Among the memorable album releases from way back in 1992 are Eric Clapton’s Unplugged, R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People, Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, and It’s a Shame about Ray from the Lemonheads, a band led by this guy in the hoodie — Evan Dando. You remember him, right? Well, do you know what Dando doesn’t remember about the stardom that followed Ray? Kissing Angelina Jolie, that’s what. Read on in this section to find out how that’s possible.

Fine and Dando

As Evan Dando revisits the 1992 album that made him a star, we offer four things you should know about him. By James Mayfield

Fifteen years is a long time in rock and roll. Long enough to gain fame, lose it and yourself along the way, and recapture it again. Long enough, even, to forget that you once locked lips with Angelina Jolie. And that’s exactly what’s happened to Evan Dando since his pop-rock band, the Lemonheads, first gained wide recognition for its 1992 cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson.”

The song appeared on the Lemonheads’ fifth, and what was then its most critically acclaimed, full-length record, It’s a Shame about Ray. At the time, the band was a trio originally out of Boston — Dando, bass player Juliana Hatfield, and drummer David Ryan — that had attracted a small but passionate following. But “Mrs. Robinson” helped draw a much broader audience to the group. And when that audience found Ray, it had plenty to like. There were hooks: At just 30 minutes long, Ray offered a plethora of brief, catchy songs. There were looks: Tall, shaggy-haired, and handsome, Dando, the son of a former fashion model, was easy magazine-photo-spread material. In 1993, soon after Ray’s release, Dando was even named one of the world’s “50 dishiest people” by People magazine, an honor (?) that was probably due in no small part to his friendship with Johnny Depp.

But from there, the story took an almost-too-predictable course, one that involved a failure to find another hit, rumored (and confirmed) drug use, and a personal crisis that spelled the end of the Lemonheads in 1998. Dando didn’t record under that band name again until 2005. When he did, Ray was there again: That year, he performed a couple of shows in which It’s a Shame about Ray was played in its entirety.

The comeback spurred Dando to record new Lemonheads material; on the heels of 2006’s The Lemonheads, another new album is expected to come out later this year. And that’s inspired this month’s reissue of Ray in a collector’s edition that includes a 45-minute DVD of videos and live performances and some never-before-heard demo tracks that, like Dando himself, were once lost but now are found.

1 The simplest songs are best, if you can find them.

“I made the demos at home on a four-track on cassette,” Dando says. “The demos are just a few tracks of me singing and playing the song twice. That was about as advanced as I could get on a four-track at the time. It’s just a guitar and vocals. It’s nice. “I was going crazy looking for them. Michael Krumper, who works at Razor & Tie now — he used to work at Atlantic [the Lemonheads’ label] — had them. And thank God he had them, because now we’ve got a DVD, nine previously unreleased songs, and the record. It’s very exciting. It just brings the album to people’s attention one more time.”

2 If Dando had to do Ray all over again, he might have hidden the hit “Mrs. Robinson” in a hiding place where no one ever goes.

“I wouldn’t have put ‘Mrs. Robinson’ on the album,” Dando says. “But I can’t really complain about it at this point. It really did help get us exposure. Luckily, people ventured further and heard the other stuff.”

3 He didn’t find Angelina Jolie’s famous lips to be all that memorable.

In the early ’90s, “I was living at this crummy place in the San Fernando Valley, and Johnny Depp had a big house, all empty,” Dando recalls. “He just said, ‘Come over.’ He’s a real generous person. He let me live at his house for a couple of months. So, I got Johnny in a video [‘It’s a Shame about Ray’]. Chloë Sevigny is in one [‘Big Gay Heart’]. And then I found out that Angelina Jolie was in one of our videos too. I made out with her for a couple of shots. That was for ‘It’s about Time.’ Someone asked me, ‘So Angelina Jolie is in your video?’ I didn’t know. Then I looked back on it, and, sure enough, he was right. My main girl in the video was Amy Smart. It was this really dumb-looking video.”

4 He’s come to believe that cover songs aren’t so bad after all.

“I’m working on a new record right now with [punk rocker] Gibby Haynes,” Dando says. “Back in the day, me and Johnny [Depp] and Gibby used to hang out. We’re doing a covers record together. It’s going to be a Lemonheads record, but it’s going to be all over the place. There’ll be some real notable guests on there, but I don’t want to give them away.”

Over Under

Lauren Ambrose is following up her unforgiving role on HBO’s Six Feet Under with, of all things, a sitcom. By Ken Parish Perkins

“Is there something harder than making people laugh?” asks Lauren Ambrose, the 30-year-old actress who costars with Parker Posey in Fox’s newest sitcom, The Return of Jezebel James. Well, yeah, maybe there is something harder — like making people sad or making them want to wring your neck. Ambrose managed to do both of those things for audiences while also being moody, despondent, and, yes, even funny during her run as Claire Fisher on the HBO drama Six Feet Under. In the four years she spent on that show, Ambrose earned two Emmy nominations, thanks in part to her being brave enough to abandon an actor’s almost instinctive need for viewers’ empathy. Fisher was, you’ll remember, a character who left a human foot in the locker of an ex-boyfriend without a hint of, well, oops. Yeah. That’s hard.

