Kid

Whether it’s leaning into AI-generated images or President Trump’s signature all-caps style, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s social media accounts have been firing left and right in recent weeks.

The latest target? None other than rock ’n’ roll figure and avid Trump supporter Kid Rock.

In a post on Sunday to X, Newsom’s official account shared an AI-generated image of the rock-rapper, whose legal name is Robert James Ritchie. In it, he wears his finest Uncle Sam garb and points at viewers, issuing a statement: “Kid Rock wants YOU to support Gavin Newsom.”

Text mimicking the social media style that President Trump has become known for accompanied the post: “I ACCEPT! — GCN.”

The 54-year-old artist waited less than an hour to respond, quickly clearing up that he did not, in fact, support the California governor.

“The only support Gavin Newscum will ever get out of me is from …,” he wrote, and ended his statement by referencing a portion of his anatomy.

On Monday, the press office account would respond by stating, “I HATE KID ROCK !!! — GCN.” Some users suspected that it was an allusion to President Trump’s use of an AI Taylor Swift endorsement in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.

In September 2024, Trump wrote “I accept!” over a series of AI-generated images of Swift fans posted to his own social media site Truth Social. The post used a fake image of Swift wearing Uncle Sam’s signature attire.

On Tuesday, Newsom’s account continued the bit. The post on X said, “HAS ANYONE NOTICED THAT SINCE I SAID “I HATE KID ROCK” HE’S NO LONGER ‘HOT?’ — GCN.”

There’s been no response — yet.

With the Jeffrey Epstein controversy still dogging him, President Trump has embraced his favorite distraction: the culture wars.

It began when he announced that Coca-Cola was switching to cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Coke responded with a statement that basically boiled down to: “Wait, what?” — before announcing the company would release a Trump-approved version of the famous cola.

Now, you might think decisions like these should be left up to the companies. After all, it’s none of the government’s business, and Republicans supposedly believe in free markets.

But no! Trump followed up by threatening to block a new stadium for Washington’s NFL team unless it changed its name back to the Redskins. He also demanded that Cleveland’s baseball team go back to being called the Indians.

At first glance, this seems like a ridiculous ploy to distract us from Epstein. And sure, that’s part of the story. But here’s what Trump understands: A lot of Americans feel like somebody came along and stole all their cool stuff — iconic team names, high-hold hair spray, military bases named after Confederate generals — and replaced them with soulless, modern stuff. “Guardians,” “low-flow shower heads,” “Fort Liberty.”

We might laugh at his trivial Coke crusade, but sports teams evoke more primal emotions. You can drink a Coke today and a Pepsi tomorrow. But you can’t root for the Indians on Monday and the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday. Not unless you’re a psychopath — or someone who wants to get punched in a bar. Team loyalty matters.

Trump gets this. When I was a kid, the Redskins won three Super Bowls. There were songs like “Hail to the Redskins,” team heroes (like John Riggins, Doug Williams and coach Joe Gibbs), and all manner of burgundy and gold merch. It wasn’t just a team. It was part of our identity — as well as an excuse to spend time together (even as decades passed without another Super Bowl run).

Then one day: poof. Goodbye Redskins.

Now imagine that same sense of loss in an already deracinated place like the Rust Belt, where the ball club is a big part of the city’s identity, and where they already closed Dad’s factory and then had the gall to take his boyhood team’s name too.

This isn’t really about names. It’s about nostalgia. Tradition. Identity. It’s about trying to keep a tenuous grip on a world you can still recognize, while everything else dissolves into a place where even choosing a bathroom is a political statement.

Now, is the name Redskins offensive? Sure. Even though a 2016 Washington Post poll found that 9 out of 10 Native Americans weren’t offended, you’d be hard-pressed to defend it on the merits. But the Indians? Come on. Just lose the Chief Wahoo cartoon. This isn’t rocket science.

So is Trump onto something when it comes to the real-world backlash to overwrought political correctness? Yes. But he’s also profiting politically off of people pining for a world that never really existed.

I thought about this last fall when Trump worked the fry station and drive-through window at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. At first, it seemed like just another stunt to troll Kamala Harris (who said she once worked for McDonald’s).

But then I saw him in that red apron with the yellow piping — still wearing his red tie, of course — and thought: This is Rockwell. This image evokes a time when a white guy of a certain age could sling burgers, go home to his wife and kids, mow his middle-class lawn, crack open a Coca-Cola, and watch the Redskins and the Cowboys.

Whether Trump consciously appreciates the power of this imagery, I don’t know. But he clearly understands that there is power in yearning, that culture is more primordial than American politics and that refusing to exploit these forces (out of some sense of propriety) would be a sucker’s move.

To some degree, he’s been playing this game for years — think energy efficient lightbulbs, paper straws and his criticism over Apple’s decision to get rid of the iPhone home button. If something new comes along, Trump is already up there stoking cultural outrage, blaming the “woke” left and demanding somebody bring him a Diet Coke. It’s what he does.

But here’s why this actually matters: These little skirmishes don’t just distract from the bigger, more dangerous stuff — they enable it.

Even as he accuses former President Obama of treason (which is absurd and dangerous), Trump’s bond with his supporters is reinforced by these small, almost laughable grievances. He makes them feel seen, defended and nostalgic for a world that (to them, at least) made more sense.

That emotional connection with his base is what allows Trump to tell bigger lies and launch bolder attacks without losing them.

Coke and the Redskins may seem trivial. But they’re the sugar that helps the poison go down.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Punk rock is not the first thing one might associate with a children’s puppet show. But on Sunday morning at the Ford Theater, L.A. punk pioneers Juanita y Juan and puppeteers from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater put local kids to the test.

After a morning spent crafting their own paper marionettes in the foyer, children marched towards the stage to revel in the weirdness of Juanita y Juan’s electro-cumbia guitar jams — a musical fusion they call “loud lounge.”

The duo was accompanied by vintage marionettes and their handlers, who played backup dancers in the shapes of jellyfish, cats and aliens. Families bounced and gently moshed along to the drum machine beats as “Juan,” also known as Kid Congo Powers, regaled them with a story about his hair catching on fire while playing a candlelit punk show with the Cramps.

And when a couple of rowdy kids started to climb onstage, bouncers swiftly intervened. “Oh, that’s very punk!” said “Juanita,” better known as Alice Bag.

(Evelina Gabrielle Perez / For De Los)

It was a familiar scenario for Bag and Powers. When the two first crossed paths in the 1970s — one being the front woman of the Bags, the other a guitarist in such bands as the Gun Club, the Cramps and later Pink Monkey Birds — they could hardly surmise how influential their scrappy community would become in its nascent years.

“We were all trying to create some kind of new subculture or protest against the bland music of the day,” said Kid in a Zoom call before the show. “We bonded under the flag of punk rock,” added Bag.

In the storied history of the Los Angeles punk scene, Chicanos were, and remain, permanent fixtures. But after predominantly white bands like Germs, X and the Go-Go’s were commemorated in countless books and documentaries as architects of the genre, Bag and Powers decided to start sharing their own perspectives as Mexican Americans who broke the mold.

First, they committed the stories of their lives to the page. In 2011, Alice Bag published a memoir titled “Violence Girl: East L.A. Rage to Hollywood Stage, a Chicana Punk Story,” and in 2022, Kid Congo Powers followed with “Some New Kind of Kick.”

But it was after collaborating on a song for the 2022 Peacock mystery series “The Resort” that their duo, Juanita y Juan, was born. They spoke to De Los about their salad days, their new album, “Jungle Cruise” and how young Latinos can navigate this time of upheaval in the U.S.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

(Evelina Gabrielle Perez / For De Los)

Tell me about your supergroup, Juanita y Juan. What sparked this idea for you?

Kid Congo Powers: Juanita and Juan are the alter egos of Alice and I. Our reference was Marty & Elayne, who were a cabaret covers act at the Dresden Room [in Los Feliz]. They got a huge following; they were in the movie “Swingers.” And the songs are fun.

We first reconnected as friends after Alice [released] her book, “Violence Girl.” Then we got asked to write a song for a [2022] TV show on Peacock called “The Resort.” Me and Alice are on the same label, In the Red Records, out of L.A. They asked for a song by “a beach lounge act,” and they wanted it to be in Spanish. We are both Mexican Americans, Chicanos, but I thought, “Alice is much more fluent in Spanish.” She was like, “Why don’t we try to do it as a duet?” And they liked that idea.

Alice Bag: With “The Resort,” we had a springboard of this “loud lounge” idea. But it morphed into several different things that were very much our personality, and very much not something we would normally do — exploring different rhythms, like Latin rhythms and tropical rhythms. I spent a month in Tucson, and we actually wrote and recorded songs [that became the album] “Jungle Cruise.”

So how did this puppet show come into play?

K.C.G.: The [Bob Baker] Marionette Theater heard our music and thought it would be appropriate for a kids’ punk thing.

A.B.: I have actually worked with Bob Baker’s Marionette Theater before. We did a video together for a song on my “Sister Dynamite” album, which was released in 2020. Also, I’m a former teacher. I used to take my classes to the old theater, so I have a very warm association with childhood and how enchanted kids are when they see a puppet show.

(Evelina Gabrielle Perez/For De Los)

You both are really inspiring to me as Latinos who helped shape punk in its very early days. Learning about you and other Latin punks like Jeffrey Lee Pierce (The Gun Club) was affirming to me as a young Latina and punk. How did you two connect over your Mexican American experience?

A.B.: There were a lot of Latinos in the early punk scene. Not just Kid and I, but like, Trudie Arguelles, who was the face of L.A. punk.

K.C.P.: Yeah, she was the it girl.

A.B.: And Margot Olavarria, who was the original bassist for the Go-Go’s, was a big shot in the scene. Tito Larriva, who formed the Plugs. Robert Lopez, Hector Penalosa, all the Zeros! There were a lot of Latinos around. But I think one of the things that happened is — I’m Alice Bag, although Bag is not my last name. Our last names got lost, and people just thought of the band names as our family names, like the Ramones! We banded under the flag of punk rock.

Our ethnicity was present, but it wasn’t always the first thing that you noticed about us because of how we dressed. People did not know what punk was. They would make comments like, “Is the circus in town? Are these people in a gang? Are they they gonna beat us up?” So we bonded, and we had to hang out together as self-defense. We were the weirdos.

Alice, in your memoir (“Violence Girl”) you spoke about the tension between the Mexican cultural mores that you grew up with and what you were creating anew with punk.

A.B.: I think people got the wrong idea about me very early on because they knew I was from East L.A. I grew up around gang culture and learned to stick up for myself, so people thought I was scary. Even Kid Congo Powers said I was scary.

Did you think she was scary?

K.C.P.: I thought she was intense. Anything could happen when Alice Bag got on stage. And that was what drew me to her and the band. There was a menace to them, something volatile. This could be a riot, or it could be an orgy.

And Kid knows chaos very well. You held your own in bands like the Cramps. Could you think of a Latin entertainer who helped influence your own performance?

K.C.P.: Iris Chacón.

Wow, I didn’t know you got down like that!

K.C.P.: My mom watched her on TV. That was exciting.

A.B.: That’s where he got his maraca work from.

