When Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong’s scathing remarks about Dodgers fans took off this spring, he wasn’t worried about how fans might interpret them. His back-and-forth with the Dodgers fans dates back several years.
“I wanted to make sure that the people on the other side of the field who I really respect knew where I was coming from, and that it had nothing to do with the people on the field,” Crow-Armstrong told The Times before the Dodgers’ 6-4 loss to the Cubs on Friday, full of gratitude for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, shortstop Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman in particular. “I wanted to make sure that nobody took it in that way, that I was going at the Dodgers.
“Was I poking fun at Dodgers fans? Absolutely.”
It all started in late February, with a Chicago Magazine article on Armstrong, which quoted him: ‘‘I love Chicago more and more. It’s just an incredible city. The people are great. … They aren’t just baseball fans who go to the game like Dodgers fans to take pictures and whatever. They are paying attention. They care.’’
After the story came out, Crow-Armstrong went on “Foul Territory” and doubled down.
When the Cubs came to town Friday, Dodgers fans made it clear they hadn’t forgotten. Thunderous boos greeted Crow-Armstrong as he walked up to the plate for the first time. But Crow-Armstrong was expecting that, and he didn’t walk back anything he said.
“What I wish people could see through is, I’m not getting at die-hard Dodger fans,” he said. “They obviously exist, they’re out there. I grew up seeing those people, too, but it’s a see-me city, man. It’s a Lakers city where people show up to sit courtside and look good. And I view it the same way here.
“Thank you, Shohei [Ohtani] and Freddie and Mookie because it wasn’t always like this.”
On that last point, his tone was sincere.
Friday’s announced attendance at Dodger Stadium was 53,733, the seventh sellout of the season.
Dodger Stadium played an important role in Crow-Armstrong’s baseball upbringing. The son of two actors, Ashley Crow and Matthew John Armstrong, Crow-Armstrong grew up in Los Angeles and went to Harvard-Westlake.
He went to plenty of Dodgers games, but when Crow-Armstrong was younger, he latched on to players rather than teams. From the Dodgers, he was drawn to Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier, and of course, Clayton Kershaw.
“I remember specific stuff too, like Adrian Gonzalez’ first homer as a Dodger,” Crow-Armstrong said. “We were all watching that together. The Dodgers were a huge part of my life growing up.”
Pete Crow-Armstrong celebrates in the dugout after scoring off a triple hit by Dansby Swanson during the seventh inning Friday.
(Ryan Sun / Associated Press)
Crow-Armstrong, baseball-hungry from a young age, also would go to Angel Stadium when the Yankees were in town to watch Derek Jeter, one of his favorites, go up against Mike Trout’s Angels. Eventually, his father, an Illinois native, recruited his son into Cubs fandom.
Crow-Armstrong’s L.A. ties made that first trip with the Cubs to Dodgers Stadium feel “special.” Regardless of the size of the stadium, or the major-league stage, part of that first experience in September 2024 made him feel like he was back in high school.
“I’m playing in front of my friends again, and I’m getting a show off for my friends and all that fun stuff,” he said. “There’s nothing better to me than seeing a random face that I didn’t know was coming to the game, and they’re sitting three rows behind our dugout. … That’s by far what I look forward to most about this trip.”
Show off he did.
Crow-Armstrong’s standout defensive showing peaked in a game-sealing catch over the wall in right-center field, robbing Max Muncy of a home run.
The rookie center fielder didn’t bother to hide his delight, jumping and shouting in celebration. He developed a contentious relationship with Dodgers fans in that series.
“They were really quick to talk … to me when I was in center field,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And I appreciate that kind of stuff. Like they’re obviously engaged and in the way that they want to be. … And just very easy to kind of give it right back. Like, ‘Yeah, please, be my guest.’ But I kind of love that.”
The Cubs’ next visit to Dodger Stadium was just as eventful. News broke that the Cubs and Crow-Armstrong’s agents at CAA had engaged in extension talks. Then he broke out of a slump to hit two home runs and a triple in a win that clinched a series victory.
“I love playing here,” Crow-Armstrong said afterward. “It’s a fun crowd, and I like the noise. I think the Cubbies like playing here, too.”
He grinned, in case the jab was too subtle.
Crow-Armstrong had a similar look on his face when that history came up again Friday.
“If we’re going to be immature and childish about it,” he said, “I’d say they started it, they just gave me an opportunity to kind of run with it.”
Crow-Armstrong walked into Dodger Stadium expecting it to be a topic he’d have to address all weekend, fully prepared to keep running with it.
“Each fan base has their own personality,” he said. “And I was really just comparing my own two experiences: playing for the Cubs, and people showing up and enjoying it, and there’s just an air about the place; and then here, it is what it is like. Maybe if I played here, it’d be different. But I don’t.”
His experience with Cubs fans also factored into his desire to stay with the organization long term. This spring, he signed a six-year, $115-million contract. And on Friday, he commended Cubs fans for their patience.
“It wasn’t the hottest start to my career, but I got loved the same way that I do today,” Crow-Armstrong said. “And even right now, when it’s been tough on me results-wise, all I hear running out to the field is, ‘Hey, we love you. We got you. The city loves you. You’re the best.”
The sentiment from Dodgers fans Friday was a little different. Not only did they boo Crow-Armstrong every at-bat, but even the Dodgers’ social media team piled on.
After Crow-Armstrong struck out in his first at-bat — one of Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan’s career-high-tying 10 strikeouts — the Dodgers’ social media account posted a video of his last whiff, with the caption: “A strikeout worthy of taking pictures and whatever.”
Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs, however, got the last laugh, as the Dodgers’ bullpen buckled. With the game tied in the ninth Friday, Crow-Armstrong lined a single into shallow left field against Dodgers reliever Tanner Scott. Then Scott grooved a fastball down the middle to Dansby Swanson, who hit it over the left-field wall.
Crow-Armstrong had a trip around the bases to relish the relative quiet he and his teammates had induced.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has ended its probe into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannine Pirro said on X that her office was ending its probe into the Fed’s extensive building renovations because the Fed’s Inspector General would scrutinize them instead.
The decision ends an investigation, one of several undertaken by the Justice Department into President Trump’s perceived adversaries, that for months had failed to gain traction as prosecutors struggled to articulate a basis to suspect criminal conduct.
A prosecutor handling the case conceded at a closed-door court hearing in March that the government hadn’t yet found any evidence of a crime, and a judge subsequently quashed subpoenas issued to the Federal Reserve. The judge, James Boasberg, said prosecutors had produced “essentially zero evidence” to suspect Powell of a crime. Boasberg prosecutors’ justification for the subpoenas as “thin and unsubstantiated.”
More recently, prosecutors made an unannounced visit to a construction site at the Fed’s headquarters but were turned away, drawing a rebuke from a defense attorney in the case who called the maneuver “not appropriate.”
The move could lead to a swift confirmation vote by the Senate for Warsh, a former top Fed official whom Trump, a Republican, nominated in January to replace Powell, whose term as chair ends May 15. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, has said he would oppose Warsh until the investigation was resolved, effectively blocking his confirmation.
Warsh said Tuesday that he never promised the White House that he would cut interest rates, even as the president renewed his calls for the central bank to do so.
“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Kevin Warsh, a former top Fed official, said under questioning by the Senate Banking Committee. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”
Warsh’s comments came just hours after Trump, in an interview on CNBC, was asked if he would be disappointed if Warsh didn’t immediately cut rates and responded, “I would.”
This week Tucker Carlson apologized for unintentionally “misleading” voters into supporting President Trump’s return to the White House. The apology came days after the president called Carlson dumb and overrated on social media. We’ve seen this plot before: It’s a different name but the same story.
Recall the president’s first term was closely shadowed by high-profile breakups from loyalists who disagreed with him on matters of substance. For example, the split with his first Defense secretary, James Mattis, began in 2017 when Mattis, a man who spent more than four decades in uniform, defended the importance of NATO. His successor, Mark Esper, found himself at odds with the president for refusing to use the military on citizens. On his way out the door, Esper told the country that if his replacement was “a real ‘yes man’ … then God help us.”
Some of the highlights from Trump’s second term include squabbles with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, who was upset the president wasn’t lowering the national debt enough; with former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because millions of Americans faced losing health insurance; and with Rep. Thomas Massie for having the audacity to seek justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation.
Now it appears it’s Carlson’s turn. He, like Pope Leo XIV and many of our allies and nearly 70% of Americans, disapproves of the president’s handling of the war in Iran. On a recent episode of the Carlson podcast, the former Fox News host invited his brother Buckley, himself a former Trump speechwriter, on the show to discuss their buyer’s remorse.
Everyone has that line they won’t cross for the president.
Omarosa Manigault Newman left reality TV to advise Trump. She followed him to the White House, found out there was a lot of racism over in MAGA land, and ended up back on reality TV. For Mattis, it was abandoning our allies. For Esper, it was shooting protesters.
For Carlson, it’s Iran. Candidate Trump campaigned on ending endless wars. This week, Trump said there’s no timeline for when the war he started with Iran will end.
“I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson told his brother. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”
Now before Tucker’s apology, Buckley defended his initial support of Trump’s candidacy in 2015 — despite “all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality” — in part because “he built things.” Buckley also said that after the election of President Obama, white Americans in Washington were subjugated by a version of Jim Crow in education and society, and that progressives “would look blank or angry” whenever he asked what Obama was doing to strengthen the nation.
In other words, being red in the face over Trump did not turn the Tucker boys blue. In fact, the episode ended with the two calling the left a bunch of “lunatics,” even after listing the ways the Trump administration was holding back release of the Epstein files and hurting the country.
“Demonic influences concentrate on those who have power. Beware of power,” Tucker warned listeners halfway through the show before his brother chimed in: “And those who seek power.”
Of course, Trump’s ascension to the White House wasn’t solely based on the contributions of media folks. The president entered 2015 having been a public figure for more than 30 years. He’s had the luxury of criticizing elected officials and legislation on camera without the burden of governing for much of that time. When he entered the political arena, he didn’t have a record to defend. He likes being quotable, not being held accountable. That’s why it’s doubtful he would have been elected a second time if not for the support from unscrupulous podcasters masquerading as political journalists such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who less than a year ago said everything Trump “campaigned on, I believed he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing.… I voted for none of this.”
As if “this” had not been clearly spelled out in the pages of Project 2025 for all to see before deciding whether to vote for Trump and that agenda.
Schulz, the comedian and podcaster, might not have read that outline, but Tucker Carlson probably did. That’s why his apology to listeners — like the mea culpas from the discarded loyalists of the past — ultimately won’t mean anything to mainstream Republicans or MAGA. Those who identify with the latter listen only to Trump. As for the former — they have always known that people like Carlson don’t regret supporting Trump. They regret falling out of favor.
The part of a lawyer, walking down his opposition in the open court. He delivered an airtight opening argument that was stunning for how much stronger it was than opposing coach Ime Udoka’s. And evidence of how far Redick has come.
Now, look, your honor: The short-on-star-power Lakers winning both games at home to take a 2-0 series lead over the heavily favored Houston Rockets in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs? That’s a compelling start.
But Redick, James and Associates are only halfway there; they’re still proving their case.
They still need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their top role players can perform as persuasively on the road as they have at home.
And they’ll probably have to prove they can effectively rebut the Rockets’ adjustments, though those are merely conceptual at this point, they’re so overdue.
Two games into this series it looks to us, the members of the jury, as though Redick has taken this allegedly open-and-shut case, this slam dunk of a trial — and thrown down a reverse.
The Lakers look like the better team. Like the better-constructed team, even. And that’s without injured stars Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, who are hustling back as fast as their bodies will let them from hamstring and oblique injuries, respectively.
They look like the better-coached team.
It’s the opposing counsel who looks dressed for the part, Udoka in a sweatsuit like a dad at a Saturday morning youth league trying to get his players to get along, with just one play in his pocket: Give the ball to Kevin.
Meanwhile, the legal team minding the game in the Lakers’ huddle is running laps around the guys on the other bench.
Coach JJ Redick and forward LeBron James have helped the Lakers earn a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven playoff series agains the favored Rockets without injured guards Luke Doncic and Austin Reaves.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Exhibit A: One of the game’s greatest scorers, Kevin Durant, has been forced by his own team to do a lot of ballhandling chores too. So the Lakers have been double-teaming and blitzing Durant all over the court, compelling him into nine turnovers in Tuesday’s 101-94 Game 2 victory at Crypto.com Arena. Using the same strategy, they’ve turned him over 20 times in his last three meetings with the Lakers, going back to the regular season.
Exhibit B: By playing drop, hedge, man and mixing zone defenses, the Lakers also have been, according to Marcus Smart’s postgame testimony, “throwing different packages” at the Rockets. It’s working: Houston has failed to score 100 points in either game of the series.
Exhibit C: The Lakers are putting the ball in Smart’s hands, using him in a way that forces the Rockets to defend honestly, instead of sagging off him. They’ve also been intentional with how they leverage Luke Kennard, running actions that overrule his reluctance to shoot. It should please the court to see the man shooting 65.4% (17 for 26) from the field in the first two games!
With these tactics and others, the Lakers seem almost to be creating new precedent for the laws of basketball, because what do you mean the Rockets have taken 44 more shots but have been outscored by 16 points?
What makes it so wildly impressive is that before the Lakers brought this thing to trial, it looked as though it would be thrown out on the grounds of insufficient star power.
With just 41-year-old LeBron James to carry them without Doncic and Reaves, Houston seemed so much stronger. Physically, on the boards, in just about every way — except in terms of chemistry, camaraderie and communication.
Even Udoka’s record seemed superior. In 2021-22, his first (and only) season as the Boston Celtics’ coach, he led them to the NBA Finals.
Redick, in his first playoffs as a coach last year, showed such contempt for his own team and made an absolute mockery of the game plan that got the Lakers to the postseason in the first place. Remember how he panicked, refusing even to approach the bench to give his preferred five a breather for a full losing half in Game 4 against the Minnesota Timberwolves? The little tantrum he threw when asked about it before the Game 5 finale?
The Duke graduate and self-proclaimed “basketball sicko” has appeared much more prepared this time, much more composed.
He seems to be in his element, problem-solving alongside his former podcast host, James, who has stepped right up with 47 points, 20 assists and 16 rebounds — including some highlight-reel dunks and passes — through the first two games. We are all witnesses.
Still, this thing is going to last at least two more games, and possibly more, before we get a verdict.
And if it goes the Lakers’ way?
Congratulations, JJ, you will have earned the reputation as a coach who can take on the toughest cases and win them. And do we have an impossible challenge for you next on the docket.
The top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder are young, deep, and up 2-0 in their first-round series against the Phoenix Suns. The defending-champion Thunder have run the Lakers out of court in every meeting this season, beating them by an average of 29 points. And they’re clever too; referees — those judges on the court — always seem so sympathetic to OKC.
Would the Lakers have any chance? Redick is proving he might be able to make a case.
It was my first time hiking through Tilden Regional Park, a 2,079-acre wooded hilly expanse near Berkeley, and I was looking for one very specific thing: a small red, white and blue rounded triangular trail marker with a tiny map of the United States.
