ST. LOUIS — Tomas Totland scored four minutes into the match and fellow defender Rafael Santos added a second-half goal to help St. Louis City beat LAFC for the first time, earning a 2-1 victory on Wednesday night.
Totland used assists from Eduard Löwen and Marcel Hartel to find the net for the first time this season and the third time in 55 career appearances. It was the first assist of the campaign for Löwen and the second for Hartel.
Santos added an unassisted goal in the 64th minute. It was his first score this season and his fourth in 92 career matches. Santos entered the match in the 10th minute for an injured Jaziel Orozco.
David Martínez entered the match in the 70th minute and scored in the 73rd to cut it to 2-1. Nkosi Tafari and defender Aaron Long set up Martínez’s fourth goal this season and his 11th in 58 appearances.
Roman Bürki finished with three saves for St. Louis City (3-6-3), which entered the match 0-5-2 all time against LAFC.
Hugo Lloris did not have a save for LAFC (6-4-3). He leads the league with eight clean sheets in 11 starts.
Mathieu Choinière scored his only two goals of the season — both from long range — to lead LAFC to a 2-0 victory over St. Louis City on March 14.
St. Louis City had scored just 10 goals in its first 11 matches under coach Yoann Damet, second fewest in the league.
Matthew Stafford, the reigning NFL most valuable player, was in a tower at the starting line.
Ty Simpson — the 13th pick in the draft — and the rest of the Rams rookie class were at the finish.
The Rams present and presumably heir-apparent quarterback bookended Saturday’s WalkUnitedLA fundraising event at Hollywood Park.
On Monday, they will be in the same meeting room and on the field together for the first time as the Rams continue their voluntary offseason workout program in Woodland Hills.
“So excited to be here, not only in a great city like Los Angeles, but a great organization like the Rams,” Simpson said in an interview after greeting and presenting medals to runners and walkers who completed a 5K. “There’s great people and great friends in the rookie class, just excited to get started.”
Rams quarterback Ty Simpson, right, poses with a fan during a WalkUnitedLA fundraising event on Saturday.
(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)
Simpson was back in Los Angeles for the first time since April 24, the day after the seemingly Super Bowl-ready Rams surprised many by passing up the opportunity to select a receiver to choose an Alabama quarterback with only 15 starts. Simpson said he was not aware of the initial reaction by some fans.
“I just know they called my name on the 13th pick — and, sign me up, I was going to Los Angeles,” he said. “I don’t really get into all that. … I just have to make sure I do whatever my process is, and make sure that I do whatever the team needs me to do.”
On the night the Rams drafted Simpson, general manager Les Snead and coach Sean McVay were uncharacteristically subdued during a news conference. McVay later explained he was attempting to be respectful of Stafford’s status as the team leader, and that a personal situation also had affected his demeanor on draft night.
Asked if he had watched the news conference, Simpson said, “I didn’t really see it.”
“I know one thing though,” he said. “I know coach McVay has been in contact and he’s super fired up. And I’m super excited.
“I know that I couldn’t have asked for a better situation, not only with the best player in the league in front of me but the best coach in the league at the helm.”
After he was drafted, Simpson, 23, received a message from Stafford’s wife, Kelly, welcoming him and offering assistance to him and his family. He said he also received a text from Stafford that he did not initially see.
“It was really cool too,” Simpson said, “because they didn’t have to do that.”
Stafford, 38, was the No. 1 overall pick out of Georgia in 2009. His message to Simpson?
“It was funny because, of course, he was like, ‘Welcome, man. I’m super pumped,’” Simpson said. “He was like, ‘Loved watching you play, but you played for the wrong jersey,’ because he’s pumping up Georgia.”
Simpson chuckled.
“So when I see him on Monday, I’m going to give him heck about that,” he said. “But it’s cool. I’m super excited, especially having him and [quarterback] Stetson [Bennett] in there, Georgia guys, and me, an Alabama guy, so I’ve got to stand up for myself.”
Simpson spent the last few weeks working out in Tennessee. He requested a Rams playbook immediately after he was drafted, but said that McVay, quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone and offensive coordinator Nate Scheelhaase counseled that all of the rookies would be onboarded together.
He is eager to get started with the first phase of his pro career.
His goal for offseason workouts?
“Just get my feet underneath me,” he said. “Be the best guy I can be. It’s going to be such a different vibe, whatever you want to call it, from college.
“I just want to go in there, soak up as much as I can from Matthew and the guys and be the best player I can be.”
Travis d’Arnaud hit a three-run homer, Walbert Ureña threw six innings of two-hit ball, and the Angels defeated the Chicago White Sox 8-2 on Wednesday.
The Angels won a series for the first time since April 10-12 at Cincinnati. The Angels (15-23) are 2-7-2 in series this season.
D’Arnaud’s 396-foot shot off Noah Schultz (2-2), the backup catcher’s first homer of the season, kicked off a five-run second inning for the Halos. After Bryce Teodosio doubled on a ball that got past right fielder Jarred Kelenic, Zach Neto hit a stand-up RBI triple.
Mike Trout brought one more across with an infield popup that second baseman Chase Meidroth lost in the afternoon sun for a single.
Jorge Soler and Jo Adell were hit by back-to-back pitches from reliever Osvaldo Bido with the bases loaded to bring in two runs in the fourth.
Ureña (1-3) allowed one run, struck out five and walked three in his second quality start of the season. Brent Suter, Drew Pomeranz and Chase Silseth completed a four-hitter.
Meidroth had two hits for Chicago (17-20). Standout rookie Munetaka Murakami, who is tied for the major league lead with 14 home runs, struck out four times for the second time this season.
Schultz allowed seven hits and seven runs in 3⅔ innings. He had allowed a total of six earned runs in four previous starts this year.
Up next for the Angels: Open a three-game series at Toronto on Friday with LHP Reid Detmers (1-2, 4.28) facing Blue Jays RHP Dylan Cease (2-1, 3.05).
With the Lakers down 1-0 in the Western Conference semifinals, Luka Doncic has not yet ramped up to on-court contact drills while recovering from an injured left hamstring that had an inital eight-week timeline for his return.
Doncic, speaking to reporters for the first time since he hobbled off the court at Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center on April 2, said Wednesday he has improved enough to begin running but he has not progressed to on-court contact drills. After suffering a left hamstring injury earlier this season, Doncic said the latest Grade 2 strain to the same area is unlike any he’s experienced because of its severity.
But it has not stopped him from trying to come back as soon as possible.
“I’m just doing everything I can,” Doncic said. “Every day I’m doing stuff I’m supposed to do. Obviously recovery, now I’m working … just going day by day, and I feel better every day.”
Soon after his injury, Doncic went to Spain and received platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections with hopes to help his recovery. He stayed for roughly two weeks because he needed to wait four days between each injection. He received four in total.
Without their leading scorer, the Lakers fought through a six-game, first-round series against the Houston Rockets, playing four of those games without Austin Reaves, who was also injured in the same game as Doncic. The fourth-seeded Lakers lost 108-90 to the defending champion Thunder in Game 1 of the conference semifinals on Tuesday.
Doncic had dutifully cheered from the bench during the playoff games, offering as much advice to his teammates as he can.
“It’s very frustrating,” Doncic said of the injury. “I don’t think people understand how frustrating it is. All I want to do is play basketball, especially at this time. It’s the best time to play basketball. It’s very frustrating seeing what my team is doing, I’m very proud of them. It’s been very tough just to see and watch them play.”
In June 2017, with President Trump newly installed in office for the first time, one of the biggest battles with the administration was about oil. He’d just named the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, as his secretary of State, even though great reporting — in this newspaper among others — had recently shown that the company knew all about, and lied all about, climate change as far back as the 1980s.
Back east, the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts were trying to take the oil giant on, initiating investigations of the company to try to hold it accountable. Environmental advocates and consumer groups were pressing hard for California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris to join in, and she seemed to be considering it. Then she left the office to assume her new U.S. Senate seat, and the decision fell to her replacement, Xavier Becerra — now a leading candidate for California governor.