K.C.P.: And my outfits. But there was Ritchie Valens, of course. I like old rock ‘n’ roll. And then when I met Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club in 1978 or ‘79, we bonded on being Chicano. We both grew up in San Gabriel Valley — me in La Puente, Jeffrey in El Monte. We’d reference riffs coming out of a garage in La Puente, some Chicano garage band playing Santana or War. We shared the outsider-ness of being born in America, but we were in Chicano world. And throw in the fact that I knew I was queer from a young age … I didn’t know if I was in or out.

A.B.: My influences were from Spanish-language music. Raphael was a Spanish singer who’s very intense and very dramatic. And I also am a big fan of José Alfredo Jiménez, who wrote all these ranchera songs that were very emotional. I think there’s a connection between ranchera music and punk — it’s for everybody. It’s better when everybody joins in and sings along. Punk and ranchera are the people’s music.

That calls to mind the resurgence of corridos among young people. Some of the songs generate controversy, but it’s interesting to see a similarly rebellious spirit as punk. What do you think?

K.C.P.: People are always saying to me, “Don’t you feel sorry for young people today? They don’t have what you had, this and that.” But I would never in my life underestimate younger people. There’s something going on, and I don’t know about it. You don’t know about it, because it’s not for us to know about.

You both have shown many Latinos how to live authentically to your identity, to your values. What’s a quick bite of encouragement or advice for young, weird Latino kids? Especially now, when it’s hard not to feel demoralized about what’s happening across the country?

K.C.P.: Well, to live authentically is a path that can be lonely. But it’s also very empowering. And I get to be in my 60s and say I’ve done music exactly as I’ve pleased. That is possible. I had no idea how to play guitar until Jeffrey Lee Pierce said, “Here’s a guitar. I think you can do this. And you’re gonna do it.” I thought, “If this one person believes in me, then I’m gonna try it.” You just have to say yes to yourself.

A.B.: I would also say you’re not alone. Every day, there’s a bombardment of things in the world and in the U.S. that you want to resist. It’s very easy to become despondent and overwhelmed. But you don’t have to feel like you’re lifting this whole weight by yourself. It’s important to know that you do have a community that stands with you. We’re all working in different ways. We’re all a band. We’re going to make it through this together.

When Children’s Hospital Los Angeles first told thousands of patients it was shuttering its pediatric gender clinic last month, Jesse Thorn was distraught but confident he could quickly find a new local care team for his kids.

But by the time the Center for Transyouth Health and Development officially closed its doors on Tuesday, the father of three was making plans to flee the country.

“They’re targeting whoever they can,” Thorn said. “[I’m afraid] the police will show up at my door because I took my child to see their doctor.”

Until this week, Children’s was among the largest and oldest pediatric gender clinics in the United States — and one of few providing puberty blockers, hormones and surgical procedures for trans youth on public insurance.

The closure of the renowned program signals a wider unraveling in the availability of care across the country, experts said. That includes in former safe havens such as California, New York and Illinois, where state laws protecting trans-specific healthcare are crumbling under mounting legal pressure and bureaucratic arm-twisting by the Trump administration.

In the last week, University of Chicago Medicine and Children’s National in D.C. announced they will end or dramatically scale back services for trans youth, following similar moves by Stanford Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“There’s a rapid collapse of the provision of this care in blue states,” said Alejandra Caraballo, a civil rights attorney and legal instructor at Harvard. “By end of 2025, most care will effectively be banned.”

Some parents in L.A. say they fear the Department of Justice will use private medical data subpoenaed from California’s largest pediatric safety-net hospital to take their children away from them.

“It’s absolutely terrifying,” said Maxine, the mother of a Children’s Hospital patient, who declined to give her last name for fear of attacks on her son.

“I’m very afraid that the DOJ and this acting Attorney General are going to come after parents and use the female genital mutilation law … to prosecute parents and separate me from my child,” she said.

On July 9, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced the Department of Justice was subpoenaing patient medical records from more than 20 doctors and clinics, the latest in a cavalcade of legal and technical maneuvers against providers who care for trans youth.

“Medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice,” Bondi said in a news release announcing the move.

Children’s would not say whether it had been subpoenaed or if it had turned over records responsive to the government’s demand.

The Justice Department was already investigating pediatric specialists for a litany of alleged crimes, from deceptive trade practices to billing fraud. Federal health agencies have vowed to withhold funding from institutions that continue to provide affirming care.

“These threats are no longer theoretical,” Children’s Hospital executives wrote to staff in an internal email announcing the closure June 12. “[They are] threatening our ability to serve the hundreds of thousands of patients who depend on CHLA for lifesaving care.”

Advocates say gender-affirming care is also lifesaving. They point to statistics — contested by the federal government and some experts — showing high rates of suicide among trans youth.

In June, the decision to shutter the clinic was widely condemned. Advocates said Children’s Hospital L.A. had “thrown trans kids under the bus” in disregard of state law.

Few are saying that now.

“You could see kids with leukemia being cut off their chemo therapy unless these hospitals stop provide care to trans people,” Caraballo said. “If one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country couldn’t shoulder that burden, I don’t see many others being able to do so.”

Others agreed.

“No matter what California or any other state has done to say, ‘We want to protect these kids,’ unless they can write checks that equal the amount of money that’s being lost, [programs close],” said Dara E. Purvis, a law professor at Temple University.

So far, the Trump administration has painted parents as victims of “radical gender ideology.”

Some experts warned that as the government tightens the screws on doctors and hospitals, trans teens and their families are likely to seek hormones outside the medical system, including through gray market channels.

“We’ve seen this with abortion,” Caraballo said. “People are going to go about getting it whichever way they can.”

There are fears that families could face prosecution for continuing to seek medications, similar to charges being filed against mothers who have secured abortion pills for their teenagers.

“We’re working with Congress on existing criminal laws related to female genital mutilation to more robustly protect children,” Justice Department Chief of Staff Chad Mizelle said during a Federal Trade Commission workshop entitled “The Dangers of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors.”

“We are using all of the tools at the Department of Justice to address this issue,” Mizelle said.

For now, dozens of hospitals across California still provide gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and surgical procedures.

But the list changes almost day to day.

“Even programs that may have been operating a month ago are not operating now,” said Terra Russell-Slavin, chief impact officer at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. “There’s a lot of concern about even being public about offering care because those agencies become targets.”

With the medical care their children rely on under threat and few promised protections from the state, some families are unsure what the coming months will bring.

For one Orange County father, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation against his trans son, plans for future travel are suddenly in jeopardy.

He said only about half of his son’s identity documents match his gender, and they’ve been warned not to try to change others.

“He won’t be able to leave the country because he can’t get a matching passport,” the father said.

For Maxine, the L.A. mom, balancing the banal with the existential is a daily strain.

“My kid is just living their life. They want to go to concerts, they want to go shopping for back to school — they don’t know any of this is happening,” the mother said. “You have to experience this intense fear while maintaining a normal household for everybody else.”

On the day immigration agents swooped through MacArthur Park in armored vehicles, wearing tactical gear and riding on horseback, Contreras Learning Center football coach Manuel Guevara said more than 20 of his players skipped summer practice.

“Kids were messaging me their parents don’t want them to leave their house,” Guevara said.

The fear among families with students attending three downtown Los Angeles high schools minutes apart — Contreras, Roybal and Belmont— is real.

“Everybody’s on edge,” Guevara said.

Players don’t know if their parents will feel safe enough to watch games from the school bleachers this fall.

As official football practice begins on Monday, three downtown Los Angeles head coaches — Guevara, Roybal’s Michael Galvan and Belmont’s Kenneth Daniels — have been in constant communication and united to help their players and parents deal with ICE raids. No one knows when the raids might subside or how the ongoing anxiety might affect teams this fall.

One of the first raids happened outside an elementary school across the street from Contreras. A 17-year-old Contreras cross country and track athlete, Nory Santoy Ramos, was detained and later deported to Guatemala with her mother after showing up for an immigration appointment. Families in the area rely on afterschool programs that are facing budget cuts. Students continue to deal with issues involving homelessness, gangs and drug use at nearby MacArthur Park.

Even though all three coaches said players feel safe on campus, with Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Alberto Carvalho vowing to make schools “safe havens,” coaches are most concerned about students’ commutes to and from school.

Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in the Westlake area on July 7.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

“A piece of me worries about them getting home safe,” Roybal’s Galvan said.

Guevara said one Contreras player told him he’s 80% certain his mother is going to leave and take him with her because of ICE fears. He’s had kids message him this summer that they couldn’t come to practices because their parents feared for their safety.

The Times has confirmed U.S. citizens are among those who have been detained during immigration raids in Southern California that have continued for more than six weeks. More than 2,700 people have been arrested during the raids and more than two-thirds of those detained had never previously been convicted of a crime.

“I understand their plight,” Guevara said. “I was brought here when I was 1. I became a citizen when I was 17. It’s not like you can tell anyone in this situation, ‘Suck it up.’ It’s a completely different animal. Our area is targeted.”

Students at Miguel Contreras Learning Complex in downtown Los Angeles continue to be affected by ICE raids.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

Belmont is struggling to field a football team this fall. School enrollment is down to less than 700 after once being a school of more than 6,000 — the largest in the county — until Contreras and Roybal were built. Athletic director Carlos Calderon said four sports that have been practicing on the Belmont campus this summer — cheer, girls volleyball, cross-country and football — have been affected by parental safety concerns.

“We’ve seen a deduction in kids coming to practices and increase communication with parents and having them call us [to say,] ‘We don’t feel comfortable in kids coming to practice,’” he said.

Calderon, who helps coach cross-country, has had athletes train on the school track instead of running the hills at Elysian Park to assuage parental fears.

Daniels said after one summer practice, when he learned an ICE raid was unfolding nearby, he instructed players to leave school from the back entrance instead of the front entrance.

“It’s really affecting us,” he said. “We’re not getting the numbers we need to get the workouts in.”

Belmont has 20 football players signed up, but only about half have been showing up for workouts. The team usually adds players once classes begin Aug. 14. Daniels, a walk-on coach, is already consumed by the challenge of building a new house in Altadena after his burned down during the Eaton fire.

“Nothing has been easy in 2025,” he said.

Galvan said he’s had players miss practices to go shopping for family members who feel they have to stay home. Others had medical appointments delayed because parents didn’t want to leave their homes.

“In all of my 25 years of teaching in the area, I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said. “You just don’t know. It’s hard to explain. How do we get through one day? … We’re taking it day by day.”

The Garfield-Roosevelt game, known as the East L.A. Classic, draws the largest L.A. high school football attendance each year. It’s scheduled for Oct. 24 at a site to be determined and officials want to make sure fans attending feel safe, so a decision on the site and security arrangements in light of continuing ICE raids are being taken into consideration along with budget.

“We will continue to follow district guidelines to ensure the well-being of our entire school community,” Garfield athletic director Lorenzo Hernandez said in a text message. “Our priority is — and will always be — to keep students and families safe, informed and supported.”

Said Galvan: “We definitely have to approach this season differently and see who we can accommodate and support the kids and balance understanding the situation and keeping them safe. It’s going to be on a weekly basis how we approach each game.”

Skipping summer practices won’t prevent a team from going forward. But if players start missing practices this fall, that will cause problems, because practices are needed to help prevent injuries and get athletes into the proper physical condition to participate.

Guevara still remembers July 7, the day of the MacArthur Park show of force. He addressed players who showed up to practice and were going home.

