daughter

Paul Avery, a journeyman actor best known for his role on “All My Children,” and his wife, Sheila, have died following a house fire. He was 81 and she was 77.

The couple’s death was confirmed by their daughters Parker Sanchez and Kyle Avery, who said the fire broke out in their home in Blairstown, N.J., early last Tuesday morning. While firefighters were able to reach Paul and Sheila inside the Mohican Road home, the couple succumbed to smoke inhalation.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Paul had a recurring role playing Hughie the bartender at Foxy’s on the ABC daytime soap “All My Children” for 12 years. He also acted in the 1978 film “Superman,” “Three’s Company,” “Soap,” and appeared in more than 300 commercials. He also acted in theater productions and produced plays in both New York and Los Angeles.

According to his daughters, the actor joked that his “elastic face” landed him multiple national commercials that ran concurrently. Casting directors looking for a “Paul Avery type” would turn the actor away because he was in too many commercials.

“He had a teeny tiny part — one line in Superman — but boy did he make a meal out of that,” Sanchez joked.

Kyle Avery added that at the Oscars, they played a clip from “Superman” that featured Paul reciting his line.

“His good friend ran into the kitchen and made him an Oscar out of tinfoil and handed it to him,” she said. “But I think the thing that he was proudest of was that he could make a living as an actor.”

Paul Avery was born Oct. 8, 1941; and Sheila Avery was born May 22, 1949. Paul was raised in Indianapolis, served in the Vietnam War in his 20s and moved to Los Angeles and then New York by his late 20s to try to make it as an actor. Sheila was raised in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to New York where she worked as a registered nurse but also had a background in theater.

She studied the craft in college, performed on a USO tour in Vietnam and worked as a costume mistress.

According to the couple’s daughters, the two brought their Midwest charm and sensibilities to the East Coast.

The couple met while living in an apartment building filled with other journeymen actors in the late 1970s.

“They were all part of this theater community, people who would go from regional theater to regional theater with the season,” Kyle Avery said. “They were a whole troupe of people who’d be in New York for part of the year, but then they’d go and be in Lakewood, Ohio, or Kansas City or Chicago, just following the theater.”

Sheila was previously married to John Quincy Bruce Jr., also an actor in the New York theater community and the father of Sanchez. Sheila and Paul got together in 1982 and married in 1984. They celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary in April.

Paul was a jack-of-all-trades and master of many. He was a small plane pilot who often flew into a tiny airport in Blairstown, N.J., which is how the couple discovered the town they’d call home. There, they opened a bookstore, Cabbages and Kings. Paul also launched a magazine: the Warren County Companion. According to the couple’s daughters, Paul was the first internet service provider in town. He also penned film reviews for the New Jersey Herald and some for the New York Times as well.

Sheila found what her daughters called the “perfect job,” which brought together her work as a registered nurse and background in theater: speaking in schools about domestic violence and sexual assault. She also became a counselor who worked with survivors, and a trainer who worked with volunteers, teaching them how to interact with victims.

“People who took her training 20 years ago have been contacting us and saying, ‘Your mother changed the way I thought about the world, she is the basis for my feminism,’” Sanchez said. “It’s been so fascinating to hear the ripple effects of young women who took that training from her, and who are now middle-aged women who are still thinking about her.”

The daughters said that their parents were community icons who were dedicated to service. “They had a sense of duty to the people around them,” Kyle Avery said.

“They loved to throw parties,” Sanchez said. “They hosted an annual event called Faux Giving and they would have these insane traditions, like we would have a head-measuring contest and measure the circumference of people’s heads, and then a winner gets to eat their pie first, and a badge.

“Whoever had the smallest head, everyone there would shout, ‘Pin head! Pin head!’ at this person, and it was the silliest thing in the world, but everyone who attended that event, even if they came one time, would talk about it forever.”

Kyle Avery added, “They were incredibly memorable.”

“They were community builders, they were people who wanted to nourish you in every way, and they were so good at it.”

They are survived by their children: Kyle Avery; Parker Sanchez and her husband, Pablo; Paul Avery’s son from a previous relationship, Stuart Sutherland; and their grandchildren, Avery, Duncan and Liana.

NICKY Campbell’s daughter was rushed to hospital after she was hit by an e-bike.

The broadcaster announced that Lilla, 26, was badly injured while out in Peckham with her sisters last night.

“It’s been a long and emotional night,” he said on Instagram.

He added that he hoped CCTV footage would be able to track down the rider, who allegedly “scarpered” once the ambulance arrived.

She is now recovering at home.

“It could have been so much worse. We are incredibly lucky,” said the BBC radio host.

He thanked the staff at King’s College Hospital for their “superb” treatment.

The prominent Scottish broadcaster, journalist and author is best known for hosting ITV’s Long Lost Family and BBC Radio Live.

He rose to prominence in the late 1980s, with a ten year stint as a DJ on BBC Radio 1.

His personal life has been shaped by his experience as an adoptee and his advocacy work for children in care.

He was awarded an OBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to children, adoption and fostering.

The radio star is married to journalist Tina Ritchie and has four daughters, Breagha, Lilla, Kirsty and Isla.

THE daughter of a legendary Hollywood director and her husband have been mysteriously found dead inside a running car parked on a highway.

Judith “Judy” Wyler Sheldon, 84, and her husband Wylie Sheldon, 86, were discovered unresponsive in a Jeep Compass on Interstate 5 near Redding, California.

A California Highway Patrol officer made the grim discovery on the shoulder of the northbound carriageway, just north of Fawndale Road, at approximately 5.46pm on Monday.

Judy, a prominent San Francisco arts patron, is the daughter of famous filmmaker William Wyler.

She was found behind the wheel, while her husband was in the passenger seat.

Despite emergency medical personnel attempting life-saving measures, both were declared dead at the scene.

The circumstances surrounding the tragedy remain unclear, and investigators are working to determine what happened inside the vehicle.

The California Highway Patrol’s Northern Division Investigative Services Unit has taken over the case.

While authorities have not publicly disclosed any indication of foul play or a medical emergency, the deaths occurred during a period of extreme heat.

The National Weather Service had issued a warning for the Redding area, where temperatures soared to 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43C) on the day the couple were found, though investigators have not confirmed if the weather played a role.

The news has stunned California’s arts and film communities, where Judy spent decades championing silent-film preservation.

She was the long-time chair and former president of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Anita Monga, the festival’s artistic director, said the community was “reeling” from the devastating loss.

“Judy and Wylie were very dear to us, supportive and a positive presence at all our events,” she said, recalling how the couple regularly opened their home to visiting film archivists and musicians.

“Judy would allow, actually encourage, our visiting guests to pose for pictures with her father William Wyler’s Oscars.

The perfect hosts.”

Born Judith Wyler in Los Angeles, she briefly appeared on screen during the 1950s with credits in The Errol Flynn Theatre, The Buccaneers, and BBC Sunday-Night Theatre.

However, her lasting legacy was behind the scenes.

Judy’s passion for film preservation intensified after attending a 2007 retrospective of her father’s silent-era films in Pordenone, Italy.

Her cultural influence also extended to other institutions, including serving as a gala co-chair for San Francisco Performances.

The tragedy carries a deep resonance due to Judy’s family’s monumental place in cinema history.

Her father, William Wyler, remains one of the most acclaimed directors in American film, directing classics such as Roman Holiday, Ben-Hur, The Best Years of Our Lives, Mrs. Miniver, and Wuthering Heights.

William won three Academy Awards for Best Director, a feat achieved by only a handful of filmmakers.

Walter Parazaider, the saxophonist and co-founder of the rock group Chicago, has died. He was 81.

Parazaider died June 17 of complications from Alzheimers disease. In a statement posted to social media on Wednesday, the band said that “Chicago is heartbroken at the sad news of Walter Parazaider’s passing this morning. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends and countless Chicago fans who are all grieving his loss today.”

His daughter, Felicia Helen Parazaider, also posted on Facebook that “I love you poppy, my Pal…You coloured our world.”

Born in Maywood, Ill., Parazaider began his music career as a clarinetist, before founding Chicago with childhood friends in the group’s namesake city. The band’s pop hits like “25 or 6 to 4” and “Saturday in the Park” were staples of the ‘70s and remain beloved fixtures of classic rock. His diverse woodwind skills helped give the band its regal sound, adding saxophone riffs to hits like “Just You ‘n’ Me” and a poignant flute solo on “Colour My World.”

While Chicago’s lineup changed often, Parazaider remained with the group until retiring in 2018. In April of 2021, Parazaider wrote in a statement on Chicago’s website that “I was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. Needless to say, my wife, daughters and myself were shocked and devastated. It has taken awhile to process this news and the fact is, we still are. The good news is we have a wonderful medical facility here and I have a very good doctor. I am working hard and not going to give up.”

Chicago gave credit to Parazaider for conceiving of the band’s distinct instrumentation, and the work ethic that made them stars. “A Rock & Roll band with horns was Walt’s idea,” Chicago’s statement continued. “He put the band together and they rehearsed in the basement of his mother’s home. He is also the one who did the hard work to book shows for the young, unknown band, performing top 40 covers at local bars in and around Chicago.

“We are forever grateful for his contribution,” they continued. “Perhaps his greatest gift was bringing people together. This amazing music may have never been heard had it not been for Walt’s vision.”

Parazaider is survived by wife JacLynn and daughters Laura and Felicia.

There’s a good reason why David Sedaris is the most beloved humorist in America. He has an unerring ability to tap into the absurdity and petty annoyances of American culture more cogently than any other writer of his generation. He is also funny as hell.

Sedaris’ latest collection, “The Land and Its People,” finds the author grappling with the seductions and consolations of technology, creeping mortality, unwanted sexual advances and feral dogs, for starters. I recently chatted with Sedaris about books, nannies and iPhones.

✍️ Author Chat

Your first book was a collection of short stories. Was it always the intent to move into writing essays, or did you have designs on being a novelist?

It never occurred to me that I would write essays about my life. I started off writing fiction, and then I started doing these readings in Chicago. Then I was to read at this variety show at this place called Park West. I was limited to about five minutes, and so I just plucked something from my diary. And it worked. I would walk onstage wearing a tie with a stack of diaries in my hand. Then I started doing these radio shows, and I thought I could read my fiction, but it had to be nonfiction. So a lot of the earliest pieces that I ever read were just things plucked from my diary.

What actually happened was that after this piece I wrote called “The Santaland Diaries” had been on the radio, I had this other book that I had already written, and I was just kind of waiting for someone to call and ask if they could publish it. But it couldn’t be published unless “Santaland” was included.

That book was “Barrel Fever” in 1994 which was a big hit. Now you were that rare creature: a bestselling essayist.

With essays, there’s a kind of shorthand to it. If you’re writing fiction, you have to world-build with every story, whereas with an essay I can just get up on stage and say “my sister and I went shipping” and people know who my sister is, and I can just get right into it. My fiction is always way, way over the top. I can’t write any story where people are reasonable.

What makes you unique is that you are onstage in front of an audience more often than 99% of authors. You can workshop material to see if it lands, much like a comic.

Yes, and I don’t ever want to waste an opportunity to do that. The frustrating thing about being on a book tour is that I can no longer make any changes to the book. So I’ve been bringing out some little, short things I’ve been working on to get it on its feet.

Much of your writing is observational. Do you find, given your public profile, that it becomes harder to do that?

It depends on where I am. If I’m hanging out in places where people don’t read, or in another country, then it doesn’t make any difference. The bigger problem is that when you’re spying on the world now, the world is just looking at their phones.

“The Land and Its People” is the new collection of essays by David Sedaris.

(Little, Brown and Company)

I know you aren’t big on the phone, or at least taking pictures with your phone. In one of your essays in the new book, you are on a Kenyan safari with your partner Hugh and you adamantly refuse to snap a single photo.