I’d already struck out twice, parking at the wrong trailheads, and I was really hoping the third time would be the charm. I trudged up the Upper Big Springs Trail, a wide dirt path lined with fragrant eucalyptus, pine trees and California bay laurels and, peeking out of the invasive grasses, California poppies and orange bush monkey flower.
I crested a hill after about two-thirds of a mile, and there I saw a sign, both literal and metaphorical, on a small brown post letting me know I was exactly where I needed to be. I was officially hiking along the American Discovery Trail, a contiguous 6,800-mile coast-to-coast nonmotorized route of multiuse trails that runs from Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County to Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware.
The American Discovery Trail sign in Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
“The ADT is all about connections — people to people, community to community, urban areas to wilderness,” according to a website outlining its history. “… The ADT connects five National Scenic, 12 National Historic, and 34 National Recreational Trails; passes through urban centers like Cincinnati and San Francisco; leads to 14 National Parks and 16 National Forests” and visits thousands of historic, cultural and natural sites.
I’m excited to share not only about the joy that can be found along this route, but also how you can join a relay in July across America along the trail. I certainly plan to!
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I’d never heard of the American Discovery Trail until last week when I attended the California Trails & Greenways conference in San Ramon. There, I met with American Discovery Trail co-founder John Fazel and John Mercurio, the trail’s California coordinator, to learn more.
The idea to create a coast-to-coast trail was born out of a 1980-81 hike across America called “HikaNation,” where several members of the American Hiking Society trekked more than 4,000 miles across the country. That adventure inspired Backpacker magazine and the American Hiking Society in 1989 to start developing the American Discovery Trail.
A view of the San Francisco Bay from the Seaview Trail in Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley. The route is a part of the American Discovery Trail.
Then, in 1991, the American Hiking Society hired a national coordinator to work with volunteer state coordinators to develop the route, and in 1996, trail advocates formed the American Discovery Trail Society to ensure their dreams became a reality.
“It’s an opportunity to get to know America up close and personal and not as a flyover,” said Fazel, who grew up in Iowa.
The San Pablo Reservior as seen from Tilden Regional Park near Berkeley.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Most people don’t complete the trail in one trip, Fazel said, as it takes months to finish and requires participants to leave the East Coast around February to ensure that enough snow has melted by the time they reach the mountains in Colorado and California.
Although the trail has existed for several years, Fazel and Mercurio admit that they don’t know exactly how much of the route is a recreational trail, sidewalk or roadway. That’s in part because it’s a technically complicated task to complete, especially for a mostly volunteer group. But it’s also because the route is ever-evolving (which is actually exciting).
“Since we got involved, small towns, counties, even states are funding millions of dollars to build trails in their area, and when they see a national trail goes across the country, they want to connect to it, and when they do, where it is on back roads, we can move it off,” Fazel said. “And it happens.”
A labyrinth in Tilden Regional Park along the American Discovery Trail.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times )
In California, the only place hikers are on pavement for a significant amount of time is from the Antioch Bridge north to Sacramento as they travel through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Fazel said.
Mercurio said he is working with local officials to try to move the trail from this narrow roadway onto an old railroad track that’s owned by the state.
“It’s been sitting there vacant for many, many years,” Mercurio said. “Now, they should know that there’s this national trail, this coast-to-coast trail, [that] is interested in utilizing that to provide a safe way for us to make our way across the delta.”
Unlike the Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail and other multistate routes, the American Discovery Trail is not federally designated under existing law.
The National Park Service studied the American Discovery Trail in the mid-’90s and acknowledged that the American Discovery Trail doesn’t fit neatly into any of the existing categories outlined in the National Trails System Act, Mercurio said. The agency mapped out three options for Congress to consider, including creating a new category for discovery trails, he said.
A lush tree canopy along the Seaview Trail, part of the American Discovery Trail, in Tilden Regional Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Trail advocates have been pushing Congress for more than 25 years to create such a category. They came close in 2021 when U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) introduced such legislation that garnered 63 co-sponsors.
“We had people on the House resources committee who were far right and killed it,” Fazel said, adding the trail has otherwise garnered bipartisan support for decades in states it passes through.
There was a mix of suspicion and concern that the recognition of the trail would lead to eminent domain and requests for federal money, neither of which the trail’s organizers want, Fazel and Mercurio said.
“The thing is, we don’t build any trail at all,” Mercurio said. “All we do is route onto stuff that’s already there, and our presence influences local jurisdictions to create trail that would be good for our route. But they’re in this anti-federal feeling, so they just knee-jerk don’t want to support it.”
The Golden Gate Bridge as seen from Tilden Regional Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The duo remains optimistic that their trail will get national recognition. In the interim, they’ve got other big plans.
On July 1, as long as everything goes according to plan, the American Discovery Trail Society will launch its “America 250 Relay,” aiming to cross the Golden Gate Bridge by July 4 and ending in Delaware at the Atlantic Ocean on Thanksgiving Day.
Anyone can join to traverse the trail in a people- or horse-powered way. Participants will carry a copy of the Declaration of Independence in a celebration of America and the outdoors. (I’ve already texted two best friends to entice them to do part of the relay with me!)
A flax-leaved blue pimpernel in Tilden Regional Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
In a time of rising authoritarianismacross the globe, it’s important we seek both joy and connection, focusing less on what we’re fed by algorithms and more on our shared humanity. I know that sounds fairly Pollyanna, but especially as a transgender American who constantly worries about whether I can safely visit my family in the Midwest, where lawmakers are seemingly seeking to outlaw my existence, I do actually mean it.
As I neared the end of the trail, a golden Labrador retriever greeted me, and after lots of head scratches, I met the dog’s owner. He and I started chatting, and soon realized that, although we belonged to different generations, we had both grown up as farm kids.
He started to tell me the story of when his dad ran himself over with a tractor.
“My dad ran himself over with a tractor too!” I said. “Did your dad start the tractor from the ground even though he’d told you a million times as a kid not to?”
“No, but he did try to get off and get back on a moving tractor,” he said, which my new friend’s father had repeatedly told him not to do.
I didn’t expect to discuss tractors and hay bales with a stranger in the East Bay, but I found that these experiences are a part of what the American Discovery Trail provides.
3 things to do
A human and canine guest travel along a previous CicLAvia event route.
(CicLAvia Los Angeles)
1. Wander the car-free streets of West L.A. CicLAvia, an L.A. nonprofit, will host a free three-mile, car-free open streets event from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday through West L.A. The event marks the 65th open streets event the organization has held around L.A., but it’s the first time that one has been held in West L.A. The route includes portions of Santa Monica and Westwood boulevards. Attendees are invited to traverse the route in any people-powered device, although there are certain restrictions on e-bikes. Learn more at ciclavia.org.
2. Prop up the pollinators in Castaic TreePeople will host Pollinator Palooza from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday at Castaic Lake. Volunteers will plant milkweed and restore habitat. The event will also feature plant giveaways, an environmental resource fair and a pollinator-themed fashion show. Learn more at treepeople.org.
3. Orient yourself in Irvine Save Orange Hills and Naturalist For You will host a hike, yoga and meditation event from 8 to 10 a.m. Sunday at Irvine Regional Park. After a short warm-up hike, guests will take part in an all-levels yoga session. Tickets are $17.85, but no one will be turned away due to lack of funds. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
San Joaquin River Parkway, currently operated by the San Joaquin River Conservancy, would join various properties into an 874-acre state park, expanding recreation opportunities and greater access along the river. The park would complement nearby Millerton Lake State Recreation Area.
(California State Parks)
California could soon see the development of three new state parks in the Central Valley. State officials announced the proposed parks on Wednesday, which are Feather River Park in Yuba County, San Joaquin River Parkway near Fresno and Dust Bowl Camp in Bakersfield, Times staff writer Hayley Smith wrote. State officials also aim to expand three existing parks in Mendocino County, Nevada County and San Mateo County. “California’s state parks are nothing short of iconic — with locations like Big Sur, Southern California beaches, and the world’s tallest trees — but our state has even more to offer,” said Wade Crowfoot, California’s natural resources secretary.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Hikers and trail builders have until April 30 to complete the California Trails Survey, which state officials will use to help shape how nonmotorized recreational trails are developed in the state — and how officials use millions from Prop 4, often called the “climate bond” because its money is supposed to be spent to combat climate change. The survey includes two portions, one for trail users and another for trail builders and advocates. If you fit both categories, you are invited to complete both portions. Early data, released at a trails conference I attended last week, suggested that white hikers were overrepresented in the results, so please spread the word, especially to BIPOC hiking organizations in your area!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
Plucked from a previous life as a working actor, Richard Gadd experienced a disorienting whirlwind less than two years ago. “Baby Reindeer,” his painfully personal 2024 Netflix show, based on the sexual assault he survived, instantly opened the floodgates of fame for him.
“The show came out on Thursday, and by Sunday, I could barely walk anywhere without being recognized, without being stopped,” Gadd says while visiting The Times’ offices earlier this month. “That’s an adjustment because I always thought if anything like that ever happened, it would be a bit more of a gradual process. But it was overnight, so I didn’t have time to adjust.”
Now the winner of three Emmy Awards and a slew of other accolades for that series, which he starred in, wrote and served as showrunner, Gadd, 36, has already helmed a new emotionally ferocious show.
Probing the tropes of rigid masculinity, “Half Man,” premiering Thursday on HBO, chronicles the destructive bond between two men over several decades. Niall and Ruben — whose respective mothers are romantic partners — call themselves brothers but they couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Bullied at school, meek Niall (played by Mitchell Robertson in his youth and Jamie Bell in adulthood) lost his father as a young boy. He dreams of being a writer. Meanwhile, the insolent and hyper-confident Ruben (Stuart Campbell as a teen and Gadd as a grown-up) has been in trouble with the law from a tender age. Facing any conflict, he resorts to brutal violence. When Ruben takes Niall under his wing, the two become inseparable. But as the years and resentments pile on, their cancerous brotherhood threatens to obliterate them both.
“Half Man” follows the destructive bond between Ruben (Richard Gadd), left, and Niall (Jamie Bell) over several decades.
(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
“Richard’s writing is really unique and really singular,” Bell says on a video call from England, where he’s currently shooting the “Peaky Blinders” sequel series and is sporting a shorter haircut. “He identifies that real gray area of humanity really well and he puts a voice to the most uncomfortable places that we go into or things that we think when we’re alone in the dark, when we think no one’s watching.”
Gadd wrote the first episode of what would become “Half Man” back in 2019, while he still was performing the live version of “Baby Reindeer,” which he turned into the series. At the time, he recalls, society at large was seriously engaging in conversations around toxic masculinity and sexual violence as the #MeToo movement gained strength.
“It wasn’t necessarily that I set out going, ‘Oh, I want to make a show about that,’” Gadd says. “It was more that something must have just drifted into my head thinking, ‘You take two men repressed in their current life, repressed in the modern world. And then you go all the way back to their childhood. You contextualize learned behavior; you contextualize trauma and things they learned that make them these repressed adults. And you bring a bit of context to, I suppose, difficult male behavior in the present.’”
As “Baby Reindeer” launched his career as a creator, Gadd put “Half Man” on ice for four years but couldn’t stop thinking about returning to it. “Even as I was coming to the end of ‘Baby Reindeer,’ I thought, ‘I’m really looking forward to getting back to that project,” he recalls. “The second ‘Baby Reindeer’ finished, I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now.’”
Sitting across from the mild-mannered Gadd, the magnitude of his transformation on screen for “Half Man” becomes even more impressive. Gadd comes off as thoughtful and emphatic, while Ruben, his physically imposing character, commands trepidation.
“The second ‘Baby Reindeer’ finished, I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now,’” Gadd says about working on “Half Man.”
(Ian Spanier / For The Times)
Watching Gadd as the rage-fueled Ruben, one might be surprised to learn he originally had no intention of acting in “Half Man.” After wearing multiple hats on “Baby Reindeer,” Gadd thought this time around he could get a purely external bird’s-eye view of a project as showrunner and writer of “Half Man.” But eventually people around him suggested he should be in front of the camera once again.
“My initial response was always, ‘That’s just so far away from anything I’ve done before. It’s so far away from me. Are people going to buy it?’” he recalls. “And behind every single fear-based thought was a worry of what people might think, which in my opinion, isn’t a good enough reason to not do something.”
Convinced audiences would struggle to see the guy from “Baby Reindeer” as this “hard man,” a U.K. term for tough and intimidating men, he had to physically morph. To inhabit a new body, Gadd underwent a strict exercise regimen, and most importantly, a new diet.
“I had a chef make these meals in England, fun enough, and send them up to Scotland where I was filming,” he recalls. “I’d eat them at specific times. You go through periods of fasting and through dehydration whenever you had your top off. There was a real science to it.”
And yet, though he at first worried he wouldn’t look big enough, Gadd refused to portray Ruben with a chiseled physique conceived for mere aesthetics.
“I didn’t want him to have a six pack, I wanted him to feel like a real person,” Gadd says. “Sometimes when you see someone on TV and they’re ripped, I almost don’t think that’s real strength. Someone like Ruben, they wear their life in their body, they’re heavy set. It’s not ripped. It’s bulky. It’s natural to him.”
Before he agreed to play the character, Gadd auditioned numerous actors for the part, but with all of them he felt they were too focused on his appearance as an imposing figure and not his inner turmoil. “Ruben is extremely sad as a person. He’s terribly broken and traumatized,” he says.
For the series, Gadd bulked up to become more physically imposing: “Someone like Ruben, they wear their life in their body, they’re heavy set. It’s not ripped. It’s bulky. It’s natural to him.”Richard Gadd in “Half Man.”(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
When asked if he sees himself as Ruben, Gadd contemplates the question, debating whether it’s his “jetlagged brain” or ambivalence about finding some of Ruben within him.
“Do I see myself in Ruben?” After a pause, he concedes: “All of his behavior is a reaction to a deep traumatic happening in his life. I can relate to finding it extremely difficult to get past big traumatic events and coming to terms with them and coming to terms with yourself even as a result of them.”
With less hesitation, Bell, 40, acknowledges that he finds a certain kinship with his character. As a teenager, Bell flocked to people with a defiant edge. “I grew up without a father in an all-female household and I felt very naked as a child in terms of needing to be protected by someone who was dominant and aggressive,” he says. “I totally understand why Niall seeks solace in someone like him. No one will touch Ruben. There is a safety in that.”
Gadd says he doesn’t think about celebrities when searching for the actors. “I’m quite fame-averse when it comes to casting because I think sometimes it can get in the way,” he explains. “You can have a show, which starts up with all the best intentions, turn into a sort of acting vehicle for someone, or the discussion becomes about the actor doing this role.”
That said, when the casting director on “Half Man” asked him about his “dream cast,” Gadd expressed Bell was the only one who would genuinely excite him. But could that happen? “In my head, I was still in pre-‘Baby Reindeer’ time where I thought, ‘Well, somebody like him is not going to be interested.’ And then I thought, ‘Well, he might be,’” Gadd says.
