time

Who: Ivory Coast vs Ghana
What: CAF Africa Cup of Nations qualifier
Where: Stade de Bouake, in Bouake, Ivory Coast
When: Thursday, September 24, at 7pm (19:00 GMT)
How to follow: Al Jazeera Sport will have live build-up from 16:00 GMT before our text commentary stream.

The qualification process for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations kicks off with a match befitting the final itself as Ivory Coast play Ghana.

Both nations are packed with high-profile players and are led by names that have managed at the highest levels of the game.

Al Jazeera takes a look at the mouth-watering opener on the path to the finals in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Who else is in Ivory Coast and Ghana’s AFCON qualifying group?

The Gambia and Somalia complete Group C of the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.

In the next round of matches in the group, Ghana will entertain The Gambia on Tuesday, while Ivory Coast will travel to Somalia.

What are the expectations on Ivory Coast’s AFCON campaign?

Despite their round-of-32 exit in the FIFA World Cup 2026 at the hands of Norway, Ivory Coast’s task ahead is quite clear: win AFCON 2027.

The Elephants are led by Herve Renard, who is taking charge of the West African giants for the second time and replaced Emerse Fae following the World Cup.

The Frenchman previously managed Ivory Coast from 2014 to 2015, leading them to the AFCON title before joining French Ligue 1 club Lille immediately after the final.

Renard is a two-time AFCON winner, having also led Zambia to their historic win in 2012. The 57-year-old has also managed Morocco, Tunisia – in a last-minute call-up at World Cup 2026 – and Saudi Arabia, who he famously led to victory against Argentina in their group-stage match at Qatar 2022.

Who are the star names in the Ivory Coast side?

Although not blessed with the superstar-level talents like Didier Drogba from their 2015 victory, Ivory Coast are still a force to be reckoned with.

Yan Diomande is the shining light of African football following his $161m move to Spanish giants Real Madrid from RB Leipzig in Germany.

Former Barcelona midfielder, now with Atalanta in Italy’s Serie A, Franck Kessie is arguably the next biggest name in the current side.

Former Arsenal forward, Nicolas Pepe is resurrecting his career at Villarreal in Spain after a failed $92m transfer to the Gunners from French club Lille.

Ibrahim Sangare has been a standout performer in the English Premier League with Nottingham Forest, while Amad Diallo of Manchester United is the starlet of Ivory Coast football.

What is Ivory Coast’s AFCON record?

The Elephants are three-time AFCON winners and beat Ghana on penalties in the 1992 final for their first continental crown.

Renard’s 2015 victory also saw Ghana defeated, and once again it was by penalties.

Their most recent win came at the 2023 edition when they defeated Nigeria 2-1 on home soil.

What are the expectations on Ghana’s AFCON campaign?

Ghana, like Ivory Coast, were also eliminated at the round of 32 at the World Cup 2026 as they lost 1-0 to Colombia.

The Black Stars also lost their final group stage match to Croatia, but achieved a respectable 0-0 draw with eventual semifinalists England, while beating Panama to secure their progress to the knockouts.

Led by former Real Madrid manager Carlos Queiroz, Ghana will also have their sights set on the final of AFCON 2027.

Queiroz, who rose to prominence as assistant to Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, has the record of Iran’s longest-serving manager with a run between 2011 and 2019. The Portuguese also returned to manage the side at Qatar 2022.

Alongside his two-year stint as Real manager, the 73-year-old has also managed South Africa, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar and his native Portugal.

With his wealth of experience, the West Africans will hope to rise from a nation that failed to reach the last AFCON – finishing bottom of their qualifying group – to winners of the 2027 edition.

Who are the star names in the Ghana side?

Where Ivory Coast have more strength across the board, Ghana have a longer list of star attractions.

Manchester City forward Antoine Semenyo is undoubtedly Ghana’s key player, but is ably assisted in attack by Mohammed Kudus, who made his name in the English Premier League with West Ham before a big-money move to Tottenham.

Jordan Ayew is a long-established spearhead of attacks in European football, as well as for Ghana, for whom he remains the national team captain.

Former Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey is still a pivotal player for his new club Villarreal, while Athletic Bilbao’s Inaki Williams remains one of the hottest talents in La Liga, with a host of top clubs across Europe vying for his signature.

What is Ghana’s AFCON record?

Ghana are four-time winners of AFCON, but have not lifted the trophy since 1982.

Alongside their 1992 and 2015 defeats by Ivory Coast, they lost the 2010 edition to Egypt.

What happened the last time Ivory Coast played Ghana?

The last meeting between the sides came in a friendly in 2021 and, much like the 2015 AFCON final, it ended in a 0-0 draw.

The previous competitive meeting between the sides saw Ivory Coast win 3-1 in their round-of-16 match at AFCON 2010.

Head-to-head

This will be the 38th meeting between the border-sharing nations, with Ghana winning 15 of the encounters and Ivory Coast winning 10.

Ivory Coast team news

Diallo is the prominent absentee from the match for Ivory Coast as the forward recovers from injury.

Evann Guessand and Omar Diakite are notable omissions from Renard’s 25-man squad selection.

Ivory Coast predicted starting lineup

Fofana; Doue, Koussounou, O Diomande, Konan; Kessie, Sangare, Inao; Pepe, Bonny, Y Diomande

Ghana team news

Injuries have stripped the Ghana squad of a number of their leading names, including their captain Ayew.

The losses of Semenyo and Kudus are even greater blows, the latter having missed the 2026 World Cup with a hamstring injury.

Ghana predicted starting lineup

Asare; Oppong, Adjetey, Opoku, Mensah; Yirenkyi, Sibo, Donkor; Issahaku, Thomas-Asante, Nuamah

When USC and Oregon meet Saturday at the Coliseum, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Trojans coach Lincoln Riley. A win could catapult USC into serious contention for the College Football Playoff. A loss could send its season into a sudden spiral. And looming over it all are questions about the coach’s future — questions that could be answered, at least in part, by the Trojans’ performance this week.

“It’s definitely an important game,” Riley said Tuesday. “There’s no question about it.”

But ask his star quarterback if there’s any extra motivation this week to beat Oregon, and you won’t exactly get the same sentiment.

“Eh, not really,” Jayden Maiava said. “We’re just kind of attacking it the same every single week.”

Or what about the Trojans starting left tackle?

“It’s the exact same [this week],” senior Elijah Paige said. “We treat every opponent the exact same.”

At the start of arguably the most consequential week of their season, the Trojans certainly gave their best efforts not to make a big deal out of the big game with Oregon. Cliches were wielded like shields Tuesday, protecting against the imminent threat of social clips construed as bulletin board material.

But there’s no hiding from the significance of Saturday’s meeting for USC. Not when the messaging all off-season, like the billboards all around town, suggest that “the time is now.”

That’s definitely true right now for the Trojans, who face a gauntlet of a schedule in the coming weeks after Oregon. Three of their next five opponents after Oregon are ranked in the top 13, with two of those games on the road.

“This game should have a lot riding on it,” Riley said. “You kind of look forward and look ahead, it feels like a game that’s going to be relevant for a long time. I think it’s good for college football. It’s good for the West Coast.”

The rivalry between the two teams has grown especially heated in recent years. But on the football field, it hasn’t really been much of a matchup over the past two decades. USC has beat Oregon just twice in their last 10 meetings. And while USC has yet to play in the College Football Playoff, Oregon has already made three appearances and finished once as runner-up.

Oregon coach Dan Lanning has bested Riley in both of their head-to-head meetings, too. But the Ducks have not been at their best so far this season. After barely squeaking by Boise State in the season opener, they were upset on the road by Oklahoma State, which had previously lost 12 in a row.

Plus, they haven’t played at the Coliseum since the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when they beat USC in L.A. for the Pac-12 title.

“It’s certainly not just another game,” Lanning said of the matchup with USC. “It’s as intense as it gets, when you talk about two teams that are competitive, that want to be really good, that have great talent. It means a ton to the fanbase. It means a lot to our team.”

The same is true at USC, even if no Trojan players are willing to admit it at the moment.

Though Paige did seem to let some enthusiasm slip Tuesday, when asked what it would be like to beat Oregon in his final opportunity to do so.

“It’d be awesome,” Paige said, before snapping back to attention.

“It’s an awesome game,” he continued. “We play a lot of awesome games.”

Injured DL Jahkeem Stewart still ‘touch and go’

Standout sophomore defensive lineman Jahkeem Stewart was dressed and looking ready to return at the start of USC’s Week 2 win over Louisiana. But after being a late scratch in that game, Stewart was ruled out early of USC’s Big Ten opener against Rutgers.

So what exactly changed in between?

Riley assured Tuesday that there was “no setback” with Stewart’s foot injury, which has held him out since the start of the season, but that USC “made the decision to pull him back a little bit” after seeing him warm up during Week 2.

Stewart is “hopefully not too far away,” Riley said. But his status for this Saturday certainly doesn’t sound optimistic.

“He’s continuing to rest, continuing to get healthier,” Riley said. “We do feel like we’re going to have him here at some point. But it’s a little bit kind of touch-and-go as that goes on, trying to manage … the time to rest without being too conservative with it. And so we’re definitely making progress. He’s definitely getting better and better each week.”

There’s an alternate universe where Taylor Tomlinson is a young adult fantasy author holed up in a cabin miles from civilization.

“ I don’t know if you have some sort of backup career or backup life that you go to in your head when you’re overwhelmed or fed up with your career or whatever process you’re in,” she asks in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel Denver ahead of a two-show night. “That was in the back of my head, [I was] like, ‘Well, I could just move to the woods and write books.’”

In this world, she’s a 32-year-old comedian with four Netflix stand-up specials and a two-season stint as the host of late-night game show “After Midnight.”

Her manager told her that people would probably be more interested in her memoir before a series centering on magic and dragons, so she started writing her own story two years ago.

A self-diagnosed workaholic, Tomlinson spent 10 years constantly moving. From a combination of mold exposure and severe burnout from filming “After Midnight” on weekdays and performing in different cities on weekends, she fell ill for months and was forced to take a break.

In that time, she wrote “Actually, Nevermind.” Coming out Tuesday, the autobiographical essay collection delves into the aspects of life that she changed her mind about since her mother died when she was 8 years old.

“Actually, Nevermind” opens with an eclectic mix of three quotes from “Anne of Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery, celebrated writer Joan Didion, and the 2001 Anne Hathaway-led comedy film “The Princess Diaries.” Tomlinson wanted a combination of funny and serious excerpts capturing grief, but also a quote about evolving as a person.

In the classic coming of age novel “Anne of Green Gables,” a young Anne Shirley states, “I’m not a bit changed — not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me — back here — is just the same.”

That’s the essence of Tomlinson’s realizations in her book — she’s growing into herself but that girl who started performing stand-up shows on the church circuit at 16 is still in there.

Tomlinson has a bit from her first Netflix special “Quarter-Life Crisis” about your 20s being a period to “fish trash out of the lake before it freezes over.” She asks how I’m enjoying my 20s, to which I bluntly reply, “It’s a nightmare.”

“ My 20s were a nightmare, too, and I was waiting to be 30, and I was like, ‘When I turn 30, I’m going to be solidified and great.’ And then I turned 30, and it was like the last two years I have probably changed just as much, if not more, than I did in my 20s,” she says. “It’s been much rockier than I anticipated.”

In speaking with her friends, she realized they also felt a disconnect between the lives they envisioned for themselves and their realities. Tomlinson channeled that uncertainty into a jumping-off point for her book.

She reflected on when she began questioning the trajectory of her life and traced it back to her mother’s death.

“ I didn’t know if I was even going to write about my mom at all when I first got the book [deal] because I was like, ‘Well, I talked about it in ‘Look At You,’ and I’ve talked about it in interviews,’ but that’s the thing about losing a parent or any big traumatic grief event is you’re always getting hit by waves of it, and then you’re always untangling it,” she says.

In creating “Actually, Nevermind,” Tomlinson pored through her mother’s diary, deciding to include a few excerpts in the finished book. For most of Tomlinson’s life, she regarded her mother as a flawless, devout Christian whom she desperately yearned to impress.

Drawing on her mother’s diary, estrangement from her father and complex sibling bonds, Tomlinson confronts impossible standards, relinquishes parentified guilt and reframes what family means after loss.

(Sela Shiloni)

Her mother married young, so she tried to hit that milestone, too.

“I didn’t manage it and self-sabotaged a lot,” she says. “Now, I’m grateful that I didn’t get married young, but at the time it was all I wanted because I wanted to fit in and I wanted to be someone she would’ve liked, someone she had things in common with.”

Through reading her mother’s diary entries, Tomlinson began to heal from the impossible standards she set for herself to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

“ She was sort of this perfect, infallible character in my brain for so much of my childhood, so it was helpful to read about her being like, ‘I’m nervous about getting married. We got pregnant on accident,’” Tomlinson says. “There’s stuff I didn’t include about arguments she had with my dad in college. It was just very human, and it was very encouraging to go, ‘Oh, it wasn’t like this perfect frictionless decision for her.’ It’s not like she just nailed it and did everything perfectly.”

One of Tomlinson’s largest shifts in perspective was no longer feeling parental responsibility toward her three younger siblings.

“ I went from their sister to a weird half parent figure when I was still a kid,” she says. “And I made all these missteps because I was also a kid. And then young adulthood was confusing because I had been waiting for everyone to get old enough to be friends with me.”

