name

Amid the fusillade of terrible headlines this year, one pierced my nerdy heart.

“Enjoying this headline? You’re a rarity: Reading for pleasure is declining …” was the topper to a story by my colleague Hailey Branson-Potts in August. Pleasure reading among American adults fell more than 40% in two decades — a continuation of a trend going back to the 1940s.

I get it. We don’t want to read for fun when we’re trying to wade through the sewer of information we find online and make sense of our terrible political times. But as Tyrion Lannister, the wily hero of George R.R. Martin’s “A Game of Thrones” series, said, “A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”

So for my annual holiday columna recommending great books about Southern California, I’m sticking to formats that lend themselves to easier reading — bite-size jewels of intellect, if you will. Through essays, short stories, poems and pictures, each of my suggestions will bring solace through the beauty of where we live and offer inspiration about how to double down on resisting the bad guys.

“California Southern: Writing From the Road, 1992-2025” by LAist reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez.

(Gustavo Arellano / Los Angeles Times)

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez’s warm voice has informed Angelenos about arts, politics and education for 25 years on what was long called KPCC and now goes by LAist 89.3. What most listeners might not know is that the Mexico City native first earned acclaim as a founder of Taco Shop Poets, an influential San Diego collective that highlighted Chicano writers in a city that didn’t seem to care for them.

Guzman-Lopez lets others delve into that history in the intro and forerward to “California Southern: Writings from the Road, 1992-2025.” Reading the short anthology, it quickly becomes clear why his audio dispatches have always had a prose-like quality often lacking among public radio reporters, whose delivery tends to be as dry as Death Valley.

In mostly English but sometimes Spanish and Spanglish, Guzman-Lopez takes readers from the U.S.-Mexico border to L.A., employing the type of lyrical bank shots only a poet can get away with. I especially loved his description of Silver Lake as “two tax brackets away/From Salvatrucha Echo Park.” Another highlight is contained in “Trucks,” where Guzman-Lopez praises the immigrant entrepreneurs from around the world who come to L.A. and name their businesses after their hometowns.

“Say these names to praise the soil,” he writes. “Say these names to document the passage. Say these names to remember the trek.”

Guzman-Lopez has been doing readings recently with Lisa Alvarez, who published her first book, “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories,” after decades of teaching English — including to my wife back in the 1990s! — at Irvine Valley College.

The L.A. native did the impossible for someone who rarely delves into made-up stories because the real world is fantastical enough: She made me not just read fiction but enjoy it.

Alvarez’s debut is a loosely tied collection centered on progressive activists in Southern California, spanning a seismic sendoff for someone who fought during the Spanish Civil War and a resident of O.C.’s canyon country tipping off the FBI about her neighbor’s participation in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

Author, activist and Irvine Valley College professor Lisa Alvarez holds a copy of her short story collection “Some Final Beauty and Other Stories.”

(Don Leach / Daily Pilot)

Most of the protagonists are women, brought to life through Alvarez’s taut, shining sentences. Memories play a key role — people loved and lost, places missed and reviled. A nephew remembers how his uncle landed in an FBI subversives file after attending a Paul Robeson speech in South L.A. shortly after serving in the Navy in World War II. An L.A. mayor who seems like a stand-in for Antonio Villaraigoisa considers himself “the crafty and cool voice of one who sees his past and future in terms of chapters in a best-selling book” as he tries to convince a faded movie star to come down from a tree during a protest.

To paraphrase William Faulkner about the South, the past is never dead in Southern California — it isn’t even past.

While Alvarez is a first-time author, D.J. Waldie has written many books. The Livy of Lakewood, who has penned important essays about L.A. history and geography for decades, has gathered some of his recent efforts in “Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air, Fire.”

A lot of his subjects — L.A.’s mother tree, pioneering preacher Aimee Semple McPherson, the first Hass avocado — are tried-and-true terrain for Southern California writers. But few of us can turn a phrase like Waldie. On legendary Dodger broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrín, he writes, “The twin cities of Los Angeles and Los Ángeles, evoked by [their] voices … may seem to be incommensurate places to the unhearing, but the borders of the two cities are porous. Sound travels.”

Man, I wish I would have written that.

“Elements of Los Angeles” is worth the purchase, if only to read “Taken by the Flood,” Waldie’s account of the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster that killed at least 431 people — mostly Latinos — and destroyed the career of L.A.’s water godfather, William Mulholland. The author’s slow burn of the tragic chronology, from Mulholland’s famous “There it is. Take it” quote when he unleashed water from the Owens Valley in 1913 to slake the city’s thirst, to how L.A. quickly forgot the disaster, compounds hubris upon hubris.

But then, Waldie concludes by citing a Spanish-language corrido about the disaster: “Friends, I leave you/with this sad song/and with a plea to heaven/For those taken by the flood.”

The ultimate victims, Waldie argues, are not the dead from the St. Francis Dam but all Angelenos for buying into the fatal folly of Mullholland’s L.A.

“Elements of Los Angeles” was published by Angel City Press, a wing of the Los Angeles Public Library that also released “Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles.”

Cal State Long Beach sociology professor Oliver Wang offers a powerhouse of a coffee table book by taking what could have easily sold as a scrapbook of cool images and grounding it in the history of a community that has seen the promise and pain of Southern California like few others.