Still, there is something to be fearful of as Ambrose takes on her new role in Jezebel James. The show stars Posey as a hard-driving, successful author who wants her slacker younger sister — played by Ambrose — to carry the child she cannot. Jezebel James has been greatly anticipated, as it marks the return of Gilmore Girls creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino to TV. Like Gilmore Girls, Jezebel James features a rat-a-tat style of dialogue and a premise that’s based on quirky female relationships. But unlike Gilmore Girls, Jezebel James is filmed like a traditional sitcom — before a studio audience. “Amy is interested in going back to old-school comedy, which is appealing to an actor to sign on to,” Ambrose says. “She’s smart and a great writer and comes from Roseanne, which was genius, and she wants to get back to her roots.”

And while Ambrose says Sherman-Palladino’s machine-gun dialogue doesn’t bother her, she does admit to being slightly terrified at the prospect of having to be funny. She shouldn’t be. Early in her roughly 10-year-old career, she knocked out several comedic roles on the big screen: Can’t Hardly Wait, in 1998; and two independent films, Swimming and the well-titled Psycho Beach Party, in 2000.

The latter two of those movies also featured Ambrose’s other talent — singing, something she has worked on post–Six Feet Under.

She made her Broadway debut in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of Awake and Sing! in 2006, starring alongside Mark Ruffalo. And Ambrose received glowing reviews for her star turn in New York’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Romeo and Juliet last summer, just months after she and her husband, photographer Sam Handel, had welcomed their first child, Orson Halcyon Handel, into the world. It’s more than worth noting that Ambrose beat out Sienna Miller for the role of Juliet.

In addition to taking on stage roles, Ambrose has followed up Six Feet Under by delivering a strikingly nuanced performance in the 2007 feature film Starting Out in the Evening.

So far, everything in Ambrose’s career seems to make perfect, almost scripted, sense: small roles in indie movies, followed by a supporting role in an HBO drama, followed by star roles in stage productions, followed by a star role in a big-screen drama. And then … a sitcom? It’s a brave and different choice. And even though Ambrose says she wishes everything in her career had been perfectly planned out, she admits that “it never really works out that way. “Things that come your way are often surprising, like this sitcom,” she says. “You can’t make any plans.”

Digging Up the Past

With Lauren Ambrose and the funereal Six Feet Under off HBO, the network looks to draw viewers by resurrecting a historical figure.

NEW TV SHOW: John Adams, HBO

SOUNDS KIND OF LIKE: That dead president guy from history class.

BUT IT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE: Adams, as seen in this miniseries based on the compelling and Pulitzer Prize–winning Adams biography by David McCullough, is actually more than a white-wigged answer to a multiple-choice question. (By the way, the answer is C. The second U.S. president.) In this seven-episode miniseries, Adams is shown as being a respected Massachusetts attorney by day and a hard-driving revolutionary and passionately romantic married man by night.

PEOPLE YOU’LL RECOGNIZE: Paul Giamatti is convincing as Adams. (It turns out that our second president also hated Merlot. Who knew?) Laura Linney is Abigail Adams. Adams’s longtime rival Thomas Jefferson is played with surprising sneer by Stephen Dillane (who was Leonard Woolf in The Hours). St. Elsewhere’s Dr. Jack Morrison, David Morse, is George Washington. And Justin Theroux — who had a brief but memorable run as Joe on Six Feet Under and who as a Washington, D.C., native may have this presidential-history stuff in his blood — plays John Hancock.

AMERICAN HISTORY IS CHEAPER THAN ROMAN HISTORY: You’ve got to give HBO credit for trying its hand with another historical epic. After all, the network was burned by the intensely expensive and lightly watched series Rome, whose expansive set outside the Eternal City helped drive the cost of the series to a reported $100 million. In creating John Adams, HBO went cheaper — and more authentic. It filmed much of the series on the streets of Colonial Williamsburg.

WHEN TO SEE IT: It begins airing on HBO and the network’s related channels March 16, and it runs through April 27. — John Ross

Shattered Dream
In My Guy Barbaro, jockey Edgar Prado gives the inside story of how the pursuit of Triple Crown glory with Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro came to a sudden, tragic end. By Kristin Baird Rattini

It’s the first commandment among jockeys in horse racing: Don’t get too attached to any one horse. Veteran jockey Edgar Prado knows that rule as well as anyone. He has ridden hundreds of horses to almost 6,000 victories after all. But when he first saw the bay colt Barbaro, Prado couldn’t help himself -- the Peruvian jockey was smitten with the beautiful, powerful thoroughbred.