If you’re at a book signing, you meet someone and then stand up and someone takes a picture with their phone. I’d rather talk to that person, you know? The picture thing, it just doesn’t make any sense to me. It doesn’t mean anything. I was invited to the Academy Awards because I wrote something about a movie, which was crazy. But it never for one moment occurred to me to go up to anybody to take a selfie. All that means is that I bothered this person. By the way, I have never once asked Hugh to send me his safari pictures.

What books make you laugh out loud?

I’m always happy to find a funny book, but they are hard to find. Did you read “Rejection” by Tony Tulathimutte?

It’s on my nightstand.

Oh my God, I laughed out loud so many times at that book. And he’s not a humorist. I’m not even sure if he thinks the book is funny. There’s a short story in there, about a guy who’s just a complete a— and his girlfriend moves in with him and he makes her put all of her stuff in the oven.

I like things that are funny that aren’t supposed to be funny. Somebody said to me a few weeks ago, “How can we laugh with the world in such terrible shape?” I said, it’s easy. Just get rid of any sense of empathy or compassion! If you’re writing satire, you have to go big. You can’t tone it down. Then it’s not satire anymore, it’s just cereal milk.

You do write in the new book about this kind of language policing that is prevalent now.

I hate it. I mean, the New Yorker is pretty good to me. I can’t complain. But I turned something in to them, and they told me I couldn’t use the word “nanny” in the piece. I mean, a nanny is a real profession, like a pharmacist. I told them I wouldn’t cut it. It just makes me think about young people who are starting out, who can’t say no because they need the money.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

(Illustration by Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; Photo via Getty Images)

Leigh Haber is blown away by Anne Patchett’s 10th novel, “Whistler.” “This exquisite writer has once again delivered an incandescent work of fiction — sweet, but never sentimental, infinitely wise and suffused with love,” Haber writes.

Songwriter and Sheryl Crow collaborator David Baerwald has written a novel called “The Fire Agent,” about his grandfather Ernest, a musician and a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp during World War I. “One of my characters tells Ernst that he has ‘yuyo,’ which might best be described as grace,” Baerwald tells Bethanne Patrick. “Its Japanese meaning is closer to the state of a river rock that has been washed over and tumbled thousands of times, so that it’s both distinct, and a meaningful part of its environment.”

Rasheed Newson, a showrunner for “The Chi” and “Bel-Air,” has written “There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood,” a novel about an often-neglected chapter of Hollywood’s Golden Age. “I wanted to do a deep dive into Black queer history during the Golden Age of cinema,” Newson tells Meredith Maran. “The first thing that came to me was Xavier’s character. I decided to make him the 10-years-younger, queer rival of Sidney Poitier, to highlight the acceptable versus unacceptable — meaning, straight versus gay — 1950s Black movie star.”

Finally, Adam Messinger, a staffer at West Hollywood’s Book Soup, attempts to answer the question: Why are books shrinking? One possible culprit may be social media. “Holding the book up to take a photo of it is easier,” writer and social media influencer Caroline Mason tells Messinger. “Although I do sometimes still drop it.”

📖 Bookstore Faves

Lost Books in Montrose looks and feels unlike any other bookstore in L.A. — a verdant terrarium filled with new and used books and vinyl. Created by Last Bookstore co-owners Jenna and Josh Spencer, Lost Books also sells plants. Moss has colonized the ceiling, and tall trees keep sentry over the store’s diverse and eclectic inventory. I asked Josh Spencer about how Lost came about.

What was the thinking behind opening Lost?

It was spontaneous. My wife and I were eating dinner in the very charming neighborhood of Montrose, and saw a very cool vacant storefront. It also happened to be on Honolulu Avenue, and with both of us being from Hawaii, we took it as a sign. We did not want to franchise the Last Bookstore at the time, and wanted the new store to have its own name and unique vibe.

You also sell plants. Where did that idea come from?

My wife grew up in a rain forest on Maui. She loves plants, and we thought that a pairing of nature with literature was exciting and not done before.

Who are your customers?

Mostly locals in Montrose, La Cañada, La Crescenta, Glendale. But we get a fair number of tourists and also people from other parts of L.A. People who love beauty, nature and books. And vinyl!

Are you seeing that big vinyl resurgence we’ve been hearing about?

Absolutely! Our vinyl does very well for us.

What genres or types of books do well for you there?

Classics, kids books, mysteries, graphic novels, art, self-help, memoirs, cookbooks and gardening of course!

Lost Books is located at 2233 Honolulu Ave., Montrose.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

When Republican Spencer Pratt burst into Los Angeles politics, venting a torrent of online fury against Mayor Karen Bass’ handling of the Palisades fire, he pitched his mayoral campaign as a full-bore challenge to L.A.’s political status quo.

The former reality TV star, who lost his home in the blaze, started as a long shot but emerged as a national story, with the ability to harvest social media attention, rally a base and dominate the news cycle.

But in a city overwhelmingly Democratic, where Republicans make up just 15% of registered voters, even some of his supporters wondered how far he could rise. In the end, voters selected Bass, a Democratic centrist, and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who ran to Bass’ left, to face off in the runoff.

Still, for many of the 200,000 Angelenos who voted for Pratt, his brash, social media-fueled campaign was not just a long exercise in trolling. Pratt gave voice to their discontent with the system of one-party rule and said things they too often felt uncomfortable saying.

And now, they face a difficult choice of who to support in November.

“I know a lot of people who are disappointed,” said Meghan Daum, an L.A. writer and podcaster and former Los Angeles Times columnist who endorsed Pratt. “They are saying, ‘OK, now what? What can we do?”’

While Pratt did not make the runoff, political experts said his candidacy tapped into Angelenos’ dissatisfaction with the Democratic establishment and resonated with a sizable number of Angelenos who are rarely represented in L.A. politics.

“He identified a previously invisible level of anger and frustration,” said Dan Schnur, a longtime politics professor at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine University, of Pratt. “The question going forward is whether he, or someone else, can shape that raw emotion into a movement.”

Pratt has yet to put out a statement conceding the race or contesting the results. As a stream of Republicans, including President Trump, made unfounded allegations of election fraud in California, the campaign’s most online candidate was conspicuously absent on X and Instagram.

Some Democrats in L.A. urged Pratt to make good on his promise to leave the city if Bass or Raman were elected. Late night TV host Jimmy Kimmel, a prominent Democrat, told Pratt he had rented him a U-Haul.

Despite the snark from Democrats, political observers say Pratt changed the terms of L.A.’s mayoral debate.

“He forced the more conventional candidates to talk about the issues in a way that would not have been the case if he weren’t in the race,” Schnur said.

“For the first time in years, there is a critical mass of citizens who are done pretending that what they see before their eyes isn’t really there,” Daum wrote on her Substack. “The people in charge will have to answer to those citizens.”

In the final weeks of the campaign, Pratt became ubiquitous in the national media. There were profiles in high-end publications, podcast interviews and regular reports from Fox News. But the results show he fell short of persuading enough Angelenos to make the runoff.

“It doesn’t appear that he’s impacted the political underpinnings of a deep blue city like Los Angeles,” Schnur said. “His impact was less ideological than attitudinal. He wasn’t convincing the voters to become more conservative, he was convincing them that it was OK for them to vent their anger in an unconventional way.”

Dissatisfaction is building in L.A. as the city’s cost of living mounts and a new generation of young Angelenos are unable to buy homes. Many are concerned about the lack of visible progress on street homelessness. Some are angry at what they see as city leaders’ poor preparation and response to the Palisades fire.

Ultimately, the momentum for change in Los Angeles was divided. As Pratt challenged Bass from the right, Raman tacked to the left of Bass on homelessness and policing and made affordability a key plank of her campaign.

Whatever their concerns about the status quo in L.A., many Angelenos were unwilling to vote for a Republican.

During the course of the campaign, Daum said she had numerous conversations with Angelenos who said: “I can’t associate with anybody who voted for Trump. I can’t have them in my house. I can’t have a conversation with them. I want nothing to do with them.”

A 42-year-old millennial who became famous on “The Hills” and owns a business selling “healing” crystals, Pratt had no political experience when he entered the mayoral race. He didn’t even appear to have a campaign manager.

“The system in Los Angeles isn’t struggling, it’s fundamentally broken,” Pratt said as he launched his campaign on Jan. 7, the anniversary of the fire. “It is a machine designed to protect the people at the top and the friends they exchange favors with while the rest of us drown in toxic smoke and ash.”

Bombastic and full of braggadocio, Pratt critiqued what he saw as Bass’ failure to prepare for and respond to the wildfires. He berated city leaders for not doing enough to get unhoused people off the streets. He railed against the city’s challenges with public safety, potholes, and the abuse of dogs on Skid Row. He even seized on a comment Bass made on the campaign trail about using taxpayer money to fund dental care for meth users.

As Pratt talked about homelessness, his message resonated with Marissa Comstock, 36, a stay-at-home mom and former software engineer in Eagle Rock.

“It’s totally obvious to me,” she said. “We need to get these people off the street.”

Last year, Comstock said she and her husband had a negative encounter at Griffith Park as they pushed their daughters around in strollers. Just a few minutes into their hike, she said, they were accosted by an unhoused person who screamed at them and threatened to cut off their daughters’ legs.

Since that incident, Comstock said, she takes her daughters only to places like the Huntington or Descanso Gardens that require membership to be admitted.

“I don’t feel comfortable even being on regular streets,” she said. “If there’s some crazy homeless person, what am I supposed to do?”

Pratt did extraordinarily well in capturing attention and developing a message, said Paul Mitchell, vice president of the Sacramento-based bipartisan firm Political Data Inc. Many Angelenos, he noted, had a better sense of Pratt’s viewpoint than they did of much more deeply funded California gubernatorial candidates, like Matt Mahan or Xavier Becerra.

During his campaign, Pratt did not express support for Trump or the Make America Great Again movement. He insisted he was a nonpartisan candidate running on local issues.

“I’m going to show everybody that I’m their mayor,” Pratt said on election night.

But even if Pratt was not explicitly MAGA, his reality TV theatrics mixed with antiestablishment populism were so MAGA-coded that he struggled to persuade disaffected liberal Angelenos. He referred to the homeless as “fentanyl zombies.” He railed against California’s “socialism.” He called Bass “Basura,” Spanish for trash.

When Trump spoke of Pratt, telling reporters “I heard he’s a big MAGA person,” Raman was quick to share Trump’s remarks on social media, warning Angelenos that Pratt was wildly out of step with their views.

While Pratt impressed some political observers with his performance in a May 6 televised debate with Bass and Raman, others said he alienated a significant portion of Angelenos with some of his social media antics.

“He could have talked about the drug use and the risks and the filth and the fire risks and all that,” said Rob Stutzman, a GOP political strategist, of Pratt’s zombie rhetoric, “but then paired that with, ‘My God, these liberals are leaving these people out here to die,’ and expressed some humanity towards the population that’s on the streets.”

Ultimately, Daum said Pratt was a “terrible candidate.”

“He did a million things wrong,” she said. “The whole time, I was yelling on Twitter about how he’s got to stop it: the AI videos are gonna hurt him, the Basura stuff, the zombie stuff. Like, stop it! Stop it!”

As Pratt’s campaign came to an end, Stutzman said, it is not clear that he represents any kind of lasting political movement.

“The question remains: Did he create a political movement or did he exploit the opportunity to run for mayor to restoke his diminishing fame?” Stutzman said. “He’s in the mold of a Kardashian: He’s just found ways to be famous without ever really doing anything important. I suspect that this was more about him acting out as to what he is as a reality celebrity versus becoming a leader of a political movement in L.A. We’ll see.”

When Angelenos go to the polls in November, there are several paths for Pratt voters.

Some, Mitchell said, will probably sit the election out entirely.

“You’ll get some Republicans who vote for Raman because they’re like, ‘Well, she’s a socialist and I can’t stand her, but I’m just voting no on Bass.’ And then you’ll have a lot of Republicans who are like, ‘OK, Raman’s a socialist.’”

