decade

Amid the fusillade of terrible headlines this year, one pierced my nerdy heart.

“Enjoying this headline? You’re a rarity: Reading for pleasure is declining …” was the topper to a story by my colleague Hailey Branson-Potts in August. Pleasure reading among American adults fell more than 40% in two decades — a continuation of a trend going back to the 1940s.

I get it. We don’t want to read for fun when we’re trying to wade through the sewer of information we find online and make sense of our terrible political times. But as Tyrion Lannister, the wily hero of George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones” series, said, “A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”

So for my annual holiday columna recommending great books about Southern California, I’m sticking to formats that lend themselves to easier reading — bite-size jewels of intellect, if you will. Through essays, short stories, poems and pictures, each of my suggestions will bring solace through the beauty of where we live and offer inspiration about how to double down on resisting the bad guys.

“California Southern: Writing From the Road, 1992-2025” by LAist reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.

(Gustavo Arellano / Los Angeles Times)

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez’s warm voice has informed Angelenos about arts, politics and education for 25 years on what was long called KPCC and now goes by LAist 89.3. What most listeners might not know is that the Mexico City native first earned acclaim as a founder of Taco Shop Poets, an influential San Diego collective that highlighted Chicano writers in a city that didn’t seem to care for them.

Guzman-Lopez lets others delve into that history in the intro and forerward to “California Southern: Writings from the Road, 1992-2025.” Reading the short anthology, it quickly becomes clear why his audio dispatches have always had a prose-like quality often lacking among public radio reporters, whose delivery tends to be as dry as Death Valley.

In mostly English but sometimes Spanish and Spanglish, Guzman-Lopez takes readers from the U.S.-Mexico border to L.A., employing the type of lyrical bank shots only a poet can get away with. I especially loved his description of Silver Lake as “two tax brackets away/From Salvatrucha Echo Park.” Another highlight is contained in “Trucks,” where Guzman-Lopez praises the immigrant entrepreneurs from around the world who come to L.A. and name their businesses after their hometowns.

“Say these names to praise the soil,” he writes. “Say these names to document the passage. Say these names to remember the trek.”

Guzman-Lopez has been doing readings recently with Lisa Alvarez, who published her first book, “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories,” after decades of teaching English — including to my wife back in the 1990s! — at Irvine Valley College.

The L.A. native did the impossible for someone who rarely delves into made-up stories because the real world is fantastical enough: She made me not just read fiction but enjoy it.

Alvarez’s debut is a loosely tied collection centered on progressive activists in Southern California, spanning a seismic sendoff for someone who fought during the Spanish Civil War and a resident of O.C.’s canyon country tipping off the FBI about her neighbor’s participation in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

Author, activist and Irvine Valley College professor Lisa Alvarez holds a copy of her short story collection “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories.”

(Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

Most of the protagonists are women, brought to life through Alvarez’s taut, shining sentences. Memories play a key role — people loved and lost, places missed and reviled. A nephew remembers how his uncle landed in an FBI subversives file after attending a Paul Robeson speech in South L.A. shortly after serving in the Navy in World War II. An L.A. mayor who seems like a stand-in for Antonio Villaraigoisa considers himself “the crafty and cool voice of one who sees his past and future in terms of chapters in a best-selling book” as he tries to convince a faded movie star to come down from a tree during a protest.

To paraphrase William Faulkner about the South, the past is never dead in Southern California — it isn’t even past.

While Alvarez is a first-time author, D.J. Waldie has written many books. The Livy of Lakewood, who has penned important essays about L.A. history and geography for decades, has gathered some of his recent efforts in “Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air, Fire.”

A lot of his subjects — L.A.’s mother tree, pioneering preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, the first Hass avocado — are tried-and-true terrain for Southern California writers. But few of us can turn a phrase like Waldie. On legendary Dodger broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín, he writes, “The twin cities of Los Angeles and Los Ángeles, evoked by [their] voices … may seem to be incommensurate places to the unhearing, but the borders of the two cities are porous. Sound travels.”

Man, I wish I would have written that.

“Elements of Los Angeles” is worth the purchase, if only to read “Taken by the Flood,” Waldie’s account of the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster that killed at least 431 people — mostly Latinos — and destroyed the career of L.A.’s water godfather, William Mulholland. The author’s slow burn of the tragic chronology, from Mulholland’s famous “There it is. Take it” quote when he unleashed water from the Owens Valley in 1913 to slake the city’s thirst, to how L.A. quickly forgot the disaster, compounds hubris upon hubris.

But then, Waldie concludes by citing a Spanish-language corrido about the disaster: “Friends, I leave you/with this sad song/and with a plea to heaven/For those taken by the flood.”