As I wrote in these pages at the time, it was a great test for him, and a great curiosity that he was staying silent, “since the rest of Sacramento is hard at work dealing with climate change.” I was not the only one who noticed. Seventy thousand Californians signed petitions demanding action. Eight California representatives in Congress — including Jared Huffman and Ted Lieu — sent him a letter demanding a “vigorous” inquiry and pointing out that it was particularly important because the newly elected Trump administration was clearly favoring the oil industry. “California has led the world in responding to the dangers of climate change, and we know that it will continue to do so,” they wrote. “You now have a leading role in that effort.” But ultimately Becerra did not have a leading role, or indeed any role at all: He punted, as this editorial page pointed out. What Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is now trying to do by statute — immunize the big oil companies from prosecution for climate liability — Becerra accomplished by sheer silence.
In the years since, of course, California has paid a huge price for our inaction on climate. Just looking at wildfire, there were of course the great blazes that Los Angeles County will never forget in 2025, but also the 2020 August Complex fire in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, the 2021 Dixie fire up north, the 2017 conflagration across Napa and Sonoma counties, the 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the 2018 Camp fire that devastated Paradise — the list goes sadly on and on and on.
Meanwhile, Big Oil and its friends at Big Utility have racked up huge profits, and Californians have faced ever higher bills. An unhobbled oil industry played a huge role in reelecting Trump in 2024 and in taking us to war with Iran.
And through it all, during his years as attorney general, Becerra did little or nothing to help. As I said all those years ago, it’s a mystery why, though I fear the mystery gets clearer with each campaign funding filing over his long career. As California’s top prosecutor, he took big donations from oil industry giants such as Chevron, and also from energy companies Sempra and Southern California Edison. As a member of Congress, he took larger checks from Pacific Gas and Electric and Edison International.
This time around, as he seeks the governor’s office, Chevron has maxed out its contributions to his campaign, the first time they’ve found a gubernatorial candidate to back in a decade. Meanwhile, across the country, leading progressives have signed a pledge refusing fossil fuel donations. Another gubernatorial contender, Katie Porter, is among them. Needless to say, Becerra is not.
The California chapters of Third Act — a group of Americans over 60 that I helped found — canvassed their members last month and issued an endorsement of Tom Steyer, on the grounds that he had worked hard over the years to address energy and climate issues. Instead of taking money from Big Oil, he’s given money, time and counsel to those of us volunteering in the fight against the industry. In fact, I think that whether one is most concerned about lowering utility bills with clean energy or protecting California’s forests, beaches and insurance rates from the global warming threat, he’d be the most climate-conscious elected official in America.
But Third Act was also founded to help protect our democracy. And that means disconnecting public policy from campaign donations. We need leaders who will do the right thing for us, not for their donors. Steyer has called on Becerra to return his donations from Big Oil. That would be a start, but it doesn’t really make up for the wasted decade we’ll never get back.
Bill McKibben is the founder of Third Act and the author, most recently, of “Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate, a Fresh Chance for Our Civilization.”
Mike Trout, Jorge Soler and Zach Neto hit home runs, Ryan Zeferjahn worked out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth inning and the Angels held on for a 4-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox on Tuesday night.
Zeferjahn hit a batter and walked two in the ninth before retiring Edgar Quero on a groundout for his first save this season and his third in 10 career opportunities. The right-hander struck out rookie home run leader Munetaka Murakami — tied with the Yankees’ Aaron Judge at 14 — with a runner on first to get the final out in the eighth.
Trout hit his 11th homer of the season and the 415th of his career with one out in the first off Erick Fedde (0-4) after Chicago scored two runs off Sam Aldegheri in the top half.
Neto homered for the first time since April 10, a tiebreaking two-out shot in the fifth for his sixth of the season. Trout walked for the second time before scoring from first on a double by Nolan Schanuel to make it 4-2 and chase Fedde. Trout reached base four times with a single in the eighth.
Neto ended an 0-for-23 slump with a third-inning single before getting picked off.
Chase Meidroth hit his second homer leading off the seventh against Sam Bachman to get Chicago within 4-3. Both Colson Montgomery and Miguel Vargas extended their on-base streaks to 18 games for the Sox.
José Fermin (1-1) pitched a scoreless fifth for the win. Aldegheri gave up two runs on four hits in four innings in his sixth career start.
Fedde yielded four runs on six hits in 4 2/3 innings.
The top four hitters in the Angels’ lineup drove in a run for the first time since June 18, 2021, against the Tigers.
For the third time in as many weeks, the leading candidates for California governor met on the debate stage Tuesday night.
The latest installment was a two-hour session, hosted and carried live from Monterey Park by CNN. The debate marked the first time the candidates appeared before a national audience and came as mail ballots have begun arriving in homes throughout the state.
Columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria took in all 120 minutes, absorbed every zinger — scripted and otherwise — and dutifully observed each parry and thrust. Here’s what they took away:
Arellano: Antonio Villaraigosa finally rises above his gubernatorial rivals. Is it too late?
I wrote my thoughts about this debate while writing my next columna on … something, stopping to pay attention only when issues in my bailiwick like immigration and the failure of the Democratic Party were the subject of discussion. The rest of the time, what the candidates said came off as one giant shout-fest straight out of the studios of the late, great Wally George, with everyone playing true to form.
Chad Bianco raged, Steve Hilton tried to mask his MAGA-ness with his British accent. Katie Porter scolded, Tom Steyer channeled Bernie. Xavier Becerra did his best impression of the old Bunsen character from “The Muppet Show.” Matt Mahan was just … there.
You know who sounded the best? Antonio Villaraigosa.
Anyone who really knows the former L.A. mayor has always seen him as Chicano Prince Hal, someone who doesn’t take himself as seriously as he should. His infidelities effectively killed his political career after his mayoral years; his consulting for the nutritional supplement company Herbalife made Villaraigosa a walking joke among too many Latinos I know.
He has spent the last decade effectively embodying Marlon Brando’s famous quote in “On the Waterfront”: He coulda been a contender. Even his gubernatorial run, announced way before many of his opponents, has mostly had the air of a has-been — that’s one of the reasons why Villaraigosa has polled so low through most of the race to the point he was excluded from many of the early debates.
But that hangdog Villaraigosa was nowhere to be seen tonight.
His wisecracks were kept to a minimum. He stayed mostly within his time limits and didn’t interrupt much. He hammered Hilton over his refusal to admit that President Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and his dismissal of undocumented immigrants.
Villaraigosa especially went hard on his forever frenemy Xavier Becerra on everything from his time as President Biden’s health secretary to how former staffers have been charged with stealing millions of dollars from his campaign funds. (Becerra has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)
When CNN co-moderator Elex Michaelson asked Villaraigosa if he would cancel California’s much-maligned high-speed rail project, the candidate’s emphatic “No” thundered down like a Lebron James dunk. He called out the waste on the multibillion-dollar project, said he revived L.A.’s subway to the sea, and spoke with a passionate gravitas that Becerra could only dream of doing.
“When I make a mistake, I’m accountable,” Villaraigosa said at the end of the debate. This sounded like a candidate who can win — and now he has a month to make a comeback worthy of his political mentor, the late, great Gloria Molina.
Four weeks to prove them wrong, Antonio.
Barabak: It was a no-hitter.
No startling breakthrough. No game-changing moment. No candidate so irresistibly charming he or she knocked the race akimbo and stamped themselves as the far-and-away front-runner in the slowly consolidating contest.
By now, the candidates are plowing well-furrowed ground.
To anyone who has watched each of the debates — and there may not be a great many of those viewers out there — it was all quite familiar.
What is new, and what may have been the draw for those just tuning in, is a sense the race is finally taking a coherent shape, with Xavier Becerra unexpectedly emerging as the candidate to beat.
A month ago, Eric Swalwell was a leading contender in the dozy contest and Becerra was an afterthought, being urged to quit for the sake of his dignity and the good of the Democratic Party. (Fears of a Democratic shutout in the June 2 primary have greatly receded.)
