Welcome back to the Lakers newsletter, where we dive into how to get the best out of big man Deandre Ayton and hear iconic Lakers coach Pat Riley praise current Lakers coach JJ Redick and his team.
The conundrum that is Deandre Ayton is now living with the Lakers.
All things Lakers, all the time.
They see the talent and skills. But they still are searching for the right ways to maximize what Ayton can offer.
They see the passion and love for the game. They want to get that out of Ayton on a consistent basis.
They see his sensitivity. They know that to bring out the best in Ayton takes patience and constant encouragement.
When the Lakers watched film of their loss to the Boston Celtics on Sunday, Redick used lines like “there’s positive trends” with Ayton and lines like “he could be better” in certain instances.
That is the paradox of Ayton.
As the Lakers enter the stretch run of the season with 26 games remaining, they need Ayton to play at a higher level more frequently if they are to be successful.
Against the Celtics, Ayton had just four points on two-for-six shooting. He had seven rebounds, one assist and one blocked shot.
“There’s positive trends,” Redick said after practice Monday. “We did watch some film today. There was some real positive trends defensively. I think his spirit and engagement and stuff has been really good. I think for all the guys, if he has a smaller player on him, that’s an advantage for us. Let’s just get him the ball. I think it’s just thematically across the team, we have to pass it to each other more and trust each other more. …
“There was a clip last night or a play last night, Jaylen Brown goes to the floor. We’ve got a five-on-four and he [Ayton] goes at about 20% speed where it’s clearly a man-down situation. So in terms of him running and putting pressure on the rim and offensive rebounding, particularly against switches and smaller players, he could be better there.”
However, Redick, his staff and Ayton’s teammates want to be clear that they support him at all times.
Earlier this season, Redick gave his 7-foot center a T-shirt featuring Ayton’s face combined with the likeness of a lion.
“We want him to be the lion,” Redick said then.
“I have his back,” Redick said Monday. “These guys, we try to make them understand my job is to help the Lakers try to win basketball games. And so nothing is ever personal. If he doesn’t close a game, it’s not personal. It’s because I think there’s a better option. And that’s not just true for him personally. There’s essentially three guys on our team that if they’re on the lineup, they’re going to close games and everybody else [will rotate]. We talked about that today.”
Ayton is producing the lowest averages of his NBA career in points (13.0), rebounds (8.4) and minutes (28.1). His field-goal attempts (8.9) and makes (5.9) are lows too, but he’s shooting a career-high 66.6%.
“He’s done OK,” said Marcus Smart, who sits next to Ayton in the ’ locker room. “You know, he definitely could be better; we all could. But the thing I love about it is he understands it and he’s working. We all are trying to figure it out; this is new to everybody. He’s doing his best, but he understands it’s another notch that we need him to go to, and we’re going to try to get him there and help with that. But he knows he’s got to do his part as well.”
Ayton plays on a team with three dominant ballhandlers in Luka Doncic, LeBron James and Austin Reaves, and it is their job to feed the 7-footer. Getting Ayton activated has been a positive for the Lakers. When he doesn’t get the touches, Ayton hasn’t been as productive.
Still, NBA scouts say Ayton can do a little more himself. He can run harder on the fast break, seal his man down low and play with force, roll to the basket with a purpose, use his athleticism to his advantage and play defense and rebound at a higher level.
Ayton came into the NBA with high expectations, the first overall pick in the 2018 draft, even going ahead of Doncic. Over five seasons with the Phoenix Suns, Ayton was a double-double machine, averaging 16.7 points and 10.4 rebounds. He shot the ball more, averaging 12.5 field goal attempts per game. He averaged 12.8 in two seasons in Portland.
With the Lakers, he’s had to adjust his game.
“I’m sure it’s a big adjustment,” Smart said. “It was an adjustment for me when I came in … The type of player I was in college and coming in and the way I played both offensively and defensively, [now I’m] taking a more defensive approach more than offensive. So it definitely can be frustrating and it’s definitely a challenge because you still value and look at the opportunity that you have to be that person. But unfortunately, sometimes the circumstances don’t call for it. That’s the hard part, understanding that early. Like I said, we all could do better at that because we all want to win. Deandre is doing the best he can, and we appreciate that. We love it too because he also uses that to motivate himself, which can be a good thing.”
Riley praises Redick, Lakers
A statue of former Lakers coach Pat Riley is unveiled outside Crypto.com Arena.
(Greg Beacham / Associated Press)
After Pat Riley had his statue unveiled Sunday on Star Plaza outside of Crypto.com Arena, he took time to praise Redick.
Riley led the Lakers to four NBA championships in the ‘80s, his coaching style a big part of the Showtime era. He likes what he sees out of Redick and the Lakers.
“I love JJ. I really do,” Riley said. “I competed against him. My teams competed against him, you know, in various teams that he played with. He’s a fiery guy. He could shoot the hell out of the ball. He was tough as nails, you know. I don’t know. Sometimes I look back and I remember myself at that time and I looked at JJ and I think they picked the right person [for the Lakers job]. There’s just a quality about him, I think, that goes above and beyond.
“And they have a hell of a team for him right here, right now with Doncic and Reaves and obviously with LeBron. And so I think Rob [Pelinka, president of basketball operations] will continue with the new ownership to build that team and to complement those players. But they have a great opportunity and I think JJ will be a great coach for it.”
On tap
Tuesday vs. Orlando (30-26), 7:30 p.m.
The Magic are a deep and versatile team, with six players who score in double figures. Paolo Banchero leads them in scoring (21.5) and rebounds (8.4) and is second in assists (5.0). He’s shooting 45% from the field. Desmond Bane is one of three Orlando players averaging more than 20 points at 20.1, making 48.3% of his shots and 38.8% of his threes. He just dropped 36 in a win over the Clippers on the second night of a back-to-back.
Thursday at Phoenix (33-25), 7 p.m. PST
Injuries are starting to take a toll on the Suns. Dillon Brooks has a broken left hand and reportedly is out four to six weeks. This comes on the heels of All-Star Devin Booker missing at least one week because of a right hip strain and fellow guards Grayson Allen (ankle/knee) and Jordan Goodwin (calf) also dealing with injuries.
Saturday at Golden State (30-27), 5:30 p.m.
The Warriors don’t have All-Star guard Stephen Curry (knee) and forward Jimmy Butler (torn ACL), leaving them without a lot of offensive firepower. The Warriors have been leaning on guard Brandin Podziemski to keep them afloat. He is averaging 12.1 points per game.
Sunday vs. Sacramento (12-46), 6:30 p.m.
The Kings have the worst record in the NBA. They have three players with season-ending surgeries — De’Andre Hunter (eye), Domantas Sabonis (knee) and Zach LaVine (hand).
Status report
Jaxson Hayes: right ankle injury
Redick said Hayes, who left Sunday’s game, got an MRI on Monday that showed his ankle had “a little bruise.” Hayes, the backup center, is day to day, Redick said. The Lakers listed Hayes as doubtful for Tuesday night’s game against the Magic at Crypto.com Arena.
“We’ll see how he feels tomorrow morning,” Redick said..
Favorite thing I ate this week
Risotto col codeghin e la peara from Tre Risotti Trattoria.
(Thuc Nhi Nguyen / Los Angeles Times)
Ciao! It’s Thuc Nhi checking in a final time from the Olympics. My final dinner of the Games had to honor northern Italy, so instead of just pizza or pasta, I went searching specifically for risotto. In Verona, before the closing ceremony, I asked the server at Tre Risotti Trattoria what the most popular risotto was and she suggested the risotto col codeghin e la peara (risotto with sausage and pepper sauce). She didn’t miss. The salty, creamy bite with the crunchy crouton around the plate was the ideal way to end my third Olympics Games. Arrivederci!
Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter, where we’ve got a jam-packed edition for you this week. USC beat reporters were given the chance to talk to assistants we don’t often get access to during the season. So this week, we’re going to empty the notebook, with 15 notes, quotes and other things you should know ahead of USC’s spring football session.
Fight on! Are you a true Trojans fan?
1. Jayden Maiava has taken “a huge leadership jump” from last season. That’s according to offensive coordinator Luke Huard, who said the quarterback has been meeting with young wideouts, setting up group chats, watching film and working with them at walk-throughs. There will be a lot on his shoulders with such a young receiving corps.
2. Freshman quarterback Jonas Williams is “pretty developed” from a physical standpoint. The athleticism also is obvious when you watch him on tape. The question is how quickly can he get up to speed mentally? Huard said Williams ran a “very multiple” offense that asked a lot of its quarterbacks. So that’s a good sign. But with Husan Longstreet gone, USC is starting from square one again at backup quarterback. Sam Huard is still an option, but this wasn’t necessarily what USC planned.
3. Huard addressed Longstreet’s exit and how plans at quarterback change on a whim nowadays. Huard’s tone, which can’t really be detected in the quote, suggested he wasn’t exactly thrilled about the situation. (Huard, after all, spent a lot of time and energy getting Longstreet to USC.) This is part of what he said: “We are going to recruit guys that are going to represent USC at an elite level and give us an opportunity to win and compete for national championships. So for us, it’s identifying those guys that USC is important to ‘em. They want to truly be here. They want to stay and develop.”
4. Don’t be shocked if a freshman running back makes an impression, even with a clear top two in the backfield. Deshonne Redeaux and Shahn Alston earned raves from running backs coach Anthony Jones — and are very different. Alston is the bigger power back, while Jones called Redeaux “a jack of all trades.” Jones said Redeaux is already a solid blocker and even can line up in the slot as a receiver if need be.
5. What’s the next step look like for King Miller? “Hopefully, King 2.0,” Jones said, with a laugh. Miller’s main goal in the offseason has been “transforming his body,” Jones added. And if Miller can maintain his breakaway speed while adding strength, the sophomore running back could be bound for an even bigger year than he had in 2025.
6. Sophomore receiver Tanook Hines is working on his route running. Hines’ athleticism was clearly off the charts in his debut season. But there’s still plenty to polish in his game. Receivers coach Dennis Simmons said that’s the next step for him as he takes the reins as the Trojans’ No. 1 wideout. This offseason is a crucial one for Hines.
7. Zach Williams will move to slot receiver. Could that mean more opportunity? Williams didn’t make much of a splash last season, largely because of injury, but when he left Utah, then-coach Kyle Whittingham said he would’ve been the Utes’ top receiver the next season. Williams has talent. And with the move inside, he finally could get the opportunity too.
8. The rest of USC’s receiving corps is very young. I expect that means we’ll see a lot of sets with Hines, Williams and N.C. State transfer Terrell Anderson at first. But freshmen Boobie Feaster and Kayden Dixon-Wyatt no doubt will get their chances to change that. Redshirt freshman Corey Simms turned heads in camp last fall and could be primed for a step forward too.
9. The competition at tight end is wide open. Lake McRee is off to the NFL. Walker Lyons transferred. “Who’s going to fill all those snaps?” tight ends coach Chad Savage asked. “Those are a lot of snaps that have gotta be replaced.” Savage mentioned that Wisconsin transfer Hunter Ashcraft would be a part of that equation. Redshirt freshman Taniela Tupou had begun to impress by the end of last season as well.
10. That said, freshman Mark Bowman might make a serious push to start. When I asked Savage about where Bowman was most developed, he said Bowman was “pretty complete” already. Remember, he still should be in high school at this point. Of course, it’ll take time for him to adjust to the physicality and blocking of college football. But I suspect that won’t take long. “In terms of being a natural pass-catcher, route runner, being explosive,” Savage said, “he can do all that.”
11. Savage had a chance to leave for another opportunity. He chose to stay and was promoted accordingly. The Trojans’ new pass game coordinator called working at USC “a dream come true.” He added, “There’s so much growth for me to happen here at USC. … I’m a West Coast guy.” That’s good news, considering he might be one of the best recruiters in college football.
12. Offensive line coach Zach Hanson said USC’s front was “nowhere near where we need to be” last season. The unit actually overachieved, considering its circumstances, but he feels there’s “a lot of room for growth.” I agree. This group will look a lot different in the fall than it did last season, with some linemen starting at new positions. Hanson believes the added competition will lead to a big leap for the line. I tend to agree.
13. Tobias Raymond will take reps at center in the spring. It has been the plan for a while that eventually Raymond would try his hand at center, as coaches see that as his best chance to stick in the NFL. It’s not out of the question that he could play there full time, assuming another linemen steps in.
14. Five-star freshman Keenyi Pepe will start off working at right tackle. Can he win the job in Year 1? He’ll have Justin Taunauu, last year’s starter, as well as young returners like Elijah Vaikona and Aaron Dunn to compete with, but Pepe is further developed than the usual freshman. “A lot is just God-given talent,” Hanson said. “The Lord blessed him with unbelievable gifts.”
15. New coordinator Gary Patterson famously split his 4-2-5 defense into two calls. One for the front seven, one for the defensive backs. But that could play out differently at USC, he said. Patterson’s plan is to use pieces of USC’s old scheme under D’Anton Lynn and “add another scheme to it.” Sometimes that’ll mean just one call for the whole defense, other times he’ll plan to deploy a double call. With slower offenses in the Big Ten, that approach could work quite well.
USC’s Laura Williams looks to pass after getting a rebound.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
—The USC men are in serious danger of missing March. It’s not just that the Trojans lost to No. 10 Illinois. They were blown out by the Illini, who then lost to UCLA three nights later. It’s not just that USC lost to Oregon, either. It’s how they lost to Oregon, a team that had lost 11 of 12, by letting the Ducks go on a stunning 7-0 run in the final minute. This version of USC doesn’t deserve to be in the tournament. But I do believe this team has the talent to be a tournament team and it’s not out of the question that it could win two of the next four, win a couple of games in the Big Ten tournament and sneak in. That climb is just a really steep one after Saturday.
—Laura Williams’ emergence as a reliable rebounder and rim protector is a big deal. All season long, Lindsay Gottlieb has been content to rely on a rotating group at the five. USC has been able to get by for most of the season, but come March, it’ll help to have someone who can do what Williams did against Wisconsin, when the redshirt freshman reeled in 14 rebounds and blocked four shots.
—What a start to the season for USC baseball. After leading a combined no-hitter the previous week, Grant Govel threw six scoreless innings, gave up just one hit and struck out 11 in a win over Rice. That was after No. 1 pitcher Mason Edwards pitched a shutout the night before. The Trojans are surging to start Andy Stankiewicz’s third season as coach, and if the pitching continues to be this good, USC could be on the brink of a breakthrough campaign.
Olympic sports spotlight
USC beach volleyball opened its season on a hot streak in Honolulu with four straight wins, including a victory over No. 2 Stanford, only to trip up twice on the final day of the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Beach Classic. That one of those losses came to No. 1 UCLA, which USC won’t face again until April 4, made it an especially tough way to end the weekend.
