If there were an MVP of the Southern Section baseball playoffs, Jack Champlin of St. John Bosco High would be the runaway winner.
In 8 1/3 scoreless innings of relief pitching over five playoff games, he has struck out nine and earned two wins and three saves. He starts at third base until the Braves send him to the mound.
The junior began the season as a starting pitcher, was injured and returned in a closing role that he has come to cherish.
“I like closing way more than starting,” he said.
He has helped Division 1 champion St. John Bosco move into Thursday’s semifinals of the regional playoffs with a home game against Villa Park. He hopes to celebrate his 17th birthday playing for a regional championship on Saturday.
Opponents better find a way to get the lead before Champlin comes in because he says he has no blown saves this season. He has a 4.1 grade-point average, too.
“I throw the ball and they don’t hit it,” he said as any true closer would say.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
EDMONTON, Canada — Leon Draisaitl scored on the power play in overtime, Stuart Skinner made 29 saves and the Edmonton Oilers erased a multigoal deficit to beat the defending champion Florida Panthers 4-3 in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final rematch on Wednesday night.
After Tomas Nosek’s penalty for putting the puck over the glass, Draisaitl’s goal 19:29 into OT sent the home fans into a frenzy and made sure the Oilers would not start this series like they did a year ago, when they fell behind three games to none.
For a while, it looked like they would at least start out trailing. Draisaitl’s goal 66 seconds in was followed later in the first period by Sam Bennett deflecting a shot in past Stuart Skinner after falling into him.
Edmonton’s Kris Knoblauch unsuccessfully challenged for goaltender interference, with the NHL’s situation room ruling that his own player, Jake Walman, tripped Bennett into Skinner. The resulting penalty paved the way for Florida’s Brad Marchand to score the go-ahead goal on the power play.
Bennett scored his second of the night early in the second period to put the Panthers up 3-1. They entered 31-0 over the past three playoffs since coach Paul Maurice took over when leading at the first or second intermission.
With Connor McDavid leading the way, the Oilers rallied. Fourth-liner Viktor Arvidsson brought the crowd back to life early in the second, and fellow Swede Mattias Ekholm — playing just his second game back from an extended injury absence — tied it with 13:27 remaining in regulation off a perfect pass from McDavid.
At the other end, Skinner made a handful of saves that were vital to keeping the Panthers from extending their lead or tying it late in the third. Florida counterpart Sergei Bobrovsky did the same, in between derisive chants of “Sergei! Sergei!” that followed goals he allowed.
Skinner was greeted with friendlier chants of “Stuuuu” after saves, including one in the first minute of overtime on a quality scoring chance. Bobrovsky stone-cold robbed Trent Frederic nine minutes in but eventually cracked.
Game 2 is Friday night in Edmonton before the series shifts to Sunrise, Fla., for Games 3 and 4.
Before anything, Clayton Kershaw has to believe. Before he can snap off curveballs the way he used to, before he can be a dependable member of the rotation instead of last resort, he has to believe.
Clayton Kershaw believes.
Never mind the mounting evidence to the contrary — the 5.17 earned-run average through his four starts this season, the two starts that weren’t interrupted by rain in which he failed to complete five innings, the unremarkable high-80s-to-low-90s fastball, the career-low strikeout rate.
Kershaw believes he can once again be a contributor on a championship team.
“I just need to put it together for a whole game,” Kershaw said, “which I think I can do and will do.”
Who’s to say otherwise?
He’s looked finished before, and he wasn’t. Even with diminished stuff, he’s found ways to get hitters out, so why should this time be any different?
“I’m gonna bet on him,” manager Dave Roberts said.
For now, at least, Roberts doesn’t have a choice. Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell remain sidelined. So is Roki Sasaki.
The next man up would be Bobby Miller, who lasted only three innings in his only major league start this season.
In reality, Kershaw also doesn’t have a choice other than to believe. What’s the alternative?
In the wake of a 10-inning, 6-5 victory over the New York Mets on Tuesday night in which he pitched just 4 ⅔ innings, Kershaw’s rhetoric and demeanor were remarkably upbeat. He pointed to his recovery from the knee and foot surgeries he underwent over the winter, as well as his shoulder operation from the previous offseason.
“I mean, physically, I feel great,” he said. “I don’t feel old. My arm feels good. There’s not really any excuses. It’s just pitch better, pitch like you’re capable of. I think the stuff’s there. The stuff’s there to get people out.”
Kershaw was charged with five runs, three of them earned. He gave up six hits and three walks.
“It’s kind of in and out for me,” he said. “I think I’ll go on a stretch of making, like, 10 or 11 good pitches in a row and then just make enough bad ones to get some damage done against me.”
In Roberts’ view, his trademark slider lacked “teethiness.” More problematic was his curveball, which was particularly erratic.
“Can’t just be a two-pitch guy out there, so definitely need to throw my curveball better, for sure,” Kershaw said.
The absence of the curveball prevented Kershaw from putting away batters. He had 14 batters into two-strike counts but managed only two strikeouts while giving up four hits and a walk.
“I know he’s frustrated because he’s getting count leverage with guys and can’t put them away by way of strikeout,” Roberts said. “He’s competing his tail off, but it just hasn’t been as easy as it has been for him prior to this little stretch.”
In Kershaw’s defense, he was let down by, well, his defense.
In the Mets’ two-run five inning, Max Muncy allowed a potential inning-ending double play grounder to skip through his legs. Later, Brandon Nimmo reached base on a train wreck of a defensive play by the Dodgers, allowing the Mets to score and take a 5-4 lead.
Kershaw is 37 now, with more than 3,000 innings pitched in professional baseball. He won’t win another Cy Young Award, and he knows that. The Dodgers know that too, and that’s not what they’re asking of him. What they’re counting on him to do is to take the mound every six or seven days and keep them in games, perhaps take down six or seven innings on occasion to relieve their overworked bullpen.
“I think he’s going to approach each start to give us a chance to win,” Roberts said. “And I don’t know what that looks like each start, but I think that that’s a starting point, and then from that point, as a game goes on, then I’m gonna have to make decisions on what we have behind him.”
Kershaw made an All-Star team just two years ago and started one the year before that. His stuff was almost as diminished then as it is now. He should be able to pitch like that again, and he’s taken a small but critical first step toward doing that. He believes he can.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. While we’re pondering the timeline to upload a human consciousness, let’s consider “Mountainhead” and its Emmy chances.
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Another year, another late-breaking HBO movie
Early on in “Mountainhead,” tech bro and Elon Musk stand-in Venis Parish (Cory Michael Smith) uses film history to put the glitches of his company’s latest AI rollout into perspective.
“The first time people saw a movie, everybody ran screaming because they thought they were gonna get hit by a train,” Venis relates, shouting out the Lumiere brothers’ 1895 film, “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station.” “The answer to that was not stop the movies. The answer was: Show more movies. We’re gonna show users as much s— as possible, until everyone realizes nothing’s that f— serious. Nothing means anything, and everything’s funny and cool.”
