father

The former “King of the Beach” kept his crown tucked away Saturday night.

Clad in denim jeans and a plain white shirt, Sinjin Smith hovered on the sidelines of the sand.

When Hagen Smith — the son and spitting image of Sinjin — sailed a serve too far, Sinjin craned his neck back and clenched his jaws.

“On the court, he tells me to serve short, and I never listen,” Hagen said.

And when Hagen — a UCLA alum like his father — uncorked a spike that thudded into the sand untouched, Sinjin’s arm sliced the air as a grin stretched across his face and his applause echoed.

“I wasn’t disguising anything,” Sinjin said.

Anonymity didn’t stand a chance as Sinjin watched Hagen and Logan Webber locked in a razor-edged three-setter against the Palm Beach Passion that twice spilled past regulation.

But as Sinjin rode every rally, Hagen and Webber eked out a narrow victory, going 13-15, 18-16 and 18-16. The L.A. men’s duo remains undefeated through five weeks of AVP play, helping offset the L.A. Launch female duo’s first loss of the year earlier Saturday. Their combined records will determine whether they win the AVP League regular season crown.

L.A. Launch’s Hagen Smith spikes the ball as Logan Webber watches during their win over Palm Beach Passion’s Phil Dalhausser and Trevor Crabb at the Intuit Dome on Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Two dozen years removed from his final outing on the sand, Sinjin carved his career on the chaos of close calls. But Friday, with his son trading kills in a battle that felt like it refused to end, Sinjin was dodging heart attacks.

As the crowd learned in, Sinjin leaned back.

“It’s nerve wracking to watch him — you couldn’t get a better match for the fans, but I hated it,” Sinjin said. “I want to win in two and go home.”

While Sinjin might’ve winced through every extra-point rally, Hagen soaked it all in — steady under pressure.. He may be “trying his best to live up to” his father, but to hear Sinjin tell it, Hagen had already surpassed the myth.

Sinjin Smith competes in the AVP Santa Barbara Open on 18 Aug. 18, 2001, in Santa Barbara.

(Icon Sportswire / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

“He’s an unbelievable resource to me. I’ll ask him at like, midnight, ‘Hey, can you come out in the morning and coach me?’ He’s there,” Hagen said of Sinjin. “I’ve modeled my game after him, through and through. If I can be as anything like him as a player, I’m honored.”

Sinjin marveled at Hagen with the awe of a fan.

“He’s his own person. He’s playing for himself, trust me,” Sinjin said. “He may be wanting to prove something to me, I don’t know, but he’s done so much more than I ever expected. He’s so fun to watch — the fact that he’s my son, that’s just icing on the cake.”

Sinjin, the UCLA and International Volleyball Hall of Famer, tapped his temple twice when asked where he and his son aligned on the sand. The resemblance, he said, lives in the mind — because Hagen’s style has taken on its own shape, forged far from his father’s shadow.

“He jumps and he’s powerful and he moves in the sand,” Sinjin said. “I did everything pretty well, which was my strength, but he really excels in — for one, attacking the ball, he hits the ball harder and more explosively when he attacks than I ever was.”

For as long as Hagen could remember, Pauley Pavilion was the lighthouse in the distance — the promised land of his childhood dreams. And when he finally walked into the arena, his eyes fixed to a familiar face.

There was Sinjin, featured on the walls around the Bruins’ home.

“Getting to see that, it’s like, ‘Ah, this is home to me. I’ve got dad helping me out, I’ve got dad watching over me. Luckily I got to wear his number that was retired and that felt awesome,” said Hagen, who wore his father’s No. 22 jersey in college.

Sinjin played under Al Scates — the architect of UCLA’s volleyball dynasty and the winningest coach in NCAA men’s volleyball history. Under Scates and his 19 national titles, winning was the annual expectation.

And under Scates’ tutelage, Sinjin bookended his career with national glory, and flooded his cabinets with individual accolades — two All-American recognitions, a Most Outstanding Player distinction at the 1979 national championship and a stalwart of the historic undefeated 1979 squad.

L.A. Launch’s Hagen Smith, left, and Logan Webber, right, celebrate with L.A. Launch teammate Terese Cannon after Smith and Webber beat Palm Beach Passion’s Phil Dalhausser and Trevor Crabb during AVP League play at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

“[Scates] was the best coach of all time in the United States,” Sinjin said. “Al had a knack for picking players that had more than just a physical game. They had a mental game as well. … There’s so many of them that Al trained and went on to be the best of the very best in either beach or indoors.”

Decades later, Hagen was coached by Scates’ protege John Speraw.

After rattling off the names of former teammates and sand-side partners, Sinjin paused, seemingly struck by a pattern he couldn’t ignore: “God,” he said, “there’s a lot of UCLA legends going around.”

Two of those share the same last name.

“[Sinjin] tried to get me into tennis,” Hagen said, “and I was like, ‘Dad, I just want to play volleyball. I just want to be like you.’”

Other AVP results

In other AVP action Saturday, Palm Beach Passion’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson handed L.A. Launch’s Terese Cannon and Megan Kraft their first loss, winning 12-15, 15-6, 15-10.

San Diego Smash’s Devon Newberry and Geena Urango defeated Miami Mayhem’s Kelly Cheng and Molly Shaw 15-10, 15-11.

And San Diego Smash’s Chase Budinger and Miles Evans beat Miami Mayhem’s Chaim Schalk and James Shaw 11-15, 15-11, 15-13.

Before Jerry Hairston Jr. became a voice of the Dodgers, that buoyant broadcaster on Spectrum Sports Net LA putting a blue-tinged spin on pregame and postgame analysis, he was a Major League ballplayer for 16 seasons.

The name Hairston is synonymous with baseball, Jerry and his brother Scott the third generation of men whose livings were made on the diamond.

Their father, Jerry Hairston, played 14 big league seasons through the 1970s and ‘80s. Their uncle John was a ballplayer. And their grandfather, Sam Hairston, was a career .300 hitter in the Negro American League in the 1940s.

The lineage between the lines benefited Hairston Jr., who leaned on his dad for advice whenever he struggled at the plate.

“If things aren’t going the right way or if I feel passive or uneasy at the plate, I definitely give him a call,” Hairston Jr. said in 2011, shortly before joining the Dodgers for the last two years of his playing career.

Following a father’s footsteps into a family business is a tried and true path. And it’s become increasingly frequent in baseball. Nearly every fan knows that Ken Griffey Jr.‘s father was a cog in the Big Red Machine, that the son of San Francisco Giants star Bobby Bonds is the all-time home run king, that Prince Fielder‘s dad, Cecil, was an equally prolific slugger.

But the MLB draft — which will be held Sunday and Monday in Atlanta as part of the All-Star Game weekend — will feature a plethora of familiar names. Will any of them blossom as quickly as Bobby Witt Jr., the Kansas City Royals superstar whose father pitched for six MLB teams in 16 seasons?

The No. 1 prospect in this year’s draft as ranked by MLB Pipeline is Ethan Holliday, an infielder from Stillwater High in Oklahoma. The name should sound familiar because Ethan’s brother, Jackson, was the first overall pick in the 2022 MLB draft by the Baltimore Orioles and already has secured the starting job at second base.

Oh, and their father, Matt Holliday, was a seven-time All-Star who batted .299 with 316 home runs over a decorated 15-year career with the St. Louis Cardinals and Colorado Rockies.

“My dad’s never put pressure on me, Jackson’s never put pressure on me, nor my mom,” Ethan Holliday told Nice Kicks. “Nobody’s ever put pressure on me to play the game. I just fell in love with it and I love playing. I love training. And like the pressure and expectations — those things have kind of always been there since I was really little with my dad playing in St. Louis and playing youth baseball there.”

The fathers of other highly regarded prospects in this year’s draft may not be as much of a household name as Holliday. The No. 5 prospect is Eli Willits, a shortstop from Fort Cobb-Broxton High in Oklahoma whose father, Reggie Willits, was an Angels outfielder from 2006 to 2011.

Two uncles of Quentin Young, the No. 37 prospect from Oaks Christian High in Westlake Village, were first-round picks who grew up in Camarillo: Dmitri and Delmon Young. Cade Obermueller, a left-handed pitcher from the University of Iowa, is the No. 53 prospect. His dad, Wes Obermueller, was a second-round pick out of Iowa in 1999 and pitched in five MLB seasons.

Dodgers coach Dino Ebel made it to triple A as a player and is regarded as one of baseball’s best third base coaches. His oldest son, Brady, a shortstop from Corona High, is the No. 64 prospect and should be available to the Dodgers, who have the Nos. 40 and 41 overall picks, the latter from the Gavin Lux trade to the Cincinnati Reds. Brady will play for College World Series champion Louisiana State if he isn’t drafted high enough for his liking.

A player who rivals the Hairstons for MLB family ties is Cam Leiter, a right-handed pitcher from Florida State and the No. 114 prospect. His uncles Mark and Al Leiter combined to pitch in more than 750 MLB games and his cousins Jack and Mark Leiter Jr. are current MLB pitchers. Cam’s dad, Kurt Leiter, advanced to double A with the Orioles.

Jayden Stroman, the son of 11-year MLB veteran pitcher Marcus Stroman, has taken a different path from his dad, emerging as the No. 130 prospect as an outfielder after playing at three different high schools.

Draft-eligible players not ranked among the top 200 whose fathers were MLB stars include Kaeden Kent, Brady Counsell, Max McGwire, Manny Ramirez Jr. and Carsten Sabathia.

Kent is a left-handed-hitting infielder from Texas A&M whose dad Jeff Kent was a power-hitting second baseman with the Dodgers and Giants for 17 years. Counsell’s dad, Craig, played 16 years and is now manager of the Chicago Cubs. McGwire’s dad, Mark, hit 573 home runs and Ramirez’s dad hit 555. Sabathia’s dad, CC, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in a couple weeks.

That’s a lot of familiar names, but hardly an anomaly. Last year nearly 40 draft picks had a close relative with an MLB pedigree.

The first three rounds of the 2025 draft will be broadcast live Sunday, with a pregame show at 3 p.m. PDT on MLB Network and ESPN. Rounds four through 20 will be streamed Monday on MLB.com beginning at 8:30 a.m.

U.S. soccer star Trinity Rodman is at Wimbledon.

Her father is not.

But that hasn’t stopped his name — Dennis Rodman — from coming up during coverage of the prestigious tennis tournament, which she has been attending in support of her boyfriend, Ben Shelton.

On Monday, after Shelton defeated Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (1), 7-5 to advance to the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the first time, Rodman took to her Instagram Story to express her frustration about the matter.

“For Ben’s matches he has his family there as his support system, which includes his dad,” wrote Rodman, who is often shown on the broadcast sitting in the stands with Shelton’s parents and his sister, Emma. “my dads not even in MY life no need to bring him up during HIS matches when I don’t even want him talked about during mine. It’s him and his loved ones’ moment. Thank you.”

Named the NWSL rookie of the year in 2021, Rodman helped the Washington Spirit win its first league championship the same season. She also has made a name for herself with the U.S. women’s national team, scoring three goals during the squad’s run to Olympic gold last year in Paris.

Rodman has made no secret of the fact that her father — a five-time NBA champion and basketball Hall of Famer — has not been a constant presence in her life. She spoke before the Olympics about his pattern of showing up occasionally — as he did for a 2021 NWSL playoff game — and then disappearing once again from her everyday life.

“Like I’ve said before, I’ve gotten closure with it all,” Rodman said at the time. “I know he’s proud of me. I truly do. He has his own things to deal with, but at the end of the day, he’s communicated to me that he knows I was going to be here, and that’s all I need.”

In December, Rodman spoke more about her complicated relationship with her father and the “anger” she often feels toward him.