We see Japanese Americans posing in front of souped-up imports, reveling in SoCal’s kustom kulture scene of the 1960s, standing in front of a car at a World War II-era incarceration camp and loading up their gardening trucks at a time when they dominated the landscaping industry.

“One can read entire histories of American car culture and find no mention of Japanese or Asian American involvement,” Wang writes — but that’s about as pedantic as “Cruising J-Town” gets.

The rest is a delight that zooms by like the rest of my recs. Drop the doomscrolling for a day, make the time to read them all and become a better Southern Californian in the process. Enjoy!

Not that it’s a contest, but Santa Clarita did it first.

It was Hollywood before Hollywood. It had its own gold rush years before riches were found at Sutter’s Mill. And men were pulling oil from the ground there two decades before Texas dug its first well.

Get to know Los Angeles through the places that bring it to life. From restaurants to shops to outdoor spaces, here’s what to discover now.

Yet the rugged Santa Clarita Valley and the four communities it comprises — Newhall, Valencia, Canyon County and Saugus — are still something of a mystery to many who don’t live there. Or worse, the area remains misunderstood thanks to “The Santa Clarita Diet” and other pop culture portrayals.

The truth is far more interesting, if evasive. For decades, the Newhall Pass formed a natural barrier separating the valley from the Los Angeles Basin, allowing Santa Clarita to cultivate its own unique culture, one that’s woven into the fabric of Southern California.

“This was truly the Old Wild West out here,” said Alan Pollack, a doctor of internal medicine who moved to the valley in 1991 and quickly became steeped in its history. “There were gunfights, there were stagecoaches, all that sort of stuff.”

Santa Clarita was where many of the early westerns were shot, with real cowboys driving herds of cattle down the town’s dusty main street. Since then, the valley has become home to more than a dozen movie ranches, from the 22-acre Melody Ranch to the 400-acre Rancho Maria and Sable Ranch, as well as dozens of soundstages, earning the city the title “Hollywood North.”

“You can get any kind of look in Santa Clarita,” says Carol Rock, marketing director for the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. “Just drive around. You’re looking at the Amazon. You’re looking at the forest in different kinds of trees. And then you’ve got palm trees.” Pay attention and you’ll notice that the hills and canyons have provided the backdrop for everything from “The Lone Ranger” and “Gunsmoke” to “Oppenheimer,” “Star Trek” and “The Office.”

The city is also home to the sprawling Magic Mountain theme park, whose 19 roller coasters are the most in a single amusement park in the world. It holds more than 80 miles of some of Southern California’s best public hiking trails, fed by a 30-mile system of biking paths, walkways and bridges. (On one of those trails, you can view the site of the St. Francis Dam built by William Mulholland, whose aqueduct made Southern California’s suburban sprawl possible. The dam’s 1928 collapse that killed hundreds is still remembered as one of the worst U.S. civil engineering disasters of the 20th century.)

And then there’s CalArts, a private visual and performing school whose graduates — including filmmaker Tim Burton, Pixar’s John Lasseter and jazz musician Ravi Coltrane — have had an outsized influence on modern animation and pop music.

Through it all, Old Town Newhall, the core of what once was a railroad and ranching hub, remains the beating heart and soul of the area. You’ll find echos of the past on Main Street — the historic district is still lined with hitching posts, though they’re mainly decorative nowadays, and embedded with bronze stars and terrazzo tiles honoring the legends of western film, television and radio. And all over the community, the legacy of William S. Hart, Newhall’s original silent screen cowboy, lives on in the streets, schools, museums and parks that bear his name.

To see where it all began, spend a day in Santa Clarita, a place where you can discover cowboy history and sip a sophisticated Chardonnay at a wine bar all on an afternoon stroll.

WASHINGTON — No one seems to know what happened to Vicente Ventura Aguilar.

A witness told his brother and attorneys that the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant, who doesn’t have lawful immigration status, was taken into custody by immigration authorities on Oct. 7 in SouthLos Angeles and suffered a medical emergency.

But it’s been more than six weeks since then, and Ventura Aguilar’s family still hasn’t heard from him.

The Department of Homeland Security said 73 people from Mexico were arrested in the Los Angeles area between Oct. 7 and 8.

“None of them were Ventura Aguilar,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary.

“For the record, illegal aliens in detention have access to phones to contact family members and attorneys,” she added.

McLaughlin did not answer questions about what the agency did to determine whether Ventura Aguilar had ever been in its custody, such as checking for anyone with the same date of birth, variations of his name, or identifying detainees who received medical attention near the California border around Oct. 8.

Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing Ventura Aguilar’s family, said DHS never responded to her inquiries about him.

The family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar, 44, says he has been missing since Oct. 7 when a friend saw him arrested by federal immigration agents in Los Angeles. Homeland Security officials say he was never in their custody.

(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)

“There’s only one agency that has answers,” she said. “Their refusal to provide this family with answers, their refusal to provide his attorneys with answers, says something about the lack of care and the cruelty of the moment right now for DHS.”

His family and lawyers checked with local hospitals and the Mexican consulate without success. They enlisted help from the office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose staff called the Los Angeles and San Diego county medical examiner’s offices. Neither had someone matching his name or description.