But the season is young, and there’s no reason to doubt that Dain Blanton will have USC in the mix to win a national title when the rivals meet again.
What I’m Watching This Week
Jason Segel in “Shrinking.”
(Apple TV+)
It’s shocking that it took until this show’s third season for it to get a mention in this space, but “Shrinking” is back, and there is no show on TV that I find more life-affirming.
Jason Segel stars as Jimmy, a therapist working through grief after the sudden death of his wife. That might sound heavy — and, sure, it is sometimes — but it’s also hilarious, optimistic and heartwarming. Few shows these days can make you both laugh out loud and tear up in the same episode. This is one of them.
The second season was a revelation. And so far, I’m hopeful that Season 3 will be a worthy follow-up.
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at ryan.kartje@latimes.com, and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
MUSE frontman Matt Bellamy has found some solace following his split from model Elle Evans, his wife of six years.
I’m told he has been spending time with sex therapist Gaia Polloni — who he dated for nine years in the Noughties.
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Matt Bellamy has found some solace following his split from model Elle Evans, with sex therapist Gaia PolloniCredit: ErotemeWe revealed at the weekend that Elle and Matt had called time on their marriageCredit: Getty
A source said: “Matt and Gaia are still good mates and they’ve been spending time together following his split from Elle.
“It’s been a hard time for him, naturally, as it would be after the end of any marriage.
“Gaia has always been a great sounding board. Matt is focused on healing and moving forwards into co-parenting with Elle.”
Matt was seen in Notting Hill, West London, last week without his wedding ring and walking next to Italian Gaia.
Darkness engulfs me right before I step into a dream. The Oscar-winning Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu guides me from a pitch-black hallway into an open space, where beams of light and smoke, interspersed with sounds from the streets of Mexico City, create a vortex into a unique cinematic experience.
Inside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Iñárritu is giving me a tour of his new installation “Sueño Perro:” a sensorial celebration of his 2000 debut film, “Amores Perros,” in honor of its 25th anniversary. The only physical elements on display are six film projectors and the celluloid that contains frames of unreleased footage, which are shown on screens of different sizes around the room. Detached and unburdened by the need of a narrative, the images simply exist.
“I love doing installations,” Iñárritu says in Spanish. “It’s like playing a game with your friends. And it’s liberating for me, because I don’t have to think about selling tickets.”
Before arriving at LACMA, his “Sueño Perro” mesmerized audiences in Milan, Italy, and in his hometown of Mexico City. LACMA previously hosted Iñárritu’s intense and immersive project “Carne y Arena,” which allowed visitors to put themselves in the shoes of a person crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on foot.
In Milan and Mexico City, “Sueño Perro” occupied labyrinthine spaces with multiple rooms. Contained within a single room, the L.A. iteration is the “paranoic version,” Iñárritu says. Once inside, there’s no respite to the barrage of images and the soundscape that surround you. He aptly describes the projectors’ beams of luminosity as “light sculptures.”
Curiously, he notes, people have such reverence for these hypnotic streams of light that they duck to avoid disturbing them rather than crossing in front of them. Iñarritu wishes they would, in fact, disrupt the light, so their shadows can enter the frame and transform it.
Never-before-seen footage from “Amores Perros” projects from 35mm projectors across the walls at LACMA, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026.
(Sarahi Apaez / For De Los)
The projected footage is material that didn’t make it to the final cut of “Amores Perros”: a gritty, visceral drama following three different stories across different social classes in a chaotic Mexico City during the turn of the millennium. Back in 2018, Iñárritu learned that all his dailies (raw takes) from that shoot, which in most productions are thrown away, were preserved at Mexico’s National University (UNAM).
“It was like looking through an album you haven’t opened in 25 years, which smells of dust,” he says. “Because of the distance, the images actually evoked a beautiful nostalgia in me.”
And that album was substantial. Iñárritu recalls that he and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto shot an immense amount of footage, nearly 1 million feet of film.
Gael García Bernal from a scene in “Amores Perros,” released in 2000.
“It’s like the placenta that’s thrown away when a baby is born. Suddenly, that discarded material, rich in DNA, which was already dead but was once part of a living being, has a life of its own,” Iñárritu explains vividly. “I didn’t know that these fragments, this dead material could be resurrected, but light has given new life to something that was forgotten.”
Critically acclaimed and Oscar-nominated for international feature film (foreign-language film back then), “Amores Perros” marked a watershed for the Mexican film industry, as an ambitious production that captivated both local and international audiences while unflinchingly portraying the country’s social ills from a humanistic standpoint.
“Look at Gael! He was 19 then. That’s a beautiful image of him,” Iñárritu says of “Amores Perros” lead García Bernal, whose shaved head is projected on one of the installation screens. The actor made his feature film debut in “Amores Perros” and has since had an extraordinary career.
At one point, three of the six projectors go dark — and the three remaining show the pivotal car crash that connects the film’s three narratives. Iñárritu and Prieto shot the imposing accident with nine different cameras. Seeing all nine different angles unspool in “Sueño Perro” provides a new understanding of the moment’s challenging orchestration.
Such a sequence evinces that “Amores Perros” was the work of an artist in his mid-30s willing to put it all on the line, uncertain whether he would get to make another film.
“I’ve changed a lot as a filmmaker, but I’m still the same idiot I’ve always been. That’s the bad news,” Iñárritu says laughing. “The other bad news is that I couldn’t make a film like that anymore, because of the number of shots and setups, and the energy behind each of those shots.”
The passage of time, in tandem with the film’s anniversary, allowed an opportunity for Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (who wrote “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel”) to reconcile after a long-standing falling out. The two mended their bond in public last year during an event in Mexico City.
“It was very important for me to close this chapter,” Iñárritu explains. “There was something so special about our friendship as people — and our children were also very close. I truly missed him as a friend. As you get older, you realize that grudges and animosity are the worst investment; it’s like having a disease inside you and not wanting to let it go.”
While most exhibits celebrating a film’s legacy feature artifacts or costumes that appeared on screen, Iñárritu ultimately decided to opt out of that route. Initially, he admits, the director was tempted to find the scraps of the wrecked car that belonged to García Bernal’s character in the film, a black Ford, and place it at the center of the installation. But it was LACMA’s CEO Michael Govan who persuaded him to preserve the purer approach.
“Michael loved the idea of the projectors, of the light and memory. And he wisely told me, ‘Perhaps the material object will be distracting. This work is ethereal, and maybe something solid will create a knot.’ I thought it was a great reflection, and I said, ‘That’s true. I’m going to try for this exhibition to exist without physical matter, because it’s about the analogous, but also the immaterial, which is light and time.’”
The objects or “archaeological remains of a film,” as he calls them, cause Iñárritu great sadness. To him those relics are akin to looking at a collection of lifeless butterflies preserved in a box. “When I see the shoes that so-and-so wore or the dress that so-and-so wore, they seem to me like butterflies that once flew and now they’re dead,” Iñárritu says. “Objects that once appeared in film lack life afterwards. They’re like skeletons.”
(Sarahi Apaez / For De Los)
For young people who have mostly watched movies on their electronic devices, Iñárritu thinks witnessing “Sueno Perro” could spark great curiosity about the way cinema existed for most of its history: on film. It will allow them to think of cinema in a primal manner.
“We are organic beings, and our capacity for understanding and our development involves all our organs, and digital screens have forced us to perceive everything only on an intellectual level,” he says. Entering the installation, he hopes, will resemble the feeling of entering a womb or a cave. “The flickering light from the lamps in the projectors is reminiscent of the fire in caves when people gathered and shared stories,” he adds.
Sonically, “Sueño Perro” envelops attendees not in lines of dialogue or a musical score, but the sounds of life in Mexico City — from street vendors to a marching band — recorded over the years and brought to L.A. with the help of sound designer Martín Hernández, who’s worked on every single Iñárritu film since “Amores Perros.” And while some of those aural elements still exist today, “Amores Perros” also serves as a time capsule of a city that has evolved and mutated incessantly.
“I still recognize the city when I watch the film, but it makes me laugh so much to see the cars and the clothes of the time,” he says. “It now looks like the Paleolithic era. And I think, ‘I’m so old!” But yes, it was definitely a different city back then.”
(Sarahi Apaez / For De Los)
Like Iñárritu, I still lived in Mexico City, then known as Distrito Federal, when “Amores Perros” was released. In those days, international tourists often feared visiting the metropolis for fear of being kidnapped. To see Mexico City become a trendy, sought-after destination for “digital nomads” from the U.S. and elsewhere feels jarring.
“People from the U.S. have for so long been snobbish about Mexico, and now they go and say, ‘F—, this is a city with incredible cultural depth,’” Iñárritu says. “They realize that their snobbishness came from a misconception, based on propaganda they’ve been fed, which portrays us Mexicans only as “sombrerudos.’”
What’s so bewitching about Mexico City, and the country at large, Iñárritu thinks, is the people’s worldview and how they confront their realities.
“There’s no other country that has that kind of vitality, because despite all of its problems, and there are many — like how violence and corruption have become so normalized — the people have an energy, a joy, a vitality that’s very hard to find in any other city around the world,” he says.
On the subject of the ingrained issues that still plague his home country, Iñárritu recalls that those in power were not pleased with how “Amores Perros” addressed them on screen.
“The Mexican government was ashamed of the film,” he says. Whenever the film would win an award at an international festival, the Mexican ambassadors or diplomats in any given country would decline invitations to celebrate the accomplishment.
“They said it was a bad representation of Mexico, that what the film showed wasn’t Mexico,” Iñárritu recalls. “They said it showed too much violence. Give me a break, as if I were the secretary of Tourism.”
Aside from promoting this latest stop in the “Sueño Perro” installation’s journey, Iñárritu is in the post-production stage of his upcoming film “Digger,” starring Tom Cruise. Besides that, he’s also working on a project to honor Mexican American artist Judy Baca.
Baca is best known for the mural “The Great Wall of Los Angeles,” which extends for over half a mile along the Tujunga Wash and depicts the complex history of California. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot a piece on this major work that will be screened at Walt Disney Concert Hall on March 7, alongside a special concert put together by Gustavo Dudamel and Gabriela Ortiz, and featuring several guest composers.
“I want to showcase the work of Judy, a Chicana who was 50 years ahead of her time and told the story of California through her eyes. I want it to be a landmark in Los Angeles. I want people to say, ‘You can’t go to L.A. and not see this mural.’”
As part of the ongoing celebration of “Amores Perros,” MACK has published a book featuring essays, behind-the-scenes photos, and storyboards. A double vinyl compilation including Gustavo Santaolalla’s score, plus tracks by generation-defining Mexican rock bands like Control Machete and Café Tacvba, has also been recently released.
Iñárritu hadn’t seen the film in a theater in many years. But when he saw it again at the Cannes Film Festival last year, he was pleased to realize it maintains its potency.
“I was struck by how well the film holds up. And it’s not just because I made it. It still has a rhythm and a muscle. It hasn’t aged badly at all. On the contrary, it’s like a young old soul,” he says with a laugh.
“Sueño Perro” will be open to the public from Feb. 26 until July 26.
A charming fishing village on the coast of one of the UK’s most beautiful regions is the epitome of rural tranquillity – and it’s a true hidden gem
It’s an outstanding gem hiding in plain sight(Image: David Clapp via Getty Images)
Whilst Cornwall’s reputation for harbouring breathtaking villages is well established, with each seemingly more enchanting than the next, one particular hidden treasure manages to shine even amongst the county’s most impressive offerings. This delightful fishing village, nestled within the Lizard Peninsula between The Lizard and Coverack, is a picture-perfect hamlet cradled by a stunning shingle cove, with roots stretching back to medieval times when it consisted of little more than a handful of fish cellars.
Celebrated for its charming and historic character, the village appears “lost in time” – a quintessential fishing settlement where little has altered through the decades. It features picturesque clusters of thatched cottages and a modest yet impressive fleet of colourful and vibrant fishing boats that are hauled up onto its shingle beach and remain in active use.
Save on the best holiday cottages in Cornwall
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Famous for its rugged coastline, golden beaches, picture-perfect villages and rich maritime heritage, Cornwall is one of the most-visited corner of the UK. Sykes Cottages has a large number of holiday homes to choose from, with prices from £36 per night.
History of this coastal treasure
The village’s name derives from the Cornish term for “a thicket” and literally means “battle of trees”, most probably owing to the densely wooded valley in which it sits.
Originally known as Porthcaswydh, which later evolved into Por Cadjwydh, this gorgeous fishing hamlet is now called Cadgwith, reports the Express.
Developing from its modest fish cellar beginnings, the 16th century witnessed Cadgwith welcoming permanent residents, whilst fishing continued to be the primary occupation for those who lived there.
Homes, cellars, lofts, and capstan houses were gradually constructed using local stone and cob walls, whilst the distinctive thatched rooftops were erected along the shoreline and hillsides of the valley, lending Cadgwith its unmistakable “Cornish fishing village” charm.
Breathtaking scenery and terrain
Nestled within the Cornwall Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), rebranded in 2023 as National Landscapes, Cadgwith boasts two beaches divided by a headland known as The Todden, which visitors are free to explore on foot.
The shingle beach, the larger of the pair, sits to the north-east and is widely recognised as Cadgwith Cove – a bustling hub where local fishermen are known to ply their trade.
The second beach, a blend of sizeable boulders and sand, lies to the south-west and goes by the name of Little Cove or Little Beach – an unspoilt retreat beloved by residents and holidaymakers alike for swimming, snorkelling, rock pooling, and diving.
Such is the breathtaking beauty of Cadgwith’s coastal scenery that it served as a backdrop for the 2003 film Ladies in Lavender, starring Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith. More recently, it was revealed that HBO’s upcoming Harry Potter TV series will be shooting scenes at Cadgwith Beach and its beloved local watering hole, Cadgwith Cove Inn, in October 2025.
What to see and do in this coastal gem
No trip to this stunning Cornish hamlet would be complete without a visit to the much-loved Cadgwith Cove Inn. This charming 300 year old watering hole exudes a wonderfully warm and welcoming ambience, regularly hosting folk music evenings featuring the renowned Cadgwith Singers, making it the ideal spot for weary travellers seeking a wholesome Cornish meal and a refreshing pint.
Dishing up the freshest seafood – hardly surprising given its coastal location – this cherished establishment has garnered glowing praise on Tripadvisor. One delighted regular commented: “Cadgwith has a special magic about it, and its heart is the Cadgwith Cove Inn. I guess you’d call us regulars – we try to get here a couple of times every year, and have done for the last six years or so. If only it could be more often! Cadgwith has a special ability to make the troubles of life melt away when you drive down the hill into the village, and the Inn is truly special at the heart of that magic.
