hall

More than a year after California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced indictments against 30 probation officers accused of coordinating or allowing so-called “gladiator fights” between youths inside L.A. County juvenile halls, almost half of the criminal cases are falling apart.

In recent weeks, state prosecutors dismissed charges against at least 10 of the 30 officers from the initial indictment, according to court documents and interviews with defense attorneys. An additional four officers entered into plea deals Tuesday that will end with their cases dropped after completing community service.

Attorneys for the officers and probation union officials said the prosecutions were an overreaction to a video — first published by The Times in 2024 — that showed officers standing by as several youths pummeled a fellow inmate at Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey.

“I believe the case was a reactionary case that was overcharged,” said attorney Adam Koppekin, who represents an officer whose case was dismissed. “They swept in a bunch of truly innocent probation officers who were following directives and doing their jobs.”

Two officers at the center of the Los Padrinos fight video — identified in court filings as Taneha Brooks and Shawn Smyles — remain charged with multiple counts of child abuse and conspiracy to commit willful cruelty against children. In the security video, the two officers can be seen laughing and shaking hands with the assailants. The 17-year-old who was attacked in the video suffered a broken nose and a concussion, according to a summary of his grand jury testimony contained in a motion filed in the case.

Brooks has repeatedly declined to speak to Times reporters. She showed up in court Tuesday in support of the other officers. E-mails to her attorney and a lawyer representing Smyles were not immediately returned.

Taneha Brooks, an L.A. County probation officer listed as the top defendant in the “Gladiator Fight” case, leaves the Clara Foltzridge Criminal Justice Center on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 in Los Angeles, CA. Brooks has been accused of orchestrating and allowing many of the fights between juveniles in L.A. County detention centers that sparked the California Department of Justice’s investigation. Her case will be heard in May.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Bonta said when announcing charges last year that his office had identified 69 other fight incidents involving nearly 150 youths between the ages of 12 and 18. The 30 officers were indicted on 71 counts of conspiracy, battery and child abuse.

But many of those other fights were different from the 2023 video in that they lasted only seconds, involved minimal injuries and ended after probation officers intervened, according to defense motions and video reviewed by The Times.

The Times confirmed that state prosecutors dismissed charges against 10 officers in recent weeks through interviews with attorneys and two law enforcement sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Court documents reviewed by The Times showed that some of the cases were dismissed “in the interest of justice” after motions filed by the state attorney general’s office. Records of those officers’ arrests were then ordered sealed, the documents show.

In a statement Tuesday, the attorney general’s office said it adjusts its treatment of defendants “based on our continued consideration of all evidence developed before, during and after criminal charges were initiated.”

“Some defendants were appropriately dismissed from the case based on the law as applied to their factual circumstances,” the statement said.

Amid the dismissals and plea deals, Bonta’s critics questioned his fitness to take over the probation department to enforce needed reforms, a move the attorney general has been seeking court permission to make since last year.

“What we are seeing raises real questions about a rush to judgment, one that has already had the effect of maligning an entire profession without the facts being fully vetted,” Curtis Chambers, president of the union that represents rank-and-file probation officers, said in a statement. “When cases begin to fall apart after being advanced so publicly, it is fair to ask whether the process itself was flawed from the outset.”

Motions to dismiss charges in the case paint some of the officers as rookies deferring to their superiors. Defense attorneys for others questioned why state prosecutors charged officers who failed to intervene in fights that were in effect over before they began.

The Times reviewed video of one incident that showed a fistfight between two youths that lasted 20 seconds. In the brief dust-up, the teens throw a series of wild hooks at each other with few of the punches actually making contact. The officer charged in that incident briefly paused before joining a crowd of other officers who pulled the two apart. That officer, whose case has since been dismissed, was charged with two counts of willful cruelty to a child.

The indictments — along with a civil lawsuit and grand jury testimony referenced in motions to dismiss the charges — portray Brooks and Smyles as the main drivers of the fights.

