The New Old Age: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently under way in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor,” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said: “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

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U.S. auto sales resilient in January

The national economy remains sluggish — but don't tell the auto industry.

Auto sales showed surprising strength in January, with all three domestic manufacturers — General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group — reporting double-digit percentage gains. Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., the two biggest Japanese brands, also posted strong sales.

Overall, the industry sold more than 1 million vehicles in January, a 14.2% gain over the same month a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp.

Shoppers are streaming into showrooms, looking to take advantage of low interest rates and big leaps in fuel economy by replacing the cars they have held onto through the economic downturn.

"The year is off to a very good start," said Kurt McNeil, GM's vice president of U.S. sales operations. "There's a sense of optimism among our dealers."

So much so that the industry is starting to put billions of dollars of investment into the U.S. economy.

"Almost unlike any other industry in the United States right now, automakers are not sitting on their cash pile," said Ken Goldstein, economist at the Conference Board.

Over the last week, GM said it would invest $800 million in a Kansas City, Kan., factory and a test facility in Pontiac, Mich. It plans to launch an additional $700 million of North American plant and facility investments this year.

Chrysler will add shifts and a combined 2,100 jobs at factories in Warren, Mich., and Toledo, Ohio, this year. Ford plans to hire 2,200 salaried workers in the U.S. this year, its largest increase in salaried workers in more than a decade.

The investments are taking place in the industrial Midwest, among the regions hit hardest by the most recent economic turndown, Goldstein said. That's particularly good for the U.S. economy, he said, which contracted slightly in the last quarter of 2012.

"It would be difficult for the economy to get back to a 2.5% growth rate without a healthy auto industry," Goldstein said. "It makes it a lot easier."

A booming domestic auto industry contrasts with recession-plagued Europe, where sales are plunging and automakers are piling up losses.

Ford lost almost $1.8 billion in Europe last year and expects to lose an additional $2 billion this year. It plans to lay off 6,200 workers as it closes assembly plants in Genk, Belgium, and Southampton, Britain, as well as a parts operation in Dagenham, Britain. GM is expected to announce losses from its European operations when it releases fourth-quarter financial data this month.

Strong sales and profits in the U.S. are more than offsetting losses suffered by Ford and GM in Europe.

GM's U.S. sales rose 15.9% in January to 194,699 vehicles compared with the same month a year earlier. Ford sales rose 21.7% to 165,683, according to Autodata, its best January since 2006. Chrysler Group also had its best January in five years, with sales rising 16.4% to 117,731.

Japanese automakers also fared well. Toyota's U.S. sales rose 26.6% to 157,725 vehicles in January. Overall, the sales pace exceeded Toyota's expectations for the industry, said Bill Fay, Toyota's U.S. general manager. Honda sales rose 12.8% to 93,626.

Even luxury brands posted big gains. Jaguar Land Rover's sales rose nearly 25% last month. Porsche sales soared almost 32%.

Cars are selling because the economy is much better off than most people realize, said Beth Ann Bovino, senior economist at Standard & Poor's.

Concerns about the so-called fiscal cliff pushed consumer confidence down in January to its lowest level since late 2011, according to a widely watched barometer from Thomson Reuters and the University of Michigan.

But that really reflects two factors: people's fears about how Congress and the Obama administration resolve their budget battle, and the end of the payroll tax holiday Dec. 31, Bovino said.

"The jobs market is healing, and that bodes well for consumer spending down the road," she said.

Employment grew at an average 181,000 jobs a month last year, and although that is under the 200,000 average target economists consider healthy, it still represents steady growth, Bovino said.

"I think we are at a tipping point," Bovino said. "Spending on an automobile is a big-ticket item, it takes a lot of confidence to get out there and put a lot of money down."

jerry.hirsch@latimes.com

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Senate Democrats huddle on gun measures

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden met Thursday with Senate Democrats to brief the caucus about the rationale behind the administration’s recommendations on guns, arguing that, in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shooting, the nation “will not understand if we don’t act.”

Biden seemed intent to emphasize that the most politically challenging of the initiatives he has  recommended – an assault weapons ban – was still a priority for the administration, mentioning it first in remarks to reporters afterward.