Now, Tomlinson’s siblings all take care of each other in their own ways. She refers to them as her “soul mates” and feels guilty wishing for a romantic partner when she already has three lifelong best friends.

While Tomlinson remains close with some of her mother’s relatives, she has been estranged from her father for five years. She writes about the sadness of not speaking to someone you feel so alike, but she doesn’t go into extreme detail about cutting ties.

“ There’s some things you just want to keep for yourself, you know?” she says. “You don’t want every painful private detail about who you are and what’s happened to you available to Google because it just makes you feel like you’re a raw nerve walking around, and you can’t get it back once you’ve shared it.”

“And you want something to say on a fifth date,” she jokes.

After processing the heartache of losing another parent in a different way, Tomlinson allowed herself to miss the good memories with her father and assuage any longing for revenge.

In her essay “I’m Gay Now,” Tomlinson explores her bisexuality and the transition from chasing male validation to feeling comfortable in herself. She came out at around 28 years old. Part of what took her until then was feeling the need to prove that she deserved to identify as queer.

In essays on sexuality, faith and ambition, she trades the pursuit of perfection for hard-won self-acceptance, exposing a more vulnerable offstage self still learning to do her best.

(Sela Shiloni)

“ I think that’s just a theme throughout my entire life,” she says. “I felt like I needed to earn the label of comedian. I felt like I needed to earn the label of queer. I needed to earn love.”

Her brother helped her understand that she didn’t have to achieve the title — she’s always been gay.

With all of her adulthood realizations, Tomlinson also reflects on what she wishes she could tell her younger self.  Talking to a 16-year-old Taylor, she writes, “The most valuable thing about us cannot be all the things we haven’t done.”

“ So much of my childhood was like, ‘Don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t have sex. Don’t step out of line,’” she says. “I wanted to experience things more than I wanted to be this pure version of myself that was performing for the Lord.”

“Actually, Nevermind” is a reflection of Tomlinson when she puts down the microphone, and she is nervous for readers to see that side of her.

“ I feel pretty good about me on stage. Me in the room, I feel really insecure about,” she says. “I’ve gotten to a place where I feel pretty confident about taking up like 45 minutes to an hour and a half of your time. Eight hours, I think, is what the audiobook is. I’m like, ‘Eight hours is a lot more than that.’ So it’s been a real test of confidence.”

After years of chasing perfection, Tomlinson says she finds comfort in knowing that she may never be the world’s greatest anything.

“ In my 20s, I think I was always trying to be the best,” she says. “And now I’m like, ‘I’m going to do my best.’”

Filming a broadcast television show can leave even the most seasoned actors feeling like they’ve lost sense of time. But by afternoon on a recent weekday, Josh Charles actually looks like he teleported to the past as he collapses into a seat inside his production trailer in upstate New York.

He’s in the throes of filming Season 2 of “Best Medicine,” the Fox dramedy he headlines that’s set in a small fishing village in Maine, and the reason he’s shed his character’s usual suit and tie for gaitered trousers and a navy coat with red facings eventually reveals itself: Port Wenn, the show’s fictional town, is putting on a Revolutionary War reenactment. And if you’re familiar with Martin Best, the curmudgeonly doctor with an almost permanently furrowed brow portrayed by Charles, the character’s willingness to don such a getup likely took some coaxing.

That’s the fun of it all for Charles.

He’s been a working actor since childhood — making his debut at 15 in John Waters’ cult classic “Hairspray,” followed soon after by his turn as Knox Overstreet in “Dead Poets Society” — and a fixture in TV and film ever since.

While best known for dramatic roles like high-powered lawyer Will Gardner in “The Good Wife,” Charles easily pivots to comedy — like the time he memorably played the triple-collared, snobby camp ringleader in “Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp.” Now, “Best Medicine” lets Charles leans into the push and pull of the comedy and drama within his tightly wound alter ego.

Josh Charles as Martin Best in Fox’s “Best Medicine.”

(Francisco Roman / Fox)

Created by Liz Tuccillo (“How to Be Single,” “Sex and the City”), the series follows a brilliant but cranky heart surgeon who, after developing a crippling blood phobia spurred by a traumatic medical case, abandons his thriving career in Boston to become a general practitioner in the town where he spent summers as a child. Martin Best is a doc whose bedside manner could use some TLC, but he came to town hoping he can still practice medicine — that is, if the townspeople would actually do as he says.

“I have been really wanting to do more comedy lately and looking — especially if I was going to call a place home for a particular period of time, like you do in a television show — for something that was a little more lighter air than I had been networking in of late,” says Charles, whose recent credits include dystopian drama “The Handmaid’s Tale” and spy thriller “The Veil.”

The series is based on the beloved British dramedy “Doc Martin,” which starred Martin Clunes as a doctor with a similar storyline, that aired between 2004 and 2022. Tuccillo says Charles brought an elegance and depth to the fish-out-of-water dynamic his character navigates in the quirky town.

“He never hits a false note,” she says in a separate video call. “I knew the material would be in great hands in that he would always elevate it just by his artistry and being. I knew he was going to be able to play the gruffness, but any time that you’re doing a show, there is a question mark on so many things. To be honest, we were like, ‘But is he going to be super funny? Is he going to want to do pratfalls? Is he going to be game for the comedy part of it?’ When we started working, it was clear he was game for all the shenanigans … he likes to laugh. So I try to devise things that I think will amuse him.”

A special advance preview of the Season 2 premiere aired Sunday, but the show will move into its regular time slot Tuesday. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation with Charles.

Josh Charles poses for photos on the “Best Medicine” set in upstate New York. He says he was drawn to the Fox dramedy because it was “a little more lighter air” than the other work he had done recently.

(Ebru Yildiz / For The Times)

“Best Medicine” hit Netflix after its first season aired. Building an audience outside the traditional linear viewing has become such a key component of television today. How do you feel about it?

One of my dad’s best friends told me, “I’m watching the show on Netflix!” He’s like, “I just can’t watch shows with commercials anymore” — as people are programmed now. That is the new shift. You go into these platforms for periods of time, build your audience in a different way and hopefully keep growing that audience. [Television] keeps evolving and growing in a way that I don’t fully understand, but I do know that it’s a different world right now. Netflix has a great reach, and it’s great that we’re on there and that people are discovering it. And apparently we did very well.

Season 2 opens with Martin on probation and under review by the medical board. What is Martin in for this season?

When it starts off, he’s really in it. Eden [Martin’s ex-girlfriend played by Eliza Coupe] is now back in the picture. She’s coming from Boston every weekend, and she’s rubbed a lot of people in town the wrong way. And the progress that Martin made, we see him maybe take a few steps back in the way that he interacts with people. He’s with her and I think there’s feelings there, but I think their relationship feels very — I don’t know, it’s interesting. It doesn’t have the fire. But she doesn’t make him feel bad about himself. She respects him, and I think those things are important. And he’s around in this town where nobody’s listening to him half the time. People are just always mad at him about something, and she’s not. She puts him a little bit on a pedestal, and I think he really needs that.

All that presents an obstacle for the show’s slow burn: Martin and Louisa (Abigail Spencer). There’s been some discourse about the art of the slow burn and how the pacing has changed in an era of short episode orders and unpredictable renewals. You have experience in this department with “The Good Wife.”

Liz and I have talked about it a little bit. You don’t want to muck bait it and drag it out for the sake of dragging it out. I think they’ve done a good job of putting the obstacles in a way that still feels organic and genuine and not yet a reach. In the British show, things accelerated so much faster. They only made eight [episodes] a year. We want to also have it feel like it’s plausible. It is really fun to have Eliza Coupe here. It’s fun to play scenes with her and [see] the different side that brought out in Martin. That is the challenge because I don’t think we’re as interested in doing it quite that fast [as the British show]. I have faith in them that we’ll land it in a good way.

Ellen Soraya Nikbakht as a peculiar patient and Josh Charles as Martin Best in the Season 2 premiere of “Best Medicine.”

(Danielle Mathias / Fox)

You’ve played in comedy and drama in your career. It’s fun to watch you straddle both sides with this character. How has it been finding the rhythm or tone with him?

A lot of the comedy I’ve done, I’ve done some stuff that’s more silly and kind of over the top. I love playing the fool. What’s really fun [here], to me, are the circumstances they put Martin in where things are blowing up in front of him and he’s just trying to deal. I’ve enjoyed doing a lot of the physical comedy on the show.

I [also] found it really interesting to have a character who doesn’t want to be around people, but he actually does. He just doesn’t really know how to do it, and he’s never really had any kind of practice at it in his life. And he’s gone through a lot of trauma in his life. He’s a really specific kind of workaholic. For him to grow up with what he did, and losing his sister really young in his life — I did research on that and what that does to people and how that can sort of frame your life. I imagine he went to private school, maybe a boarding school, then he goes on the track of going to college and medical school — we know how hard that is, the kind of hours they put in; then to be really successful at it, you put everything you have into your work. There’s this other side of his life that is completely empty. This town kind of just softens off the edges of him a little bit and helps him become a little more authentic version of who he was maybe meant to be. That gives me some place to build off of and to go with the character, other than it feeling kind of just very one-note.

Matthew Goode, left, as Finn Polmar and Josh Charles as Will Gardner in a scene from Season 5 of “The Good Wife.”

(CBS)

This series marks your return to broadcast television after leaving “The Good Wife” in its fifth season. You’ve done TV since then, of course. But a big reason you left broadcast was because of the grind of a 20-plus episode season. With “Best Medicine,” you’re the lead and the second season will have 14 episodes. Does that feel like the sweet spot?

If “The Good Wife” was “The Good Fight,” I would have done that until the wheels come off. I would have never wanted to leave that because I would have had a life. I could have been able to go do a play, travel with my family, see my kids. At the time of “The Good Wife,” I didn’t have kids, but we were about to get married and wanted to have children. I was only going to do 18 [episodes] at most with this show, if they wanted it. And then I asked them this year, “Well, we’re just at 14. What was the decision [there]?” And I’m happy about it. They also agree. This just feels like where the show wants to live creatively. You work really hard for four or five months, and then you get to go explore other projects and travel and live your life.

Your departure from “The Good Wife,” with your character Will Gardner dying, felt like an out–of–body viewing experience as it happened. The fact that it was kept under wraps —

I can’t believe we did it, honestly. There was one journalist who obviously had a source somewhere and did find out. Part of being able to keep that silent until the moment was an agreement that they would come to set and be there as long as it was [kept secret]. I remember like when the episode aired, I was in the editing bay with the editors in L.A. [for an episode I directed]. I’m seeing things come in and I was like, “Oh my God!” I thought it was going to get ruined for people on the West Coast. These days, you know how they make something, how much this cost, how they did this scene … we used to be surprised by things. To be able to truly shock people you know like in an Orson Welles-style “War of the Worlds” way. I felt like in our own sort of network TV way, this was the equivalent of that. We really got to narratively pack a punch. That season was one of the great treats of my career. I just felt the writing on that show that season was at another level.

NEWBERRY SPRINGS, Calif.  — Four decades ago, the cult hit “Bagdad Cafe” was filmed at a ramshackle diner in the Mojave Desert.

The tale of two women in the lonely landscape — a hardworking, rifle-wielding cafe owner and a stranded German tourist with a suitcase full of lederhosen — captivated viewers, particularly in Europe and Japan.

Busloads of international tourists rolled up to the actual Bagdad Cafe on a cracked, sunbaked stretch of Route 66.

Real-life proprietor Andrea Pruett, a sweet but steely Southerner who kept her own gun behind the counter, greeted them in French and German, then fed them buffalo burgers and omelets.

A memorial announcement for owner Andrea Pruett is seen at the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in the Mojave Desert.

As Pruett aged, her grip on reality loosened. But she refused to leave.

Now, the Bagdad Cafe is in limbo. Though T-shirts and tchotchkes are still for sale, the kitchen is closed. And Pruett’s family is figuring out what comes next.

Buses full of Europeans still come. So, too, do the roadtrippers celebrating Route 66, which turns 100 this year.

“We don’t get any locals, and we don’t cook any food right now,” said Mark Bradley, the cafe’s gruff but genial manager. “But we’re definitely on the map to see … it’s magic that takes place here.”

The cafe is a cacophony of color in an expanse of desert brown. Flags from all over — France, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, Canada — hang from low ceilings. The walls are covered floor to ceiling by visitors’ passport photos and dollar bills with Sharpie signatures. “We’ve been here three times!” an Italian visitor raved in a guest book.

Pruett is still there, too. An urn holding her ashes sits by the front door.

A drone image shows the remote Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in Newberry Springs.

In 1995, eight years after the movie’s European premiere, Pruett and her husband, Harold, stopped for burgers at what was then called the Sidewinder Cafe in Newberry Springs, 20 miles east of Barstow. They had just bought 640 acres for an ostrich ranch, which ultimately didn’t work out, though they kept some of the birds as pets.

The owner told them the A-frame, wood-shingled diner was for sale. “My husband looked at me and I said, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ ” Pruett told The Times in 2003.

But their son, actor Harold P. Pruett II — who was 26 and starring that year in a campy erotic horror flick called “Embrace of the Vampire” — declared the cafe “cool,” and that was that.

The Pruetts promptly rechristened it Bagdad Cafe, following German filmmaker Percy Adlon’s lead.

The exterior of the Bagdad Cafe.

Nearby Bagdad was a railroad town named in the 1880s by Southern Pacific Railroad officials after the Middle Eastern metropolis — without the H — because of the desert terrain.

