Climbing for charity

Actor Kevin Bacon hiked 14,110-foot Pikes Peak Saturday to play a concert at the top as part of an event to raise money for a cancer charity.

Bacon woke up around 4:30 a. m. to make the roughly six-hour climb with his brother, Michael, and about 95 hikers at an event to raise money for the Love Hope Strength

Foundation cancer charity. Michael Bacon’s wife and son also joined the hike in weather that switched from chilly to sunny and back.

“It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done physically,” Kevin Bacon said after the trek. “I’m in pretty good shape, but it still really kicked my ass.”

At the mountaintop, Bacon took a puff of oxygen before the Bacon Brothers performed three songs.

Late night shuffle

Nielsen Media Research says the “Late Show With David Letterman” beat the “Tonight Show” last week—the first time in more than three years.

David Letterman scored a weeklong average of 3.46 million viewers, edging out the 3.32 million viewers who watched NBC’s “Tonight Show,” hosted by Conan O’Brien.

It was Letterman’s first win during a full week of all-new broadcasts since December 2005, when Oprah Winfrey was his guest on the CBS late-night show. Letterman was perhaps given a ratings boost from lingering controversy over a wisecrack that targeted the family of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Service for Fawcett

A private funeral service will be held Tuesday for Farrah Fawcett at the Cathedral of Our lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. Church officials say the service is set for 4 p. m.

Fawcett died Thursday from anal cancer. She was 62.

The actress, best known for her role in TV’s “Charlie’s Angels,” chronicled her battle with cancer in a documentary called “Farrah’s Story” that aired last month.

Father like son

Fresh out of college with an English degree in hand, Peter Leonard wrote a six-page short story he liked very much and asked a famous author for a few notes.

He got back a three-page critique that pointed out, among other problems, that Leonard’s characters came across “like strips of leather drying in the sun.”

“I didn’t write another word of fiction for 27 years,” Leonard says.

While it’s not true that the critique knocked him out of the writing business, Leonard admits the it was hard to take. After all, it came from his father, Elmore Leonard, one of the coolest dudes ever to put pen to yellow legal pad.

Truth is, life dragged Peter Leonard away. He started his own advertising business, got married, had kids, looked up and realized it was 25 years later.

Turns out the younger Leonard shares some of his father’s gifts. His just released his new book, “Trust Me,” and just turned in his third after warm notices for his 2008 debut, “Quiver.”

Peter Leonard shows he shares a few traits with his father, though. His dialogue is singsong and flip, his criminals both cool and incorrigible, and his ability to move a story along is surely genetic.