“My message was to lay out for my colleagues what our game plan was, what we thought needed to be done,” Biden said after the more than hourlong meeting. “I made the case for not only assault weapons but for the entire set of recommendations the president laid out.”

Biden said he also asked to sit down with the key parties on Capitol Hill to plot strategy going forward.

All 23 of President Obama's gun policy proposals

A day after the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first hearing on guns, the vice president said there has been a “sea change” in public opinion since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, calling it the “straw that broke the camel’s back” to get the public behind gun measures for the first time in decades.

“I’m not saying there’s an absolute consensus on all these things,” he said. “But there is a sea change in attitudes of the American people. And I believe that the American people will not understand – and I know everyone in that caucus agrees with me – will not understand if we don’t act.”

Participants in the meeting said the vice president indicated he will continue to travel to make the administration’s case, as will the president. A week ago Biden traveled to Richmond, Va., to focus on the call for universal background checks, which is seen as the most likely of the slate of proposals to pass.

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

At that time, Biden did not mention the assault weapons ban in remarks to reporters afterward, though aides said it did come up in the private discussion with officials present.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Biden told the caucus Thursday that the administration is still behind the ban, a priority of her California colleague, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“He said this is something that they support. And that the reports that he’s seen have shown that it did make a difference,” Boxer said.

That remains a challenge though, even in the Democratic-controlled Senate because the Democrats must defend 21 seats in 2014.

“Until I see the bills and the language, the only thing I’m going to say is I’m a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. We’ve got to find a balanced approach, and I will take each amendment and bill as it comes,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who will be seeking reelection next year in a deeply Republican state.

Biden maintained that while there is no way to eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting, “there are things that we can do … that have virtually zero impact on your 2nd Amendment right to own a weapon for both self-defense and recreation that can save some lives.”

“I’ve always been confident we can reach a consensus on a broad cross-section of issues that can reduce some of this violence, even knowing it will be imperfect,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

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michael.memoli@latimes.com

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U.S. tablet shipments soar during holidays, threaten to surpass PCs

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook’s prediction that tablets would one day outsell personal computers appears to be coming true.

Holiday season shipments of tablet computers touched a record 52.5 million, up 75 percent from a year ago, as consumers snapped up a wide range of the touch-enabled mobile devices and lower priced offerings, according to International Data Corp (IDC), which tracks both markets.

Growth of the tablet market handily outpaced that of personal computers, with PC shipments sliding 6.4 percent to 89.8 million in the October-December period.

In another sign of the rise of tablets, Apple, the No. 1 seller of tablets, shipped 22 million of them in the fourth quarter, compared with 15 million personal computers shipped by No. 1 PC seller Hewlett-Packard Co during the same period.

But increasing competition means that Apple’s one-time stranglehold on the tablet market continues to loosen. The market share of its iPad fell to 43.1 percent in the fourth quarter from 51.7 percent the previous year, IDC said.

Samsung Electronics, the No. 2 seller of tablets with its flagship Galaxy brand, captured 15.1 percent of the market, more than double its 7.3 percent share a year earlier.

Software maker Microsoft Corp, which launched its Surface with Windows RT tablet during the holidays, shipped about 900,000 units, IDC said.

Microsoft has been banking on Surface to showcase its new Windows 8 software to compete with Google Inc‘s Android-based tablets and the iPad.

Amazon.com Inc, despite having a wider range of products for the holidays, saw its share slip to 11.5 percent from 15.9 percent. Asian manufacturer Asus, which makes the Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet, saw a its share increase to 5.8 percent from 2 percent, IDC said.

IDC’s figures underscore the sliding fortunes of PC makers such as HP and Dell Inc, which is now in the process of taking itself private.

“New product launches from the category’s top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season,” said Tom Mainelli, research director, tablets, at IDC.

“The record-breaking quarter stands in stark contrast to the PC market, which saw shipments decline during the quarter for the first time in more than five years,” Mainelli said.

