Rooster

In Grand Bay, Ala., a small town where violence is still rare, people wonder how it could have happened. How could it be that one day he was alive and vigorous, and the next day dead in his tracks? But the old bird's luck just ran out. In the time it takes to draw a revolver, he was gunned down in his own front yard. Now an entire community is shocked and bewildered. The sheriff's deputy swears it was self-defense, but the idea is laughable. Him? Harm an armed police officer?

What do you get when you combine spirited rock and roll with a cartoon that's much more than a doodle? A lot more than a delightful children's movie called Rock-A-Doodle. Specifically, you get the answer to the question that has kept supermarket tabloids in business for years. Elvis is indeed alive, but he is not living on Mars after being kidnapped by aliens. A more bizarre fate awaited the King: The man who accused you of being nothing but a hound dog is now himself no more than a rooster.

Home design has met with a bit of fowl play. And the culprit is pecking its way onto our welcome mats, into our living rooms, onto our tabletops and into our gardens. Animals and insects take turns as nature mascots in our homes. Over the years, we've embraced geese, butterflies, dragonflies and frogs. This year, roosters rule. Roosters have been perennial icons of the French countryside, sometimes depicted on ceramic ware known as faience or quimper. In American folk art, the rooster often turns up as a centerpiece of hooked rugs or as wood carvings.

Yes, fiberglass animals have rights, too. At least, one anonymous local businessman thinks so. He has come to the defense of the most persecuted bird in town - the big, bright rooster in front of Norview Farms. The benefactor has offered $1,000 - not chicken feed - to anyone with information that leads to the arrest of whoever broke off the bird's legs in April. According to police, busting up the bird has been a longtime tradition. The rooster has not been repaired since the last mauling and has been damaged at least six times in the last 20 years.

Rooster, the 31-year-old Philadelphia necktie manufacturer, has filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code The company is also up for sale. Rick Aron, the company's chairman, said Rooster owed about $4 million, of which $2 million represents a mortgage loan to Continental Bank. Aron, who replaced president Jerome Myers as the company's chief operating officer last week, said he expected the company would emerge from Chapter 11, but said the tie maker is for sale.

Dr. Louis Gallo lived his whole life with a rooster at the end of his name. Now there's also one on his tennis court - and it's got Gallo running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Gallo, whose last name means rooster in Italian, received the Long Island Red rooster - and its companion, a hen - as a joke from his brother-in-law last November as a 50th birthday present. "He thought we'd just drive the rooster back to the farm after a few days, when the novelty wore off," Gallo said yesterday as the rooster clucked and strutted around him. "But then they were so cute, we decided to keep them.

Elvis will be in the building tomorrow morning, along with Little Red Riding Hood, Howdy Doody and President Abraham Lincoln. They are part of a huge collection of cookie jars, Bisque pottery, dolls and related items amassed over 35 years by Connard and Joyce Riegner of Coatesville, Pa. Their collection goes across the Barr Davis auction block starting at 9 a.m. tomorrow in the Gap, Pa., fire hall. What comprises the collection? Here are the numbers: 60 pieces of Hull Little Red Riding Hood pottery; 35 Little Red Riding Hood cookie jars; 17 other cookie jars, including Howdy Doody, pigs, clowns and chickens; 60 Little Red Riding Hood dolls; over 350 collector fruit jars; over 150 Ski Country mini-decanters, and more.

Rooster Inc., a Philadelphia necktie manufacturer that gained national prominence in the 1970s with its eclectic designs, has filed to reorganize its debts under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy code. Jerome B. Myer, who was president of Rooster until recently, said yesterday that a bankruptcy petition was filed Feb. 24 in federal court in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, hesaid he expected the company to survive, but probably under different ownership. Although he would not identify the prospective buyer, Myer said, "The company is still in business, and it is in the process of selling itself.

Actors performing the Lion Dance welcomed the Year of the Rooster in a hail of exploding firecrackers yesterday in Chinatown. Other celebrations were held throughout the weekend. The four-day Chinese New Year, Hsien Nien, and the three-day Vietnamese festival, Tet, officially began Saturday.

The U.S. Postal Service will issue its first ever "Happy New Year" stamp Wednesday with a design featuring a rooster and Chinese characters. It may, however, be the last stamp issued with a New Year's theme. There is not a similar stamp in the 1993 program. The design shows a yellow rooster against a red background, with "Happy New Year!" on the right and Chinese characters that translate to "Year of the Rooster" on the left. The Chinese represent each year with an animal from one of 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac; 1993 will be the year of the rooster.