In the meantime, though, Venis’ social media platform has given users the tools to create deepfakes so realistic they can’t be identified as bogus. Immediately, people all over the world are uploading videos of their enemies committing atrocities, inflaming centuries-old animosities. Reality has collapsed and, with it, global stability.
But for “Mountainhead’s” quartet of tech magnates, played by Smith, Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef and Jason Schwartzman, everything is just fine. As venture capitalist Randall Garrett (Carell) notes, “We have plenty of calories stockpiled. Western countries have strategic commodity reserves, canola oil, lard, frozen orange juice.”
Later, Randall asks: “Are we the Bolsheviks of a new techno world order that starts tonight?”
“Mountainhead” is in many ways scarier than the zombie apocalypse of “The Last of Us” because it feels like its premise is lurking right around the corner. Armstrong came up with the idea for the two-hour movie in November, after immersing himself in podcasts and books about Silicon Valley. He shot it in March, edited it in April and delivered it in May. It captures the DOGE era, specifically in the casual cruelty expressed by its entitled characters.
“Do you believe in other people?” Venis asks Randall. “Eight billion people as real as us?”
Randall’s reply: “Well, obviously not.”
Cory Michael Smith, left, and Steve Carell in “Mountainhead.”
(Macall Polay / HBO)
“Mountainhead” aspires more directly to comedy, but because we don’t have a history with these four deplorable men, it’s often difficult to find the humor. “Like ‘Fountainhead’ Mountainhead?” Youssef jokes to Schwartzman about the estate’s title. “Was your interior decorator Ayn Bland?” There’s a procession of put-downs like that. When they’re not roasting each other, they’re trying to boost their own agendas — in the case of the cancer-stricken Randall, it’s the quest to live forever as a disembodied consciousness.
For all its Shakespearean drama, “Succession” was wildly entertaining, more of a comedy than, yes, “The Bear.” Kendall Roy performing the rap “L to the OG” at a party honoring his father’s half-century running Waystar Royco will be the funniest two minutes of television probably forever. But half the fun came from the characters’ reactions to this transcendent moment of cringe. We were deeply invested in this world.
For all their money and power, the “Mountainhead” moguls are, like the Roy children in “Succession,” not serious people. But beyond that, “Mountainhead” doesn’t have much of anything novel to say about its subjects. As good as Smith is at channeling Musk’s alien, empathy-deficient otherness, you can come away with the same level of insight — and entertainment — by spending a few minutes watching Mike Myers on “Saturday Night Live.” I don’t need to watch a movie to know that a guy sitting on a gold toilet isn’t prioritizing anyone’s interests but his own.
“Mountainhead,” as mentioned, arrives on the last day of 2024-25 Emmy eligibility, less by design than from necessity. The paint’s still wet on this film. But this does mark the third straight season that HBO has dropped a TV movie right before the deadline. Last year, it was “The Great Lillian Hall,” starring Jessica Lange as fading Broadway legend. Two years ago, it was the excellent whistleblower thriller “Reality,” featuring a star turn from Sydney Sweeney. Both movies were blanked at the Emmys, though Kathy Bates did manage a Screen Actors Guild Awards nod for “Lillian Hall.”
Did the movies land too late for enough people see them? Perhaps. The late arrival time should mean they’d be fresh in voters’ minds when they fill out their ballots. But you have to be aware of them for that to happen.
Awareness shouldn’t be an issue with “Mountainhead.” Enough people will want to watch the new offering from the creator of “Succession,” and there’s not much else on television vying for attention right now. “Mountainhead” should score a nomination for television movie, even with the category being stronger than usual this year with audience favorites “Rebel Ridge,” the latest “Bridget Jones” movie and Scott Derrickson’s enjoyable, genre-bending “The Gorge” competing.
But actors in these TV movies are at competitive disadvantage as the Emmys lump them together with their counterparts in limited series, performers who are onscreen for a much longer time. This decade, only two TV movie actors have been nominated — Hugh Jackman (“Bad Education”) and Daniel Radcliffe (“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”). The lead actress category, meanwhile, has been completely dominated by limited series.
Not that there are any women starring in “Mountainhead” because … tech bros. As for the men, Carell, Schwartzman, Smith and Youssef are very good at conveying delusional arrogance. I despised each and every one of their characters. If hate-voting were a thing, they’d all be nominated.
It’s not easy being a Democrat in these Trumpian times, as each day brings fresh tales of conquest and pillage.
Still, despite all that, 4,000 stiff-upper-lipped partisans showed up in Anaheim over the weekend, seeking solace, inspiration and a winning way forward.
As mouse-eared pilgrims plied the sidewalks outside, the party faithful — meeting several long blocks from Disneyland — engaged in their own bit of escapism and magical thinking.
“Joy is an act of resistance,” state party Chairman Rusty Hicks gamely suggested at a beer-and-wine reception, which opened the party’s annual three-day convention with as much conviviality as the downtrodden could muster.
That’s certainly one way to cope.
But the weekend gathering wasn’t all hand-wringing and liquid refreshment.
There were workshops on top of workshops, caucus meetings on top of caucus meetings, and speaker after speaker, wielding various iterations of the words “fight” and “resist” and dropping enough f-bombs to blow decorum and restraint clear to kingdom come.
President Trump — the devil himself, to those roiling inside the hall — was derided as a “punk,” “the orange oligarch,” a small-fisted bully, the “thing that sits in the White House” and assorted unprintable epithets.
“My fellow Golden State Democrats, we are the party of FDR and JFK, of Pat Brown and the incomparable Nancy Pelosi,” said a not-so-mild-mannered Sen. Adam Schiff. “We do not capitulate. We do not concede. California does not cower. Not now, not ever. We say to bullies, you can go f— yourself.”
The road from political exile, many Democrats seemed to feel, is richly paved with four-letter words.
Two of the party’s 2028 presidential prospects were on hand. (Another of those — Gov. Gavin Newsom — has fallen out of favor with many of his fellow California Democrats and found it best to stay away.)
A highly caffeinated New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, of 25-hour filibuster fame, summoned past glories and urged Democrats to find their way back to the party’s grounding principles, then fight from there.
“We are here because of people who stood up when they were told to sit down. We’re here because of people who spoke up when they were told to be silent. We’re here because of people who marched in front of fire hoses and dogs,” Booker hollered in his best preacherly cadence. “We are here because of people who faced outrageous obstacles and still banded together and said we shall overcome.”
Tim Walz, the party’s 2024 vice presidential nominee and the weekend’s keynote speaker, was on hand after jetting from a morning appearance in South Carolina. He delivered the most thorough and substantive remarks.
