It’s difficult to overshadow a game in which two touchdowns were negated by the officials in the last 30 seconds, enabling the Pittsburgh Steelers to hang on for a 29-24 victory over the Detroit Lions on Sunday in a Week 16 game with significant playoff implications.
Offensive interference penalties erased both Lions scores, including one of the wildest plays ever seen as time expired. What possibly could steal a headline from that?
How about Steelers star wide receiver DK Metcalf reaching into the stands and swinging at a fan with seemingly more force than the contact by Lions receivers that prompted the offensive interference flags?
Multiple videos captured Metcalf approach a fan wearing a blue wig at the first row of seats behind the Steelers’ bench at Ford Field. The fan leaned over the rail to say something and Metcalf reached up, grabbed him by the shirt or wig with his right hand before turning and walking away.
What would prompt Metcalf, one of the NFL’s top receivers in each of his seven seasons, to lose his temper and allegedly engage with a fan in a way strictly forbidden by the league?
Well, the fan, who identified himself as Ryan Kennedy from Pinckney, Mich., to the Detroit Free Press, said he called Metcalf by his full given name — DeKaylin Zecharius Metcalf — and that apparently touched a nerve.
“He doesn’t like his government name. I called him that and then he grabbed me and ripped my shirt,” Kennedy said. “I’m a little shocked. Like everyone’s talking to me. I’m a little rattled, but I just want the Lions to win, baby.”
Kennedy didn’t get his wish thanks to Lions receivers getting too pushy themselves, albeit on the field of play.
The play that will be replayed countless times came as time expired. Lions star wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown was stopped after catching a pass at the one-yard line, but before the whistle St. Brown underhanded the ball back to quarterback Jared Goff, who barreled into the end zone for what appeared to be a miraculous game-winning touchdown.
However, St. Brown had given Steelers cornerback Jalen Ramsey a shove before breaking free to make the catch and a flag had been thrown before Goff crossed the goal line. The officials announced after a lengthy huddle that St. Brown had committed offensive pass interference and that the game was over.
The applicable NFL rule reads: “If there is a foul by the offense, there shall be no extension of the period. If the foul occurs on the last play of the half, a score by the offense is not counted.”
Fewer than 30 seconds earlier, Lions rookie wide receiver Isaac TeSlaa set an illegal pick that enabled St. Brown — a former USC and Mater Dei High star — to break free in the end zone and make a nine-yard scoring catch.
The Steelers sideline erupted in joy after the second call resulted in a victory that put them in control of their destiny for the AFC North title. They need one win or a Baltimore Ravens loss in the last two weeks of the regular season to clinch it and secure a home playoff game.
The Lions, meanwhile, had their playoff chances reduced to 6% after the loss.
DeKaylin Zecharius Metcalf, it can be presumed, has a near 100% chance of being fined and suspended by the NFL for taking the swing at Kennedy.
Who: Nigeria vs Tanzania What: CAF Africa Cup of Nations Where: Fez Stadium in Fez, Morocco When: Tuesday, December 23, at 6:30pm (17:30 GMT) How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 14:30 GMT in advance of our text commentary stream.
Nigeria’s much-celebrated golden generation was expected to propel the nation to new heights, but another World Cup qualification disappointment has left the Super Eagles searching for answers.
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After the heartbreak of missing out on a trip to North America in 2026, Nigeria arrive in Morocco in search of redemption and continental glory. The three-time champions open their AFCON 2025 campaign against Group C opponents Tanzania, who have appeared at the tournament just three times.
Boasting world-class talent in Victor Osimhen and Ademola Lookman, Nigeria are among the favourites to top the group that also features Tunisia and Uganda.
Tuesday’s face-off in Fez pits together Nigeria and Tanzania for only the second time at the continental championships, 45 years after their first meeting at the competition.
Here’s all you need to know about the match:
Why did Nigeria fail to qualify for the 2026 World Cup?
Nigeria were among the best runners-up across the nine African qualifying groups who advanced to the playoffs, but lost 4-3 on penalties to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), failing to reach the inter-confederation playoffs.
The Super Eagles, who have made six World Cup appearances, have now failed to qualify for the global showpiece event for the second time in a row.
A poor start to their qualifying campaign, managerial changes and a pay dispute were among the factors that led to their World Cup disappointment.
What happened after the loss to DCR?
Last week, Nigeria submitted a petition to FIFA alleging DRC fielded ineligible players in that decisive playoff match.
The Nigerian football federation said several dual-nationality players had been cleared to play for DRC without meeting the required criteria, but DRC’s federation rejected the allegations.
Coaching turnover for Tanzania
There is no dearth of controversy in Tanzania, too.
Tanzania’s football federation fired its coach, Hemed Suleiman, just a month before AFCON 2025, replacing him with Miguel Gamondi, who will take interim charge of the Taifa Stars for the competition.
Former coach Suleiman led Tanzania to their fourth Cup of Nations appearance and reached the quarterfinals of the African Nations Championships this year. But they failed to secure a spot in the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Former Young Africans coach Miguel Gamondi is now in charge of Tanzania’s AFCON 2025 campaign [File: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters]
Who are Nigeria’s key players to watch?
Nigeria’s squad is packed with talent in all departments, with forwards and former CAF Player of the Year award winners Osimhen and Lookman headlining the group.
Defender Calvin Bassey, midfielders Alex Iwobi and Wilfred Ndidi, along with striker Samuel Chukwueze, are the other high-profile players.
Who are Tanzania’s key players?
Mbwana Samatta, who plays for Ligue 1 club Le Havre, and fellow experienced forward Simon Msuva headline Tanzania’s squad.
Msuva returns after missing the October and November windows and remains the most capped member of the squad. An appearance on Tuesday will mark his 100th international cap.
Defender Mohamed Hussein is a formidable presence in Tanzania’s backline, while youngster Haji Mnoga, who plays for Salford City in the English fourth tier, is also part of the squad.
Form guide
All matches, most recent result last:
Nigeria: L-L-W-W-W
Tanzania: L-L-L-L-D
Head-to-head
Nigeria and Tanzania have met seven times across all competitions, including at the FIFA World Cup.
Nigeria have won four of those matches, while three ended in a draw.
Their last meeting was in 2016 at AFCON, where Nigeria won 1-0.
AFCON records
Nigeria have played at AFCON 20 times, finishing winners on three occasions – most recently lifting the trophy in 2013 – and runners-up five times. Remarkably, they have finished in the top three in 13 of their last 15 AFCON appearances.
Tanzania have never made it past the group stage in their three AFCON appearances. They are also one of only four teams at this year’s edition that have never won an AFCON match, with six defeats and three draws in their nine AFCON matches overall.
The AFCON 2025 is a landmark tournament for Tanzania, as they have qualified for successive finals for the first time.
Nigeria team news
Nigeria will be without centre-back Benjamin Fredrick and full-back Ola Aina, who are both injured.
William Troost-Ekong, the regular captain, is unavailable after recently announcing his retirement from international football, with Ndidi now taking over the captaincy.
Strikers Victor Boniface and Tolu Arokodare were the surprise omissions from the squad.
Dynamic goal-scoring forward Ademola Lookman, left, will be a key player to watch for Nigeria during AFCON 2025 [File: Luc Gnago/Reuters]
They are methodically compiling victories — the latest, Sunday’s 34-17 thumping of the Dallas Cowboys — and perfectly content on the fringes of the national spotlight.
Lots of people wrote them off when those offensive linemen started falling like tall timber, yet the Chargers have found ways to win in spite of that. Seven times in eight games they have walked away victorious, keeping them in the running for the top seed in the AFC.
“We’re not worried about the outside noise,” said edge rusher Khalil Mack, part of a defense that has pitched second-half shutouts two weeks in a row. “Not getting too high, not getting too low. Staying even-keeled and trying to stack wins.”
Despite all that success, the Chargers (11-4) had yet to cement a spot in the postseason by the time they boarded the bus from AT&T Stadium to the airport. They needed a loss or tie by Houston — which beat Las Vegas later Sunday — or by Indianapolis, playing host to San Francisco on Monday night.
As for the Cowboys (6-8), they were eliminated from playoff contention the week before. They were playing for pride and had the NFL’s No. 1 offense, which showed up with Dak Prescott touchdown passes in the first two quarters.
But the quarterback of note in this game was Justin Herbert, who threw for 300 yards and two touchdowns and plunged across the goal line for another score. He also had a 34-yard scramble up the middle, the longest of the game, which ended with a violent collision that had him prone and wincing for a moment.
Clippers forward John Collins hangs on to the rim after dunking in front of Lakers guard Marcus Smart (36), guard Luka Doncic (77) and center Jaxson Hayes (11) on Saturday at Intuit Dome.
“I was proud that we improved from three [after starting] four for 33,” the coach deadpanned. “So we got better as the game progressed.”
With four starters out because of injuries, the Lakers’ ice cold shooting doomed them to a season low in points. Star guard Luka Doncic left the game with 12 points at halftime after a left leg contusion sustained in the first half. Redick noticed the NBA’s leading scorer limping on the court during the second quarter. Fellow starters Austin Reaves (calf), Deandre Ayton (elbow) and Rui Hachimura (groin) already were sidelined as well as key reserve Gabe Vincent (back).
It left them with just one starter in LeBron James, who had 36 points, four rebounds and three assists as the Lakers (19-8) fell behind by 22 but cut the deficit to seven in the fourth quarter before fading again.
USC center Gabe Dynes dunks during a 102-63 win over the UC Santa Cruz at Galen Center on Sunday. Dynes finished with 16 points.
(John McGillen / USC Athletics)
From Ryan Kartje: The call came Monday morning, just six days before USC was slated to play its final nonconference contest. In light of the deadly shooting on Brown’s campus, its men’s basketball team wouldn’t make the trip west. If coach Eric Musselman hoped to test his Trojans again before the new year, he and his USC staff had less than 24 hours to find a replacement.
Which is how USC found itself facing UC Santa Cruz, a 6-6 Division III team with losses to Chapman, Redlands and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, on Sunday. USC had no trouble overwhelming the Banana Slugs in a 102-63 victory. But given the scrambling it took to schedule Santa Cruz, no one was complaining about the seamless victory heading into the Trojans’ winter break.
Musselman, who notched his 250th career win, initially hoped that USC could find a D-1 program to take Brown’s place. But rules limiting the amount of regular-season games a D-1 program can play narrowed that list considerably. It left USC’s coaches counting by hand to decide which teams would fit.
USC’s Jazzy Davidson controls the ball in front of California’s Mjracle Sheppard during the first half Sunday at Chase Center.
(Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
From the Associated Press: Freshman Jazzy Davidson scored a go-ahead layup with 4:05 remaining and finished with a season-best 24 points, leading the No. 19 USC women past California 61-57 on Sunday in the Invisalign Bay Area Women’s Classic.
After Davidson’s basket, Londynn Jones hit a jumper the next time down as USC used a 6-0 burst to take control. The Trojans answered each Cal threat with a key defensive play or big basket.
Cal called time out with 43.8 seconds left and trailing 56-54, but as the Golden Bears tried to set up a play, USC’s Kennedy Smith made a steal of Sakima Walker’s bad pass.
From Jay Posner: After days of deliberation and faced with a forecast getting soggier by the day, Santa Anita officials have decided to postpone opening day of the 2025-26 race meeting from Friday until Sunday, Dec. 28.
It’s just the second time since 1976 that Santa Anita will not open on the day after Christmas. The other time was in 2019 for the same reason: wet weather. More than eight inches of rain are projected to fall between Tuesday night and Friday at Santa Anita.
Angels star Mike Trout signs autographs for fans before a game against the Minnesota Twins at Angel Stadium on Sept. 8.
(Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images)
From columnist Bill Shaikin: Christmas is three days away, and you’re running out of time to get a gift for the Angels fan in your life. How about a Dodgers cap?
Next year the Dodgers will try to become the first National League team to win three consecutive World Series. The Angels will try to end baseball’s longest postseason drought at 11 years, still without much of a plan beyond rushing first-round draft picks to the major leagues while treading the financial waters until Anthony Rendon’s contract runs out.
On Sunday they missed out on Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami, who signed with the 102-loss Chicago White Sox. Of the Angels’ five acquisitions this winter, three did not play in the majors last season, and not because they are up-and-coming prospects.
Author and journalist Shea Serrano’s new book, “Expensive Basketball,” is a New York Times bestseller that highlights unique, breakthrough moments in NBA history.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
From Gustavo Arellano: When Fernando Mendoza won the Heisman Trophy this weekend with another Latino finalist looking on from the crowd, the Cuban-American quarterback did more than just become the first Indiana Hoosier to win college football’s top prize, and only the third Latino to do so. He also subtly offered a radical statement: Latinos don’t just belong in this country, they’re essential.