(Reporting By Poornima Gupta; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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Appeals judges: Anti-paparazzi law appears legal

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An appeals panel says California's anti-paparazzi statute appears to be constitutional based on a brief filed by prosecutors.

A preliminary statement by three judges in Los Angeles requires a judge who dismissed charges aimed at a paparazzo who authorities say was driving recklessly to review his order. The judge may stick to his ruling, which would trigger a full appeal, or he could schedule further arguments on the case against freelance photographer Paul Raef.

Raef was the first person charged under the new law after a high-speed chase involving Justin Bieber last year.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed two charges in November, ruling the law is too broad and is unconstitutional.

Raef's attorney David S. Kestenbaum says he is asking Rubinson to stand by his ruling and allow a full appeal.

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Well: Waiting for Alzheimer's to Begin

My gray matter might be waning. Then again, it might not be. But I swear that I can feel memories — as I’m making them — slide off a neuron and into a tangle of plaque. I steel myself for those moments to come when I won’t remember what just went into my head.

I’m not losing track of my car keys, which is pretty standard in aging minds. Nor have I ever forgotten to turn off the oven after use, common in menopausal women. I can always find my car in the parking lot, although lots of “normal” folk can’t.

Rather, I suddenly can’t remember the name of someone with whom I’ve worked for years. I cover by saying “sir” or “madam” like the Southerner I am, even though I live in Vermont and grown people here don’t use such terms. Better to think I’m quirky than losing my faculties. Sometimes I’ll send myself an e-mail to-do reminder and then, seconds later, find myself thrilled to see a new entry pop into my inbox. Oops, it’s from me. Worse yet, a massage therapist kicked me out of her practice for missing three appointments. I didn’t recall making any of them. There must another Nancy.

Am I losing track of me?

Equally worrisome are the memories increasingly coming to the fore. Magically, these random recollections manage to circumnavigate my imagined build-up of beta-amyloid en route to delivering vivid images of my father’s first steps down his path of forgetting. He was the same age I am now, which is 46.

“How old are you?” I recall him asking me back then. Some years later, he began calling me every Dec. 28 to say, “Happy birthday,” instead of on the correct date, Dec. 27. The 28th had been his grandmother’s birthday.

The chasms were small at first. Explainable. Dismissible. When he crossed the street without looking both ways, we chalked it up to his well-cultivated, absent-minded professor persona. But the chasms grew into sinkholes, and eventually quicksand. When we took him to get new pants one day, he kept trying on the same ones he wore to the store.

“I like these slacks,” he’d say, over and over again, as he repeatedly pulled his pair up and down.

My dad died of Alzheimer’s last April at age 73 — the same age at which his father succumbed to the same disease. My dad ended up choosing neurology as his profession after witnessing the very beginning of his own dad’s forgetting.

Decades later, grandfather’s atrophied brain found its way into a jar on my father’s office desk. Was it meant to be an ever-present reminder of Alzheimer’s effect? Or was it a crystal ball sent to warn of genetic fate? My father the doctor never said, nor did he ever mention, that it was his father’s gray matter floating in that pool of formaldehyde.

Using the jarred brain as a teaching tool, my dad showed my 8-year-old self the difference between frontal and temporal lobes. He also pointed out how brains with Alzheimer’s disease become smaller, and how wide grooves develop in the cerebral cortex. But only after his death — and my mother’s confession about whose brain occupied that jar — did I figure out that my father was quite literally demonstrating how this disease runs through our heads.

Has my forgetting begun?

I called my dad’s neurologist. To find out if I was in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s, he would have to look for proteins in my blood or spinal fluid and employ expensive neuroimaging tests. If he found any indication of onset, the only option would be experimental trials.

But documented confirmation of a diseased brain would break my still hopeful heart. I’d walk around with the scarlet letter “A” etched on the inside of my forehead — obstructing how I view every situation instead of the intermittent clouding I currently experience.

“You’re still grieving your father,” the doctor said at the end of our call. “Sadness and depression affect the memory, too. Let’s wait and see.”

It certainly didn’t help matters that two people at my father’s funeral made some insensitive remarks.

“Nancy, you must be scared to death.”

