Muse Arts

Food in Any Flavor You Like, As Long as It's Not Chinese: Olympic Dining Western visitors to Beijing often hit a Chinese wall, where they suddenly get a hankering for foreign food after filling up with Peking duck and other local dishes for days.

Freud's Big Nude, Priced at $35 Million, Stirs Fat Debate: Martin Gayford The art world may be about to welcome a new heavyweight champion. If the estimate is correct, ``Benefits Supervisor Sleeping'' by Lucian Freud is about to become the most expensive work by a living artist to change hands at auction.

Post-Oprah, Disgraced Memoirist Frey Turns to Real Fiction: Craig Seligman A young couple who lift $20,000 from a biker gang. A predatory gay superstar whose latest fixation is a football hero. An adorable Chicana with thighs the size of tree trunks. A homeless wino who wants to save a meth-addled teenage girl.

Michael Jackson Avoids Foreclosure on Neverland Ranch as Colony Buys Loan Pop star Michael Jackson averted foreclosure of his Neverland Ranch because Colony Capital LLC bought the loan on the property.

Paramount's `Iron Man' Is Top Weekend Film Again With Sales of $51 Million ``Iron Man,'' the action-adventure film starring Robert Downey Jr., remained the top movie at U.S. and Canadian theaters this weekend, garnering $50.5 million for distributor Paramount Pictures.

Trumpeter Alpert Journeys to Brazil; Duo Sings Poet's `Truth' at Joe's Pub Herb Alpert, who brought the pop- infused Tijuana brass sound to the masses in the 1960s, is taking his fans on a musical journey to Brazil tonight at Joe's Pub in Manhattan.

Gore in Wonderland: New `Alice' Opera DVD Mixes Blood, Satire: Alan Rich Unsuk Chin's ``Alice in Wonderland'' opera, captured on a new Unitel DVD with its irritations and delights intact, reveals the Korean composer's sharp view of a familiar tale.

`Top Girls' Revisits Thatcherite England; Beckett's `Endgame': John Simon It is a good thing for New York theater when two such important plays as Caryl Churchill's ``Top Girls'' and Samuel Beckett's ``Endgame'' open the same week. The former premiered in 1982, the latter in 1957. Both were sensations.

U.K. Historians Savage Baker's `Human Smoke' as `Mendacious, Fraudulent' A friend who admires Nicholson Baker's fiction took me to task last month for being too harsh in my review of ``Human Smoke,'' the novelist's pacifist take on the outbreak of World War II.

Merlot Made From Hamptons Vineyard for $100 Beats Vintage Saint-Emilion After making wine since 1992 surrounded by the mansions of the Hamptons, Roman Roth got the ingredients for the ideal vintage last summer: steady sunshine and little rain.

Sotheby's Posts Loss on Slimmer Commissions, Higher Costs for Salaries Sotheby's, the world's largest publicly traded auctioneer of art and collectibles, disappointed investors with a first-quarter loss and said revenue from auctions declined.

Anna Netrebko's Baby-Doll Dress, Bocelli's Duet Mark Classical BRIT Awards The public expects bolshy comments, rude jibes and jaw-dropping catwalk clothes at the BRITS pop awards. This year it was the turn of the usually more sedate Classical BRITS, which took place at London's Royal Albert Hall last night.