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2B Daily News – Friday, August 17, 2012 FEATURES Disgusted by stepdaughter's room have been a step- mom for seven years. My hus- band's youngest is 22 and still lives with us. ''Cara'' is a Dear Annie: I hoarder. Her room is full of rotting garbage, soda cans with fruit flies com- ing out of them and half-eaten food left on piles of dirty clothes on the floor. There are dishes in there that I haven't seen in years. I've offered to help her clean up, but she doesn't want help. She likes her room the way it is. Annie's Mailbox by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar own car. We've asked her to pay rent, but have yet to see any money. She obviously doesn't help around the house. She has few friends and mostly sits in her room all day doing nothing. Frankly, I want Cara out of here. I think my husband needs to handle this, but he won't. He refuses to kick her to the curb and says to just keep her bed- room door closed. This is causing many arguments. I cannot tolerate the thought of bugs infesting the rest of the house. The weather is hot, and I can smell her stinking room. I've con- sidered cleaning it myself, but I know it will cause a huge fight. What can I do? I'm at my wits' end. — Wicked Stepmom Cara has a part-time job and her KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Scenes of Tom Cruise filled the big screen, but the moviegoers packed inside a Missouri theater focused their attention on the action playing out away from the film: Three local actors and comics cracking jokes about the star's height, his fervent belief in Scientol- ogy and some of his cine- matic shortcomings. Talking back to movies used to Dear Stepmom: People who hoard are emotionally attached to their ''collection,'' even if it includes old food and dirty dishes. These things make Cara feel safe. Unfortunately, if her hoarding isn't addressed, it is like- ly to get much worse, not to mention the health hazard it presents. Cara needs professional help, and the sooner her father realizes it the bet- ter for everyone. He isn't helping his daughter by allowing this to continue. The International Obsessive-Compul- sive Foundation has information on hoarding, as well as referrals. Please contact them at ocfoundation.org/hoarding. Dear Annie: I recently met up with an old acquaintance and have fallen head over heels in love with him. We are both single and in our 50s. I believe he loves me, but I suspect he is impotent and too proud to admit it. I don't ask any questions, and it makes no difference to me. I love him no mat- ter what. My heart breaks for him. My ques- tion is: Can a man still feel love in his heart even though he cannot perform in bed? — No Name, No State Dear No Name: Of course, but for Dear Annie: I would like to respond to ''Tired of Getting Bad Haircuts.'' I have tried every trick you suggested, but for every good haircut, I get 50 bad ones. I'm always specific about what I sexually charged events, which may make him feel obligated to take things further. Let him know that you love him as he is, without any additional expectation. Sleeping is important, although we don't know exactly why DEAR DOCTOR K: Why do we need to sleep, and what happens in our bodies while we sleep? want and go out of my way to com- municate. Yet I've had dozens of uneven haircuts, bad color jobs, styl- ists who chat on the phone while cut- ting, and haircuts that look nothing like the one on the person whose hair you liked so you got their stylist's name. I've also been subjected to styl- ists talking about their sex lives, their exes and their drug habits. I tried one stylist three times, and on the fourth trip, she said, ''You are so picky, I'd like to strangle you.'' I never went back. do. ''Tired'' hit the nail on the head. Maybe some stylists out there will see themselves and try to do better. — Also Tired of Bad Haircuts There is only so much a client can many men, the ability to show love is tied to the intimacy of sex. Some also feel that if they cannot perform, a woman will think them less of a man. There are treatments for impotence, and if this is the problem, he can speak to his doctor. We suggest you be care- ful not to turn your encounters into attract annoyed stares or the glare of an usher's flashlight, but now audiences in the- aters, comedy clubs and even sports arenas are lining up to hear the heckles. The focus of the jokes at Kansas City's Screenland Slams on this particular Saturday night was the actor's turn in 1985's ''Legend,'' a Ridley Scott-directed romantic fan- tasy starring a young Cruise as a forest dweller battling All Concrete & Wrought Iron Statuary-Fountains-Benches-Birdbaths Trellises-Gazebos & Yard Decor HOT AUGUST SALE 20% Off ANNUAL "If it's made out of concrete or wrought iron, it's on sale!" COOL SEASON VEGGIES Class Saturday, August 25th @ 10am-Free Learn to grow a cool-season garden. Please call to reserve a seat. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WYNTOUR GARDENS 365-2256 8026 Airport Road, Redding Located 1 mile south of the Airport (Next to Kents Mkt) Open Mon-Sat 8-5 & Sunday's 10-4 wyntourgardens.com Facebook Annie's Mailbox is written by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, longtime editors of the Ann Landers column. Please email your questions to anniesmailboxcomcast.net, or write to: Annie's Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254. Movie riffs making comeback from theaters to clubs the Lord of Darkness and his goblin henchmen. ''It's one of those movies that have really high aspira- tions. And there are some things in it that are great — it has really great cine- matography,'' said Tom Lancaster, founder of the Kansas City comedy troupe. ''But at the end of a day, it's about a unicorn. It's like it was made by a 7-year-old girl. So that's perfect.'' More than a decade after the cancellation of smart- alecky 90's cult TV show ''Mystery Science Theater 3000,'' a generation of ''Misties'' weaned on the show is embracing the movie riff as its own comedic form. The show's creator and original host Joel Hodgson, along with other former writers and cast members, tours theaters with the popular live show ''Cinematic Titanic,'' firing jokes as schlocky horror and sci-fi movies play in the background. Another group of ''Mystery Science The- ater'' alums, the San Diego- based RiffTrax, performs its own live shows that are simulcast at multiplexes