THURSDAY, JULY 27

The monthly Chamber of Commerce mixer, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., hosted by Wilshire Fireplace (formerly Palace Fireplace), has been cancelled and will be rescheduled. Theatre Palisades Kids present ’42nd Street,’ a 1930’s musical set behind-the-scenes in a Broadway production, opening night at Pierson Playhouse on Haverford. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. on July 27 through July 30 and 2 p.m. on July 29. Ticket: $12. Call 454-1970 for reservations. (See story, page 12.) Weekly campfire program in Temescal Gateway Park, 8 p.m. at the campfire center next to the dining hall, through August 24. Enjoy a fireside program led by local naturalists and celebrate the campfire tradition with stories, songs and (free) marshmallows. Bring stories to share and a picnic dinner. Parking is $5. Contact: 454-1395, ext. 106.

FRIDAY, JULY 28

Harpist Michael Rado, with pianist Paul Baker, will perform works by Debussy, Ravel and others, 7:30 p.m. at the Woman’s Club, 901 Haverford. Susan Allen’s Summer Harp Course concerts will also feature harpist Stella Castellucci on July 31 and students performing a range of harp repertoire on August 4. Admission is free. (See story, page 13.)

SUNDAY, JULY 30

Weekly Summer Splash program, featuring family aquatic games, activities and music, 5 to 7 p.m. at the YMCA pool in Temescal Gateway Park. Free admission and the public is invited. By popular demand, barbeque dinners are back, featuring hot dogs and turkey burgers for sale, as well as healthy snacks.

MONDAY, JULY 31

Pajama Story-time for children of all ages, 7 p.m. at the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real. Parents and teddy bears welcome.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 1

Tuesday Night Hikes, organized by the Temescal Canyon Association, will seek out the secret stairways of Pacific Palisades. Meet at 6 p.m. in the Temescal Gateway parking lot at the corner of Sunset and Temescal Canyon Rd. for carpooling. Public invited. Expect to return between 8 and 9 p.m. The Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association board will meet at 7 p.m. in Rustic Canyon Park. Public invited.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 3

Longtime Palisadian Karen Stigler will speak at the Palisades Rotary Club meeting on ‘Mediation: Enlarge the Pie, Then Slice It,’ 7:15 a.m., Gladstone’s restaurant, PCH at Sunset. Stigler is an attorney with the Century City Mediation Group, which helps families and businesses build agreements. Public invited. Weekly campfire program in Temescal Gateway Park, 8 p.m. at the campfire center next to the dining hall, through August 24. Enjoy a fireside program led by local naturalists and celebrate the campfire tradition with stories, songs and (free) marshmallows. Bring stories to share and a picnic dinner. Parking is $5. Contact: 454-1395, ext. 106.

‘Don’t ever take a partner.’ That seemed to be the paramount advice at Madame Wu’s talk last Thursday night at Mort’s Oak Room. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the speech drew about 50 people and included hors d’oeuvres and dessert courtesy of Mort’s. A longtime Palisades resident, Sylvia Wu owned and operated Madame Wu’s Garden, a Santa Monica restaurant popular with celebrities and renowned for its world-class food and service, for 37 years. Now 91 and still active as ever, she began by recalling the early years of her business and the way in which it grew. ‘I was lucky. In the beginning, I didn’t know much about publicity,’ Wu said. ‘I hired a PR man for $500 a month, but he couldn’t get the Los Angeles Times into my restaurant. I was embarrassed. ‘One day I came out of church and an old lady was walking behind me. She said, ‘Are you that little girl who opened that Chinese restaurant?’ I said, ‘Yes, who are you?” The woman turned out to be the mother of Joan Winchell, the Times’ restaurant editor. Wu explained her situation, and the woman said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.’ ‘And she did!’ Wu recalled. ‘Her daughter gave me her last column. She wrote a beautiful piece and from then on we were busy, busy, busy.’ Throughout the speech, audience members were encouraged to ask Wu questions about her business. Mort’s owner Bobbie Farberow took the lead, questioning Wu about the source of funding for beginning her restaurant. ‘When I wanted to open my first restaurant, my husband, King, insisted that I take a partner,’ Wu said. King, an engineer at Hughes Aircraft, suggested a Chinese cook in the company’s cafeteria. ‘But I didn’t want a partner,’ Wu said firmly. ‘One day my husband and I were at a friend’s house for dinner and I told them the situation. They convinced him that I shouldn’t take a partner, and so I gave the cook his money back. I think he was so relieved’he didn’t know if I could make it or not.’ Wu continued, ‘If I had a partner, I wouldn’t have what I have today. My advice to all young people is don’t take a partner. If you’re busy fighting with a partner, you can’t work.’ One young woman in the audience asked Wu what she was most proud of in her life. ‘I’ve never thought about that,’ she said, hesitating. ‘Family, children. I have very good children. ‘I was a wife, a grandmother, a housekeeper’everything. At the same time I ran a business, I took care of my children. At my 90th-birthday party, my two grandchildren told everybody that grandma picked them up from school every day.’ She and King have been married 61 years. Wu also spoke about the internal operations of her restaurant. ‘I told my waiters, ‘You don’t have to kowtow to customers, but if you don’t give them good service, then you will be fired.’ When people came to my restaurant, I made sure they were taken care of; that’s how I started the business.’ After Madame Wu finished her speech, Community Council member Kurt Toppel shared a personal experience at the restaurant. He said that after he was voted in as chairman of the Santa Monica Red Cross in 1970, ‘We wanted to have the installation of our officers and wondered where we should go. Somebody said, ‘Why don’t you ask Madame Wu’s?’ I said, ‘Are you out of your mind? We can’t afford something like that!’ He said, ‘Just ask her!’ So I did. And you said, ‘Oh, it’s no problem. You are so welcome.’ ‘So the entire leadership of the Santa Monica Red Cross came to your restaurant,’ Toppel remembered. ‘The food was great, and it wasn’t expensive. We enjoyed it immensely and you were there to encourage us, and I thank you for that.’ Asked if she had any advice for young businesspeople, Wu responded: ‘First, take care of yourself. Be very careful, and don’t trust too many people. When you go into business, you have to only think of business’you have to concentrate. ‘And don’t take a partner.’

