There's a ton of stories about people losing their jobs over a careless tweet about the boss or some sloppy, drunken photos on Facebook.

But have you heard the one about the waiter and Jane Adams?

The actress on the TV show "Hung" didn't respond to numerous attempts to be contacted, and HBO declined to comment on issues relating to its clients.

But here's the story we got from Jon-Barrett Ingels, a former waiter at the Barney Greengrass restaurant in Beverly Hills:

One afternoon, Adams came into the restaurant for lunch. Ingels, 31, served her an order of soup and a lemonade. Waiting on a celeb was nothing out of the ordinary, Ingels said, because due to the restaurant's proximity to major L.A. talent agencies, actors dine there regularly.

However, what happened next was pretty unusual.

Ingels dropped off the bill, which came to $13.44. Adams' face turned red as she fumbled through her purse, Ingels said. "I left my wallet in my car!" Ingels recalled Adams saying."I'm so sorry!"

Ingels told Adams it was OK to go to her car and come back when she found the checkbook. "Her face was plastered on billboards all over town," Ingels wrote on his blog after the incident. "It's not like I wouldn't remember who she was."

"She never came back that day," Ingels said on the phone from his home in West Hollywood.

Ever gone out and felt, well, not casters-up, not entirely not nearly blotto, but some kind of subtle gradation of drunk? Perhaps you'd find exactly the right turn of phrase in the new book "Drunk: the Definitive Drinkers Dictionary," out this week -- it's got 2,964 synonyms for the word "drunk." In fact, there are more synonyms for "drunk" than any other word in the English language. Our book blog Jacket Copy writes:

Several words and phrases for "drunk" come with literary pedigrees. Up in his hat appears in James Joyce's "Ulysses." Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" includes the colorful drunk as seven earls jumping fences. P.G. Wodehouse popularized blotto, which Edmund Wilson, in his 1927 "Lexicon on Prohibition," considered the drunkest of drunk. In "Butterfield 8" by John O'Hara, one woman scandalizes another by saying she was stewed to the balls. Shakespeare had many drunk words, including fap and cashiered. Sloppo, a rare term, is used by a character in Stephen King's "The Stand." Carl Hiaasen's "Double Whammy" includes the phrase dog-sucking drunk. And in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," Daisy Buchanan is found drunk as a monkey....

The book, which includes long stretches of unadorned lists of synonyms -- from deformed to dipped in the wassail bowl, from Count Drunkula to cross-eyed -- is illustrated by Brian Rea in a series of sketches with an appropriately sideways sensibility. The image on the cover is of a plain bar stool, tipping over.

If you think you've got a good way to say "drunk," the publisher -- the independent, Brooklyn-based Melville House -- is asking for your words and phrases. No matter how sodden or silly they may be.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times

Kathy Griffin, Hollywood’s flame-haired clown of self-deprecation, spent years on the D-list but has just vaulted to the top of the New York Times' bestseller list with her assumptively titled autobiography, "Official Book Club Selection." Consider it a 368-page instruction manual on how to grow up Catholic, start a comedy career in Los Angeles, gather a following of gay men and weasel into celebrities' parties for the purpose of dishing about them later. Griffin stops by Vroman's in Pasadena for a signing. The bookstore's website warns that she won't be posing for photos and that to get a ticketed place in line customers must buy a copy of the book from the store. Griffin will only sign copies of her memoir --- no photos, no tiaras -- so leave your "Pulp Fiction" and "Muppets From Space" memorabilia at home.

— Alie Ward

Photo: Kathy Griffin arrives at the Emmys with her book in hand. Credit: Matt Sayles / Associated Press

With all the buzz about Annie Leibovitz's near-bankruptcy, it's clear that even elite artsy types may be compelled to drag stuff out to the curb for a yard sale. So why wouldn't a few respond to the "Ca$h for your Warhol" signs that went up in the Boston area earlier this year?

The signs look almost exactly like the "Cash for your house" signs posted on telephone poles and wired to fences. In fact, they're produced by the same Texas company. But the "Ca$h for your Warhol" signs are actually an art project by Boston-based Geoff Hargadon.