Bagdad became a stop for steam-powered trains whose engines needed more water every eight miles or so in the desert climate, said Scott Piotrowski, past president of the California Historic Route 66 Assn.

The bustling little town was also a hub for gold, silver and copper mining camps.

Mining eventually faded, but cars on Route 66 overheated easily and often limped into town for water. A restaurant named, naturally, Bagdad Cafe, owned by a woman named Alice Lawrence, was the only place for miles with a dance floor and jukebox.

When Interstate 40 opened in 1972 about 10 miles north — taking most traffic and tourists away from Route 66 — it was the death knell for Bagdad, where all that remains today is a single scruffy cedar tree.

Thierry Farion, left, from France, and Aziz Khechine, right, from Tunisia, look at memorabilia inside the Bagdad Cafe.

At Pruett’s Bagdad Cafe, she embraced the movie. The two female characters, initially wary of each other, are both on a hiatus from their husbands, and the German tourist eventually draws big crowds by performing magic tricks.

“When people came in, it was like a director saying, ‘Action!’ ” said Pruett’s grandson, Greg Landers, 47, of Glassell Park. “She would just go right into welcoming people and telling them to sit down, answering their questions.”

A petite bottle-blonde who spoke with the laid-back drawl of her native Arkansas, Pruett showed off memorabilia signed by the “Bagdad Cafe” director. She got a yellow thermos like the one in the film, which, miraculously, never seems to run out of java, even when the coffee pot is busted.

A guest book displays messages at the Bagdad Cafe.

She kept the jukebox on the movie’s Academy Award-nominated theme song, “Calling You,” recorded by R&B singer Jevetta Steele and covered by Celine Dion, Barbra Streisand, George Michael and others.

The lyrics immortalized the Bagdad:

A desert road from Vegas to nowhere
Some place better than where you’ve been
A coffee machine that needs some fixing
In a little café just around the bend

Pruett’s place drew desert eccentrics, including a gravelly-voiced man dubbed General Bob who sniped at customers who doubted his claims that he designed the Pentagon, built the Golden Gate Bridge, was a brain surgeon and was 109. (“Actually, he’s 83 years old, and if he wants to be older, I let him,” Pruett told NPR in 2003.)

Monaco’s Prince Albert II stopped in once. So did actress Renée Zellweger, who told Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” that there was a “little old guy, he’s been sitting there for, I think, maybe 45 years on the same barstool. We had chicken fried steak together.”

When Huell Howser popped in unannounced for a 2001 episode of his California road trip show, General Bob, perched at the bar with a fedora atop his long silver hair, proclaimed he was 98 years old and “a real general, not a f—up.”

Marian Box, left, works the counter and talks to visitor Jaelene Kleckner.

For all the joy, desert life brought plenty of hardship.

One night in the 1990s, not long after Pruett bought the place, she was closing out the cash register when a man walked in, slammed a wooden 2-by-4 on the counter and ordered her to put all the money in a bag.

“She actually had a shotgun under the counter, and she pulled it out and said, ‘Stop,’ and cocked it,” said Landers, her grandson.

The man threw his hands up and said his family was in the car. They had been traveling and ran out of money. Pruett ushered them inside, fed them and sent them away with some cash — after making them wash their own dishes.

Pruett, who gave birth to Landers’ father, Corky, at 15, had a tough and impoverished youth. But she was “kind almost to a fault,” said Landers, a contractor who lived with her for a spell in his 20s and worked in the cafe. People who just about everyone else had given up on — she’d give them a place to stay and work to do.

In February 2002, the younger of Pruett’s two sons, Harold the actor, died of an accidental drug overdose. Her husband died two months later.

Pruett’s love for her customers kept her going, said Bradley, who has been around the cafe for 26 years as a frequent visitor and employee.

“She would have them crying as they left, but happy crying,” he said. “She could do that to people by giving them a hug and in just the few minutes that they were here. She had a magic to her.”

In 2016, Sarah Jane Woodall — a former nude model who posts popular desert travelogues on YouTube under the moniker Wonderhussy — stopped for breakfast and shot a video.

The cafe was quiet and grimy. She loved it.

“It was just, like, a lovable hot mess,” said Woodall, an Army kid who lived for a time in Germany, where people were obsessed with the movie.

The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns devastated the Bagdad Cafe — and Pruett, who turned 80 in the summer of 2020.

The Europeans disappeared. Vandals busted the windows. Pruett let go of her waiters. Her kitchen closed and never reopened.

A sign for a former motel next to the Bagdad Cafe on Route 66 in Newberry Springs.

In 2021, her house burned down. She slept in the cafe, her thin frame curled up in a red vinyl booth.

That summer, Léa De Carmo, an aspiring actress, was driving back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas with a friend and, after a night of partying, craved a cup of coffee. They pulled into the Bagdad Cafe, where — as in the movie — the coffee pot was broken.

De Carmo, a native of Paris who had never seen the film, was stunned when she opened the door and “saw French flags and soccer team stuff everywhere.”

“It seems like all the French are led there for one reason or another,” said De Carmo, 29, who talked to Pruett that day for over two hours.

“She had essentially lost everything — her business, her house — but she just had this incredible energy and warmth and humor,” De Carmo said. “There was also this very deep loneliness.”

For the next four years, De Carmo drove from L.A. to Newberry Springs dozens of times, filming Pruett for a just-finished documentary called “The Keeper of Bagdad Cafe,” about her final years in the crumbling diner.

In the film, friends help Pruett move into an RV in the parking lot. As a woman gently washes her white hair with bottled water behind the cafe counter, Pruett says she can’t remember where she’s from.

“One thing she never forgot was the cafe,” De Carmo said. “She always knew where she was and that it was the place she wanted to be.”

Landers said his father, who died in 2022, asked her to move in with him in L.A., but she didn’t want to leave the Bagdad.

“It was just hard,” said Landers, who added that she might have fared better, physically, at least, in a dementia care facility. But she repeatedly said, “No, this is my place. This is where I want to be.”

Pruett’s friends in the desert stepped up. Bradley took care of her and the cafe, opening it each day for tourists to come in and take photos.

In 2023, Tropical Storm Hilary pummeled the diner’s old roof. Water poured in.

Woodall returned at the cafe’s request, filming the stained, decaying ceiling and the water-catching buckets and coffee pots on the floor. The YouTuber’s fans raised more than $25,000 — enough for a new roof.

In the video, Pruett stood by, smiling, quiet, a little confused.

For the next three years, she stayed at the Bagdad, even as her memory continued to fade. She died this January at 85.

On a Friday morning this summer, with the outside temperature already 115 degrees, Matt Parker stood behind the worn green Formica counter, setting a smart TV to the movie and preparing to make Nescafé instant coffee — a favorite of Europeans.

On a good day, they get three tour buses, he said.

Parker, 53, moved from L.A. County to Newberry Springs — where he used to camp with his dad and ride dirt bikes as a kid — a few years ago and fell in love with the cafe.

“You can’t recreate this,” he said. “We’re just caretakers of it. It’s a museum and church, in a sense, with all this stuff. Mrs. Pruett really focused on protecting it, protecting these people’s stuff — their mark.”

Andrea Pruett’s urn near the entrance of the Bagdad Cafe, which she ran for three decades.She died in January.

Landers said that, while the family figures out what to do with the cafe, he asked Bradley to keep it open like his grandma did.

Though her urn remains in the place she loved most, Landers hopes, someday, to bury her ashes in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery next to her youngest son.

Since her death, he can’t help but think of a scene from the movie. The German woman — forced to leave after her tourist visa expires — is gone and the bustling restaurant quiet again. A customer walks in and asks where the magic shows went.

A snoozing employee sits up and says: “The magic? It’s gone.”

In the end, the German returns to the Bagdad Cafe. And so do the crowds.

When Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said earlier this week that the best was yet to come, his expectations were centered on the offense.

In the Dodgers’ 10-4 rout of the San Francisco Giants on Saturday, that better version of the offense was on display, putting together a pair of three-run rallies in back-to-back innings to take pressure off the pitching staff.

“This is the first time, seems like all year, that we’ve had four or five hitters swing the bats well for four or five games,” Roberts said. “So it’s been really good to see.”

This month, Mookie Betts, Kyle Tucker and Teoscar Hernández have led the group, with Max Muncy and Will Smith heating up this week. The Dodgers’ 15 hits Saturday were their most in a game since July 2 against the San Diego Padres, and just two shy of their season high.

Reinforcements should be coming soon too. Shohei Ohtani (right biceps and left knee) hit off the Trajekt machine Saturday and ran the bases before the game. Roberts said there’s a “good chance” that he’ll be activated off the 15-day injured list during the Dodgers’ series against the San Diego Padres this week. He can be reinstated as early as Wednesday.

Center fielder Andy Pages (fractured left hand) went through a simulated game Saturday. He could return Tuesday.

“You’re going to go through your waves,” said Betts, who finished the day with three doubles and a single. “You’ve just got to ride them. … Right now we’re getting them across, and we’re just going to keep giving ourselves chances. That’s the main thing.”

The offense kept the Dodgers in the game, despite Tarik Skubal struggling.

Skubal pitched only five innings, tied for his shortest start with the Dodgers. And he surrendered four runs, the worst mark of his Dodgers tenure.

Entering the game, Skubal appeared to be peaking. His previous two starts, both against the Reds, were some of his most efficient.

That efficiency, however, regressed against the Giants (64-91).

“Fastball command wasn’t great,” he said. “Not driving it up and in, kind of pulling the ball down at times, pushing it up at times. I think almost [all] pitching is all fastball command, and mine wasn’t great today.”

Though he got through the first two innings without giving up a run — thanks in part to a diving catch by Tucker in the right-center field to end the first — he issued two-out walks in each.

The Dodgers’ offense used that time to mount a lead. Betts hit the first of those doubles in his first at-bat, and Muncy authored his own to drive in the first run.

The next inning, rookie Josue De Paula’s walk, and singles from Alex Freeland and Betts combined to push in another run.

Dodgers baserunner Kyle Tucker slides head first into Giants catcher Andrew Knizner while scoring a run in the fifth inning Saturday.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Then Skubal began to struggle. With a runner on second and one out, he pitched to a full count against designated hitter Victor Bericoto. Skubal missed down the middle with a fastball, and Bericoto sent it 425 feet to center field. It landed on the netting on the other side of the wall to tie the score.

The Dodgers’ offense, coming alive in September, struck back in the third. Smith hit his second home run in as many nights, launching the second pitch of the inning into the left-field pavilion.

The Giants took a different approach to tie the score for a second time. After back-to-back singles, they used back-to-back sacrifice bunts to advance the runners and score another run.

Then the two teams traded runs again. Betts put the Dodgers (95-60) up with an RBI double in the fourth. Skubal gave up back-to-back doubles in the fifth.

That marked both the end of Skubal’s start and the beginning of the Dodgers’ offensive onslaught.

“Obviously, I wasn’t very good today,” Skubal said. “But the offense and defense and bullpen picked me up big time. And that’s what good teams do, they pick each other up and win series and win baseball games. So, hats off to them.”

The Dodgers brought seven batters to the plate in the fifth, and all but one reached base. Tommy Edman hit a two-run single. And pinch-hitting Miguel Rojas almost matched him, but Giants left fielder Turner Hill made a perfect throw to nab Edman in a close play at home to end the inning.

Betts’ and Smith’s bats stayed hot to open the sixth with a leadoff double and one-out RBI single, respectively. The Dodgers took advantage of the Giants’ sloppy infield play to load the bases for De Paula, who lined a two-run single into shallow center field.

Those were the kinds of stifling rallies that had defined the Dodgers’ offense earlier in the season, when they were scoring regularly in double digits.

“I think our potential’s winning the World Series,” Tucker said. “So until we do that, then I can say we reached it. But we feel like we’re in a good spot right now. Our pitching staff’s done a great job all year giving us an opportunity to win every single night. Our defense has played pretty well behind them, and then offensively we’ve done a solid job as well.

“Right now we’ve got a few guys that are feeling good, a few guys that are banged up. But we’re still out there grinding, trying to win as many games as possible before the season ends and just trying to carry it all the way to the playoffs.”

Tucker picked up some extra bumps and bruises Saturday, most notably fouling a pitch off his right knee in the third inning. Once the game became a blowout, Roberts pulled him.

“I feel like everyone’s grinding at this point in the season,” Tucker said. “But I’ll be good with it.”

Myles Garrett is out for four games following knee surgery, but other Rams edge rushers said they were ready to step up against the New York Giants on Monday night at SoFi Stadium.

Second-year pro Josaiah Stewart could start in Garrett’s place opposite Byron Young with Desjuan Johnson and rookie Wesley Bailey rotating in.

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Aaron Donald will play for the Rams against the New York Giants on Monday, but will Puka Nacua be on the field?

“I’m not going to go out there and be Myles Garrett,” said Stewart, who made six tackles and had one quarterback hit in the Rams’ season-opening defeat by the San Francisco 49ers, “but as a group we’ll fill our role and help do the job.”

The Rams’ pass rush will be aided by the addition of lineman Aaron Donald, the three-time NFL defensive player of the year who will make his season debut after coming out of two-year retirement.

But the outside linebackers plan to contribute.

“The room is full of talented guys, so everybody always smells blood,” said Johnson, a fourth-year pro. “We’re all sharks in the room, but we’re all helping each other. … It’s time for everybody to put on them big-boy boots.”

Bailey was the only first-year undrafted free agent to make the roster. He did it with outstanding performances in preseason games.

Young said losing Garrett was “huge” but he is confident the group will perform well.