After Raman made it to the runoff, Bass’ campaign slammed the city council member for voting against hiring more police and blocking efforts to keep homeless encampments away from schools. Meanwhile, Raman positioned herself as the anti-status quo candidate.

In a statement celebrating her advance to the general election, Raman did not mention Pratt or his supporters, but railed against “powerful interests” in City Hall.

“Working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them,” she said. “If you’re as frustrated by the broken status quo as I am, I hope you’ll join our movement to build a city that works for everyone.”

Even as Daum felt depressed that Pratt’s campaign was not continuing, she said she felt more engaged in L.A. politics than she had ever been. She planned to vote in November and would be watching both Bass and Raman to see how they responded to Angelenos’ concerns about street homelessness.

“If Karen Bass said, ‘OK, I get it, “housing first” is not the panacea that I’ve been thinking it is. Seriously, I’m gonna put together a task force of people who are going to actually think this through.’ … I would be following that. I would be very curious,” Daum said. “Same if Nithya said that, too. I’m open to either of them, I guess.”

Comstock said she would probably vote for Bass in the runoff.

“Nithya Raman is just way too far on the socialist scale for me and will likely do more damage, rather than Karen Bass’ ineffectualness,” she said. “I don’t want to go any farther left.”

Nelly Korda’s bid for a U.S. Women’s Open title began Thursday with a foot fault.

The No. 1-ranked player opened her round at Riviera wearing a pair of golf shoes provided to her by LeBron James, Nike Victory Pro 4s with white uppers, gold swooshes, red-and-navy details and an American flag pin on the laces.

Snazzy as they looked, the shoes were a little loose fitting for Korda, who swapped them for a more familiar pair after she played the first six holes at one over par. She never really found her groove and finished the opening round with a two-over-par 73.

“Just hit it really poorly off the tee,” said Korda, who immediately headed to the practice range after meeting with the media following her round. “Found myself in a lot of trouble on the wrong side of a lot of these pins. I just felt like I was kind of just grinding to make safe pars. It wasn’t a great day. I hit it really good Monday through Wednesday, so I have honestly no idea where this came from.”

For others, Riviera — playing host to the major championship for the first time — was as comfortable as an old shoe.

Korea’s Sei Young Kim worked her way to the top of the leaderboard with a 67, making back-to-back birdies on the 10th and 11th holes, then three in a row on Nos. 6, 7 and 8.

Sei Young Kim eyes her putting line on the ninth green during the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open at Riviera Country Club on Thursday.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

According to Elias Sports Bureau, Kim ended a personal streak of 43 consecutive major championship rounds shooting 70 or higher. It was the longest active streak of its kind entering this week.

“The U.S. Open is not regular — not the same as a regular tournament,” Kim said. “So you need to be really patient instead of attacking the pin. So I really try to follow what my caddie says.”

Some caddies have an even closer relationship with their players. On the bag for Michelle Wie West is her husband, Jonnie West, son of late NBA legend Jerry West. Wie West retired three years ago after the Open at Pebble Beach, but came out of retirement to use her last year of exemption to play on this iconic course, celebrating its centennial.

Wie West opened her round with a flourish, crushing her tee shot 293 yards down the left side. Although she missed the green on her approach, chipped up for a short birdie putt but missed it.

Wie West, once one of the biggest stars in the game, qualified for the USGA amateur championship at age 10, the youngest player to do so. She turned professional shortly before her 16th birthday and won five times on the LPGA Tour, with her only major victory coming at the U.S. Open in 2014.

Now a mother of two, Wie West said part of her motivation to return for this tournament was so her daughter, Makenna, who turned 6 this week, will have memories of her playing.

Michelle Wie West, right, and caddie Jonnie West, her husband, discuss an approach shot during a practic round Wednesday.

(Harry How / Getty Images)

“It’s everything,” Wie West said of that inspiration. “Being able to share this with her — even the last couple of months, just practicing. We talk a lot before she goes to bed, and I tell her what I do when she’s at school. ‘I had a tough day at practice. This is what I overcame.’”

Makenna is almost a sounding board.

“My daughter is like the best sports psychologist I’ve ever had, honestly. … I’m going to try to live by the words I tell my daughter. I always tell her before a game or tournament, ‘I don’t care about the results. All I care about is a good attitude and that you try your hardest.’ That’s my No. 1 goal this week.”

Still in search of her first major victory is Gaby López, whose 68 on Thursday put her just behind the leader. She grew up in Mexico City and said Riviera has a familiar and comfortable feel.

“It’s all high elevation [there] and flies way less here,” she said. “But the same kikuyu [grass] and the ball sits up, and you just have to be ready to hit some flier shots off the fairway.

“That rough, you can get lucky at times. … It’s so sticky it’s hard to get it out, especially when you’re going to have no spin. So you just have to be very specific where you’re going to miss it if you don’t hit the fairway.”

Lopez has started hot in the U.S. Open before, although she wasn’t pleased with those results. She was four under through her first nine holes in 2017 before going two over in her second nine. She shot a 70 that day and was tied for 13th after the opening round, but wound up missing the cut.

Her approach this year is simple and straightforward.

“Right now let’s be smart, let’s be focused on what you want to achieve,” she said, “and at the end of the day, let’s put yourself in a position that you can have a shot on the back nine on Sunday.”

Few players are driven to club soccer practice by a national team player. But then few players have two sisters who play for the U.S. women’s team.

Also Zoe Thompson is just 14, so you can’t expect her to drive herself.

But here’s the thing that truly sets Zoe Thompson apart. Although eldest sister Alyssa, 21, has already played in a World Cup and middle sister Gisele made 38 NWSL appearances and played four times for the national team before her 20th birthday, Zoe may actually be the best of the three.

“She’s better technically,” said her father Mario Thompson, who coached all three.

“I think she’s the combination between Alyssa and Gisele,” said Carlos Marroquin, owner of the pre-professional women’s team that gave Alyssa and Gisele their start.

So maybe there should be a line of coaches, teammates and family members waiting to drive her to practice or to her debut with Marroquin’s team, the Santa Clarita Blue Heat, on Saturday evening at The Master’s University.

The Santa Clarita Blue Heat coach Leonardo Neveleff, center, talks to his team before a practice at Valencia High. Zoe Thompson makes her debut with the team Saturday.

The team, which competes in USL W league, has long been a summer proving ground for elite college players and aspiring pros with alumni that includes Venezuela’s Deyna Castellanos, once a finalist for FIFA’s world player of the year award; World Cup veterans Savannah DeMelo and Ashley Sanchez; former Chelsea and Atlético Madrid star Ana Borges of Portugal; and Natalia Kuikka, a five-time Finnish player of the year.

This year’s roster includes more than two dozen Division I college players, meaning Zoe Thompson will be playing with and against women much older than her.

Did we mention she’s still in middle school?

“She’s always having to get out of her comfort zone, no matter what,” said Mario Thompson, whose job as Zoe’s father is to both nurture and protect his daughter’s talent.

Zoe has followed a different path than her sisters. Alyssa and Gisele were born less than 13 months apart and grew up playing together, practicing together and pushing each other. Zoe, born seven years later, grew up watching them, imitating them and wanting to be them.

But she had to do the work alone.

“It’s a unique dynamic where Alyssa and Gisele had each other,” their father said. “It wasn’t just Alyssa by herself. She always had a partner.”

Zoe, however, observed a lot by watching.

“I feel like their mistakes helped me,” she said. “But at the same time, there are some mistakes that I’ve made that they haven’t. I’m learning differently, but I’m more learning from them.”

Zoe Thompson hugs her father Mario Thompson after practice at Valencia High.

Still, this is uncharted territory. No family has ever had a trio of siblings play for the women’s national team, and the pressure of having to match the success her sisters have had will be inescapable, if unfair, for Zoe.

It’s a level of pressure that has the potential to be crushing.

“She kind of has this expectation that’s put upon her already that ‘oh, she’s going to be like her sister,’” Gisele said. “But it’s her own life.”

And Mario Thompson, an elementary school principal who has been intimately involved in all his daughters’ careers, is having to negotiate all this on the fly.

“Everyone sees the glam and the glitz of Alyssa and Giselle, but people don’t really understand it’s a lot of pressure,” he said of the sisters, who will both be heading to Brazil with the national team next week. “They see all the great stuff, but it’s also their job.”

Mario Thompson faced some of the same issues with Alyssa, the second-youngest U.S. woman to play in a World Cup, so he limited her media interviews and tried to let her be a teenager — albeit it an exceptionally talented one. Zoe faces the additional burden of having do all that while following in her sisters’ footsteps.

“I’m very mindful and aware of that,” he said. “She’s already in the spotlight without having to be in the spotlight. It’s that pressure. I want her to love the sport, love this journey. That’s kind of how I raised all three of them.”

Zoe Thompson during a practice session in preparation for her debut with the Santa Clarita Blue Heat soccer team.

For her part Zoe, mature well beyond her tender age, dismisses the hype with a shrug.

“There are going to be comparisons,” she said. “But we’re such different people that I think it’s unfair. At the same time, they can have those comparisons, they can have those opinions, but I’m not them. So it’s not going to be any different, how I play.”

Plus, having two accomplished sisters has its advantages. In the spring Zoe trained with the youth teams at Chelsea, where Alyssa now plays, and this summer she says she’ll train with Angel City, Gisele’s team. But the drawback of being a (much) younger sister is Alyssa and Gisele had each other to lean on growing up. Zoe has had to go it alone and that, she said, has made her stronger.

“Mentally, it is harder. But seeing my sisters and where they are, it’s kind of a motivation for me,” said Zoe, who has already been called in three times by the U-14 national team. “They were kind of at the same place I am. And it’s just very motivating to see them where they are. That’s just kind of where I want to be.”

If there’s been one constant in the girls’ soccer careers it’s been their dad, who has been intimately involved in with all three, drilling them in the backyard of their Studio City home or walking them down the street to a park, where they shared the lumpy grass with softball players and unleashed dogs.

They were often, but not always, willing participants since the family didn’t have a TV when the girls were growing up.

Zoe Thompson controls the ball during a training session in preparation for her debut with the Santa Clarita Blue Heat soccer team.

And while the hours and hours of practice certainly honed the sisters’ skills, their parents can’t explain where the girls got their immense physical gifts. Mario played football and basketball and ran track at Occidental College with modest success while his wife, Karen, an occupational therapist, played basketball and ran cross-country in high school, hardly the pedigree that could be expected to produce three world-class soccer players.

Perhaps part of the answer lies in their unique DNA, a mix of Mario’s Black and Filipino background and Karen’s Italian and Peruvian roots.

“It was never the plan, ‘Hey, let’s have some soccer players’,” Mario said.

But once the sisters decided that was their plan, the parents had to adjust. The girls had rare talent, Mario Thompson quickly realized, and it had to be developed. So Alyssa and Gisele began playing with an elite boys’ team while they were still in high school and passed up scholarships to Stanford to sign lucrative contracts with Angel City while their were teenagers.

Zoe has chosen another way, playing with Tudela FC, an all-girls team that practices near her home, and with the Blue Heat, where she’ll be facing stronger, more mature players for the first time. Mario Thompson hopes those aren’t the only differences, although he said the road his youngest daughter takes will ultimately be up to her.

“My hope is she goes through college and just goes a different pathway, different journey,” Mario Thompson said. “It’s a roller-coaster ride and so for [Zoe], I think she sees that roller-coaster ride and I don’t know if it’s a rush to let me get to that. She wants to eventually be a pro, but I don’t think it’s ‘I need to get there as soon as possible.’”

“It’s Zoe, what do you want?” he added. “It’s not like you have to be here, you have to do this. It’s none of that. It’s about, ‘Hey, Zoe, this is your journey.’ We want you to enjoy it, have fun with it, be happy with it.”

She appears to be accomplishing all three of those goals. She’s also both confident and comfortable in her abilities and believes she’s already ahead of both her sisters despite the weight of expectation.