They told other officers who were present, all of them rookies in the juvenile halls, “not to say anything, write down anything, and just watch when youth fights occurred,” according to the charges.

One juvenile told grand jurors he was “incentivized to fight” by Brooks and claimed both officers “rewarded him for fighting by giving him extra snacks,” according to a motion to dismiss filed on behalf of one officer.

According to the court filing, the juvenile told the grand jury that Brooks awarded special jobs to kids she favored.

“He testified Ms. Brooks would pick the ‘KP’ or kitchen patrol person based upon that person’s fighting prowess,” the motion said.

A Times investigation last year found the practice of probation officers rewarding teens who beat up other youths in custody was a problem that predated the “Gladiator Fight” scandal, with one attorney calling it an “open secret.”

Jonathan Evans, who represents Officer Isaiah Goodie, said his client was specifically told by Brooks and Smyles not to break up fights.

“They were seeing that these kids from different neighborhoods were going to fight anyway and they were finding a way to get it out of their system,” Evans said of the senior officers’ training of his client.

Two law enforcement officials told The Times that Brooks and Smyles had been investigated for allowing fights to happen years earlier while assigned to Central Juvenile Hall. It was unclear what, if any, discipline they faced.

One of the cases that will be dismissed after a plea agreement involved a high-ranking officer, 54-year-old Ramses Patron. He was charged with child abuse for failing to stop a fight that lasted less than 10 seconds, according to a motion to dismiss. His attorney, Tom Yu, argued that the state had wrongly accused many officers of planning fights that either occurred spontaneously or were arranged by Brooks and Smyles.

Patron must serve 40 hours of community service and then his case will be dismissed. Yu said his client has served the Probation Department for 30 years with a “spotless record” and the indictment upended his life.

“There’s no words to describe what my client and his family went through,” Yu said.

Indicted probation officer Ramses Patron, center, stands with his attorney Tom Yu, right, pleading no contest in the “Gladiator Fights” case.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

Advocates for the officers whose cases were dismissed said they had suffered serious harm to their finances and reputations, with each placed on leave without pay for more than a year.

“County employees are entitled to due process. To the extent that charges are reduced or dismissed, employees may have the right to seek reinstatement or back pay,” said Vicky Waters, communications director for the Probation Department.

Several defense attorneys credited the state prosecutors for scrutinizing the charges more thoroughly and ultimately deciding that some of the cases did not pass the smell test.

“Everybody would love an apology letter,” said defense attorney Bart Kasperowicz. “They did this giant witch hunt sweep and effectively changed the lives of 30 people and all the people that depend on them.”

PHOENIX — Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne, Chamique Holdsclaw and the 1996 U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later this year.

Parker, Holdsclaw and members of the 1996 Olympic team were all in attendance Friday at halftime of the UConn-South Carolina game during the women’s NCAA Final Four, where the selections were announced, as was Amar’e Stoudemire and Mike D’Antoni.

They will be joined by longtime NBA official Joey Crawford, NBA coach Doc Rivers and Gonzaga coach Mark Few in the Hall of Fame.

Parker won three titles in the WNBA with three different teams: Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas. She is the only player in league history to win both the MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season.

She also won two titles while playing in college for Tennessee under Hall of Fame coach Pat Summitt, plus two Olympic gold medals and two WNBA MVP awards.

Delle Donne won two league MVP awards in 2015 and 2019, the second of which came when she led the Washington Mystics to their lone WNBA championship. Delle Donne became the first player in league history to shoot more than 50% from the field, 40% from three-point range and 90% from the free-throw line.

Holdsclaw won three straight titles at Tennessee from 1996-98, the first team to accomplish that. The 1998 championship was Tennessee’s first undefeated season at 39–0 and the Vols also set an NCAA record for the most wins in a season. Holdsclaw went on to have an 11-year WNBA career.

Stoudemire, who was the only NBA player in this year’s class, was Rookie of the Year in 2003 and became six-time All-Star. He spent the first eight years of his career with the Phoenix Suns, where he teamed with D’Antoni.