“He’s not a dad,” Rodman said. “Maybe by blood but nothing else.”

Vera, the heroine of Gary Shteyngart’s sixth novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is a whip-smart 10-year-old Manhattanite, but she’s not quite smart enough to figure out her parents’ intentions. Why is dad so concerned about “status”? Why does her stepmom call some meals “WASP lunches”? How come every time they visit somebody’s house she’s assigned to see if they have a copy of “The Power Broker” on their shelves? She’s all but doomed to be bourgeois and neurotic, as if a juvenile court has sentenced her to live in a New Yorker cartoon.

Since his 2002 debut, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” Shteyngart has proved adept at finding humor in the intersection of immigrant life, wealth and relationships, and “Vera” largely sticks to that mix. But the cynicism that has always thrummed underneath his high-concept comedies — the dehumanizing algorithms, the rapacious finance system — is more prominent in this slim, potent novel. Vera is witnessing both the slow erosion of her parents’ marriage along with the rapid decline of democracy in near-future America. Her precocity gives the novel its wit, but Shteyngart is also alert to the fact that a child, however bright, is fundamentally helpless.

Not to mention desperate for her parents’ affection, which is in short supply for Vera. Her father, the editor of a liberal intellectual magazine, seems constantly distracted by his efforts to court a billionaire to purchase it, while her stepmom is more focused on her son’s ADHD and the family’s rapidly dwindling bank account. Things are no better outside in the world, where a constitutional convention seems ready to pass an amendment awarding five-thirds voting rights for “exceptional Americans.” (Read: white people.) Vera, the daughter of a Russian father and Korean mother, may be banished to second-class citizenry.

Even worse, her school has assigned her to take the side of the “five-thirders” in an upcoming classroom debate. So it’s become urgent for her to understand the world just as it’s become inexplicable. Shteyngart is stellar at showing just how alienated she’s become: “She knew kids were supposed to have more posters on their walls to show off their inner life, but she liked her inner life to stay inside her.” And she seems to be handling the crisis with more maturity than her father, who’s drunk and clumsy in their home: “If anyone needed to see Mrs. S., the school counselor with the master’s in social work degree, it was Daddy.”

It’s a challenge to write from the perspective of a child without being arch or cutesy — stories about kids learning about the real world can degrade to plainspoken YA or cheap melodrama. Shteyngart is striving for something more supple, using Vera’s point of view to clarify how adults become victims of their own emotional shutoffs, the way they use language to at once appear smart while covering up their feelings. “Our country’s a supermarket where some people just get to carry out whatever they want. You and I sadly are not those people,” Dad tells her, forcing her to unpack a metaphor stuffed full of ideology, economics, self-loathing and more.

Every chapter in the book starts with the phrase “She had to,” explaining Vera’s various missions amid this dysfunction: “hold the family together,” “fall asleep,” “be cool,” “win the debate.” Kids like her have to be action-oriented; they don’t have the privilege of adults’ deflections. Small wonder, then, that her most reliable companion is an AI-powered chessboard, which offers direct answers to her most pressing questions. (One of Shteyngart’s most potent running jokes is that adults aren’t more clever than computers they command.) Once she falls into a mission to discover the truth about her birth mother, she becomes more alert to the world’s brutal simplicity: “The world was a razor cut … It would cut and cut and cut.”

Shteyngart’s grown-up kids’ story has two obvious inspirations: One, as the title suggests, is Vladimir Nabokov’s 1969 novel “Ada, or Ardor,” the other Henry James’ 1897 novel “What Maisie Knew.” Both are concerned with childhood traumas, and if Shteyngart isn’t explicitly borrowing their plots he borrows some of their gravitas, the sense that preteendom is a crucible for experiencing life’s various crises.

In its final chapters, the novel takes a turn that is designed to speak to our current moment, spotlighting the way that Trump-era nativist policies have brought needless harm to Americans. A country can abandon its principles, he means to say, just as a parent can abandon a child. But if “Vera” suggests a particular vision of our particular dystopian moment, it also suggests a more enduring predicament for children, who live with the consequences of others’ decisions but don’t get a vote in them.

“There were a lot of ‘statuses’ in the world and each year she was becoming aware of more of them,” Vera observes. Children will have to learn them faster now.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

I didn’t think my level of loathing for the Max sequel to HBO’s “Sex and the City” could get any higher, and just like that, along came Season 3.

You see what I did there? Like every single person who has written about “And Just Like That…,” I have used the title in a naked and half-assed attempt to be clever.

Which honestly could also be the title of the series.

We’re midway through the third — and one can only hope final — season, and I am hoarse from screaming at watching these beloved characters behave as if they had done some sort of “Freaky Friday” switch with 13-year-olds.

Which is actually an insult to most 13-year-olds.

In the course of the barely-recognizable-as-human events that make up this latest episode, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) prolonged her inexplicable bout of homelessness by acting shocked — shocked! — that Seema (Sarita Choudhury), having found her a dream house, would expect her to make a bid over asking price; Lisa (Nicole Ari Parker) dealt with the grief over her father’s death by whining about the amazing send-off orchestrated by his friend Lucille (Jenifer Lewis) despite it including a performance by … Jenifer Lewis; and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) continued to behave as if it were perfectly normal for her husband Harry (Evan Handler) to keep his prostate cancer diagnosis secret from everyone including their children, who would no doubt handle it better than Charlotte.

All of which paled in comparison to the latest installment in the emotional horror show that is the second-time-around courtship of Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Aidan (John Corbett), which has been under threat since it was revealed in Season 2 that Aidan’s 15-year-old son Wyatt (Logan Souza) has some issues, including a recent ADHD diagnosis. Events lead Aidan to impulsively announce that he and Carrie will have to put their relationship on hold until Wyatt turns 20 (when, as everyone knows, parental responsibilities officially end).

Aidan puts his relationship with Carrie on hold because of issues related to his teenage son, Wyatt (Logan Souza).

(Craig Blankenhorn / Max)

Not surprisingly, this plan does not work out, and in this episode, Aidan celebrates the fact that Wyatt is attending a week-long wilderness camp (um, what?) by showing up at Carrie’s apartment, where he immediately breaks a window by throwing a pebble at it. You know, like he used to in the old days before Carrie had a jillion-dollar apartment with 19th century windows that, as she says, “survived the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Draft Riots of ‘63” (memo to Carrie — New York saw no action in the Mexican War).

After going to obsessive lengths to replace the glass, Aidan then confesses that he and his ex Kathy (Rosemarie DeWitt) had to force Wyatt onto the plane (how they managed to be at the gate as unticketed passengers to do this remains a mystery), an event so upsetting that Aidan and Kathy were forced to comfort each other with sex.

For one brief and shining moment, I waited for Carrie to call time of death on one of the unhealthiest relationships this particular universe has seen (and that’s saying something). Instead, and impossibly, she said she understood.

Apparently love means ignoring every sign God could think to send you. Not only did Aidan have sex with his ex, he forced his unmedicated, unsupervised 15-year-old with ADHD onto a plane headed to the Grand Tetons. (Whether the poor kid made it to camp or is currently having a meltdown in the Jackson Hole airport is never mentioned.)

But then Carrie, and the series, has continued to treat Wyatt’s condition, and his father’s obvious irritated denial of its realities, as simply a logistical obstacle in her fairy tale love story. This would barely make sense if Carrie were still in her 30s, and it makes absolutely none for a woman of her age.

I begrudge no one the desire to reboot a groundbreaking series, and two years ago, the prospect of seeing these iconic 30-somethings as mid-to-late 50-somethings was certainly appealing to one who shares their mature demographic. If only Michael Patrick King, the force behind “And Just Like That…,” allowed any of them to have matured. I don’t mean physically — stars Parker, Nixon, Davis and Kim Cattrall (briefly glimpsed at the end of Season 2) — are fit and lovely and obviously older. I mean emotionally, spiritually and psychologically.

“And Just Like That…” has had two and a half seasons to make these women seem like actual people who might exist, if not in real life, then at least the “Sex and the City” universe (remember the opening credits, when Carrie gets splashed by a bus? Hyperrealism compared to the eat-off-the-sidewalks vision of “And Just Like That…’s” New York.)

Instead, the series seems determined to prove that age is just a number by forcing its leads, now including Choudhury and Parker, to act as if 50 is the new (and very stupid) 30.

I get that Miranda is coming to grips with her newly discovered queerness, but surely a successful, Harvard-educated lawyer who has survived a divorce and raised a teenage son would have a bit more confidence and self-awareness in love, real estate and basic guest etiquette — after moving in briefly with Carrie, she eats the last yogurt!

Charlotte has always been an original Disney princess, all wide eyes and faith in the restorative nature of small animals and florals, but at 55, her high-strung reaction to her husband’s prostate cancer (caught early, easily treatable) is helpful to no one. And don’t get me about her little foot-stamping approach to motherhood or how she speaks about her dog.

Aidan’s shocking confession did little to derail Carrie or their relationship.

(Craig Blankenhorn / Max)

As for Carrie, well, it’s one thing to be a relentlessly hopeful romantic addicted to tulle, stilettos and problematic men in your 30s, but Carrie’s pushing 60 now, so when she agreed, with no demur, to Aidan’s absurd five-year plan, I wondered if she had simply gone mad.

Watching as she subsequently rattled around her huge, empty (if incredibly luxe) apartment wearing a see-through, Ophelia-like dress stuffed with roses or traipsed through Central Park wearing a hat the size of a hot-air balloon only exacerbated my fears. Dressing like Marie Antoinette to attend a luncheon at Tiffany’s isn’t sassy fashion sense — it’s a cry for help.

She most certainly needs help. The reunion with Aidan seemed too good to be true, and thus it is proving to be. Even a 30-something Carrie would have known that being in a relationship with a father means being in a relationship with his children. But the notion that she must be kept separate from Wyatt is not just unsustainable — it’s insulting.

What, she’s never experienced, met or even read about children with ADHD or post-divorce trauma? Or is she such a delicate flower that she can’t handle being around a teenager with anger management issues? She lives in New York, for heaven’s sake, the city that invented anger management issues.

Frankly, Aidan’s behavior is far more concerning than Wyatt’s, a flag so big and red that Carrie could make a stunning sheath dress out of it.

Which she appears to be doing, instead of, you know, acting like the grown-ass rich widow she is and calling Aidan out on his bull.

“And Just Like That…” purports to celebrate the mid-life do-over, just as it purports to show that women in their 50s are just as vibrant, complicated and fun as women in their 30s. Both are admirable goals, neither of which the series achieves. Even with its title — ”And Just Like That…” — this series seems determined to erase everything that might have made the older versions of these characters interesting and resonant.

Like the ability to buy a house or say the word “cancer” or get out of an unhealthy romantic relationship before it spits right in your eye.

Constitutional Court hears petition seeking premier’s dismissal as separate court hears defamation case against her father.

Thailand’s ruling political dynasty is facing legal peril, as the country’s Constitutional Court considers a petition seeking the dismissal of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, while a separate court hears a royal defamation suit against her father, former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.

The petition filed by 36 senators and being heard on Tuesday accuses Paetongtarn of dishonesty and breaching ethical standards in violation of the constitution over a leaked telephone conversation with Cambodia’s influential former leader, Hun Sen. If the court accepts the case, it could decide to suspend the premier from duty with immediate effect.

Thaksin also has his first hearing at Bangkok’s Criminal Court on Tuesday in a case centred on allegations that he insulted Thailand’s powerful monarchy, a serious offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison if found guilty. He denies the charges and has repeatedly pledged allegiance to the crown.