When Swalwell left the race and vacated his congressional seat amid allegations of sexual assault and other potentially illegal misconduct, it was widely assumed much of his support would move to either Steyer or Porter, the two other leading Democratic contenders.
But Becerra has been the clear-cut beneficiary and his new status was evident Tuesday night as he faced repeated attacks. He didn’t particularly dazzle, but that’s not his appeal. It’s his steadiness and seeming unflappability in a time of great upheaval and stress, and that was again evident.
With less than four weeks to election day — and voting already underway — time is waning for another dramatic shake-up like the one that took place between Swalwell’s implosion in April and Becerra’s surge in May.
It seems, however, as though little to nothing will change, with Becerra steadily gaining ground, Hilton consolidating GOP support and the remainder of the field looking for something — or someone — to drastically shake up the race one more time.
Chabria: I don’t know about a winner, but the debate definitely had a biggest loser: Bianco. The Riverside County sheriff, to his credit I guess, didn’t try for a hot second to hide who he really is — a conspiracy-loving immigration hardliner with ties to an extremist group.
Bianco sort-of said he was a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right organization best known for some of its members participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. He threw out election fraud theories, even suggesting state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta could be involved. He made it clear that undocumented folks are breaking the law by existing in the state.
Maybe some MAGA voters will stick by that shtick, but I’m guessing independents and more moderate Republicans will find Hilton, the Trump-endorsed Republican, even more appealing after Bianco’s ragey ramblings. Hilton may well be sending his opponent a thank-you note and a bottle of bubbly for that performance.
As for winners, a couple of the Democrats had their moments. Porter spoke with clarity and force on issues including single-payer healthcare (she supports it) and resisting Trump’s immigration policies in this state of immigrants.
But she also directly addressed the criticism of her having a bad temper in a way that I think may haunt her.
As her male opponents bickered back and forth, taking swipes at each other, Porter said that given all the “shouting” and “disrespect” onstage, she was shocked that “anyone wants to talk about my temperament.” It’s a pushback she tried out earlier in the week with a new advertisement that sought to make a punchline out of the criticism.
I get her point and I don’t think a male candidate would face the same scrutiny for yelling at a staffer as she has, but also — what’s more unappealing to voters than an angry woman? A complaining one. That moment of resistance against the narrative may not land the way she intends with voters.
I agree with Gustavo that Villaraigosa had a good night, and that Steyer had Bernie energy — which may be good.
Steyer was the most lively and direct he’s been in a debate, landing a few punches and making points with clarity (far less wonky than he’s been in the past). He’s owning his far-left politics, and labeling himself the “change-maker.”
Steyer has been trailing Becerra in the polls, but Becerra again had a steady if less-than-thrilling appearance. For fed-up Democrats, Steyer may be looking better all the time.
“Curly” Williams returned to his old high school campus last week for the first time in 76 years, but did so under his given name — the same name emblazoned on North Hollywood High’s newest attraction: the John Williams Performing Arts Center.
Williams, 94, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony last Wednesday, which commenced with the composer’s rousing “Raiders March” played by the school’s marching band and accompanied by its blue-clad cheerleaders.
For the record:
9:37 a.m. May 4, 2026A previous version of this article said Michael Stebbins designed the John Williams Performing Arts Center. The center was designed by CO Architects. Stebbins served as project manager
“I think you played that better than we could have,” Williams said, speaking from a wheelchair under the sign of his namesake venue in front of other accomplished alumni and friends, including producer Kathleen Kennedy. “That’s a hard piece.”
The ambitious construction project, initiated in 2015 and designed by CO Architects occupies 35,000 square feet and seats 800. Michael Stebbins, project manager for the BroadStage in Santa Monica, served as project manager. The center is equipped with state-of-the-art amenities to host student performances and school assemblies, but also to train the next generation of theater technicians. Besides an enormous stage, blue velvet curtains, a mixing console and safe catwalks, the building also features new classrooms and rehearsal spaces.
Students, faculty and guests stand for the national anthem before a concert inside the new John Williams Performing Arts Center, named for one of North Hollywood High’s most famous alumni.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
A 75-foot hand-painted mural in the lobby, still in the works by artist Ian Robertson-Salt, is inspired by Williams’ formidable filmography, which serves “as a daily reminder to every student who walks these halls that greatness can begin right here,” remarked Andrés Chait, acting superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District.
Due to health complications, Williams has made few public appearances in the last two years. He last conducted a concert in February 2024 — and he has also consistently turned down requests to name buildings after him, including at his beloved Tanglewood in Massachusetts, although the Hollywood Bowl did recently name its stage for Williams. It’s a testament to his affection for his time at North Hollywood High, and his regard for the next generation of students, that he not only blessed this dedication but showed up and spoke to a gathered crowd of hundreds.
“I’m sort of silly happy to be here,” he said, calling the dedication “a singular honor in my life.”
Other showbiz alumni on hand included “Beauty and the Beast” producer Don Hahn (class of ’73), “Independence Day” writer-producer Dean Devlin (’80), and Rob Friedman (’81), CEO of Ascendant Entertainment. Partly due to its proximity to the entertainment industry, North Hollywood High has produced a host of famous artists over the decades, including the late Michael Tilson Thomas, who attended in the early 1960s.
John Williams smiles while applauding a performance by the North Hollywood High School band at the dedication ceremony of the John Williams Performing Arts Center on campus.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“At some point you have to stop calling that a coincidence,” said Kennedy, a longtime collaborator of Williams who gave brief remarks before handing him the microphone. “Something happened here, and something can happen again.”
Williams moved to North Hollywood with his family in 1947, having grown up in Queens. He transferred to North Hollywood High as a 15-year-old sophomore, and joined the band and orchestra as a jazz-loving trombonist. His classmates included Susan Sontag (“I remember her teaching a class in civics, when the teacher would sit down and listen to her,” he told me in 2023) and many future actors, including Barbara Ruick, who played Carrie Pipperidge in “Carousel.” But his best friends were all music-inclined guys whose dads, like his, were famous musicians.
A poster board featured yearbook photos of John Williams, left, performing with the North Hollywood High School Band, class of 1950, in the lobby of the new John Williams Performing Arts Center on the North Hollywood High School campus.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Williams embraced the nickname “Curly,” given to him by a fellow student in response to his curly red hair, and quickly created his own jazz band with classmates. Ruick sang with them at school events and dances, and they became the house band at a new teens-only venue in Van Nuys called the Dri-Nite Club. Broadcast on local radio, they caught the attention of Time magazine, which ran a story on “Curly’s” band in October 1949.
A newspaper story about John Williams’ high school band from the Los Angeles Unified School District’s archives.
(Los Angeles Unified School District)
Williams has said he fondly remembers his civics and French classes at North Hollywood High, but his time and passion were almost exclusively devoted to music. He rigorously practiced the piano at home, studying with a local concert pianist and MGM arranger named Robert Van Eps; on Wednesday nights he played in jam sessions with his father (Johnny Sr., a drummer) and the Columbia Pictures orchestra. He bopped around clubs in L.A. listening to jazz greats like Oscar Peterson (whose style influenced Williams’ recent piano concerto), and started making a name of his own as a wunderkind performer and arranger.
Long before he scored “Star Wars” or “Harry Potter,” Williams did his earliest arranging and orchestrating for theater productions at North Hollywood High. The impact of his time at North Hollywood High cannot be overstated.
John Williams featured with members of the class of 1950 in the North Hollywood High School Yearbook.
(Los Angeles Unified School District)
During his remarks about the performing arts center on Wednesday, Williams said he felt particularly overwhelmed because the school was “formative in my thinking and my professional work … This is a great, magical place, North Hollywood.”
Williams eventually married Ruick, his high school sweetheart and mother of his three children. Ruick was instrumental in making many of Williams’ earliest career connections. She died from a brain aneurysm in 1974, at the age of 41, just one year before Williams’ career catapulted with “Jaws.” The couple’s youngest son, Joseph, lead singer of Toto, stood proudly behind Williams during the theater’s dedication.
