greek theatre

Tom Jones has postponed two California concerts after coming down with a “bad case of the flu.”

Hours before he was expected to take the stage on Monday at the Greek Theatre, the Welsh crooner announced on Instagram that he was rescheduling his L.A. and San Diego concerts on doctor’s orders.

“I’ve had a great time these last few weeks, completing 20 shows and singing for wonderful audiences across the USA, but unexpectedly I’ve been hit with a bad case of the flu,” Jones wrote. “Following doctor’s advice, I unfortunately have to reschedule tonight’s show in Los Angeles and tomorrow’s show in San Diego.”

Monday’s Greek Theatre show will now happen on Nov. 4. His show at the Rady Shell at Jacobs Park has been postponed until Nov. 3.

According to the Instagram statement, all tickets for the original shows will be honored for the new dates. Those who are unable to attend the rescheduled concerts are advised to request a refund through the original point of purchase.

The 86-year-old “It’s Not Unusual” singer is on the tail end of his “Come Gather Round Tour.” His San Francisco show on Nov. 1 was expected to be the finale, but the tour will now wrap in L.A. Jones is scheduled to perform next at Yaamava’ Theater on Thursday.

“I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience caused,” Jones said. “I look forward to seeing you all soon.”

National treasure and musical icon “Weird Al” Yankovic may have once titled an album “Straight Outta Lynwood” to pay homage to the Los Angeles suburb where he was raised, but he’s lived in the same Hollywood Hills home since 2001, the year he married his wife Suzanne.

Though he says the two are “homebodies,” they do enjoy getting out and exploring L.A. When he was bored during the pandemic, Yankovic made it his mission to find the city’s best culinary offerings for categories like doughnuts and chocolate chip cookies. What else would you expect from the guy who made “Eat It”?

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

Yankovic gets most of his food recommendations by either word of mouth or scrolling Instagram reels. “I’ll see something that looks delicious and I’ll go, ‘Oh, where’s that?’” he says. “Sometimes it’s in Tokyo, but if it’s in L.A., I’ll make a note and maybe check it out sometime.”

When Yankovic spoke to us, he was wrapping up his Bigger & Weirder tour, which spanned two years and included 165 concerts. His last appearance of the year takes place on Halloween at the Greek Theatre. The one-time event will feature a showing of “UHF,” the 1989 cult classic film that he co-wrote and starred in, along with a live orchestral performance of its score conducted by John Du Prez, a Q&A session and surprise guests.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

8 a.m.: Planning ahead for breakfast

I wake up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across my head. Then I find my way to the kitchen for a little breakfast.

My favorite breakfast treat is Courage Bagels. I wouldn’t actually go to Courage Bagels on a Sunday morning, so the standard protocol is every six to eight weeks I drive out there and just get a big bag full of assorted loosies, as we call them. Then I immediately go home and slice them in half and wrap them in cling wrap and put them in an airtight Ziploc baggie and throw them in the freezer.

Then whenever I want one, I just take it out, I sprinkle a little water on it, toast it, cover it with Violife vegan cream cheese, a little slice of tomato, a little onion, some fresh ground pepper, some Maldon salt, a little Graza drizzle and maybe a little lemon twist.

A lot of New Yorkers might say, ‘Oh, that’s not a real bagel’ — because it’s not a real New York bagel, they call it a Montreal-style bagel — but it’s what I like.

10 a.m.: Sunday service

I go to church. I don’t manage to go to church when I’m on the road, but when I’m at home, I do.

Noon: Old and newer favorites

After church, since I’m already out and about, I pick up a little lunch to go. If I’m in the mood for Indian, I’d probably go with Curry Kingdom on Santa Monica. It’s a really small hole-in-the-wall place with great food.

If I want Thai, I’d probably do Toi on Sunset, which is one of my old standbys. I’ve been going there for decades. I love the food. I love the funky rock ‘n’ roll vibe. We probably eat in more than we take out there. If I’m dining with the family, we try to get the low table in the back where you can sit on the floor. You’re not allowed to take off your shoes, they make that very clear.

1 p.m.: Members only

There’s honestly nothing better than a Sunday afternoon nap, so that would be a big attraction for me. But if there’s something cool playing at the Directors Guild or the Writers Guild, my wife and I love doing that. The DGA is maybe the best place in L.A. to actually watch a movie. I’ve had both of the movies that I’ve done in my life screened at the DGA and I’ve never seen them look better or sound better.

I am a member of the Directors Guild and the Writers Guild. I pay my dues, so I want to take advantage of that and see as many movies there as possible. And honestly, my wife and I will go there even if it’s a bad movie because we’re just entertained by seeing the illusion of motion created by a rapidly projected series of still images.

3 p.m.: All who wander

We might do a little of what we call tumbleweeding. That’s what we call rolling around town with no set destination in mind, just going wherever the wind blows us. We just get in the car and see where we wind up.

A lot of times we’ll wind up in Silver Lake or Little Tokyo. We love to stop there and grab a little mochi candy or matcha ice cream to keep us awake.

6 p.m.: Pizza or Postmates

By that point, we’re probably ready for dinner. I hesitate to plug them because it’s already virtually impossible to get reservations there, but Pizzeria Sei has absolutely the best pizza you can get west of New York City. Their Special Margherita’s my go-to. It’s Neopolitan-style with a bit of Japanese flair. My wife and I always comment after dinner that you can eat there until you’re absolutely stuffed and you never feel gross afterwards.