“Be vigilant, be careful,” he told them.

It’s a message likely to be repeated again and again this fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natalie Z. Briones is a concert veteran. She’s been to heavy metal concerts and a punk music festival where she napped most of the time. On Sunday, she attended her first baby rave.

Natalie is a few months shy of two. In the arms of her dad, Alvin Briones, 36, the pigtailed toddler squealed “Hi!” to anyone passing by the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood where the Briones family was lined up to meet Lenny Pearce, the mastermind behind Natalie’s favorite song, “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Natalie Z. Briones, held by her father Alvin Briones, sports rainbow face paint at the baby rave.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

It’s not the classic version most parents sing while slowly swaying and clapping — Pearce’s rendition rages with enough bass to rattle rib cages. Natalie is here for it, and so is her mom, Alondra Briones, who plays the techno remix during her drives to work even without Natalie in the backseat.

“It’s a pick-me-up,” said Alondra, 28, from Compton, before filing into the theater with other parents and caregivers for an afternoon rager with their kids.

In Pearce’s techno remixes of classic children’s music, an unexpected subgenre is taking off — toddler techno — which melds the cloyingly sweet lyrics of songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with the edgy beat drops associated with music from gritty warehouse parties.

The unlikely musical pairing creates a bridge between parents like Sandra Mikhail and her 6-year-old daughter, Mila. Both dressed in fuchsia at Pearce’s dance party, the mother-daughter duo were there to celebrate Mila’s promotion from kindergarten. In their Riverside home, Pearce’s music is on heavy rotation.

Children squeal in delight at the baby rave at the Roxy as Kuma the money, Lenny Pearce’s sidekick, hypes up the crowd.

“I can handle kids’ music now,” said Sandra, 38. “With the beat and [Pearce] adding that techno touch to it, it makes me able to tolerate listening to it all day long.”

For the last year, Pearce has been hosting sold-out dance parties boldly called baby raves — first in his native Australia — then on the first leg of his U.S. tour, which culminated in a June 29 double-header at the Roxy.

In the afternoon show timed for that sweet spot many parents know well — post-nap and right before the evening witching hours — Pearce pranced, high-fived kids and waved at babies being hoisted in the air.

Lenny Pearce vibes with the crowd at his sold-out show at the Roxy.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

At 34, he’s been an entertainer for most of his life. Over a decade ago, he was dancing in music videos as a member of the Australian boy band, Justice Crew. Now, he’s firmly affixed in his dad era. His dance partner is now a large balloon spider named Incy Wincy.

“I’m just being a dad on stage,” said Pearce in a video interview from New York. “I can make a clown of myself to entertain kids.”

From boy band to toddler techno

Lenny Pearce uses props during his shows, including an inflatable duck.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

Pearce’s journey into children’s entertainment seemed preordained, if only because his identical twin brother is arguably the second most famous purple character on a children’s TV show (behind Barney, of course).

“We’re both in the toddler scene,” said John Pearce, the older twin by minutes, who in 2021 joined “The Wiggles” cast as the Purple Wiggle. “[My brother’s] stuck with it for a long time, and it’s all paid off now.”

At the Roxy, many parents and caregivers said they found Pearce through the Purple Wiggle. Others discovered him on social media: He has more than 2 million followers on TikTok and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

Before becoming children’s entertainers, the Pearce brothers were members of Justice Crew, a dance troupe that won “Australia’s Got Talent” in 2010. For a few years, the boy band’s future burned white hot with the aspiration to break through in the U.S. — a dream that never materialized.

Lenny Pearce started making what he calls toddler techno music after his daughter was born in 2022. As a dad, he says he’s happy to act silly for kids.

Most boy bands have a finite time in the spotlight, said Pearce. In 2016, he quit the Justice Crew to focus on DJing and music production, but the transition from boy band to toddler techno didn’t happen overnight. For a time, he worked as a salesperson at an Australian electronic store.

“People were like, ‘Aren’t you from Justice Crew?’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. Now, do you want this lens with that camera?’”

In 2022, becoming a dad to his daughter Mila changed the course of his creativity. Pearce started remixing children’s songs with “ravey” music and filming himself dancing with her to the songs. Soon, other parents started sharing videos of their kids dancing to his songs, too. In this way, social media allows for ideas to be refined until something sticks.

In March, Pearce released his first solo album aptly titled, “Toddler Techno.”

All along the way, he imagined playing these songs at mini raves. For this generation of kids and their millennial parents, it’s not a stretch, said Pearce. Pretend DJ tables are just as commonly sold in toy aisles as construction trucks.

In the fall, Pearce and his baby raves will return to the U.S. — and, yes, to L.A. — in a 30-city tour. As a solo artist, he’s done what he couldn’t do in a band — he’s broken through to the U.S. and international audiences.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Pearce. “I always felt like I had something to say, but no one really listened.”

But are techno parties OK for kids?

Many attendees at the baby rave were wearing ear covers.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

The roots of techno — in Detroit or Berlin depending on whom you talk to — were always antiestablishment, said Ambrus Deak, program manager of music production at the Los Angeles Film School.

“It was exploratory,” said Deak, a longtime DJ who went by DJ AMB, about techno.

Toddler techno plays with that contrast — an edgy genre made safe for kids. Deak would not attend a baby rave — “It would be very cringe for me,” he said — but sees the appeal.

“I can definitely see a lot of people being into it,” said Deak, 48.

Still, not everyone is sold on the idea of taking kids to a rave — even one held in the middle of the day with a face-painting station. In the comments of Pearce’s social media posts, parents occasionally debate the appropriateness of exposing kids to drug-addled rave culture.

“I know that most people would say, ‘Is this the image we want to teach our kids?’” said Pearce. “What image are you imagining? Because if you think about it, they’re just kids with light sticks, right?”

He gets the concern, but kids don’t know about the darker sides of raves unless they are taught. And that’s not what his baby raves are about.

In the right dose, some experts say techno music and baby raves can be beneficial for kids and parents.

“Parents’ happiness and stress regulation also matter,” said Jenna Marcovitz, director of the UCLA Health Music Therapy program. “Techno can promote oxytocin and boost endorphins. It can encourage joy and play and really support brain development, emotional regulation and really enhance the parent-child bond as well.”

At the Roxy, one man vigorously pumped his fist to the beat of the music.

“Fist pump like this!” he shouted to the child on his shoulders. Both fists — little and big — jabbed the air.

How to keep it safe and sane

Glow sticks were a popular accessory at the event.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

Everything — especially baby raves — should be enjoyed in moderation. The pulsating music, giant inflatables tossed into the crowd and sudden blasts of fog can overstimulate kids.

For the roughly one-hour show, the music is loud. Typically set to 85 to 90 decibels, Pearce said. Having a sensory support plan is key, said Marcovitz, who recommends toddlers wear headphones with a noise reduction rating of 20 to 30 decibels or higher — like this one or this one. Practicing dance parties at home, so your child knows what to expect, is also helpful.

At the rave, look for signs of overstimulation, which can present differently with each child — some might shut down while others might start shoving each other mosh pit-style. At the Roxy show, one toddler sat down, ate half a bag of Goldfish crackers and poured the rest on the floor. Another disappeared into the crowd for a few alarming moments before being returned by a good Samaritan.

Toddlers crawl and lay down amid the crowd at the baby rave.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

“For any child, I would recommend breaks every 30 minutes,” said Marcovitz. “Step outside.”

Because techno hypes people up — even little kids — it’s important to help a child regulate their nervous system back down after the show.

“Lots of cuddles, silence and hugs,” said Marcovitz.

Pearce also starts the party late, so the dance party before the rave can tucker kids out before he takes the stage.

Ashley and Todd Herles drove from Santa Clarita to the Roxy so their son, Oliver, 3, could meet Pearce before the show. They said they bought $120 VIP tickets, which included a meet and greet and table seats where Oliver got to high-five Kuma, Pearce’s dancing sidekick in a turquoise monkey suit. For Pearce’s November 23 show at the Novo in downtown Los Angeles, ticket prices currently range from $48 to $195, fees and taxes included.

Overall, Oliver loved it — until he didn’t.

“[The] meltdown happened around 1:40 so we left then,” said Ashley, 40.

They had big post-rave plans to refuel with french fries. But Oliver was tired.

And, most importantly?

“Our backs hurt,” said Ashley.

Children bopped along to the music from atop their parents’ shoulders during the dance party.

Christian Pulisic was supposed to be in St. Louis on Tuesday, preparing to play in the national soccer team’s Gold Cup semifinal with Guatemala. Instead he was standing under a freeway overpass in Culver City playing with a bunch of kids.

“This is kind of what I was, you know, born to do,” the former and perhaps future captain of the national team said. “Having this platform and being here to inspire, hopefully, the next generation and do this for kids, it’s special.”

Pulisic, 26, isn’t far removed from being a kid himself, one who grew up learning the game on mini fields not too different from the one he was opening Tuesday. But for Pulisic soccer is no longer a child’s game, it’s a business. And that has taken a lot of fun out of it.

So when Pulisic, the national team’s active leader in both appearances (78) and goals (35), decided to pass up this summer’s Gold Cup, the last major competition before next year’s World Cup, he was widely pilloried as selfish and egotistical by former national team players including Clint Dempsey, Tim Howard and Landon Donovan.

American Christian Pulisic is grabbed by Bolivia’s Hector Cuellar as they chase the ball during a Copa America match in Arlington, Texas, on June 23, 2024.

(Julio Cortez / Associated Press)

“I just can’t fathom turning down the privilege of representing my country,” added Alexi Lalas, who played on two World Cup teams for the U.S.

However, Pulisic says he was simply exhausted.

He played a career-high 3,650 minutes in all competition for AC Milan last season, leading the team with 11 goals and nine assists in Serie A play while appearing in 118 games for club and country in the last 22 months. He needed a break to rest both body and mind before the World Cup, when he’ll be the focus of a U.S. team playing the tournament at home for the first time in 32 years.

So after consulting with U.S. Soccer and national team coach Mauricio Pochettino, he took it, offering to play in two June friendlies — an offer Pochettino declined — but turning down an invitation to play in the Gold Cup.

The reaction was swift and hurtful, with many critics accusing Pulisic of turning his back on his country.

“To question my commitment, especially towards the national team, in my opinion that’s way out of line,” Pulisic said in his defense on a Golazo Network podcast last month.

“I don’t regret my decision. I think it’s the right thing for me.”

AC Milan’s Christian Pulisic celebrates with teammate Tijjani Reijnders after Reijnders scored against Como in Milan, Italy, on March 15.

(Antonio Calanni / Associated Press)

Given a chance to expand on that Tuesday, Pulisic declined.

“I said what I needed to say. I don’t think it’s something that I want to harp on,” he said.

But events like Tuesday’s clearly rekindle his passion for soccer by reminding him of what the game still looks like through a child’s eyes.

“To see the joy that it brings to kids’ faces and to give them a free space to just come and play and enjoy the game like I used to when I was a kid, that’s what it’s all about,” he said. “When I was around their age, that’s when I really grew the love for the game.”

His father, Mark, was a former indoor soccer player and longtime coach, so Pulisic spent much of his childhood in places just like the one in Culver City. Getting back to those basics after what has been one of the most trying months of his professional career has been a breath of fresh air and it showed because Pulisic, whose smiles are rare and generally sarcastic, was wearing a wide and sincere one Tuesday.