“We’ve got guys that can definitely rush,” Young said. “I definitely think as a collective we can affect it together. He’s going to be back soon, and while he’s gone we’re going to hold it down and do what we do.”

Versatile forward Nicolas Batum is retiring following an 18-year NBA career and a long stint with the French national team.

The 37-year-old Batum announced his retirement in a social media video with his son on Monday.

“I decided to retire from basketball for several reasons,” Batum told 10-year-old son, Ayden, in the video. “I want to come home and be with you. I’m going to take care of you and make room for others. I think I’ve done my time. My time with France ended two years ago. And the NBA is over too. You know, when you’ve played as much basketball as I have, at some point, you have to know when to stop. … I’ve done everything I needed to do.”

Batum played two seasons in the French league before being selected in the first round of the NBA draft by the Portland Trail Blazers. The 6-foot-7 forward spent seven seasons in Portland before playing the next six with Charlotte.

Batum spent most of his final six seasons with the Clippers, with a short stint in Philadelphia in 2023-24. He also was a stalwart on French national teams that won silver medals in the 2020 and 2024 Olympics.

Batum averaged 9.6 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.0 assists while shooting 37% from three-point range during his NBA career.

Debris from a Chinese-made ballistic missile found in Yemen could have inadvertently revealed a previously undisclosed addition to Saudi Arabia’s secretive ballistic missile arsenal. Imagery circulating online appears to show the wreckage of a Chinese DF-15A short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), potentially marking the first known Saudi combat use of a weapon in this class, although both the identification and ownership remain unconfirmed.

It is also unclear what happened to the missile itself. The debris suggests a stage separation or the missile broke apart or crashed before reaching its target. The Houthis are not known to possess any weapons that could have intercepted it.

The development comes amid a sharp escalation in the long-running Saudi-Houthi conflict. After years of relative de-escalation following the 2022 truce, fighting has intensified in recent weeks as Houthi forces have dramatically overrun Saudi-backed Yemeni government positions, including around strategically important Marib and Taiz. The Houthis have also escalated missile and drone attacks against southern Saudi Arabia, targeting military and energy infrastructure while threatening the kingdom’s ability to move oil through the Red Sea. The group has declared the Bab el-Mandeb closed to Saudi oil traffic, adding a direct threat to one of Riyadh’s critical energy-export routes.

You can catch up with our latest coverage of the fighting here.

As for the DF-15, also known by its NATO designation CSS-6, this is a road-mobile, solid-fueled SRBM developed by China during the 1980s. The system formed part of Beijing’s effort to develop a new generation of conventionally armed mobile ballistic missiles, including systems primarily intended for export.

As you can read about here, the DF-15 family has evolved through several variants, although open-source information concerning their capabilities remains inconsistent.

The DF-15A reportedly entered Chinese service in the mid-1990s. Estimates of these missiles’ maximum range vary substantially, from roughly 600 kilometers (373 miles) for the original DF-15 to as much as 900 kilometers (559 miles) for later versions.

China is the only confirmed operator of the DF-15 family. There have been longstanding reports of Chinese transfers of the DF-15 or the related M-9 export version to Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria, but in each case, the export record is heavily disputed, with some reports likely conflating the DF-15 with the broadly similar DF-11.

While Saudi Arabia has never publicly acknowledged operating the DF-15 family, it has a well-established history of acquiring Chinese ballistic missiles.

In 2013, Prince Fahd bin Abdullah bin Mohammed, Deputy Minister of Defense, visited the Strategic Missile Forces of Saudi Arabia, and was given this model. YEARS of speculation on the smaller missiles (The large is DF-3). Now we know – they are DF-15 and DF-15A. pic.twitter.com/oOn8qiCgye

— Tal Inbar (@inbarspace) September 14, 2026

Saudi Arabia imported Chinese ballistic missiles to expand its long-range strike options. Its desire for a land-based strategic deterrent was initially driven by concerns over Iran, regional missile proliferation, and nuclear hedging. More recently, however, it shifted toward fielding more accurate, mobile systems with greater conventional military utility.

Riyadh secretly obtained DF-3A missiles from China beginning in the late 1980s, establishing a strategic ballistic-missile capability that remained largely outside public view.

The kingdom has also subsequently been linked to the DF-21 family. Satellite imagery and other open-source intelligence have provided evidence of Chinese-designed ballistic-missile infrastructure in Saudi Arabia.

While the Houthis have their own ballistic-missile arsenal, this is principally associated with Iranian technology, captured Yemeni systems, and locally produced or modified weapons.

Saudi employment of an SRBM in the current fighting would represent a notable expansion of the kingdom’s response options. If Saudi Arabia did indeed do this, its main advantage would be speed and responsiveness. A solid-fueled ballistic missile could reach targets deep inside Yemen within minutes while keeping Saudi aircraft and crews out of the immediate engagement area, providing Riyadh with a rapid strike option against fixed Houthi targets. That could be particularly valuable as the conflict expands and Saudi forces face pressure to respond quickly to Houthi attacks on military and energy infrastructure.

Saudi F-15 Eagles Live Missile Firing in Pakistan | Naseem Al-Bahr 13 Exercise

Previous losses at the hands of Houthi ground-based air defenses could also dissuade Riyadh from relying on crewed aircraft to strike targets on the ground deep inside Yemen. Houthi air defenses, while pathed together in many ways, are capable enough to give even U.S. airpower a serious run for their money.

At the same time, a conventional SRBM like the DF-15A can deliver a large warhead at very high speed, imparting significant kinetic energy, making it particularly useful against fixed, high-value, or hardened targets.

Use of an SRBM would also be in line with the current pattern of escalation, with the Houthis conducting missile and drone attacks against Saudi military and energy targets while Saudi-backed Yemeni forces are engaged in renewed ground fighting. Riyadh’s demonstration of an SRBM capability in this campaign would also signal that it is is willing to draw more heavily on its strategic missile inventory as the conflict intensifies, potentially further raising the stakes of the confrontation.

Such a move would carry a message beyond Yemen. Using a previously unacknowledged ballistic missile capability in combat would signal to Iran that Riyadh is now willing to employ this arsenal, after decades of keeping it very much in the shadows.

If the evidence ultimately points to a Saudi DF-15A launch, the discovery would offer a rare look at the operational use of an extremely secretive part of the kingdom’s arsenal, and add a significant new dimension to the rapidly escalating Saudi-Houthi war.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter, where we’ve reached a critical fork in the road for the Lincoln Riley era.

The soft part of the schedule is behind USC. Oregon awaits next Saturday. The time is now for Riley and USC, just like the billboards around L.A. have been insisting for months.

That this moment arrives after Saturday’s uninspiring escape from Rutgers only amplifies the pressure on USC’s coach. Against arguably the worst team in the Big Ten, the Trojans were once again plagued by many of the same road woes that Riley has failed for four years to solve. USC’s defense, now on its third coordinator under Riley, was largely a disaster. Even the offense, with another Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback, looked clunky and out of sync.

Now, Riley is out of time to iron out these issues. Because there is no more important game for USC this season than next Saturday. Outside of the 2022 Pac-12 title game, which went quite poorly for him, I’d argue it’s the most important game of Riley’s entire tenure to date.

Riley has yet to beat Oregon as USC’s coach, while Dan Lanning and the Ducks have run circles around the Trojans, on and off the field, during the four-plus years they’ve both been coaching out West. Oregon may have never won a national title, but has been to the College Football Playoff in three out of those four years. USC has never been to the Playoff. The two teams have become legitimate rivals over that time. But in two meetings with Oregon under Riley, there’s never been any doubt about who’s the better team.

For a brief moment, early in this season, it seemed like that might be shifting. Oregon was stunned by Oklahoma State, just two weeks ago, leading to real questions about whether the Ducks are the Playoff contender they were made out to be.

That loss, though, actually ratcheted up the importance for Riley. With Oregon appearing this vulnerable, there are no excuses for USC or its coach if they don’t win this game. No matter the situation that Riley inherited, the Trojans should have what it takes, by Year 5, to compete with Oregon. Full stop.

That’s the standard that USC was expecting in shelling out over $11 million per year to its football coach. But in four-plus seasons under Riley, the Trojans have just six wins against ranked opponents and have consistently blown their biggest games.

Think, for a moment, of Riley’s biggest win at USC. Are you having a hard time conjuring it? That’s because of the six ranked teams that USC has beaten under Riley, all of them finished with four losses that season.

Clay Helton had three top-five wins at USC through his first 18 games as head coach. Meanwhile, in almost five years and 57 games, I’d argue Riley still doesn’t have a single great win.

He can change that Saturday. But if Riley can’t lead USC past Oregon now, after all this time, who’s to say he ever will?

“House of Troy”: Chapter 1 drops Sept. 22

Pete Carroll when he was coaching USC.

(Getty Images)

Twenty five years ago, USC’s football program was in a bad spot.

The Trojans hadn’t been relevant in over a decade, and Paul Hackett had just been fired as head coach. USC needed a new direction. But its search for Hackett’s replacement was going poorly. Two coaches — from Oregon and Oregon State, no less — had already turned them down. That’s when Daryl Gross, the USC official in charge of the search, turned his attention to a twice-failed NFL coach.

Pete Carroll.

His hire would turn out to be a seminal moment in the history of Trojan football. But that was not how folks saw it at the time.

“There’s legendary stories of fax machines just blowing up and paper after paper coming through,” said Rocky Seto, who was a grad assistant at the time. “People weren’t happy.”

Bill Plaschke, The Times columnist, wrote a column at the time ripping the hire. Carroll himself called Plaschke after that, begging for a shot.

“All he kept saying,” Plaschke said, “was just gimme a chance.”

Well, it turned out OK for Carroll and the Trojans. They won back-to-back national titles and nearly won a third during his tenure as coach.

It’s what came after that, as USC tried to cling on to the Carroll era, that’s the subject of a new narrative podcast series from LA Times and LA Times Studios, House of Troy. Starting with Carroll’s hire a quarter-century ago, we’ll walk you through how USC rose to college football prominence and how it all came crashing down once Carroll left.

The first chapter of House of Troy drops on Sept. 22, with new episodes coming every week after that. Before then, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

King Miller runs past Rutgers defensive lineman Farell Gnago in the first half.

(Adam Hunger / AP)

—King Miller is the clear RB1 at the moment. USC may view Miller and Waymond Jordan as starting running backs, but there’s no doubting who has taken the reins at the top of that rotation. Both are averaging over five yards per carry. But Miller has at least 15 carries in all four games, while Jordan hasn’t eclipsed 11. Personally, I’m a bit surprised by that divide given how great Jordan looked before his injury last season. It makes me wonder if he’s all the way back from his ankle surgeries.

—The receiver rotation is still up in the air right now. With Trent Mosley out indefinitely, USC opened the game with Kayden Dixon-Wyatt, Corey Simms and Zacharyus Williams as its top three wideouts. Dixon-Wyatt is deservedly locked in that spot, while Simms balled it in his 20 snaps, catching four passes for 72 yards despite missing some time during the game due to injury. Hines ended up playing more snaps, but had a key drop on third down that we’d be talking much more about if USC hadn’t gone for it and converted on fourth. Williams played in the slot, but had just one catch. The real mystery here is Terrell Anderson, who was dressed and not on the injury report, but didn’t play a single snap on offense. Anderson was viewed, at one point, as a key contributor, so it’s not clear what happened.

—Kaylon Miller replaced Hayden Treter as the starting left guard. The move was a bit unexpected, given how Treter played through three games. Treter still played 28 snaps to Miller’s 40 against Rutgers, but with a very good Oregon defensive line on tap, the offensive line will be tested next week unlike it has all season. Miller has always had the respect of offensive line coach Zach Hanson. We’ll know at the start of the game next week whom he trusts the most in that spot.

—USC isn’t built to withstand injuries in the secondary. No unit on the entire roster has more doubts about its depth, and against Rutgers, USC had to test that depth more than it would like. Top corner Jontez Williams only played 22 snaps, while slot corner Alex Graham only played 15. Kennedy Urlacher and Rock Hill took their places, and while they did a fine job, the ripple effects of one injury on the position could be significant. Behind those players are a lot of question marks. So USC better hope that they’re all healthy heading into Oregon.

—USC men’s hoops will play four Big Ten road games in 10 days to start 2027. Which, on its face, seems patently insane. But after a screwy start to the Big Ten schedule a year ago, coach Eric Musselman actually asked for a slate exactly like this. The reason? His team doesn’t have to travel back and forth twice to the East Coast. In this case, they will have to travel from Bloomington, Ind. to College Park, Md. But that’s much more doable than an extra 10 hours of flying.

This week, in 2006 …

After hosting College Gameday and beating No. 19 Nebraska at home, USC opens its Pac-10 season on the road with a dominant defensive performance at Arizona, winning 20-3.

Led by new inside linebacker Rey Maualuga, the Trojans didn’t allow a single point until the fourth quarter. The offense, meanwhile, finally found a running back to lean on. With Reggie Bush and LenDale White both off to the NFL and USC still waiting for someone to step up in their place, Emmanuel Moody heeded the call. He rushed for 130 yards and a score as the Trojans stood pat at No. 3 in the AP poll.

Polling the people

We asked, “After three comfortable wins in the non-conference schedule, do you feel better about the Trojans’ trajectory than you did at the start of the season?”