“Fridays see the Cadgwith Singers do their things with their sea shanties, and it is truly the best start to a week down here. But any day of the week this place has a special blend of people and place which is truly unique. The beer is great, and the food is better. What more could you ask for?”
Another essential stop in Cadgwith is The Old Cellars Restaurant, hailed as “a true Cornish treasure” positioned directly on the village’s fishing beach. This family-run café also offers alcoholic beverages and has earned its reputation for outstanding seafood offerings, particularly prawn sandwiches, locally sourced crab, fresh lobster, and hot paninis.
Boasting a delightful cobbled courtyard with breathtaking sea vistas, The Old Cellars Restaurant has become a local favourite. One reviewer says of the joint: “What an absolutely beautiful little gem in a stunning village, we had a traditional cream tea and it was delicious, lovely courtyard seating and friendly and welcoming staff, well worth a visit.”
During the summer season, Cadgwith draws plenty of visitors, with its swimming beach providing the perfect location for a cooling plunge whilst the fishing beach offers an excellent vantage point to observe fishermen in action as they land their daily haul. It’s important to note that whilst dogs are welcome throughout most of the year, four-legged friends are prohibited from Little Cove between July 1 and August 31 from 10am to 6pm.
The South West Coast Path winds through Cadgwith, and just a short distance north of the hamlet lies The Devil’s Frying Pan – a massive 100-metre deep crater in the cliffs created when a sea cave’s roof caved in, leaving behind the breathtaking rocky arch jutting into the ocean. Whilst this dramatic coastal spectacle alone justifies a journey to Cadgwith, the village is fortunately packed with numerous other attractions.
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Who: Pakistan vs England What: 2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Super Eight When: Tuesday, February 24, at 7pm (13:30 GMT) Where: Pallekele International Cricket Stadium, Kandy, Sri Lanka How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 10:30 GMT in advance of our text commentary stream.
The second Super Eight ties of the 2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup starts on Tuesday with an intriguing contest between former champions who both consider themselves legit title contenders: Pakistan and England.
Pakistan, despite being humiliated by India in the group phase, possess a stacked roster who, on their day, can compete with any cricket team in the world.
England, listed as the pre-tournament joint-second favorite to raise the T20 world crown, are slowly building momentum in the competition, as exhibited by their dismantling of host nation Sri Lanka in their Super Eight opener on Sunday.
Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at the matchup, which may turn out to be a pivotal outcome affecting both nations’ semifinal qualification hopes.
What’s at stake in the Pakistan-England Super Eight tie?
Pakistan desperately need a win after their first match against New Zealand was washed out on Saturday.
A defeat would put England, who skittled Sri Lanka out for just 95 runs, through to the semifinals with a game to spare.
Pakistan would then need to beat Sri Lanka in their final Super Eight match and hope other results go their way to reach the last four.
History will be against Pakistan as they have never beaten England in three previous Twenty20 (T20) World Cup clashes.
“We are confident and our morale is high,” said Pakistan batsman Sahibzada Farhan, who scored an unbeaten 100 against Namibia in Pakistan’s final group match.
“We are focused on this match to win and progress.”
Pakistan will be hoping that the weather does not play a factor in their crucial second tie as another split result would all but end their semifinal aspirations.
Thankfully, the forecast looks good for Tuesday’s match against England at the Pallekele International Stadium in Kandy, with 33 degrees Celsius (91F) predicted with only a 25 percent possibility of rain. In short, there should be a result and a full match is a strong possibility.
England rounding into form
England kicked off their Super Eight campaign with a 51-run victory over Sri Lanka, a statistically dominant result that vaulted them to the top of the Group 2 standings on net run rate.
The two-time champions have now won their last three matches at the tournament.
Will Jacks has been the breakout star with the bat at the tournament, averaging 65 on a scintillating 195 strike rate.
England captain Harry Brook has his side at the top of the Super Eight Group 2 standings ahead of the all-important Pakistan tie on Tuesday [Indranil Mukherjee/AFP]
Pakistan to put England in a spin
Pakistan on Monday warned England’s inconsistent batting lineup to expect a trial by spin when the teams clash.
Farhan told reporters that England struggled to 146-9 against Sri Lanka’s spinners on Sunday.
The in-form opener said that England can expect more of the same from Pakistan’s spinners when they meet on the same Pallekele ground on Tuesday night.
“What we saw in the Sri Lanka-England game was that the ball was gripping and England struggled against spin,” said Farhan on Monday.
“Sri Lanka have one or two spinners, but we have five in all, so we will give England a tough time on a pitch that looks good and will grip,” he added.
Pakistan’s spinners have taken 26 wickets in the four matches so far. Their seamers have dismissed only seven batsmen.
‘Will not be difficult’: Farhan on Archer express
Farhan, who tops the T20 World Cup run-scoring chart with 220, said he was ready for the threat of England’s express pace bowler Jofra Archer.
“Facing Archer will not be difficult because I have faced similar bowlers in Pakistan,” said Farhan.
“So if he has plans against me, I also have plans against him.”
Pakistan team news
Pakistan are likely to bring in spinner Abrar Ahmed in place of seaming all-rounder Faheem Ashraf.
Shaheen Shah Afridi’s omission from the final group stage match against Namibia and the Super Eight opener against New Zealand was a huge shock.
The bowling superstar was expensive in the group phase, with his side pivoting to a spin-dominant strategy.
With Pakistan desperately needing a win against England, the left-arm quick is expected to return to the starting XI.
England team news
England may name an unchanged side for the fifth match in succession with Liam Dawson, Will Jacks, Adil Rashid and Jacob Bethell providing their spin options.
Form Guide:
Pakistan
W-W-L-W-NR (most recent result last)
England
W-L-W-W-W (most recent result last)
What is England’s T20 World Cup record?
England has won the T20 World Cup title twice, in 2010 (defeated Australia) and in 2022 (defeated Pakistan).
They jointly hold the record for the most T20 World Cup titles alongside India (2007, 2024) and the West Indies (2012, 2016).
What is Pakistan’s T20 World Cup record?
Pakistan are three-time finalists, but have only lifted the trophy once.
The first appearance in the final came in the inaugural competition in 2007, when India claimed a five-run win.
The second edition, in 2009, saw Pakistan beat Sri Lanka in the final, but a 13-year wait ensued for the next appearance in the showpiece finale – only for England to sweep to a five-wicket victory.
What happened the last time England played Pakistan in a T20 match?
England and Pakistan have not played each other in a Twenty20 fixture since before the last T20 World Cup in 2024.
The sides competed in a four-game series in England with the home side winning 2-0, capping off their triumph in the last fixture with a seven-wicket victory at The Oval on May 30, 2024.
Head-to-head
This will be the 32nd meeting between the countries in cricket’s shortest format.
England has won more than two-thirds of matches with 21 victories, while Pakistan has nine wins. There has been one “no result”.
Possible Pakistan playing XI
Sahibzada Farhan, Saim Ayub, Salman Ali Agha (c), Babar Azam, Usman Khan (wk), Khawaja Nafay, Shadab Khan, Mohammad Nawaz, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Abrar Ahmed, Usman Tariq
Possible England playing XI
Jos Buttler (wk), Phil Salt, Jacob Bethell, Harry Brook (c), Tom Banton, Sam Curran, Will Jacks, Jamie Overton, Liam Dawson, Jofra Archer, Adil Rashid
When the pandemic hit, and reality settled in that life would be isolated and mostly inside, Grammy winner Anderson .Paak found himself on the outside looking in, in a way he didn’t anticipate. “I was the odd man out. My son was 8, and BTS took over the whole house,” .Paak explained in an interview with The Times at his WeHo lounge, Andy’s. “It was a K-pop storm. Before that, me and my son were bonding off of my music.”
.Paak’s son, Soul Rasheed, and his now ex-wife originally from Korea, Jaylyn Chang, had become obsessed with K-pop alongside much of America, which reminded .Paak of the intensity of Beatlemania. Black American music influenced the birth of a new style, which formed and expanded across oceans, then returned to the U.S. and exploded. This effect in the .Paak household was palpable, causing Soul and Chang to deeply bond in a new way. .Paak himself, as a soul, R&B and hip-hop aficionado, was tapped into the source, but not the reinterpreted subject. So he had to find a way in.
Soul, at the time, like many 8-year-olds, had also become obsessed with becoming a YouTuber. Besides .Paak’s music, the father-and-son duo had also previously connected over humor, so .Paak started there. They began with funny skits and eventually fused them with BTS dances. Soon, there were even videos featuring them comedically educating each other about their individual music tastes. “I loved it,” .Paak recalled, getting lost in the memory. “I was getting to know him more, and he was getting to know me. My mom would always say, ‘It’s one thing for your kids to love you, but it’s another to share things you’re interested in.’ It wasn’t like I was being Anderson .Paak, I was just Dad.”
“I was getting to know him more, and he was getting to know me,” .Paak said of bonding with his son, Soul.
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Through this exploration and the realization of a potential continued familial bond, a story idea emerged, then a treatment for a K-pop-centered film that .Paak would direct and he and Soul would both star in. .Paak then began directing a slew of music videos as the pandemic began to fade, building a portfolio and gaining experience in the medium. But he could start to sense Soul’s interest fading as time passed. After a few failed pitch attempts, .Paak urgently enlisted the help of one of his oldest friends and fellow entertainer, Jonnie “Dumbfoundead” Park, who brought .Paak and the idea to Stampede Ventures.
“The pitch was from an idea that Anderson had, and [to introduce it], we showed them this TikTok that he had with his son,” Park recalled over Zoom. “Anderson was like, ‘Do you know anything about BET, son?’ And [Soul] was like, ‘No, but I know BTS.’ Then they were just going back and forth, arguing about BET and BTS. That was literally the deck, [us saying] we would take that energy and put it into a two-hour film. They loved it. As soon as we walked out of the office, Anderson looked over like, ‘Are we greenlit?!’ They just understood it, the whole intergenerational, intercultural element of Black and Korean.” Stampede combined forces on the project with Live Nation Studios and .Paak’s debut feature “K-Pops!” was off to the races.
It’s important to note that .Paak is himself Black and Korean. His mother was adopted from Korea by a SoCal Black American military family and .Paak’s father was also a Black military officer. Thus, while his mother was born in Korea, he was raised almost entirely within a Black cultural space. .Paak didn’t experience much direct exposure to Korean culture until his 20s, when he met Chang at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. As an immigrant directly from Korea, Chang showed him the fortitude of structure amid her community. He was also taken by their inherent family value system. “In Korean households, you stay in the house until you get older so you can take care of your parents, and your parents can help take care of the kids,” .Paak explained. “There’s an infrastructure that’s worked out. Also, Korean food is important, as is learning the language. I was drawn to that. My son didn’t eat anything outside of Korean food for so long, and he’s just now getting into tacos.”
.Paak then further explored his Korean side through a burgeoning friendship with Park, which happened a bit later, after Chang had already given birth to Soul. Park introduced .Paak to K-town-based Korean culture through their shared music scene. “The people that came from K-town had a lot of Latino and Black influences as well,” .Paak remembered. “There was a little more of a melting pot, and it was more urban. But in a similarly communal way [to Koreans from Korea], they were all hanging out in K-town with other Korean friends. They’d drink soju, and go to after-hours where you had to have somebody Korean with you.”
While .Paak had some opportunities in adulthood to grasp a bit of his Korean heritage, in “K-Pops!,” through his main character BJ, he also got to actualize what his mother may have missed. In the film, BJ, a failed karaoke bar R&B musician, gets a lucky chance to go to Korea and be the drummer for a popular K-pop competition series. There, he bumps into his estranged ex-girlfriend’s son, Tae Young (played by Soul), who is competing on the show. He then finds out that the kid is his. While a messy transition ensues, BJ and Tae Young eventually get to galavant around Korea and work together to try to win the competition. Through this exploration, BJ finds out he can thrive in Korea while still holding onto his Blackness. .Paak’s mother’s dive back into her roots had a different result. “My mom went abroad and spent a year in Korea, but when she went there, she just didn’t like it,” .Paak explained. “In the movie, initially, BJ doesn’t really have any connection to his Korean side and doesn’t really care to know, but then he finds a bridge.” That bridge is music.
Actor Yvette Nicole Brown, who in “K-Pops!” plays BJ’s mother, proclaimed over Zoom that, “Everything about the film and the music in it is Blasian, every culture is celebrated and massaged and made into something beautiful.” .Paak made a concerted, intentional effort to explore both the Black and Korean sides of K-pop in two scenes.
The first is an early breakdown initiated by Soul’s character, Tae Young, who explains the structured roles of a K-pop group, which may be fun for superfans and educational for laypeople to the genre. The next is a winding presentation by BJ to Tae Young about the influence of Motown groups like the Jackson 5 and boy bands like New Edition on the momentum of K-pop’s rise. It’s particularly poignant because it is all shot at a record store on the streets of Korea, where .Paak explained he actually found the records he was referencing. “There’s nothing wrong with people doing their interpretation of Black music, as long as you pay homage and as long as you respect it and take care of it,” .Paak declared. “Because [if you do], then they’ll take care of you, but the moment you don’t, you’ll see what happens … I wanted to explain that history because that’s how I saw it.”
Real-life father and son, Anderson .Paak, left, and Soul Rasheed, co-star in “K-Pops!”
(Jake Giles Netter)
”K-Pops!” has as much of who .Paak and Soul are as father and son as he could fit in. There are appearances by legacy Black artists like Earth, Wind & Fire, as well as K-pop stars like Vernon from Seventeen. There are original songs co-written and co-produced by .Paak and musician Dem Jointz, that feature K-pop fused with soul and funk, one of which Tae Young performs as his finale competition number (soundtrack arriving soon). The film was shot in both L.A. and Korea and provided ample time for bonding (especially during scenes filled with off-the-cuff humor) that .Paak envisioned from the beginning. Yet still, at the time they were about to shoot, .Paak almost couldn’t get Soul on board because he had turned 11 and wasn’t as into K-pop or acting comedically anymore; he insisted he was instead “into Slipknot.”
The duo did find their footing, though, and executed a winding story that centers on their connection. As a burgeoning teenager in 2024, Soul went with his father to the world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, along with a plethora of Korean relatives from his mom’s side. .Paak anxiously awaited their full reaction to the culmination of his quest for a deeper bond.