But again, reservations are hard to come by, so another good option is our favorite Mexican food place, which is the Gardens of Taxco. It was off of Santa Monica Boulevard for forever. Sadly it closed down a few years ago, but you can still order their food from Postmates. The only difference is now Jaime won’t be serenading you with “Bésame Mucho” while you’re eating your quesadilla.

8 p.m.: Choose your own post-dinner adventure

My wife and I just love staying home. We celebrate whenever plans get canceled, that kind of thing. So if we’re staying at home, sometimes we’ll just grab a blanket and go into the den and get cozy on the couch and binge something on our big TV. I’ve seen a lot of shows on the road and my wife will get jealous that I watched without her, so I’ll watch the whole series again at home with her.

If we feel more energetic, because I’m not really a gym guy, I do like to walk. My wife and I are trying to stay healthy together. We never really feel like exercising, but we force ourselves, so we will drive to Beverly Hills and do the walking path along Santa Monica Boulevard, which is quite lovely. It goes through a cactus garden. It’s also fun to FaceTime our daughter while we’re walking. She’s living on the Lower East Side in New York, but we talk to her pretty much every day, and that’s a nice time to touch base with her.

We’ll walk for a couple hours, and if we’re in the mood for a drink or a treat, we’ll head across the street to heytea or Go Greek. Go Greek is a big favorite of ours, and it’s crazy busy in the evenings, but it’s definitely worth waiting for.

And if we’re feeling social, something we absolutely love is doing a ding dong. Maybe that only makes sense to a small handful of people, but it’s basically a musical dinner party, and the one that we go to is full of really cool and talented people like Eric Idle, Peter Asher, Mike Geier (who’s Puddle’s Pity Party, who I’m touring with currently), and a bunch of other amazingly talented musicians. We all just bring our instruments and have a potluck dinner, and then we’ll just sit around in someone’s living room singing old Beatles songs all night long. It’s the absolute best. It’s one of those things I can’t believe I get to do.

Late night: Rock ‘n’ roll hours

Right now, I’m sort of on my rock ‘n’ roll schedule, I tend to stay up pretty late at night anyway, and my wife has got a more normal schedule. If we can go to bed at the same time, that’s great, but if not, my wife will head to the bedroom and I’ll stay in the den with my headphones on and I’ll play video games until the wee morning hours. When I finally get tired of shooting people in the face, then I’ll snuggle in next to her and fall asleep.

Halfway through her very sold-out concert Tuesday night at the Greek Theatre, Ella Langley pulled up a stool near the front of the stage and told us she wanted to “be kind of normal for a second, if that’s all right witcha.”

Life has been pretty un-normal lately for the 27-year-old country singer from small-town Alabama, whose smash “Choosin’ Texas” set a new record last month for the longest stay of all time atop Billboard’s Hot 100. The chart achievement only bolstered talk that Langley is due to clean up when Grammy Award nominations are announced next month — welcome chatter, no doubt, for a striver who grew up, as she said at the Greek, determined to get exactly where she’s gotten.

Yet Langley’s success has brought with it some darkness, including accusations from armchair experts on social media that “Choosin’ Texas” — a monster hit that people keep saying they’ve never heard — owes its impressive stats to an act of record-biz chicanery. More ominously, Langley called off a concert in Oklahoma last week due to what she called a “serious security threat.”

Then former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem got involved in Langley’s business when she tried in a tweet to pit the singer against Kacey Musgraves after Musgraves hosted the Senate hopeful James Talarico at a show in Dallas. (Langley, who’s been circumspect about voicing her political opinions, appeared to un-tag herself from Noem’s post, which is objectively hilarious.)

So you could empathize with Langley — empathize more than with other country singers longing for the good ol’ days — as she straightened up on that stool to do “Somethin’ Simple,” a winsome ditty from this year’s double-platinum “Dandelion” LP. “While I’m living the dream,” she sang, “all I’m dreaming about is slowing down just a little.”

This acoustic section of Tuesday’s gig, the first of two at the Greek, was by far the best part of the night; Langley also brought out her two openers for a pair of stripped-down duets in “Dreams,” the deathless Fleetwood Mac classic, which she sang with Laci Kaye Booth, and “Strangers,” her soulful power ballad with Kameron Marlowe, who gladly disregarded that unspoken rule about not showing up the headliner who hired you.

Loose, chatty, surrounded by friends and bandmates, Langley here was just a musician playing music; I can’t say whether she attained the normalcy she said she was looking for, though I’d buy that this is more or less what she gets up to on the back porch she sings about missing in “Somethin’ Simple.”

The problem with the rest of the concert — the parts with the lights and the videos and the goofy stage business involving a guy with a keytar and a cigarette — was that it demanded a level of star power that Langley simply doesn’t possess (or anyway isn’t interested in deploying).

On record, she summons a coolly detached quality that plays intriguingly against arrangements lush with romantic pedal steel; there’s something hard to pin down about the emotion of tunes like “Be Her” and “Choosin’ Texas,” in which the narrator sounds almost alienated from her own heartbreak.

If somebody wants to make a case that Langley’s beautifully dead-eyed love songs represent the purest embodiment of Gen Z’s post-pandemic social dysfunction — well, I’m all ears. (Great look too: very Linda Ronstadt meets Stevie Nicks.)

But onstage the lack of affect just felt flat, not least when she’d dole out the kind of canned banter between songs that would make anyone resent the mechanics of stardom. The performance posed an interesting question: How much (or how little) charisma is required to support a branding infrastructure as robust as Langley’s? At the Greek there were ads for her jeans and her sunglasses and her energy drink, and there were more merch stands than I’ve ever seen at the venue. Every one of them was jammed.