“Is it hard knowing the same thing probably will happen to you?”

Maybe the real question is what to do when the forgetting begins. My dad started taking 70 supplements a day in hopes of saving his mind. He begged me to kill him if he wound up like his father. He retired from his practice and spent all day in a chair doing puzzles. He stopped making new memories in an all-out effort to preserve the ones he already had.

Maybe his approach wasn’t the answer.

Just before his death — his brain a fraction of its former self — my father managed to offer up a final lesson. I was visiting him in the memory-care center when he got a strange look on his face. I figured it was gas. But then his eyes lit up and a big grin overtook him, and he looked right at me and said, “Funny how things turn out.”

An unforgettable moment?

I can only hope.

---

Nancy Stearns Bercaw is a writer in Vermont. Her book, “Brain in a Jar: A Daughter’s Journey Through Her Father’s Memory,” will be published in April 2013 by Broadstone.

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U.S. sues to block Budweiser maker's purchase of Grupo Modelo

The Justice Department says it's looking out for America's beer drinkers.

Officials filed suit Thursday against Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of Budweiser, seeking to block its purchase of Mexican beer maker Grupo Modelo, arguing that retail prices of suds would rise if the $20.1-billion deal were finalized.

Last summer, AB InBev, which had a 50% noncontrolling stake in Grupo Modelo, maker of Corona Extra, offered to buy the rest of the shares at a 30% premium and had expected the transaction to close early this year.

The sale would have merged the largest and third-largest beer makers in the U.S.

In a scathing 27-page complaint, the Justice Department wrote that the deal would have given AB InBev too much market power in the U.S.

The beer maker, which has its headquarters in Belgium, had been aggressively competing with Grupo Modelo for market share in states with large Latino populations, such as California and Texas, where Corona is popular.

"The loss of this head-to-head competition would enhance the ability of ABI to unilaterally raise the prices of the brands that it would own post-acquisition, and diminish ABI's incentive to innovate with respect to new brands, products and packing," attorneys for the department wrote.

Together, AB InBev and Grupo Modelo account for 46% of beer sales in the U.S., according to the Justice Department.

"We took this action today because we believe the acquisition is a bad deal for American consumers," Bill Baer, assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division, said in a conference call with reporters.

The lawsuit was filed despite an offer by AB InBev to sell its 50% stake in Crown Imports, which along with Constellation Brands Inc. imports and markets Modelo beers in the U.S.

In recent years, large brewers have been acquiring smaller beer makers to expand operations around the world. In 2005, Canadian brewer Molson Inc. merged with Adolph Coors Brewing Co. in Denver and formed Molson Coors.

In 2008, the Justice Department approved the $52-billion purchase by InBev of Anheuser-Busch Cos. of St. Louis, creating the world's largest brewer. But InBev was required to sell subsidiary Labatt USA.

In 2011, British beer maker SABMiller paid $10.2 billion for Australia's biggest brewer, Foster's Group Ltd.

AB InBev said in a statement that it planned to contest the lawsuit challenging its Grupo Modelo purchase and that it no longer expects the deal to close during the first quarter.

Analysts, however, said it's possible the Grupo Modelo deal could still be salvaged.

Tom Mullarkey, an equity analyst at Morningstar, said that although AB InBev has indicated it will contest the lawsuit, it might be inclined to negotiate.

"I imagine … they're going to try to float out a couple more concessions," Mullarkey said.

Other analysts said the lawsuit was expected and it was unclear whether the deal would be approved.

Benj Steinman, president of Beer Marketer's Insights, said AB InBev's motivation to purchase Grupo Modelo was its desire to tap into the growing beer market in Mexico.

"This deal for ABI is not primarily about the U.S.," Steinman said. "The deal is mainly to get the Modelo Mexican business and secondarily to be able to expand the Corona brand platform around the world."

The competition between the two brewers had been heating up in recent years, according to the complaint.

AB InBev, for instance, launched Bud Light Lime to compete with Corona Extra.