After learning that Brandeis University planned to close its Rose Art Museum and sell off the school's art collection -- including a few Warhols -- he got the signs printed. And posted a couple near the Rose Art Museum, too.

So far, Hargadon hasn't gotten any serious calls. And if he did, he probably wouldn't be able to meet what a seller was asking. But if they were willing to accept a really, really low price for their Warhol, who knows?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

The nonprofit Zócalo Public Square hosts some of the city's most intriguing discussions and conversations, with authors, researchers and other fascinating folks. In the last year, they've had gatherings featuring Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, Craig Newmark of Craigslist, British writer Alain de Botton, former California Gov. Pete Wilson, musician Buddy Collette, smart, slightly wicked journalist Daniel Hernandez and more.

They've talked about the principles of work, saving community gardens, whether we can solve homelessness in L.A., the Screen Actor's Guild strike, art and culture, politics global and local. And almost always, the events -- held at a variety of venues around the city, including the Hammer Museum, downtown's Central Library and the Getty -- are free.

But the recession hits everyone hard, even those who do good work. So for the first time, Zócalo Public Square is holding a fundraiser, and it's a doozy. With onetime Zócalo speaker Jonathan Gold's name on the marquee, the Oct. 10 event is guaranteed to be fit for the pickiest foodie.

A few of L.A.'s best restaurants, including Providence, will be providing the good eating. And accompanying cocktails are being provided from the shops of Cedd Moses (Seven Grand, Cole's, etc.), guaranteeing they'll be classy -- no appletinis, thank you very much.

The event sounds like an ideal, dreamy evening of the best of Los Angeles: great food, great conversation, great drinks. But with tickets at $300 for one and $500 a pair, for some attendance will remain a dream.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Image: Zócalo

The latest film from Ethan and Joel Coen has the unmemorable title "A Serious Man," but that’s about the only unmemorable thing about it. Like so much of their work, it straddles comedy and sheer grimness; while the tone is substantially lighter than their Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men," the underlying worldview is, in its own way, just as pessimistic. The difference is that the pessimism here is quite specifically Jewish pessimism -- not a characterization anyone ever applied to that Cormac McCarthy adaptation.

Given their names, one might assume, with a reasonable chance of being right, that the Coens are Jewish, at least by background. It’s not an aspect that’s come up much in their work — there were a couple of Jewish characters in "Miller’s Crossing," and John Goodman was hilarious as a defensive convert in "The Big Lebowski" -- but their Midwesternness has been more apparent. "A Serious Man" is all Jewish, all the time. 

How Jewish? The film opens with a beautifully shot eight-minute sequence in Yiddish, with English subtitles, about a married couple somewhere in Eastern Europe, a century or two ago, who are cursed after an encounter with a possible dybbuk (demon). The scene is so effective, the mood so creepy and magical, that you may feel disappointed when the action suddenly leaps forward to 1967, with "Somebody to Love" blasting on the soundtrack.

Our hero is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a fortyish physics professor whose life is about to unravel around him in ways big and small. (Direct heir to the curse in the prologue? Who knows?)

If you've got a Crayola-style crib, warm up your digital camera and get ready to enter Apartment Therapy's Fall Colors Contest. All it takes to enter is a handful of pics of a single room -- shoot for colorful and beautiful -- that need to be submitted before Oct. 12. This year, for the first time, participants are asked to design and name a color palette to describe their room.

Take the room above -- maybe it's sangria-internationale, or citrus grape, or blossom bruise. Whatever you might call it, don't call it competition -- although it was certainly colorful, it's no longer in the running, because the owner furniture designer Harry Segil has moved.

Apartment Therapy's editors select a group of candidates and post them for public vote. The voting window on each entry is short -- two days -- so perhaps there's a bit of a whiplash race to get friends' support, in addition to the aesthetic judgment. Then there's a round-robin of finalists with March Madness-style brackets to determine the ultimate winner, who will get $1,000 and a shopping day with Maxwell in New York.

What's fun about the contest is that it isn't about buying the most expensive pieces -- we have magazines for that. These are real people's homes, with their own individual ways of implementing color and style. In prior years, almost every entry has included eclectic pieces: vintage furniture, goofy lighting ornaments, bold paint colors and original artwork have all appeared in the mix.

