Life Story

Going by its title, you might think Rock Prophecies had something to do with Nostradamus' predicting the rise of the Jonas Brothers, or some similarly uncanny feat of seeing into the musical, or geological, future. That's not the case. Instead, the poorly chosen title of John Chester's documentary about Robert Knight is meant to imply that the music photographer's ability to home in on young talent destined for greatness qualifies him as some sort of rock prophet. Which is a reach, to put it mildly.

With Bluewater Comics quickly gaining a reputation as the Biography Channel of the comics industry, it is fortunate that as its brand-name recognition and sales have increased, so has the quality of its biographical books. "Condoleezza Rice" is a case in point. Not only did Bluewater luck out by having its subject making headlines again regarding Afghanistan around the time the book hit shelves, but the company also was fortunate to have chosen writer Chris Ward to chronicle the life story of our first female African-American secretary of state.

Charlotte Salomon's Life? or Theater?, a cycle of 769 watercolors painted from 1940 to 1942, opens with an image of suicide by drowning and closes with a self-portrait of the artist gazing out to sea. Salomon, who would die at Auschwitz in 1943, was the only female in her immediate family who did not take her own life. This makes her magnum opus - an intensive exploration of suicide, lies, life and love - not a tragedy, but a triumph. Hers is a heroic story of how self-knowledge leads to self-preservation, richer than most sagas of salvation through art, more eloquent than most accounts of resurrection after the Holocaust.

Marlon Brando, having long resisted enticements to write his autobiography, has agreed to do it for Random House, it was reported yesterday. No terms were disclosed, but the New York Times said the actor would get seven figures for delivering his life story in two years. The news comes two weeks after Brando's son, Christian, got a 10-year stretch for killing his half-sister's boyfriend. Brando "reached a point in his life when there was something he wanted to say," said his agent, George England, "a point where a number of things had distilled and coalesced.

It was a story of the good that can come from bad, and the jury sat spellbound as defense lawyer Tariq El-Shabazz wove the tale as only he could. He told of a teenager from New York City's projects who was caught in a minor crime. Part of the punishment was time with Scared Straight, a program started in the 1970s to expose wayward juveniles to inmates and the brutalities of prison life. That experience changed the youngster, El-Shabazz said. He won scholarships to college, then law school.

The life of Sojourner Truth, the 19th-century abolitionist born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree, would seem to yield dramatic material enough for several plays - which makes it especially disappointing that half a play is the best that Sojourner, the one-woman show on view at the Bushfire Theatre of Performing Arts, can muster. It's a reasonably absorbing half a play, however. In the anteroom of a New York City auditorium, playwright Richard LaMonte Pierce introduces his heroine at age 86, preparing to deliver what would be the final lecture of her life.

She married young and badly. She bounced checks at Pizza Hut and the grocery. She hit the bottle to excess sometimes, talked to her cats, and once attempted suicide. And, as "JihadJane," she spewed violent-sounding vitriol online for all the world - including law enforcement - to see. From what's known about her so far, Colleen Renee LaRose is not coming off as the sharpest jihadist in the suburbs. The life of the Pennsburg woman who is due in federal court a week from today on terrorism charges is sounding ever more sad than scary.

Now comes Clarence Thomas, 43, black and once-poor, to try to fill - if President Bush gets his way - the big shoes being left by retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His story - The Clarence Thomas Life Story - was made much of by the President in introducing the Yale Law School graduate and year-long member of the appellate bench at a Kennebunkport news conference. He is conservative America's success story writ large: born in the hardscrabble outskirts of Savannah, Ga., raised by a blunt grandfather who despised welfare idlers, a hard worker, disciplined student, self-sufficient.

Ever thought about what it would be like to have a pet as a confidant? Nancy Brewster Grace takes the idea and runs with it as the literary device in her new book, Letitia. Grace, 97, uses a parrot named Lettie to tell the story of her life as a Philadelphia and Main Line-area divorcee. The memoir-novel, written in spurts over 30 years, is being self-published, even as its author remains bedridden at a Haverford retirement facility, unable to get out and enjoy her success.

Theater 1812 Productions: Boston Marriage David Mamet comedy about 2 women whose romantic entanglements lead to trouble. Closes 5/20. Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St.; 215-592-9560. www.1812productions.org . $20-$36. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way ot the Forum A slave in ancient Rome tries to win a beautiful courtesan's hand for his master. Closes 5/19. Ritz Theatre Company, 915 White Horse Pike, Oaklyn; 856-858-5230. $25-$35. A Grand Night for Singing Tribute to the composing team of Rodgers & Hammerstein.