He began with a brief acknowledgment and thanks to his 2024 running mate, Kamala Harris. (She, too, stayed away from the convention while pondering her political future. The former vice president’s sole presence was a three-minute video most noteworthy for its drab production and Harris’ passion-free delivery.)
“They played a game, a blame game, and they put out misinformation about an incredibly tragic situation,” Minnesota’s governor said. “They didn’t have the backs of the firefighters. They didn’t hustle to get you the help you needed. They hung you out to dry.”
Keeping with the weekend’s expletive-laden spirit, Walz blasted Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bull—” legislation and mocked congressional Republicans as the “merry band of dips—” who lend him their undying support.
But much of his 30-minute speech was devoted to flaying his own party — “like a deer … in goddamned headlights” — saying Democrats can blame only themselves for being so feckless and off-putting they made the odious Trump seem preferable by comparison.
“There is an appetite out there across this country to govern with courage and competency, to call crap where it is, to not be afraid, to make a mistake about things, but to show people who you truly are and that they don’t have to wonder who the Democratic Party is,” Walz said to a roaring ovation.
“Are you going to go to a cocktail party with somebody who’s super rich and then pass a law that benefits them?” he demanded. “[Or] are you going to work your ass off and make sure our kids get a good education?”
And yet for all the cursing and swagger and bluster, there was an unmistakable air of anxiety pervading the glassy convention center. This is a party in need of repair and many, from the convention floor to the hospitality suites, acknowledged as much.
Alex Dersh, a 27-year-old first-time delegate from San Jose, said his young peers — “shocked by Trump’s election” — were especially eager for change. They just can’t agree, he said, on what that should be.
Indeed, there were seemingly as many prescriptions on offer in Anaheim as there were delegates. (More than 3,500 by official count.)
Anita Scuri, 75, a retired Sacramento attorney attending her third or fourth convention, suggested the party needs to get back to basics by speaking plainly — she said nothing about profanity — and focusing on people’s pocketbooks.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” she said, recycling the message of Bill Clinton’s winning 1992 campaign. “It’s focusing on the lives people are living.”
Gary Borsos said Democrats need to stop dumbing-down their message and also quit harping on the president.
“There’s a lot of ‘Trump is bad,’ ” said the 74-year-old retired software engineer, who rode eight hours by train from Arroyo Grande to attend his first convention.
“What we’re doing is coming up with a lot of Band-Aid solutions to problems of the day,” Borsos said. “We’re not thinking long-term enough.”
Neither, however, expressed great confidence in their party going forward.
Addison Moorman could finally breathe. The senior pitcher couldn’t hold her emotions back. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she embraced her teammates on Cal State Northridge’s softball diamond.
A year ago, she struck out 19 batters — only to fall short 1-0 in14 innings. Two years previous, Granada Hills was one run away from City Section glory.
On Saturday in Northridge, so close to home, the City Section Open Division title, the program’s first since 1981, was Moorman’s — and the Highlanders — to celebrate in an 11-2 drubbing of archrival Carson. Moorman put the team on her back, striking out 11 while giving up just four hits and two earned runs across her complete-game performance.
“It feels so good to go out on top, especially against [Carson],” said Moorman, who signed with Lehigh in November. “To finally beat them, overcome that hurdle and then leave as a champion, feels really great.”
Carson held a 1-0 lead early in the game when Atiana Rodriguez and Letu’u Simi combined for back-to-back doubles in the second inning, but from the bottom of the second onward, it was all Granada Hills at the plate.
Addison Moorman delivers a pitch against Carson on Saturday.
(Craig Weston)
The Highlanders capitalized off of two Colts errors in the second inning. Second baseman Lainey Brown and right fielder Elysse Diaz singled home runs, while Giselle Merida tripled to bring home another.
“I’ve been waiting,” said Diaz who went two for four with two RBIs and a double. “It was just boiling and boiling and then here, [the offense] just exploded.”
By the time Moorman returned to the circle for her third inning of work, Granada Hills had scored seven runs on six hits against Carson pitcher Giselle Pantoja — who shut the Highlanders down in 2024 — building a cushion for its star pitcher to go out and do what she’d done all season: dominate.
“‘Every time a pitcher always feels that burden of carrying the team, and [Moorman] dealt with it well,” said Granada Hills coach Ivan Garcia. “Her character is greater than her talent, the way she handles her teammates, the way she leads by example. I mean, you wouldn’t know that she’s a star pitcher, the way she puts bases away, the way she cleans up.”
Moorman made just one big mistake on Saturday — leaving a pitch over the plate to Colts center fielder Rylee Gardner, who desposited the ball over the center-field wall for a solo home run (her eighth of the year) in the sixth inning.
Otherwise, Moorman kept Carson off balance all game. She set down 13 consecutive batters between the second and sixth innings, striking out her 11th batter of the game as the penultimate at-bat of her high school career.
Giselle Merida slides safety into the base for an RBI triple against Carson in the second inning Saturday.
(Craig Weston)
For Moorman, winning a CIF title just 10 minutes away from Granada Hills High, was a moment worth savoring, she said. For Garcia — who said he was happy to see his team goofing off and having fun at a pregame lunch, loosening up before the biggest game of his coaching career — he is looking forward to the 1981 title no longer lurking around his shoulders.
“Third time’s the charm,” he said.
Earlier in the day in Northridge, Taft won its first City Section title in the softball program’s history with an 8-3 victory over Marquez in the Division II final. Legacy made no doubt of its City Section Division I title triumph later Saturday afternoon, shutting out Port of Los Angeles 5-0.
If you’re not taking a big summer trip this year, or if you are and want something to make the stress of traveling feel relaxing by comparison, NBC’s new reality competition series might be up your alley. “Destination X” features a mix of known reality stars and civilians as they put their geography knowledge and deduction skills to the test in Europe for a chance at a cash prize. Executive producer Andy Cadman stopped by Guest Spot to discuss the latest entrant in the travel-competition genre.
Also in this week’s Screen Gab, TV critic Robert Lloyd unpacks the appeal of Netflix’s new series about a traumatized Edinburgh detective tasked with investigating cold cases, and film editor Josh Rothkopf explains why a quartet of travelogue comedy films featuring improv impresarios Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as they road-trip across Europe makes for an enjoyable binge.
Plus, a service announcement: The Emmys season of The Envelope video podcast launched this week. The premiere episode features Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez, the stars of “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” as well as “Andor” actor Diego Luna. You can watch here or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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Jamie Sives, left, and Matthew Goode in Netflix’s “Dept. Q”
(Justin Downing / Netflix)
“Dept. Q” (Netflix)
In this dark yet strangely warm series adapted by Scott Frank (“The Queen’s Gambit”) from a book series by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen and transplanted from Copenhagen to Edinburgh, Matthew Goode plays Carl Morck, a moody police detective recovering from an incident, arguably his fault, that left him wounded, a partner partially paralyzed and a rookie dead. Talking his way back into service, he’s given a basement storage space for an office and a cold case involving a missing prosecutor (Chloe Pirrie), whose distressing circumstances we see without learning why. (It’s the mystery!) The primary pleasure of the series is in the team of fellow misfits who gather around Morck — a civilian expat (Alexej Manvelov) keeping mum on his experiences in the Syrian police; a chirpy cadet (Leah Byrne) back from a breakdown and tired of pushing pencils; and Morck’s recovering partner (Jamie Sives), joining from a hospital bed. It feels like the beginning of a beautiful second series. (With Shirley Henderson and Kelly Macdonald as a bonus for Scots watchers.) — Robert Lloyd
Steve Coogan, left, and Rob Brydon in “The Trip to Greece.”