The play space he was visiting is the second Christian Pulisic Stomping Grounds facility in the U.S., one developed in conjunction with the global sports brand Puma. The first Stomping Ground opened two years ago in Miami and there are plans to build a third in Texas.

Wedged into an industrial area crowded with storage facilities and warehouses beneath an on-ramp to the 405 Freeway, the space, home to the Culver City Football Club, was refurbished to include mini indoor and outdoor turf fields, a putting green and a life-size chess set.

The costly update was nice, said Krist Colocho, president and chief executive of the Culver City Football Club. But having the captain of the men’s national team come to christen the site, then engage some three dozen players, ages 9 to 13, in training drills, was priceless.

“There’s no words for it,” he said. “The top player in the U.S.? It’s amazing. To get to play with him? That’s a cherry on top.”

The nonprofit club, Colocho said, is dedicated to ending the pay-for-play model that has made soccer too expensive for many kids. The Pulisic-Puma partnership will help with that.

“This is a start,” he said. “Coming from a background where soccer is difficult to afford, this is going to be one of those stepping [stones] that we work with.”

AC Milan’s Christian Pulisic celebrates after scoring against Cagliari in Milan, Italy, on May 11, 2024.

(Antonio Calanni / Associated Press)

Outside Pulisic backed toward a mini goal as 6-year-old Arih Akwafei charged forward, pushed the ball around Pulisic and tucked it into the net, then celebrated as only a 6-year-old can.

“It was fun doing everything and using our bodies to try to play soccer with him to see if he was good or not,” Arih said, gulping air between words in an effort to control her excitement. “I scored on him.”

Cameron Carr, 9, agreed.

“It’s a very big deal,” he said of Pulisic’s visit.

Asked whether he’d be happier if Pulisic was in St. Louis practicing with the national team, as so many critics had demanded, Cameron grew confused. To him the answer was as obvious as the question was stupid.

“I’m very happy that he’s taking his time to meet with us kids when he could be training,” he said.

Zombies were dormant when screenwriter Alex Garland convinced director Danny Boyle to resurrect the undead — and make them run. The galloping ghouls in their low-budget 2002 thriller “28 Days Later” reinvigorated the genre. There’s now been so many of them that they’ve come to feel moldy. So Garland and Boyle have teamed up again to see if there’s life in these old bones.

There is, albeit sporadically and spasmodically. “28 Years Later,” the first entry of a promised trilogy, has a dull central plot beefed up by unusual ambition, quirky side characters and maniacal editing. It’s a kooky spectacle, a movie that aggressively cuts from moments of philosophy to violence, from pathos to comedy. Tonally, it’s an ungainly creature. From scene to scene, it lurches like the brain doesn’t know what the body is doing. Garland and Boyle don’t want the audience to know either, at least not yet.

The plot picks up nearly three decades into a viral “rage” pandemic that’s isolated the British Isles from the civilized world. A couple hundred people have settled into a safe-enough life on Lindisfarne, an island that’s less than a mile from shore. The tide recedes every day for a few hours, long enough to walk across a narrow strip of causeway to the mainland. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer) were young when normality collapsed, roughly the same age as the kids in the film’s cheeky opening flashback who are watching a VHS tape of “Teletubbies” while hearing the screams of their babysitters getting bitten. But these survivors have managed to grow up and become parents themselves. Given their harsh circumstances, Jamie and Isla have called their son Spike.

Name notwithstanding, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) is a sweet kid. When his father slips him a precious ration of bacon, he gives his share to his mother, who now lies weak and confused in an upstairs bedroom. The script pushes too hard to make Spike naive — blank and moldable — instead of what narrative logic tells us he is, the hardscrabble child of two stunted children. His career paths are hunter, forager or watchtower guard, but he seems more like the product of a progressive Montessori school, even with his dad urging him to cackle at shredded deer intestines. When the boy’s not looking, Jamie’s shoulders sag as he trudges up the stairs to Isla’s sickbed, showing us a hint of adult complexities he alone understands.

Spike’s storyline is a fairly simple coming-of-age journey. Once he’s slayed his first infected (“The more you kill, the easier it gets,” his dad gloats), Spike decides to sneak his sick mother to the mainland in search of a mythological being: a general medical practitioner. But straightaway, the movie’s editing (by Jon Harris) starts having a fit, seizing our attention as it splices in herky-jerky black-and-white archival footage of earlier generations of kids marching to protect their homes, both in newsreels and classical retellings including Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film of “Henry V.” The chilling electronic score by the Scottish group Young Fathers blurps and drones while an unseen voice recites Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots,” a poem about the grinding Boer War that was first published in 1903, but whose sense of slogging exhaustion sounds just as relevant to us as it would to Beowulf. These theatrics sound fancy, but they play deliberately abrasive and confounding. “28 Days Later” forced the audience to adapt to the ugliness of digital cameras, and despite the years and prestige that Garland and Boyle have accumulated since, they’ve still got a punk streak.

The filmmakers seem to be making the point that our own kinder, gentler idealism is the outlier. Humankind’s natural state is struggle and division. In this evocative setting, with its crumbling castle towers and tattered English flags, we’re elbowed to think of battles, from Brexit to the Vikings, who first attacked the British on this very same island in 793. A 9th century account describes the Lindisfarne massacre as nightmarish scenes of blood and trampling and terror, of “heathen men made lamentable havoc.” Those words could have been recycled into “28 Years Later’s” pitch deck.

As a side note, Lindisfarne remains so small and remote that it doesn’t even have any doctors today. The one we meet, Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), doesn’t show up until the last act. But he’s worth the wait, as is the messianic Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), who appears three minutes before the end credits and successfully gets us excited for the sequel, which has already been shot. (Jimmy’s tracksuits and bleached hair are evidence that his understanding of pop culture really did stop at Eminem.) Their characters inject so much energy into the movie that Boyle and Garland seem to be rationing their best material as strictly as Spike denies himself that slice of pork.

This confounding and headstrong movie doesn’t reveal everything it’s after. But it’s an intriguing comment on human progress. The uninfected Brits have had to rewind their society back a millennium. When a Swedish sailor named Erik (Edvin Ryding, marvelous) is forced ashore, he talks down to all the Brits like they’re cavemen. They’ve never even seen an iPhone (although the movie was itself shot on them). Upon seeing a picture of a modern Instagram babe plumped to a Kardashian ripeness, Spike gasps, “What’s wrong with her face?”

The infected ones have regressed further still and they’ve split into two sub-species: the grub-like “slow-low” zombies, who suck up worms with a vile slurp, and the Neanderthalish sprinters who hunt in packs. The fast ones even have an alpha (Chi Lewis-Parry) who is hellbent on taking big strides forward. One funny way he shows it is he’s made a hobby of ripping off his prey’s heads to use their spines as tools, or maybe even as décor.

Dr. Kelson, a shaman, sculptor and anthropologist, insists that even the infected still share a common humanity. “Every skull has had a thought,” he says, stabbing a freshly decapitated one with his pitchfork. He’s made an art of honoring death over these decades and his occasionally hallucinatory sequence is truly emotional, even if Fiennes, smeared with iodine and resembling a jaundiced Colonel Kurtz, made me burst out into giggles at the way he says “placenta.” Yet, I think we’re meant to laugh — he’s the exact mix of smart and silly the film is chasing.

So who, then, are the savages? The infected or us? The film shifts alliances without taking sides (yet). I’m unconvinced that sweetie pie Spike is the protagonist I want to follow for two more movies. But whatever happens, it’s a given that humans will eventually, stubbornly, relentlessly find a way to tear other humans to pieces, as we do in every movie, and just as we’ve done since the first homo sapien went after his rival with a stick. That’s the zombie genre’s visceral power: It reveals that the things that make us feel safe — love, loyalty, civility — are also our weaknesses. “28 Years Later” dares us to devolve.

Third-generation actor and director Bryce Dallas Howard has a lot going on — so much so that when The Times caught up with her recently, she was just getting over laryngitis. “Last week, it was like I would open my mouth and it was air coming out,” she said, admitting that it’s challenging for her to be disciplined about, say, not speaking. But you can’t really blame her: Talking is part of the business. And there’s a lot of business to attend to.

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.

On Thursday, Howard’s action comedy “Deep Cover” arrived on Prime Video. Howard stars alongside Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed as three improv actors recruited by the police to help with sting operations, hilariously committing to the bit. Prior to that, Howard directed and produced the Disney+ documentary “Pets,” which examines the relationship between people and their furry friends.

She’s starred as Claire Dearing in the “Jurassic World” franchise (”If the team would ever have Claire back, I’ll be there in a heartbeat,” she says), appeared in the acclaimed TV show “Black Mirror” and directed episodes of “The Mandalorian” and “Skeleton Crew,” to name a few recent career highlights. (In her spare time, she’s getting a degree from an online fine arts school.)

The ideal Sunday, then, for this NYU grad — whose first onscreen appearance at age 7 was as an extra in her dad Ron Howard’s “Parenthood” — includes lots of hot chocolate (”I always say I should have a T-shirt that says, ‘Powered by hot chocolate’ ”) and delicious food (”I like to eat little yummy things throughout the day”). There’s also time with her husband, Seth Gabel, their kids, Theo, 18, and Bea, 13, and their beloved pets. And don’t forget, she has to finish that portfolio for art school!

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

7 a.m.: Rise and hot chocolate time

I love to sleep, but I’ve got cats and dogs, and they don’t really let me sleep, and I sort of feel my best when I’m waking up around 7. So an ideal Sunday would definitely start on the early side.

I can’t drink coffee anymore. I used to love it, and now my tummy is too middle-aged for it. But I do hot chocolate, nice hot chocolate. That’s my coffee or tea. I’ve got one of those little Hotel Chocolat [hot chocolate makers]. You put chocolate powder in milk, and it froths. I got it as a gift, actually, from the producers on “Deep Cover.”

8 a.m.: Doughnuts and a dog walk at Dockweiler Beach

I love Dockweiler Beach. I filmed an M83 music video that I directed there with Lily Collins years ago; it was my first introduction to the beach. I just love to drive down there and then just walk around. It’s so beautiful.

We have two dogs, but I would only take [the younger] one. The other has a shorter walk. She’s been very clear with us: She’s a little older; message received. The younger one is a little over a year old. We can do up to three miles together, and then she’s very, very happy.

My favorite Sunday food situation is definitely Sidecar Doughnuts. They have gluten-free doughnuts, like a weekly special, and they have a vegan doughnut that’s also usually gluten-free, so I’ll get both of those and take them to the beach. My favorite is the Old Fashion — whenever it’s Old Fashion I get very excited — or the Celebration Cake.

11 a.m.: Art and art supply shopping

My favorite art supply store in Los Angeles is called Graphaids in Culver City. It’s a family-owned art store, and they have just a wonderful selection of supplies. In October, I’m going to be graduating from an online fine arts school called Milan Art Institute. It’s been very rewarding and very fun. You learn all of it — art drawing, oil painting, mixed media. I’m in the portfolio stage, so I do a lot of mixed media, and then I usually do a layer of oil over it.