For his part, Bell found the “nihilism” in Niall, a man desperately running from his true self and living in Ruben’s shadow, an enticing and complex character to play. “[Niall] conceals himself in many different ways, and has a lot of self-loathing, but at the same time has all these ambitions and actually is incredibly egotistical and thinks that his way is the correct way, and that other people don’t understand that he is terminally unique,” Bell explains with a chuckle.
Bell, who plays Niall, says his character “conceals himself in many different ways, and has a lot of self-loathing, but at the same time has all these ambitions and actually is incredibly egotistical …”
(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)
Aside from a tight schedule to produce “Half Man,” the challenge for Bell was adjusting to the dramatic intensity that Gadd was after. “I wasn’t particularly prepared for that, therefore sometimes my reading of certain scenes I’d get wrong. We’d start scenes and Richard was like, ‘You are pitching it at like a six, and this is very much an 11,’” Bell recalls laughing. I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ That took some modulating.”
In Gadd’s mind, Bell remains an “underrated” artist. A proud Scotsman, Gadd recalls loving Bell in the 2007 romantic dramedy “Hallam Foe,” where the British actor played Scottish. For “Half Man,” Gadd thought Bell could convey the pain that haunts Niall, even as his actions paint him less like Ruben’s victim and more like a vengeful participant in the chaos.
“There’s always something I find so vulnerable about Jamie and I knew that I was going to take Niall in some really big journeys where he was going to almost test the audience’s love for him,” Gadd says. That Niall finds Ruben so alluring is natural to Gadd, who believes the notion of a valiant male figure has been bred into everyone via fables and fairy tales.
Gadd adds that whether or not we like to admit it, we’re drawn to alpha male characters. “Because from an early age, we’ve been told they are always at the top of the social hierarchy. And as a result, we’ve always, as a society, answered to those kinds of people as some sort of leaders.”
And though he says he’s unfamiliar with the “manosphere,” the misogynistic and chauvinistic online community, Gadd doesn’t believe Ruben would fall for the gurus in those circles who claim to have the answers for young guys to become “real men.”
“Ruben carved his own masculinity. To give him credit, if that’s even something you can give him, those spaces wouldn’t hold any weight for him. He’s his own man,” Gad says. “He would never follow anyone on social media. He’s the person to be followed.”
Based on the tone of Gadd’s output thus far, it may come as a surprise that as a young person he dreamed of creating a show along the lines of the U.K.’s “The Office,” which he considers a “perfect piece of art.” The stories he is telling now better reflect his “neuroses” and the experiences he’s endured.
“My life just took a very dramatic turn, and my sensibilities weren’t workplace sitcoms anymore. When I grew up and I was doing comedy I thought, ‘I’ll write a sitcom one day and every character will be sort of funny in it,’” he says. “But my life just took a turn to the point where I needed my writing and my art darkened because what I went through was very dark.”
Humor is not entirely absent from “Half Man,” some of the characters’ reactions to their distressing realities earn a chuckle. Still, Gadd’s funny bone might also find an outlet in other people’s narratives. He was recently announced as part of the cast in Apple TV’s upcoming high-concept series “Husbands,” for which he already shot his scenes. Adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name, it stars Juno Temple as a woman who gets to experience life with a different partner every time she changes the light bulb in her attic.
“I’m very picky with stuff I take on. Because I love writing my own work so much, anything that takes me out on someone else’s show has to be very special. And this was very special,” Gadd says.
“Everything I do doesn’t have to be dark,” he adds with a soft smile.
For three seasons, Jimmy, a therapist grieving the loss of his wife, has used unconventional methods —think taking someone with aggression issues to a boxing ring — to get through to his patients. In the last moments of “And That’s Our Time,” Jimmy’s mentor and fellow therapist Paul (Harrison Ford) turns that approach on its namesake, flying across the country to give Jimmy a much needed push to move forward with his life. “Jimmy needed permission and encouragement from someone to say, ‘All right, it’s time,’” Segel says. “This is the end of this story and it’s time to start a new one.”
In the scene, Paul finally tells Jimmy he’s like a son to him. “I found ourselves writing a conversation that if we were lucky enough to have a conversation like that with our own fathers, we’d be grateful,” executive producer Bill Lawrence says. “A lot of my shows have an element of mentorship in them. To see Jimmy’s mentor come through for him in the way that I would always hope he would meant a lot to me.”
Lawrence had always envisioned the three-season arc for Jimmy ending this way. But when they found out the comedy would be returning for a fourth season, he and his fellow executive producers were faced with a dilemma: End the season the way they would have the series or push their original ending out for one more season. After much discussion, they decided to stick the landing.
“It still felt right,” Lawrence says. “This particular story with these characters has been told and you should feel, in a good way, like it’s gonna be OK for Jimmy. Jason is so good at it, watching him play the agony of trying to get through it all and come out on the other side was my favorite kind of journey on the whole show.”
Segel spoke to The Envelope about filming this pivotal scene and bringing the third season to a close.
What did filming this final scene mean to you? To play this part of Jimmy’s journey coming to an end?
I’m always really interested in, “What is the dirty underneath? If we go one level deeper, what is the thing that the person is not saying?” This arc with Jimmy over the three seasons had been building up to Jimmy finally saying the actual thing, which is some version of, “Who’s gonna want me now?”
Paul answers that question by telling Jimmy that his scars are “evidence of a life well–lived.”
I had a therapist I was talking to about having to show up somewhere with people I knew from 25 years ago. I remember having a little bit of apprehension because I’ve had a twisty-turny life. I thought, “God, there’s so much to catch up on and I’m showing up covered in scars.” And this therapist said to me, just matter of fact, “What a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old not covered in scars.” And I went straight to Bill and [executive producer] Neil [Goldman], this is a year ago, and I said, “This is what Harrison says to Jimmy at the end of this arc.” And we worked it in.
What was the actual day of filming the scene like for you?
It was a difficult day. It was loud that day. There was a little bit of discombobulation on the street. There was construction and they couldn’t hold the cars right. It wasn’t the ideal environment for a scene like this where you would love to hear a pin drop. People were coming into the restaurant asking, “Are you guys open?” It almost felt like we were making a student film. And Harrison and I took a minute and we walked away from the set and we started running the scene, walking up and down the busy street to kind of acclimate ourselves. And I’m walking up and down the street with this man who I idolize and we are at that moment like equals and teammates. We have to go build this scene together. It is a real honor to have that dynamic with him.
Do you think it was important to have such a pivotal scene outdoors?
They’re a good reminder that the show takes place in the real world and that you’re like a representative of reality almost. I think that there’s something vulnerable about all that taking place outside. … There’s other patrons there. It’s surrounded by people, surrounded by life, and Paul is showing up and telling Jimmy, “It’s time to step into it. Look, it’s all around you.”
This season we met Jimmy’s father (played by Jeff Daniels), who never really connected with his son and, in a heartbreaking moment, chooses a fishing trip with his buddies over staying for Alice’s (Lukita Maxwell) high school graduation.
One of the things this show does really well is handle these situations honestly. Whether it’s Parkinson’s or loss or a complicated relationship with a family member. It’s not gonna magically change. None of it. And so the show is very much true to, “How do we get through it with each other?” That’s really the theme of the show. These issues are gonna be there. What are we gonna do with the realities of life? I think the reason they brought Jeff Daniels in is to highlight why Jimmy so desperately wants Paul’s affection. Where is this coming from? Bill is a genius in terms of setting something up in a previous episode so that there’s a payoff in the finale. I think that we understand suddenly how desperate Jimmy is to have somebody say, “You’re my son and I love you.” And he finally gets that at the end from Paul.
The other major event that happens in the finale is that Alice leaves for college.
To me, [Jimmy’s relationship with Alice] has been the heart of the show and the most important storyline. The show started out with Alice parenting a troubled child in her father. And that dynamic slowly, slowly, slowly shifted to being the right direction. Until finally he is able to see her off to college and she feels safe to leave him behind. He is the parent and she is the child and everything is the right size again. I think watching Lukita as an actor and a human being grow up over these past four years, it’s been really the joy of my career. When I met her, she called me Mr. Segel. I realized she grew up with my “Muppet” movie. I have the real honor of being more of a mentor than a contemporary to Lukita. To get to the point where I am being surprised and challenged and blown away and moved to tears in scenes with Lukita is like the coolest thing in the world.
Cobie Smulders and Jason Segel in “Shrinking.”
(Apple TV)
We see Jimmy sit down at the restaurant with his potential love interest Sofi (Cobie Smulders), but we don’t hear their conversation.
It originally ended with a hard cut to black. Then then they did this beautiful cinematic pullback. I think the most important line is, “Hello.”
As the scene ends, Paul tells Jimmy that he can either “stay stuck” or “go make new scars.” Paul advises Jimmy to “choose wisely” and then winks at Jimmy. It’s a subtle nod to the famous “choose wisely” scene from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
Harrison is not so secretly one of the funnier people I know. He always knows exactly what he’s doing and we’ve had a few of those throughout the season, some little nods to Harrison’s body of work. It was a perfect way to end that scene. Paul slash Harrison is always just a little smarter than you. One of the great qualities that they have is they’re just a little bit ahead of you, which a great mentor should be, right?
Have you thought about how it will be to play Jimmy in the show’s fourth season now that this particular story arc has come to an end?
I think an equally interesting and complicated and fun area is someone deciding they’re ready to be happy. Because God knows it’s one thing in your house alone in front of the mirror [to say], “Now I’m gonna be happy.” And then you go out and in practice, it’s its own set of complications, right? And so, I’m actually really excited about that idea of someone saying, “OK, I’m ready to take it for a spin.” And then seeing that’s its own thing.
The Clippers’ season has come to an end but better than anyone expected. No consolation but a great job by head coach Tyronn Lue for guiding the Clippers from a disastrous 6-21 start and finishing with more than 40 wins.
Coach Lue led the team, overcoming major obstacles throughout the season with a player investigation, injuries, internal strife and major roster changes at the trade deadline. As usual for Clipper fans, wait till next year.
Wayne Muramatsu Cerritos
The Clippers are the NBA’s version of Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You.” Yes, they have had 15 straight seasons of playing .500 or better, and owner Steve Ballmer has brought them respectability, but for their entire 56-year existence — which has contained many clowns and jokers — they still have never [attained] their goal of winning (or even reaching) the NBA Finals.
Until recently, President Trump always found a way to fail forward, through a combination of spin, threats, payoffs and bluster.
OK, that’s the simplistic interpretation. The fine print tells a less-glamorous story: a man born on third base who spent decades insisting he’d hit a triple.
Still, it’s hard to argue with success. When Trump entered politics, he redefined the rules of the game. Rivals who tried to outflank him on policy detail, ideological consistency and institutional norms found themselves either vanquished or assimilated by the Borg.
By my lights, only once during Trump’s admittedly chaotic first term did he run into something that his playbook couldn’t at least mitigate or parry: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the final year of his presidency, reality refused to negotiate, and political gravity reasserted itself. It turns out, viruses aren’t susceptible to the Art of The Deal.
But then, miraculously, Trump wriggled through legal jeopardy, bulldozed his way past more conventional Republicans and Democrats, and re-emerged victorious in 2024.
If anything, that comeback reinforced the idea that Trump could survive anything by virtue of his playbook.
By the start of his second term, he’d made impressive headway in co-opting not only individuals but also major institutions within big tech, the media and academia.
Even in foreign affairs, Trump’s sense that any problem could be solved via force, intimidation or money was confirmed when he captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and installed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, as a sort of puppet leader. Everyone has a price, right?
Unfortunately for Trump, no. Not everyone does.
Lately, the president has encountered a different kind of resistance — adversaries motivated by something bigger and more transcendent than money, power or the avoidance of pain.
In dealing with Iran, for instance, Trump has confronted people operating under a wholly different set of incentives. It’s a regime guided by a mix of ideology, radical religious doctrine and long-term strategic interests that don’t always align with short-term material gain.
(Now perhaps, having punished Trump enough already, Iran will finally come to the negotiating table. But even if that happens, it will have occurred after exacting a steep price — so steep, in fact, that it may already be too late for Trump to plausibly claim a win.)
It turns out, you can’t easily intimidate or pay off a true believer who isn’t afraid to die and believes they have God on their side.
A similar (though obviously not morally equivalent) dynamic is now also on display in the form of Trump’s skirmish with Pope Leo XIV, a man who commands moral authority. He opposes the war in Iran (“Blessed are the peacemakers”) and has demonstrated a stubborn refusal to back down to Trump’s attempts at bullying.
“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Leo said during a tour of Africa. It’s a remark that the American pope seemed to implicitly be aiming at the American president.
Here’s what Trump doesn’t understand: There are still pockets of the world where concepts like faith and national identity outweigh tangible incentives. Where sacrifice and suffering are an accepted part of the plan.
When facing these sorts of foes, Trump’s usual operating system starts to look less like a cheat code and more like a category error.
But he can’t see this because Trump is always prone to a sort of cynical projection — of assuming everyone views the world in the same base, carnal, corrupt way he sees it.
Whether it was his incredulity that Denmark wouldn’t sell Greenland, rhetoric that seemed to discount the motivations of those who serve and sacrifice in the military, or his affinity for nakedly transactional gulf states, the pattern is familiar: a tendency to view decisions through a cost-benefit lens that not everyone shares.
To be fair, that lens has often served him well. In arenas where power, money and leverage dominate, Trump’s approach is eerily effective.
But after years of taming secular, “rational” opponents, he is fighting a two-front war against people who see their struggles as moral and spiritual.
They aren’t stronger in a conventional sense. But they are, in a very real sense, less susceptible to Trump’s methods.
For perhaps the first time in his life, Donald Trump finds himself facing adversaries who aren’t just immune to his usual Trumpian playbook but are playing a different game altogether.
I’ve come to resent the frenzy around superblooms.
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Not because I don’t love seeing our hillsides blanketed with nature’s bounty, but because it misses the point that every wildflower that bursts out of the ground is its own sort of miracle. Have you ever slowed down on the trail just to stare at an individual California poppy and considered how in the world a seed that’s a fraction of an inch (1/20 to be exact-ish) became this bright orange delicate thing before you?
For me, each wildflower I spot on the trail is an opportunity to practice gratitude. I hope I can persuade you to consider the same.
With that same energy, I’d like to teach you how I find wildflowers and other plants I love, both as a hiker and outdoors journalist. Here is what I consider as I’m searching for the best spring hikes.
A large oak tree provides shade over a trail in Franklin Canyon Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. Learn the landscapes
L.A. County is home to a multitude of diverse plant habitats, with each offering its own range of wildflowers, shrubs, trees and more. And often, these landscapes can be interspersed among each other.
Hikers around L.A. commonly encounter plant habitats and ecosystems that include:
Coastal sage scrub: Found at lower elevations (generally below 3,000 feet), this fire-adapted plant community often includes bright yellow bush sunflower, sticky monkey flower (orange blooms), deerweed (orange and yellow blooms) and fragrant California sagebrush and black sage, which features white and bluish blooms; this is a great plant habitat to hike when you want to really stop and smell things.