The John Williams Performing Arts Center (JWPAC) is the crescendo of a $319.5 million modernization project at North Hollywood High, which also includes modern classrooms and athletic facilities. It’s a reflection of the diverse public school’s commitment to the arts; students here can play in the orchestra, marching band or modern band, and study drama or modern dance.
“As I think about what else I might say to all of you younger people, students here,” Williams said at his homecoming Wednesday, “two words about this beautiful building: simply use it. Make sure you all use the place.”
Tim Greiving is the author of “John Williams: A Composer’s Life.”
“All the President’s Men” was released 50 years ago this month, an anniversary that’s been greeted with equal parts rue and reverence by the journalists, political junkies and discerning cinephiles who have worshiped the film for five decades.
As a member of all three of those constituencies, I’ve done my share of genuflecting, most recently as chief film critic at the Washington Post, whose city room was as vivid and fully realized in the movie as Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein.
Like so many Posties of my generation, I’ll never forget the so-real-it’s-surreal experience of walking into the fifth-floor newsroom for the first time in 2002. By then, standard-issue electric typewriters and six-ply carbon paper had been replaced by far less visually interesting computers. But the office’s pervading atmosphere of hard work and quiet focus felt uncannily similar to its big-screen analog.
For the last two years, I have been researching a book about the making of “All the President’s Men,” whose production involved almost as many contingencies and unresolved questions as Watergate itself. Among the film’s many mysteries, one I’ve found particularly intriguing has to do with Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post and CEO of its parent company during the Watergate investigations. As the movie amply demonstrates, it took guts for Woodward and Bernstein to persevere with their reporting in the face of terrified sources and their own growing paranoia. But, unbeknownst to many observers at the time, Graham was enduring even more withering pressures, with determination that was all the more impressive for being almost entirely invisible.
I’m still in the process of discovering why she remained invisible in “All the President’s Men.” For now, it’s clear that the backstory is more nuanced than mere oversight or, as many are quick to assume, simple sexism.
In fact, William Goldman’s first script of the film featured a sequence with Graham and Woodward, a scene that appeared in every subsequent draft. Based on an actual meeting between the two, it’s a cagey game of cat-and-mouse, with the publisher taking the measure of a nervous, still-inexperienced journalist, looking for reassurance that his reporting will prove out.
Earlier this year, at a January staged reading of “All the President’s Men” at Harmony Gold Theater in Hollywood — a fundraiser for the Stella Adler Academy — it was possible for fans to conjure what might have been. Mark Ruffalo played Woodward and Ethan Hawke played Bernstein in a version of the movie assembled from different Goldman drafts.
A high point of the evening was when Ruffalo and actor Susan Traylor brought the Graham-Woodward scene to tentative, tense and teasingly playful life. After grilling Woodward about his sources and coyly asking him about Deep Throat’s identity, Traylor’s Graham asked him if the truth about Watergate would ever be revealed. “It may never come out,” Ruffalo’s Woodward replied. “Don’t tell me ‘never,’” Graham laments, before bringing the meeting to a close with a gently peremptory “Do better.”
In poring over director Alan J. Pakula and Goldman’s papers, I’ve probably read that scene dozens of times. But when I heard it play out in real time, I was ambushed by the emotions it stirred — a mixture of pride in Graham’s legacy and deep sadness at how that legacy has been so inexplicably ignored in recent years.
I was also sad that Redford, who died in September, wasn’t there. He often expressed regret that Graham wasn’t a featured character in “All the President’s Men.” Keenly aware of how her spine and steadfastness made Woodward and Bernstein’s work possible, he wanted to honor that crucial support. When I interviewed him for the first time in 2005, he insisted that fearless owners were every bit as important in preserving democracy as the reporters he and Hoffman helped glamorize.
Over the next two decades, every time I saw Redford, he bemoaned the “downward slide of this thing,” by which he meant the constellation of institutions “All the President’s Men” celebrates: not just journalism and a robust First Amendment but a Washington where investigators, prosecutors, judges, the Senate and Congress did their jobs regardless of partisan loyalties, and a Hollywood where a studio as mainstream as Warner Bros. would agree to finance a tough-minded film about a contentious and still-raw period in recent history.
Granted, that film was based on a bestselling book and anchored by two huge stars. But today, with political and corporate leaders — including media companies — falling over each other to curry favor with President Trump, “All the President’s Men” feels like an artifact from a vanished age.
Nowhere is this more distressingly true than at the Post itself, where the newsroom immortalized by the movie has been slashed by more than a third, and where Jeff Bezos, who bought the paper in 2013, seems intent on erasing Katharine Graham’s legacy until it vanishes completely. During the first Trump administration, Bezos stood up to threats against the Post and the press at large that would make Nixon blush, or at least pea-green with envy.
Now, Bezos has become a one-man meme of what author Timothy Snyder calls “obedience in advance,” quashing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, ostentatiously grinning his way through Trump’s second inauguration, vastly overpaying for a promotional film about First Lady Melania Trump and staying conspicuously mum (at least publicly) when a Post reporter’s home was raided by the FBI in January.
All of this has come at an enormous moral and material cost, with thousands of readers canceling their subscriptions and an alarming number of the Post’s finest reporters and writers leaving for other publications and platforms. As my former boss Marty Baron told my former colleague Ruth Marcus in the New Yorker in February, Bezos’ turnaround has been “sickening” to witness: “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”
Of course, that brand was built, in no small part, by “All the President’s Men,” which taught a generation how to walk, talk, dress and act like real reporters. (Hint: A good corduroy jacket and a pen in your mouth can’t hurt.)
In 1976, Pakula was interviewed about his dealings with Graham, whom he admired tremendously and with whom he would become close friends. “I could do a film about the Katharine Graham story,” he enthused. “It’s a superb story.”
Thirty years later, Steven Spielberg would bring Pakula’s idea to fruition with “The Post,” about Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, a dress rehearsal for the even higher stakes of Watergate a year later.
“The Post,” which starred Meryl Streep in a shrewdly judged performance of aristocratic assurance and creeping insecurity, premiered in Washington less than a year into Trump’s first administration. Bezos attended that screening, which many of us saw as tacit acknowledgment that he was taking her lessons in character, comportment and competence to heart.
That was clearly wishful thinking. Graham may have finally assumed her rightful place in the newspaper-movie canon, but we’re still left to ponder her absence from the most iconic journalism movie of the 20th century.
It’s no longer the shoe-leather reporters who need a big-screen tutorial in how to do their jobs. It’s their bosses. A simple place to start would be to memorize the best two-word speech to never appear in a major motion picture: Do better.
Ann Hornaday was a film critic at the Washington Post from 2002 to 2025, when she retired. “All the President’s Men” plays at TCM Classic Film Festival Saturday at 2:45 p.m.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — No trainer has won the Kentucky Derby more times than Bob Baffert. Among other living trainers, nobody has won the Derby more than Doug O’Neill.
Combined the two Southern Californians have eight Derby victories — Baffert (six) and O’Neill (two) — one more than the total for the other 15 trainers in the field.
And yet, O’Neill’s horse for Saturday’s race, Pavlovian, is a 30-1 long shot on the morning-line odds, and Baffert’s starters are 20-1 (Potente) and 30-1 (Litmus Test). Not the odds you’d expect to see if you were just looking at the trainers.
Both know it’s nothing personal.
“It’s a sign of how, really, the sport is all about the horse,” O’Neill said at his barn. “Whether you’re Bob or me or whoever, you’re only as good as your horse. Bob and I are bringing in some horses that don’t jump off the page number-wise. But I was very impressed with Potente’s work the other day.”
Potente’s trainer also understands the odds, noting this isn’t the first time he’s brought long shots to the Derby.
“I mean, I’d rather be here with a horse like American Pharoah or Justify,” Baffert said, referring to his Triple Crown winners from 2015 and 2018. “But then I’d be like Todd [Pletcher]. He’s getting sick. I said, ‘You’re sick because you’ve got the favorite [Renegade].’ When I had Pharoah and Justify, I got so sick. I was so stressed out.”