The kingdom’s politics have for years been dominated by a battle between the conservative, pro-military, pro-royalist elite and the Shinawatra family, whom the elite consider a threat to Thailand’s traditional social order.

On Tuesday, Thailand’s Constitutional Court is due to meet for the first time since a group of conservative senators lodged a case against Paetongtarn, accusing her of breaching ministerial ethics during a diplomatic spat with Cambodia.

If the court decides to hear the case, they could suspend the prime minister as they enter months-long deliberations, plunging Thailand into chaos as it grapples with a spluttering economy and the threat of tariffs from the United States.

The controversy stems from a June 15 call intended to defuse escalating border tensions with Cambodia. During the call, Paetongtarn, 38, referred to Hun Sen as “uncle”, and criticised a Thai army commander, a red line in a country where the military has significant clout. She has apologised and said her remarks were a negotiating tactic.

The leaked conversation triggered outrage and has left Paetongtarn’s coalition with a razor-thin majority, with a key party abandoning the alliance and expected to soon seek a no-confidence vote in parliament, as thousands of demonstrators demand the premier resign.

“I will let the process take its course,” a downcast Paetongtarn told reporters on Monday. “If you are asking whether I am worried, I am.”

If Paetongtarn is suspended, power will pass to her deputy, Phumtham Wechayachai.

The 38-year-old Paetongtarn took office less than a year ago but has been badly weakened by the Cambodia controversy.

Thailand’s king on Tuesday approved Paetongtarn’s cabinet reshuffle after her allies quit. She has appointed herself as culture minister.

Meanwhile, Thaksin, the 75-year-old family patriarch and billionaire twice elected leader in the early 2000s, appeared at a Bangkok criminal court to face accusations of breaching strict lese-majeste laws used to shield Thailand’s king from criticism.

The allegations stem from a 2015 interview he gave to South Korean media and he faces up to 15 years in jail after the trial, which is set to last for weeks, with a verdict not expected for at least a month after that.

A court official confirmed to the AFP news agency that the trial had started but media would not be allowed in.

Thaksin has denied the charges against him and repeatedly pledged allegiance to the crown.

Thaksin dodged jail and spent six months in hospital detention on medical grounds before being released on parole in February last year. The Supreme Court will this month scrutinise that hospital stay and could potentially send him back to jail.

“How the f— does this baby know if she loves her father?” asked River Gallo one day at Walmart, back in 2010, when they saw an infant sucking on a pacifier emblazoned with the words “I love my daddy.”

“That started the ball rolling about my own issues with my father and with this compulsory love that we have with our families, specifically with our parents, specifically in this instance with my father, her father, our fathers, and with masculinity in general,” says a radiant Gallo during a recent video interview.

The spontaneous moment of introspection planted the seed for what became a 10-minute performance piece while studying acting at NYU — then their USC thesis-turned-short film “Ponyboi,” released in 2017, which Gallo wrote, starred in, and co-directed with Sadé Clacken Joseph. That project ultimately evolved into “Ponyboi” the feature, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024, became the first film produced under Fox Entertainment Studios’ indie label, Tideline, and was released June 27 in theaters across the United States.

A consummate multihyphenate, Gallo again wrote the screenplay, served as producer and stars as the titular character: an intersex, Latine sex worker in New Jersey who is desperate to escape their pimp (played by Dylan O’Brien) and the world of crime and violence that surrounds them.

Flashbacks to Ponyboi’s childhood, made difficult due to the medical procedures forced on them and the temperament of their classically macho Latino father, fill in the viewer on the protagonist’s past. Meanwhile, dreamy sequences with a handsome, cowboy hat-wearing stranger named Bruce (Murray Bartlett), an idealized embodiment of a positive masculinity, construct a rich world both visually and thematically in Ponyboi’s present.

“[At] face value, ‘Ponyboi’ can seem like, ‘Oh, it’s just a person-on-the-run kind of movie,’ but upon a closer look, it’s about someone finding freedom in the acceptance of their past and the possibility that, through transcending their own beliefs about themselves, perhaps their future could be a little brighter,” Gallo explains.

Gallo is the child of Salvadoran immigrants who escaped their country’s civil war in 1980 and lived undocumented in the U.S. Gallo grew up in New Jersey and showed interest in acting from an early age. It was a strict teacher’s unexpected encouragement, after Gallo appeared in a musical during their sophomore year of high school, that convinced them to pursue a life in art.

“My biology teacher, Mrs. Lagatol, came to see my musical, and the next day I was waiting for her to say something to me, and she didn’t say anything,” Gallo recalls. “Then she gave me back a test, and on the test was a little Post-it that said: ‘If you had been the only one on stage, it would’ve been worth the price of admission. Bravo.’”

Gallo still keeps that Post-it note framed.

Though their parents were supportive, Gallo admits feeling frustration in recent years that their family has not fully understood the magnitude of what they’ve accomplished as a marginalized person in entertainment: an intersex individual and a first-generation Latine.

“Not to toot my own horn, but for a graduate of any film program, getting your first feature to Sundance is the biggest deal in the world,” says Gallo. “There hasn’t been a person like me to do what I’m doing. There’s no precedent or pioneer in my specific identities.”

This desire for a more informed validation is even stronger in relation to their father.

“I don’t think my dad has seen any of my films. My mom has; she was at the premiere at Sundance, which was really beautiful, and so was my sister,” Gallo says. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad never sees my movies. That’s hard, but he’s supportive in other ways.”

Halfway through our conversation, Gallo realizes they are wearing a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt. That’s no coincidence, since “The Boss,” a fellow New Jerseyan, influenced multiple aspects of “Ponyboi.” As they wrote the screenplay for the short version, Gallo was also reading Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born to Run,” and that seeped into their work.

“I remember taking a trip to the Jersey Shore that summer and then looking up at the Stone Pony, the venue where [Springsteen] had his first big performance, and just being like, ‘Stone pony, stone pony, pony, pony, pony boy, ponyboi. That’s a good name.’ And then that was just what I decided to name the character”

For Gallo, the emblematic American singer-songwriter represents “the idea of being working class,” which Gallo thinks “transcends political ideology.” As a child of immigrants, Springsteen’s work speaks to Gallo profoundly.

“My dad, who is more dark-skinned than me, was an electrician, and he was a union guy who experienced all this racism in New York unions,” Gallo says. “There’s so much of what I see in Bruce Springsteen in my father and also just in how Bruce Springsteen describes his relationship with his dad, who was also a man who couldn’t express his emotions.”

For the feature, Gallo enlisted Esteban Arango, a Colombian-born, L.A.-based filmmaker whose debut feature, “Blast Beat,” premiered at Sundance in 2020.

But while Gallo believes Arango understood the nuances of the narrative, it admittedly pained them to relinquish the director’s chair. But it was a necessary sacrifice in order to focus on the performance and move the project along.

“It was difficult because I went to school for directing,” Gallo explains. “But I just don’t think the movie would’ve happened on this timeline if I had wanted to direct it. It would’ve taken much longer, and we needed the film at this moment in time.”

Arango brought his own “abrasive” edge to the narrative. “I felt the story needed more darkness,” the director explains via Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “The hypermasculine world of New Jersey is constantly trying to oppress and reject Ponyboi, because they have a much softer, feminine energy they want to project.”

The contrast between the tenderness of Ponyboi’s interiority and the harshness of their reality is what Arango focused on.

Though Arango hesitated to take on the film, given that he is not queer, his personal history as an immigrant functioned as an entry point into this tale of shifting, complex identities. Still, throughout the entire process, Arango was clear that, first and foremost, “Ponyboi” was a story centering intersex people — and all those who don’t fit into the rigid gender binary.

“Their plight should be our plight, because they are at the forefront of what it means to be free,” he says. “When somebody attacks them or doesn’t understand why they present themselves as they are, it’s really an attack on all of us, and it’s a reflection of our misunderstanding of ourselves.”

Back in 2023, Gallo was one of three subjects in Julie Cohen’s incisive documentary “Every Body,” about the intersex experience, including the ways the medical industry performs unnecessary procedures in order to “normalize” intersex people.

Gallo confesses that for a long time they thought being intersex was something they would never feel comfortable talking about — something they even would take “to the grave,” as they put it.

“There’s no other way that I can explain the fact that now I’ve made so much work reflecting on my identity other than it being an act of God,” Gallo says. “Because I just had the feeling that the world needed it now, and also that I needed it now. I’m glad that ‘Ponyboi’ taught me about the agency that I have over my art and myself and my life.”

Anti-trans legislation, Gallo explains, includes loopholes enabling doctors to “normalize” intersex bodies and continue the medically unnecessary, and at times nonconsensual surgeries on intersex youth. “The intersex narrative in [trans legislation] is invisible and not spoken about enough,” they say. “These are also anti-intersex bills.”

To fully understand Gallo as a person and an artist, one should watch both “Every Body” and “Ponyboi.” The doc shows the bones of what made Gallo who they are without symbols, just the raw facts of how their intersex identity shaped them. “Ponyboi,” on the other hand, exposes their interior life with the poetry that the cinematic medium allows for.

However, what happens with “Ponyboi” now isn’t as important to Gallo as the fact that the movie exists as a testament of their totality as a creative force.

“Love my movie, hate my movie, I don’t care, because my movie healed something deep inside of me that I was waiting a lifetime to be healed from,” Gallo states fervently. “Intersex people are still invisible in this culture, but I can at least say that I don’t feel invisible to myself anymore. And it was all worth it for that.”

The first time Atsuko Okatsuka filmed a comedy special, 2022’s “The Intruder” for HBO and Max, she didn’t have health insurance. A lot has changed since then.

Instantly recognizable for her severe bowl haircut and “art teacher”-esque, maximalist fashion, the Los Angeles-based comedian has since become insured, hired an assistant, embarked on a world tour, amassed more than two million Instagram followers, met family members she didn’t know she had and filmed her second comedy special, “Father,” which was released June 13 on Hulu.

“I think I have, like, 12 agents or something, and I’m like, ‘Is that even a thing?’” Okatsuka says over Zoom. Wearing a purple, yellow and magenta colorblocked T-shirt, Okatsuka flashes aqua nails topped off with hot dog charms. “It comes with leveling up, right? Not to quote ‘Spider-Man,’ but … yeah, responsibility, right?”

The building blocks of Okatsuka’s life remain in place, though. Amid traveling the globe on her “Full Grown” tour, being interviewed by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” and Chelsea Handler on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and being named one of Variety’s Top 10 Comics to Watch in 2022 (among other accolades), the Taiwanese Japanese stand-up still spends most of her time with her Grandma Li, her mother, and husband Ryan Harper Gray, who is an actor, director and producer and helps manage Okatsuka. Family members feature prominently in Okatsuka’s comedy, to such an extent that a lot of her sentences begin with “My grandmother…” and “My husband, Ryan…”

“I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” Okatsuka says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans.”

(Mary Ellen Matthews / Disney)

In this respect, Okatsuka jokingly refers to herself as codependent, but from a comedy standpoint, her familial riffing serves as a handy world-building device, building a sense of familiarity with audiences, who no doubt walk out of Okatsuka’s sets feeling like they really know her. “I am an open book in that I truly want to connect with people,” she says. “I’m just gonna end up telling you what’s happening in my life. That’s the only way I can try to connect with other humans. It just naturally happens to be that I am with my mom, grandma and Ryan a lot. I love that the fans have gotten to know the family. They can be Team Ryan. They could be Team Me. I think most often they’re Team Ryan. They’re like, ‘Oh, Atsuko did it again. She can’t find her keys.’”