Zoe Thompson with head coach Leonardo Neveleff at the conclusion of a training session in preparation for her debut with the Santa Clarita Blue Heat soccer team. Thompson, 14, is the younger sister of U.S. women’s soccer players Gisele and Alyssa Thompson.

But she’s also well aware of the pitfalls ahead, having seen Alyssa and Gisele occasionally stumble into them.

“Yeah, it is a lot of pressure but I feel like we just had different paths,” she said. “They didn’t really know they were going to do soccer. They didn’t know that was their sport. But I feel like that path was set for me.

“It was just like I grew faster. I kind of took the understanding of what they were doing, and then I did it a little faster.”

There are other differences as well. Gisele is a defender and Alyssa a forward, but Zoe plays in the midfield. And while it was sometimes difficult to get anything more than a giggle from Alyssa in an interview even after she turned pro, Zoe already gives complete, thoughtful answers to most questions.

Zoe’s game is also different; while Alyssa and Gisele are both exceptionally fast, Zoe relies more on her skill.

“Zoe’s more technical than her sisters at this stage,” her father said. “She’s better on the ball, she has a better understanding of the game. A lot of their game was because of speed. Hers is more thinking, hers is more of the ball on her feet.

“Technically, she’s better and understands the game at this age.”

Gisele, the sister who chauffeurs Zoe to practice in Santa Clarita, agrees. But, she adds, Zoe’s greatest strength may actually be her desire.

“She just has so many great qualities that me and Alyssa don’t have,” she said. “At her age, she wants it way more than we did. She loves soccer with a passion. Me and Alyssa didn’t love it as much as she does.”

And if that passion translates to performance, Zoe will someday join her sisters on the national team. By then she may even be in the driver’s seat.

Santa Clarita Blue Heat team owner Carlos Marroquin talks to Zoe Thompson after a training session at Valencia High.

In Deborah Levy’s new novel “My Year in Paris With Gertrude Stein,” the celebrated British author turns her keen observational and critical eye toward Stein, a writer that Levy feels has been criminally redacted from the canon of modernist masters that emerged at the turn of the 20th century. “My Year in Paris With Gertrude Stein,” however, is anything but a dry-as-dust revisionist treatise.

Levy couches her thoughts on Stein’s life and work within the story of three women in contemporary Paris, including Levy’s fictive avatar as the narrator, grappling with her own notions of identity as she writes about Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. I spoke with Levy about Stein, Toklas and Picasso.

✍️ Author Chat

Have you always had an abiding interest in Gertrude Stein?

She has always been lurking there for a number of reasons. When I was studying modernist literature, I was pointed to all the usual suspects — T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Beckett, Joyce. But no one ever pointed to Gertrude Stein. She was absent in Britain, anyway. I’m not sure it’s the same in America.

I feel like in America she certainly is not frequently cited among that pantheon of modernist writers that you just mentioned.

I thought her most commercial work, “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,” was quite enchanting. But when you start to dig into her other writing, you find this mixture of very obtuse, very violent work, and some brilliant work.

You write in the book that you sometimes don’t understand Stein, but this doesn’t diminish your enjoyment of her work.

The thing about avant-garde writers is that they either crash or they triumph. For readers, it’s either someone popping a vein at the new and strange, or someone over-praising the work. And I thought, well I’m allowed to have mixed emotions about Stein’s writing. Sometimes she is totally brilliant, and sometimes less so.

Author Deborah Levy

(Sheila Burnett)

You also celebrate Stein and Toklas’ fierce individuality, which runs counter to the usual narratives about female authors during this time.

Well, female writers are supposed to suffer or commit suicide. And the glorious thing about Stein and Alice is that the art of living was very important to them. Travel, conversation, or driving around. This really appeals to me. You know, Stein would have a roast chicken leg in one hand and one hand on the steering wheel, with the dogs in the back.

I feel like Stein’s legacy as a writer has been occluded by her renown as a collector of the greatest modern art of the century, most notably Picasso before he became Picasso. She is remembered more for collecting others’ art than for her own art.

If you’re going to collect this bold, daring art of your own time, and you’re buying it cheap, because it’s being mocked, you have to know how to defend it. Stein wasn’t an art historian. She studied psychology with William James and then studied medicine at Johns Hopkins. Through her conversations with Picasso and others, she really began to acquire the apparatus to defend the work, and that fascinated me.

You write that Stein wanted to kill the 19th century with her work by dismantling and then reassembling language.

She was going to write through continuous present tense. She got rid of commas so she could hurtle through time and make her thoughts move forward. No question marks, because it was self-evident to her when someone was asking a question in her writing. She really was a pioneer.

Her prose reads like Beckett’s, decades before his novels were published.

The critic Roland Barthes wrote that all writing has some kind of behavior. A lot of avant-garde writing behaves like Stein, but she wasn’t imitating any other thing. She made something new for her century.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

Book jacket for “Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe” by Gail Crowther

(Los Angeles Times illustration; book jacket from Galley Books)

Marilyn Monroe was an avid reader who traveled with her treasured library of books wherever she lived. Yet, the stubborn image of Monroe as a literary dilettante remains. Now Gail Crowther has written “Marilyn and Her Books” which sets out to debunk that misconception of the screen legend. Crowther’s sharp account is both the story of Monroe’s library and “what we’ve projected upon Monroe when we’re asked to consider that she had one,” writes Mark Athitakis.

As Cuba struggles with a faltering economy and President Trump’s saber-rattling overtures, Ada Ferrer’s timely new memoir “Keeper of My Kin” “argues that the grand narratives of exile and revolution are, at their core, made up of private reckonings with irretrievable consequences,” writes Mariella Rudi.

When Eagle Rock’s Read Books was threatened with a massive rent hike from its landlord, co-owners Jeremy and Debbie Kaplan rallied the community around the fight for tenant’s rights and started an activist organization called Save North East Los Angeles Shops. “Commercial landlords [have] unbelievably unrealistic expectations of rent, and a small business can only sell a T-shirt or a hamburger or a service for what the market will bear,” neighborhood preservationist Aaron Peskin told Emily St. Martin.

Finally, Swan Huntley found a novel way to put off writing her next book: She hiked to every Erewhon store in Los Angeles.

📖 Bookstore Faves

A Good Used Book’s beautiful interior

(A Good Used Book)

Jenny Yang and Chris Capizzi started A Good Used Book in 2017 by selling secondhand titles at local flea markets and the Grand Central Market downtown. Seven years later, after a brief COVID blowback, the pair opened their own storefront in Historic Filipinotown. Now, A Good Used Book has blossomed into a vital community space featuring a vast selection of previously loved books across all genres. The store also hosts pop-up markets on the weekends, with more events scheduled in the coming year. I spoke with Capizzi about his store.

Who are your customers?

Our customer base is pretty broad. We’re selective about the books we carry, but we want anyone to be able to find themselves somewhere in the shop, whether you’re just getting back into reading or you’re the kind of person who already has strong opinions about translations. And we try not to take ourselves too seriously, so even though we may have critical theory, we also have “Choose Your Own Adventure.”

How do you pick inventory? Is there any emphasis on any particular genres that might be popular?

We definitely do the work to find books, but honestly a lot of the time the books seem to find us. In terms of what we carry, we focus mostly on classic, modern and contemporary fiction, but we love genre fiction too, like sci-fi, crime and horror. And a big part of what makes the store feel like us are our nonfiction and culture sections — humanities, sciences, film, music, fashion and design. Anything for that curious person who just wants to go a little deeper.

I know the store is about much more than books. Can you tell me about some of the other community events you guys organize?

During the week we’re all about the books. Every Sunday we host the Every Sunday Funday Market that features two food pop-ups out front, one savory and one sweet, and four or five local vendors and artists inside. We rotate vendors selling and making ceramics, jewelry, Japanese retro radios, soaps and candles, zines and prints, and even Persian perfumes. And we always have drinks going out of our vintage Coleman cooler, too. It’s a lot of things happening at once, but it adds up to a pretty easy, fun Sunday afternoon.

A Good Used Book is located at 307 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles.

(Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.)

Cary Elwes may not have been born in Los Angeles, but it’s probably fair to consider the native Brit an honorary Angeleno. The “Princess Bride” star was born in and spent his formative years kicking around London; he moved to L.A. in 1990, on his brother’s recommendation. He met his wife, photographer Lisa Marie Kurbikoff, at a cookoff in Malibu about a year later and the two married in 2000. A daughter, Dominique, arrived in 2007.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

Elwes has spent his years in California not just establishing his family life, but also further enmeshing himself in Hollywood. He’s appeared in everything from “Saw” to “Ella Enchanted,” and played a corrupt government agent in a couple of “Mission Impossible” movies. His latest role is as a former cop turned private detective in Peacock’s new crime thriller, “M.I.A.,” streaming now.

“I’ve been out here for quite a bit now and while [2025’s] fires were pretty devastating — changing a lot of the landscape and people’s lives in ways that none of us could have imagined — I’m hopeful,” Elwes says. “I feel like we’re going to build back stronger and better. Things can seem dark sometimes, but I still have a spark of hope in my heart.”

Here’s how Elwes would spend his perfect, hopeful Sunday in Los Angeles.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

10 a.m.: Coffee and a chat

We wake up around 10 a.m., which is kind of late for me. Then we’ll have our coffee. I tend to lean toward Gelson’s beans, which I find have a particular flavor I tend to like. I do like my coffee. It’s probably the only addiction I really have.

Anyway, after I finish up my coffee, I’ll typically ask my wife and daughter what they’d like to do for the day. My daughter is 19, and she’s terrific. I always tell my wife she’s the best production we’ll ever do together.

Noon: Leisurely lunch

My wife is very fond of this Italian restaurant in Woodland Hills called Casaléna. It’s right off Ventura Boulevard and it’s terrific. Even their salads are extraordinary. It’s fairly new, too, but it’s always booked out solid so you really have to make a reservation in advance. Luckily, my wife and daughter are organized, so if they want to go there, they’ll have planned ahead.

2 p.m.: Head to the movies

We like to go see movies at the Imax at Universal CityWalk. The quality of that theater is very, very good and seeing films on the biggest screen possible is important to us.

My wife and I went on a date to see “Michael” in Imax, which was sold out and it was phenomenal. Antoine Fuqua did a great job and our friend Colman [Domingo] was honestly transformative as Joe Jackson. And Jaafar Jackson, who’s Michael’s nephew, is remarkable. It’s an extraordinary film, but sold out with people cheering and dancing? That made it a phenomenon. People were interacting with the movie as it played and it was remarkable.

If we’re not interested in whatever’s playing at the time, we might go for a hike in Tapia Park. I grew up watching “MASH” as a kid and when I realized they filmed there, I thought “How blessed am I to be living just a few miles from where such an iconic series was made?”

It’s a really beautiful park too. If you take a long hike, you’ll see waterfalls and lots of wildlife. On a nice afternoon, taking the dog out there for a walk? You can’t beat it.

There’s so much rich history here. I remember going on the Universal Studio Tour for the first time when I visited L.A. as a kid. They had a thing where they’d pick a couple of tour guests and the guide would put you on camera in front of a blue screen and you’d reenact a scene from a movie. The tour also took you by the “Jaws” shark coming out of the water and through an old western town, and I found out years later that a director friend of mine had been making westerns there when I was a kid and I didn’t even know it.

That tour was fantastic. With parting the sea for “The Ten Commandments” and then the boulders coming down the hill during the rockslide? Absolutely magnificent.

5 p.m.: Pick a Getty, any Getty

Depending on what time our movie ends or if we just end up going for a walk instead, we might go over to the Getty Center. We love it there. Usually we’ll go in the afternoon — maybe we’ll have a late lunch up there — and sometimes we’ll go to the Getty Villa instead, which luckily survived the Palisades fire.

We just love being around art. We’ll walk through the entire collection, plus whatever exhibit they have on at the time. We’ll go to LACMA sometimes, too, or even the Academy Museum to see whatever new exhibits they have.