(BBC / Revolution Films)
“The Trip: The Complete Series” (Criterion Collection, starting June 1)
Intensely bingeable (the movies actually got their start as four six-episode BBC runs), “The Trip” makes beautiful sense as an afternoon of viewing, maybe one accompanied by different cuisines as you go. The central premise: Actor-comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing barely altered versions of themselves, take to the road for epic conversations behind the wheel and at dinners, where the contours of their hyper-competitive friendship take shape, as does a parade of celebrity impressions. Director Michael Winterbottom steers the duo toward a deeper appreciation of life viewed through the rearview mirror, though honestly, you’re there for the vicious backbiting. For anyone wanting to dip in selectively: 2010’s “The Trip” features the guys’ classic dueling Michael Caines; 2014’s “The Trip to Italy” takes on “The Godfather”; 2017’s “The Trip to Spain” unleashes a killer, preening Mick Jagger; and 2020’s “The Trip to Greece” goes for Dustin Hoffman. — Joshua Rothkopf
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
“Destination X” contestants Rick Szabo, left, Allyson “Ally” Bross and Rachel Rosette during a challenge from the show.
(Helmut Wachter / NBC)
Imagine the pressure of trying to figure out where you are in the world while a man known for carrying a bat studded with barbed wire watches on. NBC’s new reality competition show, “Destination X,” follows 12 players who are whisked around Europe in a blacked-out bus — no windows or GPS to guide them — and tasked with trying to decipher their mystery locations through clues and challenges for a chance to win a cash prize. There’s plenty of alliances and rivalries that get formed along the way. The show is hosted by actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, known for his chilling turn as charismatic villain Negan in “The Walking Dead.” New episodes air every Tuesday on NBC, and can be streamed the next day on Peacock. Executive producer Andy Cadman stopped by Guest Spot via email to discuss the show’s mix of known reality TV personalities and civilians and more. — Yvonne Villarreal
“Destination X” is adapted from a Belgian format. How true to the original version is it? How much needed to be changed to suit American audiences?
The DNA of the original Belgian format is still present: the idea of being lost and trying to work out where you are. To this we added elements of strategy, giving the players more opportunities to mislead one another, forcing them to make difficult decisions, keep secrets, form alliances and ultimately allowing the players to decide who was at risk of elimination in each episode. Pitting the players more directly against one another transformed the show from a game about geography into a strategic, social competition, more accessible to an American audience and ultimately a more dramatic and exciting reality competition show.
The first season of the U.S. version of “Traitors” featured a mix of reality TV personalities and civilians, but quickly pivoted to an all–celebrity lineup. “Destination X” features a mix of reality personalities and civilians. Is the hope to keep that kind of combo? And is that kind of blend becoming more important in today’s reality competition landscape?
I believe that there’s a real benefit in the mix between civilians and established reality personalities. With “Destination X,” we wanted to do a couple of things. Firstly, discover and get to know some amazing new reality personalities that we’ll see on our screens for years to come. We have some brilliant characters in this season that are new, unique and surprising. Secondly, we wanted to see how some of the established reality faces might react to this incredible adventure. It was an opportunity to see some familiar faces taken out of their comfort zones and challenged in totally new ways. I think that this combination is a very valuable tool — it gives viewers the chance to meet some new favourites, while still giving them the comfort of some old friends dropping in.
What’s the game or competition series that hooked your interest in the format as a viewer and led to you pursuing a career in it?
I grew up on the original “Big Brother” and then made that show for many years here in the U.K. It was such a groundbreaking show and has survived the test of time like nothing else. Many of the production techniques that we still use today came from “Big Brother.” The lure of the genre for me lies in the way that people react to difficult situations. The entertainment can often be in the competition, but for me the greatest interest lies in the social politics, relationships people make, what people will do when faced with a dilemma and how far people will go to win. We used all of these levers in “Destination X” to create the most dramatic and engaging show possible.
What have you watched recently that you’re recommending to everyone you know?
“Slow Horses” [AppleTV+], [a] British spy thriller; “The Glass Dome” [Netflix], [a] Scandi noir, and if you like tricky puzzles and social strategy, the U.K. version of “Genius Game” is worth a look.
What’s your go-to comfort watch, the film or TV show you return to again and again?
I genuinely don’t have one; I find comfort in new seasons of my favourites though. I’m very excited for the next [season of] “Stranger Things” [Netflix]!
I still remember the goal that made me feel lucky for living in Los Angeles during the era of Carlos Vela.
It was a cool Wednesday night in August 2019, and I was standing in the 200-level section of what is now known as BMO Stadium, trying to process what I had just seen. In the 41st minute of the match against the visiting San Jose Earthquakes, Los Angeles Football Club winger Diego Rossi fed Vela the ball a few yards outside the opponent’s box. The Mexico-born player effortlessly avoided a sliding tackle from behind, dribbled past a helpless defender and juked the keeper out of position, who fell to the ground, leaving the goal wide open. Another Quakes defender tried desperately to prevent the inevitable, but Vela easily sidestepped him and casually tapped the ball into the back of the net for his second goal of the night, and his 26th of the season.
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It was the textbook definition of a golazo.
LAFC would go on to win 4-0, another victory in the team’s historic run to clinch the Supporters’ Shield, the first ever piece of hardware for the expansion team. Vela would finish the 2019 season with 34 goals (a single-season Major League Soccer record that still stands), 15 assists and MVP honors, delivering what many consider to be the single greatest individual performance in a season in league history.
On Tuesday, Vela, 36, announced his retirement from professional soccer. After nearly two decades of playing in four different countries; after representing Mexico at the international level in 72 matches; and after helping LAFC win two Supporters’ Shields and an MLS Cup, Charlie Candle is hanging up his cleats and calling it quits.
“Helping to build LAFC and winning trophies for the club is a highlight of my career,” Vela said via a statement released by the team. “This club means so much to me and my family, and I am proud of everything we have accomplished together with the great fans of Los Angeles.”
LAFC also announced that Vela would remain with the team as a club ambassador.
Learning of Vela’s retirement made me reflect on the feeling of excitement I felt that evening. I remember pulling up the highlight on YouTube and watching it over and over again. He was a wizard on the pitch, making the impossible look so easy and effortless. With each viewing, my admiration gave way to appreciation. I was thankful that the most gifted footballer in Mexican history was playing in my city, and that I could witness his greatness firsthand.