Okatsuka’s scatterbrained qualities — like losing her keys, realizing she’s never once used the washer and dryer and depending on Gray to set up her Zoom calls — are not only endearing, they also have informed her special’s title of “Father.” As Okatsuka’s star rose, her fans have taken to calling her “Mother,” a mostly Gen Z slang term signaling approval. But to Okatsuka, a “mother” knows how to do things like use the washer and dryer and fill out paperwork correctly, which she remains willfully ignorant about. For example, she frequently tells a story about how she and Gray forgot to file their marriage certificate when they first got married in 2017. When Okatsuka went to put Gray on her health insurance in 2023, she learned there was no record of them being married. “What about the unorganized girls?” she asks her audience. “What about the b— that crumbles easily? We exist! We are not a monolith… No, no, no… I am Father.”

While Okatsuka has been doing stand-up for the better part of a decade, starting out with local sets at the Virgil and Dynasty Typewriter, she shot to viral fame during the pandemic when she posted a video of her (and her grandmother) suddenly “dropping” to Beyoncé’s “Yoncé” in unexpected locations like Little Tokyo and the grocery store. Generating millions of views, the #DropChallenge exploded, with everyone from Mandy Moore to Serena Williams emulating Okatsuka.

In addition to classic observational and absurdist comedy, part of Okatsuka’s charm is also that she has a real knack for tapping into internet humor. Across her social media channels, she dances and puts her own spin on TikTok skits and trends. A recent example is a clip of her doing Doechii’s “Anxiety” dance while her grandmother hovers in an attempt to feed her dumplings.

While “Father” is a self-deprecating jab at Okatsuka’s nondomestic qualities, the title also refers to Okatsuka’s recent reunion with her dad in Japan. This marks the beginning of a winding life journey, which Okatsuka has spoken of at length in her comedy, as well as in an episode of “This American Life” titled “I Coulda Grown Big In Japan.”

Her story began when Okatsuka’s parents, who met on a Japanese dating show, divorced shortly after her birth in 1988. At first, the comedian lived with her father in Chiba; later, she moved in with her mother and grandmother. But when her mother began having mental health struggles (Okatsuka’s mother was later diagnosed with schizophrenia), Okatsuka’s grandmother moved everyone to Los Angeles to be closer to her uncle in West L.A. At the time, Okatsuka’s grandmother told an 8-year-old Okatsuka they were going on a “two-month vacation.” But as eight weeks turned into years, Okatsuka started to wonder if perhaps she’d been kidnapped — another concept she’s worked into her sets. “We’re just like a chiller, more polite, Japanese ‘Jerry Springer’ show,” Okatsuka cracks of her familial backstory.

When asked what it meant to reconnect with her father, Okatsuka becomes somber. “It filled a lot of holes — like, questions that I had. Like, did my grandma kidnap me? I also learned your gut is often right.”

Technically, Okatsuka was kidnapped, if only because her father had full custody of her at the time. Okatsuka might joke about suffering from Stockholm syndrome, but she really is best friends with her grandma, who was her primary caregiver in childhood and now has her own social media fan base.

“That’s why I got into comedy,” Atsuko says. “So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”

(Lee Jameson)

Ironically, it didn’t occur to Okatsuka to pursue comedy until she was in her early 20s. Her first exposure to stand-up was when, in eighth grade, a friend slipped her a Margaret Cho DVD during a church sermon. “I was like, this is badass. But nowhere did my brain go, ‘That’s gotta be me,’” Okatsuka says. “I dreamed pretty small. When I was a kid in L.A., my dream was to work at an ice cream parlor … And then at 17, I did. [I worked at] Cold Stone Creamery in West L.A. I said, ‘Now what? I’ve already reached my goal. I peaked at 17. I have to dream more.’”

Okatsuka spent a year and a half attending UC Riverside and then transferred to CalArts, where she majored in creative writing and film/video. “You can just get in with an art portfolio; you don’t need grades,” she deadpans. “My interest was in the arts. I wasn’t an academic.” After art school, Okatsuka decided to really make a go at stand-up amid juggling a handful of jobs — dog walking, teaching cinema at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita and dance fitness in Atwater Village. “But stand-up comedy was always first for me,” she says. “Sometimes I would, you know, take off from teaching community college and get Ryan to substitute for me. It was totally illegal.”

In 2018, Okatsuka got her now-signature bowl haircut, which has made her so recognizable that fans all over the world show up to her sets wearing bowl-cut wigs. She might kid around about being stuck with it (“because my brand,” she says in “Father”), but she really does delight in its permanence, simply because it makes people so happy. Plus, her fans went to the trouble of buying and customizing lookalike wigs. “I mean, in this economy? They gotta be able to wear their wigs again the next time they come to see me.”

Fans will get their chance to break out the wigs again. After “Father”, Okatsuka is heading back on the road in September for the Big Bowl Tour. But there’s a bittersweet element to Okatsuka’s always-expanding schedule. The busier she gets, the less time there is to spend with her mother and grandmother. “The point of all this is we can all be together more, and we could be that happy family that we were trying to be when we first moved to America,” she says. “That’s kind of what I’m talking about in my new show. It’s a real thing that I’m figuring out right now.”

For the time being, Okatsuka has signed her mother up for Instagram, where she can see her daughter anytime she likes. “It’s taking a minute to teach her these things, but at least she can look at what I’m up to,” Okatsuka says. “You just click on my face, and you see what I’m up to that day. And that’s how she keeps up with me. We can do phone calls, but there’s nothing like being able to see your favorite person in your hand.”

Ultimately, Okatsuka revels in the opportunity to connect with as many people as possible, wherever she might be in the world. “That’s why I got into comedy, right? So that other people can feel seen, and I feel seen too.”

Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter and Lakers president and controlling owner Jeanie Buss broke their silence Wednesday on a blockbuster deal that shocked many in and outside of the Los Angeles.

A news release issued by Walter’s team confirmed his acquisition of majority ownership stake of the Lakers, with the transaction expected to close in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

During the sale talks, the valuation of the Lakers was placed at $10 billion, a record for a professional sports team, people with knowledge of the deal not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times. ESPN reported it is possible the value could swell to $12 billion before the transaction is complete.

Buss, whose family has had control of the Lakers for 46 years, will remain governor of the team and “continue to oversee all team operations on a day-to-day basis for the foreseeable future,” the statement confirmed.

Walter and Todd Boehly — a partner in the Dodgers ownership group — became the Lakers’ largest minority shareholders in 2021 when they bought 27% of the franchise, a stake previously held by Phil Anschutz.

Jerry Buss, Jeanie Buss’ father, bought the team for $67.5 million in 1979 in a deal that included the Los Angeles Kings and the Forum in Inglewood. Buss sold the Kings to Bruce McNall in 1988.

“The Buss family is deeply honored to have looked after this incredible organization for almost half a century,” Jeanie Buss said in the statement. “From the day our father purchased the Lakers, we have been determined to deliver what the City of Los Angeles deserves and demands: a team that is committed to winning — relentlessly — and to doing so with passion and with style.”

Buss said she felt confident Walter would lead the franchise to success. During his tenure, the Dodgers signed a collection of stars headlined by two-way wonder Shohei Ohtani. The team won the World Series last year, their second championship and fourth World Series appearance in the last eight years.

“I have gotten to know Mark very well over time and been delighted to learn how he shares those same values,” Buss said. “For the last four years, Mark has been an excellent partner to us, and we are thrilled to keep working with him to continue the Lakers’ extraordinary legacy.”

Walter, the chairman and CEO of TWG Global, has ownership stakes in the Dodgers, the WNBA’s Sparks, the Billie Jean King Cup, the Cadillac Formula 1 Team and the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

He said the Lakers “have long been one of the most iconic franchises in sports.”

“Since Dr. Jerry Buss first purchased the team in 1979, they have truly set the standard for basketball in one era after another, which is why you can find people anywhere in the world wearing Lakers shirts and jerseys,” Walter said.

Control of the Lakers went into a family trust after Buss died in 2013, with daughter Jeanie Buss operating as the team’s governor. The structure of the trust meant the majority of Buss’ six children — Johnny, Jim, Jeanie, Janie, Joey and Jesse — had to agree to the deal for a sale to occur.

The structure of the family trust, according to people familiar with it, doesn’t allow for ownership to pass down to heirs after death, meaning the split among the siblings would go from being shared six ways down to five and so on.

“I admire what [Jerry Buss,] Jeanie and the Buss family have built, and I know how much this special organization matters to Southern Californians and to sports fans everywhere,” Walter said. “I also have tremendous respect for Jeanie’s continued commitment to maintaining the Lakers’ long-term vision and elite status, and I’m excited to work with her on the next era.”

Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong continues to hold a minority owner share of the Lakers.

The agreement for the sale of the Lakers came about three months after Bill Chisholm agreed to buy the Boston Celtics with an initial valuation of $6.1 billion — which was going to be a record, topping the previous mark of $6.05 billion sale for the NFL’s Washington Commanders.

The Lakers transaction was viewed as a massive surprise in NBA circles.

The Celtics’ sale is not yet finalized, pending final approval by the NBA’s board of governors.

The Lakers, led on the court by stars LeBron James and Luka Doncic, are preparing to start their 78th season later this year. The team has reached the postseason 65 times in franchise history, including 32 trips to the NBA finals and 17 championships.

The Associated Press’ Tim Reynolds contributed to this report.

Amy Bloom’s exquisite “I’ll Be Right Here” is a slim volume spanning close to a century. While it’s tempting to label the novel a family epic, that description would fail to capture how Bloom reconstitutes “family” on the page, or how her chapters ricochet forward and backward from decade to decade or year to year, shifting perspective not only from character to character, but from first- to third-person point of view.

These transitions, while initially dizzying, coalesce into a rhythm that feels fresh and exciting. Together they suggest that memory conflates the past, present and future, until at the end, our lives can be viewed as a richly textured tapestry of experience and recollection, threaded together by the people we’ve loved.

The novel opens with a tableau: Siblings Alma and Anne tend to their longtime friend, who’s dying. They tenderly hold Gazala’s hands in a room that “smells like roses and orange peel.” Honey — once Anne’s sister-in-law and now her wife — massages Gazala’s thin feet with neroli oil. “Anne pulls up the shade. The day is beautiful. Gazala turns her face away from the light, and Alma pulls the shade back down.” Samir “presses his hand over his mouth so that he will not cry out at the sight of his dying sister.” Later in the novel, these five will come to be dubbed “the Greats” by their grandchildren.

The scene is a foreshadow, and signals that the novel will compress time, dwelling on certain details or events, while allotting mere lines to other pivotal moments, or allowing them to occur offstage, in passing. At first this is disorienting, but Bloom’s bold plot choices challenge and enrich.

In 1930 Paris, a young Gazala and her adopted older brother, Samir, await the return of their father from his job at a local patisserie, when they hope to sample “cinnamon montecaos, seeping oil into the twist of paper,” or perhaps a makroud he’s baked himself. In their cold, tiny apartment, Samir lays Gazala “on top of his legs to warm us both, and then, as the light fails, our father comes home.”

The Benamars are Algerians, “descended from superior Muslims and Christians both, and a rabbi,” their father, M., tells them. He delights in tall tales of a Barbary lion that has escaped Northern Africa and now roams the streets of Paris. Years elapse in the course of a few pages, and it’s 1942 in Nazi-occupied France. One night before bed, M. Benamar shreds the silk lining from a pair of worn gabardine pants to craft a belt for his daughter. Then,“he lies down on the big mattress he shares with Samir and turns his face to the wall.” He never awakens.

Now orphans — we don’t know exactly how old they are — the pair must conceal that they are on their own. Samir lines up a job where their father worked, while the owner’s wife finds Gazala a position as companion to a renowned writer, offering her “up to Mme. Colette like a canape.” Colette (yes, that one!) suffers from arthritis, and is mostly bedridden. She hides her Jewish husband upstairs, while entertaining guests below. Gazala observes that her benefactor’s “eyes are slanted under the folds of her brows, kohl-rimmed cat’s eyes in a dead-white face, powder in every fold and crack.”