The Los Angeles Police Department also told Kamlager-Dove’s office that he isn’t in their system. His brother, Felipe Aguilar, said the family filed a missing person’s report with LAPD on Nov. 7.

“We’re sad and worried,” Felipe Aguilar said. “He’s my brother and we miss him here at home. He’s a very good person. We only hope to God that he’s alive.”

Felipe Aguilar said his brother, who has lived in the U.S. for around 17 years, left home around 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 to catch the bus for an interview for a sanitation job when he ran into friends on the corner near a local liquor store. He had his phone but had left his wallet at home.

One of those friends told Felipe Aguilar and his lawyers that he and Ventura Aguilar were detained by immigration agents and then held at B-18, a temporary holding facility at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.

The friend was deported the next day to Tijuana. He spoke to the family in a phone call from Mexico.

Detainees at B-18 have limited access to phones and lawyers. Immigrants don’t usually turn up in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement online locator system until they’ve arrived at a long-term detention facility.

According to Felipe Aguilar and Toczylowski, the friend said Ventura Aguilar began to shake, went unconscious and fell to the ground while shackled on Oct. 8 at a facility near the border. The impact caused his face to bleed.

The friend said that facility staff called for an ambulance and moved the other detainees to a different room. Toczylowski said that was the last time anyone saw Ventura Aguilar.

She said the rapid timeline between when Ventura Aguilar was arrested to when he disappeared is emblematic of what she views as a broad lack of due process for people in government custody under the Trump administration and shows that “we don’t know who’s being deported from the United States.”

Felipe Aguilar said he called his brother’s cell phone after hearing about the arrests but it went straight to voicemail.

Felipe Aguilar said that while his brother is generally healthy, he saw a cardiologist a couple years ago about chest pain. He was on prescribed medication and his condition had improved.

His family and lawyers said Ventura Aguilar might have given immigration agents a fake name when he was arrested. Some detained people offer up a wrong name or alias, and that would explain why he never showed up in Homeland Security records. Toczylowski said federal agents sometimes misspell the name of the person they are booking into custody.

Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who has been missing since Oct. 7, had lived in the United States for 17 years, his family said.

(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)

But she said the agency should make a significant attempt to search for him, such as by using biometric data or his photo.

“To me, that’s another symptom of the chaos of the immigration enforcement system as it’s happening right now,” she said of the issues with accurately identifying detainees. “And it’s what happens when you are indiscriminately, racially profiling people and picking them up off the street and holding them in conditions that are substandard, and then deporting people without due process. Mistakes get made. Right now, what we want to know is what mistakes were made here, and where is Vicente now?”

Surveillance footage from a nearby business reviewed by MS NOW shows Ventura Aguilar on the sidewalk five minutes before masked agents begin making arrests in South Los Angeles. The footage doesn’t show him being arrested, but two witnesses told the outlet that they saw agents handcuff Ventura Aguilar and place him in a van.

In a letter sent to DHS leaders Friday, Kamlager-Dove asked what steps DHS has taken to determine whether anyone matching Ventura Aguilar’s identifiers was detained last month and whether the agency has documented any medical events or hospital transports involving people taken into custody around Oct. 7-8.

“Given the length of time since Mr. Ventura Aguilar’s disappearance and the credible concern that he may have been misidentified, injured, or otherwise unaccounted for during the enforcement action, I urgently request that DHS and ICE conduct an immediate and comprehensive review” by Nov. 29, Kamlager-Dove wrote in her letter.

Kamlager-Dove said her most common immigration requests from constituents are for help with visas and passports.

“Never in all the years did I expect to get a call about someone who has completely disappeared off the face of the earth, and also never did I think that I would find myself not just calling ICE and Border Patrol but checking hospitals, checking with LAPD and checking morgues to find a constituent,” she said. “It’s horrifying and it’s completely dystopian.”

She said families across Los Angeles deserve answers and need to know whether something similar could happen to them.

“Who else is missing?” she said.

Intuit is the first new founding partner of the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics to take advantage of venue naming opportunities available for the L.A. Games as the financial technology company and LA28 announced a sponsorship deal Friday.

Per the partnership, Intuit will retain its name on Intuit Dome for Olympic basketball competitions and work with LA28 to assist small businesses in the city, provide select U.S. athletes with free tax preparation and expand financial education for students in the L.A. community.

Previously, the International Olympic Committee required “clean venues,” which necessitated scrubbing all mention of corporate sponsorship. It has required LA28 organizers to use generic names such as Exposition Park Stadium for BMO Stadium or 2028 Stadium for SoFi Stadium.

But after the IOC and LA28 announced an agreement in August that opened potential venue naming rights, Honda Center (volleyball), Peacock Theater (weightlifting and boxing) and the Comcast Squash Center at Universal Studios became the first venues to have corporate sponsorship. Honda and Comcast had already previously announced deals to become founding partners with LA28.

John Slusher, chief executive of LA28’s commercial operation, believed Intuit, which is in a 23-year partnership with the Clippers, would have been a potential Olympic partner no matter what, he said the pace of conversations picked up after naming rights became available. The Intuit Dome will host men’s and women’s basketball competitions that are among the most popular Olympic events and basketball is one of the few sports that competes for the duration of the Games, giving the arena a prime position in the Olympic spotlight.