The ultimate victims, Waldie argues, are not the dead from the St. Francis Dam but all Angelenos for buying into the fatal folly of Mullholland’s L.A.

“Elements of Los Angeles” was published by Angel City Press, a wing of the Los Angeles Public Library that also released “Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles.”

Cal State Long Beach sociology professor Oliver Wang offers a powerhouse of a coffee table book by taking what could have easily sold as a scrapbook of cool images and grounding it in the history of a community that has seen the promise and pain of Southern California like few others.

We see Japanese Americans posing in front of souped-up imports, reveling in SoCal’s kustom kulture scene of the 1960s, standing in front of a car at a World War II-era incarceration camp and loading up their gardening trucks at a time when they dominated the landscaping industry.

“One can read entire histories of American car culture and find no mention of Japanese or Asian American involvement,” Wang writes — but that’s about as pedantic as “Cruising J-Town” gets.

The rest is a delight that zooms by like the rest of my recs. Drop the doomscrolling for a day, make the time to read them all and become a better Southern Californian in the process. Enjoy!

ICONIC Hollywood actor Udi Kier has tragically died aged 81.

The veteran German star, who appeared in popular movies like Ace Ventura and Blade, passed away just weeks after his birthday.

Delbert McBride, Kier’s partner, revealed that the legendary actor passed away on Sunday. He did not reveal the cause of death.

Photographer Michael Childers, who was a friend of Kier’s, has revealed on Facebook that he died in a hospital in Palm Springs, California.

Kier rose to fame after playing villains and monsters across Hollywood and European films, including popular collaborations with Andy Warhol.

Throughout his career, which spanned more than six decades, Kier acted in more than 200 movies.

But his breakout collaborations with Warhol are among his most celebrated.

He starred in the titular roles in both 1973’s Flesh for Frankenstein and 1974’s Blood for Dracula – both produced by Warhol.

Kier once told The Guardian: “I like horror films, because if you play small or guest parts in movies, it is better to be evil and scare people than be the guy who works in the post office and goes home to his wife and children. Audiences will remember you more.”

In 1991, the German actor went on to debut his US role in My Own Private Idaho, which also starred Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix.

His successful Hollywood career included films like End of Days, Blade, Johnny Mnemonic, Armageddon and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

The actor’s final role was 2025 historical political thriller The Secret Agent, in which he played Jewish Holocaust survivor Hans, who gets mistaken for a Nazi fugitive.

Kier was born on 14 October 1944 in Cologne, towards the end of World War II.

His hospital was bombed during the war, and he and his mother were reportedly dug out from rubble.

Kier moved to London at the age of 18 to learn English before starting his successful movie career.

He moved to Palm Springs, California, in 1991.

It comes just days after actor Spencer Lofranco died at the age of 33.

The Canadian film star was best known for playing the lead role of James Burns in 2014 crime drama Jamesy Boy.

Today we discuss Texas, overreaction and the voluminous field of candidates for California governor.

Is there anyone who is not running for governor?

I’m not. And neither are my two cats. At least they weren’t as of this morning, when we discussed the race before breakfast.

That leaves us somewhat short of the 135 candidates who ran in California’s 2003 recall gubernatorial election. But not by much.

I count nearly a dozen serious candidates, with possibly more to come. Why so many?

Opportunity.

This is the most wide-open race for California governor in decades. By comparison, you’d have to go back to at least 1998, when Lt. Gov. Gray Davis surged past a pair of moneybag candidates, Al Checchi and Rep. Jane Harman, in the Democratic primary, then stomped Republican Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren in November to win the general election.

Now, as then, there is no one who even remotely resembles a prohibitive front-runner.

Polling in the governor’s race has shown former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter and Chad Bianco, Riverside County’s Republican sheriff, narrowly leading the field. But with support for both in the middling 13%-to-21% range, we’re not talking about a pair of world-beaters.

Like nature, political ambition abhors a vacuum.

Speaking of moneybags…

Tom Steyer!

Yes.

After making a bundle as a hedge fund manager, the San Francisco billionaire and environmental activist has been panting after public office for years. Running for president didn’t work out in 2020, even after Steyer spent more than $345 million on his effort. (That’s close to what the Dodgers spent on their 2025 payroll.)

So now Steyer is running for governor, a move he appeared to telegraph by airing nearly $13 million in self-promotional ads that, oh yes, supported passage of Proposition 50, the Democratic gerrymander initiative.

What are his chances?

Longtime readers of this column — both of you! — will know I make no predictions.