They "went as far as to mimic Corona's distinctive clear bottle," according to the lawsuit. "Ultimately, instead of trying to compete head-to-head with its own product, Bud Light Lime, [AB InBev] is thwarting competition by buying Modelo."

Shares of the companies involved slid Thursday after the lawsuit was filed, but the hardest hit was Constellation, which had agreed to buy AB InBev's stake in Crown Imports. That firm's shares plunged $6.81, or 17.4%, to $32.36.

AB InBev fell $5.54, or 5.9%, to $88.60.

ricardo.lopez2@latimes.com

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High-end home sales on a roll in state

California's luxury housing market is booming.

In activity reminiscent of real estate's bubble years, the number of homes statewide selling at more than $5 million reached an all-time high last year, while those selling at $1 million or more rose to the highest level since 2007, a real estate information service has reported.

Sales are up because well-heeled U.S. and international buyers, confident that the housing recovery is solid, are looking for places to park their cash, real estate experts said. Also playing a role was a rush among the very wealthy to take advantage of lower capital gains taxes by selling before year end.

"Last year was gangbusters," said Dave Fratello, an agent with the Real Group in Manhattan Beach, the busiest Southern California community for $1-million-plus sales in 2012. "We flipped very quickly from a buyer's market to a seller's market."

Across California, 697 homes sold for more than $5 million, beating the previous high of 491 in 2011, according to San Diego-based DataQuick. The 2012 sales mark was the highest since DataQuick began tracking such sales in 1988.

The 26,993 homes sold at $1-million-plus represented a 26.9% jump from 2011, DataQuick said. In comparison, 42,502 home sales exceeded the million-dollar mark in 2007, before the mortgage meltdown dragged down prices across the housing market.

The record was set in 2005, when 54,773 homes sold for $1 million or more. The luxury market outpaced overall sales, which were up 8.2% statewide.

"The very top, it is a record level — well beyond what it was in the bubble period," said John Karevoll, analyst for DataQuick.

Hillsborough, in the San Francisco Bay Area, claimed the top spot with 422 sales at $1 million-plus. Like many neighborhoods in Silicon Valley and environs, Hillsborough's sales growth was driven by a wave of buyers from the technology sector.

Southern California communities with the most $1-million-plus sales included Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, La Jolla, Brentwood, Beverly Hills and Laguna Beach.

"We're hitting that perfect storm of buyer demand, low inventory and attractive housing prices," said Paul Habibi, who teaches real estate at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Gary Painter, director of research and an economist with the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, said the high-end niche is more likely to be driven by the international economy rather than what is going on in the U.S. — which suffered an unexpected economic contraction during the last three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.

As a result, the luxury market is benefiting from a continued influx of wealthy international buyers who are betting on the potential of prime housing to appreciate and view luxury home prices in the U.S. as bargains versus other parts of the world.

Foreign buyers spent 24% more on U.S. real estate last year than in 2011, according to an annual survey by the National Assn. of Realtors. These buyers represented 8.9% of all housing spending. Asian shoppers are particularly interested in California homes, the study said.

Sandra Miller of Engel & Volkers, a broker who specializes in international buyers and luxury properties, said that "the money is really coming from everywhere."

While her office is dealing with an onslaught of Italians, buyers are coming from London and Germany. Chinese buyers are snapping up homes in the $1-million to $5-million range for their children, she said, but not ultra-luxurious estates.

"The very, very large sales last year were done with Russian money," Miller said.

DataQuick's Karevoll cautioned that the boom at the luxury level doesn't automatically translate to continued sales and price improvement for all homes.

"As a bellwether for a market as a whole, however, it is really hard to read what it means," he said. "The broader market and what we call the 'prestige' market — homes from about $2 million to $3 million and up — seem to dance to two different tunes."

In Manhattan Beach, most homes are priced at more than $1 million, said Fratello, who is also a housing market blogger at MB Confidential. "The days of little cottages for under $1 million are mostly behind us."

A low supply of homes for sale kept a lid on sales in the sought-after beach community, Fratello added. Bidding wars returned.

"With another 10% in sales our volume would have matched all the bubble years," he said, referring to 2004 to 2006.