“It wasn’t just any building. It was an incredibly important and state-of-the-art building,” Slusher said in an interview with The Times. “And it obviously ties so well with their investment in Los Angeles and what they do with the dome right now.”

Intuit Dome opened in 2024 for the Clippers. Hailed for its innovative use of technology, massive halo board and large fan section dubbed “The Wall,” the project from Clippers owner Steve Ballmer has already secured hosting rights for the NBA All-Star Game in February.

“Intuit is incredibly proud to be a founding partner of the LA28 Games,” Intuit chief marketing officer Thomas Ranese said in a statement. “Our commitment to powering prosperity aligns perfectly with the spirit of the movement: celebrating determination, optimism, and the belief in what’s possible. Just as athletes strive for gold, we empower consumers and businesses to outdo their financial goals with confidence.”

Conversations with partners regarding naming rights for temporary venues have started, Slusher said, beginning with companies already involved in The Olympic Partner (TOP) program. While no deals have closed for temporary venues yet, the initial feedback from partners “seems incredibly excited,” Slusher said.

The venue naming rights opened a never-before-tapped revenue stream for the 2028 Games, which are expected to cost about $7.1 billion. Organizers are hoping to cover at least $2.5 billion with domestic sponsorship. The financial terms of Friday’s contract were not disclosed, but founding-level partnerships are reported to start at roughly $200 million, according to Sports Business Journal.

The organizing committee had lofty marketing expectations heading into 2025. Hoping to capitalize on the successful 2024 Paris Games, the group aimed to bring in $800 million to $1 billion in deals this year and reach $2 billion total by the beginning of 2026. After announcing three founding-level partnerships this year between Intuit, Honda and Starbucks, Slusher says he believes the team is on track to meet its goals.

“We feel very confident that what we said back then will be true,” Slusher said. “So we’re feeling great about the progress. I think we saw an incredible momentum in the first quarter, and now what we’re seeing is that same momentum. … We are super excited about it and more to come.”

Every last deal matters approaching the July 14, 2028, opening ceremony. Any debt incurred from Games operation by LA28 will fall to L.A. The city is on the hook for the first $270 million in overrun costs, with California picking up the next $270 million and the rest falling back to L.A.

There was a time when KevOnStage was a very literal description of comedian Kevin Fredericks as a hungry comedian looking for stage time. These days, he might as well be called KevOnEverything. You can find him cracking jokes on live comedy tours, TV sketch shows, books, podcasts and just about every social media platform you care about. From books like his 2025 New York Times bestseller “Successful Failure” to his latest podcast, “Not My Best Moment,” the idea has always been about forward momentum to breed a funny brand that, just like his name, continues to stick with a sense of humor that ultimately succeeds at being relatable.

Moving from Washington state to L.A. with his wife and kids to fulfill his comedy dreams, he focused his comedy on the Black church and family life in a way that hadn’t been done before. The result was his breakout success with the show “Churchy” that started as a self-funded series that was picked up by BET and recently ran through its second season. It created a lane for him to expand his content universe with sketch shows like “The Hospital” and “Safe Space” on Tubi that allows him to retain creative control and put on more comedians working with veteran stand-ups like Tahir Moore and Tony Baker. The latter is his podcasting partner in crime whom he’s been touring with on the Bald Brothers comedy tour which wraps up in L.A. at the Wiltern on Sunday. Recently we spoke to KevOnStage about the secret to building his comedy brand — by being everywhere.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

I love that this is a year where so much is happening for you from so many angles.

It’s wild.

You’re KevOnStage, KevOnPodcasts, KevOnBooks, KevOnTV …

[Laughs] Literally KevOnEverything.

When did you decide to go from being Kevin Fredericks — working a regular job and doing comedy on the side — to becoming “KevOnStage”?

I was working at the Spanaway [Washington] branch of Key Bank and I was on Twitter. This must have been 2009 — very early on Twitter. And people were just making jokes and people were getting fired [from their jobs over their jokes on Twitter]. People would not like a joke you said, search your name, Google you, find out where you worked and email like your boss, and people were getting fired. And I was like, “I can’t afford to lose my job over some ports take.” So I’m gonna take my full actual government name out of my handle, which was just Kevin Fredericks at the time. And I was like, “I’m Kev and I be on stage.” And that was literally as much thought as I put into it. I was just not trying to be easily found and fired. So I switched my handle to KevOnStage because I was doing stand-up all the time at that time and it stuck. Hindsight being 20/20, I would have just kept Kevin Fredericks, which was my Facebook name, but I think KevOnStage is cool as a moniker. I’m trying to be like Beyoncé, Bono, Sting, Oprah, KevOnStage — one name. People think my actual name is Kevon because of that. If they think that, then I know they found me because of the internet. Which is also fine. As long as people know me, it doesn’t bother me.

KevOnStage with Tony Baker on the Bald Brothers comedy tour.

(Joshua Gonzales )

When did you really find your tribe of comedians in Washington state that you still hang out with today?