Culturally, we really try to keep busy. Sometimes we’ll want to sit at home and play Spite and Malice or watch a show on TV, but mostly I try to go out and encourage my family to do the same, especially because we live in such a wonderfully diverse, cultural city.

7 p.m.: Taco time

I always leave meal decisions up to the girls, and sometimes they like to go out and get tacos. We like the fish tacos at Escuela. It’s pretty close to Quentin Tarantino’s movie theater, the New Beverly Cinema, which we like to go to as well. I took my daughter to see “Jaws” there, in fact, which she loved.

9 p.m.: More movies

I’m trying to educate my daughter in the films and TV shows that I watched growing up. She’s taking a film history class in school. She wants to be an actor as well, so I want her to have an understanding of the history of film and history of performance, so I show her the great performances that inspired me as a kid and encourage her in that way.

When I grew up in England, we literally had two channels, both in black and white. Young people can’t quite wrap their heads around that now, but it really did make you pay attention because you had to be sitting in front of the television to catch a show or movie you wanted to watch.

I remember that the BBC, particularly on weekends, would have matinee screenings of movies. We actually had pretty good quality TV in England growing up, but they’d also heavily focus on British films from the ‘40s all the way through to the ‘60s so I got my education from that particular style of films, like the postwar films, ‘50s films, and the Ealing comedies. David Lean and Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson … a lot of the films they were in or directed really helped shape who I am today.

Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers had a very strong influence on me as a kid, too, so I really want to try to share with my daughter why these films meant so much to me.

10:30 p.m.: Books in bed

I’m not really a late-night person anymore. I used to be when I was a kid, but now, unless we’re out on a date, my wife and I are homebodies.

The prodigal “Daughter From Hell” returns: Gracie Abrams just announced her upcoming tour, and it includes four nights in her hometown of Los Angeles.

The 64-date Look at My Life tour hits arenas across North America and Europe starting Dec. 2 in Denver, before the singer lands in L.A. later that month. Abrams will take the stage at Inglewood’s Kia Forum for four nights: Dec. 14, 18, 19 and 20. The North American leg of the tour concludes in Brooklyn in March, and she kicks off the European leg in April.

The tour will follow the release of Abrams’ third studio album, “Daughter From Hell,” which drops July 17 via Interscope Records. Abrams took to Instagram to share her upcoming tour dates, teasing fans with the caption, “we’re baaaaaack.”

At the Kia Forum, Abrams will be supported by openers Rachel Chinouriri and Holly Humberstone, both popular British singer-songwriters. Fans can sign up on Abrams’ website for access to the June 2 pre-sale for all dates before tickets go on sale to the general public June 5.

Abrams most recently played in L.A. as part of a three-night residency at the Kia Forum in August 2025 for the Secret of Us Deluxe tour. There, she brought out surprise guest Audrey Hobert, Abrams’ longtime best friend and collaborator. Abrams’ other frequent collaborator, musician and producer Aaron Dessner, co-wrote and produced her latest single, “Hit the Wall,” which dropped in mid-May in advance of her new album.

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t tell either of them, so it makes it easy to be completely open when writing,” Abrams told The Times of Hobart and Dessner in 2024.

Her September 2024 shows at L.A.’s Greek Theater sold out so quickly that the singer-songwriter had to add two additional dates to meet demand. At the time, Abrams told The Times that she would keep performing if the fan support continued.

“As long as they’ll have me, I’ll do this,” she said.

“Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.” ― Coco Chanel

Apropos of Paris. Apropos of the French Open.

That’s all the context necessary to appreciate Naomi Osaka removing a ceremonial black skirt and sleeveless beaded bodice ahead of her opening match at the Roland-Garros Complex this week, revealing a sequined gold playing dress.

Osaka was playing all right. With sensibilities. With tradition. With her opponents, who she summarily dispatched with victories in the first and second rounds.

Naomi Osaka arrives on Court Suzanne-Lenglen to play her singles match against Laura Siegemund.

(THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images)

And it was clear the four-time Grand Slam champion was playing with all of us when she said of her dress, “It’s very couture. You know the Eiffel Tower at night when it’s sparkly? I kind of think I look like that a little bit.”

Countless LinkedIn pages spout something about residing at the intersection of sport and fashion. Osaka locates that intersection at tennis tournaments worldwide, looks both ways and boldly steps into the street.

Last year at the U.S. Open she adorned her ponytail with red roses and attached a Labubu to her tennis bag that she named Billie Jean Bling.

At the Australian Open in January, she entered the court in a tie-dye turquoise and green palette with flowing tendrils. Her face was concealed by a veil, a wide-brim hat and a white parasol that she said was inspired by an image of a jellyfish that excited her 2-year-old daughter.

Naomi Osaka walking onto the court in a jellyfish-inspired ensemble ahead of her first-round match at the 2026 Australian Open in Melbourne.

(Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

It’s all great fun. Yet continued fashion statements depend on her performance on the court. Osaka wins, she earns another grand entrance. She loses, nobody cares what she wears on the ride home.

At the U.S. Open, Osaka shined, reaching the women’s singles semifinals. Seeded as an also-ran at No. 23, she upset Coco Gauff and Karolina Muchova before falling in a tight three-set match to Amanda Anisimova.

Seeded No. 16 in Australia, she won two matches before withdrawing because of an abdominal injury suffered during her three-set victory against Sorana Cîrstea.

Fast forward to the French Open. Osaka advanced to the third round for the first time in seven years Thursday with a 7-6 (7/1), 6-4 win against Croatia’s Donna Vekic and will take on teenager Iva Jovic on Saturday.

What she will wear walking in is anybody’s guess. An effortless chic aesthetic courses through Paris. Advancing to the French Open round of 16 for the first time would require the opposite, Osaka toiling through another step in her return to form after giving birth to her daughter.

And creating another opportunity to have fun with fashion.

With average gas prices topping $6 in Los Angeles, it can be painful to watch your fuel gauge creep toward “E” during a day out around town. It’s time to stop the car and walk. And where better to do that than in the most walkable city in California?

For more than a decade, West Hollywood has been designated a “Walkers Paradise” by Walk Score, earning a 91 out of 100 on the popular walkability index that looks at distance to amenities, pedestrian friendliness, population density and road metrics. The small city within a city scores two points above the state’s second most walkable city, San Francisco. It’s also a full 22 points above Los Angeles, which has a middling score of 69.

But you don’t need a formula to know that West Hollywood’s well-maintained sidewalks dotted with cafes, shops and historic sites is a great place for walking. Take a stroll around the city and you can find out for yourself.

That’s what I did on a recent Friday afternoon, where I met locals like Kimberly Beauchaine out in the neighborhood — yes — walking. “We really don’t use our car here,” Beauchaine said, pushing her 18-month old in a stroller past the Pacific Design Center on Melrose Avenue. “It’s very walkable and very central.”

Alex Uihlein and Kimberly Beauchaine walk down Melrose Avenue with their 18-month-old on their way to the West Hollywood Aquatic & Recreation Center.

(Scott Strazzante / For The Times)

While West Hollywood is easy to navigate on foot, getting there without a car can be a challenge. The closest Metro stop is along the just-opened D-line on Wilshire Boulevard, a two-mile hike from the West Hollywood border. Fortunately, West Hollywood has ample public parking. I found a spot in a public lot on North San Vincente Boulevard, where I paid $12 for the whole day.

The hardest part about planning a fun day in West Hollywood might be choosing a place to start. According to Walk Score, there are about 339 restaurants, bars and coffee shops in the city and you can walk to an average of 13 of them in 5 minutes.

I asked Eric Parker, director of PR and communications for the city of West Hollywood, why there’s such an abundance of spots to eat and drink in the tiny city. He explained that West Hollywood serves not just residents who live within its borders but also the many folks who live in the residential neighborhood of the Hollywood Hills.

“They need a place to live their lives too,” he said. “Beverly Hills has become a little jam-packed with tourists, so West Hollywood has become the heart of L.A. in many ways.”

My journey began at the Butcher’s Daughter on Melrose Avenue, a cheerful and bright plant-forward cafe a few blocks from where I parked my car. The croissant I ordered was fine, but the atmosphere was lovely — open and airy with a communal wood table inside and green and white bistro chairs outside. Pedestrians of all ages strolled by on the wide flat sidewalks, many with small dogs in tow. Trees along the street offered dappled shade, and there were several other cute restaurants nearby, many with outdoor spaces of their own.

Adisa Aditheparot, left, and Mari Muay enjoy a light lunch at the Butcher’s Daughter on Melrose Avenue after walking over from a nearby Pilates class.

(Scott Strazzante / For The Times)

Moving on from the Butcher’s Daughter I headed one block east to the corner of Melrose and San Vincente to take in the rolling lawns and massive green, red and blue glass buildings of the 14-acre Pacific Design Center, which first opened to the public in 1975 and currently houses nearly 100 showrooms. Across the street on San Vincente, I strolled past the excellent West Hollywood Library, the luxurious rooftop West Hollywood Public Pool, and the green expanse of West Hollywood Park where young children were shrieking on the playground.

The vibe shifted as I continued north toward Santa Monica Boulevard. Here, the city’s identity as a gay haven was in full view. The crosswalks were painted with stripes and triangles celebrating the full range of queer identity and although the many colorful bars were quiet on this early Friday afternoon, it was easy to imagine them filled with revelers after the sun set. On the weekends, a free bus runs down this street every 15 minutes, connecting the Troubadour to Formosa Cafe. The area felt fun and funky, but I was only passing through, determined to get to my next destination.

To be fair, walking in West Hollywood is not ideal for everyone. After having lived in Boston, New York and Santa Monica, Sean Patrick Gallagher points out that the hills are real.

“It’s walkable if you are walking east to west,” said Gallagher, who has lived in the city for two years. “If you have to venture north or south, you are destined to hit inclines that are not for every able body.”

Pedestrian traffic outside Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard.

(Scott Strazzante / For The Times)

At the same time, daily conveniences are generally in easy walking distance for many residents. “Most people in West Hollywood can walk to the gym, the grocery store and the laundromat,” he said. “There are enough things on each street that cater to your needs.”

Parker describes West Hollywood as a place where history is hidden in plain sight. I certainly felt that as I passed onto the quiet, shaded streets of Norma Triangle, a historic neighborhood in West Hollywood where Dorothy Parker and Christopher Isherwood once lived. The sidewalks here are more narrow but well maintained, and the streets are filled with locals walking dogs of all sizes. The homes and apartment buildings, many of which date to the mid-20th century, are beautifully landscaped and clearly tended to with care, but I was searching for one in particular — the Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, designed in 1927 by Frank Lloyd Wright’s eldest son who also worked as an architect.

The house was not a disappointment. It’s not open to the public, so I was only able to see the exterior, but it was worth it. The desert landscaping on the corner lot is on point and the building itself, a two-story space that makes use of the organic textile-block pattern popularized by Lloyd Wright’s father, has a unique interlocking design of stylized Joshua Trees. I loved it. It’s also located in deep shade, which is very welcome on a hot day.

With that done, I made my way up to Sunset Boulevard, which is loud and unshaded and not nearly as pleasant a place to walk as some of West Hollywood’s more green and leafy streets. However, there are some cultural landmarks here that I felt should not be missed along with a surge of oval-eyed delivery robots (seriously, so many). This is the famous Sunset Strip where you’ll find the Roxy Theatre, the Whisky a Go Go and the Viper Room. All very cool, but this writer was most excited about getting to spend some time in Book Soup, the iconic bookstore with a real-life magazine stand outside that celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Down a narrow alley right next door is the more esoteric Mystery Pier Books, which specializes in first editions and is beloved by celebrities.

Taking a walk down Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood.

(Scott Strazzante / For The Times)

I had ambitious plans to amble past more spots in West Hollywood. More than one friend suggested I go to Mamie on Sunset and Fairfax for Italian sandwiches (the focaccia is supposed to be amazing). I considered ending my day at the perfect patio at Chateau Marmont on the border of the Hollywood Hills. But reader, I was tired, and walkability is not about exhausting yourself. It’s about enjoying your time car-free. So instead, I headed back toward where I started, walking past the high-end shops of Melrose Place before arriving at Zinque for a simple prosciutto and cornichon sandwich and an Arnold Palmer. At 4 p.m., a waiter came past my table to tell me happy hour had officially begun and asked if I’d like a drink.