At a time when questions swirl around this country‘s largest minority group that cast us in a demeaning, tokenized light — how could so many of us vote for Trump in 2024? Why don’t we assimilate faster? Why does Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh think it’s OK for immigration agents to racially profile us? — the fact that two of the best college football players in the country this year were Latino quarterbacks didn’t draw the headlines they would’ve a generation ago. That’s because we now live in an era where Latinos are part of the fabric of sports in the United States like never before.
That’s the untold thesis of four great books I read this year. Each is anchored in Latino pride but treat their subjects not just as sport curios and pioneers but great athletes who were and are fundamental not just to their professions and community but society at large.
1894 — The United States Golf Association is founded, becoming the governing body for the game in the country.
1915 — The Federal League folds. Owners of the American and National Leagues buy out half of the owners (Pittsburgh, Newark, Buffalo, and Brooklyn) of the Federal League teams. Phil Ball, owner of the St. Louis Terriers, is allowed to buy the St. Louis Browns of the AL, and Charles Weeghman, owner of the Chicago Whales, buys out the Chicago Cubs of the NL.
1924 — Babe Dye of the Toronto St. Patricks scores five goals in a 10-2 victory over the Boston Bruins.
1946 — The Cleveland Browns beat the New York Yankees 14-9 in the first AAFC championship game.
1969 — Pete Maravich sets an NCAA record by hitting 30 of 31 foul shots, and scores 46 points to lead LSU to a 98-89 victory over Georgia.
1974 — Boston’s Phil Esposito scores two goals, including his 500th goal, to lead the Bruins to a 5-4 win over the Detroit Red Wings at Boston Garden.
1990 — Paul Coffey becomes the second NHL defenseman to record 1000 points. Coffey reaches the milestone with an assist on Kevin Stevens’ goal in second-period of a 4-3 win against the New York Islanders.
1996 — Brett Hull becomes the 24th player in NHL history to score 500 goals, with a hat trick in the St. Louis Blues’ 7-4 win over the Los Angeles Kings. Brett and his father, Bobby Hull, are the first father-son tandem to each score 500 goals.
2003 — Brett Favre passes for 399 yards and four touchdowns a day after his father dies, moving into second place in NFL history for career TD passes while leading the Green Bay Packers to a 41-7 victory over the Oakland Raiders. Favre passes Fran Tarkenton on the NFL’s career list with his 343rd career TD throw.
2005 — Reggie Campbell of Navy ties the NCAA bowl record with five touchdowns and had 290 all-purpose yards, leading the Midshipmen to a 51-30 win over Colorado State in the Poinsettia Bowl.
2006 — Peter Bondra scores his 500th NHL goal early in the third period to snap a 1-all tie and lead Chicago past Toronto 3-1.
2007 — Eathyn Manumaleuna blocks a field goal as time expires to give BYU a 17-16 victory over UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl.
2009 — Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh becomes the first defensive player voted The Associated Press College Football Player of the Year, winning the award after his dominant performance against Texas in the Big 12 title game.
2013 — Peyton Manning finishes 32 for 51 for 400 yards and four touchdown passes to set the single season touchdown mark in Denver’s 37-13 win over Houston. Manning, with 51 touchdown passes, passes Tom Brady (50 in 2007) for the most in a single season in NFL history.
2013 — Tom Brady leads the Patriots to a 41-7 win at Baltimore as New England clinches the AFC East. It’s the 11th division title for Brady, the most by a starting quarterback in NFL history.
2016 — Matt Linehan throws for 381 yards and four touchdowns and runs for a another score to help Idaho beat Colorado State 61-50 in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. It’s the third-highest scoring game in bowl history. Idaho (9-4) matches its highest victory total since moving to FBS in 1996.
2020 — Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi scores his 644th goal for FC Barcelona during 3-0 win over Real Valladolid to break Pele’s record for most goals for one club; Pele, 643 goals for Santos 1956-74.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
The fact quarterback Luke Fahey of Mission Viejo High signed with Ohio State is impressive enough. Then look at his 2025 statistics and you begin to realize he’s going to be next in line to continue Southern California’s success in developing top quarterbacks.
Over 11 games, he only had three passes intercepted while completing 71% of his passes. He threw for 3,199 yards and 25 touchdowns. He ran for six touchdowns. He had a school-record 569 yards passing against Los Alamitos. He made a clutch touchdown pass in the second half to beat eventual Southern Section Division 1 champion Santa Margarita 7-6 in the season opener.
He clearly performed at his best when the pressure was on and Mission Viejo needed him to lift up his teammates.
“He’s the best leader I’ve had in 25 years of coaching. He’s the total package,” coach Chad Johnson said.
Fahey has been selected The Times’ back of the year.
Jack Junker catches 33-.yard TD pass from Luke Fahey. Junker used to play at Santa Margarita. 7-3 Mission Viejo with 1:31 left in third. pic.twitter.com/1MAx5shs2q
Before this season, he was sharing time at quarterback, showing incredible unselfishness while putting his trust in the process that everything would work out when it was his time to be the full-time starter. And it did.
“He’s always been real good,” Johnson said. “He was sharing reps and didn’t allow everyone to see his greatness and what he could be. Ohio State saw it. It’s going to be crazy what he can do at the next level.”
There’s one memory Johnson won’t soon forget. It was in the visiting locker room after a game at St. Paul. Fahey stayed behind as the last person to pick up trash to leave the locker room clean. Then he headed to the bus. Only the head coach saw it. The best player on the team doing work others ignored.
It has been a year. And for many of us, not a great one. Fires, political chaos, rising unemployment, thelossofbelovedculturalicons — it’s understandable if you want to toss 2025 in the trash heap where it belongs.
And you should, at least symbolically. Ending a collective or personal era with a closing ritual can be therapeutic and allow you to make room for something new. The goal is not to work abracadabra-type magic, but to “enact a symbolic shift,” as University of British Columbia anthropologist Sabina Magliocco puts it.
“When you do a New Year’s ritual, you are symbolically shifting to a new beginning,” she said. “That might involve rituals to usher in good luck or health, more prosperity, more creativity, or just out with the old, in with the new.”
Humanity has been enacting rituals to transition from one year to the next for millennia, and they are part of our lives today — drinking sparkling beverages, watching the ball drop in Times Square, cheering as the clock strikes midnight — these are all ways of celebrating the completion of one cycle and welcoming the start of the next one with joy and the hope that this time may be better.
We’ve collected and created 25 practices to help you say goodbye to 2025. Some of our rituals are serious, others more lighthearted, yet all should be done with intention for maximum effect. We’ve included some places around L.A. that would be ideal for these activities — for instance, Downtown’s Rage Ground where you can (safely) smash a car, or San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, where you can plunge into water that’s freezing by L.A. standards (it’s about 59 degrees).
So sweat it out, sweep it out, dance it out or melt it away. Whichever way you choose to say good riddance, we hope it brings you a bit of peace and helps you slide purposely into the new year (which surely, hopefully, God-willing has to be better than the one we just finished, right?).
— Deborah Netburn
1. Scream into the void
“Scream therapy,” or “primal scream therapy,” dates back to the early ‘70s and is an underrated — and free — way to release bottled-up tension and anger (or a relentlessly stressful year). Find an open expanse with a dramatic view — check out our guide to shout-worthy spots in L.A. — take a few deep breaths, engage your core and let out an unbridled scream. Not ready to howl in a place where other people may be in the vicinity? A primal scream into a pillow at home can offer a similar sense of release. — Deborah Vankin
2. Sweat 2025 out of your system
Koreatown’s Wi Spa, open 24/7, has five progressively hot saunas in a coed community space. But its single hottest sauna — one of the toastiest in all of L.A. — is the Bulgama sauna. It looks like an igloo from the outside, though the interior is made mostly of oak wood. The sauna is set at an intense 231-degrees (by contrast, my gym’s dry sauna is 160-180 degrees). There are no benches to sit on; guests lie on the floor or sit upright against the wall, their faces flushing scarlet and sweat dripping down their cheeks and limbs. Tough it out for as long as you possibly can, perhaps while meditating on all you want to let go of, and sweat out every bit of this difficult year. Just be sure to hydrate afterward. — D.V.
3. Roll down a hill
If the heaviness of 2025 has you feeling stuck, shake up your perspective by making like a 5-year-old and rolling down a grassy hill. Luckily, L.A. is filled with hills perfect for rolling, including the popular Hancock Park near the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. I guarantee that you’ll feel different at the end of your roll than you did at the start. (And if I’m wrong, try climbing the hill and rolling down again!) — Deborah Netburn
4. Jump into the ocean
The “polar bear plunge” is a popular tradition in many places, including San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, where people have been jumping into the water on New Year’s Day for at least 73 years. The Cabrillo Beach Polar Bears name a king and queen and hand out polar bear certificates — in fact, so many people joined in last year that the club ran out of certificates. The water in San Pedro is typically about 59 degrees. But this tradition persists in places much colder — for instance, Scheveningen, the Netherlands. There, as many as 10,000 brave bathers show up each New Year’s Eve to dip into the North Sea, which is usually between 37 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit. — Christopher Reynolds
5. Rage … and smash a car!
When I’m angry — like fuming, stomping, raging mad (which is a lot, lately, considering the state of, well, everything) — I often think of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s video, “Ever Is Over All.” In it, Rist saunters down an urban sidewalk in a light blue sundress smashing car windows as she goes. The crinkly, cacophonous sound of shattering glass is amplified each time she bashes a car. Sounds awesome, right? You can do the same at L.A. Rage Rooms such as Rage Ground and Break Room Los Angeles. Visitors don protective gear while wrecking an entire automobile — windows, doors, headlights and all — to the angry playlist of their choice. Unleashing rage can be cathartic and healing — not a bad way to put 2025 behind you for f— good! — D.V.
6. Burn some incense — or join a safe, fire department-sanctioned communal blaze
Maybe you’ll spark some sage, as people do when hoping to rid a room of bad vibes. You could also burn a little incense, cedar, yerba santa, palo santo, rosemary, mugwort, juniper or sandalwood. Or, if you crave a bigger blaze, you could head up to Solvang, where on Friday, Jan. 9, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department will supervise a community Christmas Tree Burn. Local authorities bill the event as “a powerful safety demonstration” in the empty lot next to the Mission Santa Ines (1760 Mission Drive). But you’ll know that it’s really about purging the vile remnants of the last year. — C.R.
7. Walk a labyrinth
Labyrinths can be a great tool for release. To make a labyrinth walk extra meaningful, find a trinket or stone that represents 2025 to you and then walk slowly toward the labyrinth’s center, infusing the stone with whatever you want to leave behind in 2025. When you get to the center of the labyrinth, drop the stone, and breathe out the year. As you leave the center, imagine filling yourself up with your hopes for the new year. Looking for a labyrinth to walk? Check out our list of great labyrinths in the L.A. area, including the one at Peace Awareness that uses the same pattern design as the labyrinth at the Chartres Cathedral in France — D.N.
8. Travel through time
If you visit the Time Travel Mart in Echo Park or Mar Vista, you’ll come to understand that its true mission is to promote literacy and writing skills among kids. But the goofball retail goods in both shops — alleged supplies for chrononauts — are a comfort to anyone seeking maximum distance from 2025. Buy candles honoring patron saints of time travel (including theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Ronald Mallett). Pick up some robot milk or canned mammoth. Or, perhaps best of all, grab a copy of “The Time Traveler’s Almanac,” a 2013 collection of 72 literary “journeys through time” by writers including Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin and H.G. Wells. As the largest collection of time-travel stories ever assembled, it won’t just take you to 2026, but far beyond. — C.R.
9. Dance it out
Shake your booty, swing your limbs, wriggle your hips. Literally shake off the year while working up a sweat at any number of dance events. I do it at Zumba class; others at nightclubs and dance parties. LA Dance Project offers weekly, community dance classes for all levels; Wiggle Room holds improvisational movement workshops; Pony Sweat, a “fiercely noncompetitive dance aerobics celebration,” holds $10 classes on Monday nights; and Ecstatic Dance LA is a “substance-free, all ages community celebration” of dance. Even the Los Angeles Public Library holds free ‘80s-era dance classes. Or travel to another part of the world for the night at ¡BAILE!, a recurring world music dance party — one of many in L.A. You’ll forget all about 2025, if just momentarily. — D.V.
10. Challenge yourself with one of L.A.’s hardest hikes
You made it through a hard year. Celebrate by making it through a hard hike. For a serious challenge, try the Vital Link Trail at Wildwood Canyon Park in Burbank where you’ll do an elevation gain of 1,700 feet in just two miles. Because the trail is sandy and has some erosion, it’s best to navigate it with trekking poles. Also, remember that “challenging” is a relative term. If Vital Link Trail is not for you, check out other options on our list of local hikes for all skill levels. — D.N.
11. Write a year-end letter
This could be a pep talk, a condemnation of the last 12 months, a breakup letter to your past self or a hopeful letter to your future self. Or take control of your life by starting a diary, as the main character does in the Helen Fielding novel and subsequent Renée Zellweger movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Maybe with less smoking, drinking and mixing it up with Hugh Grant. — C.R.