In Washington state there was only really like Nate Jackson, he was the only working comedian who was working nationally. In Washington it was me, Nate, Big Irish Jay, a comedian named Terrence — those are the only people that were kind of doing comedy consistently. And then we had the Bay Area Black Comedy Competition, I don’t remember what year it was, and I met Lance Woods, who I’m still cool with. But then when I moved [to L.A.], that’s when I met Tony Baker and Tahir Moore through All Def Comedy. Because I didn’t really do stand-up on stage that much when I first moved to L.A. My wife was like, “we’re not gonna move to L.A. and then you’re on stage four or five nights a week.” And it was hard to get on stage … you have to go and hang out, go to Denny’s and like hang out all night. And [my wife] was not going for it and I had small children who had to go to school. So the majority of the people that I know I met through All Def.

You brought up an interesting point about the lifestyle of comics because it is a lifestyle that doesn’t really agree with everything else for most of the 9-to-5 working world — especially being married and having kids. So how did you then decide to focus more on content creation as a means to perform?

Well, interestingly enough, it started before I moved to L.A. There’s hardly any entertainment opportunities in Washington. There’s very rarely a TV show, even shooting there, much less a show you can actually audition and be on. So what happened was we were doing plays. We’re trying to be like Tyler Perry, David E. Talbert or Je’Caryous Johnson. And we were on our way, but there weren’t enough people in Washington to mount a successful black play — or “urban plays” as people called them. So we did our best, but even if we got 3,000 people, that was only for one night. And we weren’t doing that, by the way. We’re getting like 68 people. So I was watching a lot of YouTube at the time and I was realizing these people have fans everywhere. So I was like, we can do internet comedy and make people laugh on the internet and hopefully we get fans all across the United States. And from the first two videos we did, I was like, forget the play thing, I think the internet is the thing. Just like focus on that. I think we do that, we will build our own audience, and everything will be easier for us.

As far as the ability to own your content and guide however you want, how has that been important for your comedy career?

For me it’s been like, “He who pays says.” Like if you pay for it, you get the final say. So for a long time, it was by default because nobody’s getting paid. I’m just making it and posting it. The first big thing we did that was like really expensive was “Churchy” [on BET]. And there was a lot of [money from previous brand deals] that I saved, a lot of [money from doing] Spectrum commercials that I saved. I made eight episodes of “Churchy.” And shout-out to Jamal Henderson, he helped us meet executives at BET and they bought it. And they couldn’t have any creative control because it was already done.

So that’s kind of a process that we’ve repeated with [my sketch shows] “The Hospital” and “Safe Space.” We pay for it and then license it or partner with a company and make it now. And with Tubi, they’re a little bit different. They let you have creative control, even if they pay for it. They’re like “hey, we trust that you built your audience, you know your audience.” They’re the only platform that I’ve worked with that’s completely like, “we don’t have any say-so, no notes, you don’t have to send us a script, you don’t have to send an edit for approval, we trust you.” And that’s fantastic for me because you get to make it as close to [the original vision] without any impurities as possible.

Now I gotta be honest, when I work with BET, we had amazing executives and they’ve given us a lot of great notes, but they also give you some notes that you don’t agree with that you have to take. And that’s also part of just making things. It’s not a full negative. They also made [the show] better in a lot of different ways. And the one thing that I’m very grateful for with our partners at BET is every note they gave was to make the overall project better and for more people to enjoy it. I am a comedian at heart, so sometimes I’m loyal to the joke to a fault. The executive is like, we gotta tell the best story — so it’s not all bad. A lot of times we hear people bemoan partnering with people, and it has its negatives, but also my TV exec was more experienced than I was at making good TV, so some of their notes were really helpful, and I can carry those with me when I’m making other projects.

“The Hospital” and “Safe Space” are both like sketch shows. What was important about the formats for both shows — one at a hospital, the other on a therapist’s couch — that allow you to find the funny?

Richard Washington, who is a creative exec at KevOn Stage Studios, head of T V and film, and I built the systems and then we allow the people to work within the systems to the best of their personality. So I think the great part about “Safe Space” is the talent. Like you give them a premise, you find the right people, and then they take it and make it funny. “Safe Space” was really the same with “The Hospital.” Like, you know, we hired more sketch writers for the hospital, but Safe Space was more improv than even “The Hospital.” We had some fully written sketches for “The Hospital,” but we didn’t stick to everything exactly. Some are almost all improv. Like comedian CP’s episodes, he’s just riffing. So it’s as close to a stand-up version of content as you can get. And what I mean by stand-up is the audience is sitting there not knowing what the person’s gonna say. And that’s why I think it works.

KevOnStage recording a podcast.

(Mike Folabi)

As a creator of these shows, you often hold the door open for new talent to shine. How does that help your own vision of allowing there to be space for new actors and comedians to come up?

I grew up playing sports and then I went into plays. And with both of those elements, it’s it’s a team environment. You need other people to be successful and you gotta rely on other people to do their thing. With plays, you wanna have the best show possible. And then you put it all together and it’s the best product. And I think that’s the same approach that I take to creation. A lot of comedians, I’ve been told, they won’t take the best comedians. They’ll take people who are OK, but nowhere near as good as them.

Considering you post three to five videos a day, how do you find the time to produce as much content as you do?