The first selections go online this Thursday, open to public vote and ready to provide inspiration.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Harry Segil's former living room. Credit: Richard Hartog / Los Angles Times

Sex has always led technology. Early photography evolved on the back of dirty photos. Home video recording and VHS tapes gained traction first in the world of porn. And the Internet would never have grown into the insatiable beast we know today without the profitable, technology-driving porn industry.

But what of genetic engineering? Sex toys? Future robot sex?

They're all the territory of Arse Elektronika, an alternative sex-meets-technology conference held in San Francisco (of course). Now in its third year, it kicks off Thursday night at the Roxie Theater, with film screenings, an opening celebration and the Prixxx Arse Elektronika Awards Gala.

Discussions, a hands-on session and presentations will include "Atomic Porn: What is the smallest particle of erotica?", "Sexual Etiquette and Law in the Age of the Panopticon" (hello, Foucault!), "Of Hypercrotch and Nanobot" and "Steampunk Vibrator: DIY?"

Explore that last one at your own risk.

The classic vision of a laboratory is clean and cold, but this group of futurists, artists and engineers is thinking of science in new, unclean ways. Analee Neuwtiz, the editor of i09, calls it "naughty geeky weirdness." She should know; she's speaking on Saturday.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: A scientist in Taiwan adjusts a robot-in-progress. Credit: Sam Yeh  / AFP/Getty Images

Here's a wild idea: relate your organization's fundraiser to your members' interests.

All too often, nonprofits default to bland, overpriced banquets in order to raise cash. Nicole Ring, the assistant director of development at the Ketchum-Downtown YMCA, calls them "rubber-chicken dinners."

The better alternative, Ring said, is the YMCA's annual Stair Climb to the Top fundraiser, which took place Friday afternoon.

This year's event attracted about 2,000 fitness-conscious folks from Los Angeles and others flying in specifically for the fundraiser.

For the stair climb's 16th anniversary, participants paid a $100 entry fee and asked friends to donate toward the YMCA's community programs. The players then raced up the 75 flights of stairs in the U.S. Bank Tower downtown. It's supposedly the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

"It's our biggest fundraiser of the year," Ring said. "It really brings together the downtown community."

In addition to avid YMCA members looking for a workout, the event draws local businesses, which use the team-focused challenge as a sort of camaraderie-training exercise.

Speechless.

That was our reaction to the new feature Tecmo is pimping for the PlayStation 3 release of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. That's also the way the game company portrayed Japanese players in its online viral video, showing guys experimenting with the ability to control the movement of on-screen breasts by tilting their controllers.

Going back to the original Nintendo video game system, the Ninja Gaiden franchise has always been about Ryu, a sword-wielding ninja who combats super-sized enemies. The new game is really no different.

But while exploring marketing avenues for the product, Tecmo had a dilemma: The company released a very similar game for the Xbox 360 more than a year ago. That game, called Ninja Gaiden 2, was marketed as a bloody, gory action adventure, said Tecmo spokeswoman Kyoko Yamashita.

The developers decided to tone down the extreme violence for the PlayStation 3 audience and implemented mammary movement as a gimmick based on the underused Sony Sixaxis controller technology. Online marketing, too, shifted its focus to another taboo subject -- sex.

"Looking at the audience behind the 360 versus the PS3," Yamashita said, "360 has kind of a raw, very pro-American audience." The PS3, they determined, had less of a thirst for blood and perhaps more of a thirst for flesh.

While there are three female characters that players can control, the bulk of the game is spent playing as Ryu. Sorry, ladies, but there's no similar body-part-manipulation feature for the male protagonist.

Tecmo's Japanese marketing team crafted the online video. The American and European divisions jumped at the opportunity to reuse it because they believed it had universal appeal. (After all, there's no language or cultural barriers since the actors are too hypnotized to speak and most guys love those womanly assets.)

"We were very interested once we saw the concept," Yamashita said. "The marketing campaign itself is quite different."

If anyone questions the old adage "sex sells," we'll have an answer shortly after the game hits store shelves on Tuesday.

Updated, Sept. 28, 10:48 a.m.: The original Tecmo video appears to have been removed from YouTube. We have replaced it with a mirrored version.

-- Mark Milian