12. Visit a cemetery to reflect on the past
L.A.’s legendary Hollywood Forever Cemetery just held an end-of-year event with a cord-cutting meditation meant to help participants “dispel the shadows” of their lives and let go of what no longer serves them. You could create a similar ritual. Visit one of the city’s many cemeteries and as you stroll through the space, think about laying to rest what’s been weighing on you most this past year. — Michelle Woo
13. Be your own Death Bear
More than a decade ago, New York performance artist Nate Hill created a Death Bear character. He would appear at people’s homes in a strange black PVC costume, then remove items that triggered bad memories and take them away forever to his Death Bear Cave, location unspecified. Hill seems to have retired Death Bear, but you could always create your character to vanquish bad memories. — C.R.
14. Bury the year
You could throw 2025 in the trash, but consider composting it instead. Write down “2025” on a small scrap of paper along with an few aspects of the year you would like to leave behind. Bury the paper in a garden or a flower pot along with some seeds of your choice. Over the next few weeks, watch with satisfaction as a budding seedling transmutes 2025 into something beautiful and fresh. — D.N.
15. Shed 2025 along with your dead skin with an intense body scrub
Vigorous, bracing, borderline painful, there is nothing like a no-frills full-body scrub at one of L.A.’s many Korean spas. For as little as $50 you will feel like you’ve removed the hard crust of the bygone year from your body, emerging shiny, soft and new. Let the shedding begin! — D.N.
16. Cut your hair
Or change it. Various cultures have ideas about this and exactly when you should do it. I say the sooner we turn the page, the better. Along with shedding skin, getting a trim is one of the most literal ways you can change your body to signal a new era. — C.R.
17. Purge your closet — and donate
This summer, the fluff and fold I bring my laundry to burned down — with three enormous bags of my clothing and linens inside. At first I was upset: beyond its practical function, our clothing is an extension of our identity and often beloved items house emotional memories from the places they’ve traveled to. It felt like a loss, not to mention a financial burden. But surprisingly quickly, silver linings surfaced. My closet was roomier and more navigable — it was easier to put outfits together. Friends and family offered blankets, sheets and sweaters, and I felt supported. I somehow also felt lighter? A purposeful, DIY closet purging can feel cathartic at the end of year. And in hauling off a bag or two of your clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, you’ll not only be releasing a little bit of 2025, but helping others, who need your recycled goods, in the process. — D.V.
18. Cry in the shower
I get my best creative ideas in the shower. And I indulge my fiercest sobbing sessions there as well. The act of crying — anywhere — lowers stress hormones such as cortisol and releases feel-good hormones like oxytocin. But there’s something about being in a cozy, private space, ensconced by rushing water and plumes of steam, that allows me to fully release and opens the floodgates. Try it. Bonus: no tear-stained face afterward. — D.V.
19. Rearrange your house
Switch up the energy in your home by switching up the placement of your furniture. It will help you see your space, and perhaps your life, in a fresh light. The bed in that corner? That was so 2025. The dresser on that wall? Last year’s news! Try working with the items you have before going out to buy something new. — D.N.
20. Sweep the worst of 2025 out the door
Deep cleaning followed by ritually sweeping misfortune and bad energy out of your home before the start of the Lunar New Year is a tradition in Chinese culture. I’ve also seen ritual sweeping practiced by modern witches and other spiritual questers. The ritual itself is simple but deeply symbolic: For a fresh start to the new year, fully clean your house top to bottom and then finish by holding a broom just a bit off the floor and use a sweeping motion to push the bad energy out of your house. — D.N.
21. Make a physical threshold and cross it
New Year’s Eve party idea: Just before midnight create a physical threshold on the ground using a stick, a piece of string, or draw an actual line in the sand if you happen to be at the beach (this is L.A. after all). As the clock strikes midnight, invite guests to cross the threshold one by one and cheer as you step into 2026 and leave 2025 behind. — D.N.
22. Watch 2025 melt away
Find a small candle and carve “2025” onto the side of it using a small knife. Light the candle and let it burn until 2025 has melted away. — D.N.
23. Watch the sunset
Is there a more symbolic way to say farewell to 2025 than watching the sun literally dip below the horizon for the final time on this god-awful year? Consider this nature’s ball drop. — D.N.
24. Toss 2025 into the waves
Tashlich is a Jewish new year ritual of symbolically releasing your sins by throwing them into a natural body of water. When I was a kid, my family used bread crumbs to represent our sins. Now I use small stones or torn-up bits of leaves to keep from polluting the environment. Whatever you use, hold it in your hand and imagine what it is that you want to release. Then toss it into the water and imagine yourself letting it go. The Jewish new year holiday, Rosh Hashanah, is celebrated in early fall, but there’s no reason you can’t give this ritual a whirl on the Gregorian calendar’s new year too. — D.N.
25. Take a final photo
2025 may not have looked like how you hoped it would look, but now you are in control. As the year draws to a close, set yourself a task of taking one final photo of the year that is meaningful to you. Sad or hopeful, lush or desolate: you decide. Perhaps it is someone or something you love. Or a representation of the loss you experienced. We take photos all the time without thinking. Choose to make this one count. — D.N.
EUGENE, Ore. — Perhaps it was James Madison going for it twice on fourth down on its first drive of the game.
Or, maybe it was coach Bob Chesney calling for a wide receiver pass on the Dukes’ second series of the evening. Even 12th-ranked James Madison successfully pulling off a fake punt could have adequately explained what the scoreboard failed to convey.
It was clear that the fifth-ranked Oregon Ducks were in a different class than their visitors in a 51-34 win in a College Football Playoff first round matchup Saturday at Autzen Stadium. Oregon led 48-13 midway through the third quarter before the Dukes added three late touchdowns to make the final score appear closer than the game really was.
“I think the scoreboard itself, every time we got down there we kind of shot ourselves in the foot,” said Chesney, who takes over as UCLA’s head coach after the JMU loss. “If we did not do that, if we did not end with 13 penalties, is this a little bit of a different game? Maybe. But at the same point in time, that’s a tough offense to stop, and I think it’s tough for a lot of teams in the entire country to stop.”
With James Madison’s loss, Group of Five teams fell to 0-4 all-time in CFP games. No. 17 Tulane fell 41-10 to No. 6 Mississippi on Saturday, too, while Penn State beat Boise State 31-14 in last year’s Fiesta Bowl. Alabama topped Cincinnati 27-6 in a 2022 CFP semifinal at the Cotton Bowl.
Following their loss to Ole Miss, Green Wave head coach Jon Sumrall brushed aside any notion of his team not belonging among the last 12 standing.
“We’re our conference champion and the rules are what they were, and I think there should be access for at least one G5 team moving forward,” Sumrall said. “I do. I think you should have given the American champion an opportunity before the ACC champion this year because we beat the ACC champion. So Duke won the ACC Championship; we beat them.”
To Sumrall’s point, Tulane beat a pair of Power Four teams in Northwestern and Duke, but those schools combined to go 14-11 in 2025.
James Madison, meanwhile, lost to its only Power Four opponent this season, with Louisville beating it 28-14 in a game in which the Dukes mustered just 263 yards of total offense. Most of the season, James Madison ran with the ball with ease against its opponents, rushing for over 300 yards in a game five times and over 200 yards in a game nine times.
But on Saturday, the Dukes mostly abandoned the run after quickly falling behind, and instead often turned to Sun Belt player of the year and quarterback Alonza Barnett III, who attempted a career-high 48 passes in the contest. Even so, Barnett was confident his team belonged in the CFP over other Power Four schools.
“I believe people saw that we were meant to be on this level. When you look at the Power Four teams and whatever, the destiny is really — the ball is in your court. You control your own destiny,” Barnett said. “Most of those teams that didn’t make it, they controlled their own destiny, and we handled what we could handle and we didn’t give into outside noise.”
Among Group of Five schools, James Madison did fare the best of any of them on offense in the CFP. The other three programs scored a combined 30 points in their respective playoff games, a total James Madison eclipsed against the nation’s eighth-ranked scoring defense.
But where the Dukes fell flat was slowing down the Ducks’ ninth-ranked scoring offense. Oregon ran the ball with ease, averaging more than 7.7 yards per attempt against James Madison’s run defense that entered the contest allowing the second-fewest yards per game in the country.
As has often been the case in matchups between Power Four and Group of Five teams, the greatest discrepancies existed in the trenches. To a man, James Madison could not adequately match up with Oregon, just as Tulane couldn’t with Ole Miss and many other Group of Five programs before them both failed to do.
“I think there were moments today where I feel like we could play with them,” Chesney said. “ And I think that today, the complimentary football, and us playing in the way we needed to just did not exist.”
AN unreleased track by rock legends Queen that “no one has ever heard” will be played publicly for the first time today.
Guitarist Sir Brian May, 78, will broadcast Not For Sale (Polar Bear) on radio station Planet Rock.
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An unreleased track by Queen that ‘no one has ever heard’ will be played publicly for the first time todayCredit: RedfernsThe track will be played during Sir Brian May’s Planet Rock Christmas SpecialCredit: Getty
It was originally recorded during the sessions for the band’s 1974 album, Queen II, but did not make the final cut.
This remastered version will feature in the 2026 rerelease of the album.
While a “bootleg” version of the song by May’s pre-Queen band Smile may already have circulated, he says “no one” has heard this version.
It will be played during Sir Brian’s Planet Rock Christmas Special at 6pm — featuring his favourite seasonal tracks.
He said: “It’s a song that goes back a very long way, but to my knowledge no one has ever heard this version.
“It’s a work in progress and will appear on the forthcoming rebuild of the Queen II album.
“But I’m sneaking this into my Planet Rock special because I’m fascinated to know what people think about it.”
Formed in the 1970s, Queen was made up of guitarist Sir Brian, drummer Roger Taylor, late frontman Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon.
The group has since had six UK number one singles and 10 UK number one albums with some of their best known songs including Bohemian Rhapsody, Killer Queen, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, and We Are The Champions.
Let’s jump into her list and maybe you’ll find your own shop that offers the best of both worlds.
(Lisa Boone/Los Angeles Times )
Flowerboy Project (Venice)
With Flowerboy Project, equal parts coffeehouse, florist and gift shop, partners Sean Knibb and Stella Shirinda have created an intriguing space that offers a feel-good mix for all the senses.
On Lincoln Boulevard in Venice, the concept cafe and flower shop offers apparel, jewelry, Venice Organics chocolate, home decor and apothecary items alongside fresh-cut and dried floral arrangements.
The cafe serves hot and cold coffee drinks, plus a few specialty drinks such as the Dirty Rose Girl (rose latte) and Lavender Boy (lavender latte), served with flowers on top. Custom flower arrangements are offered at prices ranging from $90 to $175.
(Lisa Boone/Los Angeles Times )
Javista at the Atrium (West Hollywood)
Billed as “The Botanist’s Bodega,” the bustling two-story Atrium in West Hollywood is a unique blend of coffee and plants. With Javista Coffee on the ground floor and a delightful array of plants, gifts and additional seating upstairs, the Atrium is a haven for plant enthusiasts and coffee lovers alike.
In addition to coffee staples such as macchiato and espresso, the bodega offers some exotic beverages like the CBTea Latte.
But that’s not all. The Atrium also hosts plant-related workshops, such as a recent one on how to mount a staghorn fern and create a terrarium. Plant lovers will appreciate a variety of plant accessories, including ceramic pots, misters, river stones and LED grow lights.
To support other small businesses, owner Andrew Ruiz stocks a wide selection of books and clothing along with candles from Flamingo Estate, Lavune and Marak, adding a local touch to the Atrium’s offerings.
(Lisa Boone/Los Angeles Times)
Little Nelly (Burbank)
Conveniently located in a Burbank neighborhood with plenty of parking, this takeout spot is a great place to shop for gifts while you wait for your espresso or hot combo sandwich (shaved turkey, hot coppa, Gioia burrata, giardiniera, wild arugula and pesto).
The market and sandwich shop, which also offers catering, is filled with cookbooks, handmade ceramics, wood carving boards perfect for charcuterie displays, candles and greeting cards. And for the foodies in your life, the market stocks unique pantry items such as spices, olive oils, vinegar and hot sauce that are perfect for stocking stuffers.
Made by DWC Cafe and Gift Boutique (Downtown L.A.)
Made by DWC, the Skid Row gift shop launched by the Downtown Women’s Center in Los Angeles in 2011, offers handmade gifts — soaps, bath salts, soy candles and greeting cards — crafted by women on L.A.’s Skid Row area as part of a vocational training program.
All profits from the Made store and cafe, which sells organic coffee, smoothies, salads and pastries from Homeboy Industries, help fund the center’s career training and mentorship programs. Note: The gift shop is not open on weekends.