Prado’s love affair became the nation’s when the duo left their competition in the dust at the 2006 Kentucky Derby. It was the first time in his seven Derby rides that Prado had ever finished higher than third. And suddenly, Barbaro seemed like the best bet in a generation to win the Triple Crown. But at the Preakness two weeks later, Barbaro shattered his right hind leg, an injury that ended his racing career and, eventually, led to his death.

The memory of that event is not something Prado particularly likes talking about, which is understandable. So it was with some trepidation that he enlisted former Baltimore Sun sports columnist John Eisenberg to help him put his days of riding Barbaro into words. The result -- My Guy Barbaro: A Jockey’s Journey through Love, Triumph, and Heartbreak with America’s Favorite Horse ($26, HarperCollins) -- is a moving testament to the power a sport can have on both its fans and its participants. Prado gives us just some of the highlights.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT: I saw Barbaro working out at Churchill Downs the Wednesday before the Derby. It was incredible to see him. It was like a painting, a work of art. He was loving every single minute of it. I called my family and said, “Pack it up; you’re coming to the Derby.” I was confident he would win the race.

A RIDE LIKE A LAMBORGHINI: He had so much power. When he accelerated, it seemed he went from zero to 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds. He was a very muscular and strong horse. He left all the competition behind effortlessly. I knew I was riding a champion.

THE MOMENT OF TRAGEDY: It was 100 meters after coming out of the gate. He had always been a horse that responded when asked. He always came running out of the gate. But that day, he didn’t come out fast. I felt his back leg was very weak. I decided to pull him up right away, without hesitation. I wasn’t thinking about the Preakness or the Triple Crown or the money. I was thinking about Barbaro. He was my partner, my friend.

ON THE FAN REACTION: It was all over the television. He was such a great horse, with a lot of talent and power and the ability to become the greatest horse in America. After being on such a high from winning the Kentucky Derby, and then two weeks later struggling for his life … People just really wanted him to make it.

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS: I have pictures of Barbaro in my mind and my heart. No one can take those away. He stays with me every time I hear a couple of songs I used to play at the time he won the Derby. There’s one in particular I like very much -- Gloria Estefan’s [“Reach ,”] the song she made for the Olympics. Because that is what Barbaro did; he went and he tried his best.

THE DAY WORDS FAILED HIM: When I heard the news [of Barbaro being euthanized], I was speechless, especially since the last news I’d heard was that he was doing well and was going to be relocated to Kentucky or Florida. [When] I found out, I was in Peru. I couldn’t talk. I was devastated. Then I realized: He was an example for people too. Hope is the last thing you want to lose. You have to try hard, do your best. Sometimes things don’t come easy. He fought every step of the way, every single day.

THE HARDEST WORDS TO WRITE: Honestly, I didn’t want to talk about it. But a friend convinced me to tell my story. Someone else was making a movie, but they didn’t know the whole story behind it -- about how it felt riding him, being on top of such a great horse. I thought people should know about Barbaro from the inside -- the way he fought, how smart he was. He leaves behind a great legacy as a racehorse, a patient, and a fighter.

PLAY ON Two sports movies turn two decades old this year.

It’s hard to believe, but Bull Durham and Eight Men Out, two movies that approached America’s pastime from very different perspectives, are almost old enough to legally order a drink. The films, both of which are available this month on DVD in special anniversary editions, were released in 1988. It seems that the year and the baseball theme, though, are all they have in common. After all, Kevin Costner’s Bull Durham had a love story and a feel-good ending, but John Cusack’s Eight Men Out was a tragic tale of top athletes getting caught up in corruption. (Sounds familiar, no?) But with so much time having passed, we’re finding it easy to get the two movies confused. Are we alone? Mark your answers below and see how well you do in figuring out which character nicknames and quotes belong to Bull Durham and which belong to Eight Men Out. -- John Ross

1. Quote: “The pitcher throws and you look for that pill. Suddenly there’s nothing else in the ballpark but you and it. Sometimes, when you feel right, there’s a groove there, and the bat just eases into it and meets that ball. When the bat meets that ball and you feel that ball just give, you know it’s going to go a long way.”

2. Quote: “Look for the fastball up. He’s gotta come with the cheese. Relax. Relax. Quick bat. Pop the clubhead. Open the hips. Relax. You’re thinking too much.”

3. Nickname: Deke

4. Nickname: Bobby

5. Nickname: Buck

6. Nickname: Swede

7. Quote: “A good friend of mine used to say, ‘This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.’ ”

8. Quote: “I always figured it was talent made a man big -- you know, if I was the best at something. I mean, we’re the guys they come to see. Without us, there ain’t a ball game.”