A police narcotics raid Thursday yielded drugs, guns, money - and 47 dressed fighting roosters that were part of a cockfighting ring in the city's Hunting Park section, authorities said. Police called officers from the Pennsylvania SPCA to the 4000 block of North Fairhill Street after the narcotics raid, said agency spokeswoman Wendy Marano. Police found some of the birds, a fighting ring, and fighting paraphernalia. Besides the dressed roosters, PSPCA officers removed more than 50 hens and chicks from the two sites, she said.

Dozens of roosters - believed to have been raised for a cockfighting operation - and other animals were seized Wednesday in raids on two rowhouses in Philadelphia's Fairhill section, authorities said. "It's not like somebody was just raising chickens," Pennsylvania SPCA spokeswoman Wendy Marano said. "It's pretty obvious by the way the roosters were dressed that they're fighting birds. " Acting on a tip, the PSPCA raided a property at 3047 N. Reese St. about 2 p.m., Marano said.

THE COEN BROTHERS' "No Country For Old Men" told of a Texas sheriff who, confronted with the worst criminal he'd ever seen, spit the bit. He would, he figured, have to corrupt himself to stop the killer. It's "what you're willing to become," he tells us. "A man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I won't do that. " Now the Coens have made another western, from the Charles Portis novel "True Grit," and it's a fair to say there's a new sheriff in town. He's the legendary Rooster Cogburn, happy to take on a half dozen evil men by putting the reins in his mouth and riding out with a gun in each hand.

Before martinis got all silly and the advent of oxymoronic sports bars, there was the Happy Rooster, a gem of a hideaway at the corner of 16th and Sansom, its bar warm Brazilian rosewood, its aspect buttoned-down and, in the '60s, perfectly scripted for a Mad Man. It was run as something of a private preserve by a romantic Francophile by the name of Abe "Doc" Ulitsky, and not only were jackets required, but ties as well, and unescorted women were...

The top items in the Conestoga Auction company's two-day sale next weekend in Manheim will be offered at the second session Aug. 22 - notably a 1925 Model T Ford and a 1789 George Washington inaugural button. The first session next Friday will specialize in what at first blush sounds like a contradiction in terms: contemporary folk art. Folk art is routinely characterized as antiques created by unknown, often self-taught, artisans carrying on traditional forms. The more than 350 lots to be offered next Friday, beginning at 3 p.m. at the gallery at 768 Graystone Rd., have all been made within the last 50 years, and most are signed by their makers, including such well-known contemporary folk artists as David Y. Ellinger, the Strawsers, James Christian Seagraves, Walter Gottshall, and the unforgettable Left-Handed Russell Henry.

Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. There are at least 13 ways of looking at these blackbirds. They are, indelibly, the young Vito Corleone and Michael Corleone, the seasoned faces of American conflict and compromise and the most authoritative actors of their generation. If there were a Mount Rushmore of actors, surely their profiles would be chiseled in granite next to those of Marlon Brando and Jimmy Stewart. Is it possible that Righteous Kill is only the third time De Niro and Pacino have shared a movie marquee and only the second they have shared scenes?

French style is legendary. Yet somehow, in this country, French-inspired interior decor too often means a kitschy version of country French - a busy look heavy on rustic furniture, wrought iron, rooster motifs, and flower-print Proven?al fabrics in primary colors. Aiming to liberate us from all that are three new books on French interiors with a very different take on the Gallic look. London antiques dealer Josephine Ryan's French Home (Ryland, Peters & Small, $29.95), Dallas interior designer Betty Lou Phillips' Inspirations From France & Italy (Gibbs Smith, $39.95)

Seagulls are common on the Delaware River, but the untimely deaths of 189 of them 18 months ago formed the basis yesterday for a most uncommon prosecution. Appearing before Municipal Court Judge Deborah Shelton Griffin for a summary trial, Daniel Gallagher, 50, admitted that he drove into a flock of seagulls at the Packer Marine Terminal on the night of Feb. 18, 2006. But, describing a scene seemingly out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, he asserted it was an accident. Gallagher took the stand in his own defense after Assistant District Attorney Bill James mounted a prosecution that included three dozen photographs, a videotape, and a witness list that included city, state and federal officials and a self-taught seagull expert.

"Now this is a photograph of what I was painting. Can anyone spot the differences?" says Michael McKee to a group of eight or so West Bradford third-graders. The 37-year-old, with buzzed, sandy hair compares a photo of a local field to his rendering of it in acrylic paint. One by one the kids point out small distinctions - a moved flower here, a shorter tree there - that separate McKee's painting from the photo. "I can make some subtle changes if I want, things that I think will make it better," the artist explains.