“Everybody really enjoyed it,” .Paak remembered, relieved. “[Soul] was like, ‘I’m proud of you, Dad.’ I asked him, ‘You think you would ever do part two?’ He was like, ‘Nah, I don’t think acting is my passion, but I’ll never forget those moments … You know what? On second thought, it depends on the script.’ But I think he’s really proud of it. I think it’s something like, when he gets older, he’ll see how special it is as well. But yeah, he didn’t say it’s cringe.”
“K-Pops!” has its L.A. premiere on Tuesday and debuts in select theaters Friday.
PHOENIX — Dalton Rushing’s first year in the big leagues with the Dodgers didn’t go quite as planned.
Over 53 games after his May call-up, the highly-regarded prospect batted .204 with a .258 on-base percentage, .582 OPS, four home runs and 24 RBI. It was the only time in his baseball life — aside from his freshman year at the University of Louisville — that Rushing was not a regular fixture in his team’s lineup.
“It was very, very up and down,” Rushing said. “It was some good, some bad, some ugly. A lot of things were new to me, the scattering [of] playing time was tough. It was a little tough being able to stay on top of compete mode, keep the swing in a good spot.”
But it still yielded a rather satisfying end result.
“Overall, I got to win a World Series with this team,” Rushing said. “And it’s hard to look back and think, ‘I’d take this back or I’d take that back.’ It went exactly how it was planned.”
With three-time All-Star catcher Will Smith in front of him, Rushing’s role is clear: he is the Dodgers’ backup catcher. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts feels good about Rushing’s progression going into 2026.
“Dalton’s in a good spot right now,” Roberts said last week. “I want him to understand his role as a backup catcher, what that entails, really learn the pitchers, learn the swing that works for playing a couple times a week. He’s used to playing a lot more. But I think, that [he’s] still maturing, because it’s not easy to not play every day when you’re used to [playing regularly]. I think that he grew last year, and I like where he’s at.”
Roberts plans to use Rushing at first base, if Freddie Freeman comes out of the game or needs a day off. Rushing will not, however, play in the outfield, where he saw some run in the minor leagues.
“Outfield’s not on the table”, Roberts said. “I do think that there’s going to be some spots for him to come into games if Freddie’s out or if there’s a game he doesn’t play, we’ll see how that lines up. And I think right now for me, just seeing how the roster plays out as far as what are the options we might have at first base, but I do want to get him at-bats when I can.”
Rushing started Saturday’s Cactus League opener against the Angels, driving in a run on a sacrifice fly in his three at-bats. The 25-year-old said he’s fully embracing his spot on a club vying for its third consecutive championship.
“For me, if I can keep myself ready to play two or three times a week, then it’s going to be easy to keep myself ready to play five or six,” Rushing said. “To be able to go through something like this early in my career, where I have to not only earn the time on the field, but also navigate my way through my career, I think it’s a really good start to my career, to be able to understand how this game works.”
Rushing also views playing behind Smith as a valuable opportunity to learn from one baseball’s best catchers, something he believes will help him grow as a player.
“I have a spot to work behind the best catcher in baseball,” Rushing said. “And from there, I’m going to be given opportunities to see more time on the field, to get my bat in there as much as possible, and it’s up to me to take advantage of those opportunities and continue to put myself on the field as much as possible.”
Rushing says he does not have any personal goals or accolades that he hopes to reach in 2026. This season is about team success and winning.
“The main goal especially with this role is I’m going to win as many [games as] possible,” Rushing said. “Every game I’m on the field, I want to win. I want to win 110 games in the regular season as a Dodger. We’re fully capable of it. I think that’s a good goal to put for ourselves and it just makes each and every game that much important.”
Shohei Ohtani throws live BP before departing for WBC
Before the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the San Diego Padres in Peoria, Ariz., on Sunday, Shohei Ohtani had a live batting practice session at Camelback Ranch in which he threw 33 pitches and struck out Freeman and Mookie Betts.
“I felt pretty good about today in terms of volume,” Ohtani said via interpreter Will Ireton after his session. “While in Japan, I plan to do some sort of live BP/bullpen/some kind of simulation.”
After the game, Roberts revealed the star two-way player is expected to depart either Sunday night or on Monday to join Team Japan for preparations for next month’s World Baseball Classic.
The cast of “Scrubs” knows that the show’s creator, Bill Lawrence, has a habit of building communities with his series, which include “Ted Lasso” and “Shrinking.” But the “Scrubs” crew knows they are the closest.
“Since I work on all those shows, I can say that we’re the tightest-knit group,” says Zach Braff on a video call with his fellow fake doctors Sarah Chalke and Donald Faison. “We vacation together.”
Lawrence, just a day later, has to concede that Braff has a point. “It’s annoying because I have to admit that they are right,” he says. “We’ve stayed the tightest because we all still spend way too much time together.”
And now the gang is back together for a new, nine-episode season of the beloved series premiering Feb. 25 on ABC, and the next day on Hulu. When “Scrubs” debuted in 2001, narrator J.D. (Braff), his best friend Turk (Faison) and on-again, off-again love interest Elliot (Chalke) were interns at Sacred Heart Hospital. Now, J.D. is a concierge doctor, while Turk and Elliot have advanced to leadership positions at Sacred Heart. There’s a new batch of interns, a new cheery hospital representative (Vanessa Bayer) whose job involves making sure no one gets offended, and a new doctor (Joel Kim Booster) who is not too fond of J.D. But there are also other familiar faces including John C. McGinley as J.D.’s begrudging mentor Dr. Cox and Judy Reyes as nurse Carla, who also happens to be Turk’s wife.
“Scrubs” then and now: Sarah Chalke, Zach Braff and Donald Faison in the original series, left, and in the ABC revival.(Chris Haston/NBC)(Brian Bowen Smith/Disney)
In the Season 8 finale — before the show reset with a medical school setting — J.D., always prone to elaborate fantasy sequences, sees a vision of how his life is going to turn out. His reality doesn’t exactly resemble that.
“We say midlife crisis or whatever, but it’s a time of questioning, a time where you take stock of your life,” says showrunner Aseem Batra. “That’s really a cool time to catch up with our characters because when we saw them last, they were in their quarter life.”
Batra herself has followed a similar path to the characters. After working as an assistant at ABC, her first writing gig was on “Scrubs.” Now she’s in a position of authority. “Truly, it was the best job I had and it was my first job and I’m doing it again out of pure love,” she says. (Longtime “Scrubs” writer Tim Hobert was originally announced as co-showrunner but departed the project.)
Lawrence, who serves as executive producer on the new incarnation, can also see a parallel between his path and that of his fictional creations. “I’m only good at writing about stuff that’s at least tangentially part of my life and the idea that of those young goofballs who are the students now being the teachers, it’s very much part of my life right now,” he says.
“Scrubs” creator Bill Lawrence has handed the reins to Aseem Batra, who is the showrunner of the revival. “Truly, it was the best job I had and it was my first job and I’m doing it again out of pure love,” she says.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Still, Lawrence says the reason the revival of the show was able to work is because of the closeness of the original cast. Faison and Braff are still constantly collaborating whether that’s on a podcast or commercials, and even though she’s decamped from Los Angeles to Canada, Chalke makes a point to keep in touch. On a boisterous Zoom call, we spoke about returning to their beloved characters.
What were your reactions coming back to this world?
Donald Faison: Please. Please. Revive it. Do me that solid and revive it.
Sarah Chalke: I manifested it. A couple years ago, I was like, “Oh, I miss ‘Scrubs.’ I want to do a comedy like ‘Scrubs’ that shoots in Vancouver, and then it all happened.”
Zach Braff: To be honest, I was very surprised when it actually started happening that ABC was going to put it in prime time. I thought it might be something on Hulu. That felt like a giant audience with Hulu the next day and a really big scale and really a belief in the project. That was really exciting.
Why do you think the show’s legacy is so strong that there is that belief?
Braff: I think that it’s Bill’s unique mix of comedy and pathos and emotion and fantasy. It’s such a unique recipe. But in execution, as he did with the first pilot, it was undeniable. It was so groundbreaking at the time. No one had done that in the network space. It was also at a time when there was no streaming. So, the show was on at 9:30 and Bill was trying to push what you could still do on network [television]. That’s why it was a more risqué version of what we’re doing now. I think now the goal was — well, there’s streaming for that. What’s a show that we can have on at 8 that pairs with “Abbott Elementary” that parents can watch with their kids? Maybe some jokes will fly over the kids’ heads, but it’s not trying to compete with what people are doing on streaming.
What do you remember about getting cast? You were all in your 20s.
Faison: I was the oldest one. Still the oldest one. I remember how big of a deal it was. This was the pilot of the season. I remember everybody and their mama was talking about how great the script was and how they wanted to be on the show. I remember my agent telling me, “This is a big one. The creator of the show really likes you. Let’s see what you can do.”
Chalke: I didn’t know this until two days ago. Our casting director came up to set to visit, and she said I was the first person to audition on the first morning of casting. In the character description, it said she moves and talks at a faster pace than normal humans. And in every single job, I’ve been told, “Slow down.” It felt like the luckiest thing; I’ll never forget when Bill called me and said that I got it and I truly couldn’t believe it. And the experience far exceeded any expectation I could have had about what it was going to be.
When I think back on it, what I remember is what that felt like to be at work every day, genuinely laughing so hard to the point where it would get late at night and there was one sound that Zach and Donald could make that would make me laugh.
Sarah Chalke on being cast in “Scrubs”: “I’ll never forget when Bill called me and said that I got it and I truly couldn’t believe it. And the experience far exceeded any expectation I could have had about what it was going to be.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
What was the sound?
Faison: It’s almost like a fart.
Braff: No, it’s not a fart.
Faison: I’m not trying to make a fart joke. But do you know how when you fart, it always sounds like a question mark. So, that’s the sound.
Braff: Esther, do not use this, please. It’s a high-pitched noise like this [does noise]. We would do it quietly enough that no one would hear we were doing it. And then she would break down laughing and ruin the take and we’d be like, “Sarah, what are you doing? It’s late. We want to go home.”
Zach, what were your initial thoughts about the project?
Braff: I was waiting tables at a French-Vietnamese restaurant called Le Colonial at Beverly and Robertson [in L.A.]. And I had to wear a tunic, which I put into “Garden State.” I’d been auditioning for so many things and not really getting much traction in the sitcom space, but I read this and I thought it was so funny. I was like, “Oh, I think I could really sell this because I find it so funny.”
How did you know the chemistry between the three of you was going to work?
Braff: When we were shooting the pilot, I was just like, “Wow. I really love these people.” I was obsessed with Sarah. I thought Donald was the funniest person I’d ever met. And then Bill was legitimately the funniest person I’ve ever met. I just felt in really good hands.
Chalke: We were all so excited to be there and we’d just hang out and watch the other scenes that we weren’t in. And I remember just being by the monitor, watching everybody else work and just being so blown away.
Braff: We would hang out after we were wrapped, which Sarah still does occasionally. This time Donald came early because there’s this really weird coffee robot in the production office that Donald seems to think is amazing coffee. So, I caught him a few times coming in early for the coffee robot.
Faison: That’s not why I came in early. I was notoriously late and unprepared the first go of “Scrubs.” I heard Tom Hanks talking about how he was a young actor and a very established actor kept forgetting their lines. And the director finally goes, “Ah, come on, come on guys. Three things. Show up early, know the text, have an idea. Let’s take 10,” and walks away. And Tom Hanks goes, “Oh, if that’s what it takes, I can do that s—.” So, I took that to heart and this is the second opportunity.
Braff: I thought it was the coffee robot.
Zach Braff on his co-stars: “When we were shooting the pilot, I was just like, ‘Wow. I really love these people.’ I was obsessed with Sarah. I thought Donald was the funniest person I’d ever met.”(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
But Sarah would hang out after you wrapped?
Chalke: We are all executive producers on this. Zach is producing and directing and editing and writing and doing all of the things, and that’s been really neat to watch. I legitimately do want to learn. Obviously, there’s a balance of that with also going back into work full-time and having two kids.
Braff: Sarah gave me this whole speech at the top of the show. She’s like, “Hey, I really do want to learn this stuff. I want to sit by your director’s chair. I want to ask you questions. I want to learn to genuinely [executive produce], genuinely direct.” And I was like, “Great.” The first week I was like, “All right. Sarah, we’re going on a big tech scout. It’s probably going to be about…”
Chalke: “In a van for seven hours.”
Braff: I go, “You’re going to learn more on the tech scout than you could in film school.” And she’s like, “No, I won’t be able to do that.” And then by the end of the nine episodes, Sarah was like, “I think my EP thing is morale.”
Faison: I want to piggyback on something Sarah said though. Zach has done a lot, these nine episodes. For this revival, he’s done so much and has worked so hard on this. And that’s made us all feel very safe and secure also because we know we have the No. 1 guy on the call sheet who cares about the show completely putting in 100% to make sure that we’re coming out the gate with something very, very, very, very strong and undeniable for the fans.
What were your conversations about where your characters would be after all these years?
Braff: One of the big conversations we had was we wanted to reground the show because the show got really broad over the years and we wanted to dial it back and go back to where we started, where it exists in a real place. We have the luxury of the fantasies where we can be super silly. And obviously, we dip our toe over the line sometimes and stuff is a little broad. But for the most part, the new show is back to Season 1 and grounded again.
As we all know, especially when you reach 50 years old, a lot of things in life don’t turn out the way you hope they would. And that’s why we opened the show with J.D. living this fantasy that he is this heroic trauma ER guy when in fact he’s fixing toes in the suburbs. Also, I think with regard to me and Donald, [Lawrence] said, “I want them to be silly as those two guys are in real life, but … when they drop in and they’re teachers, they’re really good teachers.”
Donald Faison on returning for the revival: “When we did the table read, I laughed so hard when the first voice-over kicked in, when Zach read the voice-over.”
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
Was it easy to fall back into your rhythms?
Faison: When we did the table read, I laughed so hard when the first voice-over kicked in, when Zach read the voice-over.
Braff: The whole room did. It was really funny because no one had heard me do that voice in 20 years.
Chalke: One of the coolest things that helped with the show was Bill would just write to everybody’s strengths or write to their quirks or write to their personalities and weave it in. That happened this season, but it happened all through the first eight years. And so, to a certain extent, the lines blurred sometimes between ourselves and our characters. So, stepping back into them, there’s a reason why it felt so comfortable.
Braff: Sarah is a fast-talking klutz.
Chalke: I am. We met all the interns and Zach said, “So, guys, Chalke’s going to come in every day and something’s going to be broken. Every day there’s going to be a story.” And then I proceeded the very next day, which was the day before filming, to fall and break my finger. So, I did have to come in on the first day and say, “So, I broke my finger.”
How did you break your finger?
Braff: Walking.
Chalke: It’s part of who I am, but it’s also part of who Elliot is.