‘California should be leading the way in reducing the nation’s addiction to oil,’ Assemblywoman Fran Pavley said last Friday at Santa Monica College. ‘With the technological advances we have, this state could become an economic example in alternative energy sources to the rest of the world.’ Pavley, who has gained international stature for her progressive stance on environmental issues while representing the 41st District since 2000, joined with State Senator Sheila Kuehl to hold a 2-hour conference on sources of alternative energy for vehicles. Several hundred journalists, various officials and curious citizens crowded into SMC’s Concert Hall, with many people having to stand or sit in the aisles. Outside, a number of alternative-fuel cars, including George Clooney’s infamous electric Tango Spied, a 39-inch-wide one-seater which carries a half-ton of batteries, were on display. Inside, experts in various fields of alternative energy each gave a short speech and presentation on their technology and its benefits as a viable vehicle energy source. Plug-in Hybrid Vehicles These vehicles can be charged at home from a standard outlet and contain both a traditional internal combustion engine and an electric motor. They differ from traditional hybrid vehicles in that the latter cannot be charged, and thus rely more on gasoline. Charging allows these hybrids to achieve approximately twice the gas mileage of normal hybrids, which can in some cases top 100 mpg highway. ‘The [power] grid is an energy asset waiting to be used by transportation,’ said Edward Kjaer of Southern California Edison. ‘We expect to see plug-in hybrids by the ’09 or ’10 model year.’ Ethanol Fuels This high-octane fuel is produced from renewable, biological sources such as corn as opposed to fossil fuels. While pure ethanol is not used as a vehicle fuel, it can be mixed with gasoline to create a cheaper, cleaner-burning power source. High concentrations of ethanol, such as E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline), can be used in flexible-fuel vehicles, while lower concentrations, such as E10 or E6, can be used with any vehicle currently sold in the U.S. ‘Flexible-fuel vehicles are coming into the market’we just need the infrastructure [fueling stations, etc.],’ said Robert Babik, whose company General Motors currently has over two million Flexfuel vehicles on the road. Biodiesel ‘Biodiesel is a non-toxic, biodegrable, renewable fuel,’ said Lisa Mortenson of Community Fuels. ‘The material’s safety data sheet says that if you drink it you should chase it with two glasses of water, which is the same thing you do with bourbon.’ Much like ethanol, biodiesel is used as an additive to standard fuel’in this case, diesel. The major problem currently facing biodiesel, as with ethanol, is a lack of fueling infrastructure. Hydrogen fuel cells Fuel cells combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, with water and heat as the only by-products. Offering zero tailpipe emissions and high efficiency and reliability, the two major barriers to hydrogen vehicles are high cost and lack of fueling infrastructure. While hydrogen cars are not yet on the market, the city of Santa Monica maintains a small fleet of hydrogen vehicles. ‘Hydrogen also provides an opportunity for fast refueling,’ one area where other electric vehicles are lacking, according to Catherine Dunwoody of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. Natural gas Honda Motor Company manager Steve Ellis spoke about the benefits of natural-gas vehicles. His talk touched on the ‘phill’ device, a home-fueling station sold with all new Honda natural-gas vehicles. ‘Phill’ would eliminate many of the fueling infrastructure problems found with biodiesel, ethanol, and hydrogen fuel cells. Natural gas has significantly lower emissions than gasoline, reducing carbon monoxide emissions by 70 percent and carbon dioxide by 20 percent. ‘The door is also open for natural-gas vehicles to be hybridized,’ said Ellis, hinting at even lower emissions from a natural-gas electric hybrid car in the future.