After 1,523 votes:

Nothing has changed, 47.4%
Yes, I feel better, 45.8%
No, I feel worse, 6.8%

Olympic sports spotlight

A brutal start to the season isn’t getting much better in Big Ten play for USC’s women’s soccer team. After starting the conference slate by being shut out, 5-0, by Michigan State, USC was shut out again by Purdue, 2-0, and then managed a tie against Oregon, 1-1.

The Trojans have scored one or fewer goals in seven of their nine matches this season and are 0-5-2 in those scenarios. They need to produce more offense — and stat.

What I’m watching this week

Domhnall Gleeson as Ned in “The Paper.”

(Aaron Epstein/Peacock)

It tends to take at least a season for a sitcom to really find its rhythm, and so far, that’s been the case for “The Paper,” the spinoff of The Office which dropped its second season on Peacock recently. The first season got the journalism right, but the narrative was a bit clunky, as it sorted out who of its characters should be leading the way.

Fortunately, it seems like they’ve figured it out. Especially in the case of Domnhall Gleeson’s lead editor character, Ned Sampson, who I find far more likable in Season 2.

In case you missed it

No. 12 USC defeats Rutgers in Big Ten opener, but defensive woes detract from win

USC freshman star Luke Wafle’s football roots date back nearly a century

USC freshman star receiver Trent Mosley to miss Rutgers game

Chad Baker-Mazara sues USC, accuses Eric Musselman of ‘racially charged’ tirade

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 ryan.kartje@latimes.com, and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Only the Pirates and Cubs have met more often than the Dodgers and Giants, who faced off for the first time in 1889. And over all that time, the Dodgers are just two games better, with 1,294 wins to the Giants’ 1,292.

The Dodgers and Giants have also won more pennants, made more World Series appearances and have more players wearing their caps in the Hall of Fame than any other National League teams, all of which fueled a rivalry that was once among the most visceral and passionate in American sports.

But that was then and this is now.

After Sunday’s 3-1 victory over the Giants, the Dodgers’ 14^th win in their last 17 games, the team could finish a season with 100 wins for the fourth time in six years. The Giants have had just one winning record in that time.

The Dodgers (96-60), who have won five straight division titles, are headed to the postseason for a record-tying 14^th consecutive year. The Giants will miss the playoffs for a fifth straight season.

So is the rivalry dead? That depends on who you ask.

“It’s always a rivalry,” Giants pitcher Logan Webb. “We’d like to make it a little closer when it comes to the standings. But I definitely feel it when I throw against them.”

But then Webb, who is from Northern California, grew up with the rivalry and, as the longest-tenured Giant, pitched against the Dodgers in games that mattered. Giants coach Ron Washington, who made his major league debut with the Dodgers when the rivalry was still a thing, said many players on San Francisco’s roster don’t know that background.

“It should be a rivalry. But I don’t think the young kids we got know anything about a rivalry. They’re not history buffs.”

Webb said it’s the responsibility of the veterans on both sides to keep that history alive by explaining the enmity to the young players.

“I think there are still guys that came up in the system that know what it’s like,” he said. “It’s my job to kind of hype these guys up to play a game like this.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who played for the Dodgers and Giants during his 10-year career, agrees the rivalry now exists more in the history books than the current standings, where the Giants have been overtaken by the San Diego Padres, who will finish second to the Dodgers in the N.L. West for the fourth time in five seasons.

“It’s certainly a rivalry in the sense of the history, the fan bases,” Roberts said. “But obviously it’s about relevancy. The Padres have been successful the last handful of years, and so it’s certainly built some momentum. The geography lends itself to that too.

“But Dodgers-Giants is always fun.”

It hasn’t been so much fun for the Giants lately. San Francisco hasn’t won the season series with the Dodgers since 2021 and has lost more than 90 games this year for the first time in nine seasons.

On Sunday they went in front three batters into the game with Johan Cox working Dodger opener Jack Dreyer for a leadoff walk, then making his way around the bases on Dreyer’s throwing error, a stolen base and a one-one single by Victor Bericoto.

San Francisco would get just one more hit — a single by Jung Hoo Lee with one out in the sixth.

That allowed the Dodgers to tie the score in the bottom of the sixth on Tommy Edman’s seventh home run of the season just inside the right-field foul pole. An inning later they went ahead to stay when Max Muncy singled under a sliding Cox at second, moved to third on a single by rookie Josue De Paula and scored on Kiké Hernández’s double to center.

Josue de Paula hits a double in the fifth inning Sunday.

(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)

A two-out single by Muncy, his second of the game, scored Teoscar Hernández, who also had two hits, in the eighth inning with the final run.

Even the slumping Freddie Freeman contributed to the Dodgers’ 11-hit attack, ending an 0-for-11 slide with a broken-bat single in the fourth then singling again in the eighth.

Sunday’s result helped clarify the Dodgers’ once-muddy playoff picture. With six games left in the regular season, the Dodgers lead Atlanta by four games in the race for the second seed in the National League playoffs, which would give them a first-round bye and the homefield advantage in the division series.

The team’s postseason roster may be getting clearer as well. Right-hander Emmet Sheehan, who made 22 starts this season, came out of the bullpen for the first time Sunday and was brilliant in his audition for the playoffs.

“If there is a role in the postseason, it will be out of the [bull]pen,” Roberts said of Sheehan, who gave up just a hit and walk, striking out nine — one off his season high — in 5 1/3 innings.

De Paula, meanwhile, whose third multihit game extended his modest hitting streak to four games, appears to have secured a job as the team’s left-handed bat off the bench while utility player Hyeseong Kim, who has spent the last four months in the minors, will rejoin the Dodgers after the triple-A playoffs and be considered for a roster spot as a pinch-runner and late-inning defensive replacement.

“My expectation is that Hyeseong will be here during the off week and potentially be a conversation for the postseason because he has the ability to run, play defense, and steal a base,” Roberts said.

After Monday’s off day, the final break of the regular season for the Dodgers, the team is expected to activate Andy Pages, Roki Sasaki and Shohei Ohtani from the injured list during its three-game series with the Padres.

“We’ll get Andy back on Tuesday, which will be great, and then shortly thereafter we’ll get Shohei back. So yeah, things are starting to come together,” Roberts said. “We’re in a good spot.”

The staging is simple. A circle of nine stately wood chairs on a bare stage. Four actors, affixed with in-ear monitors, occupy different seats as testimony is elicited, provided and undermined.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is back in session in “The Ford/Hill Project,” now at REDCAT through Saturday. What follows is some of the most riveting and distressing testimony ever delivered in such a setting.

Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford are called back to testify under oath about the Supreme Court nominations of Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, respectively. This documentary drama, created by Elizabeth Marvel and director Lee Sunday Evans, is composed from the verbatim transcripts of these painful proceedings.

In 1991, Hill testified that Thomas had repeatedly sexually harassed her when he was her supervisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education. In 2018, Ford testified that she had been sexually assaulted in 1982 by a 17-year-old Kavanaugh when she was 15.

Marvel and Evans create a double helix from excerpts of these two hearings, which are separated by nearly 30 years yet reveal highly entrenched patriarchal patterns. Two women, summoning the courage to tell what they know about two men who are about to be entrusted with the most consequential governmental power, are put through the wringer as the political machine shifts into gear.

The actors wear in-ear monitors that feed them edited clips from the real audio of the hearings.

(Angel Origgi / REDCAT)

Marvel, one of the treasures of New York theater, takes on the role of Ford at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a run that ends Sunday. (The piece premiered at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in 2024.) At REDCAT, the superb Rosemarie DeWitt assumes Marvel’s place, standing in for Ford but never attempting anything as crass as an impersonation.

The production, under Evans’ precise direction, manages to find a tone that might be paradoxically described as emotionally resonant neutrality. Those in-ear monitors that the actors are wearing feed them edited clips from the real audio of the hearings.

Ford, a psychology professor with an expertise in biostatistics, answers prosecutorial questions about a life-altering trauma in a manner that leans on her scientific training for security. Hill, a Yale-educated lawyer asked to elaborate on the prurient conduct she was chronically subjected to at work, never loses her professional composure.

“Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter,” Ford tells Sen. Patrick Leahy when asked about the strongest memory she has of the incident. (Ford’s voice, resounding at the start of the production, keeps the brutality of the assault at the forefront of our minds.)

Hill, played by Betty Gabriel, describes the threatening nature of the unwanted advances that created such a toxic work environment. Aware of the damage that Thomas could inflict on her young career, Hill was determined to do what she could to salvage an extraordinary legal opportunity.

At times during Thursday’s performance, Gabriel appeared to stumble on her lines, but it was hard to tell because Hill is speaking extempore in the most difficult of public forums and she doubles back on her sentences, carefully parsing out her words. What both DeWitt and Gabriel honor exquisitely in their performances is the quiet integrity of these women as they willingly expose themselves to political attacks for the sake of causes greater than themselves — the truth, first and foremost, but also gender equality and the Senate’s advisory role as a cornerstone of American democracy.

The actors change not only their seats but also their roles.

(Angel Origgi / REDCAT)

Dulé Hill channels the presence of Thomas, who eventually theatrically hijacks the hearing by referring to the experience as a “high-tech lynching for uppity Blacks.” Rich Sommer gives us the voice of Kavanaugh extolling the pleasures of beer and barking at senators who pointedly ask about the extent of his drinking.

The actors change not only their seats but also their roles. The interrogated become the interrogators in a way that gets a little blurry when the focus initially shifts from Hill and Ford to Thomas and Kavanaugh. But the murkiness doesn’t last long in a production that achieves an admirable balance between objectivity and emotion, abstraction and representation.

The restraint imposed by the production adds to its power. There’s no need to editorialize. The proceedings skewer themselves.

When Sen. Alan Simpson quotes from “Othello” in defense of Thomas, he uses Shakespeare’s lyrical authority but fails to realize that he is in fact invoking the false words of the tragedy’s villain, Iago. Not that the easily impressed senators, eager to exculpate a favored man, took note of the irony.

The patriarchy cares mostly about shoring up its own power. Thomas and Kavanaugh were part of the Supreme Court majority that voted to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

The ending, the only time when Evans’ direction loses its poise, blares “make it right,” performed by the Tune-Yards, as Thomas and Kavanaugh, adorning themselves in black robes, find their seated place according to seniority among the nine chairs. The theatrical flourish seems jarring, but so too is the historic moment.

“The Ford/Hill Project” filled me with sadness but not despair. The bravery of Hill, who educated a nation on sexual harassment, and the emotional strength of Ford, who bared her trauma for public enlightenment, live on in the American consciousness as it progresses, in fits and starts, toward justice.

You’ve probably never seen Michael Araujo, but if you’ve attended an Angels game since 2013, you’ve definitely heard him.

On Sunday, Araujo will work the final game of his 14th season as the Angels’ public address announcer. During that time he has started more home games than Mike Trout and finished hundreds more than any reliever to come out of the bullpen.

Yet for most fans, his voice has been little more than background noise, an acapella Muzak that only gets noticed when Araujo makes a mistake.

And mistakes just don’t happen, said Davin Maske, the Angels’ director of entertainment and production.

“I don’t remember any,” said Maske, Araujo’s boss. “There isn’t that one major mistake since I’ve been here that I could recall.”

Araujo, who is also the stadium voice for the Galaxy, has worked Gold Cup and Copa América soccer matches, eight World Cup games and the 2003 Women’s World Cup final. But the Angels’ gig is his dream job and he passed 1,000 games as the team’s PA announcer last month.

“He loves sports,” said his wife Kathryn Casey. “He really does enjoy being there and being part of it because he’s a huge fan. It’s not just a job.”

It is a job that comes with high expectations, though. Because if the broadcasts of the late Vin Scully were the soundtrack for baseball fans in Southern California, for people of a certain age, the booming baritone of John Ramsey will forever be the template for what a PA announcer should sound like.

Ramsey, who died in 1990, was the original PA voice of the Angels, as well as the Dodgers, Kings, Lakers and L.A. Raiders. He also did the Rams and USC football with a calm, articulate and authoritative delivery that was so powerful, it had its own echo.

“Would you all please rise (rise, rise, rise) and honor America in the singing of our national anthem (anthem, anthem, anthem).”

It was like being spoken to by God, an impression aided by the fact that Ramsey, hidden in a small booth near the press box, was heard but never seen.

“That’s not me, Araujo said. “So I try not to emulate that.”

Angels public address announcer Michael Araujo overlooks the field in his booth before a game against the Minnesota Twins on September 17.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Still, like Ramsey, Araujo’s gift is his voice. And though his delivery isn’t nearly as deep and commanding as Ramsey’s, it is unique in that it has a distinct, enthusiastic lilt, one he’s been able to maintain through what will likely be the Angels’ first 100-loss season.

“I try to bring the energy,” he said.

“It’s all about riding your vibes,” Maske added. That’s why Araujo’s perch on the club level behind home plate is exposed to the crowd rather than enclosed, like the booths to his right used by the radio and TV broadcasters. The idea is to feed off the fans, not lock them out.

“Baseball is gnarly. It’s repetitive. It’s a sport that’s inherently, at times, very boring,” Maske said. “So you’ve got to find those little moments to make it entertaining.

“It’s not NFL. It’s not the NBA. It’s baseball. Mike’s good at kind of finding that balance of excitement and traditionalism.”

And the excitement, even at the end of a blowout loss, is genuine, he said.

“The Angels were my team growing up, so the Angels was my dream job,” said Araujo, a former season-ticket holder. “I’ve been very fortunate.”

“I want to get paid to watch sports and that’s it,” he continued. “So whatever I’ve got to do to be invaluable so that I stay there, that’s kind of my mission.”