Soon, the sister and brother’s paths diverge, and Gazala makes her way to New York City.

It’s 1947. Through Colette, Gazala has found work at a shop on Second Avenue, and sleeps in the storeroom above. Enter Anne and Alma Cohen, teenage sisters who take an instant liking to Gazala and her French accent; in short order, they’ve embraced her as a third sibling. Months later, there is a knock on the bakery door, and it’s Samir, returned from abroad, in search of Gazala. For the rest of their lives, the nonblood-related siblings will conceal that they are lovers.

Going forward, the plot zigs and zags, dipping in and out of each character’s life. It’s 2010 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., where Samir and Gazala have lived together in a rambling old house for decades, maintaining appearances by keeping separate bedrooms. They are old, and Samir “brushes her silver hair away from his lips.” She tells him she doesn’t mind that he smells of the shallots in their garden.

It’s 1968, and Anne, by now a wife, mother and lawyer, has fallen in love with her husband Richard’s sister, Honey. We glimpse their first sexual encounter after years of simmering emotions. Alma — who receives minimal attention from her author — marries a bighearted chicken farmer named Izzy, and later grieves the early loss of her husband, and the absence of children.

As they grow older, the circle consisting of Gazala, Samir, Anne, Alma and Honey will grow to include Lily, Anne’s daughter, and eventually Lily’s daughter, Harry. Gazala and Samir take in Bea, whose parents were killed in a car accident; she becomes the daughter they never had. This bespoke family will support each of its members through all that is to come.

It’s 2015 in Poughkeepsie, and Gazala’s gauzy figures float through her fading consciousness. Beneath the tree outside her window — ”huge and flaming gold” — sits her father, reading the paper. “Madame pours mint tea into the red glasses.” The other Greats are gathered round. One last memory, the most cherished of all: It’s 1984 and Gazala and Samir are in their 50s. He proposes a vacation in Oaxaca. “Let’s go as we are,” he whispers. At their hotel, “they sit beneath the arches, admiring the yellow sun, the blue sky, the green leaves on the trees, all as bright as a children’s drawing.” There, they freely express their love for each other.

As Bloom has demonstrated throughout her stellar literary career, which began in 1993 with the publication of her acclaimed story collection, “Come to Me,” she can train her eye on any person, place or object and render it sublime. Her prose is so finely wrought it shimmers. Again and again she has returned to love as her primary subject, each time finding new depth and dimension, requiring us to put aside our expectations and go where the pages take us. As readers, we’re in the most adept of hands.

Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.

A young boy in Gaza was filmed wailing over the boy of his father, who was killed in an Israeli air attack on Jabalia. Israel’s bombing of Gaza has not subsided despite it’s escalating military campaign on Iran.

In the summer of 2021, Priscilla Presley seemed to be riding high.

The ex-wife of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll had appeared at Graceland during the annual Elvis Week celebration and later hosted a three-day festival at the famous manse extolling the virtues of elegant southern living. Then there were the highly anticipated upcoming biopics: director Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” and Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla” based on her 1985 memoir, for which she served as an executive producer.

Privately, however, it was a difficult time for the actress. Priscilla was mourning the passing of her mother, just a year after her grandson, Benjamin Keough, the only son of her daughter Lisa Marie Presley, had committed suicide at 27. Adding to her personal woes, Elvis’ former bride was in a serious financial hole, as court filings would later claim.

Then she met Brigitte Kruse, a flamboyant, fifth-generation auctioneer and self-styled philanthropist who specialized in high-profile celebrity memorabilia, royal objects, estates and fine jewelry sales. In 2017, Kruse gained a measure of renown when she sold an abandoned private plane known as the “lost jet” once owned by Elvis for $498,000.

After the pair were introduced, they launched a joint venture that would cash in on Priscilla’s famous name, image and likeness through her paid public appearances and other projects.

Within months of their initial meeting, Priscilla began lending her name to some of Kruse’s online Elvis memorabilia auctions with GWS Auctions Inc., based in Agoura Hills.

Priscilla Presley at a 2014 event held at Graceland in Memphis.

(Lance Murphey / Associated Press)

Less than two years later, their partnership was in tatters, with the two women trading bitter allegations in dueling lawsuits.

Priscilla, 80, called Kruse, who was half her age, a “con-artist and pathological liar” who had forced her into a “form of indentured servitude,” leading her into signing away 80% of her income and conning her out of more than $1 million, according to the fraud and elder abuse lawsuit she filed against Kruse and her business associates in Los Angeles last year.

Kruse, who did not respond to requests for comment, has disputed Priscilla Presley’s claims, depicting herself in court filings as her financial savior who faced retaliation after she sued Priscilla for breach of contract a year earlier.

The litigation is the latest in a string of legal battles that Priscilla and the Presley heirs have been involved in since Elvis died nearly 50 years ago, leaving a financial legacy as messy and fraught as the King’s life.

While the storied Presley family has forever been enshrined in celebrity as America’s reigning pop culture icons, Elvis’ estate has long been the spigot of his heirs’ fortunes and misfortunes, spilling out from the gates of Graceland.

As Joel Weinshanker, managing partner of Elvis Presley Enterprises once said about another dispute involving the estate:

“People have been trying to take from Elvis since Elvis was Elvis.”

Inheriting a messy estate

When 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu met Elvis Presley in 1959, he was already Elvis. She was the stepdaughter of an U.S. Air Force officer, living in West Germany where the rocker, then 24, was stationed during his military service.

Four years later, Priscilla moved to Memphis and stepped inside the gilded cage of Elvis’ fame. In 1967, the couple married in Las Vegas. With the birth of their daughter Lisa Marie nine months later, a rock ‘n’ roll dynasty was born.

Lisa Marie was born in 1968, nine months after Elvis and Priscilla married in Las Vegas.

(Associated Press)

But life inside of the irresistible mythology of Elvis proved stifling. He was mostly on tour and in a haze of drugs and affairs. At 28, Priscilla divorced the rocker, but not his stardom.

She built an agile career out of the ashes of their romance. Priscilla went on to become an actress with a recurring role in the 1980s CBS hit series “Dallas,” starred in several of the “Naked Gun” movies and appeared in other television shows; she also authored books and launched a fragrance.

But she never strayed far from the buzzy afterlife of Elvis’ orbit.

When Elvis died in 1977, their daughter Lisa Marie was just nine and his father, Vernon Presley, took the reins as executor of his estate. After Vernon died in 1979, Priscilla, a successor trustee, assumed the role of primary manager.

Despite the celebrated influence and global popularity of Elvis, who was estimated to have earned anywhere between $100 million to $1 billion, his estate was in shambles — worth only about $5 million. Graceland’s costly maintenance and massive IRS bills were fast depleting Lisa Marie’s inheritance.

The poor state of affairs was due in part to Elvis’ profligate spending. He was known to lavish Cadillacs and jewelry on friends, many of whom were also on his payroll. But his fortune’s wane was exacerbated by the abusive control that his longtime manager Col. Tom Parker exerted over his business affairs.

Elvis performing in Honolulu in 1973.

(Pål Grandlund)

The cigar-chomping Parker, who died in 1997, was a former carnival barker and a compulsive gambler. He wasn’t, however, a colonel — the Dutch-born “Parker’s” real name was Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk.

During his time as Elvis’ manager, Parker took commissions as high as 50%, and frequently cut deals that enriched himself at the rocker’s expense.

Four years before Elvis died, Parker sold off his back catalog to RCA for $5.4 million (with Parker taking $2.6 million and Elvis $2.8 million), depriving the estate of untold millions in royalties.

In 1981, the co-executors of Elvis’ estate (an attorney separately represented Lisa Marie), sued Parker for massive fraud and mismanagement, claiming he received the “lion’s share” of Elvis’ income, even after his death. The parties eventually reached an out-of-court settlement.

Reviving Graceland

But the years of profound missteps and mismanagement left Elvis’ estate facing the prospect of bankruptcy and worse, having to sell Graceland. Priscilla brought in a team of financial advisors and lawyers who engineered a stunning financial turnaround.

In 1981, the Elvis Presley Trust created Elvis Presley Enterprises Inc. to conduct business and manage the trust’s assets, including Graceland, which was opened to the public the following year. Now a National Historic Landmark, the tourist shrine generates an estimated $10 million annually.

By the time Lisa Marie inherited her father’s estate upon her 25th birthday in 1993, the estate had rebounded. Two decades later, Graceland, along with the merchandising of Elvis’ image and managing his music royalties, was worth upward of $500 million.

Elvis on the grounds of his Graceland estate circa 1957.

(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Then, in 2005, Elvis’ estate changed hands. Lisa Marie agreed to sell 85% of EPE’s assets, including her father’s likeness rights, to music entrepreneur Robert F.X. Sillerman and his company CKX Inc. for $114 million.

Under the deal, Lisa Marie retained 15% of the trust and received $50 million in cash as well as $26 million in CKX common and preferred stock. She also retained sole ownership of Graceland and her father’s personal items. Priscilla received $6.5 million for the use of the family name, Fortune reported.

But in 2013, CKX Inc. sold its majority interest in the estate to the intellectual property firm Authenic Brands Group for a reported $145 million.

The problems that had long trailed the estate surfaced again five years later.

This time it was Lisa Marie who alleged she had been duped. Then 50 and in the middle of divorcing her fourth husband Michael Lockwood, the father of her twin girls, she sued her business manager Barry Siegel. She claimed that as a result of his “reckless and negligent mismanagement” the trust had dwindled to just $14,000 and was left with $500,000 in credit card debt.

Lisa Marie Presley in her childhood bedroom at Graceland in 2012.

(Lance Murphey/AP)

Siegel denied the allegations and countersued, claiming that she had “squandered” her fortune as a result of her “excessive spending.” At the time, court filings related to her divorce from Lockwood, revealed that she was $16.7 million in debt.

A mother, daughter feud

When Lisa Marie died suddenly in January 2023 at the age of 54, another tense legal battle erupted over the estate and the trust Lisa Marie had set up.

Within weeks of her death, Priscilla went to court to challenge an amendment that removed her as a trustee, making her granddaughter, the actress Riley Keough, sole trustee. Priscilla’s lawyers argued that the signature was “inconsistent” with Lisa Marie’s handwriting.

The matter was settled five months later. Keough was named sole trustee. In exchange for stepping down, Priscilla received a $1-million lump sum payment paid out of Lisa Marie’s $25-million life insurance policy and was made a special advisor for a trust relating to EPE, for which she would receive $100,000 annually for 10 years or until her death.

Priscilla was also granted permission to be buried in the Meditation Garden at Graceland near Elvis’ gravesite and to be given a memorial service on the property.

‘Dame’ Kruse

By spring 2023, as Priscilla resolved her dispute with her daughter’s estate, Kruse’s presence and influence in her personal and business affairs deepened.

When they met, Priscilla was in her mid-70s and her main source of income derived from her paid personal appearances. Kruse’s suit described Presley’s celebrity as “a mere shadow of what it once was, and her earning potential was only a fraction of what it previously was.”

Moreover, she claimed that Priscilla was 60 days away from financial disaster, and drowning under $700,000 in outstanding tax debts.

Then 39, Kruse was publicly portrayed as a success, active in the worlds of celebrity and philanthropy and who spoke multiple languages. She highlighted her advocacy for children with autism and AIDS research; donating money to related causes and delivering toys to orphans in global conflict zones with her husband, Vahe Sislyan.