A tear-down in the so-called Tree Section of Manhattan Beach drew 20 offers in March, selling for $1.352 million — $250,000 above the asking price. A 2,600-square-foot Midcentury-style house in need of work in the same block attracted 15 bidders. Listed at $1.6 million, it sold for $1.88 million.

"Everybody is shaking their heads," Fratello said. "This is crazy."

Cash buyers accounted for a record 7,791 of the million-dollar home sales, up from 5,802 in 2011. Many of those presumably are investors looking for better places to put their money than the stock market or other investments.

The most expensive transaction to appear in public records was the $117.5-million sale of an 8,930-square-foot mansion on nine acres in the Northern California community of Woodside.

Among top sales in the Los Angeles area was billionaire Larry Ellison's purchase of a three-structure compound in Malibu for $36.9 million. "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest paid $36.5 million for talk show host Ellen DeGeneres' three-property spread in Beverly Hills, and the family of the late philanthropist Max Palevsky sold his Malibu mansion for $36.5 million just before the end of last year.

Almost all home sales were in $1-million-plus territory in the communities of Ross in Marin County; San Marino and Santa Monica in Los Angeles County; Los Altos in Santa Clara County; Atherton and Hillsborough in San Mateo County; and Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County.

lauren.beale@latimes.com

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Are Weak Wii U Sales a Bellwether of Shifting Game Demographics?

Nintendo expects to sell fewer Wii U and 3DS units than originally claimed, according to reports this morning. The company says it sold three million Wii U units through December, but slashed its forecast of 5.5 million Wii U units sold by the end of March to just four million in all. On the Wii U software side, Nintendo is now forecasting 16 million units in the same timeframe, a number that’s down by roughly a third from original expectations.

The 3DS takes a similar hit in the standings: down from 17.5 million units predicted through March to just 15 million units and a commensurate drop in 3DS software sales.

(MORE: Apple to Sell 128GB iPad Starting Next Tuesday)

You can look at this any number of ways. From a numbers standpoint, there’s no doubt that the Wii U lags behind its predecessor in raw sales when you contrast launch windows. But the Wii arrived at just the right time: It was the world’s first fully motion-control-driven game system — a system that went on to capture the imaginations of consumers who’d never really engaged with a game console before. Whatever you thought of the Wii, however much you actually played it in the years that followed, it did more to popularize gaming as a mainstream pastime than any gaming-related device in history.

The Wii U, by contrast, is an evolutionary step forward designed to appeal more to traditional gamers. Though even lacking the Wii’s novelty, the Wii U GamePad is a far more intrepid technological concoction than, say, either Microsoft or Sony’s imitative motion-control approaches. And suggestions that Nintendo’s just mining Apple territory with the Wii U’s tablet-style controller seem shortsighted: With its two-screen dynamic and hybrid haptic/deterministic controls, the Wii U GamePad couldn’t be less like an iPad. Or, put another way, the Wii U is as much a riff on the iPad as the iPad is just a riff on Nintendo’s original dual-screen DS — a handheld that predated Apple’s tablet by six years.

Another explanation for the Wii U’s slow start could be pricing. The Wii U hardly seems a bargain by Nintendo’s own standards. The GameCube sold for $ 200 at rollout in 2001 (no pack-in), while the Wii cost $ 250 at launch and included a game. The Wii U, by comparison, starts at $ 300 for the stripped down model sans game, then jumps $ 50 if you want a decent amount of storage and something to play — a pack-in (Nintendoland) that frankly lacks the distinctive “so that’s what all the hype’s about” flair of Wii Sports.

But let’s cut to the chase: Whither mobile gaming? Isn’t the Wii U’s sluggish start because, well, hello smartphones and tablets? Not so fast: The data we have on this is inconclusive and potentially misleading.

According to NPD research, of the roughly 212 million people playing games in the United States last year, mobile gamers only slightly outranked core gamers. The number of core gamers shrank slightly in 2012 (NPD attributes this in part to the extra-long life cycle of the current consoles) while the number of mobile gamers was up a tick, it’s true. But how many people bought a Wii U because they needed a phone? An Xbox 360 to sync with their computer’s day-planner? Conversely, how many people bought a smartphone or tablet because all they wanted was to play games like Angry Birds or Temple Run 2?