(Lisa Boone/Los Angeles Times)
Sachi.LA (Del Rey)
Influenced by their Japanese heritage, sisters Sachi and Chiyo Hartley opened their Del Rey coffeehouse in 2018 to share “Sachi” — the Japanese kanji character meaning happiness, fortune or good luck — with their community. The coffeehouse, which serves a wide variety of coffee drinks including matcha and the Sachi Special, a signature cold brew with oat milk and vanilla syrup, is just the beginning.
Adjacent to the coffeehouse, which also serves pastries, the sisters have opened a retail space that is a treasure-trove filled with houseplants, gifts, vintage clothes and plant accessories such as bud vases and planters. They also host occasional pop-ups, so keep an eye on their Instagram for updates.
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“Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure our elections were fair and honest,” Trump said in a typically gaseous, dissembling post on social media.
“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections,” the president went on. “Today I am granting Tina a full pardon for her attempts to expose voter fraud in the rigged 2020 Presidential Election.”
That’s because Trump has precisely zero say over Peters’ fate, given the former Mesa County elections chief was convicted on state charges. The president’s pardon power — which Trump has twisted to a snapping point — extends only to federal cases. If we’re going to play make-believe, then perhaps Foo-Foo the Snoo can personally escort Peters from prison and crown her Queen of the Rockies.
That’s not to suggest, however, that Trump’s empty gesture was harmless. (Apologies to Foo-Foo and Dr. Seuss.)
Some extremists, ever ready to do Trump’s malevolent bidding, have taken up Peters’ cause, using the same belligerent language that foreshadowed the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In fact, threats have come from some of the very same thugs whom Trump pardoned in one of the first shameless acts of his presidency.
“WE THE PEOPLE ARE COMING TO BREAK TINA PETERS OUT OF PRISON IN 45 DAYS,” Jake Lang, a rioter who was charged with attacking police with an aluminum baseball bat, said on social media. “If Tina M. Peters is not released from La Vista Prison in Colorado to Federal Authorities by January 31st, 2026; US MARSHALS & JANUARY 6ERS PATRIOTS WILL BE STORMING IN TO FREE TINA!!”’
(Capitalization and random punctuation are apparently the way to show fervency as well as prove one’s MAGA bona fides.)
Enrique Tarrio, the former head of the Proud Boys extremist group whom Trump also pardoned, shared a screenshot of the president’s social media post. “A battle,” Tarrio said, “is coming.”
Trump’s pretend pardon is not the first intervention on Peters’ behalf.
In March, the Justice Department asked a federal judge to free her from prison, saying there were “reasonable concerns” about the length of Peters’ sentence. The judge declined.
In November, the administration wrote the Colorado Department of Corrections and asked that Peters be transferred to federal custody, which would presumably allow for her release. No go.
Earlier this month, apparently looking to up the pressure, the Justice Department announced an investigation of the state’s prison system. (Perhaps Peters was denied the special “magnetic mattress” she requested at her sentencing, to help deal with sleep issues.)
Like any child, when Trump doesn’t get his way he calls people names. On Monday, he set his sights on Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis — “a weak and pathetic man” — for refusing to spring Peters from state prison.
“The criminals from Venezuela took over sections of Colorado,” Trump said, “and he was afraid to do anything, but he puts Tina in jail for nine years because she caught people cheating.”
While Trump portrays Peters as a martyr, she is nothing of the sort.
As Polis noted in response to Trump’s “pardon,” she was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney and convicted by a jury of her peers — a jury, it should be noted, that was drawn from the citizenry of Mesa County. The place is no liberal playpen. Voters in the rugged enclave on Colorado’s Western Slope backed Trump all three times he ran for president, by margins approaching 2-to-1.
If Peters’ sentence seems harsh — which it does — hear what the judge had to say.
Peters was motivated not by principle or a search for the truth but rather, he suggested, vanity and personal aggrandizement. She betrayed the public trust and eroded faith in an honestly run election to ingratiate herself with Trump and others grifting off his Big Lie.
“You are as privileged as they come and you used that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame,” Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters in a lacerating lecture. “You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”
Peters remains unrepentant.
In petitioning Trump for a pardon, her attorney submitted nine pages of cockamamie claims, asserting that Peters was the victim of a conspiracy involving, among others, voting-machine vendors, Colorado’s secretary of state and the Venezuelan government.
To her credit, Peters has rejected calls for violence to set her free.
“Tina categorically DENOUNCES and REJECTS any statements or OPERATIONS, public or private, involving a ‘prison break’ or use of force against La Vista or any other CDOC facility in any way,” a post on social media stated, again with the random capitalization.
Perhaps the parole board will take note of those sentiments when the 70-year-old Peters becomes eligible for conditional release in January 2029, a date that just happens to coincide with the end of Trump’s term.
Which seems fitting.
Keep Peters locked up until then, serving as an example and deterrent to others who might consider emulating her by vandalizing the truth and attacking our democracy.
Emmerdale fans have a lot to look forward to on the ITV soap this Christmas – and this is when they can tune in as all the drama unfolds over the festive period
There will be plenty of drama in the Dales over the Yuletide period
Emmerdale fans are looking forward to tuning in on Christmas Day – and it’s looking like quite a dramatic time during the festive time on the farm. Viewers of the long-running ITV soap, which first aired in 1972, would expect nothing less from the programme but it’s already been quite the year for the residents of the Yorkshire-based village.
This Christmas, there’s concern for Robron as a threat looms for newly reunited Aaron Dingle and Robert Sugden. When news of a possible return is shared not everyone is immediately happy about it, sparking a new feud. Ross Barton is blindsided when he finds out Aaron and Robert are planning to bring Robert’s son Seb back into their lives. Ross was Seb’s stepfather and helped raise him, until Seb’s mother Rebecca White sadly passed away.
What’s more, someone will be showing lurking in the shadows with intent and their reign of terror is only just getting started. When the trees outside his flat are set alight, Aaron once again blames Ross, only for Robert to uncover who the real culprit is. Will he be able to stop them? As Christmas Day arrives Aaron is puzzled when Robert heads off on a mystery errand. Soon there’s serious concern when he doesn’t return – so what has happened to Robert?
What time is Emmerdale on Christmas Day? What happens?
But when exactly will fans be able to catch all the Yuletide drama? Traditionally, the soap airs weeknights at 7:30pm in a half-hour slot, often just before Coronation Street. Eager fans can also watch the latest instalment from 7am on the day of broadcast by logging onto ITVX.
However, on Thursday 25th December, the festive special of Emmerdale will air at the significantly earlier time of 6:15pm. Prior to that, the programme will hit screens at 6:55pm on Christmas Eve and once the big day is all over, the soap air again at 6:30pm on Boxing Day.
Emmerdale will then resume its ordinary slot in the days after Christmas, and conclude the festive period with an hour-long special on New Year’s Day.
There’s lots more for fans of Emmerdale to look forward to this Christmas, as evil mother-and-son duo Celia Daniels and Ray Walters are fearing the game is up and they may need to flee, amid their shocking drug schemes being exposed. But with Ray growing closer to Laurel Thomas, could he dare to dream of starting things afresh away from his evil mum?
Kim Tate’s recent near-death experience leaves her pushing people away, and soon Joe Tate is furious by a confession from Lydia Dingle. Joe returns to Home Farm to patch things up with Kim but she sends him packing.
But when she falls and hurts herself, she calls for help only for Lydia to arrive and help her. Kim immediately dismisses her, and she’s soon facing Christmas alone.
Wrapping up Christmas, there’s a public marriage proposal happens, Paddy is missing his father Bear as he remains on Celia’s farm, and Vanessa and Charity are strong-armed into spending Christmas Day together. When Vanessa gets drunk, Charity fears the beans will be spilled as a threat looms.
The entire festive schedule for the ITV soap is as follows: :
Monday December 22 – 7.30pm (30 minutes)Tuesday December 23 -7pm (30 minutes)Wednesday December 24 (Christmas Eve) – 6:55pm (30 minutes)Thursday December 25 (Christmas Day)- 6:15pm (One hour)Friday December 26 (Boxing Day) – 6:30pm (30 minutes) Monday December 29 – 7:30pm Tuesday December 30 – 7:30pmWednesday December 31 – 7:30pmThursday January 1 (New Year’s Day) 7pm (One hour)Friday January 2 – 7:30pm
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan, pictured in 2021, and his wife have been sentenced to 17 years in prison for corruption. File Photo by Chamila Karunarathne/EPA-EFE
Dec. 20 (UPI) — The former prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, and his wife have been sentenced to 17 additional years in jail over charges of corruption and grifting.
Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, received the sentence in the Toshakhana-2 case, which charged them with fraud for intentionally undervaluing a Bulgari jewelry set that had been gifted to them by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon in 2021, The BBC and Bloomberg reported.
The verdict, handed down late Friday during a hearing at the jail Khan is at, also includes a roughly $54,000 fine, is just the latest in a series of charges and trials he has faced since leaving office.
Khan and Bibi may be permitted to serve the new sentences concurrent to their previous sentences, according to reports.
“This court, while passing sentences, has considered the old age of Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi, as well as the fact that Bushra Imran Khan is a female,” Pakistani news organization Dawn reported Special Judge Central Shahrukh Arjumand said in a court order. “It is in considering of both said factors that a lenient view has been taken awarding a lesser punishment.”
Imran has been imprisoned since August 2023 on a 14-year sentence related to another corruption case, the same case that landed Bibi a seven-year jail sentence.
Khan also awaits trial on charges under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act because of riots in 2023 linked to his arrest for the litany of charges he faces, which include illegally receiving land worth $6.5 million and allegations that he “deliberately concealed” the details and value of gifts from foreign officials.
In Pakistan, politicians are required to return state gifts to the country’s treasury, but are permitted to buy them back. In the case of the Bulgari jewelry set, Khan and Bibi allegedly had the jewels undervalued to avoid paying what they are truly worth.
President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order reclassifying marijuana from a schedule I to a schedule III controlled substance in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
Lola Young has made a return to social media after an abrupt pause on her careerCredit: AlamyLola stepped back from the spotlight after a series of strugglesCredit: PABut she broke her silence to thank fans for their supportCredit: Refer to source
Lola, 24, returned to Instagram with some positive news for fans and promised she was doing a lot better.
“Hey, I just wanted to express gratitude to everyone who has given me time and space to gather myself and get my head in a better place,” she wrote in the heartfelt post.
“I’ve felt so much love and support from you all and it has helped more than you will ever know.”
Lola continued: “I am hoping to gradually get back to performing and continuing pursuing my dreams. Happy holidays to you all and can’t wait to see you in 2026.
“Life is a journey, nothing is perfect but today I am doing well. All my love always, Lola x.”
The London-born singer had just released her critically-acclaimed debut when she made the sudden decision to press pause on her career and cancelled her tour.
Announcing her departure in a heartbreaking statement shared on Instagram, Lola said she hopes her followers will give her a “second chance”.
“I’m going away for a while. It pains me to say I have to cancel everything for the foreseeable future. Thank you for all the love and support,” she wrote in a post at the time.
“I’m so sorry to let anyone down who has bought a ticket to see me, it hurts me more than you know.”
The singer had gone through a series secret struggles – from a mental health diagnosis to an ongoing nepo baby row and even legal issues.
Last year, while Lola’s biggest hit was climbing up the charts, she was checked into a rehab facility for an addiction to cocaine.
It’s thought she was admitted last November and the drug addiction swamped the singer for “a long time”, she said in an interview with The Guardian.
She also revealed she ‘hated’ her body after trolls flooded her social media accounts with cruel comments.
Meanwhile, when she was 17, she was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder.
The condition is a mix of schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions, according to the NHS.
Writing on Instagram in 2022, Lola explained: “I have struggled immensely learning to accept this part of myself, and I am still learning.”
Lola’s star exploded in 2024 and had just released her debut album when she paused her careerCredit: Getty
It’s a testament to the coaching of Jim Harbaugh that the Chargers have been decidedly un-Charger-like this season, continuing to win games despite a slew of pivotal injuries. They’re coming off back-to-back victories over the two teams in last season’s Super Bowl, Philadelphia and Kansas City.
Their challenge Sunday is beating the Cowboys, who went 3-1 in November but began this month with consecutive losses.
The Cowboys lead the league in offense, rolling up nearly 400 yards per game, but they’re 29th in total defense and last against the pass. Facing Justin Herbert is not a favorable matchup for them.
Dallas was eliminated from postseason contention with a Week 15 loss to Minnesota.
The Chargers can clinch a playoff berth with a win and a loss or tie by Indianapolis (versus San Francisco) or Houston (vs. Las Vegas).
How the Chargers can win: If Herbert has time, he should be able to dissect a suspect Cowboys secondary and relies heavily on zone coverage. That has led to a bunch of explosive plays. The Cowboys are vulnerable to the run, as well, and a balanced attack by the Chargers will take them a long way. Get another strong performance from the defense.
How the Cowboys can win: Be aggressive and play to win, not to protect leads. That means outscoring the Chargers, not settling for field goals because Brandon Aubrey is such a weapon. It would help the Cowboys to take some risks and go for it on fourth down more frequently. They can put points on the board, but more often they move the ball well between the 20s. Even a small improvement on defense would help.
