Goldilocks

Parents went to court in Tennessee this week, challenging the values of fairy tales and pleading that their children be segregated from the worldly and corrupting teachings of the public schools. Those worldly and corrupting teachings, they say, are found in such stories as The Wizard of Oz (it's pro- witchcraft), Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Goldilocks beats the rap after breaking and entering), etc. They see feminism, pacifism and humanism seeping under the schoolhouse door.

KEANSBURG, N.J. - A tired burglary suspect was captured inside a central New Jersey home after authorities say he fell asleep on a couch. Keansburg police tell the Asbury Park Press that Dennis Bannon of Middletown apparently broke into the home sometime Friday and stole a cellphone before taking his nap. He was discovered about 3:30 p.m. by the home's owner, who called police. Officers soon responded, but it took them several minutes to awaken Bannon. He's been charged with burglary, theft, criminal trespass and possession of stolen property, and was being held on $20,000 bail.

ELLEN. Channel 6, 9:30 tonight. The Theater of the Absurd, also known as Ellen DeGeneres' ABC sitcom, "Ellen," is getting wackier by the day. In a flip-flop of a decision made last week, ABC has decided that this week's show - at 9:30 tonight on Channel 6 - will air without a parental advisory. Last week's episode sparked a well-publicized dustup with the show's star. ABC slapped that episode with a "Due to adult content, parental discretion is advised" warning because it showed a kiss between DeGeneres' out-of-the-closet lesbian character and her heterosexual best friend, Paige (Joely Fisher)

If you think Goldilocks and the Three Bears is just an innocent children's story, you haven't seen it cast as a fable about furniture. In illustrator Steven Guarnaccia's telling, the young intruder stumbles onto a Frank Lloyd Wright-ish home filled with furnishings that are icons of postwar design. As clocks by George Nelson tick away, Goldilocks tries out chairs by Charles and Ray Eames and Arne Jacobsen, and samples chili from bowls by Eva Zeisel. Clearly, this is a bear family with style, in which Papa Bear reflects 1950s hipster culture with a beret, shades and a jazzy clarinet.

This is in response to the Inquirer editorial "Is this that old-time religion?" (Dec. 20). The editorial states that the "Scopes II" trial was an absurd distortion of religious freedom. It further states: "A faith that can't withstand an encounter with Goldilocks is a weak reed indeed to hang one's religious beliefs on. " It seems to me that the same reasoning can be used when Jewish children decry the use of a cartoon mouse on a Christmas stocking. After reading your editorial "Jewish kids and Christmas" (Dec.

The latest absurd distortion of religious freedom to emerge from the "Scopes II" trial in Greeneville, Tenn., is U.S. District Judge Thomas G. Hull's decision that the local school board must pay $50,521 to a group of fundamentalist parents for, among other things, the cost of enrolling their children in private schools. In a lawsuit that went to trial last July, the parents asserted that their children were being forced to read books that, in one way or another, offended their fundamentalist religious beliefs.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans-area art teacher Kathy Hughes salvaged art supplies for her students. The students' resulting artworks, on display at Winterthur starting Saturday, capture their unique experiences as children affected by a natural disaster. "Reflections on the Storm" includes 22 works of art created by Hughes' elementary school students from the Jefferson Parish public schools. Hughes recovered what art supplies she could post-Katrina because "I believed that art could serve a therapeutic purpose in helping the students grapple with the many emotions and experiences they had endured.

"God made the world," Dana said. "And he told Noah to build an ark and take his animals, two by two on it. " She laid down the sticker storybook she had been holding, and pasted a gull near a palm tree. "Then it rained 40 days," she continued, "really hard. "Then the sun came out! And the blue bird came back with a green leaf and God made a promise he'd never ever do that again!" Dana, 7, is bright-eyed and friendly. She listens with attention when someone is speaking and answers questions with a ready smile.

Sex With Strangers, a documentary about two couples and one trio practicing the "swinger" (i.e., multiple-partner) lifestyle, could turn a libertine into a Puritan. If the film by Joe and Harry Gantz - the reality-TV pioneers of HBO's Taxicab Confessions - has any insight, it's that for some, sex with strangers is easier than emotions with intimates. Because six of the seven characters are so open about living their most private moments in public, the film plays less like an exploration of a sexual subculture than a forum for exhibitionists.

BEARISH ON RETIREMENT When it comes time to tap your company's 401(k) plan for a happy retirement, you may be in for a rude shock. Because of extremely conservative investments, there may not be enough money in the plan, says a consultant quoted in Investor's Business Daily. Douglas Culver of William M. Mercer Inc. said 401(k) plans lost ground in the 1980s because they are heavily into such things as money-market funds as opposed to stocks and bonds. "What you end up with is a bunch of folks who can't afford to retire," Culver says.