On social media and in news releases, Kruse showcased her activities and accolades, posting images alongside various marquee names such as the pop star Gwen Stefani and President Trump and his wife Melania.

In 2016, seven years after Kruse and her husband founded GWS, she was the first female auctioneer to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records (for selling the largest abandoned world property). Kruse formally added the honorific title “Dame” to her name after a member of the royal Italian Medici family conferred the title of Cavaliere, a kind of knighthood, on her.

In media interviews, Kruse liked to say that the sale of Elvis’ “lost jet” had seared her reputation as the rocker’s memorabilia dealer. Over the years she was prolific, selling a number of his items, including the Smith & Wesson that he was said to have purchased in 1973 after he was attacked onstage in Las Vegas.

According to Priscilla, she first met Kruse in June 2021 after the auctioneer texted her saying she’d like to meet for lunch.

They dined at Gucci Osteria in Beverly Hills followed by numerous other get-togethers in Los Angeles. Kruse introduced her to her “business partner,” Kevin Fialko, “an investor, experienced businessman, and financial expert,” who “would help Kruse get my financial affairs in order,” according to a declaration submitted by Priscilla.

Dame Brigitte Kruse and Priscilla Presley at an event in Orlando in 2023.

(Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)

“When I first met Brigitte Kruse, she wanted to involve me in her auction business,” she wrote in her March declaration.

From there, Kruse “quickly immersed herself” in Priscilla’s life, “often sending her multiple text messages a day, and “telling her how much she loved her and admired her,” according to her elder abuse complaint. She also talked up her credentials, lineage and expertise in the auction business as well as her “connections to celebrities.”

In September 2021, Priscilla participated in one of GWS’ online auctions that featured a private lunch with her and Kruse, with a portion of the proceeds going to a charity. A number of Elvis items were also auctioned off, such as the white eyelet jumpsuit cape he wore during his 1972 performances at Madison Square Garden and a jar of his hair.

“She’s just such a wealth of experience and knowledge. You don’t study and learn about Elvis without learning about Priscilla as well. Their names are synonymous,” Kruse told People.

The following year, Kruse’s GWS conducted an online auction billed as “The Lost Jewelry Collection of Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker,” including watches, rings and cuff links that Elvis had bought or commissioned for his manager.

Although she didn’t own any of the items, Priscilla provided “letters of recollection” vouching for her personal historical memories of many of them, according to the auction’s online catalog notes.

“There is so much product out there that is not authentic at all and that worries me,” she said in a video with Reuters after viewing the collection. “I want to know for sure that that is going to go to someone who is going to care for it, love it.”

By January 2023, Priscilla and Kruse agreed to set up several companies to exploit Priscilla’s name and image and to bolster Kruse’s Elvis memorabilia auctions through Priscilla’s written “recollections.”

The terms of their agreement gave Kruse 51% and Presley 49% of Priscilla Presley Partners LLC, according to court filings.

Soon after, however, Priscilla alleged Kruse and Fialko “expanded the scope of their interest in my affairs, seeking to inject themselves into every area of my life.”

They gained her trust and isolated her from key advisors, setting the stage for “a meticulously planned and abhorrent scheme,” intended “to drain her of every last penny she had,” Presley alleged in her lawsuit.

Presley says that she was “fraudulently induced” to sign documents without the opportunity to review them in advance or “advised as to the nature of the paperwork.”

The contracts gave Kruse a controlling interest in her name, image and likeness in perpetuity. They also granted her power of attorney over Priscilla’s affairs and healthcare and named Kruse a trustee on her personal and family trusts, according to Priscilla’s declaration.

Along with Fialko, Kruse closed Priscilla’s bank accounts and opened new ones “in an effort to transfer the funds of Presley’s various personal, business and trust accounts.”

Priscilla claims she also signed a five-year lease on a house in Orlando, Fla., owned by Sislyan, that she never asked for or wanted.

Further, Priscilla alleges in a declaration that Kruse and Fialko leaned on Coppola to get a credit on the biopic and diverted $120,000 of money Presley earned from the film into their own accounts.

When Lisa Marie died, Priscilla contended that Kruse and Fialko improperly inserted themselves into her legal dispute over her daughter’s trust, she said in her complaint. They also had the “audacity” to demand that they were allowed “ to attend any memorial service for Presley in the future,” she added.

By August 2023, Priscilla severed ties with Kruse.

A lawyer representing Kruse and Fialko did not respond to a request for comment.

A few months later, Kruse, through Priscilla Presley Partners, sued for breach of contract, saying Priscilla asked Kruse to take over her business affairs, requiring her to “devote her attention full-time to managing Priscilla’s life” in order to “monetize various aspects of her [Presley’s] life.”

Kruse and Fialko maintained they worked tirelessly to keep Priscilla from “financial ruin and public embarrassment,” and that she fully understood the agreements she was signing.

Meanwhile, others began to question the authenticity around some of GWS’s Elvis sales.

When GWS held another online auction of Elvis memorabilia in January 2023 that included a one-of-a-kind grommet jacket that Elvis wore in 1972, it drew the attention of Elvis Presley Enterprises.

“We know there was only one made, and guess what? We have it in our archives,” Weinshanker, EPE’s managing partner, told NBC News, last July.

GWS said the claims were unsubstantiated: “GWS stands behind everything that it sells, and categorically denies tracking in fake or inauthentic items attributed to Elvis Presley, or otherwise.”

The tensions escalated last November, after GWS announced another “lost” collection auction of Elvis and Col. Parker memorabilia, comprising 400 items.

Priscilla Presley, her daughter Lisa Marie and grandaughters: Riley Keough, Harper Lockwood and Finley Lockwood at an event honoring the Presley family at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles in 2022.

(Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

The cache of documents included telegrams Elvis and Parker sent to Frank Sinatra, the Beatles and others, handwritten notes and Elvis’ signed 1956 contract with the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, included in the auction, that rang alarm bells.

The estate’s lawyers in December sent a cease and desist letter to GWS, claiming the listed auction items were the property of Graceland and demanded their immediate return. Nonetheless, GWS went forward with the sale, contending in a letter it had acted appropriately.
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On Dec. 24, the estate sued GWS, Kruse and two others, claiming the items belonged to Graceland and were “improperly and illegally offered for sale at auction.” They sought to recover at least 74 “irreplaceable documents,” and alleged that the defendants were in “possession of perhaps thousands more such items.”

According to the suit, the allegedly “stolen” items were part of an enormous trove that the estate acquired from Parker in 1990 for $1.25 million. GWS has denied that it had engaged in “any wrongdoing whatsoever.”

Elvis’ estate alleges that a former Parker employee named Greg McDonald “took possession” of the documents that should have been turned over to Graceland after Parker died.

Instead, when McDonald died in 2024, his widow Sherry and son Thomas McDonald, who are named as defendants, “took possession of the Property and then delivered it to Brigitte Kruse for sale at GWS,” the lawsuit states.

The suit further asserted that Kruse was aware of the circumstances in which Greg McDonald obtained the items before putting them up for sale. In an email thread between Kruse and Graceland’s longtime archivist in 2021, included in the filings, Kruse wrote that she had a video of her in conversation with McDonald in which he “admits to knowing of the theft,” in regards to the documents.

Over 600,000 visitors go to Graceland each year, earning the estate an estimated $10 million annually.

(Raymond Boyd/Getty Images)

An attorney for Kruse disputed the claim, saying in a statement that when she had informed the Elvis estate of the existence of McDonald’s collection in 2021, “they did not make a claim to Mr. McDonald alleging that the collection was not rightfully his.”

GWS “never maintained care, custody or control of any of the items” that were auctioned,” the statement read. “We will continue to respect the judicial process and the outcome of the ongoing litigation.”

In a statement to The Times on behalf of himself and his mother, Thomas McDonald said: “The property in which Graceland and Elvis Presley Enterprises are asserting ownership has been in my family’s possession for over forty years as gifts from the Colonel. I am committed to resolving this dispute and vindicating my family’s rights as expediently and fairly as possible.”

Lawyers for EPE and Graceland Holdings did not respond to a request for comment.

As the various lawsuits were unfolding, last April, GWS Auctions was suspended by the Franchise Tax board in California, effectively losing its standing to operate legally due to noncompliance with tax requirements.

In court filings, Kruse and her co-defendants are cited as saying that GWS is “defunct.” However, GWS’ website remains active and currently lists the results of its most recent auction: the Artifacts of Hollywood and Music sale held on June 7 (that included the racing helmet Elvis wore in “Viva Las Vegas,” that sold for $6,500).

Last month, Elvis’ former wife scored a legal win when a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied a motion by Kruse and her business associates to temporarily put a hold on the elder abuse lawsuit in an effort to move the litigation to Florida.

In his ruling, Judge Mark H. Epstein expressed frustration with the defendants’ “never-ending series of motions,” underscoring that this was not a a contract-based case. Presley “is suing these defendants for fraud and elder abuse, an aspect of which was allegedly bamboozling her into signing those agreements in the first place.”

The ongoing clash with Kruse has left Priscilla “devastated,” said her attorney, Wayne Harman. “We look forward to the court holding defendants fully accountable for their actions,” he said in a statement.

Amid the fallout with Kruse, the estate faced another controversy.

A mysterious company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending, presented documents claiming that Lisa Marie had borrowed $3.8 million and put up Graceland as collateral but had failed to repay the loan before she died.

But it was an elaborate scam, according to federal authorities, who in August arrested a Missouri woman, Lisa Jeanine Findley, alleging she used fake documents to “steal the family’s ownership interest in Graceland” and attemped to put it up for sale.

In February, Findley pleaded guilty to mail fraud for her role in the scheme and is scheduled to be sentenced this week. She faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Video shows distressing scenes as a badly wounded Palestinian girl in Gaza embraces the body of her father, who was killed in an Israeli attack on Khan Younis. Luna Rasras was sheltering in a tent with her family when the attack happened. Her siblings were also killed.

Gjert Ingebrigtsen, the father and former trainer of Norwegian star Jakob Ingebrigtsen, has been cleared of abusing the two-time Olympic champion.

In the climax of a trial that has gripped Norway, the court announced that there was insufficient evidence of Jakob’s claims that his father had overseen a childhood of fear and intimidation marked by violence and threats.

However, Gjert has been found guilty of hitting Jakob’s younger sister Ingrid, now 19, in the face with a towel during a row in 2022.

Gjert has been given a suspended prison sentence of 15 days for the incident and fined 10,000 Norwegian Kroner (£745).

She was attending her first protest, driven to be seen with thousands of others at a “No Kings” demonstration Saturday morning in El Segundo, eager to make a statement.

But she was there for her father, as well.

The sign she held aloft as car horns honked in support said: “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”

Her father would have loved to join her, Jennifer told me. But with ICE raids in Los Angeles and arrests by the hundreds in recent days, her 55-year-old undocumented dad couldn’t afford to take the risk.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

Jennifer is 29. I hadn’t seen her in nearly 20 years, when I wrote about her father and visited her home in Inglewood to deliver $2,000 donated by readers who read his story.

Here’s the back story:

In December of 2005 I got a tip about a shooting in the front yard of an Inglewood home. Two men approached a landscaper and demanded money. He resisted, and in the tussle that ensued, a shot was fired.

Paramedics rushed the man to the emergency room at UCLA, where doctors determined that a bullet had just missed his heart and was lodged in his chest. Although doctors recommended he stay at least overnight for observation, he insisted he felt fine and needed to get back to work.

The landscaper, whom I referred to as Ray, insisted on leaving immediately. As he later explained to me, the Inglewood job was for a client who hired him to re-landscape the yard as a Christmas gift to his wife.

Ray was shot on Dec. 23.