Rivers has nearly 1,200 victories on his resume, which puts him eighth on the all-time wins list. He led the Boston Celtics to the NBA championship in 2008 and also was in charge of the Los Angeles Clippers during their Lob City era.

Few has won more than 770 games at Gonzaga in his career at the school. He set the NCAA Division I men’s coaching record by winning 81 games in his first three years at the school.

Crawford officiated 2,561 regular-season NBA games and 50 Finals games over his 39-year career. He retired in 2016.

The enshrinement ceremony will take place in August at the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

April 1 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1826, Samuel Morey was granted a patent on the internal combustion engine.

In 1891, the Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago by William Wrigley, Jr., originally selling goods such as soap and baking powder. A year later Wrigley would start packaging packets of gum with each tin of baking powder. The rest is history.

In 1918, toward the end of World War I, the British founded the Royal Air Force. Two months later it began bombing industrial targets in Germany from bases in France.

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI

In 1924, Adolf Hitler was sent to prison for five years after failing to take over Germany by force in the unsuccessful “Beer Hall Putsch.”

In 1945, U.S. forces swarmed ashore on the Japanese island of Okinawa to begin what would be one of the longest battles of World War II.

In 1946, a massive earthquake near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands created a tsunami that raced south across the Pacific Ocean, slamming into the Hawaiian Islands causing widespread destruction. The two events resulted in more than 165 casualties across three states.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon signed legislation calling for mandatory health warnings on tobacco product packaging and banning cigarette ads on TV and radio, effective January 1, 1971.

In 1976, Apple Inc. was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

UPI File Photo

In 1979, the overthrow of the shah becomes official as Iran votes to become an Islamic republic.

In 1984, Marvin Gaye, whose rhythm and blues hits over nearly 25 years included “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” and “Sexual Healing,” was shot and killed by his preacher father.

In 1992, U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced a $24 billion aid package for the former Soviet republics.

In 1996, an outbreak of “mad cow” disease forced Britain to plan the mass slaughter of cows.

In 1999, Canada created a new territory, Nunavut, as a means of providing autonomy for the Inuit people.

In 2003, U.S. Marines rescued Pfc. Jessica Lynch, 19, who had been held prisoner in Iraq since an ambush on March 23.

In 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel peace laureate and voice of the political opposition in Myanmar, won a seat in Parliament less than two years after being freed from nearly two decades of house arrest.

In 2019, Japan announced the name of its new imperial era would be “Reiwa,” when Crown Prince Naruhito becomes emperor, which would happen one month later.

In 2024, an Israeli strike in central Gaza killed seven aid workers with U.S. non-profit World Central Kitchen.

File Photo by Ismael Mohamad/UPI

NELLY Furtado has silenced body shamers in a curve-hugging strapless red gown, as she was honored with a Hall of Fame award.

The iconic singer, 47, has faced cruel comments about her figure since her return to the spotlight, but defied the haters to accept the coveted achievement.

Nelly looked stunning in her dress, as she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame at the 2026 Juno Awards.

The stunning star oozed sex appeal in the incredible dress as she collected her gong.

The Grammy Award winning artist wore her brown locks tied back, and she accessorised with huge earrings.

Nelly beamed and threw her arms in the air as she walked on stage to be inducted into her native country’s Hall of Fame.

Addressing the audience, the thrilled star said: “Honestly, I’m just really proud to be Canadian. I live in Canada.

“I make my music in Canada.

“I work with Canadian musicians, songwriters, producers because I totally believe in the Canadian dream.

“Please believe it, too.”

It comes after Nelly revealed how she was retiring from performing, after 25 years in the spotlight.

Taking to Instagram last October, the Grammy winner made an emotional post expressing gratitude for her career but that she felt it was time for a change.

Addressing fans, Nelly said: “I have decided to step away from performance for the foreseeable future and pursue some other creative and personal endeavours that I feel would better suit this next phase of my life.