Until two weeks ago, perhaps the biggest thrill of Jeff Madsen’s life occurred during his senior year at Palisades High, when he and his Dolphin teammates won the City Invitational baseball championship at Dodger Stadium. On July 16, Madsen shocked a packed crowd at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas by finishing first in a field of 1,579 players to become the youngest player (at 21 years and five weeks) ever to win a World Series of Poker event. According to the Associated Press, Madsen pocketed $660,948 in a three-day no-limit hold’em game. And just to prove it was no fluke, he won a second no-limit hold’em game last Saturday, upping his net earnings to almost $1.4 million. What will he do with his newly-earned money? ‘I’m just going to do a lot of random shopping,’ he was quoted as saying in Saturday’s edition of the Los Angeles Times. ‘I really haven’t figured it out yet.’ Madsen, who graduated from PaliHi in 2003, began developing his craft during his freshman year at UC Santa Barbara, playing primarily at the Chumash Indian casino in Santa Ynez, where 18 is the legal gambling age. To earn the victory Saturday, Madsen had to go heads-up at the final table against previous World Cup player-of-the-year Erick Lindgren. The result was the poker equivalent to an unkown qualifier beating Tiger Woods at The Masters. In the final hand, Lindgren raised to $50,000 before the flop (the first three community cards) and Madsen called. The flop came K-Q-2 rainbow (three different suits) and Madsen immediately moved all of his chips into the pot. Lindgren thought for a few moments, then called all-in and showed A-J of diamonds. Madsen showed Q-9, giving him a pair of queens and the lead at that point in the hand. The turn, or fourth, community card was the 5 of diamonds, which gave Lindgren a chance to win the pot with an ace on the final card, any 10 for a straight, or any diamond for a flush. There were 15 cards left in the deck that would snatch victory away from Madsen. But the river card was the three of hearts and Madsen had his second gold bracelet in less than a week. While his winnings have increased Madsen’s bank account they apparently have not warped his values. The morning after hitting his latest jackpot, he was back at home by Riviera Country Club to attend a memorial service for his grandmother. ‘Jeffrey is so cool as a cucumber,’ his mom, Harriett, told AP. ‘You would not know, sitting next to him at the memorial service, that this boy just became a millionaire.’ Madsen, on summer break from UCSB where he is studying film, showed signs of great things to come on July 5 when he finished third out of 670 players in the Rio’s $2,000 buy-in Omaha high-low tournament, good for $97,552. ‘He was a great kid and he had a pretty good bat,’ said Russ Howard, Palisades’ varsity baseball coach from 1986-93. ‘I remember that he was very low key’he always kept his cool.’ Jeff’s older sister Marissa ran cross country and track at PaliHi, where she won the Palisadian-Post Cup Award as the school’s outstanding senior athlete in 2001. Ferguson Also Wins at World Series of Poker Fellow PaliHi grad Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, the Palisades’ most famous poker player and main-event champion at the 2000 World Series of Poker, has cashed in at three tournaments so far during this year’s 37th running of the WSOP. Known most for his trademark black clothes, sunglasses and black hat, Ferguson had tallied $18,530 through July 18. His best finish was 17th on July 7 in an Omaha high-low tournament, worth $9,964. His other cashes include 59th place on July 18 in a no-limit hold’em shootout (for $4,805), and 61st place on June 30 in a pot-limit hold’em for $3,761. Ferguson is one of the top pros considered to have a chance to win the main event, which starts Friday and ends on Aug. 10. World Series officials are expecting about 8,000 players to compete in this single event, about 2,500 more than last year’s record-shattering total. First place money this year is projected to be $10 million. (Russ Scott, managing editor of The Dispatch in Moline, Illinois, contributed to this story.) By RUSS SCOTT Special to the Palisadian-Post ”’ Jeff Madsen’s historic run at the 37th annual World Series of Poker in Las Vegas continued early Thursday morning when he finished third in a tournament, pushing him into second place on the WSOP points leaderboard and second in the overall tournament player of the year rankings. ”’ Madsen, a graduate of Palisades Charter High School, battled his way to third place in the $1,000 buy-in’ seven-car stud high-low event before getting knocked out about 1:30 a.m. at the Rio Hotel and Casino. ”’ It was the fourth time this month that Madsen, of Brentwood, made a World Series final table. He won two of those events, becoming the youngest player ever–at just five weeks past his 21st birthday–to win a coveted gold bracelet. And, of course, the youngest to ever win two bracelets. ”’ The overnight finish netted Madsen $65,971, pushing his total winnings for the Series to $1,467,852, good for second in the player-of-the-year standings behind well-known poker pro Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, who has amassed $2,093,730. ”’ Madsen’s final hand pitted him against eventual tournament winner Patrick Poules. “Boy Wonder”, as Madsen is being called by some at the World Series, was knocked out when his lone pair was topped by his opponent’s pair of aces. ”’ A total of 788 players started the tournament on Monday. Madsen was in last chip position when the final table began with eight players, but he fought his way toward the top until running into Poules’ top pair.