So the thing is like this is my job. And I work really hard. I think people compare themselves to me, but they also have a job. Like you’re thinking of “how does he do this?” because you’re thinking of your actual day job. For the most part, I get up and think of funny things to say all day. And the other thing is I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m gonna do or editing it at all. If something funny happens right now, if I walk out of here and I trip and fall, I’ll probably make a video immediately and within five minutes that video’s gonna be on seven different platforms. So I’m not really precious about what I make. And I feel like people think it’s hard, but this is not hard for me. It’s something I love to do, I create freely out of joy. The guy who runs my doughnut shop who hasn’t taken a day off in 20 years, literally I was talking to him about this. He never takes a day off. Twenty years he’s at that doughnut shop, every night at 8 p.m., he makes doughnut, preparing for the day. Every day at 4 a.m., he comes and bakes them. That is hard. Not to say what I’m making is not hard. It is, but it’s not hard like that. People have hard jobs. I just be silly for two minutes and post it within five minutes. That’s not really hard for me.

“For the most part, I get up and think of funny things to say all day,” says KevOnStage.

(Joshua Gonzales )

I guess you’re not getting cellphone calluses.

Not at all [laughs] … I kind of designed my content to be able to make it easily because I feel like my approach is just inundating you with Kev. Like I want to be unavoidable. Yeah. I want to make content on so many different topics. It’s not even always comedic. I want people to just share you and or have a thought or make you have a thought. Right now I’ve been doing a lot of podcasts. So if you don’t follow me, but you follow for example “The Pivot,” which I did last week and they collab with me, now you’re seeing me on “The Pivot” or Funny Marco or I interviewed Issa Rae for the first episode of [my new podcast] called “Not My Best Moment.” And Issa Rae doesn’t do a whole whole bunch of interviews if she’s not promoting something. So if you’re interested in what Issa has to say, you got to hear me because I asked the question. So people rip my stuff, I’m like, “this is great!” They rip it and post it on threads. This is like as close to getting bootlegged as possible.

That’s what you want.

Yeah, bootleg me! Obviously I’d love to make the money, but it’s like the exposure will become capital or currency later. I just want to be out here so much that you’re eventually like, “All right, what is he talking about?” Because think about how many videos do you see in a day now. Back in the day, we used to have to be like, OK, I want to watch the videos. I’m gonna go to my computer and go to like, I remember before YouTube, I used to go to Break.com and watch videos. It was a thing I did for some time and then I went on about my day. Think about how many videos you consume on a daily basis. … So you gotta really hit ‘em over and over before they make a decision. So that’s why I just wanna flood you. I want you to be like, “Oh, my God, enough!”

Well, add one more to the pile right here.

Yeah, absolutely. Once I saw cameras here [at the L.A. Times studio], I was like, “Yeah, baby, I thought this was just an interview, we got video content, baby. Let’s go!” So yeah, it’s like that’s my approach. Just keep going — a lot.

Starting Saturday, NBCUniversal’s cable news channel MSNBC will be called MS NOW, a makeover that may come as a shock to its loyal audience.

It’s why every MSNBC host has been sending the same message in promotional spots, on their programs and in press interviews about the new moniker. They say: We’re not going anywhere and we’re not changing.

“ ‘Morning Joe’ will still be ‘Morning Joe,’ ” said the program’s co-host Joe Scarborough in a recent Zoom conversation. “Chris Hayes will still be Chris Hayes. Rachel Maddow will still be Rachel. Lawrence O’Donnell will still be Lawrence.”

“We’re just going to keep doing what we do,” added Scarborough’s wife and co-host, Mika Brzezinski.

While no programming changes are planned, the rebranding will be a test in an age when brand awareness is difficult to achieve as the media marketplace is highly fractured. MSNBC kept its name for 29 years even after its founding partner Microsoft gave up its stake in the network.

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough on “Morning Joe.”

(MSNBC)

MS NOW — an acronym for “My Source for News, Opinion and the World” — is the result of the politically progressive network being spun off into a company called Versant. Parent company Comcast announced the move last year as it no longer wants the slow, steady decline of the cable business holding back its stock price. Versant, which also includes CNBC, USA Network, Oxygen, E! and Golf Channel, will be its own publicly traded company starting in January.

The new ownership for MSNBC led to a separation from NBC News, which operated MSNBC since its launch in 1996. Although Versant leadership initially said the name would remain, NBCUniversal wanted to avoid having the network’s brand attached to a channel it no longer controlled.

Versant executives will likely be nervous when they look at the Nielsen ratings the first few weeks after the name change. But Julie Doughty, regional executive director of naming and verbal identity for the global brand consulting firm Landor, believes the shift is minor enough for consumers to get used to quickly.

“I’m sure they were concerned about disrupting the brand awareness they’ve built and losing the legitimacy and gravitas of the NBC name,” Doughty said. “This new name closely tracks the original. It has the same number of letters. MS is still in the front, which is a nice bit of continuity for those customers who already just shorten the name to MS.”

Doughty added, “The real test will come in the content. Will it continue to have high standards and deserve their trust as a mainstream new source?”

The network appeared to pass its first big test as a freestanding news organization with coverage of the Nov. 4 off-year election that saw a strong showing for the Democrats and the passage of the congressional redistricting proposition in California.

Nielsen data showed MSNBC finished well ahead of CNN on the night and just slightly behind perennial cable news ratings leader Fox News.

MSNBC becomes MS NOW on Nov. 15.