Braff: I think if we put in the show how really klutzy you are, people would think it’s too much.
Was there anything you were nostalgic for that wasn’t in the new incarnation?
Chalke: Sam Lloyd.
Braff: Sam Lloyd who played the lawyer was such a big part of the show and not only a fan favorite, but our favorite. He was just the funniest, nicest man. And Bill calls people like Sam Lloyd “comedy assassins.” They come in and they have one line and you’re laughing. And he was one of the greats.
Faison: It’s not the same “Scrubs.” And I kind of miss a little bit of that. There are so many new stories to tell. And you get nostalgic when you see the stuff that we’re doing in it, but I do sometimes miss some of the stories that we told in the past. It’s like capturing lightning in the bottle again, and I feel like we did it. I really do hope we have that opportunity again. I really do hope that this isn’t just nine. But it’s important for the audience to know that we’re definitely older. That’s just real talk. I’m not a 26-year-old man anymore. I’m 50.
HOLIDAY prices move constantly. Most people know that.
But only a few realise just how much the time of day you book can influence what you pay.
Holiday expert Rob Brooks has taken a deep dive into data to find the ultimate booking timeCredit: Rob Brooks
I work in travel and spend a large part of my job analysing pricing data, and recently, I wanted to understand how big the swing really is across a single day.
Not just the cheapest day of the week, but the cheapest hour, and even the cheapest minute.
The results were clearer (and way more dramatic) than I expected.
When is the most expensive time to book?
The data shows that the most expensive time of day to book a holiday is between 9am and 10am.
Bookings made in that window came in at around 30 per cent more expensive than the cheapest time of day, according to the data.
There is a straightforward reason for this: it’s when demand spikes.
People arrive at work, open their laptops and start browsing.
Search volumes increase, airline pricing systems respond, and fares begin to rise. Then, package holiday prices follow the same pattern.
In simple terms, booking your summer break with your first coffee of the day is statistically one of the pricier moments to do it.
When is the cheapest hour to book?
At the other end of the scale, the cheapest time to book is consistently between 4am and 5am.
Overnight, demand drops off. Fewer searches mean less upward pressure on prices.
Airline systems effectively reset after the previous day’s activity, and fares often return closer to their baseline before building again through the morning.
It’s not a secret loophole. It’s simply supply and demand working in your favour while most of the country is asleep.
Is there a more realistic option?
Of course, most people are not setting alarms for 4am to book a holiday.
So I looked specifically at sociable hours.
If you are booking in the late evening, roughly 8pm to 10pm, prices were on average around 5 per cent cheaper than during the 9am to 10am rush for the same holiday.
Five per cent may not sound dramatic, but on a £2,000 family holiday that equates to around £100.
That is a tangible difference for many households – mine included.
Rob found a 24% price increase in just a few hours on a stay at Turkey’s Catty Cats Garden HotelCredit: On the Beach
When is the exact cheapest minute?
Out of curiosity, I pushed into the data further and examined booking times by the minute.
Consistently, the single cheapest minute recorded was 2:48am.
At that exact point, bookings were around 60 per cent cheaper than the most expensive time of day in the data sample.
Now – reality check time. Booking at 2:48am does not mean every holiday will magically be 60 per cent cheaper.
Pricing is influenced by many factors, including availability and route demand.
However, it illustrates just how wide the gap can be between peak and off-peak booking behaviour.
Rob tested hotel rates throughout the day to find the exact moment that prices dropCredit: Rob Brooks
Testing it in real time
Data is one thing. I wanted to see it happen on screen. So I tested two different package holidays.
First, I checked Catty Cats Garden Hotel in Turkey at 2:47am. It was pricing at £133 per person.
Later that same morning, at 11:36am, the exact same hotel and dates were pricing from £165 per person.
That is roughly a 24 per cent increase in a few hours.
Then I repeated the test with a completely different deal – Mahdia Beach & Aqua Park in Tunisia.
At 2:48am, it was pricing from £130 per person. When I checked again at 11:46am, it had risen to £143 per person.
Again, same hotel, same dates. The only thing that changed was the time of day. Early hours versus late morning – identical searches but different prices.
It is a simple demonstration of how sensitive holiday pricing can be to demand levels throughout the day.
What this means for sunseekers
I want to be clear: I’m not encouraging everyone to live like an insomniac just to save a few pounds. But the broader trend is consistent.
Peak browsing hours tend to coincide with higher prices. Quieter periods – particularly early morning and late evening – often offer better value.
If you want a practical takeaway: avoid the 9am to 10am window if you can. Consider booking later in the evening instead.
And if you do happen to wake up at 4am and find yourself scrolling… it might be the most financially productive scroll of the week.
The isolated quarry village of Nant Gwrtheyrn was once a thriving community before it was abandoned. But it was given a new lease of life as a beloved Welsh language centre
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Nant Gwrtheyrn looking back towards Yr Eifl(Image: Daily Post Wales)
Nestled between the Irish Sea and the Eifl mountains at the very edge of civilisation, this tiny village was once frozen in time before its thriving mining heritage was brought back to life.
The quarry at Nant Gwrtheyrn launched operations in 1861, adjacent to Porth y Nant, which now serves as a cherished language centre at the forefront of campaigns to revitalise the Welsh language.
In this remote community, residents’ existence centred around extracting and transporting Nant Gwrtheyrn stone for road surfacing – dispatching materials primarily via the Irish Sea, which resulted in scant interaction with the wider world, according to Nant Gwrtheyrn.
History.
When demand plummeted during the early stages of World War Two, the quarry closed, abandoning the local community to desolation. The worldwide conflict brought production to a standstill, reports Wales Online.
Wales is renowned for its stunning mountains, picturesque coastline and rich Celtic history. Sykes has a wide and varied collection of holiday cottages, houses and apartments across the country. Prices start from £35 per night with current deals.
The villagers left and their homes fell to ruin. Apart from a brief spell in the 1860s when a handful of outsiders attempted to rejuvenate the settlement, the village stood deserted.
Visitors can step back in time to the era when quarry labourers lived in the local cottages by exploring the quarryman’s cottage. This dwelling and all its contents have been recreated to demonstrate how a quarryman and his family would have existed in 1910.
Subsequently, the location received an injection of funding that would construct a new school – which was eventually taken over by a local trust, spearheaded by Dr Carl Clowes, who established it to create a Welsh language centre.
Tre’r Ceiri.
Close by stands Tre’r Ceiri – among Wales’ most impressive ancient sites.
Initially documented by Thomas Pennant, the renowned author of ‘Tours of Wales’, this represents some of the earliest archaeological proof of existence within the Iron Age hillforts scattered across the elevated terrain surrounding Nant Gwrtheyrn.
Both Tre’r Ceiri and Yr Eifl saw habitation from 150 BC through to 400 AD – our knowledge of them remains limited, though we understand they relied substantially on locally sourced iron, which was traded and exported.
Debs wrote on Trip Advisor: “What a fabulously tranquil place. We spent several hours here, walking and enjoying the peace and quiet. Found the history of Nant Gwrtheryn fascinating.
“We sampled the tasty cakes in the cafe. Would highly recommend a visit. We will most certainly return.”
One visitor said: “What a beautiful place. The Welsh Language Centre. The story behind the revival of this village is inspirational. The vision on a local doctor and the surrounding communities is worthy of a Hollywood film.
“The views are breathtaking and the road down is incredibly steep but worth it.
“We had breakfast in the cafe. Highly recommended good quality produce and full flavoured coffee. Another great plus was the indoor seating where we could have food with our dog.
“The lady who greeted us was so welcoming and friendly too. Just a beautiful place great walks too.”
MILAN — He’s as smooth as a bobsled track and sharp as a skate blade.
Snoop Dogg, the rap rapscallion who puts the OG in Olympic Games, plopped down on a couch in the NBC green room and muted the TV. It’s exhausting being everywhere at all times at the most spread-out Winter Games in history.
Whether he was carrying the Olympic torch, skiing with Picabo Street, sliding a curling stone or driving a Zamboni, Snoop was everywhere. He finished each day with a highlight show from the Milan studios.
So ubiquitous was the so-called Ambassador of Happiness, you’d swear NBC duped a Snoop — or maybe two.
Snoop Dogg, right, and five-time Olympic gold medalist former speedskater Eric Heiden watch speedskating at the Milan-Cortina Olympics on Feb. 11.
(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)
“The Winter Olympics are underrated,” he said in an interview Friday at the network’s Olympic complex. “It’s not highly touted like it should be. This is an event that is just as good as the Super Bowl, as the Summer Olympics. There’s so much action and there’s so much happening, and it’s not just one day. It’s not just four quarters. It’s weeks of great competition — on ice, for the most part.”
It’s almost as if the angular, 6-foot-4 Snoop is on ice as he glides through the back halls of NBC’s temporary headquarters, wearing a white turtleneck under a red, white and blue leather jacket with “COACH SNOOP” across the front. He’s wearing a gold-rope chain with the Universal logo as a pendant, and gold-rimmed sunglasses that are square and lightly tinted.
He greets everyone he sees and a friendly assistant follows him, handing out Olympic pins of a tiny, cartoonish Snoop with his arms raised at his side, standing in front of an American flag.
Is it any wonder this guy creates a buzz in every venue he enters? He is the No. 1 celebrity sighting at the Games.
“Snoop has a joy about him, a childlike curiosity, and he’s also a people person,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer and president of programming for NBC’s Olympics coverage. “He wants to lift people up in all aspects of his persona.”
NBC began using the rapper as part of its Olympic coverage during the Tokyo Games in 2021 with the streaming Peacock show “Olympic Highlights with Kevin Hart & Snoop Dogg.” Many of their playful clips and humorous commentaries went viral and were especially appealing to younger viewers. Snoop genuinely enjoyed the competition, even though a lot of it was new to him.
Three years later, as the network was preparing for the Paris Olympics, executives were looking for ways to enhance the prime-time coverage, much of which would air on tape because of time-zone differences. They decided to expand Snoop’s role to give the perspective of a “superfan.” With these Olympics, his role further evolved into an experiential one, and to serve as an informal mentor and ambassador to the athletes.
“This is the biggest stage in the world,” he said. “Nobody gets to perform in front of the world like they do, with the whole world paying attention. To have all of that pressure of [something] you’ve been working for four years … Some of these girls and guys get that one shot, their event is only one time.”
As a roving correspondent, he did … well, some serious roving.
That included making the drive from Milan to Cortina for curling, sliding and women’s ski racing. That’s a four-hour van ride each way, some of it winding into the Dolomites.
“Trying to sleep with my head up against the window, with turning curves and every mountaintop,” he said. “Sliding by trains and traffic, and oh my God, I couldn’t drive out here. One-way streets. Little-bitty trains coming this way, that way. Bicycles, mopeds. It’s a lot.”
He also made a 3½-hour trip to Livigno to watch snowboarding — and said that if he had to pick a sport to compete in, that would be his choice.
“I could get good in snowboard, because I just like the creativity of when you’re in the air you have full control but you in the air,” he said. “I just feel like that’s something I could really be good at.”
So he must have skateboarded as a kid growing up in Long Beach, right?
“Never,” he said. “That’s what I’m saying. None of these sports are near and dear to me. That’s why it’s gonna be a first-time trial. But I know who I am. I don’t like to fail. I don’t like to lose. So I’m just such a perfectionist that I will get good enough to be good enough.”
He’s 54 and concedes his body can’t always accomplish what his mind thinks it can. He tried running the 200 meters at the Olympic trials in Oregon before the Paris Games and did so in 33 seconds, but he limped away with an injury. So he has a goal for when the Summer Games come to Los Angeles in two years.
“When we get to L.A., my mission is for me to run the 200 in under 30 seconds,” he said. “In 2028, I should be 56 years old. So if I can run it in under 30 seconds at 56, that’s a gold medal for me.”
Solomon said NBC is still brainstorming about how Snoop’s role will evolve for the 2028 Games.
Honorary Team USA coach Snoop Dogg throws a curling stone as Americans Daniel Casper and Tabitha Peterson Lovick watch on Feb. 6 in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
(Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)
“Of course, L.A. is Snoop’s hometown,” she said. “So he will be a hometown hero.”
Snoop said his love for the Olympics dates to the 1984 Los Angeles Games. He didn’t attend any events at the time, though, noting that for a 13-year-old kid growing up in Long Beach, the city felt “like a whole state away.”
“We were watching on television,” he said. “We never thought we could physically be there. … It just felt good to be an American, to watch us compete against the whole world and to see how great we were.”
He’s particularly interested in flag football — which will make its debut in the Los Angeles Olympics — and created a youth football league that counts among its alumni NFL standouts C.J. Stroud and JuJu Smith-Schuster.
“Flag football is a sport the whole world can grab ahold of,” Snoop said. “There are so many athletes that are in the NFL that are from different parts of the world that they’ve grown the sport from them just making it to the NFL and being an inspiration for the next generation.”
Willie Colón, a legendary trombonist and pioneer of salsa music, has died. He was 75.
His death on Saturday was confirmed in a Facebook post by his longtime manager, Pietro Carlos.
News of the singer’s condition circulated on the web in recent days. Yonkers Voice News reported Colón was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian Westchester hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., on Tuesday with respiratory problems and he appeared fragile.
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Born William Anthony Colón Román on April 28, 1950, to Puerto Rican parents in New York City, Colón first picked up the trumpet in school. It seemed like a natural choice for the former bugle-playing Boy Scout, who attended the youth program at the suggestion of his grandmother.
“So I could learn how to be a good boy,” said Colón in a 1988 interview with Associated Press.
By age 13, Colón had started a band and played at some weddings and in the bustling nightclubs of New York City. At one point, he forged a cabaret card, a mandated ID for musicians and entertainers between 1940 and 1967 who worked in establishments serving alcohol, which required individuals to be 18 years and older.
The thrilling 1960s Latin music scene in New York consumed Colón, who was deeply inspired by Latin jazz pioneer and bandleader Eddie Palmieri, once part of a main act at the Palladium Ballroom who went on to form La Perfecta, a Cuban conjunto that revolutionized the New York Latin music scene with its inclusion of two trombones, played by Barry Rogers and Jose Rodriguez, instead of the costly four-set trumpets.
But Colón’s instrumental preference changed once he heard the bodied timbre of Mon Rivera’s all-trombone brass lineup marching to a bomba beat. “It would knock my socks off,” said Colón in a 1988 interview with Associated Press, leading the singer to teach himself how to play the instrument.
By age 15, Colón was signed to Fania Records. Two years later at age 17, he went on to release his debut album, “El Malo,” a record that defined the fierce sounds of New York’s salsa scene, which Colón later described as the Latin equivalent of rap.