But California voters have never looked favorably upon rich candidates trying to make the leap from political civilian to the governorship or U.S. Senate. In fact, over the last 50-plus years, a gilded gallery of the well-to-do have tried and spectacularly failed.

Perhaps Steyer will display the policy chops or the razzle and dazzle they all lacked. But his launch video certainly didn’t shatter any molds. Rather, it presented a stereotypical grab bag of redwood trees, potshots at Sacramento, multicultural images of hard-working-everyday-folk, a promise to fight, a pledge to build more housing and, of course, a dash of profanity because, gosh darn it, nothing says “unbridled authenticity” like a political candidate swearing!

Maybe his fellow billionaire, Rick Caruso, will show more creativity and imagination if he gets into the governor’s race.

At least Democrats have been showing signs of life.

Indeed. Dare I say, the party’s mood swing from near-suicidal to euphoric has been quite something.

Winning gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia — not by a little, but a lot — and prevailing in down-ballot contests in Pennsylvania and Georgia had a remarkably transformative effect. (Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in sky-blue New York City was no big surprise once the democratic socialist prevailed in the primary.)

Literally overnight, Democrats seized the momentum heading into the 2026 midterm election, while Republicans have begun scrambling to reposition their party and recraft its messaging.

All that being said, even before their buoyant off-year performance those widespread reports of Democrats’ demise were greatly … well, we’ll leave that Mark Twain chestnut alone. As analyst Charlie Cook points out, 2024 was a deeply disappointing year for the party. But it wasn’t a disaster.

Democrats gained two House seats. There was no net change in any of the 11 gubernatorial races and legislative contests across 44 states ended in something close to a wash. The party lost four Senate seats — and control of the chamber — but three of those losses came in the red states of Montana, Ohio and West Virginia.

“This is not to argue that Democrats had a great night in November 2024, but it certainly wasn’t a massacre or a party-wide repudiation,” Cook wrote in a recent posting. “If voters had intended to take it out on the party as a whole, the results would have looked quite different.”

Rather than a wholesale takedown of Democrats, the result seemed very much a rejection of President Biden and, by extension, his hasty replacement on the ballot, Vice President Kamala Harris.

What does that mean going forth?

If you’re asking whether Democrats will win control of the House or Senate…

Yes?!?

…I haven’t a clue.

Democrats need to gain three seats to take control of the House and both history and Trump’s sagging approval ratings — especially as pertains to the economy — augur well for their chances. The president’s party has lost House seats in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections and, according to Inside Elections, the fewest number of seats that flipped was four.

That’s why I thought Proposition 50, which sets out to all but decapitate California Republicans in Congress, was a bad and unnecessary move, effectively disenfranchising millions of non-Democratic voters.

An appeals court last week tossed out a Republican gerrymander in Texas, putting Democrats in an even stronger position, though the legal wrangling is far from over. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the decision, pending review. And still to come is a high court ruling that could gut the Voting Rights Act and yield Republicans a dozen or more House seats nationwide.

So the fight for control is far from decided.

As for the Senate, Republicans stand a much better chance of keeping control, given how the seats contested in 2026 are located on largely favorable GOP terrain.

But until the votes are counted, nobody knows what will happen. That’s the thing about elections: they help keep wiseacres like me honest.

Nearly a decade after his 2016 novel, “All That Man Is,” was passed over for the Booker Prize, David Szalay has taken home gold with his latest work, “Flesh.”

“Flesh,” Szalay’s sixth novel, follows István, a socially isolated Hungarian teen who through circumstances beyond his control is thrust into London’s upper echelon. In the coming decades, he finds himself caught between his traumatic past and growing appetite for prestige. Szalay is the first Hungarian British writer to receive the prestigious award, which he accepted at Monday’s ceremony in London with visible surprise.

“I felt ‘Flesh’ is quite a risky novel, a risky book. It felt risky to me writing it,” Szalay said in his acceptance speech.

“I think it’s very important that the publisher — the novel-making community, if I can put it like that — embraces that sense of risk rather than shuns it,” he said.

In the judges’ view, Szalay’s risks more than paid off, yielding an “extraordinary, singular novel.”

“The judges discussed the six books on the shortlist for more than five hours,” said Roddy Doyle, chair of the judging panel. “The book we kept coming back to, the one that stood out from the other great novels, was ‘Flesh’ — because of its singularity.”

“We had never read anything quite like it. It is, in many ways, a dark book but it is a joy to read,” he said.

Despite chronicling decades of István’s life, “Flesh,” through narrative omissions, leaves readers with an inscrutable protagonist they nonetheless remain deeply invested in.

“I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well,” Doyle said, adding that in “Flesh,” “Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter.”

