Pay Is Fishy but Show Goes On

--Andre the Seal, whose harbor tricks and coastal migrations have entertained tourists for two decades, is virtually blind with cataracts but is otherwise healthy and the show should go on, his trainer and his veterinarian agree. “Obviously, the sight had been deteriorating for a while,” said veterinarian Victor J. Steinglass, who believes that the seal made his annual swim up the New England coast from Cape Cod this spring in almost total darkness. “He obviously made it almost blind this year,” he said. “He’s made it with really minimal eyesight.” Although impaired, the 24-year-old seal continues to put on a daily afternoon exhibition at the harbor in Rockport, Me., with trainer Harry Goodridge. Treatment is untried, Steinglass said, because most seals with failing eyesight continue to navigate ably, “still catching fish, still mating, still having live pups.” Andre winters in Provincetown, Conn., at the Mystic Marine Life Aquarium, where his sight problems “became more noticeable this spring before he left,” aquarium spokeswoman Laura Kezer said.

--Entertainer Bruce Springsteen is selling out concert halls throughout Europe in a widely acclaimed tour, but one British judge admitted ignorance of the performer. “Who is he? A pop star?” Sir Jeremiah Harman murmured at a High Court hearing in London over the alleged sale of pirated Springsteen T-shirts. Edward Bragiel, lawyer for Springsteen’s Merchandising Enterprises Inc., told Harman that the American entertainer was “probably the most popular singer in the world today.” “Very well,” replied the bewigged jurist. Springsteen has opened a three-concert engagement in London as part of his “Born in the USA” tour, and the company sought to prevent sales of illegal souvenirs.

--The Earl of Spencer, Princess Diana’s father, sold two Venetian master paintings to help pay a $2.6-million bill for repairs to his ancestral home, Althorp House, in central England. One of the paintings, “St. Christopher With the Infant Christ and St. Peter” by 15th-Century Giovanni Battista Cima, brought more than $327,000 at an auction at Sotheby’s in London. The other, “The Madonna and Child With St. John the Baptist,” by 16th-Century Jacopo Bassano, went for $50,000. The earl says the only way he can keep Althorp House open is to sell off family treasures.

--The 3-year-olds in teacher Dolly Zehner’s class, eating hamburgers during a Fourth of July playground picnic in Sulphur Springs, Tex., did not hesitate when she asked them, “What is your favorite country in the whole wide world? I almost died when they all yelled, ‘Japan,’ ” said Zehner, a teacher at the Church Street Day Care Center. “But then I had a thought: Where are most of their toys made--Japan,” she said. “They may be smarter than we think.”