KEANSBURG, N.J. - A tired burglary suspect was captured inside a central New Jersey home after authorities say he fell asleep on a couch. Keansburg police tell the Asbury Park Press that Dennis Bannon of Middletown apparently broke into the home sometime Friday and stole a cellphone before taking his nap. He was discovered about 3:30 p.m. by the home's owner, who called police. Officers soon responded, but it took them several minutes to awaken Bannon. He's been charged with burglary, theft, criminal trespass and possession of stolen property, and was being held on $20,000 bail.

Do not mistake The Greatest for a movie about Muhammad Ali. And do not think its ambitious title indicates its overall quality. Distinguished by a gripping pre-titles sequence and a remarkably nuanced performance by Pierce Brosnan (who executive-produced), The Greatest is a group portrait in grief, inconsistently told. The tone of writer/director Shana Feste wavers wildly from deeply felt empathy with the mourners to melodramatic exploitation of them. Not only are the plot holes so big you can drive a truck through them, Feste literally drives a truck through them.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, New Orleans-area art teacher Kathy Hughes salvaged art supplies for her students. The students' resulting artworks, on display at Winterthur starting Saturday, capture their unique experiences as children affected by a natural disaster. "Reflections on the Storm" includes 22 works of art created by Hughes' elementary school students from the Jefferson Parish public schools. Hughes recovered what art supplies she could post-Katrina because "I believed that art could serve a therapeutic purpose in helping the students grapple with the many emotions and experiences they had endured.

We stalled, procrastinated, and stalled some more. When there was no more postponing - when our old mattress sagged and groaned and caused two middle-age backs to rebel in protest - it was time for a trip to the South Jersey mattress marketplace. If you haven't bought a mattress lately - if your Old Faithful is nearly as old as your marriage - you're in for the same astonishments we were. Buying a mattress these days is no fast stop at the department store while attending to other errands.

A Gothic Goldilocks, White Oleander follows adolescent Astrid as she falls through the rotting floorboards of the California foster-care system. After experiences with families and group homes that would make Oliver Twist look coddled, Astrid learns how to mother herself - with a little help from one mama bear. Astrid's own mom, Ingrid, is unavailable. She's in prison awaiting trial for allegedly murdering an ex-lover. But even from maximum security, the mercurial and manipulative Ingrid knows how to pluck a weeper on Astrid's heartstrings.

Sex With Strangers, a documentary about two couples and one trio practicing the "swinger" (i.e., multiple-partner) lifestyle, could turn a libertine into a Puritan. If the film by Joe and Harry Gantz - the reality-TV pioneers of HBO's Taxicab Confessions - has any insight, it's that for some, sex with strangers is easier than emotions with intimates. Because six of the seven characters are so open about living their most private moments in public, the film plays less like an exploration of a sexual subculture than a forum for exhibitionists.

If you think Goldilocks and the Three Bears is just an innocent children's story, you haven't seen it cast as a fable about furniture. In illustrator Steven Guarnaccia's telling, the young intruder stumbles onto a Frank Lloyd Wright-ish home filled with furnishings that are icons of postwar design. As clocks by George Nelson tick away, Goldilocks tries out chairs by Charles and Ray Eames and Arne Jacobsen, and samples chili from bowls by Eva Zeisel. Clearly, this is a bear family with style, in which Papa Bear reflects 1950s hipster culture with a beret, shades and a jazzy clarinet.

When she returned to her home in Wayne from a trip to Europe, Corene Lemaitre's parents welcomed her with open arms. But Lemaitre, being the budding young writer she was, couldn't leave well enough alone. Instead, she wondered what it would be like if they hadn't been so happy to see her. And the result is April Rising (Carroll & Graf, $23.95), an amusing take on the Goldilocks and the Three Bears tale in which a young woman, Ellen Kaplan, returns to her Main Line home to find that someone else has been sleeping in her bed. Not only that, but stealing her place in her family's affections.

ELLEN. Channel 6, 9:30 tonight. The Theater of the Absurd, also known as Ellen DeGeneres' ABC sitcom, "Ellen," is getting wackier by the day. In a flip-flop of a decision made last week, ABC has decided that this week's show - at 9:30 tonight on Channel 6 - will air without a parental advisory. Last week's episode sparked a well-publicized dustup with the show's star. ABC slapped that episode with a "Due to adult content, parental discretion is advised" warning because it showed a kiss between DeGeneres' out-of-the-closet lesbian character and her heterosexual best friend, Paige (Joely Fisher)

Robert Downey is at a table in a little French place in the West Village, drinking iced tea, eating veal stew and remembering the first two movies in which he cast his son, Robert Jr. In Pound, a 1970 satire in which actors portrayed dogs waiting for humans to take them home, "he played a puppy," says Downey of his then-5-year-old. "He got adopted right away. " And in 1972, in Downey's loopy Jesus Christ parody Greaser's Palace - a western, at that - his son was cast as a mutilated child.