“I have enjoyed my career immensely, and I still love writing music as I have always seen it as a hobby I was lucky enough to make into a career.

“I’ll identify as a songwriter forever.”

Nelly shot to fame in 2000 with her debut album Whoa, Nelly!.

The record was a huge success and spawned the single I’m Like A Bird which went was played on radio stations around the world.

The star is also well known for her song Promiscuous as well as her collaboration with singer James Morrison on Broken Strings.

Another huge hit for Nelly was her chart topping song Maneater.

VAN NUYS — It was a showdown between quake-weary homeowners and the insurance companies they are still battling six months later.

More than 300 people turned out for the confrontation Wednesday night, filling an auditorium at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys for a hearing presided over by state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the Senate insurance committee and the Democratic nominee for insurance commissioner in the November election.

Besides disgruntled victims of the Northridge quake, the speakers included representatives of State Farm, the state’s largest carrier with 20% of the homeowners market, and No. 3 Farmers Insurance Group.

Nettie Hoge, head of consumer services for the California Department of Insurance, also participated in the often heated town hall meeting that Torres conducted as an official hearing of the insurance committee.

Hoge told the crowd that state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi had persuaded Woodland Hills-based 20th Century Insurance Co. to restore homeowners coverage to about 14 of its customers whose policies the company recently canceled.

20th Century received so many quake claims that the state insurance department granted the company special permission to get out of the homeowners coverage business. One of the conditions, however, was that the company offer its customers two more annual renewals. Some of its policyholders have complained recently that the company was seizing on technical excuses to refuse immediately to renew their policies.

Many people in the audience brandished signs such as “Boycott 20th Century” and “20th Century, What Did You Do With Our Premiums?”

Torres said 20th Century was invited to send a speaker to the meeting, but declined. However, when Torres asked if anyone from 20th Century was in the audience, two people raised their hands. Rick Dinon, a senior vice president, said the executives were there because they hoped to “correct some misinterpretations of the company’s actions, motives and finances.”

“It hurts,” Dinon said of the homemade signs criticizing the company. “We hope we have the respect of our customers and we most assuredly respect them.

“It hurts a lot to be placed in an adversarial relationship with our customers. It is disappointing we can’t continue to offer them the kind of protection we have in the past.”

When an earthquake hits, “much of the suffering is from the reprehensible conduct of the insurance industry adjusting the earthquake loss,” said George Kehrer, executive director of Community Assistance Recovery, or CARE, a Northridge-based consumer group he said represents more than 5,000 property owners.

“Adjusters swarm into the state like killer bees,” Kehrer said, drawing a standing ovation.

Torres told the group that many of the complaints he has received have come from people who fear their company will abandon them. But he noted that Garamendi is proposing a statewide insurance industry pool as well as supporting proposals for national disaster insurance.

“It’s hard to be patient,” he said. “People in northern California are still dealing with insurance companies from the Loma Prieta quake” in October, 1989.

Bill Gausewitz, of Farmer’s Insurance, said his company had resolved 27,241 quake-related claims, about 90% of those it had received. Of those, 7,877 were dismissed without payment and the others received compensation, he said.

Torres asked Gausewitz if Farmers had received complaints that it refused to pay the true cost of earthquake repairs.

“Not that I know of,” Gausewitz replied, drawing hoots and jeers from the audience.

Hoge said the insurance department has received complaints of low payments by virtually all insurance companies hit by Northridge quake claims.

Torres, whose committee is wrestling with many quake-caused problems, including a growing homeowners coverage crisis, said he arranged the meeting to give angry quake victims a chance to air their grievances.

Disillusioned policyholders have inundated his Los Angeles and Sacramento offices with complaints, he said, ranging from switching adjusters in the middle of the claims process to “low-ball” offers to settle to delays receiving payoff checks. Some accused their insurance carriers of breaking promises or lying to avoid paying claims.

This is the golden age of baseball in Southern California. The Angels heralded its dawn.

