Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004 | 9:34 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE SERVICES
Two months shy of four years after closing, "Forever Plaid" will return to Las Vegas.
The Broadway musical was at the Flamingo for six years before its final curtain on the Strip in March 2001 after 3,718 performances.
The curtain will rise again for "Plaid" on Jan. 15 at the Gold Coast Showroom. Shows will be at 7:30 p.m. nightly; dark on Fridays. Tickets will be $24.95 for the show or $34.95 for a show and dinner package.
The plot of "Forever Plaid" centers on four singers killed in a car accident on Feb. 9, 1964, en route to pick up the custom-made plaid tuxedos they were going to wear in their act. The singers are caught between heaven and Earth, and while in a limbo existence they sing about 30 songs popular in the 1950s and '60s.
The show debuted in New York in 1990.
Spears leads queries
Britney Spears is No. 1, but Paris Hilton, Christina Aguilera and Pamela Anderson are just a few clicks away.
Those four pop culture icons were among the top Internet search queries of 2004, according to Google.
The lists from all the major search engines are replete with pretty people, giving weight to the argument that the Internet is used mostly for looking at musicians and actors in sexy poses.
But it wasn't all celebrity gawking in 2004. Poker had a big year online, according to Lycos, which put it at No. 10 on its list. Last year the game of chance didn't make the top 100.
Christo project coming
Billowing panels of saffron-colored fabric are about to transform the winter view of Central Park as the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude create their first U.S. project since 1991.
More than 600 workers will enter Central Park in New York on Monday to begin installing "The Gates," the city's most ambitious art project in decades. Some 7,500 gates, each 16 feet tall, are being erected along 23 miles of pathways through the park. A panel of orange-yellow fabric hangs from the top of each gate to about 7 feet above the ground.
The panels will be unfurled Feb. 12, more than 25 years after they were first proposed.
Clarke safe in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's best known resident, science fiction writer and visionary Arthur C. Clarke, said today that he and his family were safe, but regretted the lack of a warning system in his adopted home of Sri Lanka.
"I am enormously relieved that my family and household have escaped the ravages of the sea that suddenly invaded most parts of coastal Sri Lanka, leaving a trail of destruction," said Clarke, the author of "2001: A. Space Odyssey."
Originally from Somerset, England, Clarke, 87, came to Sri Lanka, a small island country of 19 million people off India's southern tip, for underwater diving in 1954. Two years later he made the tropical island his home.
Victims getting help
Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, in Bangkok, Thailand, to play an exhibition match against Venus Williams, plans to donate $10,000 to victims of the tsunami disaster in southern Thailand, a Thai tennis official said today.
The world No. 4 and Wimbledon champion is scheduled to play Williams, the former world No. 1, in the northern province of Chiang Mai Sunday. Williams arrives in Thailand later today.
Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II would make a substantial donation to victims of the disaster, channeling the money through charities of which she is a patron.
A fund set up by Britain's Disasters Emergency Committee, on behalf of numerous charities, received $9.6 million even before an official appeal was broadcast on British television and radio Wednesday evening.
Hong Kong Red Cross said it received $3.3 million in donations from the public and various organizations. Asia's richest man, Li Ka-shing, who heads a global commercial empire, pitched in $3.1 million to disaster relief efforts.
Movie star Jackie Chan donated $64,282 to UNICEF, the agency said, while Chow Yun-fat, who starred in "The Replacement Killers" and "Anna and the King," gave $25,600 to a disaster relief fund set up by the Apple Daily, the mass-market paper reported Wednesday.
Chan acknowledged his donation was "a token" for such a huge disaster, but he said he wanted "to have a spearheading effect."
Debbie Reynolds sued
The former owner of a shopping center Wednesday sued actress Debbie Reynolds and her son, Todd Fisher, for allegedly breaching their contract to display Hollywood memorabilia.
TrizecHahn Hollywood said in a Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that it had signed a lease agreement with Reynolds and Fisher in June 2001 to house the merchandise at the center in Hollywood.
The company said that Reynolds announced in March that the collection -- valued between $30 million to $50 million -- would be moved to the Belle Island Village Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. She and her son also failed to make lease payments, the lawsuit said.
Another company, the CIM Group, now owns the shopping and entertainment complex.
Princess engaged
Princess Sayako's engagement to a Tokyo city bureaucrat, a commoner, became official today with an announcement by Japan's Imperial Household Agency.
Japan had eagerly awaited word of the engagement between Sayako, 35, the only daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, and Yoshiki Kuroda, 39.
The wedding will probably occur in the latter half of next year.
Alda likes villain role
Alan Alda, who plays a scheming senator in Martin Scorsese's new film, "The Aviator," says there's something appealing about being the villain.
"I don't just want power, I want absolute power. That's nice," he told AP Radio of his role in the Howard Hughes biopic.
"The other thing is as a person, it's fun to be able to go in and spend the whole day just being ruthless," he said. "I mean, we'd all like to be ruthless once in awhile."
Murphy to sell home
Actor-comedian Eddie Murphy's seven-bedroom mansion in Englewood, N.J., that includes a bowling alley, theater and recording studio is on the market for $30 million.
Murphy, 43, who has owned the gated estate known as "Bubble Hill" for 18 years, put it on the market this month, The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported.
The star of "Trading Places," "Beverly Hills Cop" and "The Nutty Professor" bought the 25,000-square-foot home in 1986, four years after it was built.
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