Once again, Bill Plaschke has literally jinxed another Southern California sports team with his proclamation questions regarding the Rams:
Who’s going to beat them?
Who’s going to stop the unstoppable offense?
Who’s going to score on the persistent defense?
Who’s going to outwit the coaching genius?
I have the answers, and it’s not just Seattle. It’s their special teams, their defensive backs and it’s coach Sean McVay’s play-calling. Well, maybe the referees … but that’s for another day.
Thanks again for the poison-pen article, Bill.
Gary Grayson Ventura
Just four days after Bill Plaschke promised that the Rams would win the Super Bowl, the team blew a big lead and lost in a stinker to the Seahawks. Like my mother told me when I was a kid: Be honest, respect others, and bet against Plaschke — you’ll win every time!
Jack Wolf Westwood
Can we quit the Rams praise now? They can’t tackle anyone that gets past the line of scrimmage. Coach Sean McKay and defensive coordinator Chris Shula went into a shell as the Rams lost the game to the Seahawks and any chance of a long playoff run.
Russell Hosaka Torrance
How many more times do we need to see Emmanuel Forbes chasing a receiver because of a blown coverage or missing an assignment and giving up a big play. The secondary is the weak link in the Rams defense and he’s absolutely a broken link. Chris Shula, please put someone else back there. The mascot Rampage would be a better choice than Forbes.
Bill Plaschke’s Rams encomium is puzzling. During the course of the game I watched, Detroit moved through the Rams defense like Sherman through Georgia. This was, at best, park football. The first team that exploits the Rams defense as the Lions did and consistently moves the ball on offense will defeat the Rams.
Skip Nevell Eugene, Ore.
Just when the Rams thought that they solved their kicking situation, they lost another game because of a missed field goal. After the game, they must have been kicking themselves.
Jeff Hershow Woodland Hills
It looks like the Bills are going to win the Super Bowl, because Plaschke wrote, “The Bills? Not ever.”
I visited Disneyland last weekend expecting huge crowds, busy restaurants and monster ride wait times. But the day was quite enjoyable thanks in part to Disneyland’s Lightning Lane Pass.
I commented to some employees throughout the day, “I thought this would be worse.”
Almost unanimously, each had the same answer: The real rush was yet to come.
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That’s when the cost of a single-day adult park-hopper pass, which allows a patron to visit Disneyland and adjacent California Adventure Park, soars to $314 (buy a week later, prices will drop by $50.)
Many Disney experts and influencers advise you to avoid the resort during this time.
But what if you’ve already bought tickets? What if out-of-town family is desperate to visit? What if this is the only free time to take the kids?
Traver explained to me that preparing for the holiday rush is not all too dissimilar from spring break.
One essential tip is to arrive at Disneyland before the park’s opening at 8 a.m.
Security checks begin as early as 7 a.m. and the gate, which opens around 7:20 to 7:30, allowing patrons to line up for the rope drop.
“For people interested in getting on the most popular rides, this is how you cut down on wait times,” Traver said.
He noted rope drop, the insider term for the moment a literal rope around attractions, restaurants and shops drops when the park opens at 8 a.m. is the best time to head to the “Star Wars”-themed “Rise of the Resistance,” which can easily draw two-hour lines later in the day.
Traver added this tidbit: Disney hotel guests receive early entry on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, so the other days are best for early arrivers.
Consider eating at the bigger restaurants
He said patrons looking to maximize time and find a seat should search for larger capacity places.
Those include Rancho del Zocalo in Frontierland, the Red Rose Taverne in Fantasyland, the Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree in Bayou Country, Galactic Grill and Alien Pizza Planet in Tomorrowland.
“The larger the crowd, the bigger the fight for seats,” Traver said. “Go to places with more seats.”
Next week, there might be one more consideration: Forecasters predict rain on Tuesday and Thursday.
Traver said restaurants like Alien Pizza Planet, which is 90% covered, or the Golden Horseshoe Restaurant in Frontierland, which is completely indoors, will be in high demand.
Take advantage of single rider
Both Disneyland and California Adventure offer a handful of single-rider lines.
If family members don’t mind riding alone, they can cut long waits at Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, Space Mountain and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run in Disneyland, the lone single-rider attractions at the park.
Traver’s favorite single rider attraction is California Adventure’s Radiator Springs Racer, where wait times are notorious.
“It will cut the wait time by a third,” Traver said.
Be realistic, but bring a good attitude
Maybe the biggest secret: Set proper expectations, Traver said.
“If you expect things to go smoothly and they don’t, now you’re disappointed,” he said. “But, if you arrive with lower expectations and an understanding that lines are going to be long and you’re just going to have to wait, you may be pleasantly surprised.”
The week’s biggest stories
(Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; Photos via Getty Images)
A chance for justice. A strain on today’s classrooms
Starting in 2020, Assembly Bill 218 offered survivors of childhood sex abuse in California a three-year window to sue over past molestation and sexual assault.
The wave of litigation has caused financial strain across the state’s schools and programs.
Tyler Skaggs’ family reaches settlement with Angels
Friday’s settlement in the wrongful death case brings an end to several days of juror deliberations and a four year legal battle.
Terms of the agreement, which follows previous unsuccessful settlement efforts from the former Angels pitcher’s family, were not immediately available.
Reiner slayings
After the fires…
What else is going on
Must reads
Other gripping reads
Nearly a year after the L.A. fires, the television drama “Fire Country” drew inspiration from those who fought it.
Six directors on “wasting” (and saving) money, the future of movie theaters and more.
For your downtime
Lively video projections behind a 1965 Ford Mustang make guests feel like they’re on a ride through Southern California at “American Icon: A Mustang Immersive Experience.”
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Going out
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L.A. Timeless
A selection of the very best reads from The Times’ 143-year archive.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jim Rainey, staff reporter Hugo Martín, assistant editor, Fast Break desk Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer June Hsu, editorial fellow Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
After Friday afternoon’s practice, USC football coach Lincoln Riley said he had no update on D’Anton Lynn, who has been the target of Penn State’s defensive coordinator search.
Penn State showed interest in Lynn last year before he received a contract extension from USC. Lynn was hired by the Trojans after a successful season as the defensive coordinator at UCLA.
“This is what happens this time of year, especially when you have a really good staff and are doing a lot of positive things,” Riley said. “We’re excited about having the opportunity to keep continuity but if there is turnover, not just with that position but any position, these are coveted jobs. It’s just part of the world we live in.
“Obviously, D’Anton has done a really good job here and we’ll see how it turns out.”
Being prepared for change is a must in the current college football climate, Riley said.
“Contingency plans for coaches, players, staff, everyone because so much can and does change,” Riley said. “Our job is to be prepared and have flexibility. You can’t always predict everything that’s going to happen but you have to be ready to adjust. Yeah, every team goes through it on some level and you try to handle it as well as you can.”
Riley has liked what he has seen in practice as USC (9-3) prepares for its Alamo Bowl matchup against Texas Christian on Dec. 30.
“We’ve done a really good job the last couple of years of going to work and we’re not thinking about what players or coaches are here or aren’t here,” Riley said. “It’s all about trying to maximize this time and build for the future.”
USC announced Tuesday that redshirt junior quarterback Jayden Maiava had re-signed for the upcoming season and is not joining Makai Lemon and Ja’Kobi Lane — USC’s two best receivers — in declaring for the 2026 NFL draft.
“It’s great. Anytime you can get a returning guy like that who has played a good amount of football, it’s important,” Riley said of Maiava. “He’s also become a good leader in this program and I’d expect that to continue to improve. The majority of this team has already re-signed, we know those guys are going to be here and it’s cool for those guys to show how much they believe in this place and what we’re doing.
“The exciting thing is you look ahead and you start to imagine pairing what we have coming back with what’s going to be walking through the door here in three weeks or so, but it starts with your veterans who have been through the fire and we have a lot of them back.”
Maiava, one of the last players to leave the practice field Friday, made it clear why he chose to stay.
“Coach Riley,” Maiava said. “Of course, the staff too and my brothers. I’m super grateful to be back out here. I’m focused on a day at a time, staying level-headed, making the right decisions and just taking care of the ball.”
Maiava is happy for Lemon, who won the Biletnikoff Award as college football’s top receiver after catching 79 passes for 1,156 yards and 11 touchdowns as a junior this season.
“It was awesome, everybody was there in the lobby when we found out … it’s well-deserved,” Maiava said. “He and Ja’Kobi set the standard for everyone. He won the award, so I’d say we had pretty good chemistry even off the field going out to eat and places. I had to do my job, but he did his job, too, as best he could.”
Defensive end Braylan Shelby also is grateful to be back with the Trojans for another season.
“I always knew I wanted to be here, he said. “Bowl games mean a lot and it’s a time for the team to put it all together and play together one last time.”
Regarding the new NFL model for announcing re-signings, Shelby said: “Some people love it, some hate it. … USC is a step ahead of the game and I think it’s the right step. In this NIL era, it helps fans know who’s returning.”
Having re-signed, junior safety Christian Pierce is excited about being a potential starter next fall.
“The bowl game is a huge start going into next season in terms of building the culture,” Pierce said. “My focus is on trying to understand the defense even more and the skills and techniques I’ll need to get better at. The talk after re-signing was more on the coaching staff and the program.”
Riley praised offensive lineman Tobias Raymond on his willingness and ability to play multiple positions on the front line.
“He was one of the most important players on the entire team,” Riley said. “His toughness was off the charts, his versatility with all the different lineups we played, being able to physically and mentally handle that. He was just a steadying presence. He’ll be a huge key coming back as a captain, a leader and a player. As many of those guys as you can have in a locker room — you’ll be a lot closer to winning.”
Much to his coach’s liking, Raymond has embraced his leadership role.
“I’ve just tried to be more vocal, set an example and hold other people to the standard our coaches have put out for us,” said the 6–foot-6, 315-pound redshirt sophomore out of Ventura. “Pick people up when things are low and when things are high making sure we’re keeping level-headed.”
Regarding the transfer portal, Riley said he plans to be less reliant on it than in previous years.
“The number we’re talking about is so much less than before, so moving forward we’ll be able to zero in on what we’re going to go after. So the picture is starting to become clearer on what we’ll be targeting.”
My name is Jon Halperin. I booked and managed Chain Reaction from 2000 to 2006. It started by accident while I was running a one-person record label. I went to the club to see the band Melee perform and the prior talent buyer for the club had just quit that day. I told owner Tim Hill I’d do it (having only booked three shows ever at a coffee shop). We slept on it, and I was hired the next day.
I joined Ron Martinez (of Final Conflict). He was booking the punk and hardcore shows. I booked the indie, ska, emo, screamo and pop punk stuff. We made a great team. Best work-wife ever.
Story time. My friend Ikey Owens (RIP) hit me up and told me that he and the guys from At the Drive In were going to be starting a new band. I’d booked Defacto (their dub project) before, and we agreed to throw them on a show and just bill it as “Defacto.” There were maybe 200 people there to see the first show for a band that would soon be known as the Mars Volta.
That wasn’t out of the ordinary. Chain Reaction had many artists grace that stage that went on to bigger things: Death Cab for Cutie, Avenged Sevenfold, Maroon 5, Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, Taking Back Sunday, Pierce the Veil, My Morning Jacket. The list goes on and on.
Jon Halperin, who booked Chain Reaction from 2000 to 2006, stands in front of the club during its heyday.
(From Jon Halperin)
I used to make a deal with the kids. Buy a ticket to “X” show, and if you didn’t like the band, I’d refund you. I never had to. I knew my audience and they trusted my curation of the room. … It was by the kids, for the kids, except I was 30 at the time. I had to think like a teenager. My friend Brian once called me “Peter Pan.”
Halfway through my reign, social media became a thing. There was Friendster and a bit later MySpace. YouTube stated just a few years after. But those first few years of me at the venue, it was word of mouth. It was paper fliers dropped off at coffee shops and record stores. It was the flier in the venue window. It was Mean Street Magazine and Skratch Magazine.
I’d tease the press when they wanted to review a show. If you don’t show up with a pen and paper, you aren’t getting in (sorry, Kelli).
Most music industry went to the Los Angeles show, but smart industry came to us. Countless acts got signed following their shows. You’d often see the band meeting with a label in the parking lot near their tour van.
It was a dry room when I was there. No booze or weed whatsoever. We made only one exception to the weed rule. An artist in a band with Crohn’s disease who traveled with a nurse. Not saying bands didn’t drink backstage, on stage, in their vans (we rarely had buses), but what we didn’t see didn’t happen.
Touche Amoré performing at Chain Reaction in 2010.
