SCHOOL ALARM: It might not be a...

SCHOOL ALARM: It might not be a new topic, but drug problems are worse than ever for local schools, says Cypress High School Principal Elizabeth Novack. Her school hosts tonight what it’s calling a “Community Wake-Up Call.” . . . Speakers include Cypress Police Chief Daryl Wicker and Bill Beacham, a veteran drug program coordinator. Says Novack: “It’s our moral obligation to our youth to take action.” . . . The principal encourages whole families to come--child care will be provided.

EASTER SORROW: Nearly a year after Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder and O.J. Simpson’s arrest, the couple’s children--Sydney, 9, and Justin, 6--are on the cover of the June issue of Life magazine, photographed at their mother’s grave in Lake Forest. The magazine says in a cover story that the family gathered there at Easter. . . . It adds that “Sydney can’t bring herself to approach the grave. Dominique (her aunt and Nicole’s sister) has to coax her across the grass.”

GIVE A WHIT: If Will Rogers never met a man he didn’t like, he would have loved James Whitmore. . . . Amid other acting stints, Whitmore has been playing the famous humorist for 25 years in his one-man show, “Will Rogers’ U.S.A.” . . . The 73-year-old actor, recently praised for his work in “The Shawshank Redemption,” brings his Will Rogers act to South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa on July 15. It’s a fund-raiser--one show only--for South Coast Rep programs. Tickets sell for $100 and $150.

LOUIS KNOWS: It was country music historian Hugh Cherry of Seal Beach who wrote the liner notes about Jimmie Rodgers’ life for Merle Haggard’s 1969 double album tribute to the pioneering country singer. That album has just been re-released on CD (OC Live!). . . . Cherry, who grew up listening to Rodgers, says few know that Rodgers once recorded with Louis Armstrong. Cherry says he once asked the jazz great if he remembered recording with Rodgers in 1931, and Armstrong replied: “Only white man I ever knew who could sing the blues.”