Chaparral: Often said to be the most extensive vegetation type in California, chaparral is found throughout Southern California’s mountain ranges up to about 5,000 feet, although it does grow higher; chaparral is a “continuous cover of low-growing shrubs creating a mosaic in shades of green,” according to research by the U.S. Forest Service; common flowering plants found in chaparral include woolly bluecurls, chamise (white flowers), ceanothus (shrubs with fragrant purple, white and sometimes pink blooms) and manzanitas.
Oak woodlands: A plant habitat often found in low- to mid-elevations (generally below 5,000 feet) in foothills and valleys, this ecosystem is “officially defined as an oak stand in which at least 10% of the land is covered by oaks and other species, mostly hardwoods,” writes author Kate Marianchild in “Secrets of the Oak Woodlands”; wildflowers that often grow here include California buttercup (yellow blooms), Collinsia heterophylla (purple and white blooms), hummingbird sage (super cool plant with magenta flowers) and more.
Several coast live oaks, including this one with a swing, live along the Gabrielino Trail, left. Top right, there are several native plants and wildflowers along the Gabrielino Trail, including golden yarrow. Bottom right, Bush monkey flower, sometimes called sticky monkey flower, is a native shrub found along the Gabrielino Trail.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Riparian habitats: This is the term used to describe the lush landscape found around rivers, creeks and in moisture-rich canyons and includes riparian woodlands; it is less defined by elevation and more so is used to describe the life found around water. Wildflowers and plants that bloom include western columbine, scarlet monkey flower and miner’s lettuce (white and pale pink blooms). You can often also find California bay laurels, which have a zesty pungent smell (that not everyone loves).
Where to see it: Essentially anywhere along the 28.8-mile Gabrielino Trail, which runs parallel in several sections to the San Gabriel River and Arroyo Seco.
The snow plant (sarcodes sanguinea Torr.) is starting to come up around pine trees at the Chilao Picnic Area in the Angeles National Forest. It grows in the spring, after snow has melted, has no chlorophyll and gets its nutrition from fungi growing on conifer roots in the soil.
(Raul Roa / Los Angeles Times)
2. Go higher for late-season blooms
Thanks to our proximity to the San Gabriel Mountains, the wildflower season often extends into late spring and early summer.
In Angeles National Forest, you can easily hike above 5,000 feet and even farther into the sub-alpine regions where you’ll find mixed conifer forests and a range of wildflowers and other interesting plants. One of my favorites to spot is the snow plant, a funky red parasitic plant that “derives sustenance and nutrients from mycorrhizal fungi that attach to roots of trees,” according to the California Native Plant Society. Other blooms you might spot include various types of lupine, pumice alpine gold and some types of paintbrushes.
Grape soda lupine grows in Angeles National Forest, including here along the Cooper Canyon trail.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
3. Determine whether an area has burned in recent years
Many of the most beloved areas of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains have burned in recent years. The immediate aftermath is devastating to witness: blackened hillsides with shrubs and trees burned down to nubs and stumps.
But, as the ecosystem starts to heal, several wildflowers known as “fire followers” will start popping up.
“Often boasting beautiful blooms, some germinate only when their seeds are exposed to heat, while others take advantage of the charred, mineral-rich soil left behind, helping to secure the land and reduce erosion,” according to TreePeople.
I’ve found this to be true in areas that burned in the 2020 Bobcat fire, where trails burst with blooms from several types of lupine (including grape-soda lupine, my personal favorite), phacelias, including large flowered phacelia and caterpillar phacelia, and withered snapdragon.
California poppies bloom next to the California State Route 138 near the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve State Natural Reserve on March 12. The state’s wildflowers typically bloom from mid-March through April.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
4. Check the data and help others do the same
Before heading out, I often head to iNaturalist, a citizen science app where users submit photos of animals, plants and other living organisms they observe. I will usually look at what other users have submitted in recent weeks. And on every hike, I typically submit at least 20 observations of wildflowers, lizards and trees I noticed. (As of today, I’ve submitted 675 observations of 341 species, including eight California poppy observations and seven black bear observations, which are really just photos of scat.)
To use iNaturalist, you can either visit its desktop site or use the app, which is available for iPhone and Android. You can easily search specific plants — although rare and endangered specimens will have their locations hidden — to discern whether any have been spotted along the trail you’re headed to. This is one of the ways I discovered an abundant showing of wildflowers in Towsley Canyon and in the Santa Monica Mountains, which hopefully is still there thanks to the recent rainfall.
As you can tell, there is much to learn about the diverse landscapes covering Southern California. I hope this newsletter prompts you to learn even more as you venture out there.
May your adventures lead you to a day full of springtime color and a deep sense of gratitude for whatever you find!
3 things to do
Violet Tiul, 12, removes invasive mustard weed at Friends of the Los Angeles River’s Habitat Restoration & Earth Month Celebration at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Preserve in Los Angeles on May 24, 2025.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
1. Celebrate Earth Month at the L.A. River Friends of the L.A. River needs volunteers from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday at the Sepulveda Basin for its Earth Month habitat restoration day. Other local groups at the event will include the California Native Plant Society and the L.A. and San Fernando Valley chapters of the Audubon Society. Volunteers will yank weeds and install native plants and be rewarded with guided nature walks around the native reserve. Binoculars will be provided. Learn more at support.folar.org.
2. Explore the night sky in Joshua Tree The Mojave Desert Land Trust will host an interactive evening exploring the night skies from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday at its headquarters in Joshua Tree. Interns from the trust’s Women In Science Discovering Our Mojave (or WISDOM) will share their research findings, and afterward, guests will be treated to s’mores and a night sky viewing with a National Park Service ranger. Learn more and register at mdlt.org.
3. Hike with bats and more in Calabasas Malibu Creek State Park will host a guided night hike from 7:30 to 9 p.m. in Calabasas. Guests will learn about nocturnal animals as they hike about three miles round trip. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
Carrizo Plain National Monument in San Luis Obispo County.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
If you’re feeling up for a road trip, may I suggest heading to the Carrizo Plain National Monument? Times staff writer Christopher Reynolds outlined how, even though we are past its peak wildflower season, the monument is still a gorgeous display of springtime blooms. “By the time my wife and I arrived in the first days of April, the flowers were past their peak, but the hills were still green and many meadows popped with yellow, purple and blue,” Reynolds wrote. “If I’m reading my wildflowers handbook right, these were tidy tips, Goldfields, Owl’s Clover, thistle sage, Valley Larkspur, coreopsis, phacelia and hillside daisies.”
We are so lucky to live among such rich biodiversity!
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Would you like to meet me IRL? I am hosting “L.A. Hiking 101” at 1:45 p.m. Sunday at Mudd Hall 203 during the L.A. Times’ Festival of Books at USC. The festival is free to attend, as are several of the panels, mine included. I will share how to find some of the best hikes around L.A., what I’ve learned writing about our local wildlands and, as a fun show-and-tell, what I carry in my pack when I’m out on a day hike. Space is limited, so grab your ticket now for my talk. I am eager to hear what questions you have. See you there!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
Families, in their various flavors, have been essential to television since that light first flickered on. They may be ideal or nightmarish, or both, or in between, and we take to them — be they Waltons or Addamses or Simpsons — according to our own experience or desires, having known families of our own or wanted something other than what we had.
In “Schitt’s Creek,” Dan Levy co-created — with his father, Eugene, yet — one of the medium’s greatest family comedies. It was a show that grew over time from a basic premise about rich people who lose their money and are forced to live at close quarters in adjoining motel rooms to a paean to love, understanding and acceptance. It swept the comedy categories at the 2020 Emmys, including acting awards for both Levys, Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy and writing and directing trophies for Dan.
“To family” are in fact the last words spoken in the first season of “Bad Mistakes,” Levy’s noisy, funny new show, co-created with Rachel Sennott and now streaming on Netflix — though given what precedes it, it’s less a blessing than a curse. Levy plays Nicky, a pastor at a sparsely attended suburban New Jersey church of no evident denomination. He’s out as gay, but supposedly celibate; that he has a boyfriend, Tareq (Jacob Gutierrez), is known only to Tareq; this, of course, creates a secret, which will create pressure, which will create comedy.
Sister Morgan (Taylor Ortega) is an elementary school teacher, a job that doesn’t quite jibe with everything else we see about her — it’s barely represented, anyway, summer having come — and a very longtime boyfriend, Max (Jack Innanen), who has decided that now is the moment to propose. She had once tried acting in New York, which means that she lived a wilder life once and is something of an improviser. Their mother, Linda (Laurie Metcalf), who owns a hardware store, is running for mayor and the campaign is being managed by extra daughter Natalie (Abby Quinn).
The series begins as their grandmother is dying, and at Linda’s command, they rush out to buy her a present — Linda is trying to squeeze in an “early birthday” before her mother passes. And because she is that sort of person, Morgan shoplifts what she imagines is a cheap necklace from a convenience store. (Attendant Yusuf, played by Boran Kuzum, will have much to do.) The necklace isn’t cheap, it turns out, for no particularly good reason, and the convenience store isn’t just a convenience store, but a kind of waystation for stolen goods run by local Russian mobsters. As a result, Morgan and Nicky find themselves forced to run errands for them, under threat of death, or worse.
The show gets very complicated on its way to a circular semi-conclusion; there is a lot going on, with Linda’s mayoral ambitions and various relationship issues. (Elizabeth Perkins plays Max’s mother, bridging storylines.) But it’s a good ride, and classic in its way; searching the phrase “get mixed up with gangsters” brings forth a host of old comedies. Through the dodgiest situations, brother and sister do not hesitate to argue. Nicky would love to be anywhere else, while Morgan finds it invigorating. Though it is all improbable, the parts do mesh neatly; they make television sense.
Finally, the series rests on the shoulders of the three principal players, who are just a pleasure to watch; the camera obliges by moving in close. Levy brings a soft-spoken breathlessness you may recognize from his David Rose on “Schitt’s”; his softly muttered “OK,” which might just mean “stop talking,” is almost a trademark. Ortega brings a kind of poignance to her reborn wild child, while Metcalf plays Linda with a kind of small-town operatic intensity, eyes popped and pronunciation precise — she’s like a country cousin to O’Hara’s Moira Rose — as if she were onstage pitching to the back row of the theater.
Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning in “Margo’s Got Money Troubles,” premiering April 15, 2026 on Apple TV.
(Allyson Riggs/Courtesy of Apple)
In “Margo’s Got Money Problems, premiering Wednesday on Apple TV, Elle Fanning plays the title character, a college student flattered into bed by her married-with-children writing professor, Mark (Michael Angarano), despite my shouting at the screen for her not to do it. Soon she is pregnant, and soon after that the essentially single mother of baby Bodhi, unable to find work or the time to write. (As the heroine, we assume her talent.)
Presumably in search of some normalcy, Margo’s mother, Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), a former good time girl — but still sparkly — has become engaged to Kenny (Greg Kinnear), Christian, square and sincere; the Ralph Bellamy of the piece, you are not asked to take him quite seriously (though Kinnear plays him straight). Shyanne’s ex-husband is Jinx, a former professional wrestler, played by Nick Offerman with the low-key affect of Ron Swanson, dialed down even further; depression and drug addiction will do that to you. Fresh out of rehab, he trades a championship belt for a motorcycle and joins the household; though he left Margo early, and unlike Shyanne, he proves to have a marvelous, easy way with Bodhi. (The baby himself, or babies — they use twins for this job — are themselves marvelous.)
Also in residence is roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham), a chirpy cosplayer — and coincidentally Jinx’s biggest fan — whose skills will become valuable as Margo, needing cash, sets off into the world of OnlyFans. First picking up tips describing followers’ penises in terms of Pokémon (no explanation has been thought necessary), she pivots to video, mounting increasingly elaborate sexy sci-fi productions alongside Susie (sets and costumes), Jinx (narrative advice, stunt coordinator) and OnlyFans veterans KC (Rico Nasty) and Rose (Lindsey Normington), a fabulous tag team to whom Margo turns for advice. (Margo does seem to take things over, but it’s her name in the title, so there you go.) This introduces an element of Mickey and Judy, my uncle’s got a barn, let’s put on a show comedy. More important, it creates a team, melding the family you make with the family you have.
It’s as sweet as can be. Apart from sleeping with one’s professor — students, do not do this! — the show is positive about just about everything: motherhood, daughterhood, professional wrestling, second chances, sex work, cosplaying and the way art shows up in strange places. Only Marcia Gay Harden, as Mark’s mother, Elizabeth, is an outright villain, and you will hate her.
The series was created by David E. Kelley (Mr. Michelle Pfeiffer), from Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 novel, once again under the umbrella of Nicole Kidman’s Blossom Films (following their collaborations on “Big Little Lies,” “Nine Perfect Strangers” and “Love & Death”), with its house style of well-upholstered capital-Q Quality (as distinct, in its pop-cult, way, from prestige). (Kidman has a small role as a wrestler-turned-lawyer and it’s been a while since I’ve seen her this well used.) “Margo’s Got Money Problems” can be terribly sentimental, almost corny — the climax is pure Hollywood — but undeniably effective. And if its mix of comedy and drama can be a little destabilizing, you won’t need to worry about where it ends up.
When I was a child, I watched “The Jetsons” and “Lost in Space” and imagined my adult self living in a world of high-tech ease: flying cars, self-cleaning rooms, high-speed trains, personal jetpacks and wise-cracking robotic companions capable of solving any problem in a trice.
Instead I got Google (now with an irritating and frequently wrong AI feature), increased gridlock, Roombas, far too many passcodes/two-factor authenticator systems and a bunch of motorized ice chests cluttering up the sidewalks.
The last of which were recently banned, mercifully if temporarily, in Glendale. Reading about the city’s upcoming moratorium on delivery robots, I literally cheered. I hate them so much.
I know, I know, they’re adorable, with their wide “eyes” and squat toddler-like determination as they trundle along, pausing in careful recalculation whenever they encounter a curb, street sign, a sidewalk cafe table. Hating them makes me feel a bit like those folks who ban children from weddings or make snarky comments about dogs showing up just about everywhere (two things I would never do).
A Serve Robotics delivery robot heads to work Feb. 13. They navigate autonomously using LiDAR and only require human intervention if they get stuck, damaged or are heavily vandalized.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
But though I am happy to accommodate dog walkers, stroller-pushers and other slow-moving/space-requiring pedestrians, I am less happy to do so for a tricked-out little metal box as it picks its way over potholes and sidewalk cracks on a “heroic” mission to deliver takeout to someone who, presumably, lives less than a mile away from its source.
And it isn’t just cranky-pants impatience. I recently became part of a face-off between two opposite-running Coco bots on the small strip of sidewalk in front of Cafe Figaro. The minutes-long standstill forced several people into the street; many more, including my husband and his cane, engaged in a potentially perilous stutter-step around the two knee-high, randomly moving yet noncommunicative vehicles.