I didn’t always feel this way.
When LAFC announced in 2017, months before its inaugural season, that Vela would be its first star player, I was disappointed. Like most fans of the Mexican men’s national team, I interpreted his decision to leave Spanish club Real Sociedad for a U.S. team with no legacy or history as strictly a business move. Since launching in 1996, MLS has frequently attracted some of the biggest Mexican soccer legends. Cuauhtémoc Blanco, Rafa Marquez, Jorge Campos, Luis Hernandez, Carlos Hermosillo, Hugo Sanchez all played for MLS clubs during the waning years of their careers.
Vela, who was 28 at the time, was still in his prime. His successful multiyear stint in La Liga proved that he could go toe to toe with the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. I wanted him to stay where he was, or at least move to a bigger European club. I felt that it was his obligation to sharpen his skills against the world’s best so that he could give Mexico a better chance at winning the World Cup, or, at the very least, move past the Round of 16 stage of the tournament. Never mind that Vela had already opted out of playing at the 2014 World Cup because of a strained relationship with the Mexican federation for non-soccer reasons.
Vela was the chosen one. He was a key member of the Mexico squad that won the 2005 FIFA under-17 World Cup (Vela was the tournament’s top goalscorer), and was at one point signed to English Premier League club Arsenal, which saw the young striker/winger as a potential heir to French superstar Thierry Henry.
For many, Vela choosing to play in the U.S. felt like a betrayal, and it further legitimized the accusation that Vela was perfectly fine squandering his talent. The prevailing narrative was that he treated soccer as nothing more than a job. The enigmatic footballer didn’t help his case by telling the press that he would much rather “watch a basketball game than a soccer one.”
My very strong feelings about what Carlos Vela should do with his career and his life didn’t stop me from going to LAFC’s home opener months later. Did I think he was slumming it? Absolutely. But he was still in his prime! And it just so happened that the small pond Vela chose to be a big fish in was a few miles from my house.
As the season progressed, my curiosity turned into casual interest, which quickly morphed into fandom. I even bought merch, a line I told myself I would never cross. Vela single-handedly made someone who had always looked at MLS with suspicion all of a sudden care about what happened in the league. My biggest soccer loves will forever be Club América and Liga MX, but Vela forced me to make some room in my heart for the black and gold.
None of this would have been possible if Vela had mailed it in. In all the times I watched him play, whether in person or on television, I never got the impression that he was going through the motions. He always fought hard for the ball and constantly tried to be the best player on the pitch. It was as if Vela derived pleasure in being a human highlight reel.
Los Angeles FC’s Carlos Vela hoists the trophy alongside teammates after defeating the Philadelphia Union in a penalty-kick shootout to win the MLS Cup soccer match Nov. 5, 2022, in Los Angeles.
(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)
When LAFC finally won the MLS Cup in 2022, defeating the Philadelphia Union in penalties, it was an overjoyed Vela who lifted the trophy. He didn’t look like someone who was just clocking in and out. Vela embraced living in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles immediately embraced him back. I imagine that living in a universe full of stars afforded him some reprieve from the media scrutiny he has been subjected to for two decades. I’m sure it made it easier to love the game.
MLS and LAFC are deeply indebted to Vela. His move to L.A. helped an expansion club become one of the best teams in the league, as well as the most valuable soccer franchise in North America. According to Sportico, a news outlet specializing in the intersection of sports and business, LAFC has a $1.2-billion valuation, making it the 16th most valuable soccer franchise in the world.
“From the beginning, Carlos has been more than just a player — he has been the heartbeat, the captain, and the face of LAFC,” John Thorrington, the team’s co-president and general manager, said via a statement. “Carlos arrived in Los Angeles with a shared vision of building something truly special, and he delivered on that promise in every way. From unforgettable goals to historic victories, Carlos helped make LAFC what it is today.”
Sounds like the club ought to build Vela a statue. They can certainly afford it.
Do I still wish that he had played more for Mexico, or tried to max out his potential in Europe? Absolutely.
But I also can’t begrudge another Mexican for finding his bliss in our fair city. That would make me a hypocrite.
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New music we’re vibing to: ‘Gorgeous,’ by Isabella Lovestory
Beginning this week, the Latinx Files will feature a section that highlights new releases that have caught our ear.
In fusing Y2K-era bubblegum with racy reggaetón coqueteo, Honduran singer-producer Isabella Lovestory has successfully captured the femme fatale spirit of the modern Latina baddie. She garnered ample buzz for her neo-perreo fusion in 2020’s “Mariposa,” and continues the momentum in her new single “Gorgeous,” a confidence-boosting track sung in Spanglish. Evoking the slinky pop-adjacent bounce of R&B legends like Aaliyah and Destiny’s Child, “Gorgeous” will appear on Lovestory’s upcoming album “Vanity,” out June 27.
— Suzy Exposito
Comic: Good immigrant, bad immigrant.
Periodically, the newsletter will feature a comic strip from a contributing artist. This week’s offering comes courtesy of Julio Salgado, a queer Mexicano-born artist who grew up in Long Beach, Calif. Through the use of art, Salgado has become a well-known activist within the DREAM Act movement. Salgado uses his art to empower undocumented and queer people by telling their story and putting a human face to the issue.
(Julio Salgado/For De Los)
Stories we read this week that we think you should read
An outpost for Chicano culture in Vietnam attracts community — and occasional concerns among older generations inclined to associate tattoos with gangs.
On the heels of his performance at Chicago’s Sueños Festival, the Mexican singer-songwriter talks about his upcoming album, his first headlining U.S. tour and the true meaning of his big hit, “Tu Boda.”
What Felix Mallard has grown to appreciate about living in L.A. is that there’s a pocket of town to match every vibe — even if that vibe is “Aussie,” which his proudly is, having moved from Melbourne seven years ago.
“There are a lot of places that remind me of home,” says the 27-year-old actor, who plays tough-shelled Marcus in Netflix’s “Ginny & Georgia,” which returns for its third season next week. “The coastal cities and certainly some parts of Silver Lake and Echo Park feel very Melbourne. They feel very hipster. I mean, that word has changed so much — I don’t know if bohemian is the right word either. But there’s a sense of wanting to engage with good food, good coffee and good art. That kind of thing is very important to people from Melbourne.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
As he carves his own space in Los Angeles, Mallard has been captivating Gen Z audiences with his nuanced roles, ones that tend to resonate with young men amid all of the distinct pressures they face. Last year, he starred in the romantic drama “Turtles All the Way Down,” the film adaptation of John Green’s young adult novel that explores the complexities of obsessive-compulsive disorder. He’s now set to headline “Nest,” a movie about a young family whose home is invaded by deadly arachnids. (“It’s a quiet meditation on masculinity and being a father, wrapped up in a really fun spider horror movie,” he explains. “A real one-two punch.”)