(Joe Calixto)
We were often referred to as the “CBGB’s of the West,” and for a lot of bands, locals and touring acts alike, we were just that. We were the epicenter. There were other venues of course, but for some reason, we were the venue to play. Showcase Theater in Corona was edging toward its demise. Koo’s Cafe in Santa Ana was done. Back Alley in Fullerton wasn’t active. Galaxy Theater [in Santa Ana] was still, well, the Galaxy. There was no House of Blues Anaheim. Bands would drive a thousand miles to play one show at Chain Reaction. We were where the local bands started as first of four on a bill and would be headlining us within a year. We were their jumping-off point. We were where the kids came out. The real fans, many of whom started bands themselves.
Thankfully, there are other smaller venues out there today fostering the all-ages scene: Programme Skate in Fullerton, the Locker Room at Garden AMP [in Garden Grove], Toxic Toast in Long Beach, the Haven Pomona, but it’s just not the same. It was a moment in time. A time that will be forgotten in a few decades, but for today, my social media is being inundated with memories of a room that was a second home for thousands of kids.
Zero regrets. It was the best and worst times of my life. Working a day gig and then heading to the venue nearly every day of the week was rough. Relationships and friendships were hard, being that I couldn’t go out at night. I couldn’t get a pet. I was constantly tired. But I wouldn’t trade those six years for the world.
Keiko Agena likes to create moments of coziness — not just on Sundays, but whenever she possibly can.
“Oh, there’s my rice cooker,” she says when she hears the sound in her Arts District home. “We’re making steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker, which by the way, is a game changer. I used to have to baby it and watch it, but now I can just put it in there and forget it.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
The 52-year-old actor, who played music-loving bestie Lane Kim in the beloved series “Gilmore Girls,” delights in specific comforts like a bowl of warm oats, talking about Enneagram numbers and watching cooking competitions with her husband, Shin Kawasaki.
“It sounds so simple, but I look forward so much to spending time on the couch,” Agena says with a laugh.
It is time that she’s intentional about protecting, especially amid her kaleidoscope of projects. Over the last couple of years, Agena starred in Lloyd Suh’s moving play “The Chinese Lady” in Atlanta, acted in Netflix’s “The Residence,” showcased her artwork in her first feature exhibit, “Hep Tones” (some of her ink and pencil drawings are still for sale), and performed regularly on that L.A. improv circuit. And her work endures with “Gilmore Girls,” which turns 25 this year. Agena narrated the audiobook for “Meet Me at Luke’s,” a guide that draws life lessons from the series, and is featured in the upcoming “Gilmore Girls” documentary “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast.”
She shares with us her perfect Sunday in L.A., which begins before sunrise.
5 a.m.: Morning solitude
I like to be up early-early, like 5 a.m. I like that feeling of everything being quiet. I’ll go into the other room and do Duolingo on my phone. I am a little addicted to social media, so the Duolingo is not just to learn Japanese, but also to keep me from scrolling. Like, if I’m going to do something on my phone, this is better for me. I think my streak is 146. Shin is Japanese, from Oyama. So I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for a while. For him and his mom.
Then I’ll do [the writing practice] Morning Pages. I don’t know when I learned about Julia Cameron’s book [“The Artist’s Way”] — probably around 2000. I know a lot of people do it handwritten, but I’m a little paranoid about people, like, finding it after I die. So if I have it on my computer and it’s password protected, I can be really honest.
Then a lot of times, I’ll go back to bed. Shin, as a musician, works at night, and so he wakes up a lot later. So I’ll fall back asleep and wake up with him.
9 a.m.: Gimme that bread
I don’t do coffee anymore because it’s a little too tough for my system, but I’ll walk with Shin to Eightfold Coffee in the Arts District. It’s tiny but very chill. Then we’re going to Bliss Bakery inside the Little Tokyo Market Place. We get these tapioca bread balls. If you make any kind of sandwich that you would normally make, but use that bread instead, it ups the game. It’s life-changing. The Little Tokyo Market Place is not fancy or anything, but it has everything that you would want. There’s Korean food. They have a little sushi place in there. You can get premade Korean banchan and hot food in their hot food section. They also have a really good nuts section. It’s just one big table with all these nuts, just piles and piles.
10 a.m.: Nature without leaving the city
We’ll go to Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown. I like that place just because it’s very accessible. Like, they have accessible bathrooms and I’m always checking out whether a place has good bathrooms. We call it Flat Park because it’s a great walk. Like, you’re not really out in nature, but there’s a lot of greenery. You can take your shoes off and at least touch grass for a second.
11:30 a.m.: Lunch and TV cooking shows
One of my favorite salad-sandwich combos is at Cafe Dulce in Little Tokyo. A Korean cheesesteak and a kale salad. That’s always like a — bang, bang — good combo. So we might go there or Aloha Cafe, though it’s not fully open on Sundays. But I love it because I grew up in Hawaii. They have this great Chinese chicken salad and spam musubi and other Hawaiian food that is so good.
We’ll bring home food and watch something. Cooking competition shows are my cream of the crop. My favorite right now is “Tournament of Champions” because it’s blind tasting. To me, that’s the best way to do it. “The Great British Bake Off” is Shin’s favorite. He loves the nature and the accents as much as the actual cooking. He just loves the vibe, the slow pace of the whole thing.
I’m such a TV girl. I love spending time on the couch and eating a meal and watching something that’s appetizing with my favorite person in the world. I’m lucky because I get to do that a lot.
2 p.m.: Browse the aisles
I’ll go to this bookstore called Hennessey + Ingalls. I love art and architecture and design, but you can’t always buy these massive books. But you can go into this bookstore and look at them and it’s always chill.
If I have time, I’ll walk around art supply stores. Artist & Craftsman Supply is a good one. I’ll look at pens, pencils, stickers, tape, washi tape, different kinds of paper, charcoals. In my art, I try to find things that aren’t meant for that particular purpose, like little things in a hardware store that I’ll use it in a different way.
5 p.m.: Downtown L.A. in its glory
We really love to walk the Sixth Street Bridge. It’s architecturally beautiful and they’re building a huge park over there, so we’ll walk around and check it out, like, ‘Which trees are they planting? Can you see?’ We sort of dream about how it’s coming together. But the other beautiful thing about that walk is that if you go at sunset and you walk back toward downtown, it’s just gorgeous. Los Angeles doesn’t have the most majestic skyline, but it’s so picturesque in that moment.
6:30 p.m.: Cornbread and Enneagrams
I’ll head to the Park’s Finest in Echo Park. It’s Filipino barbecue. It’s just so savory and rich and a special hang. Their cornbread is really good. Oh, and the coconut beef, but I’m trying to eat less beef. They have a hot link medley. Oh my gosh, just looking at this menu right now, my mouth is watering. OK, I’ll stop.
One of my favorite things to do is ask friends about their Enneagram number. So the idea of sitting with friends over a good meal and asking them a bunch of personal questions about their childhood and what motivates them and what their parents were like and what their greatest fear is and then figure out what their Enneagram number is? That is top-tier activity for me.
9 p.m.: Rally for improv
Because I get up so early, if 9 o’clock, I’m ready to go to sleep. But I am obsessed with improv, so on my ideal day, there’d be a show to do. There’s this place called World’s Greatest Improv School in Los Feliz. It’s tiny and they just opened a few years ago, but the vibe there is spectacular.
Then there’s another place where my heart is so invested in now called Outside in Theatre in Highland Park. Tamlyn Tomita and Daniel Blinkoff created it together and not only is the space gorgeous — I mean, they built it from scratch — they have interesting programming there all the time. They’re so supportive of communities that are not seen in mainstream art spaces. It’s my favorite place. Sometimes I’ll find myself in their lobby till 12 o’clock at night. The kind of people I like to hang around are the people that hang out in that space.
11 p.m.: Turn on the ASMR and shut down
I am firmly an ASMR girl and I have been for years. I have to find something to watch that will slow my brain down. Then it’s pretty consistent. I don’t last very long once I turn something on. My eyelids get heavy and it chills me out.
DETROIT — In the frantic final firefight of the 1992 presidential campaign, this battered industrial city may have been ground zero.
In the last days before today’s vote, President Bush and Bill Clinton crossed paths over and over again through a narrow band of critical Rust Belt and Great Lakes states–from New Jersey and Pennsylvania to Ohio and Wisconsin. But no state occupied more of their attention than Michigan.
Into this battlefield, the two major contenders have fired television and radio ads, mailings, surrogate speakers and repeated visits of their own–to the point where even veteran local observers have been overwhelmed. Their efforts–reinforced by Ross Perot’s national television barrage–have put the campaign on everyone’s lips.
“There’s a lot of strong feelings on it this year,” said LeAnn Kirrmann, a Republican activist from Grand Ledge, as she waited for Bush to arrive at a rally near here Sunday.
That appears to be the case across the nation, as voters render their verdict on this stormy, vituperative and often path-breaking campaign. Polls show the percentage of voters paying close attention to the campaign has soared this fall, and most experts expect a large turnout–a dramatic conclusion to a campaign that has regularly produced moments of high drama.
“It’s a mortal lock that turnout is going up,” said GOP pollster Bill McInturff.
After tightening significantly last week, national polls show Clinton again holding a comfortable lead over Bush, with Perot lagging behind. Few observers are entirely certain that a campaign that has been consistently unpredictable doesn’t hold one or two more surprises. But a Bush comeback at this stage would rank as the most dramatic reversal of fortune in the final hours of a presidential race.
In their final maneuvering, both Bush and Clinton targeted this state for contrasting reasons that underscore the length of the odds facing the President.
The widespread economic uneasiness in Michigan–symbolized by the continuing turmoil of General Motors Corp., which led to a management shake-up Monday–has always made the state an uphill climb for Bush despite its Republican leanings in recent presidential campaigns.
It remains a daunting challenge for the President now: The latest statewide tracking poll for a Detroit TV station, released Monday night, showed Clinton leading with 46%, Bush with 30% and Ross Perot at 16%.
Facing such numbers, Bush might have written off Michigan in a different year to spend his last campaign hours elsewhere. But the President has been forced to pound relentlessly at the state because there appears to be no way he can win the necessary 270 electoral votes without Michigan’s 18.
That reality defines Clinton’s stake in the state. Although Clinton–with his strong base on both coasts–can probably win today without carrying Michigan, he has invested so heavily here precisely because he knows Bush cannot.
“That’s Clinton’s great advantage,” said Democratic strategist Tad Devine. “He can focus on trying to take just one link out of Bush’s chain.”
Clinton’s intense focus on Michigan represents the reversal of a traditional Republican tactic. Because the GOP base in the South and West left Democrats so little room to maneuver in past presidential campaigns, Republicans have typically been able to dictate the battlefield in the election’s final hours.
In past years, the Republicans devoted enormous resources to a single conservative-leaning state–usually Ohio–confident that if they won there, the Democrats could not reach an Electoral College majority.
This year, though, it is Clinton who has the lead and the flexibility to choose where to fight. He has selected Michigan as his version of Ohio.
“That is a pretty fair analogy,” said David Wilhelm, Clinton’s campaign manager. “Michigan is a linchpin to our Electoral College strategy; it is a state that if we win, it destroys almost any chance that Bush will be reelected.”
With the state playing such a central role in the strategies of both candidates, their efforts here have been enormous. “Some of us,” said Don Tucker, the Democratic chairman in populous Oakland County, “have started to think Clinton and Bush are running for President of Michigan.”
When Clinton arrived in Detroit on Monday for a lunchtime airport rally, it marked his third visit to the area in five days and his sixth trip to the state in two weeks.
On Sunday, Bush roused the faithful with a scathing attack on Clinton at a rally in Auburn Hills, just north of here–his third run at the state in eight days.
Last Thursday, voters from around the state were able to ask Bush questions in a televised town meeting from Grand Rapids. The next night Clinton flew to the Detroit suburbs to hold his own televised town meeting.
When Clinton forces made their final buy of television time last week, they estimated they were placing enough commercials on the air so that each Michigan resident would see them 14 times through Election Day.
Bush, both sides figure, is on the air even more heavily–especially with a foreboding spot about Clinton’s record as governor that might be titled “Apocalypse Arkansas.” From both sides, acerbic radio advertisements blare incessantly.
As for Perot, local observers say his ad assault has been less visible than in some other states. But his promises to shake up Washington have won him a strong following.
At one point early last week, Republican polls showed Perot surging over 20% in this state. With most of Perot’s gains coming from Clinton, that tightened the Michigan race considerably.
But, as has happened throughout the country, Perot’s support has slipped here since he accused the White House last week of engineering dirty tricks that forced his withdrawal from the race in July. Initially, the voters deserting Perot disproportionately moved to Bush, but now Clinton is winning his share of those voters and consolidating his lead.
“The President is unlikely to close the gap in Michigan on Election Day,” said GOP pollster Steve Lombardo.
Even with Clinton’s lead in the polls, Democrats here remain edgy. Almost without exception, they are haunted by the memory of 1990, when then-Gov. James J. Blanchard led Republican John Engler by 10 percentage points in the final polls–and then was swept from office by a strong Republican effort to get out their vote, coupled with a poor turnout in Detroit.