Graphaids has been there through the entire journey. I started the program in October of 2023, when I was going into the store not knowing what anything meant, and then getting to know the folks who work there. They’re all artists. They want to save you money. They care about hobbyists; they care about professionals. They care about students. It’s beautiful. Now I go in the store and I’m like,“Could I have this solvent, please? And I would love this medium, please.” It’s much more “you know what you’re after” now.

On a Sunday, I would be working on my portfolio at home, and then — this isn’t Los Angeles, but it’s California — I love to take online Case for Making classes. Those are watercolor classes. My kids will usually join in if they’re around and the social calendar permits it.

1 p.m.: Brunch and walking and shopping in Culver City or Venice

Destroyer in Culver City is really, really good. They’ve got a great plant-centric menu, which is good because one of my kids doesn’t really eat meat, and I also like that it’s kind of elevated. I like the raw oatmeal soaked in date-almond milk.

I also love Gjelina in Venice; it’s elevated, but it’s also relaxed. Ideally I’d go with my family, and my best friend — we’ve been best friends since we were 15 — lives in Venice. So we would definitely meet up at Gjelina. Part of the fun there is you’re waiting to get in, so you can walk up and down Abbot Kinney. My favorite makeup store in Los Angeles, Apple Doll, has a storefront on Abbot Kinney. They have this Nectar Salve that I’m obsessed with.

If we have brunch in Culver City, afterward I would probably go to Arcana. I love that bookstore. So I would go there with my best friend on this perfect Sunday. The reason we like these areas is they’re really walkable. I was raised mostly on the East Coast and I went to NYU, so being able to walk places — it’s very important.

4 p.m.: An afternoon chocolate fix

When we moved to the Westside, I got really into John Kelly Chocolates [in Santa Monica]. It’s high-end chocolate. On a dream Sunday, absolutely, I would go there. And I’m also going to Sprinkles and getting red velvet, gluten-free cupcakes.

6 p.m.: Dinner in — or more snacks out

I love to order delivery from Burger Lounge that my son will then go and pick up because he likes saving money on delivery. I love the classic burger. They have really great gluten-free buns.

I also like going to AOC winebar, sitting at the bar and not ordering a big meal. Their bacon-wrapped dates are really, really delicious.

8 p.m.: Pajama walk around the neighborhood

I think we might’ve made this up — I don’t think I read about it anywhere — when the kids were younger, we would do this thing I would call pajama walks. It was a way for me to force them to get into their pajamas before it got dark and to keep a schedule according to the cycle of the sun and get us all outside after dinner.

Now it’s basically my husband’s and my way of sneaking out of the house. We’ll invite the kids, and a lot of times they’ll want to come. If they don’t, it’s just a great way for my husband and me to get a little bit of one-on-one time together. I’ll still wear pajamas; I’ll just throw a coat over it. The world has more loungewear these days, so you can’t even tell.

9 p.m.: ‘Landscape Artist of the Year’ and a little painting before bed

I’m actually pretty careful about screen time during the weekend if I can help it, but my husband and I like to watch “Landscape Artist of the Year,” the British feel-good show. Then usually I will paint, and that’s usually when I’m working on my portfolio stuff. (On an ideal Sunday, we’re not having to stress last-minute about our daughter having homework.)

I love to listen to audiobooks while I’m painting. I’ve been relistening to books that I read when I was younger. I just did a third time through “A Movable Feast.” It’s so fun to just listen to the stories. The next day, I’ve got to be up at 7, so I’ll paint until about 10:30 and then just go to sleep.

A PROFESSIONAL nanny has revealed the Aldi kids’ food she would never give her clients’ children.

Emily, who works with families all over the world, claimed that she would personally avoid “pouches and meal trays” that you can pick up in supermarkets. 

4

4

Over recent years, numerous companies have found success in convincing parents that feeding a baby with a quick and convenient processed pouch is easier and also nutritious.

However, there have been growing concerns over whether they are nutritionally sufficient and if they hinder a varied diet.

On her @thenosugarcoatnanny account, Emily, who is trained as a prestigious Norland nanny, held up two items from Aldi’s Organia Mamia range, which are designed for children.

Speaking of their “super cheap” 65p apples, parsnips and carrots pouch (intended for ages four months and above) and their 95p chicken and vegetable cous cous (designed for 12 months and older), she said: “These are products that I do not recommend to parents.”

PANORAMA INVESTIGATION

Emily cited an investigation by BBC Panorama, which found that six leading UK brands did not meet their key nutritional needs for baby food pouches.

The NHS website has published advice on commercial baby food, and said parents should not rely on shop-bought pouches as everyday meals.

Some popular baby food pouches are labelled as being “perfectly balanced for growing babies” or “packed with goodness”.

Emily added: “Lots of you know about the Panorama documentary that came out about pouches and food. 

“I think if you haven’t watched it as a parent, definitely go and watch it.”

The study followed the World Health Organisation stating that it is “critical” that infants and toddlers get good nutrition in the first three years of life.

Babies need food that is “pure, varied, minimally seasoned and nutrient-dense.“

Despite this, by the age of two to five, the average UK toddler has been found to get 61 per cent of their energy from ultra-processed foods, according to a 2022 study.

IRON LEVELS

Emily’s next gripe was with the iron levels in baby meals, and claimed that “a baby needs 7.8 mg a day.”

In the Panorama documentary, Ella’s Kitchen spag bol had just 0.7mg of iron, while Aldi’s Bangers and Mash contained 0.5mg of iron and a Lidl meal had about 0.4mg.

4

Emily claimed: “Aldi’s products were tested, and their iron levels in them were around 0.5 mg. 

“So, if you give your child, let’s say, this for breakfast, this for lunch, and a similar one for dinner, your child’s, getting 1.5 milligrams of iron a day? 

“That’s so incredibly low. 

“And obviously, children need iron to grow their blood cells.

“It’s obviously to help with their oxygen and the flow around their body.

“So, that’s something to really, really consider when thinking of these.”

4

Emily shared how she wasn’t advising parents to avoid them completely, and said they are “absolutely fine” for days out if you’ve not made anything or forgotten a snack.

She explained: “But what I don’t want parents to be doing is stocking their cupboards full of these sorts of things, and then that’s your go-to.”

A spokesperson for Aldi said: “Our range of products can help parents and carers to support a child’s weaning journey by introducing a wide variety of food and flavours as part of a varied diet.

“Any sugar in them is naturally occurring and would be the same in a fruit puree made at home.”

NHS GUIDANCE

The NHS Start For Life website states that parents should wait until their baby is around six months old before feeding them solid foods, even if labels on pouches say the products are suitable from four months.

Experts say the products should only be used sparingly, and not as replacements for homemade meals.

They also advised they can cause children health problems if used as their main source of nutrition.

The six brands involved in the investigation were Ella’s Kitchen, Heinz, Piccolo, Little Freddie, Aldi and Lidl, who all said their products were intended to be used as a complementary part of a child’s varied weaning diet.

There are many factors that led Taylor Jenkins Reid to choose space as the backdrop of her new novel, “Atmosphere,” a thrilling love story set at NASA in the 1980s.

One may very well have been her L.A. commute.

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.

Specifically, her journey along the Dr. Sally Ride Memorial Highway, a portion of the 101 Freeway in Encino. “I am sure that it worked its way into my subconscious,” Reid says. “It was there waiting for me because I’ve driven by that sign so many times.”

So much of Encino and the Valley inspires Reid, the author of a shining repertoire of bestselling novels including “Daisy Jones & the Six” and “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.” She talks about the hikes, the views and the charming restaurants that have stood for generations. Here’s how she’d spend a perfect day in L.A. with her husband, Alex Jenkins Reid, and their 8-year-old daughter, Lilah.

8 a.m. Wake up and grab a book
Everybody in my house is reading in bed. I am reading “Harlem Rhapsody” by Victoria Christopher Murray. I have been late multiple mornings now because of how much I’m enjoying it. It’s like, “Oh, sorry, I was reading.” My kid does the same thing. She and I will both be like, “Wait, it’s already 7:40? You’re supposed to be in school!” But both of us are reading.

9:30 a.m.: A place where everybody knows your name
My family and I love to go to this small diner in the Valley called Millie’s. It’s a no-frills place, but the food is so good and my husband’s family has been going there for at least 30 years. The server always remembers my husband’s grandpa and asks how his grandma’s doing and how his mom is doing and his brothers are doing. It has such a lovely small-town feel to it. Also, the tortilla soup is incredibly good. It’s, like, one of my favorite things

10:30 a.m.: Hit the trail
After that, I inevitably will try to bribe my daughter into a hike. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The thing is, she actually does love to hike and just forgets that she does. Where I love to go — and I have not been able to because of the fires — is the Upper Canyonback Trailhead [temporarily closed] in Encino Hills. There are two ways you can go. If you go to the left, there’s a really great view of the city. You can see down to Century City and even downtown on a clear day. And the hills are gorgeous. But if you go to the right, you can see the Encino Reservoir and eventually you get to a decommissioned Nike missile silo. We make a game-time decision.

Noon: A bookstore afternoon
Then I have to make good on the way that I bribed my kid and one of her favorite things to do is go to Vroman’s in Pasadena. It has one of the best children’s book sections in Los Angeles — it takes up half of their second floor. She’ll grab a bunch of books, I will have grabbed books from downstairs and we’ll be sitting on a bench reading them. And you know, my husband’s like, “Dude, would you like to leave and actually pay for these?”

2 p.m.: Hop around Old Town Pasadena
Not that far from Vroman’s, there’s this intersection that has so many things that all of us like. Motto Tea Cafe serves Japanese soufflé-style pancakes. They’re so fluffy! My daughter normally gets the plain ones with the Nutella cream on top. This place is often quite packed, so we order in advance. Then there’s this ice cream place called Kinrose Creamery that is unbelievable. They indulged me by letting me try basically every flavor. They have a sour cherry with candy floss that is unlike anything I’ve ever had. And there’s a park near there, Central Park, that is really beautiful and has a very expansive playground area. And so my kid will go play for a little while.

3:30 p.m.: Indulge an obsession
On the walk back to our car, I will go to Farrow & Ball and just look at paint colors. I’m completely obsessed with paint colors, so I make my family go pretty often. I never have a reason to be there. When the person is like, “How can I help you? Are you looking to paint something?” I’m like, “No, I just want to look at paint colors.” They’ve got great names for all their paint — I could probably name them all for you, literally. The ones I have in my house: Dead Salmon, Skimming Stone, Wimborne White. My daughter and I have become obsessed with a very pretty coral-y orange called Naperon. Both of us are like, “We have to paint something Naperon!”

There’s a woman who is the color curator for Farrow & Ball and her name is Joa Studholme. She’s the only person that is famous to me and my daughter. She makes these videos where she’s talking about why they came up with a paint color and my kid and I will just watch them four different times.

5:30 p.m.: Best pasta ever
Every Sunday night, we eat takeout from Lido Pizza. Doesn’t matter the fanciest place I’ve ever been to — this is the best pasta. I love it so much. And there’s something about their salad dressing that is exactly what my taste buds want in a salad dressing. I have gone so far as to order a full jug of it for my house.

It’s such a humble, unassuming place. We’ve been taking my daughter there since she was a baby. When the movie “Booksmart” came out, we were watching it and saw that a whole scene takes place in the Lido parking lot. We eat there every single Sunday night, and at this point, they have to just know the call is coming sometime around 5:30.