It’s not a mission that pays much, however, with most PA announcers across the majors earning between $100-$500 a game to announce each hitter as he comes to plate, read commercial copy between innings and, in Araujo’s case at least, to handle the play-by-play for the cartoon races that run on the scoreboard late in the game.

“It’s fun money,” said Casey who, like Araujo, is a teacher as well as the clock operator at Galaxy games, where she works alongside her husband. “We use it for travel.”

The job is one Araujo stumbled into. Despite a rich voice and a lifelong passion for sports, pairing the two was something that just happened, not something that was planned.

A teacher at an alternative-education high school in La Puente, Araujo, 54, has worked for the Galaxy since the MLS team’s second game in 1996, filling a number of roles from glorified errand boy to assistant game-day producer. That last job required him to stand behind the PA announcer and relay silent cues, and since he knew the gig, Araujo was handed a microphone and asked to fill in a few times during absences, sick days and other emergencies.

The biggest emergency came when Victor Villalba, the Galaxy’s regular announcer, left in the middle of a season to join the Dallas Cowboys radio team. Araujo was the natural choice to finish out the year and he’s been there ever since.

“That was 2002,” he said. “So I’m in my 25th season.”

It was similar desperation that led to his job with the Angels. When David Courtney, who had been with the team for nearly two decades, died at 56 two months after the 2012 season, the Angels began asking around for a replacement and Araujo’s name was the one they heard most frequently. So he was invited to spring training the following year to audition and he beat out two others to claim the job.

On game days Araujo gets to the ballpark about 2½ hours before first pitch, pausing in the parking lot to pull on an Angels cap and jersey with his name on the back. If the team wins, he’ll wear the same jersey the next day; if not, he’ll rotate through a closet of red, white, gray and City Connect jerseys.

Araujo’s only other tools are a microphone and a laptop, on which he’s installed an interactive software program he created that tracks the lineups of both teams. He can also call up pronunciation guides for players on all 30 major league teams, though he’s found the radio broadcasters for the visiting clubs are often more helpful.

Angels public address announcer Michael Araujo has worked more than 1,000 games at Angel Stadium and has been the Galaxy’s public address announcer since 2002.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

His cramped work space, about 90 feet from the field, has enough room for two green vinyl chairs, though Araujo prefers to stand when he’s working. And unlike many people whose vocal chords are their livelihood, Araujo says he has few ritualistic habits to protect his voice.

“In my bag I have a gazillion cough drops; a couple of different kinds, some with honey,” he said. “I definitely wouldn’t do anything carbonated before a game. Makes you burp and all that kind of stuff.”

Araujo is one of three Latino PA announcers in the majors, alongside Marysol Castro, who works for the New York Mets, and Frank Fernandez of the Miami Marlins. Given that 30% of big-league players are from Latin America, the fact that just 10% of the PA announcers are Latino is something Araujo said he thinks about during Hispanic Heritage Month.

“Did I grow up in Boyle Heights or anything like that? No, I’m no poster child or miracle story or anything like that,” said Araujo, who was raised middle class in La Verne, where his father, a sheriff’s deputy, and mother, a nurse, often spoke to one another in Spanish.

“We are here in 2026 and it’s not a little more prevalent. It can be an aspiration to any kid, even one of my students, that bigger things are possible.”

For a PA announcer, it turns out, there are times when it’s important to be heard and seen.

EDINBURG, Texas — Quinten Martinez, pumping gas under a hot south Texas sun, remembers a time when fueling up didn’t require difficult decisions.

“Is it going to be groceries this week?” said the 28-year-old Amazon delivery driver as he watched the numbers tick higher. “Is it gonna be getting gas in our tank to go to work?”

He shook his head when asked about President Trump’s assertion last week that higher gas prices are a small price to pay for the war with Iran.

“I don’t feel like it’s a good trade-off,” Martinez said. “I don’t feel like this is good for anyone.”

Voters across the country, and across the political spectrum, tend to agree.

Interviews with voters in several states, along with a fresh round of national polling, reveal an overwhelming sense of frustration that skyrocketing gas prices — a direct result of Trump’s war — are creating serious and sustained financial hardships for America’s working class.

The acute concerns are adding to a bad political environment that may be worsening for Trump and his Republican Party as early voting gets underway in the November midterm elections.

Historically, the party holding the White House has suffered major losses in midterms. About seven weeks before election day, Republican candidates at all levels are struggling with the additional burden of Trump’s weak approval ratings, an unpopular war and an affordability crisis that Trump and his congressional allies had promised to fix.

But when Trump campaigned in North Carolina on Wednesday, he played down the effect of surging gas prices.

“You have a little higher. It’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done,” Trump said of the war, which he describes as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. “Remember that. It’s a little more. Frankly, even if it was a lot more.”

‘Gas prices matter’

Despite what Trump says, there are few things that may matter more this election year than the price of a gallon of gasoline, according to political operatives in both parties.

Gas prices are moving sharply in the wrong direction at a time of year when drivers typically get some relief. The national average for a gallon of gas reached $4.48 on Friday, according to the American Automobile Assn., up roughly 17 cents over the last week, 40 cents in a month and $1.27 from a year ago.

“Gas prices matter because they’re one of the few economic indicators voters experience and see in real time,” said veteran Republican strategist Chris Wilson. “The price is literally staring them in the face several times a week. So I wouldn’t minimize the frustration we’re seeing, particularly among working- and middle-class voters.”

Interviews with voters last week found bipartisan frustration and disappointment.

Democrats and unaffiliated voters were especially motivated to punish Republicans at the ballot box for their economic hardship, while some of Trump’s working-class supporters pledged to support Republicans this fall, even if they weren’t happy with the president’s leadership on the economy.

Some Republicans say they’re disappointed

Dan Lloyd, who voted for Trump, lamented the president’s leadership as the 63-year-old carpenter paid $4.39 a gallon to fill up his pickup truck in Mesa, Ariz.

“He hurt himself stepping into this,” Lloyd said of Trump. “Where’s all this oil from Venezuela? I thought we were flush with gas and everything, but no. The American people eat it every time, whether it’s interest rates, food, gasoline.”

Still, he expects to vote Republican in the midterms.

“I think the Democratic Party has lost its way,” Lloyd said. “I just feel like the whole system’s on the verge of collapse.”

In sweltering Edinburg, Texas, 52-year-old Kristin Jimenez shrugged off the rising price of gas after filling up her Mercedes.

“We’ve paid the same price under Republican presidents, we’ve paid this price under Democrat presidents,” said Jimenez, a mother who runs a small business. She plans to vote for a Republican because they’re the “lesser of two evils.”

She said gas prices aren’t part of her calculation.

“We don’t mind paying $8 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks, but we have a problem paying four bucks at the pump?” she said. “Make it make sense.”

More than 1,500 miles to the north in central Michigan, 35-year-old Garth Johnson is trying to make ends meet running a deep-cleaning business with several gas-powered vehicles and one machine fueled by diesel, which was $6.79 a gallon as he filled up his SUV.

Johnson voted for Trump, but doesn’t know what he’s going to do in November. He said he doesn’t feel qualified to second-guess the president’s evaluation of the war, but he’s feeling financial pressure in his own life.

“I like a lot of the things he’s done,” Johnson said, but added, “I’m a little guy and I’ve got to live my life.”

Other voters are less forgiving

Midterm voting was already underway Friday in Virginia, where Alan Johnson said Trump seems to have “no empathy” for Americans who are struggling financially.

“With the gas prices being what they are and continuing to grow, we’ve got to do something. Hopefully the Democrats can get into office and turn the ship around,” said the 60-year-old engineer, who cast ballots in the morning for Democrats for the U.S. Senate and House.

In Raleigh, N.C., teacher Brittney Bivins sees surging gas prices as evidence that Trump and his Republican Party aren’t dealing with the issues that matter most to people like her.

“He really doesn’t care about everyday people,” the 45-year-old said. “He can afford the gas, but most of us can’t. So it feels like he’s not even connected to his own people.”

Bivins, who described herself as an independent, said she’s eager to support Democrats this fall — especially the party’s emerging democratic socialist wing.

At a gas station in Lansing, Mich., Rina Risper spent $50 on eight gallons of premium gas.

“When I rolled up I was in shock, actually, and said, well, maybe I should drink water instead of having that $4.99 bottle of whatever it was I was gonna get,” Risper said. She thinks Trump’s tariffs will make affordability even worse.

“We’re not in Miami. We’re in Lansing, Michigan,” she said. “It’s really going to impact our people.”

Polls reflect economic distress

Nationwide, more than three times as many voters say they are falling behind financially as getting ahead, according to a Fox News survey released Wednesday. By a 15-point margin, Democrats are considered the party that would better handle inflation and prices at a time when the cost of living and the economy are voters’ top concerns.

The Fox poll found that 61% of voters say gas prices are a major problem for their household, compared with 48% two years ago, while 52% say the same for healthcare costs, compared with 44% in 2024. Majorities also view housing costs and grocery prices as major problems, although neither has increased.

Overall, nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say the administration has made the economy worse, compared with 52% in September 2025, including one-quarter of Republicans. Only 46% of Republicans say the administration has improved the economy, while about one-quarter don’t see an impact.

Back in rural south Texas, an area where Trump’s GOP made gains in recent elections, Martinez, the Amazon delivery driver, could not contain his frustration.

Trump “likes to tout that we are the best economy in the world,” said Martinez, but in rural towns, “you don’t see any of the winning, you don’t see any of the ups that he’s talking about.”

“You just see struggles for day-to-day life,” he said.

Peoples, Bedayn and Cooper write for the Associated Press. Peoples reported from New York and Cooper from Mesa. AP writers Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, Jacqueline GaNun in Lansing, Sarah Rankin in Richmond and Nicholas Riccardi in Mason, Mich., contributed to this report.

Premiering Sunday on PBS, “Trespasses,” a four-part adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s 2022 debut novel, is a story of love in a time of choler. Set outside of Belfast in 1975 during the Troubles, it follows a clandestine affair between Cushla Lavery (Lola Petticrew, the serial killer in “Furious”), a 24-year-old Catholic elementary school teacher, and Michael Agnew (Tom Cullen), an older, married Protestant barrister known for defending stone-throwing Catholic youth with an eye to keeping them out of the IRA.

Emptying the thesaurus, press materials stress the hot stuff — “scandalous,” “risqué,” “racy,” “torrid,” “titillating” and “steamy” — and while there is more than a modicum of modest sex scenes, the actual tone of the limited series, as adapted by Ailbhe Keogan and directed by Dawn Shadforth, is quite measured; it runs on talk. That’s not to say, given the setting and the setup, which betokens tragedy as surely as Romeo meeting Juliet, it doesn’t throb with tension, let’s say, three-quarters of the time.

Along with teaching, Cushla works for her brother Eamonn (Martin McCann) at the family bar. The clientele includes Catholics and Protestants, united in their love of whiskey, lately including Michael — whose opposition to extremism grants him the honor of being disliked by both sides — seemingly there expressly, even too expressly, to gaze upon Cushla while he pretends to do crosswords. And she gazes back. Moving through discussions of Malcolm McDowell’s typecasting and group lessons in Irish, led by Cushla, they will go beyond gazing.

She’s a ray of light; he’s magnetically mature. You may or may not buy the mutual attraction the series insists upon, or for that matter, trust the lovers’ motivations. (I think we’re meant at least not to wholly trust Michael, as the older party, with a reputation as a womanizer — I didn’t, anyway.) But you will also be invited to change your mind. Because the camera never leaves Cushla’s side, anything there is to learn we learn along with her, which pays some dramatic dividends and means we’ll be forced to revise earlier judgments, usually for the better.

It’s a dangerous liaison. Michael, who is given to speechifying (and actual speechmaking), declares, “We cannot let the old bigots and the boys with guns tell us how to live … Otherwise nothing will ever change. Hate wins” and, in a favorite refrain, “We must find the bravery to choose freedom over fear.” Cushla, however notes that she comes “from a long line of Catholics that have survived by keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. Having a big opinion like yours, it’s a luxury I don’t have.”

Gerry Harkin (Oisin Thompson), left, Cushla’s colleague and confidant.

(Peter Marley / Channel 4)

Many shots are framed as if Cushla and Michael are being watched, whether or not they are, though sometimes they are, including by each other. (“They like to let me know they know where I am,” Michael says, when Cushla mentions seeing a patrol car outside his flat.) We’re shown the oppressive presence of loyalist troops, and some anti-Catholic vandalism, and a neighbor reflexively checking his car for a bomb, but the greater violence comes through as background noise on the radio or TV news, or reported by Cushla’s young students.

Fortunately, if no less terribly, there is more to the story, and many of the most compelling scenes have little or nothing to do with Michael. (Every scene is a Cushla scene.) She’s wonderful with her class, and her colleague and confidant Gerry Harkin (Oisin Thompson), who will jump onstage at a school assembly to interrupt a strident, bigoted superior, leading the students in a peace song — “Take away the hate and the violence / Bring love into our hearts.” Viewers will consider his bowl haircut a romantic nonstarter, but there are levels to be revealed.

Cushla may not have the luxury of big opinions, but as an obviously good person, whatever one thinks of adultery, she’s unafraid to go against the grain in support of her student Davy McGeown (Daithi Ó Haragain), whose mother (Emily Taaffe) is Protestant and whose Catholic father, in the child’s words, has been “beat up for loving my mummy.” She’s also supportive of Davy’s bright older brother Tommy (Conlaoch Gough-Cunningham), teetering on the edge after the attack on his father.