Democrats are insistent that won’t happen again. Registration is up in Detroit, and Mayor Coleman A. Young has put his shoulder into the Clinton effort. One local official estimated this weekend that 65% of registered Detroit voters could come to the polls today, compared to just 54% four years ago.
Unions are pushing hard too: The UAW has been distributing to members copies of a Flint newspaper article reporting that Ross Perot owns a Mercedes-Benz and other foreign cars. In Michigan, that’s not much different than burning a flag.
Republican efforts to turn out the vote are just as intense. In Oakland County alone, GOP volunteers made more than 150,000 calls last weekend, said Jim Alexander, the county GOP chairman.
Local observers say religious conservatives and anti-abortion activists are mounting powerful drives; thousands of copies of the Christian Coalition’s voter guide on the presidential candidates were distributed at Bush’s rally in Auburn Hills on Sunday.
Beyond its impact on the Electoral College, voting in Michigan should help answer some of the key questions on which the results will pivot around the nation. Among them:
* Can Clinton reclaim the so-called Reagan Democrats–the blue-collar ethnics who deserted the party during the 1970s and 1980s over taxes, the economy and the perception that Democrats favored minorities?
Stressing such issues as welfare reform and his support for the death penalty, Clinton has aggressively courted voters in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb renowned as the breeding ground of Reagan Democrats.
Republicans have fired back with targeted mailers hitting Clinton on trust and taxes. And Perot could be a formidable competitor in Macomb County and similar neighborhoods for the votes of working-class residents disgusted with Bush and the gridlock in Washington.
* Can Bush hold suburban Republicans and independents who favor abortion rights? Four years ago, he carried the generally affluent Detroit suburb of Oakland County by 109,000 votes. But the hard-right line on social issues at the Republican Convention did not play well there, and Democrats are optimistic that Clinton’s centrist message will allow him to make significant inroads, not only in Oakland County but in similar places in New Jersey, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
* Can Clinton get the high turnout he needs from blacks after a campaign so heavily focused on wooing white swing voters in the suburbs? The answer will affect the result not only here but in other industrial states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Southern battlegrounds like Georgia and Louisiana.
* Will young voters show up today? One reason Clinton’s margin diminished in some national surveys last week is those polls included very few young people among their likely voters–and Clinton, the first baby boomer to top a national ticket, has been running very well with the young.
In 1988, just 36% of eligible voters age 18 to 24 actually turned out. Mike Dolan, field director for Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan national effort to register and turn out young voters, predicts as many as half of them may vote this year.
Such a spike in turnout would be a huge boost for Clinton; in this state, for example, he has courted students at rallies at both the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.
One cloud on the Democratic horizon is the possibility of rain today in Michigan and much of the Midwest. Conventional wisdom holds that rain could dampen turnout in Detroit and other urban centers and pinch Clinton’s vote.
But many on both sides believe that interest in this campaign is so high that even rain won’t cool it off. “With all of the attention to the race this year,” Alexander said, “I don’t know if even rain is going to matter.”
It is often said that film directors are siloed off from one another, that they don’t get to watch how others work. So when you put a group of them together, as with the six participants in The Envelope’s 2025 Oscar Directors Roundtable, they are quick to share all sorts of ideas. Like where they prefer to sit in a movie theater — centered in a row or on an aisle? How far back is the best for sound, or so the screen runs up to the edges of your peripheral vision? Should you even take the worst seats in the house, since somebody will eventually be asked to pay money to sit there?
Guillermo del Toro, there with his adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel “Frankenstein,” likes the top of the first quarter of the theater. Rian Johnson, who finds new twists for Benoit Blanc in his third “Knives Out” detective story, “Wake Up Dead Man,” says, “I look for wherever Guillermo’s sitting.” Nia DaCosta, who made the bold, adventurous Ibsen adaptation “Hedda,” likes the top of the first third. Mona Fastvold, who explores the life of the founder of the religious movement known as the Shakers in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” likes the center a little farther back. Jon M. Chu, who made the second part of a musical adaptation with “Wicked: For Good,” sits dead center — and has been known to talk to the theater manager if the sound isn’t loud enough. And Benny Safdie, who explores the rise and fall of mixed martial arts fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine,” tries to find a spot where he can fidget in his seat and not bother anyone.
Read on for more excerpts of their conversation about the art of adaptation, navigating budget constraints at any scale and much more.
Jon, I’ve heard you say that with “Wicked: For Good,” you wanted the film to be deeper but not darker. And it doesn’t pull any punches as far as dealing with themes of antiauthoritarianism. What was it like to have those very serious ideas and yet still have this be a buoyant, crowd-pleasing musical?
Chu: The reason we made it was because it had that meat to it, and it was always a two-movie, yearlong experience that set up the fairy tale first. And Movie 2 is kind of where we all are, this moment of this fairy tale shattered in front of us.
I have five children now, so I’m thinking about how to present stories to my kids. Do I still believe in the possibility of dreams and the American Dream? “For Good” really gets to delve into that stuff. And because it was shorter than the first half, we get more room to do it. We added new songs to explore that idea. So it all felt really fitting. Movie 1 could be an answer. Movie 2 is much more of a challenge: Who are we gonna be now that we know the truth?
All of your films in their own way are speaking to right now. Rian, “Wake Up Dead Man” is specifically set in the year 2025 and all the “Knives Out” pictures have been dealing with our contemporary reality. What makes you want to do that?
Johnson: That kind of started for me with the first movie. This is a genre, the murder mystery genre, that I love and that I’m just seeing so much of growing up. But it’s also a genre where most of what I had seen throughout my whole life, murder mysteries are period pieces set usually in a cozy little bubble of a little “Queensfordshire” place in England.
And I guess my realization was, that’s not what Agatha Christie did. She was not writing period pieces. She wasn’t an incredibly political writer, but she was always writing to her time. It’s not trying to do anything radical in terms of making it new or updating it, but let’s set it very much unapologetically in the modern moment. … You have a group of suspects that have a hierarchy of power amongst them and the person at the top they all wanna bump off — it’s such a potent vehicle for building a little microcosm of society.
Benny, one of my favorite things in “The Smashing Machine” is that it’s funny to realize setting a story at the turn of millennium is a period piece now. What was it like crafting this very specific, recent time period?
Safdie: It’s a time period that I think everybody thinks is just yesterday. But when you actually get into the nitty-gritty, it’s a long time ago. And things were very different and everybody knows exactly what those things are too. Because it was heavily documented, there was so much footage of it, it’s so top of mind. And I think a large amount of people also want to go back there a little bit, to this time where the internet was just kind of happening. People want to go back to this simpler moment. But trying to re-create what that feels like is what I was really going after — just thinking about how you would live in that time, and then represent that in the movie. Because I did want it to kind of feel like time travel.
Guillermo, you’ve spoken so much about how “Frankenstein” has been a lifelong dream project for you. Now that it’s done, where does that leave you?
Del Toro: There’s a massive postpartum depression, No. 1, and it’s real. And it affected me more than I thought it would, to be candid. But fortunately, I’ve been very interested in two new themes that are going to be sure to produce blockbusters, which is memory and regret. The dynamic duo of past 60. And I always thought about that in the abstract, but now I try to make the movies not only about the moment I’m in, but about me.
And I’m seriously trying to express what makes me uneasy, what makes me believe in the possibilities of grace even in the most horrible circumstances. And I’m not talking only social, but personal or philosophical. Something happens when the six clicks in on the counter. And all you can do is [ask], “Do I feel I have something to say, genuinely?” And then you go to that. Cronenberg, I had dinner with him when he was turning 74, and he said you have to scare yourself into being young again.
Nia, “Hedda” is such a bold adaptation of the play “Hedda Gabler.” You switched the gender of one of the main characters. You aren’t afraid to inject issues of race and class and sexual identity into the story. Were you ever concerned that you were asking too much of this classic text?
DaCosta: I wrote it on spec, so I wasn’t thinking about anything besides letting my freak flag fly, basically. I just thought, “This character makes more sense as a woman.” OK, what does that mean now? How does that affect the rest of the story? And then I just go from there. And then it ended up being really bountiful and generative.
And then when I met Tessa [Thompson] three years later, I thought, “Oh, when I write this, eventually Tessa will play Hedda.” So now she’s Black. OK, what does that mean? And Tessa’s also mixed-race. So then you get that element of it as well. And then I chose the 1950s, and then I chose England and the country house. You just treat these things as truths, and the story has to go in a certain direction. So I never worry about those things. Maybe because I’m a Black woman, so my presence or my identity for some people will complicate the story. But for me, it just is life.
Guillermo, in adapting “Frankenstein,” did you feel like you were dealing with the Mary Shelley text and also all the Frankenstein movies that we know?
Del Toro: I put all the cinematic stuff on the side. I didn’t want to make an erudite cinematic movie or a referential movie. I have lived with the three iterations of the text for my entire life. And there’s a lot of the interstitial stuff that I took from her biography, fusing with my biography, because even if you sing a song everybody knows, you’re doing it with your lungs. And your passion and your pain and your throat. … It’s the difference between seeing a living animal and taxidermy. If you just want the text, then buy the text. You cannot be more faithful to that text than reading the text. But if you want to see how we interact and resuscitate something into being emotional again, then that’s what we try to do.
Mona, “The Testament of Ann Lee” is a story told with music, but is it a musical? Is that a question you asked yourself as you were making it?
Fastvold: I consider it a musical. I do. But it’s just a different kind of musical. No one’s singing dialogue. It’s not magic when they start to sing. I think, as I was writing the script with Brady [Corbet], we realized early on it had to be a musical because the Shakers worship through ecstatic song and dance. They would be moved by the divine spirit and then receive a song or a piece of movement, and then they would start to sing and dance. Their life was a musical, so that’s what it had to be. And that was exciting to me, to create the whole structure of that.
But it couldn’t be, “OK, here’s a story and then here’s an amazing musical number.” It had to come from this place of worship. So all the musical bits and pieces of the film, our moments of feeling moved by the spirit and having this sort of religious experience, it had to be grounded in that and it had to be really organic-sounding and -looking. So we had to ground it in live recordings and create the soundscape and the music in dialogue with my choreographers. Every body slap and stomp is part of the rhythm and the music of it, because it couldn’t just be where diegetic audio fades out and then there’s this great, wonderful piece.
Chu: In a weird way, we all make musicals. All the movies, everybody has a take on how music integrates with it.
Del Toro: I was aiming for opera.
Guillermo, Jon, both of your films have a sense of scale to them. What kind of challenges does that present? Is it wrangling all the extras? Is it having the sets built on time? Jon, just the number of florists credited at the end of “Wicked: For Good” is wild.
Chu: It’s like building Disneyland, essentially. We had the warehouses going — there’s first a recording studio, so we’re recording music while their dance rehearsals are going on. You have hundreds and hundreds of people. Then you go to the costumes department and then you have the hair, just the wigs alone. People are getting there at 2:30 in the morning. And that’s before you even start the day.
We were planning two movies at the same time. So we had 20-something musical numbers rehearsed and worked with our cinematographer and our team to understand everything and build sets around these pieces. And then you get there on the day and how do I say, “Hey, all that stuff we did, this is actually happening over here. Let’s move everything over here”? I felt the hardest thing was being OK with wasting money if it was the right thing to do at that moment. I needed to feel free and had everybody aware that if I’m moving all of a sudden, we’ve got to go and we’ve got to figure it out. And I think that’s where the magic is.
Del Toro: To me, it’s three things. The first one is tonal, meaning everything that you do, you’re not doing eye candy, you’re doing eye protein. You’re telling a story. So it’s not about looking good or looking big. It’s about, does the gesture happen at the right moment? Because you can make gestures on the wrong moment of the film, and they don’t have a dramatic impact. I say we designed the movie for the Creature to feel real, of a piece with the world. So that’s the first one.
The second one: Is it expressing something different every time we go to a bigger thing? It’s not about the scale. And the final one to me is, does it feel real in the world? So the way I go at it is, there’s no typeface, no paint, no photograph, nothing, that cannot be investigated and designed to within an inch of its life. Even great movies, I’m very fidgety. I go, “That’s not a painting from the 1930s. Somebody painted it much later.” Or a typeface or a carnival banner or something like that. So at the end of the day, if you do your job right, you have a world and people just get into it almost like a vibe. Nobody should notice, but if you do it right, they want to experience it over and over again.
Rian, you make a really bold decision in “Wake Up Dead Man,” where the signature character of the series, Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, is offscreen for much of the first 45 minutes or so of the movie. Did you have to convince people that’s the way things should go?