Baffert added he was thinking at the time, “It was a layup; I better win this.”
If those horses were layups, Potente is more like a three-pointer from Stephen Curry range, while Litmus Test is along the lines of Jerry West’s 60-foot shot in the 1970 NBA Finals.
Of Baffert’s 35 previous starters, three went off at odds of 55-1 or higher (they finished sixth, 10th and 17th), and three others were priced at 20-1 or higher. Two of those finished ninth (25-1) and 15th (27-1), but War Emblem won the 2002 race at 20-1.
O’Neill’s first victory, in 2012, was unexpected; I’ll Have Another was priced at 15-1. Four years later, Nyquist triumphed as the 2-1 favorite. Both horses were owned by J. Paul Reddam, as is Pavlovian. A win Saturday would make the duo just the fourth owner-trainer team to win the Derby at least three times.
“That’s very cool,” O’Neill said, noting that Pavlovian is in the same stall Nyquist occupied a decade ago. “A lot of great memories here.
“But you know, when you’re talking a 20-horse field, I like the way Paul puts it: When you’re one out of 20, you got a 95% chance of losing, right? So when you get lucky enough to win, and you’re part of that 5%, you pinch yourself to how lucky and how amazing that experience was and hopefully could be again.”
Pavlovian is an unlikely Derby horse, and not just because he’s trying to become only the fifth Cal-bred to win the race. It’s mainly because he raced exclusively against Cal-breds in seven of his first eight races and only won one.
The last of those races, though, was the Cal Cup Derby, and a strong finish encouraged O’Neill to try the Sunland Park Derby. With Edwin Maldonado riding for the first time, the son of Pavel won, and in the Louisiana Derby he led almost the entire race before Emerging Market passed him in the final strides.
“For him to put up a great fight with a top horse like Emerging Market, it was a huge effort,” O’Neill said. “And the nice thing there, too, we had extra timing between that race and the Kentucky Derby. Knock on wood, everything’s kind of coming together as we had hoped and prayed.”
While O’Neill never could have expected to be here with his Cal-bred, Baffert will start two of the myriad expensive colts his clients buy each year. Potente, the San Felipe winner and Santa Anita Derby runner-up, cost $2.4 million, more than double any other horse in the Derby. Litmus Test, the Los Alamitos Futurity winner who has disappointed in two starts this year, was purchased for $875,000.
“They’re going to have to improve a lot,” Baffert said. “Potente, we’re still trying to figure him out a little bit, what he wants to do, how he wants to run, but he’s a big strong horse. … He’ll get the mile and a quarter.
“And [Litmus Test] was running really well, and then he sort of took a step back on me, but I did ship him a lot, so that might have knocked him out a little bit. But now he looks good. He worked well here, so we’ll see what happens.”
Second scratch
Fulleffort was scratched Thursday because of a chipped bone in his left hind ankle. Trainer Brad Cox still has his two most accomplished horses running Saturday in Florida Derby winner Commandment and Blue Grass champion Further Ado.
The scratch puts the maiden Ocelli in the field in the No. 20 post position. Great White, who moved into the field Wednesday with the scratch of Silent Tactic, will now break from the No. 19 post.
Kentucky Oaks Day
The filly equivalent of the Derby, the Kentucky Oaks, will be run under the lights at 5:40 p.m. PDT Friday. Zany (4-1) is the morning-line favorite for trainer Todd Pletcher, but two Southern California horses should be strong contenders: Michael McCarthy’s Meaning (5-1), the Santa Anita Oaks winner, and Baffert’s Explora (6-1). McCarthy also will start Brooklyn Blonde (30-1).
The Zion Phelps story is going to be told over and over at Loyola High to show students what can happen when someone discovers potential and decides to take a chance to bring it out.
In his first year running track after bragging during the football season that he was the fastest student at Loyola, Phelps proved on Thursday he’s also the fastest 100-meter runner in the Mission League by winning in a school-record time of 10.49 seconds at the Mission League finals at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame.
“I’m beyond grateful,” he said after embracing Loyola coach Sharaud Moore.
A junior defensive back, Phelps let Moore bring out his track talent, and now he has options in track and football.
Loyola’s Ejam Johannes offers the “shoosh” sign after anchoring the winning 4×100 relay team. He also won the Mission League 400 and 200 titles.
(Craig Weston)
Another Loyola athlete stepping forward in preparation for next weekend’s Southern Section Division 1 prelims was Ejam Yohannes. He ran anchor leg for the 4×100-meter relay team that beat Notre Dame for the first time in three years with a time of 40.75. At the finish, he put a finger over his lips and gave a “shoosh” sign. He also won the 400 meters in 47.05 and the 200 meters in 20.85, the fourth-best wind legal time in the state this year.
Notre Dame’s JJ Harel qualified in three events — going 6 feet, 10 inches in the high jump, 22-5¼ in the long jump and also qualifying in the triple jump.
The strangest moment of the day came in the Mission League 100 girls’ final. Nalia Keyes of Chaminade and Maya Rios of Bishop Alemany tied for first place, each finishing with a time of 12.46.
“It’s weird,” Rios said of her first ever race tie.
In the Marmonte League final, Demare Dezeurn of Westlake ran the 100 meters in 10.39 seconds to outduel Jaden Griffin of Newbury Park (10.50) and Kingston Celifie of Calabasas (10.56). Dezeurn played football for Palisades in the fall after transferring from Bishop Alemany last season.
Baseball
Sylmar 10, Kennedy 0: Rickee Luevano hit a grand slam for Sylmar.
Westlake 10, Newbury Park 3: Dylan Lee homered and Holden Backus had two hits and three RBIs.
Bishop Amat 3, La Serna 2: Ray Castro threw six innings and also had an RBI single.
Temecula Valley 3, Vista Murrieta 1: Grayson Martin gave up one hit and struck out seven in six innings.
Oaks Christian 17, Calabasas 8: Ryan Sheffer hit two home runs and finished with four RBIs.
Softball
Garden Grove Pacifica 4, Cypress 1: Jenna Valladares had an RBI triple and Shay Kletke threw a complete game.
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 16, Louisville 0: Jackie Morales had three hits and six RBIs.
Harvard-Westlake 14, Chaminade 11: It was a wild Mission League game that ended on a walk-off grand slam by Kale’a Tindal in the bottom of the ninth inning. Chaminade scored five runs in the seventh to tie the score 9-9. Both teams scored runs in the eighth to make it 10-10. Chaminade took an 11-10 lead in the top of the ninth on an RBI single by Siena Greenlinger. Tindal finished with four hits and four RBIs. Dylan Fischer had a home run, two doubles, a single and four RBIs.
Murrieta Mesa 8, Great Oak 0: Tatum Wolff threw six innings, striking out 10 and walking none. She also hit a home run.
The Federal Communications Commission is considering an early review of the Walt Disney Co.’s broadcast TV licenses amid criticism of ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s provocative jokes ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner.
The order could come as soon as Tuesday, according to Semafor, which first reported that the review is expected. The licenses for ABC’s stations — which include KABC in Los Angeles — were not scheduled for renewal until 2028.
Disney has not commented on the possibility of a review.
The move was likely in the works before the latest kerfuffle over Kimmel, who is under fire for a comedic bit that satirized the annual Washington gala that Trump attended for the first time. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has targeted the political content on the ABC daytime talk show “The View,” told The Times on Saturday that an action related to ABC programming was coming this week.
Carr has suggested “The View” should not be exempt from the FCC’s equal time rule that requires broadcasters to bring on a politician’s rival to provide balanced coverage and multiple viewpoints.
Carr, who was at the Saturday dinner, made the remark just hours before the event was shut down after a Torrance man breached security at the Washington Hilton while armed with a shotgun, handgun and several knives. The suspect, Cole Tomas Allen, was arrested and faces three criminal charges, including attempting to assassinate President Trump.
Right-wing commentators have gone into heavy rotation with the claim that a routine by Kimmel inspired Allen to act.