In 2002, the Angels won the World Series, the first of six postseason appearances within eight years. The Dodgers had played pretty good ball for more than a century, but they never had done that.

Angel Stadium was the place to be. The rally monkey was all the rage. The team nurtured a wave of young talent to surround Hall of Famer Vladimir Guerrero. In 2009, the final year of that run, the Angels drafted future Hall of Famer Mike Trout. In 2011, for the first and only time, the Angels sold more tickets than the Dodgers.

Neither the Angels nor the Dodgers made the playoffs in 2010, 2011, or 2012. Since then, the Dodgers have made 13 consecutive postseason appearances, with three World Series championships to show for it. The Angels have made one, and they did not win a game.

Never — and this includes the Dodgers’ time in bankruptcy court — have the fates of the two Los Angeles franchises been so disparate. In 2026, the Dodgers could win their third consecutive World Series championship, and the Angels could finish in last place for the third consecutive year.

In a story on the Major League Baseball website, two writers ranked the 30 teams on the basis of how likely each team would be to win this year’s World Series. The Dodgers ranked as most likely. The Angels ranked as least likely.

At a time major league owners would like you to believe market size equals destiny, the team with baseball’s longest postseason drought plays in the second-largest market in North America.

Today, however, we come not to bemoan the bad times but celebrate the good times, for the Angels and Dodgers.

The century is a quarter old. So here are our quarter-century teams for both the Angels and Dodgers, based solely on performances for those teams. In a few places, we included a deserving player at a secondary position, if his primary position was fully stocked. Let us know where we got it right, and where we didn’t.

And, while you’re there, you’ll see the story of our golden age in a nutshell. Of the 22 players on the Dodgers’ first and second teams, 11 were on at least one of the World Series championship teams this decade. Of the 22 players on the Angels’ first and second teams, only four played for the Angels this decade.

One was Shohei Ohtani, the first-team designated hitter for both teams.

*We considered how long someone played for the Dodgers or Angels during this century, as well as how well someone played, but we’re making an exception here for two reasons: one, left field has not been a position of strength and depth for the Dodgers; and, two: Manny Ramirez’s two-month “Mannywood” run after the Dodgers traded for him in 2008 was simply astonishing: He played 53 games and drove in 53 runs, batting .396 with 17 home runs and a 1.232 OPS. In the playoffs, he batted .520 in eight games, hitting four home runs and driving in 10 runs, with a 1.747 OPS. The two-month “Mannywood” run was good for 3.5 WAR — the same WAR Freddie Freeman delivered over the entire 2025 season. (And, yes, in May of the following year, Ramirez was suspended for violating baseball’s drug policy.)

Spring is the season of creation, a time of renewal and new beginnings. In Los Angeles, alas, we were, last spring, a city of cinders. It was a time to mourn.

A hard year followed with floods, ICE, AI, etc., menacing our native optimism. Making matters worse, in December we lost L.A.’s grand visionary vizier, the architect who time and again built us out of civic funk and transformed L.A., inspiring the city he so loved to look good, feel good and do good.

But that is still the case. So many plans Frank Gehry imagined for L.A. still remain. Gehry bequeathed blueprints and models, sketches and concepts, for his large and devoted team of younger architects and next-generation visionaries equipped to fabricate our way out of angst.

Isn’t there supposed to be an Olympics on the way for which the city appears ill-prepared? Spring 2026 is the time to build.

A couple of springs ago, L.A. County dubbed the blocks around Gehry’s masterpiece, Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Grand Avenue Cultural District. This includes the rest of the Music Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, the Broad and Colburn School. The Grand, Gehry’s resplendent complex across the street from Disney, had recently opened and ground was about to be broken for the Colburn Center, a 1,000-seat concert hall equipped to also serve dance, opera and whatever yet-to-be-invented genres Gehry designed it to enable.