For Mallard, a perfect Sunday in L.A. involves surfing (a must), playing music loudly (he knows his way around the guitar, bass, piano and drums) and trekking from West L.A. to the Eastside in the name of adventure. Here’s a play by play.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
5:30 a.m.: Chase the waves I’d get up early and have a surf. The funny thing with surfing in L.A. is that you have to go where the waves are good. So it could be anywhere — Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Malibu or Ventura. You’ve got to check the Surfline app and kind of know the seasons as well, like how winter brings north swells and summer brings south swells. But it’s a guessing game. You kind of throw a dart and follow it, you know? There’s a nice crew of Aussies, Kiwis and Americans. We all try and surf together, which is really sweet.
8 a.m.: Post-surf burritos Now I’ll probably be in a raggedy flannel top and some track pants and some Birkenstocks. Really just kind of half asleep. But it’s mandatory after a surf to get a breakfast burrito. There’s a really, really good place in Hermosa Beach called Brother’s Burritos. They don’t do the typical kind of massive breakfast burrito. Theirs come in two little bite-size burritos, which is perfect for breakfast, you know? And then there’s another place in West L.A. called Sachi.LA that’s just off the Culver loop. It’s a really cool, funky little coffee shop and cafe with a little record store next door — the perfect kind of vibe after having a surf and being in nature all morning. I really try to enjoy the peace that comes after that.
9:30 a.m.: Catch up on shows I’m going home and catching up on the week’s shows. Right now, I’m really deep into “Hacks” — obsessed with it. I feel like I came to it quite late and I’ve had to make up for lost time. And I’m really, really loving “Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney,” and “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver.” I feel like if you’re going to check in with the news these days, it’s got to be in a format that’s digestible. I think John Oliver has a really great way of doing that, presenting the outrage and the absurdity in a fun context.
Noon: Try to find the joy of cooking I’ve always found it such a challenge to see cooking as the expression of love that I know it is — I just haven’t had the inspiration. But Jamie Oliver’s books have really helped me because he explains recipes in a way that teach you the fundamentals. He’s got this cookbook, “One-Pan Wonders,” with an herb-y chicken tray bake that’s really simple. You can put the vegetables at the bottom of the tray — and a lot of rosemary and a lot of lemon — and put the chicken on the bars above the tray, so that when it cooks, the chicken fat drops into the vegetables and creates this really lovely flavor in the veggies. And then you finish it off with some lemon and olive oil. So that’s the one I think I can do. But if anyone has seen that recipe, they’ll know it’s the easiest one in the book, so I’m not trying to brag here.
1 p.m.: Get lost in the music It’s always a struggle to get up off the couch, but once there’s been some food, I’m off to play some music. There was this beautiful, really fun, cheap, grungy rehearsal studio in Culver City called Exposition Studios. It would be, like, $25 or $30 an hour, and you could rent instruments and rent a room and just play as loud and as long as you want. It’s not there anymore, but there are a few other places like that around town. I’ve gone to Pirate Studios in West Adams a couple times, and just anywhere I can play some music, really, really loud.
I’ve got an EP of songs that I’m working my way through. It’s very grungy, very emotion-based. It’s probably quite angsty. There’s a lot of anger in there, and then I think maybe a lot of sadness. It’s touching on a lot of the uglier sides of our psyche that we all have.
4 p.m.: Car entertainment Now we start preparing the journey east. Because it’s L.A., you can’t pretend that you’re not going to spend some part of your day in traffic. So a podcast is a must. I’ll be listening to Louis Theroux. I just love how he asks questions, how he kind of gives a space for his guests to either showcase who they are or maybe unknowingly reveal parts of themselves they may not even intend to. How he holds the space for that is quite impressive, and it’s a good distraction while you’re driving.
5 p.m.: Fuel up with burgers We’re going to Burgerlords. They do a really simple menu. You can get a smashburger, I think a vegan burger, and something else, and they’ve got a really nice selection of craft beers. And it’s kind of like a redone version of a ‘50s diner inside.
7 p.m.: Let loose at a punk show From there, we’ll go to Zebulon. I love it. I don’t see too many venues with an indoor-outdoor kind of space. They have a big garden, so you can go and take a break outside and then come back in and enjoy that change of pace. It’s one of my favorite spots in L.A. to go and watch music, for sure.
The last time I went, we saw the Spits. They’re, you know, really proper punks. And then another time, we saw a band called Spy, and they were supported by Fentanyl, Blood Stained Concrete and Yard, which is a Polish hardcore band. So any time we’re out there, it’s usually for a bit more of a hardcore kind of scene. And they’re the most fun gigs to go to. Everyone’s there to release some tension, some energy. The fans are always super, super, super die-hard fans.
Midnight: Straight to bed
I’ll make the trek home and tuck into bed. That’s usually about midnight. I’d like to say it’s earlier and that I’m, like, healthy, but I’m not.
In the midst of the inaction, one mom — Angeli Rose Gomez — pleaded with officers to take action or let her go in to get her two children and nephew. She was apprehended and handcuffed, but ultimately talked her way out of arrest before she sprinted inside the school to grab the kids.
Videos on social media captured the moments that Gomez brought her sons and nephew out of the school. The Texas field worker and mother of two was quickly dubbed a hero in national and local publications for her courage.
The new documentary film “Uvalde Mom” follows Gomez after becoming nationally recognized — while examining the forces at play in the Uvalde community which allowed for the shooting to take place, as well as the aftermath of such a tragedy.
“All I wanted that day was my kids to come out of the school alive, and that’s what I got,” Gomez says in one pivotal moment in the film. “I don’t want to be called a hero. I don’t want to be looked at as the hero because the only job that I did that day was being a mom.”
The feature’s director Anayansi Prado was “moved” and “horrified” by what had happened and felt motivated to make a film about the event after seeing members of the affected families on TV.
“I saw that there were Latinos, they were Mexican American, that it was a border town, that it was an agricultural farming town, and that really resonated with me and with communities I’ve done film work with before,” Prado told The Times.
Prado began reaching out to people in Uvalde shortly after the shooting, but didn’t hear back from anyone for over two months due to the inundation of media requests everyone in the city was receiving. The only person to reply to her was Gomez.
Ahead of the film’s screening Saturday at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Prado spoke with The Times about the process and the challenges of making her documentary.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.
Was the idea always for this project to be a feature-length film? Or were there talks of making it a short or a series?
I’ve always thought about it as a feature because I really wanted to dive in and understand Uvalde as a character. I wanted to understand the history of the criminal justice system, the educational system. I knew I wanted to make something that was going to be of a longer form rather than just a piece that was about Angeli or something. And a few people told me this would make a great short, but as I uncovered more about Uvalde, I was like, “No, Uvalde itself has its own history, just like a person.”