7:45 p.m.: The “Goodnight Special”
My daughter gets into bed and reads for an hour. During that time, my husband and I will watch an episode of something — lately, we’ve been watching “The Studio.” Then when it’s time to go to bed, she comes out of her bedroom and asks for the “Goodnight Special.” It’s when I hold her for a minute and sing to her. She called it that just one day. She was like, “I need the ‘Goodnight Special.’” I was like, “I think I know what you mean by that.” And then my husband and I will go to bed around 10:30.

When Debbie Allen opened the doors to her dance academy in 2000 inside of a revamped Marie Callender’s restaurant in Culver City, there was no other place in town like it that catered to disenfranchised Black and Latino communities.

The school became a haven for dancers of all backgrounds wanting to learn from the multifaceted performer, who chasséd into the Hollywood scene with her career-defining performance as Lydia Grant in the 1980 musical “Fame.” Allen went onto become an award-winning director and producer for shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” (which she also stars in), “How to Get Away With Murder,” “A Different World,” “Jane the Virgin” and “Everybody Hates Chris.”

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.

Fast forward 25 years, the Debbie Allen Dance Academy now resides in a 25,000-square-foot “arts” palace in Mid City at the Rhimes Performing Arts Center (named after Allen’s longtime friend and colleague Shonda Rhimes). It’s more active than ever with a newly accredited middle school, a summer intensive program, a tap festival and annual “Hot Chocolate Nutcracker” holiday show. Next up, Allen is hosting her third free community block party on June 8 on Washington Boulevard, featuring dance classes with world-renowned choreographers like Marguerite Derricks and a breakdancing competition with Silverback Bboy Events. And on June 22, Allen will host Dancing in the Light: Healing with the Arts, a bimonthly event that features free dance lessons for those impacted by the wildfires. The event will take place at the Wallis in Beverly Hills and will feature classes taught by choreographers Lyrik Cruz (salsa), Angela Jordan (African) and Anthony Berry (hip-hop).

“It’s been wonderful that this community has been able to see each other and have a bit of joy,” Allen said during a Zoom call from Atlanta, where she was working on a new TV pilot.

We caught up with Allen, who’s lived in L.A. for nearly 40 years, to learn about how she’d spend her perfect Sunday in the city. Much like when she was a child growing up in Houston, Sundays are centered around family and spending time with her four grandchildren who “own” her weekends, she said. On the call sheet is getting breakfast in Santa Monica, hosting a free dance class and catching a movie at Westfield Century City.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

7 a.m.: Wake up the grandbabies

On a typical Sunday, I would wake up at 7 a.m. My [eldest] grandchildren spend the night with us every Saturday. I have four grandkids who are 6, 4, and two who are 6 months old. The little ones are just now getting to where their parents might let us keep them overnight. My room has turned into a nursery.

First, we deal with our dog CoCo. We have a beautiful black German shepherd who is amazing. She’s such a good family dog and incredible guard dog. She just glistens, just pure black, and she’s wonderful with the kids. So we have to let her out and she wants to play. Then we get ready to go to breakfast.

9 a.m..: Time for breakfast

We always go out somewhere for breakfast. We either go to a nearby hotel or we go to Marmalade in Santa Monica. They have very fresh croissants, little biscuits with currants and scones. They also have really good omelets and turkey bacon. Then the neighborhood people are there, so we see people that we’ve met and have gotten to know over the years. There’s one man in particular who is always reading books and we can always get a new idea of a book to read.

11 a.m.: Host a free dance class

Then we’d come back and on any given Sunday, I might be on my way to Dancing in the Light: Healing with the Arts, where I’ve been doing these dance classes for all the people who have been impacted by the fires. We’ve been doing this for months and it’s been amazing. We’ve had tremendous support from Wallis Annenberg, United Way, Shonda Rhimes, Berry Gordy, just so many individuals who have supported. We do classes all over, which start at 11 a.m. But if we’re not doing the Dancing in the Light event, sometimes we like to go to the California Science Center, which the kids love. It’s great because there’s so much going on there now.

2:30 p.m.: Tennis time

I’ll head back home to catch the kids having their tennis lesson. They are starting to play at this young age and it’s so cute.

5 p.m.: Early dinner and a movie

We’d either start preparing family dinner because I have a son who has his 6-month-old and my daughter, Vivian, who has her three kids. Or we’d go out to dinner. We love to go to Ivy at the Shore because it’s very family-friendly and they have a lot of options. We also like going to Chinois. It’s a Wolfgang Puck spot. We’d have an early dinner around 5 p.m. If we don’t go out to eat, we might go to the movies. We love going to the movies. We’re really close to AMC Santa Monica, but sometimes we’ll go to [Westfield] Century City because they have a fantastic food court and the kids like to go up there and pick what they want to eat.

7:30 p.m.: Quality time with MaTurk

We’d come back home and spend time with my mom, who we call MaTurk. She’s 101 years old. We’d play her favorite music because she was a concert pianist. I did a beautiful piece for her at the Kennedy Center this year based on her book, “Hawk,” which we republished. It’s on sale now. But Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” is her favorite. She played it for me when I was 4 years old, going to sleep on her lap. And my granddaughters are the cutest things with MaTurk. They like to pretend they are the caregivers and they want to brush her hair. They want to massage her legs. It’s a sweet thing.

8:30 p.m.: Catch up on our favorite shows

After that, it’s time to say goodbye to the grandkids. Then my husband and I will nestle in. We’re always reading books and watching various series. We’ve been watching Shonda Rhimes’ “The Residence” lately. We love it! And he also is addicted to “Power Book.” If I could pick, I’d be in bed by 9:30 p.m.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas this year has been the center of the nation’s largest measles outbreak in more than two decades, as a mostly eradicated disease has sickened more than 700 in the state, sent dozens to hospitals and led to the death of two children who were unvaccinated.

But even as the outbreak slows, a bill approved by state lawmakers and sent to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott would make it significantly easier for parents to enroll their children in school without standard vaccinations for diseases such as measles, whooping cough, polio and hepatitis A and B.

Supporters say the bill streamlines an already legal exemption process that allows families to avoid vaccines for reasons of conscience, religious beliefs or medical reasons. It would let them download the required forms from a website instead of contacting state health officials and waiting for one to come in the mail.

The bill does not change which vaccines are required. However, critics say easing the exemption process opens a door to further outbreaks with potentially deadly results.

“If this bill becomes law, Texas is likely to see more illness, more death and higher health care costs for families and business,” Rekha Lakshmanan, chief strategy officer for Texas-based nonprofit Immunization Project, told state senators before the bill won final approval.

“The outbreak (in Texas) is not a coincidence. It is the canary in the coal mine screaming at the top of its lungs,” she said.

The exemption bill — as well as other bills passed by the Texas House on lawsuits against vaccine makers and removing immunization restrictions on organ transplants — are a snapshot of efforts across dozens of conservative states to question vaccines or roll back requirements.

At the national level, this wave has been buoyed by still-lingering pushback from the COVID-19 pandemic and the Trump administration’s embrace of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was one of the nation’s leading anti-vaccine advocates before being appointed secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

The most recent federal data shows U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates have dipped since the pandemic — 92.7% in the 2023-24 school year compared to 95% before COVID-19 — and the proportion of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high. And last week, the “Make America Healthy Again” federal report on the nation’s health and wellness questioned the necessity of vaccine mandates for schoolkids.

The national Association of Immunization Managers, an organization of state and local immunization officials, has been tracking nearly 600 vaccine-related bills across the country in 2025, and the majority would not be considered pro-vaccine, said Brent Ewig, the group’s the group’s chief policy officer.

“We saw a spike in vaccine-related bills during the pandemic. The last few years it had been tapering off. With recent actions at the federal level, there has been a spike again,” Ewig said.

The Texas measles outbreak and vaccine requirements

Measles has been considered eliminated from the United States since 2000. The Texas outbreak started in late January in West Texas’ Mennonite communities that have been resistant to vaccines and distrustful of government intervention, and the highly contagious virus quickly jumped to other places with low vaccination rates.

Like many states, Texas requires children to obtain vaccines to protect against 11 diseases to attend public and private schools and child care centers. The state’s vaccination rates for the 2023-24 school year ranged between 93.78% for chicken pox to 95.78% for hepatitis B.

But parents can obtain exemptions for religious or personal reasons, or if a doctor determines it would not be safe because of a medical condition.

Exemption rates in Texas have been rising for nearly two decades, with a dramatic spike over the last five years. According to the Texas Department of Health Services, the agency received exemption requests for nearly 153,000 students in the 2023-2024 fiscal year, up from 136,000 the previous year and nearly double the 77,000 requested in 2019.

Texas’ vaccine rollback

The bill on vaccine exemption paperwork would make it easier for parents to obtain the needed form by letting them download it to a computer or smartphone. The current system where parents ask state health officials to mail a paper copy to their home can sometimes take weeks. The form would still need to be notarized before it is turned in to a school and a student is enrolled.

Advocates say the changes would help parents thread the bureaucratic process and get their children enrolled in school quicker.

“This bill is not about whether vaccines are good or bad, it’s about government efficiency and keeping kids in schools,” said Jackie Schlegal, founder of Texans for Medical Freedom, which advocates for “vaccine freedom of choice.”

Critics argue that simplifying the exemption form process makes it too easy for unvaccinated kids to enroll in a school, endangering the health of other kids and families.

“For years Texas has struck a delicate balance of parents’ right and public health and safety,” Lakshmanan said. “This bill is more than just a form … We can support parents without putting other families at risk.”

Still waiting for a Senate vote is a bill that would allow vaccine makers who advertise in Texas to be sued if their vaccine causes a person to be injured. That bill has been opposed by the Texas Association of Manufacturers.

The author of that bill is first-term state Rep. Shelley Luther, who was briefly jailed in 2020 for opening her Dallas salon in violation of governor’s emergency order during the pandemic. Abbott quickly weakened his enforcement of coronavirus safeguards and a court ordered her released.

Vertuno writes for the Associated Press.

May 27 (UPI) — Sean “Diddy” Combs beat his former girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, for having a relationship with another rapper, whom he threatened to kill, former assistant Capricorn Clark testified on Tuesday.

Clark told the court she witnessed Combs beating Ventura, and he told her he wanted to kill Scott Mescudi, also known as “Kid Cudi,” NBC News reported.

Combs, 55, allegedly armed himself with a firearm and rushed to Mescudi’s Los Angeles home upon learning of the relationship between the rival rapper and Combs’ ex-girlfriend Ventura, Clark testified, USA Today reported.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Clark said while telling the court that Combs was in a rage and tried to break into Mescudi’s home.

Combs would not let her leave until she relayed a threat to Ventura, Clark testified.

She also said Combs repeatedly threatened her life several times while he employed her and at one time kidnapped her.

Clark teared up at times while telling the court Combs held her against her will for five days in New York City after he discovered jewelry missing from one of his homes.

She said Combs forced her to retake the polygraph test many times over several days due to her being “petrified” of her boss.

A very large man told her if she failed the polygraph test, “they’re gonna throw you in the East River,” Clark told the court.

She said the polygraph testing continued for five days until they could get a conclusive result.

Combs’ security staff would take her home each night and bring her back to the same dilapidated room on the sixth floor of a New York City building while the polygraph testing continued, Clark testified.

