Monster Mash: Breaking news and headlines

-- A couple of tramps never packed more star power than they will starting in March, when Patrick Stewart as Vladimir and Ian McKellen as Estragon will tour regional theaters in Britain, then take their "Waiting for Godot" to the London stage.

-- David Lindsay-Abaire, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of "Rabbit Hole," is on the verge of signing to write the screenplay of the next "Spider Man" film.

-- The 1957 stage adaptation of Thomas Wolfe's novel, "Look Homeward, Angel," won a Pulitzer for drama; now David Auburn, who won a drama Pulitzer for "Proof," has adapted the adaptation. The result is due on Broadway next year, staged by "Proof" director Daniel Sullivan.

-- Paintings by Francis Bacon and others are supposed to fetch multiple-millions at auction next week -- but the big auction houses are fretting that those good old days may be gone, as they seemed to be in Christie's recent auction of jewelry and modern art in Dubai  that fetched half as much as expected.

-- The Rockwell Group, which designed Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, will deck out its stage as set designer for February's annual Academy Award ceremonies.

-- Alex Ross, music critic of the New Yorker, recently won a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," and his book, "The Rest is Noise," is now a finalist for another prize -- a British award for first-time authors.

-- Mike Boehm

Photos: Patrick Stewart as Macbeth; Ian McKellen as King Lear

Credits: Stewart, Ari Mintz/Newsday; McKellen, Manuel Harlan