nationwide, including a Thursday night show of the not-so-classic horror film, ''Manos: The Hands of Fate.'' The RiffTrax collec- tive also creates online audio commentaries that can be purchased, sans movie, but played back at the user's convenience in perfect sync with the flick. And comedy clubs and cinemas from Kansas City to Los Angeles and Seattle host their own sanctioned shout-fests, star- ring performers both well- known (stand-up comic Doug Benson's Movie Interruption at a Hollywood theater) and obscure (Kansas City has two movie-riff comedy troupes). Audience participation also is valued: Theaters in Port- land, Ore., and Austin, Texas, now offer Hecklevi- sion, in which audience members are encouraged to send text messages on their cellphones while their jokes flash onscreen. ''It's very peculiar, but something has changed,'' said Hodgson, who created ''Mystery Science Theater'' in 1988 at a local UHF TV station in Minnesota before it was picked up by the Comedy Channel, which later became Comedy Cen- tral. ''People have accepted it as its own comedic art form,'' he added. ''It's one of the things on the menu if you want to be funny.'' That wasn't the case early on for Hodgson, a for- mer stand-up comic from Wisconsin whose early- career sabbatical as a toy and prop designer led to the creation of the robot puppets that became central to his show's plot. The puppets were held captive on a spaceship along with their human pal and forced to endure excruciatingly bad B-movies. ''Mystery Science Theater'' crew to riff away on forget- table films like ''Teenage Cave Man'' and ''The Brain That Wouldn't Die.'' The show and other Hodgson projects since it use scripted jokes, while crews such as Lancaster's Kansas City troupe are more improvisational. The plot allowed the DEAR READER: The honest answer is that we don't know why it is we sleep. We spend about a third of our lives doing it, so nature must have a reason for it. But it's hard to ask nature questions — or, at least, to get an answer. Dr. K by Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D. One possible reason for sleep is obvious: Our mus- cles may need the rest. How- ever, the heart is a muscle, and it doesn't rest while we sleep, thank goodness. And like our heart, many of our other organs, such as the liver and kidneys, keep working. Maybe our brains need rest? I doubt that. We can see from studying brain waves that the brain is active while we sleep, although it has very different brain wave patterns during sleep than during wakefulness. know that our brain does while we are asleep, and only then, is to dream. Sig- mund Freud thought that we needed to dream in order to deal with hidden conflicts, desires, fears and other psy- chological issues. He thought we needed to sleep because we needed to dream. Today, many psychia- trists doubt that we need to dream for those reasons. In the past 10 years, scientists here at Harvard Medical School and elsewhere have published a great deal of evi- dence that dreaming (and, hence, sleeping) is important in memory and learning. That makes sense to me. You'd think we'd need some time, without distractions, to sort through and to organize the new information that entered our brains that day. Sleep would be a good time for doing that. The one thing we all Studying electrical sig- nals given off by the brain Dreaming occurs during REM sleep. Your eyes dart back and forth rapidly behind closed lids. Your body temperature rises. Your blood pressure increases. Your heart rate and breathing speed up to daytime levels. And yet your body hardly moves, except for intermit- tent twitches. A person enters REM sleep about every 90 minutes, or three to five times a night. We have more informa- tion about sleep in our Spe- cial Health Report, "Improv- ing Sleep." (Learn more about this report at AskDoc- torK.com, or call 877-649- 9457 toll-free to order it.) So I didn't really answer your question. That's because I don't know exact- ly why we sleep, nor does anyone else. But we do know that it's important — for the health of our brain and also the health of our body. During the night, you move between different sleep stages in a fairly predictable pattern, alternating between REM and non-REM sleep. During deepest sleep, which is non-REM sleep, hormones are released that stimulate tissue growth and muscle repair. And your immune system becomes primed to defend itself against infection. Dr. Komaroff is a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. To send questions, go to AskDoctorK.com, or write: Ask Doctor K, 10 Shattuck St., Second Floor, Boston, MA 02115. Michael J. Fox returning to TV LOS ANGELES (AP) — Michael J. Fox is planning a return to series TV, more than a decade after he left to concentrate on fighting Parkinson's disease. The actor, who first gained fame in the 1980s sitcom ''Family Ties'' and later headlined ''Spin City,'' will star in a comedy that's in development at Sony Pictures Television for 2013, according to people with knowl- edge of the project. The people, who lacked authority to publicly discuss the matter, spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymi- ty. The project has drawn strong interest from the major networks, they said. The actor's publicist did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Sony declined comment. Fox, 51, who starred in the hit ''Back to the Future'' movie franchise, is working with Will Gluck, director of the film ''Easy A,'' and writer Sam Laybourne, whose credits include ''Cougar Town'' and ''Arrested Development,'' the people said. The actor, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's dis- ease in 1991, left ''Spin City'' in 2000 and said he intended to focus on helping find a cure for the disease. He started a foundation, which bears his name, to fund research toward that goal. Although he reduced his workload because of Parkinson's, Fox has made guest appearances on TV series including ''Rescue Me,'' ''Curb Your Enthusi- asm'' and ''The Good Wife.'' In May, Fox told ABC News that a new drug regi- men has helped him control the tics that are a result of the disease and allowed him to take on more acting roles. (brain waves) and signals by our muscles has allowed us to know that there are two major types of sleep: rapid eye move- ment (REM) sleep or dream- ing sleep, and non-REM or quiet sleep. The new Sony project was first reported by the enter- tainment website Vulture.