According to his former label, the name of “El Malo” was bestowed upon Colón by older musicians who sought to mock his trombone range at the time, though the young bandleader would find a way to use the label to his advantage.
On the LP, Colón’s sound moved away from the polished mambo sounds of orchestral bands decades prior, in large part due to Puerto Rican singer Héctor Lavoe, whose vocals can be heard in tracks like the gritty “El Malo” that vows to knock out any wanna-be street phony.
The pair would go on to record a total of 14 albums through 1973, with Lavoe’s talents for improvisation complementing Colón’s raw, aggressive trombone.
“Salsa came from the same kind of situation that rap does,” Colon said in a 1992 interview with The Times. “It was kind of a hybrid of a bunch of different elements. Hector had just come from Puerto Rico and didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak much Spanish, I was a little New York kid. We got together and just started with the same kind of irreverent, rebellious attitude, writing songs about the baddest guy on the block, drugs and sex. Before that, the lyrics and whole attitude of Latin music was, ‘Look at me dance, listen to those drums, I’m cutting sugar cane.’ It was a rural, folkloric emphasis; we changed it to an inner-city kind of culture.”
Colón’s impact went beyond live music. The album cover of “El Malo,” which showed two serious profiles of Colón, depicted the singer as a sly bad boy, and ultimately gave rise to his gangster persona, which would be a throughline in future projects, including his sophomore 1968 album, “The Hustler” which featured the band with fitted suits, smoking cigars and placing bets in a pool hall. His 1970 album “Cosa Nuestra” featured Colón smoking a cigar while overlooking a dead body in broad daylight in Manhattan’s East River Bikeway. Most famously, his 1971 album, “La Gran Fuga,” depicted the singer on a fake FBI “Most Wanted” poster.
These mob-like depictions occurred long before cult-favorite films like Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 “The Godfather” and Brian De Palma 1983’s “Scarface” became the prominent gangster storylines various male acts venerate in their music.
By 1973, Colón and Lavoe split — allegedly due to Lavoe’s drug addiction leading to many missed concert performances — although the two would remain frequent collaborators until the latter’s death in 1993 due to complications of AIDS.
The Nuyorican musician would introduce Blades as the new singer of his orchestra, whom he had met years prior while visiting Panama during carnivals. They collaborated briefly on Colón’s 1975 LP “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly,” cementing their partnership in the 1977 album “Metiendo Mano,” which delved into socio-political themes, notably in their track “Pablo Pueblo,” which shares the story of a working class man with broken dreams halted by toils of daily life. Other tracks like “Plantación Adentro,” detailed the story of Camilo Manrique, a fictionalized enslaved character who died at the hands of a Spanish colonizer in 1745.
Many considered this album Colón’s first foray into intellectual salsa — in large part because of Blades, who had a knack for storytelling and political interests (he unsuccessfully ran for president of Panama in 1994) — that addressed colonialism and class disparities. Together they released three albums, including their 1978 “Siembra,” one of the bestselling salsa albums at that time; from the start, their track “Plastico” fused the popular disco music of the moment while addressing superficial beauty standards and colorism in Latin America.
According to 1996 reporting by The Times, “Siembra” delivered pulsating salsa rhythms that “carried messages of freedom at a time when most of Latin America was oppressed by military dictatorships.”
By 1982, Blades and Colón parted ways, but they collaborated again on projects like their 2005 LP “Tras La Tormenta” — which led the bandleader to sing for the first time in his career, “I had to start from zero, and it took me many years to feel comfortable,” Colón said.
This newfound independence gave rise to some of Colón’s most famous songs, including his 1995 track “Talento de Televisión,” an upbeat song with his signature trombone wailing in the backdrop as he sang about an attractive woman with a lack of talent.
Many across Latin America might be familiar with his 1989 song “El Gran Varon” — which narrated the story of a trans woman who is rejected by her father and presumably dies of AIDS — a landmark salsa song that brought awareness to LGBTQ+ themes during the AIDS crisis. Colón would later serve as a member of the Latino Commission on AIDS. “El Gran Varon” is an anthem to this day.
Colón released more than 40 albums in all.
He also acted, taking roles in films including 1982’s “Vigilante,” the 1983 sports drama “The Last Fight,” as well as one-episode stints in TV shows like “Miami Vice” and “The Cosby Show.” He was even featured in Bad Bunny’s “Nuevayol” music video, cutting a slice of cake; the 31-year-old superstar pays homage to the singer in its lyrics: “Willie Colón, me dicen el malo, ey. Porque pasan los años y sigo dando palo”/ “Willie Colón, they say I’m bad, because the years come and I’m still hitting.”
In his later years, he became more involved in politics. In 1994, he unsuccessfully went up against U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel of the Bronx in the Democratic primary. He also ran as a Democrat for Public Advocate in 2001, focusing on community issues, education and AIDS awareness, but failed to gain the popular vote. In 2008, he endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama in the primary election.
On May 26, 2014, after graduating from Westchester County Police Academy, Colón was sworn in as a deputy sheriff for the Department of Public Safety, later becoming deputy lieutenant.
As President Trump took office in his first term, Colón’s politics shifted in support of the right-wing candidate, and he said he would be open to performing at his inauguration in 2017.
A sparkly pink electric guitar hangs on a wall of the recording studio where Hilary Duff made her new album. The cozy, gear-filled joint near the Van Nuys Airport belongs to her husband, Matthew Koma, who produced “Luck… or Something,” the singer and actor’s first LP in more than a decade. But as Duff points out on a recent afternoon, the paisley-print guitar is all hers.
“I got it for my 16th birthday,” she says proudly — a gift from the Fender company. “I found it in the storage unit and Matt was like, ‘Oh, that’s going up there.’”
Before Miley Cyrus, before Sabrina Carpenter, before Olivia Rodrigo, Duff arrived in the early 2000s as a Disney kid with pop-idol ambitions. She broke out in the endearingly awkward title role of the Disney Channel’s “Lizzie McGuire” then went on to star in family-friendly movies like “Agent Cody Banks” and “Cheaper by the Dozen.” By the time she received that guitar, she’d topped the Billboard 200 with her album “Metamorphosis,” which sold 4 million copies and spawned hit singles like “So Yesterday” and “Come Clean.”
Duff stepped away from music for most of her 20s to focus on acting and starting a family. (An attempted comeback album in 2015, “Breathe In. Breathe Out.,” didn’t really go anywhere.) Now, at 38, she’s returned with a bracingly honest record full of the texture and detail of her life as a wife, sister and mother of four.
In frank yet wordy songs that layer guitars and synths over shimmering grooves, Duff sings about trying to overcome old habits and about her fear that her best times are behind her. “We Don’t Talk” appears to address her estrangement from her older sister, Haylie, while “Weather for Tennis” describes her tendency to keep the peace as a child of divorce. In “Holiday Party,” she recounts a recurring dream in which Koma cheats on her with her friends.
“I wake up in a rage and he’s like, ‘I didn’t do anything!’” she says with a laugh. “And I’m like, ‘But you want to.’ A lot of this stuff came out of the hormonal boom of: I’ve just had a baby and I’m nursing and I’m trying to get my two feet back on the ground again.” (Duff and Koma have three daughters aged 7, 4 and 1, while Duff shares a 13-year-old son with her ex-husband, former hockey player Mike Comrie.)
Asked how he hopes the album fares commercially, Koma says, “I don’t [care]. Public perception or sales, that’s all cool, but it’s a separate experience from why we did it.” The producer, who’s known for his work with Zedd and Shania Twain, adds, “The whole purpose was to make something that Hilary could feel good about stepping into.”
Yet early-2000s nostalgia led to a recent run of sold-out theater gigs, and this summer it’ll carry her into arenas around the world, including Inglewood’s Kia Forum on July 8 and 9. (Less happily for Duff, it also made a viral sensation of an essay in the Cut by her fellow millennial Ashley Tisdale in which Tisdale wrote about leaving a “toxic mom group” that allegedly included Duff and Mandy Moore.)
Curled on a sofa in the studio’s control room, Duff says, “I’m finally at this place where I’m zero percent ashamed of my past and any of the things that used to embarrass me” — one reason she made the bold choice to open her set at the Wiltern last month with two of her biggest hits, “Wake Up” and “So Yesterday.”
After those songs came “Roommates,” perhaps the most vulnerable track on Duff’s new album. It’s about navigating a dry patch in a marriage, and the language is as vivid as it is unsparing: “I only want the beginning / I don’t want the end,” she sings, adding that she longs to be in the “back of a dive bar, giving you h—.”
A surprising word choice. How would you have said it? Sometimes you need to make the lyrics fit — you need it to rhyme with something. [Laughs] It’s meant to be polarizing because it’s such a desperate plea. I can say I haven’t actually given h— in the back of a dive bar. But it’s just trying to capture the feeling of a time when you felt alive.
Like all teen stars, you had to figure out how to grow up and talk about sex as a public figure. Now there’s the idea that it’s better left to the young. I finally feel like I know a lot about sex. My whole 20s, sex was not always enjoyable — it was so much to figure out. Now I finally understand it. Maybe that’s a female thing, but I’m not ready to be put out to pasture. People come up to me all the time and they’re like, “Wow, you aged really well.” I’m like, “I’m only 38! Just because you’ve known me since I was 9…”
You’re handling senior citizenship well. When do I start getting the discounts? I feel like 38 is not old, although when I thought about my parents at 40, they looked so different than we look now.
I always stop at those TikToks where it shows what 35 looked like in 1982. I don’t think anyone drank water back then. They were, like, dusty-crusty.
Hilary Duff, left, and Matthew Koma at Apple Music Studios in Los Angeles in December.
(Amy Sussman / Getty Images for Apple Music)
You borrow the chorus of Blink-182’s “Dammit” for your song “Growing Up.” Why? Blink is one of my favorite bands. I remember getting my driver’s license, and that was what was playing on my iPod. “Growing Up” is such a deeply personal song to me, talking about sitting in the backyard with one of my best friends and just needing to drink too much wine and unload about life. But it also feels like a love letter to my fans. I don’t like saying that word, but I genuinely feel like I’ve had fans for 25 years, and getting to see them now in adulthood — I didn’t know I was going to have this opportunity.
What’s the problem with “fan”? It puts me on a pedestal that makes me feel uncomfortable. If you were to talk to Matt or someone close to me, they’d probably say, “Hilary doesn’t understand what she’s meant to some people.” And I think that’s true. When I think of myself, I’m not like a grand pop star — I feel more like a woman of the people.
A woman of the people? Am I allowed to say that? [Laughs] Is that offensive in any way? My feet hit the ground in the morning, and I’ve got a million things to do. Sometimes my baby’s still sleeping. And I have a teenager to get ready for school that we’re always all waiting on.
Why do you have four children? I know — we’re sick.
Did you expect to have four? I thought I would have at least three. I always wanted a big family because I come from a super small family and I always wanted more siblings. I had Luca obviously pre-Matt, and then we had Banks before we got married. Then the pandemic hit — we had a pandemic baby like everybody else. The fourth was just a crazy-a— decision. Matt was like, “Everybody’s gonna think we’re really Christ-y if we go for No. 4.” We also have three dogs, two cats and eight chickens.
As two artists, how do you sort out the work of child-rearing? I don’t know if I’ve actually said this out loud — to Matt I have for sure — but I think that part of my wanting to make a record was coming out of having my fourth child. I love motherhood, obviously — I wouldn’t have four kids if I didn’t. But I think I felt really jealous that he got to go to work every day and just be alone with his thoughts. I was like, I need to stretch. That’s what it felt like after the fourth baby: I’m either gonna lose myself completely and just become a stay-at-home mom and wait for the phone to ring, or I’m gonna go make something that moves me.
You don’t need me to tell you that our culture is always happy to make moms feel guilty. Was it a journey to accept that it’s OK to do something for yourself? That’s what the healthy part of the brain says. But the other part that’s wired to be with the children you birthed — sometimes that part overshadows it. And it’s very hard to fight that. I could probably cry right now thinking about all the things I’m gonna miss this year.
Hilary Duff in the studio where she recorded her new album.
(Jay L Clendenin / For The Times)
You’ve got a line in “Roommates” where you say, “Life is life-ing and pressure is pressuring me.” At the shows you just played, did you think of your audience as being at the same place in life as you? For sure. When they were scream-singing it back to me, I was like, “Oh, you know.” That doesn’t mean you have to be a parent. “Life is life-ing” is the bills and the monotony and the traffic and the family — it’s all the things. I knew that if it’s bumping around inside my head, and I’ve been living a pretty normal life for 10 years — normal as I can get — then people would see themselves in it.
Twenty-five years ago, you were playing to 10-year-olds. Would a 10-year-old today be interested in your new songs? I don’t think so. But I mean, I used to sing Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” all the time, and I had no idea what it was about.
The last decade has been a golden age for young female songwriters: Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo. You forgot Chappell Roan.
“Luck… or Something” feels aligned with that deepening craft. But maybe your early stuff felt sophisticated to you. I don’t think the intent back then was sophisticated songwriting. There was no Taylor Swift yet — it’s like before Christ and after Christ.
She changed the game? On all the levels.
How’d you end up on Atlantic Records? I wondered whether this was a product of personal friendships — the Elliot Grainge and Sofia Richie and Good Charlotte of it all. We’re more personally friends with them now. I finished making the record and for the first time ever was like, “It’s done — do you like it?”
You weren’t looking for notes from the label. I’m not saying I didn’t have meetings with A&R. But pretty much the record was created, and that was that. I didn’t go shopping anywhere else, which was fantastic because I hate a dog-and-pony show.
Did you feel like you’d been chewed up by the record industry in any way? After “Breathe In. Breathe Out.,” it was very easy to be like, “RCA forced me to lead with this song when I knew it should’ve been this song.” But that was me not having [courage], you know what I mean? It was a joint effort of [messing] it up. But I learned a lot from that. I don’t think I would’ve made this record if I hadn’t fumbled the ball a little.
The story about the toxic mom group blew up just as you were launching this album. Did that experience give you pause about reentering the pop world? I mean, this is not new for me. I’ve had this since I was maybe 15 and starting to get followed around by paparazzi. Everything starts getting documented and everyone knows my life and all the players in it. So the stories that get news pickup — it’s not what happens to a normal person who maybe became an actor as an adult. And now it’s escalated by the talking heads on TikTok that need clickbait. It’s hard because you’re like, “Wait, whoa, that person kind of got it right,” and “Whoa that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” I saw something that was like, “None of the moms at school actually like her and neither do the teachers,” and I was like, “First of all…”
Is it hard or easy for you to tune out — By the way, the women at school are lovely and I’m obsessed with all of them.