(MSNBC)

MS NOW executives say they remain committed to covering breaking news, staffing the channel’s own Washington bureau and entering news-gathering agreements with Sky for international coverage and AccuWeather. A number of NBC News journalists, including White House correspondent Vaughn Hillyard, justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian and national correspondent Jacob Soboroff, moved to MS NOW with the belief there will be more opportunities for expansive reporting.

“I won’t say their names, but some of the best reporters at NBC are far more disappointed with this than we are,” Scarborough said. “Their window just went from having 30 minutes on ‘Morning Joe,’ where influencers are, to 35 seconds on a morning show or maybe a sound bite on ‘NBC Nightly News.’”

The network is leaning heavily into promoting its lineup of personalities who in the current era of divided politics serve as tribal leaders for the audience.

“One of the things that so impressed me three years ago when I joined MS was the depth of the relationship with the fans,” MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler said at a recent press breakfast at the network’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan once occupied by the New York Times. “Eight hours a week — that is a ton of time and that is how much people watch us.”

The only signature MSNBC talent who chose to go with NBC News is political analyst Steve Kornacki. Willie Geist will remain host of NBC’s “Sunday Today” in addition to his duties on “Morning Joe.”

MSNBC on-air personalities believe the lack of a large corporate owner will be freeing at a time when journalism organizations and their parent companies are fearing the wrath of President Trump and his threats of business-related retribution over coverage he doesn’t like.

Last month at an MSNBC fan event in Manhattan, Maddow stirred up the crowd by touting the network’s editorial independence. She called the network a “nontoxic workplace” that is “at no risk of right-wing bloggers who are some billionaire’s friend.”

The comment was a reference to Bari Weiss, founder of anti-”woke” website the Free Press, who was hired to be editor in chief of CBS News and is a clear favorite of parent company Paramount’s chief executive, David Ellison.

Scarborough and Brzezinski said they have noticed how fans greet them with a bit more intensity since Trump has returned to the White House.

“When people see us on the street or the airport, they hug us a little longer and they thank us a little more,” Scarborough said. “They ask if everything is going to be OK.”

Scarborough said the new corporate setup will allow more entrepreneurial opportunities for the on-air talent in other platforms such as newsletters, podcasts and live events.

ESPN is shifting its strategy on online sports gambling, ending its partnership with Penn Entertainment.

The companies announced Thursday they were terminating an agreement that offered ESPN equity in Penn, which operated the ESPN Bet sportsbook app. The app will no longer carry the familiar red ESPN logo. It will operate under a new name.

ESPN said it will partner with DraftKings, a leading sports betting company, which will provide odds and other gaming-related data for the Walt Disney Co. unit’s programs and its digital platforms. ESPN’s on-air staff will use DraftKings’ odds starting Dec. 1.

According to people familiar with the ESPN-Penn arrangement, the app simply didn’t reach its financial targets in the highly competitive business, which operates in the 31 states where online gambling is legal.

In 2023, Penn agreed to pay $1.5 billion in cash over the next 10 years for the rights to use the ESPN name on its app. As part of the deal, ESPN promoted the product across its programming and provided access to on-air talent. ESPN had the right to purchase up to 31.8 million shares of Penn stock for $500 million over the 10-year period.

“When we first announced our partnership with ESPN, both sides made it clear that we expected to compete for a podium position in the space,” said Jay Snowden, CEO and President of Penn Entertainment. “Although we made significant progress in improving our product offering and building a cohesive ecosystem with ESPN, we have mutually and amicably agreed to wind down our collaboration.”

The end of the deal comes shortly after an FBI investigation led to the arrest of Miami Heat player Terry Rozier, who allegedly pulled out of a game claiming injury to deliver a win on one of his prop bets.

ESPN’s decision is unrelated to the recent news, as the company has been in talks for months with DraftKings about a new partnership. But no longer having the ESPN name on a betting app will keep the brand out of the line of fire if the NBA case escalates.

Beginning in December, DraftKings will have its app exclusively integrated across ESPN’s platforms.

The companies said they will “collaborate to advance their shared commitment to responsible gaming, by dedicating prominent assets to educate, raise customer awareness and promote responsible play through campaigns and integrations.”

DraftKings will provide the betting tab within the ESPN app and its customers will receive special promotions for ESPN’s newly launched direct-to-consumer streaming product.

DraftKings operates in 28 states and in Washington, D.C., and Ontario, Canada, and has more than 10 million customers across its products.

When it comes to Proposition 50, Marcia Owens is a bit fuzzy on the details.

She knows, vaguely, it has something to do with how California draws the boundaries for its 52 congressional districts, a convoluted and arcane process that’s not exactly top of the mind for your average person. But Owens is abundantly clear when it comes to her intent in Tuesday’s special election.

“I’m voting to take power out of Trump’s hands and put it back in the hands of the people,” said Owens, 48, a vocational nurse in Riverside. “He’s making a lot of illogical decisions that are really wreaking havoc on our country. He’s not putting our interests first, making sure that an individual has food on the table, they can pay their rent, pay electric bills, pay for healthcare.”

Peter Arensburger, a fellow Democrat who also lives in Riverside, was blunter still.

President Trump, said the 55-year-old college professor, “is trying to rule as a dictator” and Republicans are doing absolutely nothing to stop him.

So, Arensburger said, California voters will do it for them.

Or at least try.

“It’s a false equivalency,” he said, “to say that we need to do everything on an even keel in California, but Texas” — which redrew its political map to boost Republicans — “can do whatever they want.”