Demonstrators at a “No Kings” event at Main Street and Imperial Highway in El Segundo on Saturday.

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

He finished the job by Christmas.

I’ve been thinking about Ray since ICE agents began the crackdown ordered by President Trump, whose administration said its goal was to deport 3,000 people a day. Hundreds have been arrested in the Fashion District, at car washes and at building supply stores across Los Angeles.

That’s led to clashes between law enforcement and demonstrators, and to peaceful protests like the one along Imperial Highway and Main Street on Saturday in El Segundo.

I thought of Ray because Trump generally speaks of undocumented immigrants as monsters, and no doubt there are criminals among them.

But over the years, nearly all my encounters have been with the likes of Ray, who are an essential part of the workforce.

Yes, there are costs associated with undocumented immigrants, but benefits as well — they’ve been an essential part of the California economy for years. And among those eager to hire them — in the fields, in the hospitality industry, in slaughterhouses, in healthcare — are avid Trump supporters.

On Friday, I called Ray to see how he was doing.

“I’m worried about it,” he said, even though he has some protection.

Demonstrators at the “No Kings” event in El Segundo raise their signs, including one that read, “Real men don’t need parades.”

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

Several years ago, an immigration attorney helped him get a permit to work, but the Trump administration has vowed to end temporary protected legal status for certain groups of immigrants.

“I see and hear about a lot of cases where they’re not respecting documents. People look Latino, and they get arrested,” said Ray, who is in the midst of a years-long process to upgrade his status.

Ray is still loading tools onto his truck and driving to landscaping, tree-trimming and irrigation jobs across L.A., as he’s done for more than 30 years. But he said he’s being extra careful.

A protester at a “No Kings” event in El Segundo prepares a sign on Saturday.

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

“You know, like keeping an eye out everywhere and checking my telephone to see where checkpoints are,” he said.

Ray’s ex-wife has legal status, and all three of their children were born here and are U.S. citizens. The marriage ended and Ray has remarried, but he remains close to the three kids I met in the spring of 2006, when they were 9, 10 and 11.

The younger son, who is disabled, lives with Ray. His older son, a graphic designer, lives nearby. Jennifer, a job recruiter, lives next door and has been on edge in recent days.

“Even though he has permission to be here … it’s scary, and I wasn’t even letting him go to work,” Jennifer said. “On Monday I was getting into the shower and heard him loading up the truck.”

She ran outside to stop him, but he was already gone, so she called him and said, “Oh my God, you shouldn’t be going to work right now. It’s not safe.”

“No Kings” was the theme of the day during a demonstration in El Segundo on Saturday.

(Steve Lopez / Los Angeles Times)

Jennifer works from home but couldn’t concentrate that day. She used an app to track her father’s location and checked the latest information on ICE raids. So far, Ray has made it home safely each day, although Jennifer is hoping he slows down for a while.

Twenty years ago, when I wrote about Ray getting shot and his insistence on going back to work immediately, one of the readers who donated money — $1,000 — to him was one of his landscaping clients, Rohelle Erde. When I checked in with her this week to update her on Ray’s situation, she said her entire family came to the U.S. as immigrants to work hard and build a better life, and Ray did the same.

“He has been working and making money and helping people beautify their homes, creating beauty and order, and this must be so distressing,” Erde said. “The ugliness and disorder are exactly the opposite of what he represents.”

The evening before Saturday’s rally in El Segundo, Jennifer told me why she wanted to demonstrate:

“To show my face for those who can’t speak and to say we’re not all criminals, we’re all sticking together, we have each other’s backs,” she said. “The girl who takes care of my kids is undocumented and she’s scared to leave the house. I have a lot of friends and family in the same boat.”

Jennifer attended with her son, who’s 9 and told me he’s afraid his grandfather will be arrested and sent back to Mexico.

“He’s the age I was when you met me,” Jennifer said of her son.

She took in the crowd and said it was uplifting to see such a huge and diverse throng of people stand up, in peaceful protest, against authoritarianism and the militarization of the country.

Mother and son stood together, flashing their signs for passing motorists.

His said, “Families belong together.”

Jennifer told me that her father still has the bullet in his chest.

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Video shows a young man carrying his dead father on a bicycle, after he was shot while trying to secure food parcels at a US-backed aid site in Gaza. Israeli forces, backed by gangs, have killed more than 220 people at the aid distribution sites in Rafah and the Netzarim corridor since they opened.

ST. LOUIS — Growing up on the western tip of Cuba, Andy Pages excelled at every sport he played.

He was good at soccer and volleyball, arguably better at basketball. But he loved baseball for reasons that weren’t necessarily limited to the game.

Pages’ father, Liban, a carpenter who had a job repairing wooden boats, helped make his son’s first bats by hand, using leftover lumber given to him by friends. Soon baseball became the boy’s favorite pastime.

“When I was starting to play baseball in Cuba, when things were really bad, there were no bats. There weren’t things like that,” Pages said in Spanish. “So he always tried to make me a bat so I could play.

“I became more motivated, and from that point on, we’ve been playing baseball.”

The sport eventually proved to be a way off the island for Pages, who has emerged as one of the Dodgers’ brightest stars in just his second season with the team.

He entered the start of a three-game series Monday in San Diego hitting .288 with 12 home runs and 39 RBIs, trailing only Shohei Ohtani in homers and matching Ohtani for third on the team in RBIs. He’s also tied for second in stolen bases with six and has yet to be thrown out.

If he can stay consistent, he has a chance to become the first Dodger center fielder to hit better than .250 with 25 homers since Matt Kemp in 2011.

Although Pages never played in Cuba’s elite Serie Nacional, the proving ground for stars such as Yuli Gurriel, Yunel Escobar and Orlando “El Duque” Hernández, he became one of the country’s top prospects after hitting .364/.484/.581 in a under-15 league.

Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages rifles the ball to second base to prevent Arizona’s Ketel Marte from advancing on a single at Dodger Stadium on May 20.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

That convinced Pages (pronounced PAH-hays) he had a chance to be a big leaguer some day. So at 16, the Athletic reported, he arranged to be spirited off the island alongside Jairo Pomares, another young Cuban star, traveling through Guyana, Curacao and Haiti before crossing in the Dominican Republic. He then waited eight months before the Dodgers signed him as an international free agent in March 2018, giving him a $300,000 bonus, more than 1,500 times the average annual wage in Cuba, according to CiberCuba.

Pomares signed with the San Francisco Giants at about the same time, but while he remains in the minors, Pages’ climb to the majors was steady. He reached triple A by the start the 2024 season. He didn’t stay at Oklahoma City long, however, hitting .371/.452/.694 with 15 RBIs in 15 games to earn a call-up to the Dodgers.

Before his rookie season was over, Pages was a World Series champion. He paid a heavy price for that though, going seven years without seeing his family in person.

“It was emotional since I hadn’t seen them for a long time,” said Pages, 24, who returned to Cuba for the first time the winter before his big-league debut.

His sister, Elaine, a child when he left “was already a full-grown woman.”

“So those memories came back to me, and they were quite — how should I say it? — quite strong for me,” said Pages, who brought his father a few of the machine-made bats he used in the minor leagues.

But if his father provided the spark that made his son a baseball player, teammate Teoscar Hernández provided the help, guidance and mentoring that made Pages an everyday major leaguer.

“He’s played in the major leagues for a long time now,” Pages said of Hernández, a 10-year veteran who signed with the Dodgers months before Pages made his big-league debut. “He’s been through a lot of bad times. I went through that at the beginning of the season, for example, and last year too. And he’s given me advice that’s helped me a lot to get through that time.”

With Pages’ family still in Cuba, Hernández has become a big brother as well as a teammate, taking him out for dinner on off days or just getting together to play video games.

Andy Pages runs the bases after hitting a solo home run against the Athletics at Dodger Stadium on May 14.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“Getting through bad times is sometimes a little difficult when you’re alone, when you don’t have anyone to help you, to give you good advice, and to make you understand that sometimes things don’t happen when you want them to,” Pages said.

And that’s worked out well for Pages. Three games after Hernández returned from a rehab assignment last month, Pages started a streak that would see him hit in 13 of his next 14 starts, including 11 in a row, raising his average 24 points to .293. He’s batting .379 with a team-high 11 hits in seven games this month.

“We try to go out to my house. We go out to a restaurant with my wife, his wife. Just so we can get together, have time to enjoy and not think about baseball,” Hernández said.

Pages isn’t the first player to benefit from Hernández’s mentorship. During his six seasons in Toronto, Hernández took another talented rookie, fellow Dominican Vladimir Guerrero Jr., under his wing. Guerrero is now a four-time All-Star.

Hernández is still so respected in Toronto when the Dodgers played there last season, some Blue Jays players wore his old uniform number during batting practice. Earlier this year Guerrero offered to buy him a $300,000 Richard Mille watch; Hernández joked he’d rather have money instead.

As the quiet Pages has grown more confident and comfortable with the Dodgers, his play has improved. A speedy outfielder with a plus arm, he also can play all three positions.

And while he left Cuba, he never fully left it behind, having expressed interest in representing the country in next year’s World Baseball Classic. The decision to go to the Dominican Republic as a teenager, after all, was a business one, not a personal one.

Pages would also like to bring his family to U.S. some day, though that dream was dealt a setback last week when President Trump signed an executive order restricting access to Cubans hoping to come to the U.S.

“Hope is always there,” said Pages, who has beaten impossibly long odds once. “But you have to follow the rules, get the papers, do whatever it takes to make sure everything’s OK. And then get here and stay here.

“I’m just trying, trying until they can leave.”

During his days as an All-City quarterback at San Fernando High during the 1980s, Michael Wynn was considered one of the best athletes in the San Fernando Valley.

Now his son, Michael Jr., enters his senior year at St. Genevieve hoping to show everyone he can play quarterback as well as his father once did and perhaps be an even better passer.

The younger Wynn is coming off a junior season in which the Valiants switched to using four receivers to take advantage of his athleticism. He passed for 2,014 yards and 24 touchdowns with just one interception. Aided by a year’s experience running the offense, look for Wynn to be even better this fall. He had seven touchdowns running, so he’s got some of his father’s speed.

St. Genevieve coach Billy Parra is expecting big things from Wynn, who’s 6 feet, 200 pounds and gaining in confidence. …

June is a big month for seven-on-seven passing competitions. Western in Anaheim is hosting an event on Saturday that includes defending Southen Section Division 1 champion Mater Dei. Simi Valley is also hosting a competition for mainly Ventura County schools. …

Championship games in baseball and softball will be played on Saturday at home sites to determine Southern California regional champions. Here’s the schedule.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].

North Salinas High sophomore Clara Adams ran the fastest time in the girls’ 400-meter finals at the CIF State Track & Field Finals last weekend.

She crossed the finish line .28 seconds ahead of her closest competitor.

But Adams is not the state champion. She was stripped of that title after she used a fire extinguisher to spray her cleats while on the field inside the track moments after the race.

“I was robbed,” Adams, 16, told The Times shortly after being disqualified from that event as well the 200 finals, which took place later in the meet.

Adams said CIF officials told her that she was being disqualified because she had been “unsportsmanlike,” but that’s not how she saw it at all.

“I was having fun,” Adams said, noting her win in the 400 marked her first state title. “I’d never won something like that before, and they took it away from me. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

She added: “I worked really hard for it and they took it from me, and I don’t know what to do.”

Days later, David Adams, who said he is the sprint coach at North Salinas, told The Times his daughter was “doing better” but still trying to cope with everything that unfolded Saturday afternoon at Buchanan High in Clovis.