When it came to choosing Angeli, was she the first and only person who responded to your outreach?
I think the people in town were oversaturated with media coverage, and Angeli was the one that got back to me. What was really interesting is that I learned on that first trip [to Uvalde] about her backstory and I learned about how the criminal justice system had failed her. I saw a parallel there of how the system failed the community the day of the shooting and how it was failing this woman also individually. I wanted to play with those two stories, the macro and the personal. Once I learned who she was, beyond the mom who ran into the school, I was like, “I have to tell this woman’s story.”
How did you go about balancing her personal stuff and the failures that happened on a larger scale?
So much of the way the film is structured is reflective of my own experience as a filmmaker. It was a sort of surreal world, these two worlds were going on: what was happening to Angeli and then what was going on outside with the lack of accountability and the cover-up. So that informed the way that I wanted to structure the film.
In terms of the personal, it was a journey to gain Angeli’s trust. At some point at the beginning, she wasn’t sure she wanted to participate in the film, and so I told her, “You don’t owe me anything. I’m a stranger, but all I ask is that you give me a chance to earn your trust.” And she was like, “OK.” From there on, she opened up and, pretty quickly, we became close and she trusted me. I was very cognizant [of] her legal past and even the way she’s perceived by some folks. I also didn’t want Angeli to come off as a victim and people to feel sorry for her, but I still wanted to tell her story in a way where you get mad at the system for failing her.
What kind of struggles did you have trying to get in communication with some of the officials of the city?
We used a lot of news [archives] to represent that part of the story. The [authorities] weren’t giving any interviews, they were just holding press conferences. So access was limited, but also the majority of the time that we were filming, we were very low-key about the production — because Angeli was on probation and there was retaliation for her speaking to the media. We tried to keep it under wraps that we were filming, so not a lot of people knew about it [besides] her family. Obviously other folks in town [were] part of the film, like her friend Tina and family members. Outside of that, it was too risky to let other people in town know what was going on.
Ultimately I wanted to make [“Uvalde Mome”] a personal portrait. I was just very selective on the people that we absolutely needed to interview. I’m happy with Tina, who’s an activist in town, and Arnie, a survivor of the shooting and a school teacher, [plus] Angeli’s legal team. I felt like those were people we needed to tell a fuller story. But we just couldn’t be out in the open making a film about her and let people know.
What kind of reception have you gotten from people of Uvalde that have seen the film?
We had our premiere at South by Southwest, which was great. A lot of folks came from Uvalde and spoke about how, almost three years later, a lot of this stuff is still going on. Every time Gov. Greg Abbott came on-screen, people would scream, “Loser!” It was really moving to have those screenings.
As was expected from the folks who are not fans of Angeli, there was some backlash. It’s the same narrative you see in the film of, “She’s a criminal, don’t believe her.” It’s a town that is an open wound. I just try to have compassion for people. Ultimately, Angeli’s story is the story of one person in Uvalde of many that need to continue to be told. And I hope that other filmmakers, journalists and other storytellers continue to tell the story there, especially with the lack of closure and accountability. I’m happy that the film is putting Uvalde back into the headlines in some way; that way we don’t forget about it.
Had you ever spent an extended amount of time in Texas before?
I had been to Texas, but I hadn’t done a project in Texas. Because I’m an outsider, it was very important for me to hire a 100% local Texas crew for this film. My crew was entirely Texas-based, from our PAs to our sound to our DPs. I also wanted to have a majority Texas-born Mexican American crew so that they could guide me. We began production in September of 2022 and the atmosphere was very tense.
This is a story that is deeply rooted in the Latino community and the tension about the law enforcement in Uvalde. What was it like dealing with that tension and how did you personally feel that when you went into the town?
When I got to Uvalde, I saw that the majority of the Latino community had been there for several generations. You would think a town with that kind of Mexican American history, and them being the majority, that they’d be pretty cemented and represented, right? It was really eye-opening to see [how] these folks are still considered second-class citizens. A lot of them are being repressed. And then you have folks that get in positions of power, but they’re whitewashed in line with the white conservative agenda. So even those that are able to get into positions of power don’t lean towards the community. They turn their back on it.
I heard from folks that the history of neglect was what led to the response that day at Robb Elementary. And they’re like, “Yeah, that’s what happens on that side of town. You call the cops, they don’t come. Our schools are run-down.” You really see the disparity. This was a Mexican American community that had been there for a long time. It’s fascinating how the conservative white community, even if they’re the smaller part of the population, they can still hold the power.
Pride Month, which officially starts Sunday, is already in full swing and continuing through June with a host of activities and events. (After Long Beach Pride in mid-May, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, Venice, Santa Monica, San Fernando Valley, Catalina Island and other communities are following up with their own Pride celebrations.)
Although there is no shortage of opportunities for enjoying this worldwide celebration of the LGBTQ+ community, this year seems like a particularly pivotal time to partake in activities that uplift queer arts programs.
In 2025 and beyond, arts and culture funding is facing increasing threats of cancellation and cuts by the Trump administration. Los Angeles is home to numerous forms of art, but nothing is guaranteed to last forever. And in a world increasingly dominated by AI and virtual technologies, engaging with our imaginations can play a more important role than we might realize.
“I think more than ever people need to embrace the arts because we don’t know how much time we have left or how bad things can get,” said Lucé Tomlin-Brenner, a queer comedian and filmmaker who hosts the film-comedy show “Video Visions” at Highland Park video rental store Vidéothèque.
“We have to get into the practice of recognizing that what makes us feel free and joyful matters because that will strengthen us for the hard times,” she said. “If we’re just despairing, if we feel like we’re trapped already, then they’ve won because we’re not using our voices or our talents to change our realities.”
So this Pride Month, along with celebrating via boozy drag brunches and dancing at the Pink Pony Club until the sun rises, partake in L.A.-area activities that serve as a lifeline for queer community and creativity.
From learning how to use oil paints to discovering queer films streaming networks ignore and sewing your own Pride flag, opportunities abound throughout June to connect with your imagination and help ensure the survival and growth of local arts programs.
Eaton Canyon and adjacent federal land that burned in the January wildfires in L.A. County will remain closed through 2026 and maybe longer given the extensive damage caused by the Eaton fire and subsequent flooding, county officials said during a recent news conference.
One of the most popular hiking areas in L.A. County, Eaton Canyon previously saw a million visitors per year. Officials said they’ve seen a spate of trespassers in the park since the fire, including one hiker who tried to reach Echo Mountain only to get lost and require rescue. Officials are pleading with the public to stay out of the area and let the land heal.
Karen Mateer, vice president of the Eaton Canyon Nature Center Associates, speaks during a news conference last week in which officials asked the public to stay out of the Eaton fire burn scar to let the land heal.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
“With apologies to James Taylor, we’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain, and I’ll tell you what, we’ve also seen a fair amount of air in the form of wind coming through the canyon,” said Karen Mateer, vice president of the Eaton Canyon Nature Center Associates. “Those are three of the basic elements of nature, and now we really need to focus on the fourth, the earth.”
