THE LEFT LANE
Lynn not so hot here

Advertiser Staff and News Services

Produced by White Stripes' Jack White, a longtime fan of Lynn's, "Van Lear Rose" puts the country legend's gritty, lusty voice front and center, with a lot of lyrical sass, fuzzy and twangy electric-guitar licks, gentle country-fried pedal steel, Dobro and fiddle.

Locally, however "Van Lear Rose" barely made a dent on last week's Tower Records sales charts.

While the week's other top debuts, "American Idol Season 3: Greatest Soul Classics" and D12's "D12 World," bowed at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, "Van Lear Rose" entered at No. 56.

Perhaps Lynn needs to guest judge an episode of "Idol."

Gender gap in games

The survey of more than 1,000 fifth-, eighth- and 11th-graders, and university students in Michigan and Indiana was conducted in 2003. Among the findings:

• Eighth-graders lead the way in time spent playing games, with boys averaging 23 hours a week and girls 12 hours.
• Girls tend to prefer classic board games, card or dice games, quiz-trivia games, arcade games and puzzle games.
• Boys tend to prefer fighters, shooters, sports, fantasy role-playing, action-adventure and strategy games.
  
  
  

Working mothers

According to a poll conducted for ClubMom, 88 percent of mothers call motherhood a job. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds of mothers are members of the work force: 43 percent work full time and 21 percent part time.

If money weren't an issue, the number of working moms would drop off to just over 50 percent, the poll predicts.

The ClubMom poll was conducted by Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research, and is based on a national survey of 1,207 mothers. There is a margin of error of 3.1 percent.