But can you ignore the chatter about you on social media? It just depends on the day. Knowing that I get to open up the backdoors and play soccer as a family and take a hot tub and go get our chicken eggs — that’s the purpose of life. On the days when crazy s— happens, I go home and quiet the noise.
How does Mick Cronin survive this, sending his own player off the court after hustling hard on defense to get a piece of the ball but unfortunately too much contact and drew a foul. Does he not constantly rip his team for weak defense?
Steven Jamerson, you deserved better from your coach and I won’t be surprised if your teammates and UCLA’s decision-makers agree going forward. Except …. he just recently got an extension. Way to go, Martin Jarmond.
Ron Mortvedt San Bernardino
How can UCLA’s combustible coach possibly demand discipline, hold his players responsible, or blame them for failing to take accountability when, night after night, he’s the most unhinged person in the building? Hey Mick, as my grandma used to say, “When you point a finger at someone, three point back at you.”
Steve Ross Carmel
Bill Plaschke nailed it in his column today. Mick Cronin just seems to be angry all the time prowling the sidelines. What does that look like to a kid still playing in high school? How AD Martin Jarmond gave him an extended contract with a $22.5-million buyout is beyond me. It’s going to cost UCLA to move on from him. It would be a lot easier if he only starts throwing chairs.
Paul Atkinson Ventura
The sky has fallen! For the first time I can remember I agree with something Bill Plaschke has written!
Julian Pollok
Palm Desert
As a lifelong fan and proud alumnus, I believe it’s time for UCLA to seriously evaluate the direction of its men’s basketball program. Why would we want a head coach who appears angry every time he’s in the spotlight? Leadership sets the tone, and right now that tone feels tense and joyless. Players want to compete for someone who inspires them and makes them better — not someone whose public demeanor seems rooted in frustration.
Watching from the outside, it often looks like the team is playing tight rather than confident, and that reflects leadership. Mick Cronin has had success and deserves credit for that, but UCLA basketball is bigger than any one résumé; if the standard is sustained excellence and a culture players are proud to represent, then it’s fair to question whether this is the right long-term fit for the program.
KATIE Price appears to be planning to double down on defying her family’s warning about her husband – by marrying him for a second time.
The 47-year-old wed Lee Andrews last month in a whirlwind ceremony in Dubai just days after meeting in person.
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Katie Price posted about having another weddingCredit: InstagramShe wed Lee Andrews last monthCredit: Instagram/@wesleeeandrewsShe appears to be thinking about her second wedding dressCredit: BackGrid
Weeks after breaking up with Married At First Sight’s JJ Slater,Katie posted photos of her wedding proposal, with flowers spelling “Will you marry me?” at Dubai’s Burj Khalifa hotel.
He has not yet travelled to the UK to meet her family or kids.
Katie Price’s relationship history
We take a look back at the highs and lows of Katie Price’s relationship history.
1996-1998: Katie got engaged to Gladiators star Warren Furman – aka Ace – with a £3,000 ring. But their relationship didn’t make it as far as ‘I do’.
1998-2000: Katie described Dane Bowers as ‘the love of her life’ but she broke up with the singer after he allegedly cheated on her.
2001: Footballer Dwight Yorke is the father of Katie’s eldest child Harvey. He has had very little to do with his son throughout his life.
2002: Rebounding from Dwight, Katie famously had one night of passion with Pop Idol star Gareth Gates, allegedly taking his virginity.
2002-2004: Katie was dating Scott Sullivan when she entered the jungle for I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here!. He threatened to “punch Peter’s lights out” when chemistry blossomed between her and Peter Andre.
2004-2009: The jungle romance resulted in Katie marrying Aussie pop star Peter. They had two kids, Junior and Princess, before their bitter split in 2009.
2010-2011: Fresh from her break-up with Peter, Katie enjoyed a whirlwind relationship and marriage with cage fighter Alex Reid. They split 20 months after their Las Vegas wedding.
2011: Katie briefly dated model Danny Cipriani… but it ended as quickly as it begun.
2011-2012: They didn’t speak the same language, but Katie got engaged to Argentinian model Leandro Penna in 2011. He later fled home to South America.
2012-2018: Wedding bells rang once more after Katie met Kieran Hayler in 2013. They eventually called it quits after a rocky marriage.
2018-2019: Katie moved on quickly with Kris Boyson. They had an on-off romance for one year and even got engaged. They split for good in 2019.
2019: Katie was linked to Charles Drury during her on-off relationship with Kris. Charles, who also dated Lauren Goodger, has always denied being in “official relationship” with her.
2020-2023: Car salesman Carl Woods took a shine to Katie in 2020. Their relationship was up and down for three years. They broke up for a final time last year.
2024-2026: After weeks of rumours, Katie confirmed her relationship with Married At First Sight star JJ Slater in February 2024. The pair split in January 2026 after two years together.
2026: Katie shocked fans when she revealed she had married Dubai-based businessman Lee Andrews after a 48-hour engagement and only knowing him a week.
In 1878, the New Haven, Conn., Telephone Co. published the first phone directory. It listed 50 subscribers.
In 1885, the Washington Monument, a 555-foot-high marble obelisk built in honor of America’s revolutionary hero and first president, was dedicated in Washington.
File Photo by Pat Benic/UPI
In 1916, Germans launched the Battle of Verdun. More than 1 million soldiers in the German and French armies were killed in nearly 10 months of fighting. It was the longest battle of World War I.
In 1925, the first issue of The New Yorker was published.
In 1934, Nicaraguan guerrilla leader Cesar Augusto Sandino was killed by members of the country’s national guard.
In 1953, Francis Crick and James D. Watson discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. It took another three decades for scientists to produce a clear, direct picture of the DNA molecule.
The Francis Crick Letter titled “Secret of Life” is on display at Christie’s in New York City on April 5, 2013. The letter from Francis Crick to his son dated March 19, 1953, outlines the revolutionary discovery of the structure and function of DNA. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI
In 1965, Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally in New York.
In 1994, longtime CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames and his wife, Maria, were arrested and charged with selling information to the Soviet Union and Russia. Ames was sentenced to life in prison; his wife got a five-year term.
In 1995, a Russian commission estimated up to 24,400 civilians died in a two-month uprising in the separatist republic of Chechnya.
In 2007, nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan signed a treaty in New Delhi aimed at preventing the accidental use of atomic weapons.
In 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, at the White House after the Chinese government warned the meeting would damage U.S.-China relations. A White House statement said Obama “reiterated the U.S. position that Tibet is part of the People’s Republic of China and that the United States does not support Tibet independence.”
In 2019, the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa-2 probe touched down on asteroid Ryugu. It was the first probe to deploy working rovers onto an asteroid.
In 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered “peacekeeping” troops into two separatist regions of eastern Ukraine under new decrees recognizing them as independent republics. Three days later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
It was a long day at the office for Marco Penge, but the overtime hours were well worth it for the 27-year-old from Lancashire, England, who shot a bogey-free 64 Friday and is tied for the lead with Jacob Bridgeman after two rounds of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club.
Penge surged to the lead with birdies on five of the last seven holes, then watched as Bridgeman closed with three birdies to catch him at 12 under par.
“I was biding my time on the front nine — the targets are so small here — but I found my swing coming down the stretch and that allowed me to be more aggressive,” said Penge, who won three times on the DP World Tour last year to earn his first PGA Tour card. “It’s tough for a European to come over here and do the things Rory [McIlroy] and Tommy [Fleetwood] are doing but I managed the course well today.”
Penge was in the last group Thursday and was on the 10th hole when play was suspended due to darkness. He carded four birdies and two bogeys on the back nine early Friday morning to join McIlory, Bridgeman and countryman Aaron Rai at five under par. He had only 38 minutes between finishing his first round and starting the second, but showed no signs of fatigue.
Marco Penge reacts after putting on the 18th green during the second round of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club on Friday.
(Caroline Brehman / Associated Press)
“Not really, I wasn’t any more tired than usual,” he said. “When you see you’re near the top your adrenaline gets you through it.”
Although he did not get paid time and a half for playing 27 holes instead of the normal 18, a healthy check will come his way Sunday afternoon if Penge can hold his position.
Likewise for Bridgeman, who rode his momentum from the day before to also card a 64, opening his round with an eagle and posting eight birdies to more than offset bogeys at No. 7 and No. 12.
“I putted really well, hit my driver great and I’m excited to be in the hunt for the second straight week,” Bridgeman said after coolly sinking an eight-foot birdie putt on the last hole. “Yesterday was a learning experience. The 18th was playing a lot longer than I thought today. It’s shocking how soft and how fast these greens are. This is the most pure layout I’ve ever seen.”
Jacob Bridgeman hits from the 18th fairway during the second round of the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club on Friday.
(Caroline Brehman / Associated Press)
McIlroy, the world’s No. 2-ranked player, looms one shot back after a six-under 65 and two-time winner Adam Scott rocketed into contention with two eagles and six birdies — an eight-under-par 63 marred only by his bogey at 18. Scott has won twice at Riviera, in 2005 (a rain-shortened 36 holes) and 2020, and is tied for fourth with Xander Schauffele at -9.
Schauffele, ranked 13th in the world, also had a prolonged day. He was tied for 29th at even par through 11 holes when play was suspended Thursday and played the last seven holes of the first round in three-under-par. The 2016-17 Rookie of the Year notched the last of his 10 Tour victories at the Baycurrent Classic last October.
“I’m tired man… I’m looking forward to laying down sometime soon,” said the 32-year-old who lives in Jupiter, Florida but was born in San Diego and played his college golf at Long Beach State and San Diego State.
Asked about tournament host Tiger Woods’ suggestion to reschedule the event to the summertime, Schauffele said: “Wherever it is and whatever the conditions are — dry, damp, moist — I just enjoying playing here.”
Rai led by one stroke when play was suspended Thursday but bogeyed 18 early Friday to drop into a tie and shot a second-round 69, leaving him tied for 12th with South African Aldrich Potgeiter, Ryan Fox and 2021 Genesis champion Max Homa at the halfway point.
“My ball striking was better than yesterday and I got more looks at birdie,” Potgeiter said after shooting 68 for a second straight day. “The course is looking great… with the amount of rain we’ve had they did a good job.”
World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler was tied with Keegan Bradley for last place at five-over when he walked off the course Thursday evening and shot two under over his last eight holes early Friday morning to begin the second round tied for 65th at +3. He had three birdies and six pars on the back nine for a 68 in the second round to get to even par and was among 51 in the 72-player field to make the cut.
“It’s nice to be able to get another two cracks at the course,” a relieved Scheffler said after having to drain a four-foot birdie putt at the 17th to extend his consecutive cuts streak to 68—the longest active streak on Tour. “This place and I have a weird relationship. I feel like I can play well here, I just haven’t yet. I was very aware I had to get to at least even par to keep going. I had to battle because the closing stretch is tough here.”
Scheffler has not missed a cut since the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August of 2022.
The conditions were ideal and scores reflected that on the second day of the 100th edition of a tournament that is still up for grabs, with 22 players within nine shots of the lead. One of them is Max Greyserman, who is tied for sixth with Australian Min Woo Lee at -8.
“Starting off with an eagle is always nice,” said Greyserman, a 30-year-old who lives in Palm Beach and is seeking his first pro win. “I hit a lot of nice drives. If you miss the fairways around here things get tricky. The kikuyu grass is interesting. I didn’t grow up on it. I played Genesis last year at Torrey [Pines] and I’ve played here four times before this week. It’s a good test, a fair test, a fun test.”
BARRY Manilow has been forced to reschedule his shows AGAIN after undergoing cancer surgery following his diagnosis in December.
The veteran singer, 82, has delivered a health update to fans while revealing he will have to push back his tour dates.
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Credit: Instagram/barrymanilowofficial
In his post, Barry revealed he was rescheduling his first batch of arena shows, which were due to begin in a matter of days.
He explained that the shows that are being canceled are the February 27 up until March 17 shows, on the order of his surgeon.
Barry then delivered some happy news when he said he would likely be able to do the Vegas shows at the very end of March, and the second batch of arena shows at the beginning of April.
“I’m SO, SO sorry I have to reschedule some of these first arena shows, again,” Barry added.
The full statement read: “Hi everyone, Barry here.
“Just got home from visiting the surgeon. Very depressing visit.
“I told him that I have been using the treadmill three times a day (I have) but that I still couldn’t sing more than three songs in a row before I had to stop.”
Barry added that he told his surgeon that he was sure he would be able to do the arena shows in a few weeks, but the surgeon shook his head.
It was an extraordinary media moment: CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday publicly blasted his own employer over its handling of his interview with Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico of Texas.
Colbert contended that his own network prevented him from airing the interview in an effort to appease the Trump administration, which CBS has denied. He chose instead to put the sit-down with the Texas state legislator on YouTube, which is not regulated by the FCC.
The standoff not only highlighted the simmering tensions inside CBS with the late-night host, it also marked the latest flash point in the ongoing clash between the Trump administration and leading media and entertainment figures — including other late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel — who have been openly critical of the president’s policies.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has been leading the charge, aggressively attempting to wield the long dormant equal time rules forcing broadcast TV stations to offer equal time to opposing candidates as a means of influencing the legacy media companies who President Trump believes treats him unfairly.
Carr contends the effort is a long overdue corrective to combat what he and Trump believe is liberal bias in broadcast network news coverage. He has even threatened to pull TV station licenses if programmers don’t get in line.
Last fall, he warned ABC that it could lose its TV station licenses after Kimmel made remarks on his program about slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk that upset conservatives. Two major TV station groups pulled the program and the network suspended Kimmel‘s program for a week.
But experts say the efforts — along with the recent arrest of former CNN journalist Don Lemon over civil rights charges — pose a threat to constitutionally protected freedom of speech and would likely face court challenges.
“We don’t want the government trying to make decisions as to what counts as political speech and what doesn’t and what counts as fairness and what doesn’t,” media consultant Michael Harrison told The Times last month.
Some experts are also skeptical that Carr will ever make good on those threats through greater enforcement of the equal time provision.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a public interest communications attorney, said Carr is using his bully pulpit at the FCC to intimidate “a timorous broadcasting industry.”
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert “ on July 23, 2024.
(Scott Kowalchyk / CBS)
“It’s just all bluster,” said Schwartzman. “Broadcasters are more interested in short-term regulatory relief from the FCC, and in the case of [CBS parent] Paramount, getting approval of a possible Warner Bros. Discovery deal.”
CBS cited financial losses as the reason for the cancellation of Colbert’s show, which ends in May, just two months before CBS parent Paramount Global closed its merger deal with Skydance Media, which required regulatory approval from the Trump administration. Paramount also has been attempting a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount also drew scrutiny over its controversial decision to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s legal salvo against “60 Minutes” over the editing of an interview with his 2024 opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Most legal analysts viewed the case as frivolous.