The Booker Prize is an annual award given to the best English-language novel published in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“Flesh” triumphed over five other shortlisted books: Kiran Desai’s “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” Andrew Miller’s “The Land in Winter,” Susan Choi’s “Flashlight,” Katie Kitamura’s “Audition” and Ben Markovits’ “The Rest of Our Lives.”

“Flesh” has also received praise from writer Zadie Smith and singer Dua Lipa, who selected the novel for her Service95 Book Club.

“I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a character who has so little to say as István and yet by the end of it I cared about him so deeply,” Lipa told Szalay in an October interview at the New York Public Library.

During their conversation, Szalay shared that while “Flesh” was the file name for the book on his computer, he never expected it to get to the final press.

Yet his team couldn’t think of another title more fitting for the novel.

“The kind of slight unease that I think it provokes, that sense of tawdriness, I think that they really fit the book, ultimately,” Szalay said.

NEW YORK — Paul Tagliabue, who helped bring labor peace and riches to the NFL during his 17 years as commissioner but was criticized for not taking stronger action on concussions, died Sunday from heart failure. He was 84.

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said Tagliabue’s family informed the league of his death in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Tagliabue, who had developed Parkinson’s disease, was commissioner after Pete Rozelle from 1989 to 2006. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of a special centennial class in 2020. Current Commissioner Roger Goodell succeeded Tagliabue.

“Paul was the ultimate steward of the game — tall in stature, humble in presence and decisive in his loyalty to the NFL,” Goodell said in a statement. “I am forever grateful and proud to have Paul as my friend and mentor. I cherished the innumerable hours we spent together where he helped shape me as an executive but also as a man, husband and father.”

Tagliabue oversaw a myriad of new stadiums and negotiated television contracts that added billions of dollars to the league’s bank account. Under him, there were no labor stoppages.

During his time, Los Angeles lost two teams and Cleveland another, migrating to Baltimore before being replaced by an expansion franchise.

Tagliabue implemented a policy on substance abuse that was considered the strongest in all major sports. He also established the “Rooney Rule,” in which all teams with coaching vacancies must interview minority candidates. It has since been expanded to include front-office and league executive positions.

When he took office in 1989, the NFL had just gotten its first Black head coach of the modern era. By the time Tagliabue stepped down in 2006, there were seven minority head coaches in the league.

In one of his pivotal moments, Tagliabue called off NFL games the weekend after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It was one of the few times the public compared him favorably to Rozelle, who proceeded with the games the Sunday after John Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. A key presidential aide had advised Rozelle that the NFL should play, a decision that was one of the commissioner’s great regrets.

Tagliabue certainly had his detractors, notably over concussions. The issue has plagued the NFL for decades, though team owners had a major role in the lack of progress in dealing with head trauma.

In 2017, Tagliabue apologized for remarks he made decades ago about concussions in football, acknowledging he didn’t have the proper data at the time in 1994. He called concussions “one of those pack-journalism issues” and contended the number of concussions “is relatively small; the problem is the journalist issue.”

“Obviously,” he said on Talk of Fame Network, “I do regret those remarks. Looking back, it was not sensible language to use to express my thoughts at the time. My language was intemperate, and it led to serious misunderstanding.

“My intention at the time was to make a point which could have been made fairly simply: that there was a need for better data. There was a need for more reliable information about concussions and uniformity in terms of how they were being defined in terms of severity.”

While concussion recognition, research and treatment lagged for much of Tagliabue’s tenure, his work on the labor front was exemplary.

As one of his first decisions, Tagliabue reached out to the players’ union, then run by Gene Upshaw, a Hall of Fame player and former star for Al Davis’ Raiders. Tagliabue had insisted he be directly involved in all labor negotiations, basically rendering useless the Management Council of club executives that had handled such duties for nearly two decades.

It was a wise decision.

“When Paul was named commissioner after that seven-month search in 1989, that’s when the league got back on track,” said Joe Browne, who spent 50 years as an NFL executive and was a confidant of Rozelle and Tagliabue.

“Paul had insisted during his negotiations for the position that final control over matters such as labor and all commercial business dealings had to rest in the commissioner’s office. The owners agreed and that was a large step forward toward the tremendous rebound we had as a league — an expanded league — in the ’90s and beyond.”

Tagliabue forged a solid relationship with Upshaw. In breaking with the contentious dealings between the league and the NFL Players Association, Tagliabue and Upshaw kept negotiations respectful and centered on what would benefit both sides. Compromise was key, Upshaw always said — although the union often was criticized for being too accommodating.