Above all, there is Cushla’s mother, Gina, played by Gillian Anderson, in a downward spiral since the death of her husband, some two years earlier. Introduced in a state of drunken collapse, Anderson — fearful, bitter, despairing, protective — is quite magnificent limning different levels of intoxication. But she’s even more impressive in her sober scenes, participating in the world beyond her couch, bringing food to the McGeowns and, finally, acting as a mother to Gina.

Michael’s declarations not even aside, Keoghan has a gift for writing dialogue that feels native to the speaker and doesn’t land heavily on a point, and apart from the lovemaking interludes and a gauzy montage of a romantic trip to Dublin, Shadforth’s naturalistic direction enhances the drama by not underscoring it. She has an especially convincing way with party scenes — a school disco, a wedding, an art opening, a birthday party (at which Michael performs a soulful, foreshadowing version of the Carter Family’s “The Last Move For Me”) — where so many productions fall down.

Come for the promised steaminess. Stay for the rest of it.

Jim Harbaugh had never lost an NFL opener as a head coach… until last Sunday.

Now, with the Las Vegas Raiders coming to town, Harbaugh is looking to keep another streak intact. With him as coach, his Chargers are 4-0 against the Silver & Black.

If Sunday’s game isn’t a must-win for the Chargers, it’s certainly a high-stakes contest on the heels of an opening flop against the Arizona Cardinals.

The Chargers did precious little right in that 26-14 defeat at SoFi Stadium, the first Week 1 loss for Harbaugh in seven openers.

The Chargers, who were favored by 9½ points, failed to generate anything close to a rhythm. The newly unveiled Mike McDaniel offense failed to get any real traction, and Justin Herbert was sacked three times.

One of the few bright spots for the Chargers was receiver Ladd McConkey, but his availability remains uncertain.

Meanwhile, the Raiders dominated the visiting Miami Dolphins, 27-13, handing Klint Kubiak a victory in his coaching debut. Granted, the Dolphins don’t show a lot of promise.

Harbaugh’s teams have swept the Raiders each of the past two seasons. In fact, the last time the Chargers lost to the Raiders was a 63-21 debacle Dec. 14, 2023, and Chargers coach Brandon Staley was fired the next day.

You need a boost, right?

We’re living under a dark cloud, with a steady downpour of graft, thuggery and baloney.

There’s the raffling of presidential pardons and the attacks on reporters for doing their jobs, the clownish trade war with Canada, the bungled disaster in Iran, the petty obsessions with the ballroom and the Kennedy Center, the hogwash about a stolen election, the attacks on immigrants and the shameless presidential profiteering while working people suffer the cost of Trump’s countless broken promises.

I could go on, and I will. But rest assured, I have not forgotten about the boost I promised.

For all the affronts, nothing strikes me as more sinister than the Trump administration’s ambitious assault on the planet. Despite nearly daily headlines about the global calamity of overheated oceans, melting glaciers, stark weather transformations and species extinction, Trump keeps shoveling more coal onto a fire that will rage long after he’s dead and gone.

He’s gutted environmental protections and scientific research and dismantled clean energy initiatives. Now his administration is rolling back limits on power plant emissions, attempting to open the California coast to more oil drilling and sabotaging the state’s ambitious goals on emission controls and electric vehicle conversion.

We don’t need AI to threaten the future of humanity. We’ve got Trump.

It’s tempting to duck under the covers and wait for the nightmare to end, but the good news is that a lot of people are standing up rather than rolling over, rebelling against the ignorance and callous disregard that threatens our most precious and fragile shared inheritance.

In August, hundreds showed up to defend California’s authority to govern its own coast at a Santa Monica hearing of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and 18,000 more people filed comments online.

The rollback of environmental safeguards is, for many, a call to arms.

“Yes, I am discouraged. … But I am not despairing,” said Bill McKibben, an author and environmental activist who is organizing a worldwide event called Sun Day for next year to promote clean energy. “We’re reacting to multiple crises, and we’re led by a pack of fools, so why would anybody not stand up?”

McKibben launched a national movement five years ago called Third Act, and tens of thousands of people 60 and older have signed on to advocate for climate action, voting rights and civic participation. Third Act now operates in about 30 states, with a robust chapter in Southern California.

Former Times reporter Zan Dubin has worked as both a volunteer and a paid communications consultant for Third Act, and I asked her what someone could expect to do if they became a member of Third Act/SoCal.

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben is organizing a worldwide event called Sun Day next year to promote clean energy.

(Amanda Swinhart / Associated Press)

“We do it all,” Dubin said, from promoting climate-friendly candidates to running phone banks and testifying at public meetings. She said Third Act co-sponsors protests at Dodger Stadium, and she and others planned to meet at Vin Scully Avenue and Stadium Way for Sunday’s game against the San Francisco Giants. They want the Dodgers to stop doing business with Big Oil and bench their sponsorship deal with Phillips 66.

She also called out Disneyland for its exhaust-spewing Autopia attraction, along with former Times climate columnist Sammy Roth, and Disneyland responded by announcing in 2024 that it was switching to electric cars beginning in 2027.

Dubin, co-founder of National Drive Electric Week, said 170 volunteer-led events were being held nationwide over the next month to promote EVs, and she was leading one Friday in Irvine.

“Action is absolutely the antidote to despair,” Dubin said. “I find that despite the onslaught of these horrifying headlines … taking action invigorates me.”

Claremont resident Margaret Davis knows that feeling. She emailed me in 2023, prior to participating in a Third Act event, and said many retirees have time on their hands, which puts them in a powerful position.

“The climate crisis is the greatest existential threat humans have ever faced, hence we live in a time when we can make the greatest change for the better,” Davis wrote at the time.

When I called her a few days ago, Davis told me she’s now a member of Senior Stewards Acting for the Environment. She lives at Pilgrim Place — a senior community with a focus on justice, peace and environment — where residents meet regularly to study, discuss and advocate for sustainability, biodiversity and environmental causes.

“When I was in college in 1970, we had the antiwar movement and that was the first year of Earth Day,” Davis said. “At the time, I thought Earth Day was just a distraction from what was going on in the world.”

Later, she said, “I came to realize it was the biggest issue of all time.”

Climate activist Sim Bilal stands next to pumps at an oil field in Los Angeles in 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Like Davis, I went to college in the ‘70s, and there’s no denying that our aggressively consumptive generation played a key role in manufacturing a crisis for our children and grandchildren. We’ve got matches in our hands and smoke on the horizon, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we’d see atonement not as a hobby, but as a duty.

As for the next generation, climate activist Sim Bilal, 24, said he too shares the sense that this is both a wickedly frightening time and a moment of opportunity.

“In the last month, we’ve gotten more young people involved,” said Bilal, executive director of Youth Climate Stewards 4 Local Action. “We usually have to reach out to them, but so many people have been wanting to get involved, and they’re so eager, and that’s been affirming for me. The policies are depressing, but the fact that people are reenergized and want to fight back is really exciting.”

Bilal said faith in politics, government and corporations is not high among his peers, but he’s trying to grow a network of young people to cultivate and support future leaders.

“A mentor told me there are two kinds of power — organized people, and organized money,” said Bilal, whose activism began when his grandmother died and he began wondering if her cancer, and global warming, were connected to the oil drilling in his South L.A. neighborhood. “We don’t have the money, but a lot of the work we do is political and civic education, demystifying power, and making people understand they have agency.”

You needed a boost, right?

There you go.

Whatever your age, do not despair.

Get off the chair.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

Let’s go back in time to the day when parents sent all their children to the same neighborhood public school, one brother after another, one sister after another. Coaches were thrilled. The youngest couldn’t wait to follow the big brothers, especially in football, to the school where they were once ball boys.

Fast forward to Thursday night at Davidson Field in Newport Beach. The quarterback for La Serna High was Grady Long. He’s the last of the Long brothers playing for La Serna. First was Dylan, a quarterback who went to Cal Poly Pomona to play baseball. Second was Jake, a quarterback who just got drafted by the Angels this year. Third was Owen, a 225-pound linebacker for Arizona State.

On the other team was junior quarterback JD Annett of Corona del Mar. Eldest brother Kaleb is the backup quarterback at Central Florida. Middle brother Brady is playing quarterback at Eastern Washington. JD made his first varsity start last week, then came Thursday night when he and Grady engaged in an entertaining duel that deserved to be on TV. Corona del Mar won 30-24 in a game that had four lead changes in the second half.

Long passed for 347 yards and two touchdowns. Annett passed for a career-high 289 yards and two touchdowns. He also ran for two touchdowns. Each had best friends help them. Landon Armenta had nine catches for 221 yards and one touchdown for La Serna. Nolan Scott caught seven passes for 115 yards and one touchdown for Corona del Mar.

The game ended with drama. Long was driving La Serna to a potential game-winning score when he completed a pass to the 24-yard line on fourth down. The clock showed 0.00 on the scoreboard. Just like the Michigan-Western Michigan college game earlier this season, the officials put one second back on the clock for a final play. The La Serna crowd was getting excited. But then the officials realized La Serna was just short of a first down. Corona del Mar took possession and ran off the one second to win.

“It was a great football game,” La Serna coach Andy George said. “We ran out of time. Both teams played hard. Nothing but growth from here.”

It was a game between two 4-0 teams. One had to lose but it was fun for all, each team answering the other until time ran out.

As Annett was leaving the field with a big smile, he said he was going to FaceTime his brothers. In defeat, the 6-foot-4 Long, who’s also a star pitcher for the baseball team, held his head high speaking to family and friends, showing despite a loss he’s ready for the next game, the next challenge.

Even though the Longs have no more boys arriving at La Serna, there’s a sister who will be freshman next year at La Serna. And the brothers say she’s the best athlete in the family.

Can you say flag football?

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

An Australian indoor fitness athlete apologized Thursday for continuing to participate in a recent competition after apparently soiling herself.

Joanna Wietrzyk, a 24-year-old Melborne resident, could be seen with what appears to be fecal matter on parts of her body as she competed in a Hyrox event Saturday in Beijing, China. Despite that, she was permitted to stay in the race — even though the running-workout event involves the shared use of equipment by multiple competitors — and eventually was declared the winner with a time of 1 hour, 1 minute and 23 seconds.

Wietrzyk has decided to “retroactively withdraw from the race and forfeit the points I earned,” she indicated in a Sept. 18 statement posted on Instagram.

“I want to offer my sincere apology to the people of China, my fellow competitors, the spectators and the HYROX organizers for what happened during the race in Beijing,” Wietrzyk wrote.

“I felt completely fit and healthy at the start of the race, with no reason to expect any illness. Looking back, I regret the decision to not have stepped off the track. I recognize that I should have made a different choice. I take responsibility for my decision to continue and am deeply sorry for the discomfort and disruption it caused.

“I know my actions had an impact beyond myself, and I am genuinely sorry to everyone who was affected. I am learning from this experience and will carry those lessons with me, including remembering that there is more to life than racing and knowing when it is right to step away.”

The message contrasted from that of a post Wietrzyk made earlier in the week that, according to the Athletic, also included a selfie of the athlete apparently in a hospital bed.

“Go hard or go home … a win is a win,” the since-deleted post reportedly said. “In all seriousness, thank you for all the support. I’ll be back soon.”

First introduced in 2017, Hyrox indoor fitness competitions are made up of eight 1-kilometer (.62-mile) runs that are separated by intense exercises at eight different workout stations (ski ergometer, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jump, rowing, farmer’s carry, sandbag lunges and medicine ball squat/throw). Wietrzyk holds the world record in the women’s event with a time of 54:26 set earlier this year.

Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste posted a statement Sunday on Instagram apologizing for “the recent events in China” and indicating that the competition has taken unspecified steps to prevent another such occurrence.

“I apologise to all that were directly or indirectly affected, as well as to everyone who felt like we did not handle the situation like we should have,” Fürste wrote. “HYROX made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race. In the end it is my job to foresee these potential incidents — and I did not.

“Of course, we started improving event processes, plus making rulebook changes immediately. As of this moment, there are new rules and procedures in place to prevent situations like this from happening again.”

New York Mets first baseman Jared Young was carted off the field Thursday night after he took a knee to the head during a collision with pitcher Nolan McLean while both players were trying to make a play on a ground ball hit by Philadelphia’s Justin Crawford.

Young, who landed face-first in the dirt, reportedly was briefly knocked unconscious during the sixth-inning incident at Citi Field.

“It was scary to sit there and just know that he wasn’t with us in that moment,” Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor said after the game. “He was just somewhere else.”

Young was able to give a thumbs-up to the crowd, however, as he was driven off. Mets interim manager Andy Green told reporters after the game that it “feels at this point in time like we’ve avoided the scariest outcomes.”

A CT scan at a hospital was negative, said Green, who added that Young had concussion symptoms but also had full use of his extremities.

Still, Green said after his team’s 3-0 loss, “it was a terrifying moment on a baseball field. Took him a while to come to. It was a really scary collision.”

McLean remained in the game and struck out Philadelphia’s Garrett Stubbs to end the inning. He was replaced by reliever Tobias Myers in the seventh.

Young, 31, has been a bright spot for the Mets (69-84) during his first full season, hitting .266 with nine homers and 39 RBIs in 103 games. A left knee injury caused him to miss six weeks early in the season.

“He’s somebody we all respect and appreciate and have love for,” Lindor said. “He’s been a big part of our team this whole year.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“The Pineapple” promised to be intense, but even hours before the show had begun, it had me startled.