(MORE: Nintendo Wii U Review: A Tale of Two Screens)

How many mobile gamers are buying souped up phones or tablets just to play games, in other words? Anyone? Or is the mobile gaming angle more of a perk, like the Philips head or mini-scissors in a Swiss Army Knife?

I’m not saying mobile gaming isn’t big — because it is. But just as sales of a game like Wii Sports were deceptively high because you couldn’t not buy it when picking up a Wii, talking about the prevalence of mobile gaming in a pre-fab market gets tricky. Is playing games on phones or tablets siphoning gamers from PCs and consoles? It’s impossible to say at this point because we lack the data.

Nintendo can’t be all things to all people any more than Apple’s been to gamers with its iPhone or iPad. If I want to play a game like Ni No Kuni or Guild Wars 2 or Devil May Cry, I wouldn’t look to my smartphone or tablet. Likewise, I have no interest in playing stuff like Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja or Cut the Rope – the same old increasingly tiresome mobile top-sellers for years — on a console or PC. I don’t want to sell the mobile/tablet gaming market short, not with titles like Battle of the Bulge and Radiant Defense or others like Space Hulk, Shadowrun Returns and Warhammer Quest on the horizon, but concluding that the Wii U or 3DS’s slightly-lower-than-expected sales can be attributed to a shift in gamer tastes — from core to mobile/tablet gaming — oversimplifies things in my view.

What we may be looking at in these reduced Nintendo sales numbers — and what I’d expect to continue to see with the launch of new systems from Microsoft and Sony — is segmentation of a market that experienced a kind of cross-demographic boom in the mid-to-late 2000s. Before iPhones and iPads, casual gamers had the PC. The Wii was essentially a way to bring that sort of gamer into the living room. But we’d be torturing indulgence to claim the shift that occurred after 2006 was tantamount to a conversion. Casual gamers, if you’ll pardon that label, are by definition uncommitted gamers. And with buyers already spending considerably more for something like the iPad (and considerably less on that platform for games), would it be such a surprise to find a much pickier audience for a system like the Wii U in 2013 than existed in 2006?

I have no idea what sorts of devices the kind of more core-oriented games I like to play are going to live on a decade from now. All it’d take, for instance, is for Apple to flip a few switches and double down on gaming to shake up the market in ways that could make what happened with the Wii seem tame. But that won’t mean the demise of traditional gamers any more than the rise of touchscreens entails the downfall of deterministic interfaces like keyboards, mice and gamepads. Core gamers aren’t this tiny minority on the verge of extinction, after all.

Far from it, in fact: Revenue contributions from core gamers still outpace all others, reports NPD, which calls the core gaming demographic “vital to the future of the industry.” From a financial standpoint, in other words, whatever the reasons for the Wii U’s lower-than-expected sales, the ball remains clearly in core gaming’s court.

MORE: Murfie Converts Your CDs into a Lossless Online Library, Lets You Sell and Trade Your Music

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Patty Andrews of Andrews Sisters dead at 94

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Patty Andrews, the last surviving member of the singing Andrews Sisters trio whose hits such as the rollicking "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B" and the poignant "I Can Dream, Can't I?" captured the home-front spirit of World War II, died Wednesday. She was 94.

Andrews died of natural causes at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, said family spokesman Alan Eichler in a statement.

Patty was the Andrews in the middle, the lead singer and chief clown, whose raucous jitterbugging delighted American servicemen abroad and audiences at home.

She could also deliver sentimental ballads like "I'll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time" with a sincerity that caused hardened GIs far from home to weep.

From the late 1930s through the 1940s, the Andrews Sisters produced one hit record after another, beginning with "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" in 1937 and continuing with "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar," ''Rum and Coca-Cola" and more. They recorded more than 400 songs and sold over 80 million records, several of them going gold (over a million copies).