The Colburn Center is well on its way to completion next year. Bits of the building’s pink skin have started to peek out like spring blossoms on the construction site at 2nd and Olive. The Broad has begun an expansion. But after two years, nothing else has been done to make this the cultural district it must become, one unlike anything else in any city.

Four springs ago I toured Grand Avenue with Gehry to gather what he had in mind for an arts district. When Disney Hall opened in 2003, it instantly became an enduring symbol of L.A., overtaking the Hollywood sign in many cases. The Dodgers want to parade joy in winning their second World Series in row last October, where else but in front of Disney? But not in front of all Gehry had in mind.

We will soon have a pair of futuristic new museum buildings to show off this year: the David Geffen Galleries, the controversial Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Peter Zumthor building (I predict it will prove a sensation), and the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (no predictions on that one) next door to the Coliseum. But the fact that each is a 15-minute ride away from the cultural district’s new Metro station only makes the district even more of a center.

A center, indeed. Gehry’s vision included completing the original plans cost-cut out of Disney a quarter-century ago, along with new modifications and much more throughout the area. Some are more costly than others. Enough could be done on Grand Avenue in time for the Olympics to make a difference if we begin this minute.

Since its opening, Disney has been — shamefully — the most poorly lit building of its stature in the world. Gehry had chosen the specific steel for its capacity to reflect light. His idea was to project on the building whatever concert was taking place that night. No sound, just imagery. Belt-tighteners didn’t want to commit the $2 or $3 million or whatever and go through the trouble.

It was spectacularly tested at the hall’s 10th anniversary, but with tacky prerecorded video and crummy amplification. Facilities are now included in the Grand for projectors. It would have been amazing in 2003 and will be amazing now. The Grand has been disappointingly slow to attract the restaurants, bars, cafes and shops it needs to create a scene. The projections could change all that and even create enough of a ruckus to get a reluctant, car-crazed city to make that Grand Avenue block pedestrian.

There is much more for Disney. Gehry wanted to turn BP Hall, where preconcert talks occur, into a small chamber music hall with a suspended balcony. He had plans for reconfiguring the seldom-used small outdoor Keck Amphitheater into an enclosed jazz club for Herbie Hancock and turning the little-used 1st Street entrance into a glass-enclosed bar that would be named the Ernest, in tribute to Ernest Fleischmann, the L.A. Phil executive director who was responsible for building Disney.

Disney was supposed to have a pit for the orchestra, allowing for staging opera and dance. The plans exist. That could be done in a summer for a couple million. Bottom-liners had also nixed Gehry’s original design for a more gracious lobby with a cafe out front, not the gloomy one installed against his will.

The Colburn Center has the potential for being another game changer for the area, a vibrant new hall where we are promised upward of 200 events a year from all walks of musical life, local and international. But Gehry had in mind even more.

He intended to lower the steep and pedestrian unfriendly 2nd Street hill, so that it would be an easy walk from the new Metro station two blocks away, and add two more pedestrian blocks by diverting traffic to the 2nd Street tunnel. This would connect the cultural district with Grand Central Market on one end and the Broad on the other. Then 2nd could itself become a lively street with the stores and restaurants a “district” needs.

A model of architect Frank Gehry’s design of an addition for Colburn School.

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

The extraordinary original plans for the Colburn Center included turning the parking lot across 2nd from the hall into a public plaza with a giant video wall and high-end outdoor sound system, for projecting nightly concerts in the hall. Gehry was a devoted outdoor-indoor architect, and he designed for the hall a balcony on which musicians can perform.

That initiative has thus far been blocked by City Hall officials, fearful of the tunnel’s aging infrastructure. Although if that’s the case, I’m not all that eager to be in the tunnel as it currently is when the Big One comes along. This is where L.A. shows its moxie. Upgrade the tunnel. Now! If this were Beijing, New Delhi or Hanoi, it would be a no-brainer.

Gehry next proposed building low-cost artist housing in Grand Park directly across from the Music Center, which would further create a true arts community. There has been talk of renovating the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for three decades and that’s all it’s been. The corporate-esque recent Music Center plaza could use a little excitement, maybe a Phase II.