During the bit that aired Thursday, a tuxedo-clad Kimmel called First Lady Melania Trump “beautiful,” saying she had “the glow of an expectant widow.” The comic explained Monday that the gag was a reference to the age difference between Trump and his wife.
“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80 and she’s younger than I am,” Kimmel said. “It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination. And they know that.”
Since becoming FCC chairman last year, Carr has repeatedly threatened to use the levers of power he has to punish TV and radio stations that irritate Trump. His behavior has alarmed free speech advocates, including the FCC’s lone Democratic appointee Anna Gomez, who noted that early station renewal reviews are exceedingly rare and largely futile.
“This is unprecedented, unlawful, and going nowhere,” Gomez said in a statement. “It is a political stunt and it won’t stick. Companies should challenge it head-on. The 1st Amendment is on their side.”
Other White House administrations have threatened to pull TV station licenses in response to negative news coverage. At the height of the Watergate scandal in the 1970s, Richard Nixon’s allies unsuccessfully attempted to challenge the TV licenses for three stations owned at the time by the Washington Post.
RKO General, a unit of the General Tire and Rubber Co., was the last company to lose broadcast TV station licenses in 1987, including Los Angeles outlet KHJ. The case was related to corporate malfeasance and not broadcast content on the stations.
The process to revoke the RKO licenses took seven years from the moment the FCC voted in favor of the move.
Dodgers closer Edwin Díaz said Monday that he’s known about the five loose bodies in his elbow — which were removed in an operation Wednesday — since he was drafted in 2012.
Last week in Colorado was the first time it affected him. He gave up three runs without recording an out on April 19. And the next day, he told the team his arm felt “weird.”
On Monday, he described the feeling as “tired and tight.”
Before his arm started giving him problems, Díaz was unavailable for four straight games because of fatigue in his knee. His legs felt “good” in Colorado, Díaz said.
Results from an MRI scan suggested that the loose bodies in his elbow were to blame for the discomfort in his arm. Díaz said he was confident the operation would resolve the problem.
“The tightness and the soreness was where the loose body was,” Díaz said. “So that’s why we ended up getting the surgery because it was in the same spot I’ve always had them.”
He’s hoping to return after the All-Star break. So, the Dodgers will have to come up with an alternate ninth-inning plan for the next two-and-a-half months.
“That sucks to miss the first half with the team,” Díaz said. “I’m new with this team. But that’s something I can’t control. Everyone here is supporting me. All of my teammates they’re supporting me, they’re happy that I’m doing way better than before. They just can’t wait to see me on the mound in the second half.
“They say, take your time, we need you in October. But I want to come back as soon as possible and help this team to win games.”
Díaz is still waiting to have his stitches removed, but he expects to start playing catch in a couple weeks.
“My arm is feeling way better than it did on Sunday,” he said. “That’s a good sign. Right now, just a couple days after surgery, I can move my arm really good. My range of motion is coming back to normal. So that’s something I like. And just get stronger and be ready for the second half.”
Kings coach D.J. Smith gave his team the day off Friday, but he sent his players home with a message: if they don’t show up for work Sunday, they’ll have the rest of the spring and summer off, too.
Players don’t like to call any game a “must-win” because of the pressure it brings, but there’s no other way to look at Sunday’s game for the Kings. After losing the first three games of their best-of-seven playoff series with the Colorado Avalanche, the Kings are one loss away from being eliminating in the first round for a fifth consecutive season.
“Must-win game,” agreed defenseman Drew Doughty, who hasn’t played on a winning team in a playoff series since the Kings last won the Stanley Cup in 2014. “Everyone’s going to give everything and we’ve got to win that one. And then hopefully go back to Denver.”
The most recent loss came Thursday when the Avs scored two fluky goals on pucks that bounced in off the skates of Kings players and put another one into an empty net in a 4-2 victory that pushed the Kings to the brink of elimination once again.
“You don’t like the result,” Smith said. “And it’s tough to swallow.”
For Colorado, the best team in the NHL during the regular season, it hasn’t been the most stylish of postseasons. But after a pair of hard-fought 2-1 wins at home, the Avs have a chance to sweep a playoff series for the first time since 2022, when they won their last Stanley Cup.
“All the games have been tight. We’re right there,” forward Quinton Byfield said. “Each guy, including myself, we just have to give a little bit more.
“We’re doing the right things, we just have to dig in a little bit more.”
It’s hard to say how. The Kings’ power play has been good, scoring a goal in each of the three games, and their penalty kill even better, shutting out the top-scoring team in the NHL on nine tries with a man advantage.
The Kings have been physical and fast and goaltender Anton Forsberg has been brilliant in his first career playoff series, making 90 saves in the three games. Yet none of that has paid off with a win.
“Sometimes you play real well for stretches and you don’t get the results. And then you’ll win a game you don’t deserve to win,” Smith said. “Maybe we didn’t stay with it long enough.”
“Those games are over with,” a frustrated Byfield added. “You can’t look back at those games. It’s just on to the next one, that’s our focus.”
Doughty said the Kings need to wear down the Avalanche, something they clearly couldn’t do in the two games played in Denver’s mile-high altitude. They might have a better chance Sunday at sea level.
“I don’t think we’re creating enough Grade A chances,” he said. “They’re statistically one of the best teams in the neutral zone. So for us to beat them, we’ve got to wear them down in the D zone, make them tired and score goals that way. We haven’t done that enough.”
Every team has its kryptonite and the for the Kings that appears to be the first round of the playoffs. Over the past dozen seasons, the team has gone 9-27 in the postseason, taking a series to a seventh game just once in six tries. Along the way they’ve changed general mangers twice, changed head coaches five times and even changed their opponents, facing the Avs this year after losing four straight series to the Edmonton Oilers.
None of that has changed the results.
Smith, in fact, is an interim coach, having taken over for Jim Hiller with 23 games left in the regular season. He figures to be coaching for his future Sunday since a playoff sweep won’t look good at his resume.
“There’s no quit in there,” Smith said of the Kings’ locker room. “We’ll get reset with practice [Saturday] and I think you’re going to see our best effort.
“Now we’ve got to make a few changes and see if we can spark something.”
If that works, the Kings will be heading back to Denver. If it doesn’t, they’ll be heading home for another long summer.
By early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a blustery, snowy night that February, the Rolling Stones’ classic early lineup took the stage for one of the first times, dazzling the audience with ferocious renditions of blues standards like Muddy Waters’ “I Want to Be Loved” and Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.”
Multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the band’s founder and leader, synchronized guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a distinctive slashing and stinging style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group’s newest member, a jazz aficionado and an accomplished percussionist, propelled the music forward with a rock-solid beat.
Anchoring the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was recruited more for his spare VOX AC30 amp that the guitarists could plug into than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved a strong and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would go on to form one of rock’s most decorated rhythm sections.
Ian Stewart’s energetic boogie-woogie piano style rounded out the sound. Months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked him out of the band for being “ugly,” although Stewart continued to record, tour and serve as the band’s road manager until his death in 1985.
This April 8, 1964, file photo shows the Rolling Stones during a rehearsal. The members, from left, are Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar.
(Associated Press)
Fronting the group was Mick Jagger. Channeling the music like a crazed shaman, Jagger shimmied and sashayed, owning the stage like few lead singers have before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd in a frenzy. Although only 30 people had made it to the gig because of the treacherous weather conditions, the hotel’s booker had seen enough: He offered the Stones a regular gig.
“The Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own… It was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising,” writes Bob Spitz in “The Rolling Stones: The Biography,” his magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”
Spitz, the author of strong biographies on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public’s consciousness for more than six decades. It’s all here: The Stones’ evolution from a blues cover band to artistic rival of the Beatles; the musical peaks — “Aftermath,” “Let It Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street” as well as misfires like “Dirty Work”; Keith’s descent into a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band; the death of the ‘60s at the ill-fated Altamont free concert; Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses; the breakups, makeups and crackups; and perhaps most important, the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards at the center of it all.
Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band’s story a deep richness and poignancy.