Tagliabue had been the NFL’s Washington lawyer, a partner in the prestigious firm of Covington and Burling. He was chosen as commissioner in October 1989 over New Orleans general manager Jim Finks after a bitter fight highlighting the differences between the NFL’s old guard and newer owners.

Yet during his reign as commissioner, which ended in the spring of 2006 after pushing through a highly contested labor agreement, he managed to unite those divided owners and, in fact, relied more on the old-timers who supported him than on Jerry Jones and many of the younger owners.

Tagliabue was born on Nov. 24, 1940, in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was the 6-foot-5 captain of the basketball team at Georgetown and graduated in 1962 as one of the school’s leading rebounders at the time — his career average later listed just below that of Patrick Ewing. He was president of his class and a Rhodes scholar finalist. Three years later, he graduated from NYU Law School and subsequently worked as a lawyer in the Defense Department before joining Covington & Burling.

He eventually took over the NFL account, establishing a close relationship with Rozelle and other NFL officials during a series of legal actions in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tagliabue was reserved by nature and it sometimes led to coolness with the media, which had embraced Rozelle, an affable former public relations man. Even after he left office, Tagliabue did not measure up in that regard with Goodell, who began his NFL career in the public relations department.

But after 9/11, Tagliabue showed a different side, particularly toward league employees who had lost loved ones in the attacks. He accompanied Ed Tighe, an NFL Management Council lawyer whose wife died that day, to Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a few blocks from the NFL office.

Art Shell, a Hall of Fame player, became the NFL’s first modern-day Black head coach with the Raiders. He got to see Tagliabue up close and thought him utterly suited for his job.

“After my coaching career was over, I had the privilege of working directly with Paul in the league office,” Shell said, “His philosophy on almost every issue was, ‘If it’s broke, fix it. And if it’s not broke, fix it anyway.’

“He always challenged us to find better ways of doing things. Paul never lost sight of his responsibility to do what was right for the game. He was the perfect choice as NFL commissioner.”

Tagliabue is survived by his wife Chandler, son Drew, and daughter Emily.

Wilner and Maaddi write for the Associated Press.

A HUGE heavy metal band has announced their first UK show in over a decade, after they retired from touring.

The 70s band, who who are best known for We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock, are heading back on the road – and they are heading to the UK.

Formed in New Jersey in the 70s, American rockers Twisted Sister are coming out of tour retirement and making a stop in Wales.

The much-loved band revealed in September they were heading back out on the road again, after nearly a decade of not touring.

Twisted Sister, who are headed up by Dee Snider, have now announced their first UK show which will see them headline the Welsh festival Steelhouse.

Organisers have brought in the legendary heavy metal band to celebrate 15 years of the festival – which next year will take place from July 24 to 26.

KEEP ON MOVIN’

Five reveal more tour plans amid reunion & insist comeback isn’t about cash

comeback tour

Lily Allen tour 2026 – dates and how to get tickets

They will take to the stage at the iconic Welsh festival, which is held at the mountainous Hafod-y-Dafal Farm, Aberbeeg, Ebbw Vale.

Speaking about booking Twisted Sister, Steelhouse promoters Max and Mike said: “We thought 15 years was worth celebrating in the biggest possible way.

“And what better way to do that with one of the most iconic names in metal – Twisted f***ing Sister!

“To have them come and celebrate their milestone 50 years with us is an absolute and unbelievable honour.”

The statement ended: “When Dee Snider came and laid waste to Steelhouse a decade ago – and more than any other headliner, fundamentally got what we were trying to do as an independent rock festival – we hoped that perhaps he would one day return with the band he made his name with… In our 15th year and their 50th, this is coming to pass… Twisted Sister on The Mountain is going to be huge!”

Other bands confirmed for Steelhouse 2026 include The Temperance Movement, plus Reef, Alien Ant Farm, Tyketto, Von Hertzen Brothers, Darren Wharton’s Renegade, Mason Hill, Dan Byrne, Luke Morley, Anthony Gomes, King Kraken, Blue Nation and more.

Twisted Sister have only played one live show since 2016, when they temporarily reunited for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2023.

But they announced in September that they would be heading back out on tour.

At the time, the band revealed that their line-up had changed, as longtime bassist Mark Mendoza won’t be on the tour.

Instead, Russell Pzütto, who has played with the band in the past, will be joining for the new shows.

They are going back on tour to celebrate a HUGE milestone in the band’s long career.

“If you’re lucky enough to be in a band that people still want to see after fifty years(!), how can you not answer the call?” lead singer Dee teased.

“In 2026, Twisted F***ing Sister will hit stages around the world because WE STILL WANNA ROCK!!”