Proposition 50, which aims to deliver Democrats at least five more House seats in the 2026 midterm election, is either righteous payback or a grubby power grab.

A reasoned attempt to even things out in response to Texas’ attempt to nab five more congressional seats. Or a ruthless gambit to drive the California GOP to near-extinction.

It all depends on your perspective.

Above all, Proposition 50 has become a political ink-blot test; what many California voters see depends on, politically, where they stand.

Mary Ann Rounsavall thinks the measure is “horrible,” because that’s how the Fontana retiree feels about its chief proponent, Gavin Newsom.

“He’s a jerk,” the 75-year-old Republican fairly spat, as if the act of forming the governor’s name left a bad taste in her mouth. “No one believes anything he says.”

Timothy, a fellow Republican who withheld his last name to avoid online trolls, echoed the sentiment.

“It’s just Gavin Newsom playing political games,” said the 39-year-old warehouse manager, who commutes from West Covina to his job at a plumbing supplier in Ontario. “They always talk about Trump. ‘Trump, Trump, Trump.’ Get off of Trump. I’ve been hearing this crap ever since he started running.”

Riverside and San Bernardino counties form the heart of the Inland Empire. The next-door neighbors are politically purple: more Republican than the state as a whole, but not as conservative as California’s more rural reaches. That means neither party has an upper hand, a parity reflected in dozens of interviews with voters across the sprawling region.

On a recent smoggy morning, the hulking San Bernardino Mountains veiled by a gray-brown haze, Eric Lawson paused to offer his thoughts.

The 66-year-old independent has no use for politicians of any stripe. “They’re all crooks,” he said. “All of them.”

Lawson called Proposition 50 a waste of time and money.

Gerrymandering — the dark art of drawing political lines to benefit one party over another — is, as he pointed out, hardly new. (In fact, the term is rooted in the name of Elbridge Gerry, one of the nation’s founders.)

What has Lawson particularly steamed is the cost of “this stupid election,” which is pushing $300 million.

“We talk and talk and talk and we print money for all this talk,” said Lawson, who lives in Ontario and consults in the auto industry. “But that money doesn’t go where it’s supposed to go.”

Although sentiments were evenly split in those several dozen conversations, all indications suggest that Proposition 50 is headed toward passage Tuesday, possibly by a wide margin. After raising a tidal wave of cash, Newsom last week told small donors that’s enough, thanks. The opposition has all but given up and resigned itself to defeat.

It comes down to math. Proposition 50 has become a test of party muscle and a talisman of partisan faith and California has a lot more Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

Andrea Fisher, who opposes the initiative, is well aware of that fact. “I’m a conservative,” she said, “in a state that’s not very conservative.”

She has come to accept that reality, but fears things will get worse if Democrats have their way and slash California’s already-scanty Republican ranks on Capitol Hill. Among those targeted for ouster is Ken Calvert, a 16-term GOP incumbent who represents a good slice of Riverside County.

“I feel like it’s going to eliminate my voice,” said Fisher, 48, a food server at her daughter’s school in Riverside. “If I’m 40% of the vote” — roughly the percentage Trump received statewide in 2024 — “then we in that population should have fair representation. We’re still their constituents.” (In Riverside County, Trump edged Kamala Harris 49% to 48%.)

Amber Pelland says Proposition 50 will hurt voters by putting redistricting back into the hands of politicians.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Amber Pelland, 46, who works in the nonprofit field in Corona, feels by “sticking it to Trump” — a tagline in one of the TV ads supporting Proposition 50 — voters will be sticking it to themselves. Passage would erase the political map drawn by an independent commission, which voters empowered in 2010 for the express purpose of wrestling redistricting away from self-dealing lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento.

“I don’t care if you hate the person or don’t hate the person,” said Pelland, a Republican who backs the president. “It’s just going to hurt voters by taking the power away from the people.”

Even some backers of Proposition 50 flinched at the notion of sidelining the redistricting commission and undoing its painstaking, nonpartisan work. What helps make it palatable, they said, is the requirement — written into the ballot measure — that congressional redistricting will revert to the commission after the 2030 census, when California’s next set of congressional maps is due to be drafted.

“I’m glad that it’s temporary because I don’t think redistricting should be done in order to give one political party greater power over another,” said Carole, a Riverside Democrat. “I think it’s something that should be decided over a long period and not in a rush.” (She also withheld her last name so her husband, who serves in the community, wouldn’t be hassled for her opinion, she said.)

Texas, Carole suggested, has forced California to act because of its extreme action, redistricting at mid-decade at Trump’s command. “It’s important to think about the country as a whole,” said the 51-year-old academic researcher, “and to respond to what’s being done, especially with the pressure coming from the White House.”

Felise Self-Visnic, a 71-year-old retired schoolteacher, agreed.

She was shopping at a Trader Joe’s in Riverside in an orange ball cap that read “Human-Kind (Be Both).” Back home, in her garage-door window, is a poster that reads “No Kings.”

She described Proposition 50 as a stopgap measure that will return power to the commission once the urgency of today’s political upheaval has passed. But even if that wasn’t the case, the Democrat said, she would still vote in favor.

“Anything,” Self-Visnic said, “to fight fascism, which is where we’re heading.”