Take “Satisfaction,” the Stones’ 1965 classic and first U.S. chart topper. The oft-told story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed the guitar that was next to his bed, and recorded the iconic riff and the phrase “I can’t get no … satisfaction” on a cassette recorder in his Clearwater, Fla., hotel room before falling back asleep. But as Spitz notes, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That is until Stewart purchased a fuzz box for Richards a few days later, which gave the tune a raunchier sound that perfectly matched Jagger’s lyrics of frustration and alienation. A classic was born.
Piercing the Stones mythology
Spitz’s deep reporting often pierces the mythology surrounding the band. Contrary to the popular belief of many fans, for instance, Jones bears much of the responsibility for the rift with his bandmates and his tragic demise.
The most musically adventurous member of the group — he plays sitar on “Paint It Black” and dulcimer on “Lady Jane” — Jones wasn’t a songwriter. That stoked his jealousies and insecurities, along with frontman Jagger stealing the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that’s why she left him for Richards. Over time, Jones made fewer contributions in the studio and onstage, becoming a catatonic drug casualty. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969 but would have been justified doing so a couple years earlier. He drowned in his pool less than a month later.
Author Bob Spitz
(Elena Seibert)
Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized the making of “Exile on Main Street” in the stifling, dingy basement of Richards’ rented Villa Nellcôte in the South of France, where the Stones had decamped to avoid British taxes. In this telling, Richards, deep in the throes of heroin addiction, somehow managed to come up with one indelible riff after another built around his signature open G tuning — taught to him by Ry Cooder — leading the band to create one of the best albums in rock history. That’s not entirely accurate, according to Spitz.
Yes, Richards came up with the licks for “Rocks Off,” “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice.” But it’s equally true that a strung-out Richards missed myriad recording sessions, invited dealers, hangers-on and other distractions to Nellcôte, and repeatedly failed to turn up to write with Jagger. Far from completing the album in the druggy haze of a French basement, the band spent six months on overdubs at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger contributed many of his vocals.
Beatles vs. Stones
One of the more interesting themes Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and Stones, with the Fab Four mostly overshadowing them — until they didn’t.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “I Wanna Be Your Man” and gave it to the Stones, whose 1963 rendition, with Jones on slide guitar, became the group’s first UK Top 20 hit. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin penning their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles came to the U.S. for the first time, making television history with their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and playing Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones kicked off their inaugural American tour at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. In 1967, the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” a psychedelic masterpiece. The Stones responded with “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” a psychedelic mess.
The Rolling Stones: The Biography cover
As the Beatles began to splinter, Spitz writes, the Stones sharpened their focus. The band released “Beggars Banquet” in late 1968 and “Let It Bleed” the following year, albums every bit as innovative and visionary as “The White Album” and “Abbey Road.” For the first time, the two groups stood as equals.
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the Stones kept rolling. With Jones replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor — whose fluid, melodic style served as a tasty foil to Richards — they produced what many consider their finest works, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.” More impressively, the band, with Taylor’s successor, Ronnie Wood, has continued to dazzle audiences with incendiary live shows, touring as recently as 2024 behind the late-career triumph “Hackney Diamonds.” The Beatles, by contrast, retired from the road in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.
Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.
Like most of the band’s biographers, Spitz gives short shrift to the post-“Exile” period after 1972. He curtly dismisses 2005’s strong “A Bigger Bang” and 2016’s “Blue & Lonesome,” a back-to-basics album of blues covers, as “adequate endeavors that signaled a band living on borrowed time.” That critique is both off target and under-developed. Spitz ignores the band’s legendary live album, “Brussels Affair,” recorded in 1973, or why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.
These are small quibbles. Spitz has written a book worthy of its 704-page length; another 50 or so pages covering the later years would have made it even stronger. To quote the Rolling Stones: “I know it’s only rock ‘n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do.”
Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.
DENVER — What do you know? The once-stampeding Dodgers have been caged by the Colorado Rockies.
With a 9-6 loss Sunday at Coors Field, the two-time defending World Series champions lost back-to-back games for the first time this season. The Dodgers again couldn’t hold a lead, letting the Rockies tee off for 15 hits.
Nor could the Dodgers keep up offensively at the hitter-friendly park — though they put some pressure on in the ninth inning, when Shohei Ohtani led off with a ground-rule double and the Dodgers scored twice to cut the lead to three runs. Then the new guy, Ryan Ward, made the final out in his big league debut, robbed of a hit and a chance to keep chipping away by a diving Troy Johnston in right field.
Before that, the Rockies — who beat the Dodgers twice in 13 meetings all of last season — chased starter Roki Sasaki from the game in the fifth inning and then ruffled the Dodgers’ relievers. That included closer Edwin Díaz, who came on in the eighth and promptly gave up three singles, a walk and two runs before being pulled with the Dodgers trailing 8-4.
Dodgers starting pitcher Roki Sasaki gave up three runs on seven hits in 4-2/3 innings Sunday against the Rockies in Denver.
(David Zalubowski / Associated Press)
He and Blake Treinen combined to face eight batters without getting an out.
“They both weren’t sharp,” said manager Dave Roberts, who had theories but not many answers — though he did have real concern, especially about Díaz, who recently had his right knee checked out by the medical staff.
Roberts said the closer wanted to pitch after nine days off, even though it wasn’t a save situation. But his velocity was slightly down (95.4 mph vs. 95.8) and so, “today was a tough evaluation,” the manager said.
“It really was,” Roberts said. “Because, you know, I know what it’s supposed to look like, and when it doesn’t look like that, it gets a little concerning, really.”
And losing for the second time to the Rockies, who are now 9-13? Being in danger of losing their four-game series, after arriving in Denver without having lost to a National League opponent, against a club that hasn’t made the postseason since 2018?
It’s well below the bar the Dodgers have set, and it added a bitter note to Ward’s otherwise sweet debut.
Ward punched a big league clock for the first time wearing No. 67 and cranked his first hit off Rockies starter Michael Lorenzen in the fourth inning, lining a changeup to right field for a single that scored Andy Pages, made it 3-0 and got the 20-some members of Ward’s party up, jumping in place, hugging and high-fiving.
“When I was on first base, I got to see them all jumping around up there,” Ward said. “That was a pretty special moment.”
He also singled in the sixth and swung on the first pitch in his first at-bat, a fly out in the third inning.
The Dodgers gave Sasaki a 2-0 lead in the third. Alex Freeland drove in Hyeseong Kim, and Shohei Ohtani doubled in Freeland — and extended his career-best on-base streak to 51 games, moving past Willie Keeler into third place in Dodgers history.
Sasaki went 4-2/3 innings, threw 78 pitches and gave up three runs on seven hits, striking out two and walking two. His ERA after his fourth start: 6.11, worst in the six-man rotation.
The Dodgers fell behind 6-4 in the seventh when Treinen — who was cleared Friday after he was struck in the head by a batted ball during batting practice — gave up four consecutive hits, including a two-run home run by Mickey Moniak.
The result likely will be a minor detail when Ward tells the story years from now about getting the call after first baseman Freddie Freeman was placed on the paternity list.
The Dodgers’ No. 19 prospect and reigning Pacific Coast League MVP spent the last seven years in the minors. Last season, he hit 36 home runs and drove in 122 runs with a .937 on-base-plus-slugging percentage for triple-A Oklahoma City, and he has a 1.020 OPS and four homers this year.
Ward made it a point to improve his chase rate, draw more walks and get on base more frequently, everything the Dodgers asked of him. He also passed the broadest patience test.
“The plate discipline, being a better hitter … he’s done all that,” Roberts said. “He’s improved his defense. But honestly, for me, just not to let his lack of opportunity in the big leagues deter him. That’s easy when you get frustrated and let it affect performance, and he hasn’t done that.”
If anything, Ward said, the waiting made him better.
“I used it to keep going. ‘OK, if I’m not there yet, what do I have to do to get there?’” he said. “‘What part of my game do I need to work on to keep getting better?’
“I used it as fire to keep working.”