9. Nickname: Chick

10. Nickname: Crash

11. Quote: “I did some fighting in my time. Once I was fighting a guy. … My eyes were all bloody, but I landed a lucky punch. The next thing I know, I’m steppin’ on something, and it’s the other guy’s teeth.”

12. Quote: “When you get in a fight with a drunk, you don’t hit him with your pitching hand.”

ANSWERS: Eight Men Out: 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11; Bull Durham: 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12

One for Bad, Two for Good

The man who first told the story of this month’s big-screen gambling movie, 21, is proof that the house doesn’t always win. By Eric Celeste

Mezrich, a 1991 Harvard graduate, was so intrigued, he convinced his buddy to let him not only watch the team in action but also take part in some of their team card-counting forays -- that is, until the casinos got wise and banned them. The experience formed the basis of Mezrich’s 2002 best seller, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions. We talked to Mezrich just before the scheduled March 28 release of 21, the feature film based on his book and starring Kevin Spacey.

How did you get the story? I knew the main characters, and I knew they had tons of money. Once they told me about the MIT blackjack team, I convinced them to let me go with them, watch them, and write about them.

So you were along for the whole ride? No, I met them after they were already together and having success, and the book starts a few years before that, in the early ’90s. But I basically joined the team, and then, once they’d dissolved because they were being kicked out of casinos, I spent six months in Vegas writing the book.

Were you putting down $10,000 bets too? No, I wasn’t a guy making big bets. I was a “gorilla” player, just doing whatever I was told to do, making small bets and gathering information so the big players could make their big bets. I’m good at math, but I’m not great at math.

How did the movie deal happen? Two months before the book came out, I wrote an article about it for Wired. A few days later, a guy calls saying he’s got Kevin Spacey on the phone and he wants to talk to me. I’m a huge Spacey fan, but I didn’t believe it. My mom thought it was some of my friends pranking me. But after I met with him, he said he wanted to make the movie. We sold it to MGM, which was funny because they owned one of the casinos the players were kicked out of.

The book doesn’t have a dramatic ending: The team gets discovered, and the group ultimately disbands. Was the story Hollywood-ed up for the movie? Sure, they had to turn it into more of a Hollywood thriller. But they let us have input. I read the screenplays; they had me and the MIT kids on the set. They shot some scenes just a few blocks from my place in Boston, so I got to hang out with the actors. I haven’t seen the final movie yet, but I know they kept the feel of it alive.

Has it become impossible to count cards now that most casinos use automatic shufflers, not to mention face-recognition software? It’s hard, but it still goes on. There’s another MIT blackjack team now. There are more big-money casinos now than there were in the ’90s. They just can’t do it for years without getting found out.

Can you, personally, bet in those casinos now? I would definitely be kicked out if I tried to bet big. But I don’t. I go back to Vegas every few months, and I still like to play, but just normal bets -- $25 a hand or whatever. I’m more into poker now. But I’m not a great poker player. I’m not a gambler. I’m a storyteller.

Do you think the movie will spur folks to give blackjack and card counting a try? Movies are so much bigger than books, so I’m sure it will. I see people reading my book on the flight to Vegas. I see it all the time. That’s the worst thing you could do. The MIT blackjack team practiced for six months for hours a day before trying it. And they had a team. And they were MIT students. But everyone has a dream when they go to Vegas.

Card Counting the MIT Way

Blackjack is the only casino game with a memory. When you play craps, your last roll has no effect on the dice on your next roll. But in blackjack, when a low card -- six or lower -- is dealt, there is one less low card in the deck, even when the dealing is done from a stack that is six decks deep. That changes the odds that another similar card will come. Slightly.

In 1963, an MIT professor named Edward Thorp ran simulations which showed that the more low cards remaining in the deck or decks, the more the outcome favors the dealer. The more high cards remaining, the more it favors the player. (That’s over the long run, anyway.)

This “Hi-Lo system” was used by the MIT blackjack team Ben Mezrich accompanied. They scored sets of cards based on their face value plus or minus a certain number of points. Like this:

Cards two through six were worth their face value plus one.

Cards 10 through Ace were worth their face value minus one.

Cards seven through nine had a neutral value of zero.

The teams kept a running count based on those values and adjusted the count based on how far the dealer was into his or her six decks, called a shoe in Vegas parlance. From there, quite a bit more math was involved, including factoring in each particular casino’s edge over the players -- based on that casino’s house rules. Bottom line for the card counters: It’s pretty complicated.

What made it even harder, as is demonstrated in 21, is that the strategy required a team in order to work well, in part because operating as a team made it more difficult to get caught. Herein is the lesson for anyone who thinks he or she might like to give card counting a shot: Although card counting is not illegal, casinos can ban you for any reason, and most take the official position that card counters interfere with the gaming fun of other customers. So before you give it a try, keep in mind that the only thing you can count on is that counting cards will put a quick end to your Vegas fun. -- E.C.