I was warned, via a waiver attendees must sign to experience the production, to expect “intimate, and/or aggressive physical contact,” “confined spaces and passageways,” and that I may be asked to crawl, kneel or lie down. All of it would happen in a show that I was cautioned would present simulated violence or “disturbing imagery.”

As much as I love participatory, immersive theater — productions that often rely on some form of audience participation — “The Pineapple” was providing me with a checklist of things I generally avoid. It was a feeling that only grew when I reached the waiver’s end, and signed off that I was OK with claustrophobia (I am not).

What had I done?

None of it, though, had fully prepared me for what Candle House’s “The Pineapple” actually was. By the time the hourlong experience in North Hollywood had reached its conclusion, I had been straddled by a woman who forced a gloved finger down my throat, outfitted with hooded, vision-impairing face masks, grabbed by the wrists as they were taped together, ordered to crawl toward a blood-stained room, and spooned or kissed by multiple male performers.

“The Pineapple” is a secretive hourlong show that seeks to disorient attendees.

(Sona Earnest)

“The Pineapple” is a buzzed-about show among the tight-knit immersive community, one that fits into the medium’s long tradition of productions designed for a sole audience member. A short run last year in New Jersey sold out. Candle House has such a devoted following that its L.A. shows have been selling out almost as instantly as they are announced. While it’s thus far been shrouded in secrecy — “The Pineapple” will not even release a program or cast list until its run has concluded — it comes highly recommended from acquaintances who saw it on the East Coast. I was alternately excited and apprehensive to take part, and my editor would like me to note that I pitched this story on my own accord.

“The Pineapple” in its limited online description promises an alien encounter. Sign up, and an email will tell you that it will “change your life.”

For the passionate crowd of immersive enthusiasts who may want to experience “The Pineapple” and are worried I just spoiled the show, I call nonsense. For one, I believe audiences should know exactly what they are paying for, and two, I do not think “The Pineapple” can be properly spoiled. It was at times otherworldly, in moments psychedelic, and while there were scenes in which I felt fear, there were also others in which I laughed. While “The Pineapple” flirts with horror, torture and conspiracy nuts, it also provides space for Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”

And in “The Pineapple’s” best instances, it created a sense of personal intimacy with its performers. These were actors who may have earlier been needling at or attempting to push my boundaries. “The Pineapple” wants to toy with our trust, to create a safe space where it can intermix themes of abuse and empathy until their lines are blurred. Consider its waiver, then, not just a warning but an attempt to weed out those who may be offended or triggered.

“The Pineapple” tries to break us. And it charges nearly $250 for the privilege.

“How do I put this,” says the show’s core creator/director Evan Neiden when asked his intentions behind “The Pineapple.” “I think the show is designed to boil you. Like the lobster in the pot. It gets warmer and warmer and warmer and it’s slowly acclimating you to this new set of rules that keep changing to this new environment of degeneracy and conspiracy.”

“The Pineapple” teases an alien encounter. It is theatrical production designed for one guest.

(Sona Earnest)

Neiden, the 27 year-old founder of Candle House, has long specialized in one-on-one phone productions designed to be done from the caller’s home. While drastically different in narrative content, his horror show “Claws,” in which its solo guest acts as an emergency line operator, is good prep for “The Pineapple” as it also seeks to push people to the brink of comfort.

If there is an artistic thesis behind the work of the New York-based Candle House, it is to cast its audience as performers, but then poke, prod and disorient until they stop performing and start reacting on instinct — or, in theory, become unguarded. It’s an idea that simply to get through the day we are playing a role of sorts, tuning our conversations to please others, or presenting exaggerated, false or tidied-up versions of ourselves on social media.

“In an experience like this, you’re alone with the inhabitants of the world, and they’re all there as part of your hallucination, your dream and your journey,” Neiden says. “You don’t need to worry about presenting a certain way or being perceived in a certain way. All the characters in ‘The Pineapple’ are degenerates, and this show invites you to become one as well. That’s very hard to do if someone from the respectable, outside world is watching.”

The setup for “The Pineapple” is simple. I was playing a respondent to an ad for a meeting with an alien. But things quickly spiral beyond clear narrative recognition, as piecing together the story becomes a puzzle unto itself. And it will shift depending on how one reacts, as there are multiple endings. But know only that in its opening minutes we learn that we have been swindled and are now part of a ritual of sorts to summon said alien.

“The Pineapple” offers intimate actor interactions designed to push boundaries.

(Sona Earnest)

You may find yourself, as I did, raising your voice, as “The Pineapple” did light research on me. My career was insulted, and I was mocked for fumbling around while attempting to juice a pineapple with a woefully inadequate kitchen utensil. Neiden says many attendees try to break the show itself, to push back and see how far its narrative can bend. This is typically not how I play, wanting to experience a production as its designers have intended and thus I let “The Pineapple” take the lead rather than trying to force my will upon it.

I am not easily offended and never used the safe word provided, although there were instances where I came close, namely when my feet were being aggressively, unwelcomely massaged. And yet there were scenes in which I thought about deeply personal relationships I have had, specifically when a character asked me to think of a time when forgiveness or an apology was craved from someone I am no longer closely connected with.

“The Pineapple” then began to feel like a metaphor. As I moved from darkened room to darkened room, ridiculed in one, flirted with in another, a thread of finding one’s own personal paradise in a hellscape began to emerge. Is it aliens we are seeking, “The Pineapple” begins to ask, or simply perhaps purpose? The act of forgiveness, Neiden tells me, was on his mind when crafting the show.

“I never really felt like I fully understand it,” Neiden says. “What is forgiveness? Some people say it’s letting someone off the hook. Others say it’s releasing yourself of the burden of a grudge. And it’s a word wrapped in religion and politics. There are so many definitions of it, and we hear it everywhere — forgiveness and its counterparts of guilt, shame and accountability. What does it mean? The show doesn’t answer that.”

Maybe. That’s up to the audience, not its creator.

Days after I’ve seen “The Pineapple,” friends and peers keep asking if I enjoyed it, and I don’t think it’s a simple answer. It’s not for everyone. I’m not sure it’s even for me. Simulated torture is not my idea of a good time. But “The Pineapple” did wear me down, and it’s beautiful in the way it highlights the lonely anguish at the heart of Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”

As its small cast obsesses over a fabled alien encounter and seems willing to stop at nothing to find release in a divine being, be careful, “The Pineapple” argues, of the personal Eden you seek.

At least that was my takeaway. You might walk away with an entirely different message.

“Maybe you just fell in with the wrong crowd and got abducted by aliens,” Neiden says.

We’re hunkered down in a dark stairwell on the side of a hotel facing a busy street in Hollywood. To passersby, we could easily be mistaken for two teenagers hiding in the shadows. In reality, I’m sitting with Kelela, the electronic R&B architect whose uncompromising vision has quietly reshaped the contours of alternative music.

Dressed in oversize sunglasses, an acid-washed tee, light blue jeans, checkered Vans and a vibrant auburn-colored French bob with micro bangs, she effortlessly rolls a joint with long ombre nails that mimic smoke and fire. She slips it between her lips and flicks a lighter stamped with a single word: Gotham.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Her lighter choice is pure coincidence, she says, but it fits the apocalyptic visual universe she’s built for “New Avatar,” her dark, guitar-heavy third album that merges her early D.C. indie roots with shoegaze, grunge, futuristic club music and R&B. Produced almost exclusively by Oscar Scheller — who has crafted tracks for PinkPantheress and Lily Allen — the 12-track project finds Kelela chasing intimacy, desire and emotional refuge in the midst of an increasingly chaotic world. From the color-inverted cover art to her icy white hair and bleached brows in the video for “idea 1” — a song that draws inspiration from Octavia Butler’s 1993 sci-fi classic “Parable of the Sower” — the world-building is unmistakable.

“I used it to describe the context … of these stories on the record,” Kelela explains about the Gotham visual concept. “It’s a basic reference, but it feels like it applies. It’s the context for people needing to be saved and everything being f— on some level, but there still being hope.”

Just a few miles from the Hollywood stairwell where we’re sitting, Kelela will translate her genre-flexing record for the stage at the Wiltern during two back-to-back shows on Sept. 21 and 22.

Although she’s a New Yorker now, Los Angeles plays a crucial role in her musical journey. In 2010, the Ethiopian American singer-songwriter moved to Venice to work as a nanny before taking a gig as a solar panel telemarketer — a job she picked to avoid moving back home but unexpectedly excelled at.

“I’ve sold solar power to hundreds of people in the L.A. area,” she quips. “I would level with people. I didn’t sound like a salesperson because I can’t sell something that doesn’t make sense.”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The job funded her first solo apartment in MacArthur Park, but an insurance payout from a totaled car ultimately gave her the financial runway to leave sales behind and focus solely on music. That freedom manifested into her debut mixtape “Cut 4 Me,” featuring fan favorites like “Send Me Out” and “Bank Head.”

“It’s a very L.A. story,” she says with a laugh.

More than 10 years after the breakthrough record, Kelela returned to L.A. to record “New Avatar” with Scheller at his home studio in Silver Lake.

During their first session, she played him “Outta Time,” a track featuring British singer-producer A.K. Paul (Jai Paul’s brother) that she’d been holding onto for a decade until she was ready to make her first guitar-centered album. She also showed Scheller her “white bag” playlist — a collection of indie, rock and alternative tracks she loved as a teenager, from Incubus to Deftones to the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He understood the assignment and by the end of their session, they walked away with two songs: the lead single “Idea 1” and the sensual, U.K. garage-infused “Don’t Piss Me Off.”

“I had a sketch and I think that felt very magical,” Kelela says.

Their natural flow was part of the reason why Kelela was able to release “New Avatar” sooner than previous albums. It arrives just three years after its predecessor, “Raven.”

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

But leaning into her “white bag” wasn’t just about nostalgia. It’s a return for the artist who was once the frontwoman of indie rockers Dizzy Spells and was rocking out with her then-boyfriend, guitarist Tosin Abasi (of Animals as Leaders). It’s also a direct confrontation with the industry’s racialized genre boxes — a phenomenon Kelela identifies as “sonic racism.”

“It’s designed to keep us apart, to keep us out,” she says, “and I think clocking that is really important.”

She points to the unspoken kinship that forms when Black fans who love heavier guitar music find each other in white-dominated crowds.

“When they meet it’s a different type of bond through the music — like ‘I’ve always felt on the outside,’ but also ‘We are so inside,’” she says. “That catharsis is another feeling and I knew so much of my audience had an experience with this music, but maybe had to compartmentalize and be on the outside in order to enjoy it.” With “New Avatar,” she wanted to “dismantle and disrupt” that dissonance without abandoning her R&B roots, she says.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

That philosophy echoes through the record’s lyricism. Where 2023’s “Raven,” a rave-inspired, post-pandemic offering that ruminated on the times and being firm in your boundaries, “New Avatar” is its older sister who is a bit more wise and speaks with even sharper conviction.

“We need space to feel over it,” she says, “and to not be considered Debbie Downers. That’s basically the role that Black women have been sort of relegated to — to be truth tellers. Then everyone’s like ‘Ugh, come on…’ But it’s like we’re laughing all the time. I’m so happy. I’m not unhappy.”

She adds, “The key is not rooted in escapism. The key is rooted in being honest about what you saw, and that’s kind of the tradition that I’d want my work to live in.”

On “Point Blank,” Kelela explores the emotional labor for a woman in a one-sided relationship: “By now, I hope you see/That bullet set me free/And the more I pour, the more you reap/And I’m too spent too weep.” As the title implies, “Don’t Piss Me Off” sees a woman losing her patience with a lover: “Know you want me/Tell me I’m wrong/Takin’ all night/Don’t piss me off.” But by the album’s closer “If We Meet Again,” she cuts ties entirely: “If we ever amend/Nevermind, over and out.”

“A lot of the songs are like “Y’all ain’t s—,’” she says laughing, “But I try to say it in an artful way.”

Two bright spots on the album arrive in the final act: the dream pop-infused “New Life Forms” featuring Fousheé and “The Bridge,” a song about yearning with PinkPantheress, who returned the favor after Kelela appeared on her track “Bury Me.” Directed by Yasser Abubeker, “The Bridge” music video features a memorable, sultry dance number between the two singers — a sequence Kelela encouraged fans to learn before her shows.

“I cried the first time that Yasser sent me the edit,” she says. “It’s like a love letter to Black queer culture, our intimacy. It’s so sexy without me and her having an overt love interest. It just feels so implied in this smart way.”

The day before we met in Hollywood, Kelela gave an intimate live performance for Spotify. Backed by an all-Black femme band featuring a string quartet, guitar, bass and backup vocals, she performed “Idea 1” and a cover of Incubus’ “Mexico” — a rendition that earned her praise on social media from Incubus’ frontman, Brandon Boyd, himself.

“It’s a really important image,” says Kelela about the video. “In addition to it sounding exquisite, I’m not gonna lie, it also tore visually and symbolically.”

She’ll also be backed by a full band during her “New Avatar Live” tour, which she envisions as a high-energy rave that could break into a mosh pit at any moment.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s another medium for me to be able to articulate or dismantle those constructs around what makes sense together,” Kelela says. “It’s going to be first and foremost — like any record or anything that I do — cathartic for me.”

She continues, “So I’m going to be living my best f— life and through that I know I will give a good show because it just excites me. It’s a dream come true to be able to pull these things together.”