One of which was, for reasons of its own, sporting an American flag — maybe it wants to be a Mars rover when it grows up.
Delivery bots, including those made by Coco, a company begun in 2020 by two UCLA graduates, have been around for a while. Early rollouts, however, were small and often plagued by trouble. Stranded or struggling robots became the new Bird scooters — nifty ideas that proved more problematic in practice.
The Coco 1, left, alongside the new Coco 2 (Next-Gen) at the Coco Robotics headquarters in February in Venice. Coco Robotics launched its next-generation, fully autonomous delivery robot, Coco 2.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Many people love Coco and other delivery robots, which partially replace traffic-clogging, exhaust-spewing delivery drivers with a more environmentally friendly alternative.
Others do not, viewing the bots as sidewalk lice that create hazards and take jobs from humans. Several cities, including Chicago, Toronto and San Francisco, have already instituted bans; Glendale is, as Long Beach recently did, taking a less draconian approach, putting the robots on pause while city officials figure out a regulatory framework.
Good luck with that. The e-bike craze, which is putting many people, including kids, in the hospital at an alarming rate, has thus far defied similar regulatory frameworks. As with delivery robots, the possible benefits of e-bikes — environmentally friendly, traffic-decreasing, super fun to ride — created a demand that ignores the dangers created by popularity.
Unlike e-bikes, or the electric scooters that preceded them, delivery robots aren’t yet causing widespread physical harm. Even my own feelings for those motorized metal coolers are fueled by existential disappointment as much as personal irritation.
In many ways, the high-tech future I envisioned as a child has come to pass — we have computers in our pockets, driverless cars, thumbprint and face ID, and voice-activated remote controls for everything. We may not be able to teleport, either physically or via hologram, but we can Zoom or video chat with pretty much anyone anywhere. ChatGPT is not exactly J.A.R.V.I.S., but it’s something. High-speed trains, and pretty much any mass transportation improvement, continue to elude the United States, but one can experience them elsewhere.
Matt Wood, Serve Robotics supervisor, drives a robot to a holding area earlier this year in the company’s parking lot where it and 26 others were to be transported by delivery truck to a farther service location.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The problem is, of course, that reality is much more complicated than futuristic visions sold by “The Jetsons,” “Minority Report” or the cultural marketers of Silicon Valley. Like e-bikes, every advancement creates a host of new problems — hackers, identity theft, system failures, increased energy demands. Labor-saving devices are rarely that — instead labor is shifted, from one department to another, from the body to the brain, or standards are raised — when laundry is done by a machine, its operator must ensure that all clothing is bright, soft, sweet smelling and stain-free just as those who have been given a company smartphone must be available 24/7. After all, how hard is it to answer a text?
Delivery robots are both disappointing in their reality and alarming in their symbolic implication. With all manner of industries constricting and AI threatening entry-level positions, many people have become delivery drivers, full-time or as an economically necessary side gig. Are robots coming for them as well? And are we all going to step around them and post photos on Instagram as they do?
It’s a lot to put on a relatively new and small industry that remains, thus far, a cute and novel way to receive a salad or a few groceries. Those who fear imminent robotic world domination can actually take heart — like the AI actor Tilly Norwood, these little geezers have limited abilities. They don’t go very far, or move very fast; they are easily damaged and disabled (especially in Philadelphia). If they are the vanguard of a sentient nonhuman enemy, we don’t have much to fear yet.
Still, as these robots grow in number and size, those big innocent “eyes” and the cutesy design take on an unnerving air. As Albert Brooks said in “Broadcast News”: “What do you think the devil is going to look like if he’s around … he will be attractive, he’ll be nice and helpful.”
The NBA regular season ended Sunday and the first order of business for teams that fell short of making the playoffs was to evaluate their head coach. Hall of Famer Doc Rivers wasn’t spared the scrutiny.
He agreed to depart from the Milwaukee Bucks after winning 16 fewer games this season than last. Rivers has one year remaining on the $40-million contract he signed in January 2024 and will be paid for the final season.
The Bucks were 32-50 this season largely because superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo played in only 36 games because of injuries. Antetokounmpo, who expressed frustration talking to reporters Sunday, might be next out the door.
If so, the Lakers undoubtedly would be interested. They are projected to have about $60 million in salary-cap space and three first-round draft picks they can use — 2026, 2031 and 2033 — to try to make a deal this offseason.
Despite his insistence that he was healthy fairly soon after he suffered a left knee hyperextension and bone bruise March 15, Antetokounmpo didn’t play in the last 15 games of the season.
“To my understanding, I had to play three-on-three to be able to be available to play,” he said. “I did that multiple times. I’ve never in my life denied participation of practice. Whoever came up with that is disrespectful toward what I’ve done for this team and the way I carry myself.”
The decision was likely made to ensure the trade value of the two-time most valuable player wasn’t diminished by another injury. Antetokounmpo, 31, is under contract for 2026-2027 and has a player option of $62.7 million for 2027-28.
The Lakers — and other trade partners — would be more than willing to give him an extension. The contracts of LeBron James ($52.6 million), Rui Hachimura ($18 million) and Maxi Kleber ($11 million) expire after this season, giving the Lakers the cash to toss in Antetokounmpo’s direction.
The Bucks floundered without him and the coach paid the price. Rivers, 64, hadn’t had a losing full season since 2006-2007, a span that included an NBA title with Boston in 2007-2008, seven seasons with the Clippers and three with the Philadelphia 76ers.
“I have truly loved my time in Milwaukee,” said Rivers, who played college basketball at Marquette. “Coming back to where I got my start, to a city that has always embraced me, has been a privilege. I am disappointed that things did not turn out the way any of us hoped, but I am deeply grateful for this experience, the relationships built, and unwavering support from our fans and the community.”
Rivers began coaching after a 13-year NBA playing career and has a 1,194-866 record (.580) with five teams across 27 seasons. His regular-season wins are the sixth most in NBA history and he will be enshrined into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame this year.
The Bucks discussed with him an advisory role in the organization, but Rivers is taking his time deciding what to do next. Asked how long he envisions coaching, Rivers mentioned his grandchildren.
“I won’t answer that, but I have grandkids that I want to see,” Rivers told reporters. “I’ll let you figure it out from there. I have seven grandkids now, and they’re all 8 years and under, and it kills me every time I miss grandparents day with each one of them in school. It’s probably time to go see them more, so I’ll let you figure out the rest.”
His seven consecutive winning seasons with the Clippers are part of the franchise’s current streak of 15 consecutive seasons with a winning record, the longest active run in the NBA and fourth-longest in league history.
Other NBA coaches on the hot seat include Jamahl Mosley of the Orlando Magic and Brian Keefe of the Washington Wizards. Portland Trail Blazers interim coach Tiago Splitter also might be replaced.
Splitter took over for Chauncey Billups, who has pleaded not guilty to charges he profited from rigged poker games involving several Mafia figures and at least one other ex-NBA player.
So this is how we find out Justin Bieber is a YouTube Premium subscriber.
The 32-year-old teen-pop survivor headlined Coachella on Saturday night, and for roughly half an hour in the middle of his set, what Bieber did was sit behind a laptop and sing along to his old music videos — often an octave down from where he recorded them — as he searched up the songs on YouTube and played them over the festival’s state-of-the-art sound system.
YouTube Premium, that is, given that he (and we) faced no ads during the performance.
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Expectations were insanely high for this show — Bieber’s first large-scale concert after a few years he spent in the pop-star wilderness recovering from various health ailments of both the physical and mental variety.
Invite-only warm-up gigs he played over the last couple of weeks in L.A. led to widespread speculation that at Coachella he might play only material from last year’s “Swag” and “Swag II” comeback albums.
And indeed that’s what he did for the first half-hour or so, singing songs like “All I Can Take,” “Speed Demon” and “Butterflies” — and singing them with extreme precision — accompanied by prerecorded backing tracks; after that, he brought out Carter Lang and Dylan Wiggins — two of his closest “Swag” collaborators — to do more of the “Swag” material “up close and personal with you guys,” as he put it.
“This is a night I dreamed about for a long time,” he said, dressed in a red hoodie, shorts and Paddington-gone-Balenciaga rain boots.
Together the three did gorgeous Christian-youth-group white-soul renditions of “Things You Do” and “Glory” and “Everything Hallelujah,” the last of which Bieber used to shout out his wife, Hailey Baldwin, who was in the crowd and made herself available to Coachella’s roving cameras.
Then: “Feels like we gotta take you guys on a bit of a journey,” Bieber said. “You guys remember this song?”
That was his own cue for a YouTube deep dive — it started with “Baby” and included “Never Say Never” and “Beauty and a Beat” — that made you wonder about the unresolved trauma he’s still dealing with from his child-star days. (Second night in a row for that, by the way, after Sabrina Carpenter on Friday.)
“How far back do you go?” he asked the crowd at one point. “Are you really with the s—?”
Bieber went on to play much-memed videos of himself running into a revolving door and himself falling off a stage; that led to an unfortunate little digression about the paparazzi and their rapacious ways.
“These guys won’t leave you alone, bro,” he said before playing that famous video of the guy freaking out over the double rainbow.
The final portion of the show had Bieber doing “Yukon,” then “Devotion” with Dijon — the vocals! — then “Essence” with Tems and Wizkid.
“Tonight has been beautiful,” Bieber said before bringing out Mk.gee to close with “Daisies,” and he was right: This was a radical reframing of what a headlining Coachella performance is supposed to be, and I loved it.
When the final horn sounded Saturday on the Kings’ 1-0 matinee win over the Edmonton Oilers, Anze Kopitar made his way to center ice, a microphone in his hand and his heart in pieces.
“Thank you very much,” he said to the fans, his voice cracking. “Thank you for being here.”
Kopitar then held his hands in front of him and folded his fingers into the shape of a heart before skating away — not quite into the sunset, but headed in that direction.
Kopitar announced in September that this season would be his last, so unless the Kings make the playoffs — a distinct possibility after the team’s fourth win a row and fifth in six games, its best streak of the season — Saturday marked the final home appearance of a brilliant 20-year career spent entirely in Los Angeles.
The Kings’ Anze Kopitar vies for position in front of the Oilers’ Darnell Nurse during the second period on Saturday at Crypto.com Arena.
(Scott Strazzante/For The Times)
And the announced crowd of 18,145 at Crypto.com Arena made sure he knew that parting is such sweet sorrow, standing and cheering long after the game had ended.
“Eventually it was going to happen,” Kopitar, 38, reflected before the game. “Whether it was this year or two years from now, there was going to be a last day. And I’m very OK with my decision.”
Kopitar will leave having written his name all over the Kings’ record book. He’s the all-time franchise leader in points (1,314), assists (862), game-winning goals (79) and games played (1,518). He ranks third in goals (452) and power-play goals (129).
And most importantly, he played a starring role on the Kings’ only two Stanley Cup championships, leading both the 2011-12 and 2013-14 teams in goals, assists and points.
“Over 700 people have put the Kings’ uniform on,” said Daryl Evans, who was one of the 700 before retiring to become a broadcaster with the team. “He stands at the top of the mountain as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — to do so. He’s a great hockey player, as we can all see. But he’s a better person off the ice.”
It’s that second part, Evans said, that will make Kopitar difficult to replace.
“Records are made to be beaten. But the intangibles, the things that he did as the team’s captain, the leadership that he provided, the type of a player he was, very unselfish,” Evans said. “He’s one of those guys who’s a special player.”
The Kings got the only goal they would need Saturday 7:34 into the first period when Artemi Panarin stripped Edmonton’s Evan Bouchard of the puck at the Kings’ blue line and took off the other way, skating in alone on Oilers’ goalie Connor Ingram, then beating him on a wrist shot from between the circles.
Kings players react as Anze Kopitar speaks to fans after his final regular-season home game, a 1-0 win over the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
(Scott Strazzante/For The Times)
The goal was Panarin’s ninth in 23 games since joining the Kings just ahead of the Olympic break. Edmonton nearly pulled that back midway through the period when Curtis Lazar tipped the puck by Kings’ goalie Anton Forsberg, only to have defenseman Cody Ceci dive through the crease and swipe it away with a desperate one-handed wave of his stick.
Forsberg was brilliant the rest of the way, stopping 27 shots to post his 11th career shutout and win his season-best fourth game in a row, preserving the Kings’ one-point lead over Nashville in the race for the Western Conference’s final wild-card playoff berth.
The son of a coach, Kopitar was born in the former Yugoslavia, in the mining town of Jesenice near the border with Austria, an area that became part of Slovenia when that country declared independence just before Kopitar’s fourth birthday.
At 16, he led the new country’s first-tier professional league in scoring, so he moved to Sweden in search of a challenge — and led that country’s top junior league with 49 points in 30 games. That drew the attention of the Kings, who took Kopitar with the 11th overall pick in the 2005 draft.
Fourteen months later he became the first Slovenian to play in the NHL, making his debut as a teenager and scoring two goals against the Ducks. He never looked back — nor looked to play elsewhere, twice signing contract extensions with the Kings rather than test the free-agent market. (Not that he needed to test the free-agent market since he made more than $140 million in his two decades with the Kings, becoming the best-paid player in team history.)
“I’ve always felt extremely comfortable in L.A.,” said Kopitar, whose two children were born here. “The organization has been world-class since I got here, so I had no desire to go anywhere else.”
Anze Kopitar celebrates with the Stanley Cup after the Kings’ win over the New Jersey Devils in 2012.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
As a result only six players in league history have played more games with a single organization, making Kopitar’s name synonymous with the franchise.
“The greatest to play for the Kings,” said Luc Robitaille, the franchise leader in goals (557) as a player and now the team’s president. “What’s he meant to this franchise — you know this franchise never won and he came along and we won two [Stanley Cups]. So he deserves all the credits and everything that’s coming his way.”
He’s also among the last of a dying breed: a two-way center who stood out on both ends of the ice, but was also gentlemanly enough to win the Lady Byng trophy three times. Only one player has won the NHL’s top sportsmanship award more often this century.
“Every coach would love to have him because he never cheats the game,” Evans said of Kopitar, who this month was also nominated for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy, which recognizes the player who “best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to ice hockey.”
“He’s got a lot of pride and he doesn’t want to let his teammates down,” Evans said. “He’s been a student of the game from Day 1. He plays the game the right way. If you could tell a player ‘watch somebody,’ there’s a guy you want to watch.”
Kopitar’s numbers have declined this season, owing partly to a pair of lower-body injuries that caused him to miss significant time in both October and January. That’s left him on pace to finish with fewer than 16 goals in a full season for just the third time while his 24 assists and 36 points are career lows.
But he has the best plus/minus number on the team and he’s winning a career-best 57.7% of his faceoffs, including four crucial draws deep in the Kings’ end in the final minute Saturday.
“It’s been, obviously, an up-and-down season,” he said. “Some good, some bad, some ugly.”
Kopitar admits the goodbyes have been emotional at times. On his final visit to Madison Square Garden last month, for example, he and former teammate Jonathan Quick exchanged several hugs after the game.