The first thing anybody needs to know about Ludwig Live! is that the cabaret show, playing at the Kimmel Center's Innovation Studio, has little to do with Beethoven or even having laughs at his expense. Using tired devices such as the clash of high and low art, Ludwig Live! , which opened Friday, explores how intentionally ramshackle showbiz somehow holds the stage. The concept is that cranky old Beethoven - played by Charles Lindberg, in the cheapest wig imaginable - is somehow back from the dead and taking his story on the road with a troupe of actors.

DOMINIC COOPER goes positively Pacino in "The Devil's Double," a film biography of a real-life Iraqi "Scarface" and the poor sap ordered to be his stand-in. Cooper brilliantly portrays both Uday Hussein, the singularly sadistic son of Saddam, and the fatalistic, fearful Latif Yahia, a former schoolmate of Uday's yanked out of the army and told to impersonate the dictator's son so that anybody who wanted to kill him - and potential assassins were legion - would take a shot or swipe at Latif and not the real Uday.

"MY MAN! MY main man!" shouted the ever-upbeat Phil-ebrity to the shocked and smiling citizenry. "Life is good?" he asked as follow-up to grinning guys with tag-names like "Rick-ophonic Rick. You're looking fannnn-tastic. Keep on rockin'. " Riding around South Philly in the Geatormobile with top down on a sunny day, you're gonna hear this kind of chatter (and percussive finger-snapping) a lot from the guy behind the wheel, Jerry Blavat. And be greeted, in turn, by equally delighted and resounding retorts from everyone who recognizes him. "Yo, Jerry!"

NEW YORK - The hotel maid accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan hotel room broke her silence yesterday, saying in a published report that the former International Monetary Fund leader grabbed and attacked her as she urged him to stop. "I said, 'Sir, stop this. I don't want to lose my job.' He said, 'You're not going to lose your job,' " Nafissatou Diallo told Newsweek in a cover story posted online yesterday. ABC News said it would broadcast an interview with her on three of its programs today.

NEW YORK - Together and apart, the lives of Gabrielle Giffords and husband-astronaut Mark Kelly have been extraordinary. She, the congresswoman from Arizona who has miraculously survived being shot in the head. He, the commander of the space shuttle Endeavour, exchanging wedding rings with his wife before his final mission in space. Now, he is retiring to be with her full time, and the two are collaborating on a memoir that will tell a story, their story, that Kelly says the public hardly knows.

At what cost life? How much suffering should we be willing to endure, and perhaps inflict on others, to survive in a hostile world? Those are the questions swirling like birds of prey throughout Princeton author Chang-rae Lee's novel The Surrendered , a mournful, if oddly life-affirming novel about a young girl orphaned by the Korean War. Lee will talk about the book, first published last year and just out in paperback (Riverhead, $16),...

RAY DAVIES got the whole "music and conversation" show-concept going a few years back, spinning a night of tunes and tales off his "X-Ray" autobiography and deep catalog of Kinks Klassics. In the next few weeks, Philadelphians will be privy to several more of such mixed-media concert treats. Rodney Crowell has a songs-and-stories showcase - tied to his artfully spun new hard-luck-life autobiography, "Chinaberry Sidewalks" - coming next Friday to the Sellersville Theatre. Peter Asher will regale us with tales and tunes (as half of Peter and Gordon, and as hit producer for the likes of Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor)

Juan Castillo's path to the NFL started with beheaded shrimp. At a seafood-packing house on the Gulf of Mexico, Castillo held his first job, donning gloves too big for his 8-year-old hands, thumbing the heads off shrimp and dropping the bodies into a bin. Paid by the pound, he quickly saw the importance of working fast - and hard. There was a technique to it, and soon Castillo could use two hands at once. He'd line up with his mother and grandmother at 3 or 4 in the morning to secure a prime spot near the front of the conveyor belt that brought the shrimp in. "I didn't really know anything different," Castillo said.

THERE ARE MANY one-way tickets to Palookaville, but nothing will get you there faster or more directly than drugs. So we learn in "The Fighter," a putative boxing movie that deepens into a engrossingly strange, tragicomic portrait of addiction and its repercussions. The marketing campaign plays down the drug angle, and I can't imagine why. Boxing, to crib again from David Mamet, is "as dead as Woodrow Wilson. " Addiction, on the other hand, is on cable seven nights a week.