That will be the Dodgers’ assignment too.
In the finale of the four-game series Monday, the Dodgers are expected to start left-hander Justin Wrobleski (2-0, 2.12) against Colorado left-hander Jose Quintana (0-1, 5.63).
Anyone who thinks Coachella’s biggest surprises are reserved for Weekend 1 was proven wrong Friday night as Sabrina Carpenter welcomed Madonna on stage during her Weekend 2 headlining set. The crowd exploded with waves of cheers as the iconic pop star came on stage.
Madge joined Carpenter as a surprise guest during “Juno,” in which Carpenter reemerged in a gown that was a nod to Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” for a torch-passing duet of Madonna’s 1990 pop-house gauntlet “Vogue.”
The classic was followed by the debut of the gloriously upbeat “I Feel Free,” the first track from the pop icon’s forthcoming new album “Confessions II,” due out July 3.
The singer announced the record, a sequel to 2005’s “Confessions On A Dancefloor,” on April 15, alongside a 60-second teaser video for “I Feel Free.”
The Coachella performance, however, marks the first time the song has been heard in full — a fitting full circle moment 20 after Madonna played the Sahara Tent in 2006, complete with the same boots and costuming from that gig. “Confessions II” will be Madonna’s first full-length album since 2019’s “Madame X.”
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“Let’s try to be together. Let’s try to avoid disagreements,” Madonna said as she spoke about the moon and planets aligning.
Before the pair ended with “Like a Prayer,” accompanied by a choir, Madonna had another reason to be grateful.
“This is probably the first time I’ve ever performed with someone shorter than me,” Madonna said to Carpenter as the crowd laughed. “Thank you for giving me that experience.”
Senior Audience Editor Vanessa Franko contributed to this report.
The Kings looked nothing like a playoff team heading into the NHL’s trade deadline. They had lost six of their last eight games, had just fired their coach and had saw their second-leading scorer go down with a broken leg in the Olympic tournament.
They were backing away from the playoffs, not heading toward them. So general manager Ken Holland did the prudent thing and largely stood pat, trading a couple of veterans for draft picks and making only a pair of minor acquisitions.
Turns out he wasn’t waving a white flag but rather a green one because the Kings hit the gas after that, gathering points in 16 of their final 20 games, finishing the regular season as one of the hottest teams in the NHL. That earned them a fifth straight trip to the playoffs and a first-round meeting with the Colorado Avalanche, the league’s winningest team, beginning Sunday in Denver.
The Ducks, meanwhile, advanced to the postseason for the first time since 2018 but they stumbled in, losing eight of their last 10 and blowing a five-point lead in the Pacific Division and the home-ice advantage that went with it over the final three weeks. The Ducks, the third-place team in the Pacific Division, will start on the road in Edmonton on Monday.
Kings interim coach D.J. Smith during a game in March in Boston.
(Charles Krupa / Associated Press)
“It’s been a climb. Probably didn’t look very good a while ago,” said Kings interim coach D.J. Smith, who could lose the interim part of that title after going 11-6-6 after replacing Jim Hiller behind the bench with 23 games to play. “It’s a credit to the guys, the leadership. They played playoff hockey for a while now. And it’s allowed us this opportunity.”
Actually, crediting the Kings with playing playoff hockey isn’t necessarily a compliment since the team hasn’t won a postseason series since hoisting the Stanley Cup in 2014. But it’s been more than a decade since the Kings have entered the playoffs carrying this kind of momentum and they have a few people to thank for that.
Anton Forsberg has been key for the Kings down the stretch.
(Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
Journeyman goaltender Anton Forsberg, who spent most of his first season in Los Angeles backing up Darcy Kuemper, won five straight starts in April to key the Kings’ fast finish. Russian winger Artemi Panarin, acquired from the New York Rangers just before the Olympic break and a month before the trade deadline, contributed nine goals and 18 assists in 26 games, helping make up for the loss of forwards Kevin Fiala and Andrei Kuzmenko to injuries. And Quinton Byfield scored 10 times in his final 13 games to set a career high with 24 goals.
“Since the break I feel like we’ve really come together as a group,” Byfield said.
The team displayed uncommon grit as well, going to overtime an NHL-record 33 times. (They lost 20 of those games; if they have gotten the second point in just a third of those, they would have won the division.)
And finally, the Kings were also fueled by a desire to give captain Anze Kopitar one more chance at a title. Kopitar, who announced in September that this season would be his last, gave an emotional good-bye speech to the fans after the final regular-season home game. His teammates were determined to give him an encore in the playoffs.
“That had a lot to do with it,” Smith said. “Guys were playing for him. He gets one more chance to play at home.
“We found a way.”
Kopitar, however, credited his coach for the team’s fast finish.
“Once Smithy came in, he just changed the energy a little bit and we’re trying to be a little more aggressive versus sitting back,” said Kopitar, the Kings’ all-time leader in games, points and assists.
Cutter Gauthier is the first Duck to score 40 goals in a season since Corey Perry in 2013-14.
(Melissa Majchrzak / Associated Press)
For the Ducks, they’re not only returning to the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons — only the Detroit Red Wings have a longer active postseason drought — but they also posted a winning record for the first time since 2018.
Troy Terry, who played two games as a rookie that season, is the only Duck remaining from that team.
“This year has just felt different from the start,” he said. “It was less question marks about the potential of the team. We knew what we could be.”
Which isn’t to say it’s been easy. The team had two seven-game winning streaks but also weathered losing streaks of nine and six games.
“We had a couple of roller coasters there, starting and then slowing down and getting back on it,” said coach Joel Quenneville, who has taken five teams to the NHL playoffs, winning three Stanley Cups in Chicago.
The Ducks’ 273 goals this season are the most in franchise history but the 288 they allowed is third-worst all time, leaving the team with the second-highest goal differential of any playoff team. (Only the Kings are worse at -22.)
Speaking of history, winger Cutter Gauthier, with 18 goals in the final 23 games, is the first Duck to score 40 goals in a season since Corey Perry in 2013-14. At 22, he’s also the second-youngest to get there, trailing only Paul Kariya.
Last fall, “Dr. Pimple Popper” suddenly became a patient herself.
Dr. Sandra Lee, the reality TV dermatologist and surgeon known for tackling ick-inducing skin situations on camera, had a bad day a week before Thanksgiving 2025 while she was taping new episodes of her show at her Upland office.
“I had what I thought was a hot flash. I got super sweaty and didn’t feel like myself,” she told People in an interview published Tuesday. She said she finished the shoot and then headed to her parents’ nearby home, where that evening she experienced shooting pains in one leg and later had trouble navigating down a flight of stairs in the middle of the night.
When she awakened the next day, she said, her left side wasn’t working properly and she was having trouble speaking clearly. It was definitely more than a hot flash.
Her doctor dad — also a dermatologist — told her to get herself to an ER, where she had an MRI that showed evidence of an ischemic stroke, where a vessel supplying blood to the brain gets obstructed. The diagnosis was a shock.
“As a physician I couldn’t deny that I had slurred speech, that I was having weakness on one side,” she said, “but I was like, ‘Well, this is a dream, right?’”
Lee, 55, said unmanaged cholesterol levels and high blood pressure were likely contributors to the stroke, plus the stress of balancing her real-life practice with the demands of “Dr. Pimple Popper.” She returned to production in January, she said, though she was more than a little freaked out.
“I don’t like that I don’t have total control of my left hand or the grip wasn’t as strong. If I feel like I’m not at my best — it’s very scary,” Lee said.
Her neurologist told the outlet that Lee’s symptoms are pretty much gone. Lee said she still notices slight differences when she speaks.
The TV doc is on blood thinners now and is still doing some physical therapy after spending two months post-stroke working through PT and occupational therapy. Lee had to make sure her left hand, among other body parts, was functional and that her balance and movement bounced back.
She does, after all, do precise procedures on camera for the Lifetime audience.
“People watch the videos over and over again because it helps them go to sleep at night,” she told People. But, she added, “Others watch it like it’s a scary movie or a roller coaster.”