There is more than one reason why it makes sense to live in a walkable community.

ZOE Ball has opened up about having an empty nest at home, after her daughter Nelly, 16, moved out to live with her dad, Fatboy Slim, full time.

The former Radio 2 DJ, 55, who recently lost out on the Strictly Come Dancing hosting job, is now living in a “quieter” house with her boyfriend.

Mum-of-two Zoe shares both Nelly, and son Woody, 25, with her ex-husband, Norman Cook, 62.

But, the presenter has revealed how her house is now “so quiet” after both of her children had moved out, as her son now lives in Bristol.

Speaking to Jo Whiley, 60, on their Dig It podcast, Zoe reflected on how empty her Brighton home was, in comparison to her co-host’s busy house.

“Mine’s so quiet, it’s like ugh! It’s less and less because Nel is based more at her dad’s now because I think she’s got to that point of, ‘Ah can I just be in one place?’” the star said.

HAVING A BALL

Zoe Ball on why she’s GLAD she missed out on Strictly & ‘rant’ at producers

STRICTLY SNUB

Emotional Zoe Ball reveals ‘grief’ & ‘rejection’ over Strictly host job snub

“All of her CSI revision notes are on the wall at her dads and it’s just [nice] not having to move from house to house, so she’s just spending more time there now.”

Zoe then revealed how Nelly was not far away, as Norman lived closed by.

“It’s great because it’s only around the corner and I can nip round at any time, which is great, and she can come here if she gets upset about anything like, ‘Mum, I need you’ but it’s less and less,” she said.

But Zoe isn’t on her own in her big house, as she moved her boyfriend Mathieu Weekes, 49, into the family home earlier this year.

The couple have been dating for a year now, with the pair completely smitten with each other.

Speaking about being a single mum and dating, Zoe previously told her podcast: “Introducing new partners, it’s a tricky one.

“You just have to go with the feeling of it. I think it’s okay to have a bit of a private life that isn’t part of the kids’ life for a little bit.

“In the past I’ve rushed that by welcoming someone in and being like ‘here’s my kids. Here’s my life. This is me.’

“And it’s all a bit much. It’s all a bit much for me. It’s all a bit much for the kids.

“Hopefully at some point there is someone where you think actually this person’s pretty cool and they’re pretty laid-back and they’re not going to come in and demand to be part of your kids’ lives.”

Meanwhile, this latest revelation comes just days after Zoe opened up to The Sun about how she REALLY feels about not getting the plum Strictly hosting job.

The star was beaten to the role by comedian Josh Widdicombe, 43, presenter Emma Willis, 50, and dance pro Johannes Radebe, 39.

The trio take over from Claudia Winkleman, 53, and Tess Daly, 57, who stepped down last year.

Zoe told The Sun: “I screen tested with Josh and he is hilarious. He is going to be so good.

“Emma is just gorgeous and I love Johannes, so they are going to ace it.

“And I don’t have to have a facelift, so I’m quite happy.”

Zoe also sent her congratulations to the trio, and thinks they will give the series a boost.

She said: “I have messaged Emma, Josh and Johannes — they are going to be brilliant.

“You know what? It needed fresh energy, and you can totally see why that’s happening.

“It’s like, move forwards, and that is great.”

Kelvin Fletcher will return to screens tonight with an episode from series one of Fletcher’s Family Farm.

Kelvin and Liz Fletcher were forced to make a heartbreaking decision on the farm.

Following the end of series four of the ITV reality show, which follows Kelvin Fletcher and his family as they run their farm in Cheshire, fans will be treated to a repeat episode tonight.

In episode seven, available to watch on ITVX, Kelvin and Liz faced brutal decisions, one of which left their daughter, Marnie, feeling upset.

The family decided to put their pet lamb, Aga, with the rest of the flock before sending two of their sheep to slaughter.

Kelvin reflected, “It’s the right thing for him, but a day we’ve all been dreading.”

As they walked Aga up to the top field, he went on, “Our Aga is more like a dog than a sheep, and we’ve all become very attached to the little guy.”

“I don’t want him to go,” Marnie pleaded with her parents. Kelvin then proceeded to mark Aga with a special love heart on his back before he joined the rest of the flock.

The former soap star commented, “He seems reluctant to join the flock, giving Marnie a little more time to say goodbye.”

Marnie shared her fears that her dad would send Aga to the butchers for the family to eat, but Kelvin reassured her that he was part of the family.

“She’s gutted,” Kelvin said to his wife, Liz. “She’s going to be upset, isn’t she?”

Liz shared, “We’ve had him from literally day one. The second he was born, we’ve looked after him, and it’s a success that he’s a healthy lamb, and he’s good enough and well enough to now go out in the big field.”

Kelvin noted, “Neither of us are willing to accept it just yet. He’s probably thinking, ‘I want to be back with you, Dad, back down there,’ but within a day, he’ll be happy, I hope.”

Calling to his daughter, Kelvin shouted, “Marnie, come on now, darling. We’ll come and check on him later on, okay?”

“Right, darling, come here. It was a bit tough, that wasn’t it, a bit tricky,” Kelvin said as he cuddled his daughter, who was visibly upset.

“But listen, he’s only in this field, he’s with all his friends, just like the first day at school.

“In a couple of hours, he’ll be out there running around with all his friends, and we’ll come and check on him, and I’ll do you a deal. I promise, shake hands…. that we’ll always have him.

“I’m making you a promise, you see. Like the other lambs and the other sheep, sometimes they help feed everybody. He won’t end up on our plate. I promise you that.”

“That may not have been the most profitable decision I have made today, but family comes first,” Kelvin added as they walked back to the farm.

Fletcher’s Family Farm will air tonight at 7.30pm and is also available to watch on ITVX.

VENEZUELA Fury may have just bagged a £5million wedding gift from her Gypsy King dad Tyson – but the teenager’s first marital home is a far cry from the millionaire lifestyle she grew up in.

The Fury dynasty toasted the teenager’s lavish wedding, which included Peter Andre performances, towering cakes, and a dress with a 50ft train, this weekend. But now, the 16-year-old bride and new husband Noah Price, 19, have moved into a £46,995 static caravan that had been sitting unsold for months – after furious buyers blasted the company’s homes as “absolute s**t”.

And in true Fury fashion, the story behind their first home together is every bit as dramatic as the wedding itself.

The young couple snapped up the two-bedroom caravan, named Manor House, exactly as it stood on the forecourt of East Yorkshire firm Carabuild – with no bespoke upgrades, luxury add-ons or personalised touches.

At 42ft long and 14ft wide, the caravan spans 588 square feet – roughly the same size as a large London studio flat.

That means Venezuela, who has spent her entire life surrounded by unimaginable luxury, is swapping Tyson and Paris Fury’s jaw-dropping £8million mansion for a static home that is 21 TIMES smaller.

Tyson’s sprawling estate stretches across 12,286 square feet, sits on historic land over 200 years old and boasts all the lavish trappings you’d expect from one of Britain’s richest sporting dynasties.

Yet now his eldest daughter is embracing traditional traveller life with husband Noah – and it seems the pair are doing it the old-fashioned way.

A source previously told The Sun: “Venezuela wants to start her married life in the traditional style of a traveller, just like her parents did.

“She has lived in luxury since she was born, but is willing to swap her home comforts to go and live in a static caravan.”

The source added: “She thinks it did her parents no harm and is looking forward to taking care of all the domestics while Noah goes out to work. Her parents approve.”

And it seems Venezuela took that traditional vision very seriously.

Because the caravan itself had been sitting unsold for months before Venezuela and Noah bought it.

Carabuild, which describes itself as a “bespoke manufacturer of luxury static caravans and lodges”, first advertised the home back in January with an asking price of £46,995.

By February, it still hadn’t shifted.

The firm posted another sales video online showing off the caravan’s “oak exterior” and “cream and gold” interior while urging potential buyers to get in touch.

Then in March came what insiders described as an increasingly desperate push to finally get rid of it.

In a social media plea, the company wrote: “Springtime offer. Be in this home for Easter. Available right now from stock. No waiting, no travelling, no stress.”

But while the videos attempted to paint a picture of luxury traveller living, furious online reviews underneath told a different story.

One furious customer blasted: “Stay well clear of this man Zane from Carabuild.

“Once he has your deposit, you never see him again.

“The homes are absolutely sh*t flat packs.”

The disgruntled reviewer continued: “Cheap made kitchen, cheapest of the cheapest, trust me, I am not joking.

“Please stay away from this company.”

Others accused the firm of poor insulation, broken radiators and “paper-thin walls”.

One scathing Google review read: “If I could give lower than one star, I would.”

Another raged: “Don’t give them a pound.”

Despite the controversy surrounding the company, Venezuela and Noah still chose the static home as the place they would begin married life together.

Carabuild proudly revealed the newlyweds had bought the home.

Sharing a video of the caravan to their Facebook page, the company wrote: “Congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs Price.

“We had the pleasure of designing and building Venezuela Fury and Noah Price’s very first marital home.”

It marks the latest chapter in what has become one of the most talked-about celebrity weddings of the year.

Venezuela – the eldest daughter of boxing superstar Tyson Fury and wife Paris – married Noah in a lavish traveller wedding on the Isle of Man earlier this month.

The wedding itself was pure Fury extravagance.

There were 20,000 flowers, a towering 12ft wedding cake, 18 bridesmaids, vintage cream wedding cars and a surprise performance from Peter Andre.

Venezuela wore a dramatic fishtail gown imported from Italy, complete with a staggering 50ft train – paired, brilliantly, with white Crocs.

Netflix cameras filmed the entire thing for the family’s hit reality series At Home With The Furys.

Tyson, emotional throughout the day, called himself a “big softie” as he walked his daughter down the aisle before later joking in his speech: “I told you – you shouldn’t have done it!”

And despite the glitz, glamour and eye-watering spending, the newlyweds appear determined to keep one foot firmly planted in traditional traveller culture.

The young couple will settle in East Yorkshire once they return from their lavish £30,000 honeymoon in Marbella – another gift paid for by Tyson and Paris.

And the honeymoon wasn’t the only present the pair received.

Tyson also gifted the newlyweds a traditional gypsy wagon as a sentimental nod to their roots.

Meanwhile, some family members were said to be stunned after Tyson and Paris reportedly handed the young couple £5million to help kickstart their married life.

“Some family members thought it was a lot of money for a young couple,” one insider told The Sun.

“But it’s up to Tyson and Paris.”

For now, though, despite the millions, the honeymoon and the reality TV cameras, Venezuela and Noah are preparing to start married life in the very caravan that buyers warned people to avoid.

The daughter of mosque security guard Amin Abdullah is remembering him as the “absolute best dad in the world.” Family and community members gathered Tuesday to honour Abdullah, who was killed while confronting gunmen during the attack on a San Diego mosque.

Francesco Caballero has been juggling a lot — quite literally.

When he’s not tending to his online studies at the California Virtual Academies, the 13-year-old can be found in the circus ring — hurling bowling pins, straw hats, hollow rings and rubber balls high up in the air, all in one harmonious cycle.

But the bright-eyed teen is also balancing something far greater: a legacy. The rookie showman is proving his mettle as part of the Caballero Circus, a five-generation family of performers, by enchanting audiences with his charismatic stage presence and sharp coordination.

“My family is a circus family. That’s what they did when they were kids and it just passed on to me,” said Francesco, hours before a Wednesday night performance in Santa Ana.

Though Francesco is only a month into his journey as a traveling cast member, he pranced about the ring Wednesday with the confidence of a seasoned ringmaster. For his act, the teen juggled up to five objects at a time; as a couple of stray balls fell to his side, he swiftly picked them up and tossed them into the air, as if it were part of the script all along.

