Juice pours it on for relief

Walker, Calif. Grammy Award winning singer Juice Newton sang for an audience seated on hay bales to raise money for this quiet Sierra town ravaged by two wildfires last summer.

“I was asked if I would come to do a show to try to raise the awareness, to raise some money,” she said after Saturday’s concert. “Of course I’d come. Why not? … You’ve gotta help.”

Newton sang for more than an hour to a crowd of about 200 in a dusty field a few hundred yards from where an air tanker crashed while fighting a June blaze, killing all three men on board.

A second fire in July burned 9,866 acres and forced the evacuation of the Topaz Lodge, a hotel-casino and recreational vehicle park on the California-Nevada line.

Hoping to make history

Malibu, Calif. Tea Leoni has been getting little sleep raising her 3-month old son and 3-year-old daughter with former “X-Files” star David Duchovny, but she still found time and energy to take a hike for breast cancer research.

She said it wasn’t easy finishing the hike through several miles of the Santa Monica Mountains to raise funds for the Expedition Inspiration Fund for Breast Cancer Research.

“I get pretty tired,” the 36-year-old actress said in a telephone interview. “The other day I forgot my son’s name.”

Leoni said she wants to contribute to the fight against breast cancer because she knows too many women with the disease. “My new goal is that when my daughter is my age, breast cancer will be just something that she can talk about to her kids from history books.”

Is Senate a hip-hop away?

Dallas Politics helped Dallas win the Hip-Hop summit.

Impresario Russell Simmons, known as the godfather of Hip-Hop, chose Dallas largely because he wanted a chance to plug Democrat Ron Kirk’s Senate bid.

“It’s a race we can win and it’s one of the most important races coming up now,” Simmons, founder of Def Jam Records, told a throng of aspiring musicians Saturday.

Participants cheered messages from Simmons, U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, rapper D.O.C. and the Rev. Benjamin F. Muhammad before rushing Simmons with samples of their own music in hopes of a record deal.

Flattered by comparison

Waltersboro, S.C. The wife of a high-school football coach whose life is being made into a Hollywood film says she’s honored Debra Winger is going to play her on the silver screen.

“I had no idea that it would be anybody like her,” said Linda Jones, wife of coach Harold Jones. “She’s one of my favorites. I don’t see many movies, but I’ve rarely missed one of hers.”

Ed Harris plays the T.L. Hanna High School coach and Cuba Gooding Jr. the mentally disabled man he befriends. Shooting of “Radio,” named after Gooding’s character, starts today.