At Stern Grove on Sunday, reports season host Liam Mayclem, star of the show Rufus Wainwright opened the show by observing, Today there's a marathon, a Palestinian protest and a bum-centric party. The artist is looking for financial support, for a "wetsuit sponsor," as well as volunteers for the day and companion standers. Lenore Naxon of the JCC says the event's almost sold out - even before tickets are on sale to the public - "to folks who have donated to our program just to get tickets." According to this beauty bible, "if you haven't been diagnosed as gluten-sensitive, it's better to be gluten-aware rather than gluten-phobic." -- Joel Selvin, longtime Chronicle pop music critic, has written eight books since he left the paper in 2009. The most recent is "Piece of My Heart," about songwriter-producer Bert Berns; a musical version of that story opened in New York a few weeks ago, and Selvin was there, basking in its success (it got a rave review from the New York Times), as well as his own. Attempts to find someone to fix it on a weekend night were unsuccessful, so he and his pals went to Barndiva for dinner, as planned, and he tried to put it out of his mind.