And, once the thrill wore off, Francesco marched into center stage with a small motorbike — enclosing himself in a chamber known as the “Globe of Death”: a mesh sphere where riders ramp their bikes using the power of centripetal force to loop around the Globe. He also played the trumpet.

“In order to grow as a performer and to be better, you really have to be patient,” said Caballero. “It’s not something that’s easy, that you’ll be better in like a week.”

Francesco Caballero, 13, poses for a portrait at the Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.

As boldly charismatic as Caballero appeared on stage, his path to performing in the family circus was hardly clear-cut.

At the age of 3, he was diagnosed with leukemia: a cancer that causes the body to produce too many abnormal white blood cells. This made it difficult for his body to fight infections, carry oxygen and stop bleeding. He was in treatment for four years, until he finally beat cancer by age 7.

This is why his mother, Liliana, a former flying trapeze artist, felt overprotective of him when he began showing interest in the performing world — which began with a small role in the Cirque du Soleil show “The Beatles Love,” in which he played one of the Fab Four in childhood.

At first, Liliana would watch closely to make sure Francesco didn’t get tired or bruised. Yet doctors eventually assured her that physical activity for a recovering pediatric leukemia patient would be beneficial to his quality of life.

“I was against it [at first], but he was so spoiled,” said Liliana. She joked that her son, the youngest of her three children, was “mimado” — a term in Spanish used to describe someone who receives excess attention. Back in the ring, as Francesco prepared his juggling act for another night of play, she stood farther back in the stands, being an ever-observant coach.

“When he told me that he wanted to be like my family, like his grandparents, it was a great satisfaction for me,” said Liliana. “After everything we’ve been through, and still my son dreams of being in the circus, it was a huge blessing for me.”

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The Cartoon Poodles perform at the Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.  (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

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Chicharron performs at the Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.  (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

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Francesco Caballero, 13, juggles pins during his performance at Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.  (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

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Nicole Caballero, 15, second from left, Gianna Rios, 8, Francesco Caballero, 13, Judith Caballero, 15, and Chicharron perform at the Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.  (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The Caballero circus dynasty dates back to the turn of the 20th century in Guadalajara, with Adelaida Caballero was the first in the family to practice the joyous spectacle. Her daughter, Isabel, would be the first of the Caballeros to open her own circus, as a way to earn income during the Mexican Revolution. (They allegedly entertained Pancho Villa, a well-known circus-lover, in 1916.)

During this time, circus families blossomed all over Mexico, aided by the appearance of the steamship and railway systems, as the circus historian Julio Revolledo Cárdenas would detail in a 2018 article for the Fédération Mondiale du Cirque.

However, much of the Caballero family’s performance lore begins with Isabel’s son, 82-year-old Rubén: an apparatus connoisseur well-versed in the high wire, trapeze and hand balancing. Around 1981, Rubén would bring the entire Caballero family to the United States; all eight of his children performed for the esteemed Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses, with the flying trapeze as their specialty act.

Two members of the Caballero family, Rubén Sr. and Rubén Jr., are also recognized for being the first to execute the quadruple somersault under the big top tent in 1985. It requires extreme faith in the opposite catcher, as much as it does for the individual flipping multiple times over — they even recorded the groundbreaking stunt for posterity’s sake, along with other home videos.

In 1995, this risky act helped the family secure the esteemed Payaso de Oro: the top prize at the International Circus Festival of Monte-Carlo, an award comparable to soccer’s Ballon d’Or or music’s Grammy. Some of the Rubén’s direct descendants would win the award once again 30 years later.

By 2000, Rubén would open his own white-and-purple tent circus, Caballero Circus, where Liliana now oversees the concession stand. Her sisters Maria and Judith manage the circus and supervise show details, respectively.

“My father’s American dream was always to run his own circus,” said Liliana.

Rubén Sr., who continues to be the patriarch of the Caballero family, is teaching his youngest grandson everything he knows. “He wants me to be better,” said Francesco.

Nicole Caballero, 15, from left in the front row, Melody Caballero, 22, Francesco Caballero, 13, and Judith Caballero, 15, at the end of the show at the Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.

Now carrying the family’s torch is the fifth generation of tumbling acrobats skilled in the art of balance and flexibility. Liliana’s 15-year-old daughter, Nicole, specializes in the Globe of Death, where she gets in the locked cage with her cousin Judith, also 15; together they maneuver the motorbikes around the globe at opposing-intersecting paths. This is a skill set she takes pride in, since many in the audience assume there are men underneath the protective gear.

“Once we come out, we take our helmets out and they see girls can do it too,” said Nicole before her Wednesday performance.

Melody, host of the bilingual show, competed as a contortionist on Season 8 of “America’s Got Talent,” which aired in 2013. “ We could have the worst day of our lives, but when we step on stage, we have to have the biggest smile in the world,” said Melody.

Two of Rubén’s older sons, who married Russian acrobats during international stints, broke off and founded their own troupe as Circus Caballero. They have their own touring show stationed in Bell through May 25.

Francesco Caballero, 13, gets ready in a mirror inside a trailer at the Caballero Circus on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Santa Ana.

Some of the Caballero family members also compete internationally as the Flying Caballero — something the youngest Caballero member, Francesco, hopes he can work his way up to.

“ I’ve been told that they’ve been to France, to Italy, Germany, everywhere,” he said. “My primos just went to one of the most prestigious festivals in Monaco and they won first place. I wanna be like my cousins and do what they’re doing.”

Francesco might still be learning the ropes of the circus world — but before he can compete on the glamorous world stage, he must first conquer his school’s virtual talent show. On June 8, he will participate in a nationwide competition by the virtual academy K12, which will showcase student talent from across the country.

Thankfully, he will have plenty of time to practice. The Caballero Circus will station itself in Lakewood between May 22 to June 7.

“Not a lot of kids do what I do,” said Francesco. “It teaches us to connect with the public, to connect with other people.”

For more than 40 years, Barry Walters has been closely watching the dance floors of New York and San Francisco, chronicling the ways in which LGBTQ+ culture has influenced mainstream culture. As a writer for the Village Voice, the Advocate and Spin, among others, Walters became one of music journalism’s most eloquent and crucial voices, championing artists like the Pet Shop Boys and Madonna during their formative years.

Walters’ new book, “Mighty Real,” draws on his deep firsthand knowledge, offering a comprehensive history of LGBTQ+ music from 1969 to 2000. I recently spoke with Walters about Babs, Madge and Bowie.

✍️ Author Chat

In the book, you make a distinction between pre-Stonewall LGBTQ music and post-Stonewall LGBTQ music.

Gay culture before Stonewall really had to be hidden, or at least secretive. I think of Barbra Streisand as a quintessential pre-Stonewall figure. Judy Garland, as well. These women are tough, and even though they sing songs written by men, it’s not in a submissive way. They are singing like they are the champions, even when they are suffering through what men do to women through the torch songs they perform.

What can you say about the encoded nature of certain songs that spoke to gay culture in a way that flew under the radar of hetero listeners in the pre-Stonewall era?

The music that spoke to gay culture, by necessity, had to be encoded. “Secret Love” by Doris Day is a good example. It’s about struggling to have something that’s otherwise forbidden. Sinead O’Connor covered that song. There was a song I loved as a young child called “Have I The Right?” by the Honeycombs, which was written by two British gay men at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. You know, have I the right to be with whomever I want to be with?

What, in your view, was the big bang of post-Stonewall LGBTQ music?

David Bowie to a large degree. Right around the time that “Hunky Dory” was being released in 1971, he told the Evening Standard newspaper that he was gay, flat out just said it. And it was such a strange thing to say that many people doubted his sincerity.

Barry Walters, a writer for the Village Voice, the Advocate and Spin, among others, wrote a new book about the history of LGBTQ+ music.

(Kelly Lawrence for Walters)

I remember seeing Bowie wearing that dress on the cover of “The Man Who Sold The World,” thinking that was the most transgressive act any rock star had ever committed.

And then he performed “Starman” on Top of the Pops in 1972 and he put his arm around his guitarist Mick Ronson, who also looked gorgeous. They were displaying a familiarity men aren’t supposed to have.

I thought I knew everything about pop music, but you have uncovered so many fascinating stories. Tell me about Olivia Records.

Olivia Records was an independent record label in the Bay Area owned and controlled by lesbians for female artists. This is years before punk or indie rock, when so many small labels cropped up. They pioneered so much. They would recruit fans in different cities to man the merchandise and to help get their records in stores. The idea of a merch table was something new at the time. They also created the forerunner of Burning Man. They would go find a farm somewhere and create an impromptu village, with food, sanitation and the rest.

You have given the most space in your book to Madonna, whom you have written about extensively over the years. Why is Madonna such a huge figure in the history of LGBTQ music?

Her art is so queer. I feel like she is one of us. She’s very much like Grace Jones, in that her sensibility is so aligned with gay culture. I related to Madonna on multiple levels. In the early ‘80s, I would see her around town, dancing at the same New York clubs I was frequenting, like Danceteria. She was steeped in gay culture, and then she brought all of this into the mainstream, and that was profound. I also feel like she was misunderstood in many ways. When straight men called her a slut, things like that. That is so far from the truth. She is such a complex artist. If you are making that claim, you don’t know anything about her.

(This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

📰 The Week(s) in Books

(Javier Pérez / For The Times)

Pulitzer prize winner Elizabeth Strout has a new novel called “The Things We Never Say,” and Julia M. Klein approves. “[Strout] reprises her familiar themes: the mysteries of human personality, the perils of solitude, the occasional possibility of grace … in deceptively simple, occasionally mannered prose that draws readers in and immerses them in her fictional worlds,” Klein writes.

They’re on a boat! Paula L. Woods climbed aboard a 130-foot yacht in Marina del Rey to soak in the vibes of the Yacht Girls Book Club. “I wanted conversations with like-minded women that were intellectual but fun,” club founder Aloni Ford told Woods. “And talking about books seemed to be the ideal way to achieve that.”

“PEN15” co-creator Anna Konkle has written a memoir called “The Sane One,” and Rachel Brodsky talked to her about it. “In some ways, ‘PEN15’ was a reaction to loving memoirs,” she tells Brodsky. “Raw memory has always been very exciting to me.”

Finally, our Times critics take the measure of this summer’s hottest beach reads.

📖 Bookstore Faves

Kinokuniya bookstores sell Japanese manga, stationery and literature.

(Courtesy of Kinokuniya)

When Kinokuniya opened its first L.A. shop in 1977, it was primarily to provide Japanese expats with imported books and magazines to read in their native tongue. Forty years later, the store has become a locus of Japanese printed matter for Angelenos eager to scoop up Japanese literature and manga in Japanese and English, as well an expansive selection of imported stationery products that, in L.A., can only be found in Kinokuniya’s three stores. I spoke with Sakura Yamaguchi, who manages two of Kinokuniya’s stores downtown (the third is in Mar Vista) about its many-splendored pleasures.

How did the store travel from Japan to Los Angeles?

Books Kinokuniya was founded by Moichi Tanabe in 1927. Located in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo in a two-story wooden building, the first Kinokuniya started with five employees, including Mr. Tanabe himself. In 1969, Kinokuniya opened its first overseas bookstore in San Francisco. The first Los Angeles store opened in 1977.

Who are your customers?

We first started as a store for Japanese customers, so we imported Japanese books and magazines and sold them, mainly. But in the past 10 years, Japanese manga/anime, stationery and literature has been quite popular in the U.S. Therefore our customers are a mix of Japanese-speaking customers and non-Japanese speakers who are interested in Japanese culture.

What percentage of your clientele buys Japanese–language products?

Forty percent Japanese-language products versus 60% English books.

What specific titles are selling for you right now?

“Witch Hat Atelier Grimoire Edition, Volume 1,” “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Purple Smoke Distortion” and the “Strange Houses” series.

Are you seeing more young people turning to printed matter? It seems like there is an analog revival at the moment.