“Clara’s hurt. She’s hurt right now,” David Adams said Wednesday. “She’s better today than Saturday. Saturday was fresh. It just happened. It was a shock. She felt numb. They made her sit there and watch while they put those other girls on the podium, knowing Clara’s the fastest 400-meter runner in the state of California.”

Clara Adams has been running competitively since age 6, her father said. She finished fourth in the 400 at last year’s state meet and won the event with a state-best time of 53.23 at the Central Coast Section championships last month. After posting the top qualifying time in Friday’s preliminaries, Adams surged ahead of Madison Mosby of St. Mary’s Academy in Inglewood to win the race with a time of 53.24.

Immediately afterward, Adams walked over to the wall in front of the stands and found her father, who reached down and handed her what he described as a “small” fire extinguisher. She then walked back across the track into the grass, where she sprayed her cleats as if she was putting out a fire — a move her father said was a tribute to former U.S. sprinter Maurice Greene, who similarly celebrated his win in the 100 at the 2004 Home Depot Invitational in Carson.

CIF officials apparently were not amused and disqualified Adams on the spot, awarding first place to Mosby. According to rules established by the National Federation of State High School Assns., “unsporting conduct” is defined as behavior that includes but is not limited to “disrespectfully addressing an official, any flagrant behavior, intentional contact, taunting, criticizing or using profanity directed toward someone.” The penalty is disqualification from the event in which the behavior took place and further competition in the meet.

The CIF did not respond to a request for comment from The Times.

According to David Adams, the officials “were really nasty” toward his daughter. They “tugged on her arm,” he said, “they were screaming in her face. I could hear it from where I was at. I could see it — I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but they were just really nasty.”

Clara Adams said she specifically asked the officials to speak with her father about the disqualification, but they refused.

“They kept telling me, ‘It’s OK,’ and I was telling them, ‘It’s not OK,’ and they didn’t care,” she said. “They were trying to smile in my face, like them telling me ‘no’ amused them or something.”

David Adams said the officials would only speak to North Salinas head coach Alan Green, who declined to speak to The Times for this story.

“They told him that it was unsportsmanlike conduct,” David Adams said of the officials’ discussion with Green. “We were asking for the rule, the specific rule of what she did, and they didn’t really give anything. It was more of a gray area that gives them discretion to pick and choose what they feel is unsportsmanlike conduct.”

Adams disputes that his daughter behaved in a manner that could be considered unsportsmanlike.

“Looking at the film, Clara is nowhere near any opponent,” he said. “She’s off the track, on the grass. Her opponents are long gone off the track already, so she wasn’t in their face. It was a father-daughter moment. … She did it off the track because she didn’t want to seem disrespectful toward nobody. And they still found a reason to take her title away. They didn’t give her a warning or anything.”

He added that his daughter is a “very humble, really sweet kid.”

“I take responsibility for the situation. I’m taking full responsibility,” he said. “Clara has run several championship races and won and walked off the track. It’s just weird that she celebrates one time and now people, these strangers, these middle-aged people want to chase after her character?”

Greene, the four-time Olympic medalist who inspired Clara’s celebration, told KSBW-TV in Salinas that the CIF should reconsider its decision.

“If [the celebration] was away from everyone and not interfering with anyone, I would say reinstate her,” Greene said.

David Adams said he is trying to make that happen but so far the CIF won’t return his calls .

“We have an attorney on standby right now,” he said. “I don’t want to take it there, but I will fight this all the way. As long as I’m breathing I’m gonna fight it. But we’re trying to go through proper channels to give the CIF an opportunity to do the right thing. Having an attorney involved is our last resort, that means we tried everything.”

Unlike generations of Mexican children before and after him, actor Pablo Cruz Guerrero didn’t grow up watching the hugely popular sitcoms created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, the late writer, producer and performer better known as “Chespirito” or “Little Shakespeare.”

It’s a wonder, considering that at peak, Gómez Bolaños’ family-friendly programs were watched by over 300 million people worldwide, and they remain pop culture pillars across Latin America — even in Portuguese-speaking Brazil — 50 years after they first aired.

The programs’ influence also extends to the U.S. among diasporic communities, enduring through reruns that periodically introduce his characters to new viewers. The catchphrases Gómez Bolaños penned have also become ingrained in the vernacular of many countries.

His most popular creation, “El Chavo del Ocho,” centers on an orphan boy (which he played) living in a courtyard apartment complex filled with peculiar neighbors. Then there’s “El Chapulín Colorado,” a satirical take on tights-wearing superheroes, where Gómez Bolaños plays an inept though goodhearted paladin (chapulín means grasshopper in Mexico).

That Cruz Guerrero, 41, wasn’t familiar with these landmark shows or characters is all the more shocking because he’s now embodied Gómez Bolaños in the new bioseries “Chespirito: Not Really on Purpose” (“Chespirito: Sin querer queriendo”), streaming on Max starting Thursday with new episodes weekly.

Pablo Cruz Guerrero stars as Mexican comedic writer, producer and performer Roberto Gómez Bolaños in Max’s “Chespirito: Not Really on Purpose.”

(Max)

The actor’s lack of nostalgic attachment for the universe of physical comedy, wordplay and social commentary that Chespirito created gave him a leg up when auditioning, he believes.

“I want to convince myself that this was the one thing that allowed me to gain objectivity about the story,” he says in Spanish during a recent video call from Mexico City. “Had I been a fan, I would have been ridden with nerves when approaching the character.”

It was casting director Isabel Cortázar who first saw Cruz Guerrero’s potential, and in mid-2023, asked him to audition for the part. “Before receiving her call, I would have never seen myself as Chespirito,” he says. “No one had ever told me before that I looked like him.”

Cruz Guerrero has been consistently acting for over 20 years in films (“El Estudiante,” “From Prada to Nada”) and TV. More recently, he played a memorable antagonist in the second and third seasons of Netflix’s “Luis Miguel: The Series,” another bioseries about the famed Mexican singer played by Diego Boneta.

As to why he didn’t watch Chespirito’s work during his childhood, Cruz Guerrero hypothesizes that because his parents lived in Los Angeles for three years before he and his siblings were born, they were more interested in culture produced outside of Mexico. Instead, they took them to the cinema, to outdoor concerts and museum exhibits.

Ironically, Cruz Guerrero has appeared on several Televisa productions over the years, the same storied network that produced Chespirito’s work.

“In middle school, I had a social and comedic disadvantage because many of my friends knew all of Chespirito’s jokes and imitated the characters’ voices, and I couldn’t follow along,” Cruz Guerrero says.

When offered a chance to vie for the role, he consumed as much Chespirito content as he could find online, whether it was of Gómez Bolaños playing his characters or interviews he gave.

“In middle school, I had a social and comedic disadvantage because many of my friends knew all of Chespirito’s jokes and imitated the characters’ voices, and I couldn’t follow along,” Pablo Cruz Guerrero says.

(Carlos Alvarez-Montero / For The Times)

The arduous audition process required Cruz Guerrero to appear every Tuesday for about seven weeks for a variety of tests. Beyond doing scenes from the episodes of “Chespirito,” each meeting would add more elements that got him closer to Gómez Bolaños: He tried on the costumes, interacted with the actors who would play his children, he shaved his beard and tried on the prosthetic nose, contact lenses and receding hairline required for the role.

And even then, as the weeks dragged on, Cruz Guerrero wasn’t certain he’d be picked, especially after sharing with the family of Gómez Bolaños, who are involved in the production, his neophyte status on everything Chespirito.

“I could read on their faces they were thinking, ‘Are we making the right decision with someone who doesn’t genuinely love our father’s legacy already?’” the actor recalls.

Ultimately, Cruz Guerrero won them over because he was able to closely replicate the mannerisms and voice of the real Chespirito. Gómez Bolaños’ physicality called to mind silent film era icons such as Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

“I felt like if I tried to play around with my feet and knees when I walked, not only did I lose a little bit of height to get closer to Roberto’s height, but it also put me in a position to feel a little more playful with my body,” says Cruz Guerrero while wiggling his arms.

Roberto Gómez Fernandez, Chespirito’s son, admits he initially had doubts about Cruz Guerrero. The show had been in the works for about four years at that point, two of which had been spent searching for the right actors to recreate Gómez Bolaños’ world.

Slowly, as Cruz Guerrero refined his performance and the makeup got him closer to Chespirito’s image, Gómez Fernandez became convinced they had found their man.

“I saw my father in him,” says Gómez Fernandez on a recent Zoom chat, “during complex situations in a scene and in a little wink or a glance that Pablo did.”

The family’s approval fueled him. “They would say to me, ‘I just heard my dad through you. I just had a conversation with my dad. I just shook his hand and gave him a hug,” says Cruz Guerrero, who recalls being deeply moved. “That empowered me to feel more in his skin and not feel self-doubt because of my previous distance.”

Once he officially landed the role, Cruz Guerrero immersed himself in Gómez Bolaños’ personal and professional life via his autobiography, “Sin querer queriendo,” which lends the series its title. It functioned as a link between the actor and the creator, who died in 2014.

“I was trying to establish a metaphysical dialogue through the words he had written and edited himself in the book,” Cruz Guerrero says. “I asked him questions, and I feel like we had very beautiful conversations thanks to the book.”

Many of the pointed questions that Cruz Guerrero sought answers to in the text revolved around fatherhood, namely the elusive notion of work-life balance.

“In our careers, there are moments of beautiful enlightenment where you’re creating and having a great time,” he says. “However, you’re also aware that you’re fulfilling a contract, and chasing financial compensation. This means that you’re investing time and energy and you often prioritize the professional instead of being at home and you miss your family.”

That struggle became rather personal for the actor during this process.

“I found out I was going to be a father for the first time the same week I found out I was going to play Roberto,” recalls Cruz Guerrero. “I wanted to absorb knowledge from him about his experience as a father and the experiences I was about to embark on playing him.”

While the series features moments where Cruz Guerrero dons the emblematic attire of Chavo del Ocho and Chapulín Colorado, the focus is on the real man behind them.

Andrea Noli, left, Miguel Islas, Paola Montes de Oca and Pablo Cruz Guerrero in a scene from “Chespirito.” The series is less about the characters Roberto Gómez Bolaños was famous for and more about the real man behind them.

(Max)

The book also served as the foundation for Gómez Fernandez and his sister Paulina to write the episodes’ screenplays. The two are also producers and were involved in every decision about the project.

For Roberto Gómez Fernandez, the challenge was for the series not to become a solemn, saintly tribute to the larger-than-life figure their father was.

“I had to remember that I wasn’t thinking about my dad, but about the character of Roberto Gómez Bolaños,” he says. “They weren’t real-life people because you have to transform them into characters, and sometimes you have to pull some strings to make the dramatic dynamics more effective.”

And yet, despite having fictionalized aspects, Gómez Fernandez believes that the series offers truthfulness about his father’s essence as a person.

“I think we achieved it, but along the way, we had to undress the character’s successes and failures, many of which had consequences in his life,” Gómez Fernandez says. “Some things turned out alright for him, but others went wrong, and he also hurt people.”

It’s not lost on Cruz Guerrero that someone like him, who didn’t previously revere Chespirito’s genius, wound up taking on the task of bringing his story to the screen.

“In moments of fear, insecurity and doubt, I would ask myself, ‘Oh, man, how did I end up here?’ And then it was all resolved with laughter because in front of me I would read the title of the show, ‘Not Really on Purpose,’” he says with a knowing smile.

After more than two decades mostly appearing in supporting roles, Cruz Guerrero is basking in what’s undoubtedly the most important credit of his career so far.

“I’m especially grateful to the family, who chose me to play this beloved character, who is obviously part of their personal story,” Cruz Guerrero says. “I live this moment with great gratitude, so thank you to Roberto Gómez Bolaños.”