Johnson: Not really. For this one, first of all, it is a little closer to actually a traditional detective structure. That’s kind of how most Agatha Christie books work, is you meet the suspects in the first act. You get a very good idea of who’s gonna get bumped off. And then, end of the first act, the murder happens, and then the detective shows up and starts to solve it. So there was a precedent for it. But the real reason I had done backflips in the previous two movies to get around that was so we could get Blanc in there earlier. The reason it made sense for this [is] because Father Jud, who’s played by Josh O’Connor, [is] kind of the protagonist of it because of the themes of religion, and so the whole lay of the land was more complicated and delicate in this one to set up. I felt like the audience would be best served by having that runway and getting the time before this powerhouse that is Daniel playing Benoit Blanc comes in and brings this whole new energy to it.
The other thing that I’ve landed on with them is you have to constantly resist the candy of the mystery. You have to always remind yourself [that] the mystery elements are not a load-bearing wall, that those are never going to keep an audience entertained or engaged. You need to do the same thing you do in any movie where you have an emotional, bold line going that’s thrown at the beginning, that lands at the end. And the mystery then has to support that.
Mona, with “Ann Lee,” but also with “The Brutalist,” it seems like the movies that you and Brady Corbet are collaborating on together, you’re doing so much with relatively limited resources. What is it that the two of you are doing in these films that you’re able to make them seem so grand?
Fastvold: I mean, there’s no trick. I had to prep for almost a year for this one, because I knew that no one was going to give me a lot of money to make a musical about the founders of the Shakers. It was not gonna be this sexy pitch. It was a hard pitch. So I knew that it was going to be a limited budget. But at the same time, I just desperately wanted “Ann Lee” to have a really grand story. And I wanted there to be a believable, lush world. And I wanted to tell a story about her whole life, not just a day in her life.
So I had to make it work somehow. It was so much about saying, “OK, I’m working with my [director of photography], my production designer, my costume designer every weekend and night for months and months before we started official prep. And same with my choreographer and composer and with all of the cast as well, just rehearsing. Amanda [Seyfried] was rehearsing at night while she was shooting something else. She would go and have dance rehearsals at night, on the weekends, so we could keep on adjusting.
So the only way that I could, to quote David Lynch, get dreamy on set, which was something I really wanted, was by having so much prep time, and then just really knowing what my Plan A and B was, and to sort of experiment in advance more. And because I knew there’s no way that you can try and build a world and then have the same flexibility on this budget, it’s all about knowing every line item in my budget, what everything costs in Hungary, what everything costs in Sweden. “OK, this is how much a cherry picker in Hungary costs, and therefore I’m gonna take out two shots and only build half the roof.”
The 2025 Envelope Directors Roundtable. Top row, left to right: Rian Johnson, Benny Safdie, and Mona Fastvold. Bottom row, left to right: Nia DaCosta, Jon M. Chu and Guillermo del Toro.
Chu: I think that’s one of the biggest lessons I learned being a director. You don’t have a right to make your movie, because it costs so much and you need so much help. You do have to earn the right to make your movie. That is a part of our job.
Nia, you come to “Hedda” having just made a Marvel movie. You’ve just also finished a sequel to “28 Years Later.” Is there a secret through line for you that connects all these projects?
DaCosta: Being a nerd, Marvel, horror, comic books, for me, those things that I’ve done that I haven’t written are worlds that I loved as a kid. So “Candyman” was hugely important to me when I was younger. I used to love Marvel comics as a kid. “28 Days Later” is one of my formative films that I watched. And so when the opportunities came up to be a part of those worlds, it was really exciting for me. And then “Hedda,” I’m a theater nerd too, so I just really go by my passion, and I’m really compelled by just interesting characters.
“Hedda” and “28 Years Later” are very different films, but for me, they were so similar because I learned from my experience jumping into the studio system after making a sub-million-dollar movie [“Little Woods”] what works for me and what doesn’t work for me. And what works for me is really being given authorship. And so I’m setting the tone early. We’re not here to battle. We’re here to make the vision that I have. And if you’re into it, cool and great, let’s work together. If you’re not into it, then it doesn’t have to exist or I’ll find another way for it to exist.
Del Toro: The ambition should always be beyond the budget. If they give you $130 [million], you want to make a movie that is $260 [million]. But the way to that I found by doing “Devil’s Backbone,” which is $3 million, or “Shape of Water,” which is $19.3. “Shape of Water” opened with all the different sets in the first 15 minutes. And then it’s two sets. Lab, apartment, lab, apartment, lab, apartment. I always tell the departments, let’s choose meatballs and gravy. Where do we put the real resources? You reach a plateau no matter what the budget. Never spend money on a plateau. It always needs to mean something.
Safdie: You pick and choose the moments when you’re gonna get big. We were doing the hospital scene and then we built the plane in the hallway of the hospital. Because that was the most affordable. But there was a column in the middle of the plane, and I would always joke that we should go through the column. I find those limitations exciting. Because you really have to figure it out.
Rian, “Glass Onion” had a more robust theatrical release than “Dead Man” has gotten. Do you feel like as filmmakers that all of you are being put in this position of fighting for the future of theaters and moviegoing?
Johnson: I actually feel incredibly optimistic at this moment about the future of moviemaking. I don’t feel that way because we’re all picking up signs and marching down the street and preaching to people that they need to keep this sacred. I feel optimistic about it because I go to movie theaters and I see them packed with young people who want to go to movie theaters and have that experience.
And I see them coming out for new movies. I see them at revival cinemas. I see theaters at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday showing a Melville film that are just full of young people who are excited. And then you see it with movies that have come out this year. You see it with something like Ryan [Coogler]’s movie, “Sinners,” or with so many films that have struck chords with audiences and created cultural events. You can’t wag your finger at people and say, “You should be going to the theater and having this theatrical experience,” but you feel it rising right now. And so for me, it’s less that I want to advocate for it. It’s more that I want to ride that wave of it coming up.
SEATTLE — In a matter of minutes, the home of the Seattle Seahawks went from a painfully quiet Lumen “Library” to a rollicking madhouse that sent seismologists scrambling for their ground-motion sensors.
Call it the Sheesh-Quake Game.
In a historic comeback, the Seahawks dug their way out of a 16-point, fourth-quarter ditch to beat the Rams in overtime, 38-37.
Oh, the visitors will agonize over some of the bizarre calls, some deserving of further explanation from the NFL. An ineligible-man-downfield call that wiped out a Rams touchdown when they were a yard away from the end zone? That had people scratching their heads. Then there was that do-or-die two-point conversion that seemingly fell incomplete… but later was reversed. More on that in a moment.
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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in their 38-37 loss to the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field on Thursday night.
When the Rams wincingly rewind the video of the collapse, they’ll be peering through the cracks in their fingers.
You’ve heard of a no-look pass? This was a no-look finish.
As soothing wins go, this was a warm bubble bath for the Seahawks, who secured a playoff berth and assumed the driver’s seat in the race for the NFC’s No. 1 seed.
“You hear people late in the year have losses, and you hear people come up here and say, like, ‘Man, this is going to be a good thing for us,’” said Seahawks receiver Cooper Kupp, a onetime Rams hero. “It’s much better to be up here right now saying this is going to be a good thing for us.”
Kupp atoned for his first-half fumble with a successful two-point conversion in the fourth quarter — the first of three in a row for the Seahawks — and a 21-yard reception on the winning drive in overtime.
“If you find a way to get a win when you do turn the ball over three times, you do end up down 16 points, or whatever it was, in the fourth quarter, just finding ways to win games when the odds are against you and things aren’t going right — finding a way to fight back — it’s going to be a good thing for us,” Kupp said. “A good thing for us to draw on.”
The Rams are sifting through the debris of a different lesson. It was a reminder that this charmed season, with Matthew Stafford in line to win his first Most Valuable Player honor, can come crashing down at any moment. There’s no more smooth glide path to Santa Clara for the Super Bowl.
As good as it was for most of the game, picking off Sam Darnold twice and sacking him four times, the Rams defense failed to hold up when it counted most. Shades of the three-point loss at Carolina.
Darnold will have a story to tell. He exorcised a lot of demons. The Rams sacked him nine times in the playoffs last season when Darnold was playing for Minnesota, and intercepted six of his passes in two games this season.
“It’s not great when you have interceptions and turnovers, you want to limit that,” said Darnold, the former USC star. “But all you can do is fight back. For us, I was just going to continue to plug away.”
Darnold came through when it counted, completing five passes on the winning drive, then finding the obscure tight end Eric Saubert — his fourth option — wide open in the end zone on the triumphant conversion.
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold looks to pass against the Rams in the first half Thursday.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
The second of the three conversions was the game’s most controversial moment. The Seahawks needed it to forge a 30-30 tie with a little more than six minutes remaining in regulation.
Darnold fired a quick screen pass to his left, trying to get the ball to Zach Charbonnet. Rams defender Jared Verse jumped the route and knocked down the pass. Everyone thought the play was dead, including Charbonnet, who casually jogged across the goal line and picked up the ball as it lay in the end zone.
That proved critical because officials — after what seemed like an eternity — ruled that Darnold had thrown a backward pass and the ball was live when Charbonnet picked it up. Therefore, a fumble recovery and successful conversion, tying the game.
Asked later if it felt like a backward pass, Darnold had a half-smile and said, “Um, yeah. It felt like I threw it kind of right on the side. I’m glad Charbs picked it up, and that turned out to be a game-changing play.”
Was that designed to be a backward pass?
“It just happened to be backwards,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily talked about. We were just trying to get it in down there on the goal line.”
The Seahawks were lined up to kick off when officials announced that, upon review, the previous play was successful. Suddenly, the most improbable of come-from-victories was within reach.
Earlier in the fourth quarter, when the home team was trailing, 30-14, the Amazon Prime crew had to do some vamping to keep viewers engaged. Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit told some Kurt Warner stories from the “Greatest Show on Turf” days. Hey, it had to be more interesting than this game.
Michaels delivered an obscure stat: When leading by 15 points or more in the fourth quarter, the Rams were 323-1.
Informed of that, Seahawks running back Cam Akers — once shown the door by the Rams — had a wry response.
“Now, they’ve lost two,” he said.
Celebration in one locker room. Silence in another.
STATESVILLE, N.C. — A business jet crashed Thursday while trying to return to a North Carolina airport shortly after takeoff, killing all seven people aboard, including retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle and his family, authorities said.
The Cessna C550 erupted into a large fire when it hit the ground. It had departed Statesville Regional Airport, about 45 miles north of Charlotte, but soon crashed while trying to return and land, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said.
Flight records show the plane was registered to a company run by Biffle. The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known, nor was the reason for the plane’s return to the airport in drizzle and cloudy conditions.
Biffle was on the plane with his wife, Cristina, and children Ryder, 5, and Emma, 14, according to the highway patrol and a family statement. Others on the plane were identified as Dennis Dutton, his son Jack, and Craig Wadsworth.
“Each of them meant everything to us, and their absence leaves an immeasurable void in our lives,” the joint family statement said.
Biffle, 55, won more than 50 races across NASCAR’s three circuits, including 19 at the Cup Series level. He also won the Trucks Series championship in 2000 and the Xfinity Series title in 2002.
NASCAR said it was devastated by the news.
“Greg was more than a champion driver; he was a beloved member of the NASCAR community, a fierce competitor, and a friend to so many,” NASCAR said. “His passion for racing, his integrity, and his commitment to fans and fellow competitors alike made a lasting impact on the sport.”
The plane, bound for Florida, took off from the Statesville airport shortly after 10 a.m., according to tracking data posted by FlightAware.com.
Golfers playing next to the airport were shocked as they witnessed the disaster, even dropping to the ground at the Lakewood Golf Club while the plane was overhead. The ninth hole was covered with debris.
“We were like, ‘Oh my gosh! That’s way too low,’” said Joshua Green of Mooresville. “It was scary.”
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were investigating.
The Cessna plane, built in 1981, is a popular mid-sized business jet with an excellent reputation, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said. It has two engines and typically seats six to eight passengers.
In 2024, Biffle was honored for his humanitarian efforts after Hurricane Helene struck the U.S., even using his personal helicopter to deliver aid to flooded, remote western North Carolina.
“The last time I spoke with Cristina, just a couple of weeks ago, she reached out to ask how she could help with relief efforts in Jamaica. That’s who the Biffles were,” U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, a Republican from North Carolina, said.
Wadsworth was Biffle’s friend and helped him with odd jobs, including delivering supplies to places hit by Hurricane Helene, roommate Benito Howell said.
“He didn’t know how to say no,” Howell said of Wadsworth, who had worked for several NASCAR teams. “He loved everybody. He always tried to help everybody.”
The joint family statement also spoke about Dutton and his son Jack, saying they were “deeply loved as well, and their loss is felt by all who knew them.”
With 2025 almost over, there have been 1,331 U.S. crashes this year investigated by the NTSB, from two-seat planes to commercial aircraft, compared to a total of 1,482 in 2024.
Major air disasters around the world in 2025 include the plane-helicopter collision that killed 67 in Washington, the Air India crash that killed 260 in India, and a crash in Russia’s Far East that claimed 48 lives. Fourteen people, including 11 on the ground, died in a UPS cargo plane crash in Kentucky.