Arts make a city. The Edinburgh Festival in Scotland was created after World War II to help bring the city back to life. After its fire-bombing, Tokyo founded a bevy of symphony orchestras as a phenomenal experiment in mass antidepression. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony played no small role in lifting the collective mood, preparing Tokyo to create what now feels like the world’s most arresting capital.

Unlike Scotland, unlike England, unlike Germany, unlike France, unlike Italy, unlike Poland, unlike Russia, unlike Finland, unlike the Czech Republic, unlike China, unlike any number of countries, America has no major international arts festival these days. We had one in L.A. in 1984 with the Olympic Arts Festival. The Cultural Olympiad in 2028 has shown no bones. But if we make the cultural district what it could be, there would be no better place anywhere for a major festival.

We have the goods. L.A. artists helped make the modern Salzburg Festival the meaningful model for all others. In 1992, the summer before Esa-Pekka Salonen became music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he and the orchestra were invited to shake up clinging Austrian tradition. With the help of director Peter Sellars, they staged Messiaen’s epic opera “Saint François d’Assise,” with pyramids of televisions, resulting in music and monitors upending, in Mozart’s hometown, the role of the modern opera and, so to speak, the sound of music.

Over succeeding decades, both Sellars and Salonen have been Salzburg Festival lodestars. Last summer they were back staging two monodramas, Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” and “Abschied” (the last movement of Mahler’s symphonic song cycle “Das Lied von der Erde”). Conductor and director looked with shocking depth into the “Expectation” of death and gave a “Farewell” to the “Song of the Earth” we all await. I saw it twice and can’t imagine how anyone came away from it quite the same person, not more alive, not more fragile. Art on the stage doesn’t get deeper than “One Morning Turns Into an Eternity,” as Sellars named the production. Salonen, who conducted the production with Vienna Philharmonic, is now about to become the L.A. Phil creative director in the fall and will bring the production to Disney with the L.A. Phil next season. It is thus far the most important opera news of next season in America. All the more reason to build that pit in the hall and get started on much bigger plans.

Salzburg, which manages to come up with around $80 million from here and there, also helped with the question I’ve evaded: Who’s going to pay for all this? I’ve evaded it because it’s the wrong question. Money only started pouring into the building of Disney Hall when people got wind of what it was going to become. Five years ago, Crypto.com paid more than $700 million to change the name of Staples Center. That amount, which created nothing but an advertisement for a product of dubious value to society, is the price of two Walt Disney Concert Halls and probably all of Gehry’s projects put together. It is the amount that could fund nearly nine Salzburg-scale festivals.

If we let ourselves believe that L.A. wealth only cares for mega-crypto advertising, mega-mansions and mega-yachts, then L.A. is over. It isn’t. Do we want to show only that to the world? Downtown, and prominently Crypto.com Arena in L.A. Live, have been designated a center for LA28, as we’re calling the Olympics. That makes a graciously glorifying cultural district, which functions as creation being existential not commercial, just up the road from L.A. Live, L.A. live.

When one morning turns into an eternity, you don’t ask for the bill.

Hall of Fame high school football coach Bob Johnson, who turned El Toro and Mission Viejo into powerhouse high school football programs and became one of the winningest coaches in state history, has died. He was 80. He had been battling Alzheimer’s.

“I feel for the family,” Mission Viejo football coach Chad Johnson (no relation) said Wednesday.

Johnson passed early Wednesday morning,

Johnson won six Southern Section titles coaching at Mission Viejo and three at El Toro while winning 338 games, the second winningest in Orange County history and in the top five in state history, according to the Orange County Register.

He retired after the 2017 season and was inducted into the California High School Football Hall of Fame in 2023.

His two sons, Rob and Bret, were standout high school quarterbacks before enrolling at USC and UCLA, respectively. Rob made it to the NFL. Both became coaches after their playing days were completed. Rob still coaches as an assistant at Mission Viejo.