Jeffrey McCall, a communications professor at DePauw University, said he understands why CBS did not want to invite FCC scrutiny.
“CBS could have other matters in front of the FCC,” McCall said. “So, I don’t blame CBS for trying to tell Colbert like, ‘hey, back off.’”
But McCall added that he sees no reason for the FCC to end or curtail the exemption daytime and late-night television talk shows have from laws requiring stations to offer equal broadcast opportunities to political candidates.
“They have a lot to do otherwise and I’m just not sure this is worth their trouble,” he said.
The equal time rules were devised at a time when consumers had a limited number of media options. Broadcast TV is no longer dominant in the era of streaming as evidenced by how the Talarico interview drew 8 million views on YouTube — more than three times the typical TV audience for Colbert’s “Late Show.”
Schwartzman noted that equal time provision cases are typically resolved quickly, as the rule only applies during an election campaign.
If Talarico’s interview had aired on TV and his opponents requested time, CBS would have to accommodate them ahead of the Texas primary election on March 3. (The network would not have been required to give time to Republican candidates).
CBS could have fulfilled the request by providing time on its affiliated stations in Texas. The opposing candidates did not have to appear on Colbert’s show.
“The remedy is you have to give them airtime,” Schwartzman said. “That’s all.”
CBS wanted Colbert to steer clear of Talarico because the FCC previously announced it is “investigating” ABC over the candidate’s appearance on “The View,” according to a network executive not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Talarico was on the daytime talk show Feb. 2, which has led to the FCC launching an “enforcement action” on the matter.
Representatives from CBS and ABC declined comment.
Appearing Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Carr brushed off accusations by Democrats that he was using the rule to silence their candidates.
“What we’re doing now is simply applying the law on the books,” Carr said.
When host Laura Ingraham noted that if CBS had aired the Talarico interview, it would have meant free airtime for Tarico’s primary opponent and high-profile Trump critic Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Carr replied, “Ironically, yes.”
But Schwartzman noted that if the FCC punished a network for ignoring the rule, the move would likely be challenged in court and take years to resolve. Even if the policy were violated, that would not be enough to get a station license pulled.
“A single violation or even a couple of violations of FCC policy are meaningless,” Schwartzman said. “You have to demonstrate a pattern of violations.”
“We need more competition against THE ENEMY, the Fake News National TV Networks,” Trump wrote Feb. 7 on Truth Social. “Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar — Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level.”
How Nexstar could take on the broadcast networks is a mystery. Nexstar is highly dependent on its affiliations with ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox due to their contracts with the NFL, which provide the stations with their highest-rated programming. Those network affiliations also give Nexstar leverage in its negotiations to get carriage on cable and satellite providers.
Bright yellow T-shirts reading, in raspberry type, “¡Bienvenido Gustavo!” marked Gustavo Dudamel’s first concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic the first Saturday afternoon of October 2009 at the Hollywood Bowl. Eighteen thousand tickets were distributed free for a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, an Angeleno “Ode to Joy” broadcast worldwide. The exultant young Venezuelan conductor’s message was: There is no North, South or Central America. We are one.
We are now in “Gracias Gustavo” season, and times, we are daily reminded, they are a-changin’. But what remains consistent is that Dudamel begins again, in the first month of his six-month homestretch as L.A. Phil music director, by dwelling on the composer he says has meant the most to him since his earliest days as a kid conductor in Caracas. His first major recording boasted startlingly propulsive performances of Beethoven’s Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, with the uproarious Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, recorded 20 years ago this month. In August, Dudamel will end his L.A. Phil tenure as he began it, with Beethoven’s Ninth at the Bowl.
Through these two decades, thick and COVID-lockdown thin, Beethoven has been Dudamel’s composer of uplift. This weekend he confronts, for the first time, Beethoven’s daunting mystical and mystifying “Missa Solemnis.” In following weeks, he will pair Beethoven symphonies with two of the most arresting and original of the dozens of new works he has premiered in Los Angeles — Gabriela Ortiz’ Glitter Revolution ballet score, “Revolución Diamantina,” and the first part of Thomas Adès “Dante” ballet.
To begin the Beethoven month at Walt Disney Concert Hall, however, Dudamel turned to another Beethoven work that has long obsessed him, the rarely heard complete incidental to Goethe’s tragedy, “Egmont,” which has the ever-relevant theme that matters most to Dudamel — the profound joy that arises from victory over injustice. For this, he had the assistance of actress Cate Blanchett and playwright Jeremy O. Harris.
Here, too, Beethoven serves as a musical, spiritual and political touchstone. “Egmont” comes in the middle of Beethoven’s career, his heroic period. The historic Egmont was a Flemish general, a hero to his people in the Netherlands who attempts to serve the 16th century Spanish emperor, Philip II, and rife for Goethe’s romanticizing. A remarkable polymath, Goethe himself served as an advisor to Weimar’s Grand Duke, brilliantly balancing political compromises with literature’s highest spiritual callings. He admired the spirit of liberty, for instance, yet opposed the French Revolution and supported Napoleon, believing that ensuing populist disorder would then, as it turned out, require autocracy.
Goethe’s Egmont must learn to love before he can act to defend his people against Philip. The hero goes to his death at the point of self-realization that only in sacrifice may he ascend to and become a symbol for glory.
In the play, which begins as historic epic and becomes, for Goethe, increasing personal and interior, Egmont gains perspective on the complexities of his place in politics by contemplating nature and being. Among Goethe’s many passions were scientific study. He immersed himself in the natural world and befriended the pioneering German environmentalist, Alexander von Humboldt.
It could, thus, have been hardly coincidence that Dudamel opened the program with the premiere of “Humboldt’s Nature” by Venezuelan composer Ricardo Lorenz. The five-part, 25-minute symphonic poem for a large orchestra rife with percussion follows Humboldt’s account of his journey to Venezuela in 1799.
Symphonic glitter sets the stage of New Andalusia. Guacharo birds shriek. Latin rhythms take us to coastal regions. Sandy percussion accompanies a journey up the Orinoco River. Throughout, Lorenz’s orchestra, imaginatively colored, reflects vast nature. But the score ends with the shock of humanity, as Humboldt encounters enslaved Cubans.
The one thing Goethe lacked was a sophisticated ear for music (and possibly sound). But Humbolt’s account could practically be the starting place for Beethoven’s “Egmont,” begun a decade after the Venezuelan encounter. In the popular overture, elicitation of tumult concludes, with startling exhilaration, in the kind of grand Beethovenian triumph that never fails to excite. The incidental music, though, offers needed theatrical context. That includes two songs for Egmont’s love, Klärchen, four entr’actes, a melodrama for Egmont as he approaches his execution and, powerfully as only Beethoven can, a battle cry.
Goethe has never lost relevance. Matthew Bell’s new biography, “Goethe’: A Life in Ideas,” has given Germany’s Shakespeare new attention. One of the greatest plays of our time, Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia,” confronts Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” with our own elective affinities. One of the greatest operas of our time, John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic,” contemplates the creation of nuclear weapons as the functioning of a latter-day Faust, Goethe’s most lasting creation.
“Egmont,” too, readily speaks to us and it has been on Dudamel’s agenda for years. While performances of the complete play with the incidental music are rare, a half-hour concert version, also rare but less so, proves effective. Dudamel did it with the Berlin Philharmonic in June, a performance of which can be viewed on the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall. The narrator is a young Austrian actor, Felix Kammerer, who is riveting (as he is in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”). He adds a slight introduction revealing Egmont’s indecisiveness, but otherwise sticks to Goethe.
Cate Blanchett narrates Beethoven’s incidental music to “Egmont” with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall.
(Elizabeth Asher / Los Angeles Philharmonic)
Harris, who is the author of “Slave Play,” has other elective affinities. He has created a new, effusively angry text for Blanchett. It begins as a dirge. Battalions are gathered on the banks of Portland, Ore.; Bethlehem; Charlotte, N.C.; Tehran; Minneapolis; Brussels. The Egmont Harris references is the historical one, not Goethe’s. The text become a bald call for action.
Much of it was lost to the audience, since reverberant amplification gave heroic heft to Blanchett’s voice at the cost of intelligibility. But her intensity, whether seated on the lip of the stage, where she begins, or standing in the organ loft where she winds up at the end, spoke for itself.
Beethoven’s music improves Goethe, extracting its humanity and frailty, and Dudamel’s performance probed its profound inevitability of good triumphing over evil. Soprano Elena Villalón added lithe touch to Klärchen’s songs, sung in their original German.
But Beethoven can do little for Harris’ and Blanchett‘s agitprop. Theirs is the necessity of the moment to act rather than indulge an Egmont who has to feel before he can respond. Although Blanchett was the joyless conductor in the film “Tár,” her curious little dance in the organ loft at the moment of musical triumph may have meant recovered joy or simply that the world, in which we are no longer one, has gone crazy.
Equally peculiar was a performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto that served as transition from “Humboldt” to “Egmont.” One of the concerto highlights of Dudamel’s music directorship in L.A. is a performance, eight years ago, of the concerto’s mood-shifting eloquence, for which he and Mitsuko Uchida were in wondrous accord.
This time, the soloist was the stellar emerging pianist Yunchan Lim, who keeps to himself, either lost in dreamy reverie or, like a jumpy teenager, in ferocious attack mode. Having little choice, Dudamel let Lim be. Like Egmont, Lim’s glory may one day arrive when he can express purpose for his actions.
CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — In some families, children are expected to attend the same college as their parents or root for mom or dad’s favorite team.
In Azaria Hill’s family, the children were encouraged to go to the Olympics. Not to watch, but to compete.
Hill’s father Virgil, a boxer, earned a silver medal at the 1984 Summer Games. Hill’s mother, Denean Howard, met Virgil at the 1984 Games and won Olympic gold that year running with her sister, Sherri Howard, in the 4×400-meter relay. The sisters won silver medals in the 4×400 at the 1988 Olympics before Denean earned another silver at the 1992 Games.
“At a very young age, since I could understand what the Olympics were and knew what my family did as Olympians, I knew that’s something that I wanted to do and wanted to experience,” Hill said.
But her top marks of 11.70 seconds in the 100 meters and 23.93 in the 200 didn’t rank in the top 100 for U.S. women in 2021, her senior year at Nevada Las Vegas. So if she was going to continue the family tradition, she knew she’d have to find another sport.
Jadin O’Brien was in a similar fix. She won two NCAA titles in the pentathlon but finished seventh at the U.S. trials ahead of the 2024 Games. To realize her Olympic dream, she’d have to change sports too.
Luckily for both women, there was a well-worn path from the track to the Winter Olympics: Just hop onto a sled. On Friday, Hill and O’Brien will complete their journeys when the two-woman bobsled competition gets underway at the Cortina Sliding Centre.
“I never thought that this would even be a possibility or an opportunity,” Hill said. “It just kind of fell into my lap and I was really good at it. I stuck it out and worked hard and here I am a Winter Olympian.”
She has Kaysha Love, a UNLV teammate, to thank for that. An 11-time high school track champion in Utah, Love was encouraged by her college coach to take part in a 12-day bobsled rookie camp after COVID shortened the track season her senior year. That led to more auditions and 14 months later she and pilot Kaillie Humphries won a World Cup race.
U.S. bobsledders Azaria Hill, left, and Kaysha Love take part in a training run Wednesday in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
(Aijaz Rahi / Associated Press)
After just six races, Love made the 2022 U.S. Olympic team as a brakewoman. She then tried to sell Hill on the sport.
“She was like ‘I think you should try it. Let’s see if you can do it,’” Hill remembered. “I went to my first rookie camp and I did really well, got invited back to some more camps, and ended up making my first World Cup team.”
That was in December 2023. Two years later she made it to the Olympics as the brakewoman for Love, who is now a driver.
“That’s completely opposite of what I thought I’d be doing,” Hill said. “The first time it is definitely scary. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I even want to do this.’ It is an acquired taste.
“But Keisha Love was just super positive.”
O’Brien’s rise to Olympian in the two-person bobsled, the second-fastest sliding sport of the Winter Games, has been even swifter. Elana Meyers Taylor, a five-time Olympian and five-time medalist, began recruiting O’Brien to be her brakewoman after the Beijing Games. At first she resisted, but last summer O’Brien decided she needed a rest from track “and bobsled seemed like a good alternative, so I took it up.”
Jadin O’Brien, left, and Elana Meyers Taylor prepare for a bobsled training run at the Milan-Cortina Olympic Games on Wednesday.
(Aijaz Rahi / Associated Press)
In her World Cup debut four months later, O’Brien pushed Taylor to a fourth-place finish, earning a spot on the Olympic team.
“There was so much I needed to learn,” she said. “Luckily there were quite a few girls who were very patient with me, who helped me understand the sport, understand form.”
One of the most important things she had to learn is when to pull the brake.
“If you do it too early, then you’re going to drastically hurt your time. If you do it too late, there’s a chance you’re going to ruin the runners because the track ends at a certain point,” O’Brien said.
And that decision has to be made in a heartbeat at the end of a mile-long ice chute covered at speeds exceeding 90 mph.
“It’s terrifying. You’re going super, super fast. As a brakeman you can’t see what’s going on because your head is down,” she said. “But at the same time it’s very thrilling. You feel like you’re flying if the run is done right. It’s almost addicting.”
Track athletes like Hill, 27, and O’Brien, 23, have a long history of success in bobsled, where speed and power at the start are important. Lauryn Williams won a gold medal on the track in the 2012 London Games and a silver on the back of Taylor’s sled two years later in Sochi. Lolo Jones won three world championships on the track and two in a bobsled. Most of the Jamaican team in Cortina is made up of sprinters who couldn’t catch Usain Bolt, so they climbed in a bobsled instead.
“They’ve got just an athleticism that is very applicable to pushing sleds,” said Curtis Tomasevicz, a former football player at Nebraska who won gold and silver Olympic medals in the four-man bobsled before becoming a coach with the U.S. team. “We’re recruiting athletes that have a sprinting ability and we feel like we can teach them to be bobsledders in a short amount of time.”
For Hill, that transition from the sprints to a sled has allowed her to carry on a family tradition. And she’ll have 11 relatives — including two Olympic medalists — at the Cortina Sliding Centre on Friday when she creates her own memories as the first Hill to compete in the Winter Games.
“They’re super excited seeing me on this journey, being that I’ve been able to kind of follow my own mission, create something for myself,” she said. “It’s almost like they’re kind of experiencing it again, but just in a different way.
“This has definitely exceeded my expectations of what I thought being an Olympian would be. It’s so much fun.”
