(Street Life is a regular feature that focuses on what's playing in the stock market.)

* ACT I: The Home Run Menu Foods Income Fund (TSX:MEW.UN) $6.80 Up 88.8 per cent (year to date).

The conventional thinking is that it's foolhardy to buy an income trust that doesn't pay a cash distribution. However, those contrarians who have had the courage to bottom-fish Menu Foods, a trust without a distribution, have been handsomely rewarded. Although Menu Foods' distribution remains suspended, speculation that it may be resumed later this year and improved financial results have sent the units into orbit. The Mississauga-based pet food manufacturer has escaped the investor doghouse with a dramatic turnaround in which it earned $1.97 million, or 11 cents a share, in the quarter ending June 30 compared to $403,000, or two cents a share, in the year-ago period. Units in Menu Foods bottomed at $2.82 last December in the height of tax-loss selling season. In its heyday in 2004, the units traded as high as $16.

* ACT II: The Earnings Bomb Dell Inc. (Nasdaq:DELL) $22.16 US Down 39.2 per cent (past 12 mos).

Not so long ago, investors viewed darling Dell as the go-to PC company, but the old warhorse Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) has turned the PC wars into a heck of a horse race. Dell's latest woes centre around an earnings slump and an informal investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into its accounting practices. The market continued to dump Dell shares when the company reported that its second-quarter profit had plunged almost 50 per cent, to $502 million US or 22 cents a share. While Dell's shares have been on a steady decline for the past 12 months, Hewlett-Packard's stock has chalked up a 12-month return of 31.6 per cent as the company grabs market share from its chief rival under new CEO Mark Hurd, who has focused on cost-cutting and aggressive pricing.

* ACT III: The Frothy Takeover Sleeman Breweries (TSX:ALE) $17.37 Up 17.1 per cent (one-day move on Aug. 14 news).

Many scoffed when John Sleeman started an old family tradition by launching Sleeman Breweries in 1988 after a relative passed along a family beer recipe. Well, the brewing business Sleeman rejuvenated 18 years ago is on the verge of being swallowed up - in a takeover worth $300 million from Japan's Sapporo Brewing. Sleeman's board recommended shareholders tender to Sapporo's offer, a cash bid of $17.50 per share for Canada's third-largest brewery. Sleeman, which already brews Sapporo's products for distribution in Canada and the U.S., said it would not solicit competing bids. Three other beermakers, including Molson Coors Brewing Co., were reportedly interested in acquiring the Guelph-based brewery. The $400-million deal includes assumed debt.

* ACT IV: The Broken Chart Danier Leather (TSX:DL) $6.30 Down 38.8 per cent (year to date).

The eternal optimists always point to the dividend when a stock gets spanked and that was the silver lining for Danier Leather stockholders, who have ridden the stock down from a peak of $19 in 2002. Well, what will they say now? Danier has suspended its 3.33-per-cent annual dividend amid accelerating losses. The struggling Toronto-based retailer of leather and suede apparel and accessories reported a loss of $4.6 million, or 70 cents a share, in the recent quarter ending June 24 compared to a $3.2-million loss, or 40 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Danier had paid a dividend for eight consecutive quarters.

* ACT V: The Junior Uranium Play High Plains Uranium (TSX:HPU) $1.04 Up 28.4 per cent (on Aug. 15 news).

High Plains was one of the sleepers of the junior uranium sector. Its share price was floundering and only a handful of shares were trading hands. But aggressive junior uranium player Energy Metals Corp. (TSX:EMC) lit a fire under High Plains by announcing a planned merger agreement that will essentially turn out to be a takeover. High Plains punters were ecstatic by the premium offered by Energy Metals.

The deal also proposes a joint venture option agreement on High Plains' Wyoming uranium exploration properties. Energy Metals shareholders weren't exactly enthralled by the news, initially raining on the parade by knocking the stock down 1.5 per cent before piling back in the following day.

* ACT VI: The Healthy Takeover TriPath Imaging (Nasdaq:TPTH) $8.82 US Up 72.3 per cent (on Aug. 16 news).

Small-cap biotechnology stocks have been in a horrendous multi-year slump, but patient TriPath shareholders hit the jackpot when one of the heavyweights of the health-care sector, Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BDX), made a pitch for the North Carolina-based provider of systems for cervical cancer screening.

With TriPath shares floundering at a 52-week low of $5.11 US, Becton, Dickinson - boasting a market cap in excess of $16 billion US - made an all-cash offer of $9.25 per share for the remaining 93.5 per cent of the shares it didn't already own.

* ACT VII: The Trust Bust Spinrite Income Fund (TSX:SNF.UN) $1.

Down 92 per cent (past 12 months).

Unitholders were desperately banking on a glimmer of hope, but yarn-spinning company Spinrite couldn't spin a positive yarn from its quarterly report. In fact, the quarterly results were atrocious. Revenue from yarn sales declined 67.9 per cent from the year-ago period, the company provided a dreary outlook in terms of sales and margins in the yarn market and, most importantly, said it would be difficult to comply with bank covenants. The 52-year-old company, which is based in Listowel, Ont., suspended its monthly cash distribution to unitholders in June and now is in jeopardy of defaulting on its credit agreement.

* ACT VIII: The Penny Jackpot Macarthur Minerals (TSXV:MMS) $1.25 Up 525 per cent (past 12 mos).

While most penny stocks have been floundering mightily during the market's dog days of summer, Macarthur Minerals has been basking in the limelight of a blockbuster summer. Shares in the Vancouver junior mining company have more than tripled in a five-week span in July and August on a steady stream of news. Speculators have been bidding up the shares in excitement over the company's 100-per-cent-owned iron and ore and nickel project in Australia, where early exploration results have been positive. Macarthur also announced in early August plans for a non-brokered private placement of 350,000 shares at 72 cents, for gross proceeds of $252,000.

(Quotes are based on prices through Aug. 18.)

(Gyle Konotopetz can be reached at gyle@businessedge.ca)