Other sisters, notably the Boswells, had become famous as singing acts, but mostly they huddled before a microphone in close harmony. The Andrews Sisters — LaVerne, Maxene and Patty — added a new dimension. During breaks in their singing, they cavorted about the stage in rhythm to the music.

Their voices combined with perfect synergy. As Patty remarked in 1971: "There were just three girls in the family. LaVerne had a very low voice. Maxene's was kind of high, and I was between. It was like God had given us voices to fit our parts."

The Andrews Sisters' rise coincided with the advent of swing music, and their style fit perfectly into the new craze. They aimed at reproducing the sound of three harmonizing trumpets.

"I was listening to Benny Goodman and to all the bands," Patty once remarked. "I was into the feel, so that would go into my own musical ability. I was into swing. I loved the brass section."

Unlike other singing acts, the sisters recorded with popular bands of the '40s, fitting neatly into the styles of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Crosby, Woody Herman, Guy Lombardo, Desi Arnaz and Russ Morgan. They sang dozens of songs on records with Bing Crosby, including the million-seller "Don't Fence Me In." They also recorded with Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante and Red Foley.

The Andrews' popularity led to a contract with Universal Pictures, where they made a dozen low-budget musical comedies between 1940 and 1944. In 1947, they appeared in "The Road to Rio" with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour.

The trio continued until LaVerne's death in 1967. By that time the close harmony had turned to discord, and the sisters had been openly feuding.

Bette Midler's 1973 cover of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" revived interest in the trio. The two survivors joined in 1974 for a Broadway show, "Over Here!" It ran for more than a year, but disputes with the producers led to the cancellation of the national tour of the show, and the sisters did not perform together again.

Patty continued on her own, finding success in Las Vegas and on TV variety shows. Her sister also toured solo until her death in 1995.

Her father, Peter Andrews, was a Greek immigrant who anglicized his name of Andreus when he arrived in America; his wife, Olga, was a Norwegian with a love of music. LaVerne was born in 1911, Maxine (later Maxene) in 1916, Patricia (later Patty, sometimes Patti) in 1918.

All three sisters were born and raised in the Minneapolis area, spending summers in Mound, Minn., on the western shores of Lake Minnetonka, about 20 miles west of Minneapolis.

Listening to the Boswell Sisters on radio, LaVerne played the piano and taught her sisters to sing in harmony; neither Maxene nor Patty ever learned to read music. All three studied singers at the vaudeville house near their father's restaurant. As their skills developed, they moved from amateur shows to vaudeville and singing with bands.

After Peter Andrews moved the family to New York in 1937, his wife, Olga, sought singing dates for the girls. They were often turned down with comments such as: "They sing too loud and they move too much." Olga persisted, and the sisters sang on radio with a hotel band at $15 a week. The broadcasts landed them a contract with Decca Records.

They recorded a few songs, and then came "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," an old Yiddish song for which Sammy Cahn and Saul Kaplan wrote English lyrics. (The title means, "To Me You Are Beautiful.") It was a smash hit, and the Andrews Sisters were launched into the bigtime.

Their only disappointment was the movies. Universal was a penny-pinching studio that ground out product to fit the lower half of a double bill. The sisters were seldom involved in the plots, being used for musical interludes in film with titles such as "Private Buckaroo," ''Swingtime Johnny" and "Moonlight and Cactus."

Their only hit was "Buck Privates," which made stars of Abbott and Costello and included the trio's blockbuster "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B."

In 1947, Patty married Martin Melcher, an agent who represented the sisters as well as Doris Day, then at the beginning of her film career. Patty divorced Melcher in 1949 and soon he became Day's husband, manager and producer.

Patty married Walter Weschler, pianist for the sisters, in 1952. He became their manager and demanded more pay for himself and for Patty. The two other sisters rebelled, and their differences with Patty became public. Lawsuits were filed between the two camps.

"We had been together nearly all our lives," Patty explained in 1971. "Then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died and then our father. All three of us were upset, and we were at each other's throats all the time."

Patty Andrews is survived by her foster daughter, Pam DuBois, a niece and several cousins. Weschler died in 2010.

A memorial service is planned in Los Angeles, with the date to be determined.

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