“I’m enjoying it,” he added. “I’m not sad about it. I guess I’m staying in the moment and enjoying the moment.”
The Kings’ Anze Kopitar tries to flip a shot past Edmonton goaltender Connor Ingram Saturday at Crypto.com Arena.
(Scott Strazzante/For The Times)
The Kings can extend Kopitar’s farewell tour by at least a couple of weeks by making the playoffs, a task that’s looking much more likely than it did a week ago. After Saturday’s win the Kings not only lead Nashville in the wild-card race, holding a game in hand over the Predators, but they are just two points out of third place in the Pacific Division standings.
“He hopes he’s going to play here again,” Kings coach D.J. Smith said of Kopitar’s possible postseason encore.
Just where and when the team might open the postseason — if, indeed, it qualifies — is up in the air since the Kings could finish anywhere from first to fifth in the division, leaving them with more than a dozen possible playoff scenarios. So when the team leaves for its final three-game trip of the season Sunday, the players have been told to pack for 10 days.
Either way Kopitar isn’t changing his mind; when the Kings’ season ends — whenever that is — his career will end as well. So will his time in Los Angeles since Kopitar is selling his Manhattan Beach home and moving back to Slovenia to accept a new role as a full-time father.
“I’m going to be a dad,” he said. “I’m going to just relax and see how long it takes to get bored and then we’ll figure it out from there. Of course I’m going to miss this place. But it was a family decision, obviously, to move.
“As much as this place is super nice and the community was great to us, it’s time to slow down the tempo a little bit and enjoy life. But I’ll make it back here for sure.”
Jesse Kardon has come a long way from his days as a teenager messing around with Ableton in his bedroom. The 33-year-old DJ and producer better known as Subtronics is now an established EDM star. Over the last 15 years, he has built a career that has taken him from playing small clubs in his hometown of Philadelphia to a fall headlining set at the Sphere in Las Vegas and then a landmark run of six sold-out shows at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium in December.
Back in 2022, he performed a surprise set at Coachella’s intimate electronic-focused Do Lab stage, but this year marks his proper Indio, Calif., debut where he is the highest-billed dubstep-rooted artist, playing the massive Sahara Tent on Sunday and April 19. He will also perform two Southland shows between his Coachella sets at the Fox Theater in Pomona on Tuesday and at the GV Surf Club in Palm Springs on April 18.
While EDM has emerged over the years as a dominant force, comprising nearly 45% of this year’s lineup, artists from the sometimes polarizing dubstep/riddim scene are rarely given such a prominent platform.
Subtronics’ sound has expanded in recent years. His remix of John Summit’s “Crystallized feat. Inéz” has garnered praise, while “Fibonacci Pt. 2,” his latest in a set of math-inspired releases, interweaves the melodic with the heavy. “Infinity,” featuring fellow EDM DJ Grabbitz, and “Contour,” featuring vocalist Lyrah, stand out.
Although his work has evolved to include more melodic soundscapes, Subtronics remains committed to bringing more people to a better understanding of the genre that first brought his life into focus. He will never forget how playing drums for years as a kid taught him the foundations of rhythm, and he carries the gritty sounds of Philadelphia hip-hop and trap that shaped that sound into his work today.
Dubstep has affected his life in deeply personal ways. As a kid, a shared love of the scene brought him closer to his sister. Later on, he met Sonya Broner, the dubstep artist known as Level Up. Broner is now his wife, and they often collaborate.
In a remote conversation from his new home in Laurel Canyon, Subtronics talks about his milestone Coachella run and shares thoughts on everything from what to expect from his set to his legacy in dubstep and beyond.
This interview is lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
I’m really hopeful to introduce bass music to a lot of new people, because I believe the rising tide raises all ships,” Subtronics said.
(Jason Fenmore)
What is your mindset? How are you feeling going into this weekend?
“I’ve been really super hyper focused on Coachella for about, pretty much the moment we finished the tour, which was about two, three weeks ago. It’s been really all hands on deck, nonstop working on that.”
Take me back to when you first got the news that you booked Coachella. Was that something you and your team had been working specifically toward?
“It was honestly, an almost several year plan where that really was the goal, and we were kind of thinking of the different opportunities we’ve had over the years, and the things we were going to have going forward, and how could we strategize in a way where we can work our way towards Coachella, and that’s kind of what the Shrine was. The hope was like, if we can sell out three [nights at Shrine], we’ve got a pretty good chance of getting a booking, and then we sold out a ton of them. It’s such a good time slot on such a great stage…both me and my inner child are completely freaking out.”
Did you take a moment to celebrate?
“Absolutely, yes. And you know what? It always comes in the form of, like, little moments. Because I do get so… I do have these “pause” moments where it’s like, ‘Stop and appreciate how far you’ve come.’ ‘Stop and realize the gravity of this. You’re really doing these things; all of this hard work has manifested and paid off. This Coachella slot, and even just playing at all, is ammunition to fight back against the imposter syndrome. It’s beyond my wildest dreams and expectations. I never expected any of this to get this far, and I was just trying to learn how to make cool sounds.”
Do you think about historical context, where you fit in in the history of electronic music and in Coachella’s history?
“Oh, man, I love that question so much, because it’s my No. 1 thing. When I first started, aside from wanting to learn and get good at it… my goal was to contribute to the culture and leave a mark that’s remembered, because I’m really passionate about the history of both dubstep and dance music. So many historic moments happened at Coachella. And it really is such an honor, because I just think of ‘Oh my God, dude.’ Like, Daft Punk, you know? I can’t even wrap my head around it, but it is the thing that matters most to me: being remembered years from now and doing things that really feel like they contributed to the culture.
I’m really hopeful to introduce bass music to a lot of new people, because I believe the rising tide raises all ships. There’s a lot of us dubstep and bass music makers. And I think anytime one of us gets an opportunity, it really kind of raises the ceiling for the whole scene, and we are all in it together… there’s so many talented producers that deserve to be able to make a living off of it. And the bigger the scene gets, the more people can fit under the umbrella, and pay their rent and live a successful life doing what they love.”
The highest-billed dubstep-rooted artist on this year’s festival lineup, Subtronics views his performances as a chance to introduce bass music to mainstream audiences.
(Jason Fenmore)
Have you been feeling any pressure? And if so, how have you been handling it?
“Yeah, definitely, because I think I feel pressure from multiple angles. I’ll feel pressure from the very core fan base to stick to a certain style. And then I’ll feel pressure as both a DJ and a music producer. And whenever I get these opportunities, they’re so far outside of, you know, the core of dubstep, I feel the opposite end of pressure where it’s like, you should read the room, be a DJ, you know, like, figure out what their energy is. So it’s kind of pulling me in two different directions, and my answer to that has been to have faith in my own taste — to ignore both of them, to just completely ignore everybody, and to trust what I like and have faith that my taste is what got me here in the first place.”
What is your overarching goal for these shows?
“I make a bunch of stuff, but I do mostly identify as a dubstep and bass music artist. So, to be able to represent that on such a gigantic platform to a whole ton of people who might not necessarily be 100% EDM festival attendees… to play for them is really exciting. And then the livestream as well, it’s like there’s a crazy amount of viewers who might be completely new to bass music or new to dubstep, you know, tuning in. I take it as a responsibility to introduce people to bass music and contextualize it in the best way I can. And also expressing myself as honestly and authentically as I can — having that moment of individuality and uniqueness.
What do you think mainstream audiences might not understand about dubstep?
“Something that I do think is interesting is the original wave of dubstep, the original U.K., 2004 through 2008, it was on the radio. It was melodic, it was musical. It wasn’t nearly as polarizing. Obviously, it got more aggressive and became more of a huge, showy, crazy, overstimulating thing as it, as it moved its way over to the States. But I seek to strike a middle ground. Something I experienced a lot when I first started touring was being in a sub-genre incorrectly labeled [as riddim].
The issue is that riddim is already a genre: dancehall. It already exists…I think that’s not a very well-known thing. It should have been called swamp or something like that…trench. A few names were being thrown around. I called it “wonky step” at the time because it was just really wonky and repetitive. I guess riddim is what stuck for whatever reason. I was playing for a group that was much more melodic, much more theatrical, and everyone who came up to me after the shows told me, ‘I don’t like riddim. I’ve never liked riddim before, but hearing it in your set…it makes sense to me now. So I hope to be almost like a translator. My goal is to express myself authentically and honestly, playing all original music in a way that makes sense to both groups of people [mainstream and insiders].”
Do you remember your very first performance as Subtronics? And is there something from that time you carry with you going into this weekend?
The first time I was ever actually on stage, like at a dance music venue with my name on the screen, like playing my own songs. I was opening at SoundGarden Hall, which is now known as the Ave. One of the things that early on that blew my mind the most, I was playing an after party in one of the worst neighborhoods in Philadelphia, one of the most dangerous places I’ve ever been to, maybe in my whole life, and I was standing by the front door where they’re dealing drugs and selling nitrous and some a stranger walks in the door, someone who I didn’t know, and I heard them say, ‘I heard Subtronics is playing tonight. Is that true?’ And it exploded my brain. It was the first time I had a fan that I didn’t know personally, and I will never forget that. I will never, ever, ever, ever forget as long as I live.”
David Lee Roth popped out at Coachella on Friday to sing Van Halen’s classic “Jump” with Teddy Swims. After the show, we grabbed a few minutes with the 71-year-old rock star, who wore a beaded vest and tight silver-and-black trousers and sipped from a red plastic cup.
Ted, Teddy, Theodore — what do you call Teddy swims? I call him Teddy. Teddy Swims is one of the best names ever — everybody’s saying it. All around in the city here are visitors from Germany, Holland, Japan, China, and they all know that name. Something like Greenberg? Helfenbein? [Shrugs]
What if you’d been Dave Roth? My full name is David Lee Roth — it’s an anagram. When I was born, I had a traumatic birth — I was backwards, I had the cord around, I was hyperactive. My grandfather, who was a 70-hour-a-week physician — graduated medical school in 1920 — took a look at me two hours after I was born and told my mom, “He’s gonna be trouble.” And Mom’s way of saying “Go schtup yourself,” she added the middle name Lee. If you reverse the letters, it comes out the devil.
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You ever been to Coachella before? This is my first time on this stage, and it’s the most forgiving audience. What a colorful, noisy bunch.
A forgiving audience? What does that mean? It means if you go to Kenny Chesney, you gotta have the hat — the girls have to have the cut-offs. There’s rules. If you go heavy metal, you gotta cut the sleeves off a black shirt — not blue.
And here it’s catch-as-catch-can? It’s inventive, creative, imaginative without rules — the way artwork perhaps used to be in the middle ’80s. In 1985, graphic art, sculptural art, automotive art — there were no rules. Today, you’re not getting on any gallery walls without a political bias. And today, here, I’m not sure what the bias is. I can wear something like this and it’s like, “Too bad you showed up in your day clothes.”
What is this outfit? This is Artemis moon mission. I’m vacuum-packed for your safety — kid-tested, mom-approved. She likes it because it’s good for ’em. I like it because it’s gonna taste so good.
“I got my back against the record machine,” from “Jump.” Could you explain to the kids what a record machine is? It’s a jukebox. And it’s a visual — like Broadway: [Sings] “When you’re a jet, you’re a jet / All the way from your first cigarette…” Now, I know Tony like I know me — the playground is neutral territory.
Wait, who’s Tony? “West Side Story.”
What’s a jukebox have to do with “West Side Story”? It suggests an image of a human being leaning against a jukebox saying, “I may not be the best thing in your mind today — but I’m the right tool for the job.”
Van Halen’s highest-charting single — what was it? Either “Panama” or “Jump.”
It was “Jump” — a No. 1 hit in 1984. Remember what was No. 2 behind it? Oh my God, “Boogie Oogie Oogie”?
“Karma Chameleon,” Culture Club. OK, that’s Boy George.
You ever meet Boy George? Yes, I did. Boy George would have fit into Coachella perfectly. Where is he? A Boy George comeback at Coachella? Stop lying.
What’s the best Van Halen song? It depends what verb you’re attaching.
You choose. Pairing, for example, the right alcoholic beverage with the right firearm is important. A light Pilsner goes with that new Czech machine pistol we saw in the last John Wick movie. And a Benelli shotgun for Guinness stout. Van Halen music is the same thing: What verb are you participating in? Are you dancing? How long? The whole night. Are we running? Sure. Who with? The devil.
What’s in your cup here? This is what made me what I am today — fat and unemployed.
Xander Schauffele made par on the eighth hole Thursday at Augusta National.
What was noteworthy about that accomplishment is he did it after his tee shot landed in a most unusual spot: A fan’s merchandise bag.
During the opening round of the 2026 Masters tournament, Schauffele’s shot on the par-5 hole sailed just left of the fairway and somehow came to rest inside a woman’s clear plastic shopping bag, which appeared to be sitting on the ground.
Spectators chuckled as Schauffele and an official made their way to the bag and located the ball within it. After Schauffele used a tee to mark the ball’s location on the ground, he retrieved the ball and returned the bag to its owner. He was able to continue play without penalty.
“It just flew straight into the bag,” Schauffele said after finishing his round with a 2-under 70. “It was a great break. That bounce would’ve put me in the pine straw and who knows if I would’ve had a shot to hit up the hill.”
“So thanks to the lady on 8,” added Schauffele, the two-time major championship winner whose best Masters finish was a tie for second in 2019.
No doubt, Schauffele got lucky — but not as lucky as Louis Oosthuizen in the final round of the 2016 Masters. Oosthuizen sent his tee shot on the 16th to the green, where the ball collided with that of J.B. Holmes, changed direction and rolled in for a hole-in-one.
Schauffele’s shot also brings to mind another, perhaps even more bizarre, play from the first round of the 2021 Masters. Playing from partially behind a tree on the seventh hole, Rory McIlroy missed the right side of the fairway with a high shot that ricocheted off the back of his father’s leg on the way down.
Luckily, Gerry McIlroy was unharmed. His son, however, bogeyed that hole on his way to a 4-over 76 for the round.
Over the last year, activists have organized droves of people across the United States to protest and petition Congress over concerns that the Trump administration will sell off our most beloved outdoor spaces.
We’ve worried about general threats to public lands, such as whether the 700,000-acre Angeles National Forest or the 150,000-acre Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area will remain pristine protected landscapes. We’ve also seen specific examples of what activists have cautioned could happen: a large mining operation that could open just outside Joshua Tree National Park and a large housing development proposed at the border of Yosemite National Park.
And although that attention is more than warranted, for those of us living around Los Angeles, it’s crucial that we not miss a similar, quieter battle being fought locally by nonprofits and public agencies. Here in L.A., our wildlands are often protected parcel by parcel.
A bear meanders through the Rubio Canyon Preserve.
(Johanna Turner)
It’s a time-consuming, expensive and rewarding job that the Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy has been performing for, as of Friday, when the group celebrates its anniversary, 25 years.
I spoke with conservancy leaders about their vision to create an expansive corridor for wildlife moving among our mountain ranges. This would help combat climate change locally, make hillsides more fire resistant and ensure biodiversity among our local animals.