Combs also allegedly forced Clark to work as his personal assistant from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. with no time off to sleep or eat.

The stress from her employment caused Clark to develop alopecia, which is a health condition that causes hair loss, she told the court.

She also said the human resources department at the business owned by Combs determined she was owed $80,000 in overtime pay after she complained about her working conditions.

Instead of paying her, Combs tore up the paperwork showing the amount of back pay he owed her, Clark testified.

“Your problem is you want a life and you can’t have that here,” Combs told Clark during the summer of 2006, she testified.

Clark said her duties as Combs’ personal assistant included booking hotels for Ventura and Kim Porter, with whom Combs fathered four children.

She also testified that Combs always brought a camera and a toiletry bag that contained illegal drugs and small bottles of baby oil and lubricant.

While in the south of France, Clark said Combs told her to obtain cocaine for one of his friends.

Clark told the court she finally quit after Combs overheard her complaining about his Miami home lacking turkey bacon and saying she hated being there.

She said Combs ran toward her and pushed her for 20 or 30 yards and yelled she could get out of his house if she hated being there.

The shoving continued until Combs’ security stopped him, and Clark said she quit after that incident.

Combs afterward asked her to work for his Sean John women’s apparel business, but Clark said she refused because she “didn’t want to be trapped in his house no more,” she told the court.

Clark’s testimony followed last week’s court appearances by Ventura, her mother, Regina Ventura, musical artist Dawn Richard and Mescudi.

All testified about abuse and threats made by Combs at various times.

Mescudi told the court Combs broke into his home and locked his dog in a bathroom on one occasion.

He said his car was blown up on another occasion.

Prosecutors argue such events demonstrate Combs’ alleged violent acts committed over two decades while coercing women to take drugs and participate in orchestrated sex parties that he called “freak offs” and often recorded on video.

Combs is charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy; two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution.

He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and could be sentenced to between 10 years and life in prison if found guilty on one or more charges.

The trial began on May 5 at the U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.

“Vacation” and “sex” were once my two favorite words. Put them together and you’ve got the mecca of pleasure: a romp in Egyptian cotton sheets followed by a juicy room service cheeseburger. Can you say sex in Italian? I can — “sesso” — because my husband and I copulated our way across the country early in our relationship. On our honeymoon in Hawaii two decades ago, we barely left our room and nearly missed the luau. Every getaway back then offered foreplay with a view.

And then we had a kid.

Still, the lure of vacation sex beckons. And not just for me and my husband. According to a survey conducted for the book “Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life,” 90% of people fantasized about sex in a hotel.

“All couples put ‘vacation sex’ on a pedestal because we’re more relaxed and playful when we get out of our daily routines,” says sex therapist Emily Morse, author of “Smart Sex: How to Boost Your Sex IQ and Own Your Pleasure” and host of the podcast “Sex With Emily.” “But we shouldn’t lose that intimacy because we travel with kids.”

So when my husband and I decided to celebrate 20 years of marriage by returning to Maui with our mercurial teen daughter Tess in tow, we vowed to get it on at least once on our trip. We started with a rough strategy: booking a 640-square-foot room with two queen beds. If you’re in the mood to get frisky during your family vacation, here are some tips to consider.

Plan like a pro

If you want to engage in some intimate time, add it to your itinerary before you take off. “You have to schedule sex like you schedule snorkeling or any excursion,” says Morse. “If you wait around for it to happen, it won’t happen.”

Sophie Pierce, a mom to three daughters ages 8, 9 and 14, doesn’t take chances when she and her husband ex-Navy SEAL Neil Mahoney travel. They think — and act — ahead, so they’re not completely disappointed if it doesn’t happen during the trip. “We always have sex the night before we leave for a family vacation, just in case,” says Pierce, the founder of three dance studios in Los Angeles. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t try.”

My husband and I didn’t have a strategy before we left L.A., but I did sneak sensual incidentals like lacy lingerie and a discreet bottle of lubricant into my suitcase. “Pack a sex toy too,” advises Morse, who says we’re more likely to be open to experimentation away from home. We agreed not to bring any work responsibilities on our trip. We’re both screenwriters, so we’re constantly polishing a script or crafting a pitch. I figured that by eliminating the stress of meeting deadlines, we upped the chances of having sex.

Lean into the hotel’s kid activities

Hotels and resorts see you, exhausted parents. Properties are upping their game for young guests with more exciting programming and cooler kids clubs. At the Ojai Valley Inn’s “night camp,” for instance, you can sign the children up for a scavenger hunt followed by dinner, a movie and s’mores. (Surely, that buys you enough time for a romp.) La Quinta Resort & Club in the desert offers junior pickleball clinics, along with massages and facials for tweens and teens up to age 15. At Alisal Ranch in Solvang, kids can hang out at the bar and paint horseshoes or take a riding lesson. Got littler ones? Some clubs, like Kidtopia at the Omni La Costa in Carlsbad, cater to infants (6 months and older) with nurseries on-site. Many hotels also offer babysitting services.

Note that clubs typically cater to the toddler-through-12 set. But there are exceptions, like the teen club at Grand Velas in Los Cabos that programs TikTok challenges, dance-offs at a dedicated nightclub with a DJ and karaoke events. At the Grand Wailea where we stayed, however, teens like my daughter Tess just side-eyed each other in the lobby. There was a family lounge on the property with darts and virtual reality, but it wasn’t a magnet for adolescents during our stay.

“We’re not comfortable getting sitters we don’t know on vacation,” says Pierce, who, instead, might pretend to leave the sunscreen in the room and put her teen daughter in charge to duck away from the hotel pool for a quickie with her husband. Or put the younger girls in a shared tub, but take the bath towels and mat so they can’t interrupt mom and dad in the bedroom. (Clearly, Pierce’s kids are way into self-care.)

For middle school teacher Vanessa Orellana — mom to a daughter, 6, and 1-year-old twins — the windows of opportunity for adult time on vacation call for quiet. “Between hotel beds that squeak and the in-laws’ walls, we’ve identified two golden windows for potential action: nap time and post-bedtime,” she says. “But even then, success is a coin toss. Our 8-year-old could pop up like a ninja, asking for water.”

Be flexible

Life happens, even on vacation. Prepare to pivot to plan B. My husband and I sent our daughter on an errand one morning at the 40-acre Maui resort, but she came back to fetch her AirPods and interrupted our marathon kiss. We shrugged it off and then held hands by the pool. Morse advises: “With kids, you may have to redefine intimacy on your trip. It could be flirting or even just making out after they go to bed.”

Pierce and her husband know their sex will be quick, if it happens at all. One dad of a toddler told me he and his husband have a ritual in which they text erotic messages to each other when they’re on vacation — and then promptly delete them. Just be sure to manage your expectations and laugh at any aborted attempts at intimacy.

“We’ve got an unspoken agreement: no guilt, no grumbling. Just a ‘to be continued’ knowing glance,” says Orellana. “It’s about connection, trust and keeping the spark alive through the sheer chaos of life with little humans.”

In the end, my husband and I did not get lucky. On our final night in Maui, we hit nearby award-winning restaurant Ko, where kids eat for 50% off. Unfortunately, a huge dinner of fresh crudo, lobster tempura, octopus and kobe beef — along with multiple desserts — made us shudder at the idea of any activity. So we had failed at our grand plan. But was our vacation ruined? Not at all. Ultimately, my family bonded in a way that doesn’t come easy with a teen. We swam with turtles, thrift-shopped around upcountry and held hands (for three whole seconds) while watching a sunset.

And on our first night back at home, my husband and I finally had sex. No fancy sheets or room service, but I did shout, “Aloooha!”

May 22 (UPI) — Rapper Kid Cudi will take the stand Thursday in the closed door federal sex-trafficking trial against Sean “Diddy” Combs in a big day for prosecutors.

The 41-year-old Grammy Award-winning rapper, whose birth name is Scott Mescudi, is expected to share details about his romantic past from more than 10 years ago with Combs’ ex-partner, Casandra “Cassie” Ventura, particularly the allegations that Combs allegedly was behind the blowing up of Mescudi’s car.

The trial began on May 5 at the U.S. District Court for Southern New York courthouse in Manhattan in a trial where cameras are prohibited.

Combs is charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy, two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution and two counts of sex trafficking by force. He has pleaded not guilty and could be sentenced to up to life in prison if a jury finds him guilty on one or more charges.

On Tuesday, a special agent with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was the first to open testimony in the trial during the morning hours as a handful of other witnesses took the stand, including a board-certified forensic and clinical psychologist and Ventura’s mother.

Ventura, in a 2023 civil lawsuit settled privately without Combs admitting any wrongdoing, alleged that Combs told her that he would blow of Mescudi’s car.

“Around that time, Kid Cudi’s car exploded in his driveway,” court documents read, adding that Ventura was “terrified, as she began to fully comprehend what Mr. Combs was both willing and able to do to those he believed had slighted him.”

Meanwhile, Ventura testified in court last week and said she kept a burner phone to hide her relationship with Cudi.

The prosecution will likely try to prove that Combs used his considerable influence and wealth to execute the bombing of Cudi’s vehicle, according to a former federal prosecutor for New York’s Southern District.

Calling Mescudi to the witness stand could help the prosecution if it can demonstrate Combs used his considerable financial and business resources to carry out the bombing, said Rachel Maimin, a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York.

“The burden of proof is on the federal government, so they’ll have to show this was part of the racketeering,” Rachel Maimin, now a criminal defense attorney with Lowenstein Sandler LLP, told NBC.

“This may be a way of explaining how he used his business empire to further the prosecution’s goal of proving the racketeering enterprise,” she added.

NEW YORK — Sean “Diddy” Combs’ one-time personal assistant testified Wednesday that he was in charge of cleaning up hotel rooms after the hip-hop mogul’s sex marathons — tossing out empty alcohol bottles, baby oil and drugs, tidying pillows and making it look as if nothing had happened.

Implied in the job was that “protecting him and protecting his public image were important to him,” George Kaplan told jurors at Combs’ sex trafficking trial in federal court in Manhattan.

“That’s what I was keen on doing,” Kaplan said.

Kaplan, who worked for Combs from 2013 to 2015, said the Bad Boy Records founder would sometimes summon him to a hotel room to deliver a “medicine kit,” a bag full of prescription pills and over-the-counter pain medications. He said Combs also dispatched him to buy drugs, including MDMA, also known as ecstasy.

Kaplan, 34, was granted immunity to testify after initially telling the court that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Prosecutors contend Combs leaned on employees and used his music and fashion empire to facilitate and cover up his behavior, sometimes making threats to keep them in line and his misconduct hush-hush.

Kaplan testified that Combs threatened his job on a monthly basis, once berating him for buying the wrong size bottled water. Combs’ longtime girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, testified that Kaplan quit after seeing Combs beat her.

Kaplan’s testimony resumes Thursday. He’ll be followed by rapper and actor Kid Cudi.

Cudi, whose legal name is Scott Mescudi, is expected to testify about his brief relationship with Cassie in 2011. Prosecutors say Combs was so upset that he arranged to have Cudi’s convertible firebombed.

Also Wednesday, a federal agent showed jurors two handguns he said were found in a March 2024 raid at Combs’ Miami-area home, along with photos of ammunition and a wooden box marked “Puffy” — one of his nicknames — that the agent said contained psilocybin, MDMA and other drugs.