We have been trying to make exclusive editions that come with freebies to make the printed manga more attractive, but without that our English manga sales have been increasing and our main target for the manga is young people. There are many titles that are published exclusively in e-book format, but we frequently hear from customers asking when they will be released in print form. Also, recently there has been a growing number of cases where titles that were originally available only in digital format have later been published as physical books.

Kinokuniya at the Bloc in Los Angeles is located at 700 W 7th St.

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Claudine Longet, the French-born star and ex-wife of crooner Andy Williams who became notorious for the fatal shooting of Olympic skier Vladimir “Spider” Sabich, has died. She was 84.

Her death was confirmed by her nephew, Bryan Longet, who posted a social media tribute on Thursday. Translated from French by The Times, he wrote, “You have been a true inspiration in my life and you will always be. … Another star in the sky. Thank you for everything, my aunt.”

Born in Paris on Jan. 29, 1942, Longet was the daughter of a doctor and an X-ray manufacturer. From a young age, she showed a knack for singing and dancing and envisioned her name on the marquee. In 1960, when she turned 18, American impresario Lou Walters (father of Barbara Walters) saw Longet dancing on French television and hired the ingénue to join the Tropicana casino’s flashy new production. She bid Paris adieu and sashayed to Las Vegas, where she starred in the Folies Bergère revue.

While working as a showgirl in Sin City, Longet met then-fellow Vegas performer Andy Williams one evening when her car broke down on the side of the road. Williams happened to be passing by as the young dancer was pushing her car down the highway with a friend, and Williams along with his manager stopped to help and was quickly charmed. The two were married on Christmas Day the following year, in 1961.

In 1962, Williams released “Moon River,” and the crooner’s career took off. The newlyweds left Las Vegas and moved into an oceanfront mansion in Malibu where they started a family, and over the next several years welcomed daughter Noelle and sons Christian and Robert, or “Bobby,” who was named after the couple’s close friend Robert F. Kennedy. Also in 1962, Williams’ eponymous variety show debuted and quickly became a hit. Longet was a regular on the show, and the family-oriented Christmas TV specials, often featuring the entire Williams clan, were a ratings juggernaut.

In addition to her regular appearances on “The Andy Williams Show,” Longet acted in television and film. Notably, the chanteuse captivated audiences singing Henry Mancini and Don Black’s “Nothing to Lose” in the 1968 comedy “The Party,” in which she played an aspiring actress. From 1967 to 1972, she released seven studio albums, five with A&M Records, including her debut single and album titled “Claudine,” and two with Barnaby Records. Her music was known for its breathy, lounge-pop quality, and she sang in both English and French.

By 1970, Williams and Longet’s marriage was on the rocks, and the pair separated. They officially divorced in 1975. The Emmy-winning host chalked it up to the pair growing apart. He told CBS’ “This Morning” during a 2009 appearance that he was never home. “It was all my fault, and I just didn’t take care of my marriage,” he said, noting that he regretted the split. The two stayed friendly afterward, and Williams stood by Longet when tragedy and scandal struck a year later, in 1976.

Longet met Olympian skier Sabich in Bear Valley at a celebrity skiing exhibition in 1972. There was an instant attraction between the two, and Longet relocated to Aspen, Colo., and ultimately moved into the pro skier’s ritzy Starwood chalet around 1975. On March 21, 1976, Longet shot Sabich in the abdomen with an imitation World War II .22-caliber German‐made pistol. Her daughter, Noelle, who was in the house at the time, testified that she heard Sabich yell out, “Claudine! Claudine!”

According to The Times’ archives, Longet told authorities that she found the handgun and asked Sabich how to use it. During Longet’s trial, Aspen Det. David Garms testified that Longet insisted the shooting was an accident. Garms said that Longet told him she’d pointed the gun at Sabich and then “jokingly said ‘bang, bang.’” She told investigators she thought the safety was on, and a ballistics expert said the safety did not work.

Longet was with Sabich in the ambulance when he died en route to the Aspen hospital. The “Love Is Blue” singer was subsequently questioned by investigators and charged with felony reckless manslaughter weeks later. She initially faced up to 10 years in prison. But in January 1977, after four days of testimony and 3½ hours of deliberations, Longet was acquitted of the felony charge and convicted of a misdemeanor charge of negligent homicide.

Ex-husband Williams accompanied Longet to her trial and told “This Morning” years later that he supported his ex-wife because he believed in her innocence.

“I did because I thought it was unfair,” he said. “I thought she was innocent. I thought it was an accident.”

During the trial, she testified in her signature French accent that she and Sabich were the “best of friends.”

“There were times over the four years that we would disagree. … [T]here would be times he would be a little bit offended by the attention I got and I would be a little bit offended by the attention he got, but we were the best of friends and we loved each other very much,” she told the court, per The Times’ archives.

Longet was sentenced to serve 30 days in jail “at a time of her own choosing.”

“There is not really much to say,” she told reporters outside the courtroom, per The Times’ archives. “Only that I have too much respect for living things to do that. I’m not guilty.”

The parents of Sabich filed a $1.3-million civil suit against Longet later the same year, but the case was settled out of court two years later. Longet was reportedly forbidden from speaking or writing about the shooting. As for her career in show business, she was finished.

The Sabich case became an absolute sensation in the media, not just in America but also globally, and Longet was internationally labeled Aspen’s femme fatale. Pop culture had its way with the incident as well. The Rolling Stones’ song “Claudine” was withheld from their 1978 album, “Some Girls,” because of legal considerations but was featured on the 2011 reissue of the album.

“You’re the prettiest girl I ever seen / I want to see you on the movie screen / I hope you never try to make a sacrifice of me, Claudine,” belted Mick Jagger in what may have been considered a diss track or a tribute, depending on whom you ask. “Nah ah / Don’t get, don’t get trigger happy with me, Claudine.”

In an April 1976 episode, “Saturday Night Live” also took aim at the deadly affair with a sketch titled “The Claudine Longet Invitational,” in which Chevy Chase and Jane Curtin play sports commentators who offer a play-by-play of a competition in which male skiers are “accidentally” shot by Longet as they race down the slopes.

The producers read an apology on air the following week.

Aspen attorney Ron Austin, who was on Longet’s defense team, left his wife shortly after the trial concluded to be with the embattled starlet. The two married in 1985 and remained in Aspen afterLonget’s conviction but also spent time at their second home in Hawaii. In 2023, the pair listed her $60-million Red Mountain Ranch estate, according to Robb Report.

Longet’s last known public appearance was in 2003 on the A&E channel’s Andy Williams “Biography” documentary, in which she recorded only voice-over. “To this day people stop me in the street and say how much they loved the Christmas show.”

As Kelsey Luderer rounded third base and headed home Thursday after hitting a game-tying home run that ignited Sherman Oaks Notre Dame to a 6-3 Division 1 softball playoff win over Anaheim Canyon, she was greeted by every teammate at the plate. They engulfed her in a sea of white, screaming, yelling and patting her head.

Looking on with pride was Brian Luderer, her father and Notre Dame assistant coach. Every moment he’s at a game or practice, it serves as a positive distraction from thinking about the fight his brother, Matt, the athletic director at St. Francis, has been enduring. For more than a year, Matt has been battling an uncureable brain cancer, glioblastoma.

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame assistant coach Brian Luderer with his daughter, Kelsey.

(Craig Weston / For The Times)

It’s hard for Brian to talk about his brother without crying. “These girls give me what I need,” he said. “They’re like my family. The more we can win, the better for me. I’m proud he’s been fighting his butt off.”

Three weeks ago, Matt suffered a relapse. The many Luderer family members (Brian has four children and Matt has six daughters) have united to keep the faith. And softball is their place for a moment away from life’s challenges.

“This is kind of our happy place, a good place to get away,” Kelsey said.

Haley Maldonado had a three-hit day for Sherman Oaks Notre Dame.

(Craig Weston / For The Times)

The Knights fell behind 3-0 after Canyon’s Mia Saenz hit a two-run home run and added another run on an error. The hitters started forcing Canyon pitcher Kelsey Perez to work extra hard, producing multiple three-and-two counts. Sophomore Haley Maldonado, who finished with three hits, contributed an RBI double in the second. But it wasn’t until Luderer’s home run to left field in the fourth that the Knights were set free, leading to a three-run inning and a comeback victory.

Brian and Notre Dame head coach Justin Siegel are best friends and former minor league baseball players who turned to softball when they had daughters. Brian has sophomore twins Kelsey and Keira in starring roles. In four years, they’ve built the Knights (22-3) into a Division 1 title contender. Next up is Marmonte League champion Oaks Christian on Saturday.

Every softball win brings a moment of peace to the Luderer family.

Oaks Christian 8, Chaminade 1: Sophia Debs struck out 13 and hit a home run for the Lions.

Murrieta Mesa 10, Valley View 0: Lilly Hauser had three hits and struck out 11 in a six-inning mercy rule win.

La Mirada 4, Los Alamitos 2: Alison Ortega struck out 10 for La Mirada.

JSerra 3, Yucaipa 2: Liliana Escobar struck out nine and walked one for JSerra.

Mater Dei 11, Foothill 3: Danica Lancellotti had a two-run double and finished with three hits for Mater Dei.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The bitter divorce between an Ohio congressman and his former wife, the daughter of one of the state’s U.S. senators, has escalated into new legal action.

Republican U.S. Rep. Max Miller filed a defamation lawsuit against Emily Moreno, his one-time spouse, on Wednesday in Cleveland, citing “the considerable reputational and financial harm” caused to him by her accusations that he was “a violent and abusive husband and father.”

Miller, a two-term congressman up for reelection this fall, alleges that Moreno, her attorney Andrew Zashin and his law firm have engaged in a defamatory campaign against him by spreading knowingly false information about him to media outlets including the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, and the New York Post. The action contends that the resulting damage to his reputation undermines his chances of reelection.

Those outlets have “circulation measured in the tens of millions of print and online readership,” the complaint states, and their articles have been read, viewed or discussed by Miller’s constituents, his congressional colleagues, ”his political supporters and donors, the media, and the general public.”

The suit seeks compensatory damages in excess of $25,000, punitive damages sufficient to deter future similar conduct and attorney’s fees.

“Congressman Miller is seeking to hold those responsible accountable and to obtain damages for the significant personal, professional, and political harm that he has suffered,” his spokesman said in a statement.

Zashin declined comment.

The incident brings to mind a similar situation that played out as Miller, a White House aide to President Trump during the Republican’s first term, made his first run for Congress in 2021.

Miller’s former girlfriend, one-time White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, raised allegations in her book and in a Washington Post op-ed at the time that a former White House staffer later identified as Miller had physically abused her while they were dating. Miller responded by filing a defamation lawsuit against her. He voluntarily dismissed the suit with prejudice in August 2023, just before the case was set to go to trial.

Moreno’s spokesperson, Stefan Mychajliw, cited the earlier lawsuit in a statement Thursday.

“Mr. Miller is upset because he’s tried to silence Emily Moreno the same way he silenced Stephanie Grisham — and Emily won’t let him,” he said, suggesting Miller is “running the same playbook against a woman with photographs of her bruises and burns.” He added, “Mr. Miller will not silence Ms. Moreno.”

Miller married Emily Moreno in 2022. They had a daughter in 2023.

He filed for divorce in August 2024, as her father, Bernie, was making a successful run for U.S. Senate backed by Trump. The abuse allegations — most recently, Moreno said Miller threw boiling water at her, an allegation he denies — come amid a messy custody battle that has included Miller seeking a restraining order against his ex-wife and subpoenaing the senator to testify. The divorce was finalized last June.

Miller’s spokesperson provided documentation that several allegations that he had abused his daughter were investigated by the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services and deemed unsubstantiated.

Amid the drama, Democrat Brian Poindexter, a five-term local councilman and union ironworker, is looking to oust Miller and flip Ohio’s 7th Congressional District in November.

Smyth writes for the Associated Press.