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The Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy started with four neighbors — Altadena residents Nancy Steele, Astrid Ellersieck, Diane Walters and Lori Paul — who organized against a housing development that ultimately was constructed.
“They were unsuccessful in preventing the project, but they realized that working together, they could be powerful,” said Barbara Goto, the conservancy’s director of operations.
The group first launched the Altadena Foothills Conservancy with the hyperlocal focus of protecting the neighboring hillsides and canyons from development. Over the next seven years, the organization’s vision expanded to include the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, and it started operating under its current name.
The organization has saved more than 140 acres from development since its founding. To identify ideal properties, they’ve used wildlife cameras, mapping software and other available data.
A Pacific tree frog (Pseudacris cadaverina) male, calling with extended throat, at Rubio Canyon.
(Althea Edwards)
The process to purchase those properties is often long and arduous. Conservancy staff must persuade a property owner to sell at fair-market price — a stipulation when the conservancy uses state funding to buy property. The owner must also be patient enough to wait for the conservancy to cobble together grants to buy the land.
After buying the land, the conservancy establishes a “friends” group — like Friends of Rubio — comprised of volunteers who yank invasive plants, reestablish trails (if applicable) and rebuild or restore passageways to make the property as appealing to animals as possible.
And it works.
The 41-acre Rubio Canyon Preserve, which sits about four miles northwest of Eaton Canyon, is regularly frequented by bears, mountain lions and deer passing to and from Angeles National Forest and the foothill landscape.
Two gray foxes appear to play together in Millard Canyon.
(Denis Callet)
At the conservancy’s Rosemont Preserve, volunteers have essentially removed all invasive castor bean, arundo (which clogs streams) and tree tobacco, which crowd out native plants and harm the landscape. It’s no surprise that the conservancy has documented 10 different mountain lions over the last nine years there (even though the preserve is surrounded on multiple sides by neighborhoods).
When the conservancy staff invited me to visit one of their preserves, I was eager and skeptical. I grew up in rural America, where my family’s 300-acre goat ranch was considered small. I’ve met ranchers who own essentially entire counties of land, especially around the Oklahoma-Texas Panhandle.
I had a bias going into this story. I assumed you needed big swaths of property to really make a difference. I realized how wrong I was when I visited the conservancy’s Cottonwood Canyon in Pasadena.
It is only 11 acres, but it is one of the most significant properties the conservancy has acquired. But that wasn’t immediately obvious.
A coyote trudges through the Rosemont Preserve.
(Denis Callet)
As John Howell, the conservancy’s chief executive, and Tim Martinez, the organization’s land manager, led me through the preserve, shaded by massive oak trees, they explained that a local educator had reached out to let the organization know that the property, which had been owned by the same family since 1885, would be up for sale.
The organization soon realized a few key details about the land. For one, it has a small-but-mighty spring that flows year-round into the Arroyo Seco. It is one of only two known year-round water sources for wildlife in the region, they said, a significant resource given how drought can dry up much of the nearby rivers and creeks.
But Cottonwood’s importance grew much larger when a staffer at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife pointed out during a visit to the property, Goto said, that the land could serve as a vital piece in a wildlife corridor puzzle. The land sits between the Hahamongna Watershed Park in La Cañada Flintridge to its east and the San Rafael Hills and Verdugo Mountains to its west.
“They’re like, ‘These are natural open spaces that need to be connected — these natural open spaces are large enough to support wildlife populations,’” Goto said. “So that is when our mission changed.”
A lesser goldfinch sings a little tune at Sycamore Canyon Preserve.
(TJ Hastings)
The organization has since pushed for the creation of the Hahamongna to Tujunga Wildlife Corridor, a 20-mile stretch that would link the San Gabriel Mountains at Hahamongna Watershed Park to the San Gabriels at Big Tujunga Wash for wildlife passage through the San Rafael Hills and the Verdugo Mountains. (For a great visual, visit arroyosfoothills.org.)
This type of effort helps ensure that, for example, mountain lions don’t end up like the famous Griffith Park mountain lion P-22, surrounded by roadways and unable to safely look for a mate, or worse.
“P-41 was the resident cougar in the Verdugos and was there for 10 years with Nikita, and they sired two sets of two cubs,” Howell said. “And [with] the first set, one died on the 134 [Freeway] and the second one died on the 210 [Freeway]. And the second set were found emaciated under a car in Burbank, and they had to be saved.”
A mountain lion crosses through Millard Canyon.
(Johanna Turner)
One challenge the conservancy faces in building out the Hahamongna to Tujunga Wildlife Corridor, Goto said, is how state funding is allocated. It is coincidentally similar to my own bias going into this piece.
Goto said that, as incredible as California’s “30×30” goal is — to conserve 30% of California’s lands and coastal waters by 2030 — “it makes it very difficult to get funding for small parcels.”
Much of the money to buy public lands comes from bond measures, and although L.A. County arguably has one of the biggest voting blocks that passed those measures, a substantial amount of bond money goes to buy property in Northern California, where large plots are more ample, Goto said.
“It’s when we’re working on these wildlife corridors that don’t necessarily have water and are much smaller, that’s where it really gets difficult,” Goto said.
And sometimes all that’s needed is a parcel of land.
A curious deer at Cottonwood Canyon Preserve.
(Arroyos & Foothills Conservancy)
3 things to do
The L.A. River bike trail near Griffith Park.
(Los Angeles Times)
1. Mosey on down the river in Elysian Valley, a.k.a. Frogtown L.A. Climate Week has organized an L.A. River Crawl from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday in Frogtown. Several local organizations and businesses will be open along the route, offering live music, poetry, food pop-ups and family-friendly activities about climate change and ecology. To learn more, visit laclimateweek.com.
2. Gaze at the stars in San Diego San Diego County Parks will host the Festival of the Night Sky and Nocturnal Creatures from 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday at the Los Peñasquitos Ranch House (12122 Canyonside Park Drive) in San Diego. This free all-ages event will include birdwatching, stargazing via telescopes and a night hike where participants will try to spot scorpions, crickets and bats. Visitors are encouraged to bring binoculars, flashlights, jackets, drinks and snacks. Learn more at the agency’s Instagram page.
3. Journal with genuine curiosity in L.A. The L.A. City Department of Recreation and Parks will host a guided walk with nature journaling from 9 to 11 a.m. Sunday at Griffith Park. A guide will take hikers on a short walk before the group pauses to capture what they’ve noticed in journals. Some materials will be provided, but guests are encouraged to bring what supplies they have. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
A professional guide with Times reporter Jack Dolan, right, set off near Donner Pass trailhead on a route taken by a backcountry ski group struck by an avalanche north of Tahoe on Feb. 17.
(Danny Kern / For The Times)
After hearing news of the deadliest avalanche in California history, many of us wondered how such a thing could happen given our access to weather data even in the most remote places. Times staff writer Jack Dolan retraced the steps of a guided backcountry ski trip where 13 people, including nine who died, were buried in snow during an intense blizzard. “Deep in a wooded ravine, bathed in warm sunlight, we knelt behind the makeshift memorial of flowers and looked up the slope that sent tons of snow barreling down,” Dolan wrote. “All we could see was a slight rise and a healthy forest of full-grown pine trees.”
There are no right words to say to capture the magnitude of heartache around this tragedy. The search for answers is one step in a long grieving process.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Valentine continues her quest for love, folks! The wolf who made history earlier this year when she entered Los Angeles County in search of a mate has made history for a second time. “The 3-year-old female with black fur entered Inyo County around 7 a.m. Sunday about 20 miles south of Mt. Whitney,” Times staff writer Lila Seidman wrote. “She became the first documented wolf to set paws in the Eastern Sierra county in more than a century, according to state wildlife officials.” It’s only been two months, meaning Valentine and her future mate could still qualify for a canine version of “90 Day Fiancé”!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
Less than a year after “The Handmaid’s Tale” concluded its startling and emotionally draining look at what can happen when unchecked power and totalitarianism become codified, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian saga expands on screen with “The Testaments” — and shifts focus to the simmering rebellion of teenage girls, led by actors Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday.
Based on Atwood’s 2019 novel of the same name, the new series takes place three to four years after “The Handmaid’s Tale” finale, which kicked off the beginning of the end of Gilead. It is set at an elite preparatory school to groom future wives, made up of daughters of Commanders, many of whom have been taken away from their birth parents, and so-called Pearl Girls, recruited from outside of Gilead. It is named after and run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), the profoundly complex antagonist from the original series.
Infiniti plays Agnes MacKenzie, the daughter of a high-ranking Commander, but her actual identity is Hannah, the kidnapped biological daughter of June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss). Meanwhile, Halliday plays Daisy, a recent arrival to the Pearl Girl squad who is really there as an undercover spy for the Gilead’s resistance group, Mayday, under the guidance of June. In a departure from the book, Daisy is not June’s other daughter, Baby Nicole.
Bruce Miller, who developed “The Handmaid’s Tale” and served as showrunner for much of its run, returned to adapt the sequel. And much like how June summoned her power to fight against the world that confined her, Miller thinks the grit that Agnes, Daisy and their young peers possess to bring it all down is the reason “The Testaments” won’t feel like doomscrolling.
In “The Testaments,” Daisy (Lucy Halliday), left, is a recent arrival to the Pearl Girl squad who is paired with Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti), the daughter of a high-ranking Commander, by their school’s overlord, Aunt Lydia.
(Disney)
“The hope that it has is why viewers should be ready to come back,” Miller says. “What kind of women has Gilead built? They built the kind of women that could really bring down Gilead. All the things Gilead told them not to do — become friends, develop their own moral compass — they’ve done them all. If June knocked Gilead on its back, her daughter is gonna stand on their neck until it dies.”
The first three episodes of the series are now streaming on Hulu. In an early April video conversation, The Times caught up with Infiniti and Halliday to discuss their induction into “The Handmaid’s Tale” universe, observing Moss in action and the playlist that made an impression on set. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Tell me about your knowledge of Margaret Atwood’s universe. Had you read either book before this project? Did you watch “The Handmaid’s Tale?”
Infiniti: [Points to Halliday] You’ve got the Margaret Atwood No. 1 fan right here.
Halliday: I am the Margaret Atwood No. 1 fan — I hold my hands up. I’d read all of her books. I’d read “Handmaid’s” and “The Testaments” prior to this job and, obviously, I knew about the show.
Infiniti: My first exposure to the story was through the show. I was in high school when “The Handmaid’s Tale” first started airing, and so I remember it kind of taking over my school campus. Everybody was watching it, everybody was talking about it, and I just remember it being so, so massive. And then after that, I read the books.
Halliday: “The Testaments” book came out when I was in school, and my friend brought it in, and we spoke about it at lunchtime. It’s very serendipitous, it’s full circle.
What types of conversations were you having about it?
Halliday: It always feel timely regardless of what point you’re approaching the text at. I think, particularly at the time I read it, and now with this show, what appealed to me was that it was a younger perspective, and it was a new voice in Gilead. I had a level of interest that I hadn’t expected, just because I was a teenage girl at the time I was reading this book and [saw] another experience of a teenage girl that, in some ways, mirrored my own, despite, obviously, I don’t live in Gilead.
After starring in the Oscar-winning “One Battle After Another” as the daughter of revolutionaries, Chase Infiniti is poised to lead another revolution in “The Testaments.”“You feel an extra sense of responsibility playing somebody so young who is fighting for something that is bigger than them,” she says.(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Chase, how do you see Agnes and how do you think her identity may shift when she is maybe living as Hannah? And Lucy, how do you see the Daisy in flashbacks versus the Daisy we meet in Gilead?
Infiniti: I haven’t thought about how Agnes will be when she is free as Hannah. I have concepts in my mind, but I don’t want to form anything too soon that will change the way that I personally could perform, if we’re lucky [enough] to have a Season 2 and beyond. But I think the growth that you see in Agnes, from even just Season 1, you really see her grow into herself and understand her place and understand her voice in the world.
Halliday: It’s an interesting juxtaposition because Daisy in Toronto is free and liberated and happy, but in a way, she’s not as open-minded as she could be. For example, when it comes to Gilead, she’s got these very strong, preconceived ideas of who these people are. She thinks they’re primitive, and she’s got no interest in befriending them. And then she comes to Gilead, and suddenly she’s lost access to a lot of the opportunities she had in Toronto, where she doesn’t have freedom, she can’t just do whatever she wants to, say what she wants and a there’s a great deal of oppression. But by experiencing these girls and by befriending these girls, she is actually now opening her mind to be more susceptible to friendship, and … understanding individuals who are different from who she is.
Let’s get into Agnes and Daisy’s relationship. They’re initially suspicious and distrusting of each other. What intrigued you about their dynamic?
Infiniti: Lucy has a great description about how she views Agnes and Daisy, which I think is very accurate.
Halliday: I see Agnes and Daisy as being two cats in a room sniffing each other out. And it’s because I think they immediately recognize the inherent similarities present in the other person, and that scares them because the other person, from both of their perspectives, is a foreigner, is not what they want to be associated with, yet there’s this innate kindred spirit present, and they can’t deny that. They’re the same language, just in different fonts. We see that throughout the season, and they really, like, rub off on each other and they have something to give to the other person.
There’s one big change from book to screen. Daisy is not Baby Nicole, the half-sister of Agnes. What did you make of that change, Lucy?
Infiniti: Wait a minute. I thought we were sisters this whole time. [laughs]
Halliday: It actually didn’t impact the story that much because in very many ways, Agnes and Daisy are sisters. Their relationship hasn’t altered because of this information. June is still an incredibly important figure in both of their lives. June adopts Daisy when her family is gone, so they still share all of these pieces of their history. They’ve had very similar life experiences, although unbeknownst to each of them, and the bond that they create for themselves is a sisterhood, and they have a love for each other by the end of the season. Although the lineage may be different, just about every single other aspect of Margaret Atwood’s original Daisy and Agnes remains.
An exterior shot of the elite preparatory school to groom future wives that is central to the story of “The Testaments.” It is named after and run by Aunt Lydia, the profoundly complex antagonist from the original series.
(Disney)
A girl’s menstrual cycle is a key character in this story — the power and promise it holds in the eyes of these teenage girls. What was it like to get back to that mindset of your younger self and your ideas of it then? Agnes is frustrated by the rigidness of being a girl, but she’s also curious about what’s to come, and getting her period is critical to that.
Infiniti: I feel like mine and Agnes’ experiences could not be more different. She was very excited to get it, and she was very eager, too, because of what it promises. And she was scared, but she knew that this was the hopeful step, if she was blessed by God, right, to become a wife — it would only benefit her to have it. Also, there’s so much secrecy around it, and a lot of things that these girls are just not taught about what it actually means to get your period, as opposed to the outside “next steps” that they go through. But I remember when I got mine, I was so scared. I remember I cried because I didn’t know what to do.
Were you home? I was at a sleepover and was mortified.