Investigators also found items prosecutors say were hallmarks of “freak-offs,” including dozens of bottles of baby oil and lubricant, said Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Gerard Gannon.

Combs’ lawyer Teny Geragos suggested the search — which involved 80 to 90 agents, an armored vehicle smashing the security gate, handcuffed employees and boat patrols — was overkill. Combs’ Los Angeles mansion was also searched.

Gannon confirmed the federal investigation began the day after Cassie filed a lawsuit in November 2023 alleging that Combs abused her for years and involved her in hundreds of “freak-offs” with him and male sex workers. He soon settled for $20 million, she said.

Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he leveraged his fame and fortune to control Cassie and other people through threats and violence. His lawyers say the evidence reflects domestic violence, not racketeering or sex trafficking.

Jurors also heard from a psychologist who delved into the complexities of abusive relationships. Dawn Hughes explained victims often experience a “low sense of self” and tend to stay with abusers because they yearn for love and compassion they experienced in a relationship’s early “honeymoon phase.”

Hughes also explained how a victim’s memory can sometimes become jumbled — retaining awareness of abuse, but mixing up details. Hughes, who was paid $6,000 by the prosecution to testify, didn’t examine or mention Cassie or Combs, but her testimony paralleled some of what Cassie said she experienced with him.

Cassie testified that she started dating Cudi in late 2011. Although she and Combs broke up, they still engaged in “freak-offs,” she said. It was during such an encounter that Combs looked at her phone and figured out she was seeing Cudi, Cassie said.

Cassie’s mother, Regina Ventura, testified Tuesday that Cassie emailed her in December 2011 that Combs was so angry about the relationship that he planned to release explicit videos of her and have someone hurt Cassie and Cudi. Regina Ventura said she Combs also demanded $20,000. Scared for her daughter’s safety, she said she sent Combs the money, only to have it returned by Combs days later.

Cassie testified that she broke up with Cudi before the end of the year.

“It was just too much,” she said. “Too much danger, too much uncertainty of, like, what could happen if we continued to see each other.”

After Cassie reunited with Combs, he told her that Cudi’s car would be blown up and that he wanted Cudi’s friends there to see it, Cassie said.

Sisak and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. AP reporter Julie Walker contributed to this report.

Rams running back Kyren Williams is waiting patiently.

During the offseason, the team solidified its offense by re-signing left tackle Alaric Jackson and receiver Tutu Atwell, adding free-agent receiver Davante Adams and offensive lineman Coleman Shelton and adjusting the contract of quarterback Matthew Stafford.

Williams, who rushed for more than 1,100 yards in each of the last two seasons, is entering the final year of his rookie contract and is eligible for an extension.

In April, the Rams and Williams’ agent exchanged proposed contract terms. But with organized team activities scheduled to begin next week, a deal has not been done.

Still, Williams said he was “feeling good” about the situation.

“I know with time it’s going to happen,” Williams said last week in Pasadena, where he helped distribute new shoes to kids affected by the Eaton Fire.

And if Williams and the Rams do not reach a deal before the season?

“I would love for it to get done so I can take care of my family and the loved ones that helped me get here,” he said. “I’ve always got trust in God. Whether it happens now or I play out the season, I know it’s going to happen eventually.

“And so, time will tell. I just know I’ve got to do what I need to do each and every single day to make sure that it does happen in my favor.”

Rams running back Kyren Williams, second from right, helped distribute new shoes to kids affected by Eaton fire last week in a joint effort between the Seattle Seahawks and Rams.

(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)

Williams, a 2022 fifth-round draft pick from Notre Dame, was slowed by injuries much of his rookie season. But in 12 games in 2023, he rushed for 1,144 yards, scored 15 touchdowns and was voted to the Pro Bowl. In 16 games last season, he rushed for 1,299 yards and scored 16 touchdowns and helped the Rams advance to the NFC divisional round.

Williams, 24, leads a Rams running back corps that includes second-year pro Blake Corum, Ronnie Rivers, Cody Schrader and rookie Jarquez Hunter, a fourth-round draft pick from Auburn.

Williams is scheduled to earn about $5.4 million this season, according to Overthecap.com. The Rams have not given a running back a top-level extension since they awarded Todd Gurley a then-record deal before the 2018 season.

General manager Les Snead has said that Rams would “definitely like to engineer a long-term partnership,” with Williams. Coach Sean McVay said in April that “bridging that gap” financially was the challenge.

“We’ll see how far that we have to go with that but he is a very important part of what we want to be moving forward,” McVay said, adding, “He knows how much I love him, and so we’ll see if we can get something done.”

In the meantime, Williams is preparing for the season — and continuing to contribute off the field with actions consistent with those that made him the Rams’ nominee for the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award last season.

Williams directed his $25,000 from the NFL Foundation to the LAFD Foundation to help with fire relief efforts, said Molly Higgins, the Rams’ executive vice president of community impact and engagement.

“He’s been very vocal in saying, ‘However I can help with the fire-impacted families, let me know,’” Higgins said.

So when the Seattle Seahawks reached out to the Rams offering to combine forces to distribute sneakers to needy kids affected by the fires, Williams signed on to assist team mascots and several former Seahawks players at the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena.

“I couldn’t imagine what these young kids and their families went through when they lost their houses and things due to the fire so just being able to be here — this is a blessing,” Williams said.

As his contract situation plays out, the work on and off the field will continue, Williams said.

“My only purpose is to continue to get better,” he said, “and finding joy in each and every single day and finding something to get better at.”

I wasn’t expecting a painting of a naked clown to greet me when I FaceTimed Demetri Martin on a Monday afternoon in May. After the longest two seconds of my life, the comedian appeared in front of the camera with an unassuming smile.

For the past few months, Martin has been toiling away in the studio shed designed by his wife, interior designer Rachael Beame Martin, in the backyard of their Beverly Glen home. Lush greenery peeks through the windows above a lattice he constructed to mount canvases of various sizes. His first solo exhibition of paintings and drawings is just days away and he has some finishing touches to make.

Visual art is not new to Martin, a wiz at one-liners who incorporates drawings in his stand-up.

“The cool thing about a drawing is I can share something personal and I can use a graphic to illustrate it more specifically,” he says in “Demetri Deconstructed,” his 2024 Netflix special. In one graph from the special, he plots the inverse relationship between the amount of “past” and “future” time across an individual’s lifespan. The point where “past” and “future” meet is the mid-life existential crisis.

There is a synergy between Martin’s jokes and his sketches, which are more akin to doodles than drawings. Their humor lies in their pared-down specificity. They “make you ponder something on the absurdity-of-life level, which I guess is comedy,” says Martin’s close friend and musician Jack Johnson.

“I brought visual art into my stand-up comedy,” says Demetri Martin. “Can I bring comedy into the visual art world?”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

With his love of joke crafting, Martin says he represents the comedy old guard as stand-up has become heavily autobiographical in today’s internet age.

“Specifically, it’s jokes that have always attracted me when we’re talking about the comedy world,” Martin says of his aversion to storytelling. “Can you do a joke in 12 words? Can you get an idea across? How much can you take away and it still lands with people?”

“Acute Angles,” Martin’s solo exhibition running Sunday to May 31, takes his obsession with constraint a step further. The experiment: Can you communicate jokes visually without any words?

“I brought visual art into my stand-up comedy,” says Martin, who worked on paintings for two-plus years before he figured he had enough material to fill a gallery. “Can I bring comedy into the visual art world?”

“Acute Angles” — he says the title references the shape of his nose — features large-scale paintings with a unifying color palette of bright red, sky blue and medium gray, in addition to 30 smaller drawings. The paintings depict implausible scenarios: What if the grim reaper slipped on a banana on his way to kill you? What if Superman ripped his underpants on his quest to save you?

The show is a collaboration with his wife, whom he adoringly describes as the muscles of the operation. The two secured a month-long lease of an abandoned yoga studio tucked behind a California Pizza Kitchen in Brentwood. Using her design skills — they met in New York City when she was attending Parsons School of Design and he was pursing comedy — Beame Martin led a rebuild of the studio-turned-gallery.

When Martin’s publicist called to ask if the gallery had a name, the couple turned to Google. They eventually came up with “Laconic Gallery,” for Laconia, Greece, where Martin traces his roots, and because the word laconic perfectly describes Martin’s ethos: marked by the use of few words.

Demetri Martin describes his wife, Rachael Beame Martin, as the muscles of the operation.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

On the day of our interview, Martin is completing the last of 12 paintings for the show and is puzzled why the paint appears differently on the canvas than in the can. He’s trying hard to ensure the color of the naked clown’s pubic hair matches his hair.

The relationship between the viewer and the art is both exciting and scary to Martin. When taking a comedy show on the road, you more or less know your jokes will land, he says. With an art show, there’s more of a vacuum between him and the audience, yet the conceit remains: the show is meant to be funny.

But whether viewers laugh while visiting the art exhibition almost doesn’t matter. For Martin, the reward has been the process of creation — the meditative zone he sinks into, indie rock oozing from his CD player, as he envisions and re-envisions the work. (Many of the paintings in the show are derived from old sketches.)

The show also represents Martin’s re-emergence from his own mid-life existential crisis. At 51, he is older than his dad was when he died and about the same age as his late mom, when she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. “So now, is this like bonus time for me?” he started to ask himself in his late 40s.

In some ways, Martin has always been a tortured artist. After graduating from Yale, he attended NYU Law only to drop out after the second year. But New York City is also where he found himself, spending late nights at the Comedy Cellar and the Boston Comedy Club. His days were spent visiting the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Daydreaming his way through the galleries, jotting jokes in his notepad, is when he first gained an appreciation for the arts.

“He’s not without cynicism once you know him, but where comics so often lead with cynicism, he has this wide-eyed openness, and I think that’s a thread that pulls through all of his work,” says comedian and fellow Comedy Central alum Sarah Silverman.

Demetri Martin’s first solo art exhibition is a collaboration with his wife, Rachael Beame Martin.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Now, Martin is a father to an 8-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son — the same age he was when manning his Greek family’s shish kebab stand on the Jersey Shore. His self-described anger at seeing the world his kids are growing up in, namely their peers’ obsessions with cell phones, seeps into his paintings and drawings. But ultimately, being a father has irrevocably improved Martin’s perspective on life.

“I think sometimes resignation is also acceptance,” he says, on his new appreciation of midlife. “You’re still motivated, but maybe not in the same way. … You still want to make things, but maybe it doesn’t matter as much, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. So that’s where I feel like I’m at, where I’m saying, ‘You know what, I’m grateful.’ I understand how lucky I’ve been now.”

He’s not quite done with touring but “Acute Angles” represents a potential escape. If his comedy can travel without him, if he can make money while foregoing lonely nights on the road, he can prioritize more important moments, like playing catch with his son after school. After all, his kids aren’t at the age yet where they hate him — a joke his kids don’t like.

Still, Martin’s art-making mirrors his joke-writing. It’s a numbers game, meticulously filling notebooks in handwriting Silverman describes as “tiny letters all perfectly the same size,” then revisiting and sharpening material until the joke emerges, like a vision.

“It’s really a privilege to have the kind of career where I can try something like this,” Martin says. “I don’t take that for granted anymore.”