Infiniti: I was in math class at school — and that’s extra terrifying because I was really bad at math. I just remember being very scared. So, when Agnes gets it, I was a bit in awe of the way that she handles it and the way that she takes it and doesn’t let her fear hold her back in her tracks. That’s something that I found to be very intriguing. But you do feel bad because they don’t really know anything about what it means to have your period, what it means to become a woman and go through puberty like that, and all the changes that are going to happen.
Halliday: Periods are not talked about, really, in a mainstream manner. Whereas in Gilead, it’s not a liberated place, it’s not a really progressive society, but periods are spoken about quite freely. I don’t necessarily have anything to say about it, but I do think it’s an interesting idea that even though we, in society, would like to think of ourselves as not being in Gilead, we’re not as freely speaking about periods and menstruation the way that they do there.
Infiniti: I remember in Episode 2, when Agnes goes through that ceremony and she’s literally telling everybody. She’s like, “I was blessed by God. Yo, I’m on my period.” It was crazy. She said it exactly like that, by the way [laughs]. There’s a whole system to announce that this thing has happened because it’s so uncommon in Gilead.
Halliday: On the set, I remember Mike Barker [who directed the first three episodes] called “menarche playlist” and it was just a bit of a laugh.
Infiniti: One of them was totally “… Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears.
Halliday: But I just remember that we’re on set in 2025 and people would be like, “What’s menarche?”
Infiniti: The period aspect is something that I really love that you get to see in the show; you see how openly they all talk about it with each other. Because with your friends, you have very open dialogue, and those are the people who teach you how to use a pad, those people teach you to use a tampon, how to properly take care of yourself in that way. That’s something that I really love about the show is that we get to highlight that, and that’s one of the bonds that it brings between people. Or in the case of our show, the bond that it brings, but also the amount of chaos that it can bring, too, since fertility is so low in Gilead.
In “The Testaments,” Lucy Halliday stars as Daisy, a new Pearl Girl who is really an undercover spy for Mayday.“I hope people watch the show and it only further ignites their disgust for these things and their shock, because we should never be comfortable,” she says.(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
We talked earlier about the flashback and what we learn about how Daisy found herself in Gilead. But we didn’t dig into Elisabeth Moss — she’s an executive producer, but also we get to see her as June. It starts as a brief glimpse, and more in Episode 3, getting the backstory on how she agrees to let Daisy be a spy at the school and help in Mayday’s mission to bring down Gilead. What was it like having Elisabeth on set?
Infiniti: I snuck onto set when she was working with Lucy, don’t worry. She just showered us with so much love and support. That was the biggest gift that we could have gotten since, in a way, she is “The Handmaid’s Tale.” She is the handmaid in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Halliday: Getting to watch her was truly a privilege because she is so knowledgeable, she is an encyclopedia when it comes to this world and when it comes to Gilead and these characters. And I wanted to leech off of that. I wanted to take that home with me because it really further enforced to me the importance of being prepared as an actor, and it’s something that I know we both took seriously in terms of our work ethic when approaching this job. But it definitely was daunting — I think that was actually my first day on set, was a scene with her.
Actors often talk about how their costumes inform their performances. The red garments in “The Handmaid’s Tale” became such a symbol of resistance in real life. Here, you’ve got the plum and green garments that are in accordance with a narrow view of what is acceptable for women to wear. How did the costumes inform your work?
Infiniti: The first thing it really taught me was that my posture is not as good as I thought it was because those costumes really force you to take over perfect posture. I remember when we first started to wear them every single day, for at least 12 to 14 hours [a day], your back is hurting because of how perfectly straight you’re standing. Even though the costumes are made to fit you exactly, they are restrictive and so you feel immediately like you’re thrown into Gilead and thrown into these girls’ shoes. You have to be almost like a doll, in a sense.
Halliday: I physically was a different character when I was in the scenes in Toronto versus when I was in Gilead because I was inhabiting the space in a very different way. It felt like a full transformation, and it was so helpful in terms of understanding how Daisy would feel in that environment because she’s not getting to present herself in any way that she would feel comfortable or would normally do it.
Infiniti: And you had your little pearl [in your ear].
Halliday: I would check if it was there for maybe a month after we finished filming. I was walking around looking like a Secret Service agent.
Infiniti: I was like, “Is that how the Pearl Girls communicate with each other?”
Halliday: It was like the Starship Enterprise.
Lucy Halliday, right, and Chase Infiniti of “The Testaments.”(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Many people speak of the timeliness of the themes of this show. When you’re actively playing these characters, are you thinking about the politics of the story or does that element come later when you’re reflecting on it or watching it?
Halliday: I don’t think it’d be possible to tell a story without being conscious of any sort of parallels because we all watch the news, we’re all aware of the world we live in. But it’s also worth remembering that none of it was ever intended to be a documentary. Margaret Atwood wrote it based on history, and so everything was always factual, but it was historically factual, and it’s just so happened to be that, unfortunately, we’re seeing events repeat themselves or being emulated in reality.
Chase, you’re coming off “One Battle After Another,” which spoke of modern political division and extremism. How was it to go from that to something like this?
Infiniti: One of the cool things that I really loved about both of those projects is the fact that both Willa [her character in the film] and Agnes are revolutionary characters. You feel an extra sense of responsibility playing somebody so young who is fighting for something that is bigger than them. We’re privileged to be part of something that’s saying something about the world and has the ability to enact change in the world. We really wanted to make sure that we were doing justice by the story, by the writing, by Margaret Atwood’s work and telling the story as authentically as we can from our characters, so that in the most perfect situation, we can transcend the screen and continue to touch people and hopefully enact change in viewers’ own personal lives.
Halliday: We hope people enjoy it because it is a source of entertainment. We hope people feel hope because there’s friendship and there’s a beautiful storyline inherent to it. But I think also what would be great is if people watch it and they do feel shocked. People should feel shocked or taken aback or disgusted by these scenes because we have such an overabundance of exposure to scenes of these nature — whether it be on the news or whether it be on a fictional TV show — but we hear about these events all the time nowadays, and I think we run the risk of becoming desensitized to them. I hope people watch the show and it only further ignites their disgust for these things and their shock, because we should never be comfortable. We should never be able to sit with it and feel OK. We should always have that fire burning.
In early spring, the California mountain town of Julian sits suspended between seasons. At more than 4,000 feet, up in the Cuyamaca Mountains, it rests among coastal live oak woodlands and Coulter pine forests. Snow sometimes dusts the surrounding slopes, melting by afternoon into damp earth as manzanita and mountain lilac begin to flower. Along Main Street, the mingled scents of woodsmoke and apple pie drift from storefronts.
It is here that my journey along State Route 78 begins, following its long eastward descent from the mountain forest into the stark badlands of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, then skirting the southern edge of the Salton Sea, crossing the Algodones Dunes and continuing toward the Colorado River — a 140-mile corridor spanning one of the most dramatic ecological transitions across public lands in the American Southwest.
This road trip continues a series exploring California’s overlooked scenic highways, inspired in part by artist Earl Thollander’s “Back Roads of California,” whose sketches and travel notes celebrated a slower way of seeing. After tracing Highway 127 along the edge of Death Valley, the journey now shifts south.
Julian Cafe and Bakery, the start of the trip off Route 78.
(Josh Jackson)
Within minutes of leaving town, the pavement twists downward through tight turns and steep grades as the mountain air begins to warm, the vegetation giving way to chaparral and scattered juniper, then to the stark silhouettes of ocotillo and Mojave yucca. By the time it reaches the Pacific Crest Trail crossing 12 miles east of Julian, travelers have already descended nearly 2,000 feet.
Here, the highway passes quietly into Anza-Borrego, homeland of the Kumeyaay, Cahuilla and Cupeño peoples. At nearly 650,000 acres — just smaller than Yosemite — the park unfolds as a vast mosaic of mountains, badlands and open desert valleys extending far beyond the reach of the pavement.
Wildflowers along the route.
(Josh Jackson)
Bri Fordem, executive director of theAnza-Borrego Foundation, said the landscape reveals itself slowly to first-time visitors. “I think a lot of people drive right by it and go, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a desert there,’” she said. “But when you stop and you go a little slower and take a closer look, a whole world opens up.”
That invitation begins at mile 18, where the Yaqui Pass Road turnoff leads northeast toward the desert basin and the gateway community of Borrego Springs. The 2.8-mile Borrego Palm Canyon Trail offers one of the park’s most accessible routes into the desert’s interior. Cholla gardens and brittlebush rise from pale alluvial slopes, and a seasonal stream leads to one of California’s few native fan palm oases.
In wet winters, the valleys beyond town awaken in color as sand verbena, desert sunflower, evening primrose and pincushion gather in brief, luminous blooms across the desert floor. The Anza-Borrego Foundation tracks these seasonal displays and offers guidance on how to witness them responsibly.
The short detour returns to Highway 78 along Borrego Springs Road, where the pavement drops abruptly through the Texas Dip near mile 27 — a stark, cinematic wash where scenes from the closing sequence of “One Battle After Another” were filmed. Wandering through the wash, the mind drifts not to the film but to the flash floods that move through this channel after heavy rains, sudden torrents cutting and reshaping the valley floor in a matter of hours.
Ocotillo plants rise up from the desert floor in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.
(Josh Jackson)
The sun hangs in the middle of the sky as I drive toward one of the most rapidly changing shorelines in California. From almost any vantage point, the Salton Sea appears lifeless — a gray expanse rimmed with salt and windblown dust. But at its southern terminus, that impression begins to shift. The basin gathers into shallow wetlands where movement returns to the landscape.
Sixty miles from Julian, I turn onto Bannister Road and bump north along a gravel track for three miles into the basin, to a parking lot 164 feet below sea level. The lot sits within Unit 1 of the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge. A short walk along an irrigation canal leads to a weathered observation deck rising two stories above a patchwork of saturated flats where saltgrass, iodine bush and cattail take root. Here, the Pacific Flyway compresses into a living mosaic of wings, water and soil. Each spring, hundreds of thousands of birds gather here to feed and rest before lifting north again, following migratory paths far older than the farms and highways that now define the valley.
The wetlands near the Salton Sea provide a vital habitat for birds.
(Josh Jackson)
The place overwhelms the senses: a wash of emerald against open sky, thousands of snow geese honking in chorus, orange-crowned warblers and Abert’s towhees singing in the trees, and the persistent tang of salt in the air.
I meet three birders standing quietly on the platform, scanning the horizon through binoculars and recounting the 73 avian species they had tallied over the last two days — burrowing owls, American avocets, sandhill cranes and black-necked stilts among them. For 30 minutes we watch a northern harrier on the hunt, dive-bombing blue-winged and cinnamon teal, though he always comes up empty. Between scans of the horizon, we bond over “Listers,” the 2025 documentary that turns obsessive birdwatching into both comedy and a tale of devotion.
A burrowing owl stands in the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.
(Josh Jackson)
Leaving the refuge, the vibrant color palette and moisture give way to muted browns and the returning austerity of desert air. By mile 97, the road rises to the Hugh T. Osborne Overlook, where the landscape shifts once again, opening into a vast ocean of sand.
The Algodones Dunes stretch toward the horizon in pale, wind-sculpted ridges, a narrow ribbon of shifting terrain running south into Mexico. The highway passes directly through their center.
From the overlook, the road reads as a line dividing two expressions of the same dune system. To the south lie the Bureau of Land Management’s Imperial Sand Dunes, where dune buggies and motorcycles trace arcs across bare slopes. North of the pavement, the North Algodones Dunes Wilderness holds a quieter terrain, where sunflower, ephedra and honey mesquite anchor the sand in subtle defiance of the wind.
A person walks along the Algodones Dunes.
(Josh Jackson)
Here the road becomes a boundary between different ways of moving through — and loving — the same landscape: speed and stillness, noise and silence, crowds and solitude.
By late afternoon, the final miles carry me east toward the Colorado River, where it meanders past willow and cottonwood. The light softened toward sunset, an evening echo of the same violet sky that hovered over Julian at the start of the day. After 140 miles, my road trip had come to an end. Yet as I pitched my tent that night, the motion of the landscapes lingered in mind.
The Colorado continued its long course south. Snow geese lifted north from refuge marshes. Wind reshaped the dunes, erasing the day’s tracks. Wildflowers that had briefly lit the desert floor would soon fade as heat gathered strength. The road ended, but the living systems it crossed moved steadily onward, already turning toward the next season.
Road trip planner: State Route 78
Highway 78 illustrated map.
(Illustrated map by Noah Smith)
The route: Julian to Palo Verde.
Distance: 140 miles (one way).
Drive time: 3 hours straight through; allow a full day for stops.
Best time to go: October through April. Summer temperatures frequently exceed 110 degrees.
Fuel and essentials:
Julian (Mile 0): Gas station, Julian Market and Deli, lots of restaurants.
Borrego Springs (Mile 18): Gas station, groceries, cafes.
Brawley (Mile 74): Gas station, restaurants.
Eat and drink:
Camping:
Lodging:
Hike and explore:
Safety notes:
Water: Carry at least 1 gallon per person per day.
Connectivity: Cell service is dependable along the route.
Wildlife: Watch for bighorn sheep and coyotes on the road, especially at dawn and dusk.
Taylor Frankie Paul is breaking from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The embattled “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star announced on Easter Sunday that she’s parting ways with the religion she built her brand on.
“Born and raised Mormon (lds) and I’ll always have love and respect towards it,” she wrote Sunday in an Instagram story. “I’ll even continue to go with my family at times, with that being said, it’s time to detach myself from it.”
Paul launched her career as a Mormon mom-fluencer on TikTok before she landed “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the reality television series that leveraged her #MomTok success.
The series offered a look at Mormon moms in Utah that subverted viewers’ expectations. Paul drank alcohol and scandalized her online following when she admitted that her social circle participated in “soft swinging” in which they swapped partners for hookups but “didn’t go all the way.” The series followed her through the aftermath of a divorce and an on-again, off-again relationship with Dakota Mortensen, all of which is frowned upon by the Mormon church.
“I strongly believe in Christ, God, the bible, the divine,” she continued in her post. “I believe we are loved whether we are praying in [a] church building or from a bathroom floor at home.”
Paul was set to lead Season 22 of ABC’s “The Bachelorette” until a leaked video of a 2023 domestic dispute between Paul and Mortensen made its way across the internet. Though the entire season had been taped, ABC nixed the premiere, and “Secret Lives” also paused production. Her casting was a break from “The Bachelorette” tradition in that she had not been a contestant on a previous season of “The Bachelor.”
Now police are investigating allegations of a second and third domestic violence incident involving Paul and Mortensen, and as a result of the inquiry Paul has temporarily lost custody of the son she shares with Mortensen. A hearing regarding the protective order is set for Tuesday and may determine whether a final protective order is granted by the Utah court.
“The last 40 days felt like hell on earth,” Paul wrote in a separate Instagram post on Sunday. The post stitched together photos of Bible scripture, Paul crying, pain relief patches and personal notes scrawled through notebooks.
“Through every panic attack I prayed for strength as I could feel my body breaking down and out from the distress of it all. … I’ve prayed since I was young and never strayed away because I believe he wants us to ask for help especially during our lowest points.”