Although it will take time for the land most damaged by the L.A. fires to heal, there are some areas of the burn scars that have recently reopened or will reopen soon.
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Here is the latest information on trails in three recent burn zones.
Eaton fire
The Eaton fire killed much of the plant life in Eaton Canyon, leaving the soil unstable. As such, boulders and burned trees can fall at any moment.
Norma Edith García-Gonzalez, director of L.A. County Parks and Recreation, said on one of her first visits to the canyon after the fire, a tree fell five feet in front of her. All hikers should heed the warnings to stay out, she said. Additionally, those who trespass could face substantial fines if caught.
For those wanting to see a waterfall like the gorgeous cascade that plummets down the mountain at Eaton Canyon, I’d recommend checking out the popular Switzer Falls. It was closed immediately following the Eaton fire, and there was some confusion about whether the trail had reopened. At last week’s news conference, Justin Seastrand, forest recreation manager at Angeles National Forest, confirmed it is open! However, the nearby Bear Canyon Trail Camp and the trail leading to it remain closed.
The burned hillsides around Eaton Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
A similar and beautiful trail, Millard Canyon, which also features a waterfall, will likely remain closed through 2026, as its restroom burned in the fire, Seastrand said.
Henninger Flats, a popular hiking destination north of Eaton Canyon, suffered even more serious damage, said Kim Bosell with L.A. County Parks. The old museum, propagation areas and restrooms are gone, and workers will need to remove that debris before the area is safe for hikers to access, Bosell said.
Before the fire, officials had planned to add Henninger Flats to the Eaton Canyon natural area, she said. “Unfortunately the fire took it before we could follow through with those plans, but what the future holds for it, we don’t know right now,” Bosell said.
Bridge fire
Last September, the Bridge fire burned almost 55,000 acres, including 25 trails on federal land.
The popular Bridge to Nowhere hike was near where the fire started and will remain closed for the foreseeable future, Seastrand told me, because the rivers and creeks in the area were seriously damaged during the fire and subsequent flooding. It’ll take tremendous manpower (and money) to bring it back online.
But, the good news is, the U.S. Forest Service revised the Bridge fire closure order last week to reopen two popular routes to Mt. Baldy, the Baldy Bowl Trail (Ski Hut) and Devil’s Backbone Trail. Bear Canyon, sometimes referred to as Old Mt. Baldy Trail, remains closed.
This reopening is more than a little bit exciting, considering the closure of these two trails was probably one of the least popular decisions that Angeles National Forest officials have made in a hot minute.
That said, you might notice these trails and others in the Mt. Baldy area, like Icehouse Canyon, are listed as closed on the forest service’s website when they’re actually open.
That’s, in part, because the U.S. Forest Service recently updated several forest websites and in doing so broke the links for several trails and campgrounds. The update rolled out about the same time that the federal government fired thousands of forest service workers. So, needless to say, it might be a minute before the website reflects reality. In the meantime, check the closure order if you have a question about what’s open. (You’re also welcome to email your local outdoors reporter!)
Palisades fire
In the coming weeks, hikers will be able to return to a handful of popular trails in and around the Palisades burn scar.
I spoke to Richard Fink, district superintendent for the Angeles District of California State Parks, who told me that some parkland and trails are closed not because of fire damage, but because they’re being used by state and federal officials in the recovery effort in the aftermath of the Palisades fire.
That list includes Will Rogers State Park, where Fink told me that the park was severely burned, but the trails are in great shape.
“We could open the trails at Will Rogers tomorrow if the rest of the park would be open,” Fink said. “There are actually a lot of trails that [the fire] really didn’t have any impact [on], and also due to our parks being closed, we’ve been able to perform a lot of the work already.”
An area of Topanga State Park near Eagle Springs Fire Road that did not burn in the recent Palisades fire.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
Parts of Topanga State Park were used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for hazardous debris removal, and L.A. County Department of Water and Power is using part of the park to rebuild the power grid in the Palisades. Once those efforts are finished later this year, that region of the park should be able to reopen, officials said.
“The state park priority for parts of Topanga and parts of Will Rogers State Historic Park are first and foremost to help the recovery and then to eventually get them open to the public,” Fink told me.
The southern part of Topanga State Park suffered the worst damage in the Palisades fire and will remain closed for “a while,” in particular the area around the Topanga Ranch Motel, which was “completely destroyed,” Fink said.
There are trails that may take years to recover or may no longer be accessible to the public moving forward, he said.
The Palisades fire burned several acres through Topanga State Park, especially in the southern end of the park where structures were destroyed, as well as popular hiking trails.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The popular Los Leones Trail will remain closed, although it suffered minimal damage and was one of the first trails the state parks crew worked on in early March. Crews cleared burned vegetation, removed landslides and widened the trail. It’s in good structural shape, officials said, but will remain closed because the neighborhood near the trailhead remains closed to the public. Once the neighborhood reopens, a crew will need to remove plants that have grown in the path thanks to a lack of foot traffic.
But, dear Wilder, I do have some good news for you.
On Saturday, I hiked with Rachel Glegg, volunteer coordinator with the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force, who took me around Topanga State Park to see the trail work that the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter’s trail crew, state park workers and other volunteers have completed.
Thanks to those efforts, Glegg said, officials aim to open the following trails in the next few weeks:
East Topanga Fire Road from Trippet Ranch to Parker Mesa, although anything beyond the Parker Mesa junction will likely remain closed to keep the public away from neighborhoods burned in the fire
Eagle Rock Fire Road, Eagle Springs Fire Road and Fire Road #30 to the Hub Junction in Topanga State Park
The Garapito Trail in Topanga State Park, which Glegg’s crew is still working on, but is close to repairing fully
Several phacelia grandiflora plants are growing along a burned section of the Garapito Trail.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
On my trip with Glegg, I just kept saying, “This is so beautiful,” as I took in the views of the surrounding city and ocean. We spotted loads of wildflowers, including phacelia grandiflora and a small patch of California poppies. Like you, I am eager to return and make more memories in this beautiful, resilient landscape.
3 things to do
A child plays at a previous migration celebration hosted by the Friends of Ballona Wetlands.
(Friends of Ballona Wetlands)
1. Get up close with birds in Playa Vista Friends of Ballona Wetlands will host its annual migration celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Ballona Discovery Park. Raptors will be present for visitors to see and learn about up close. Guests can also enjoy music, purchase native plants and partake in a scavenger hunt, along with tours of the freshwater marsh. Learn more at ballonafriends.org.
2. Celebrate National Bike Month in L.A. People for Mobility Justice will host a community bike ride from 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturday, starting at Ted Watkins Memorial Park. As part of this celebration of National Bike Month, riders will travel through the Florence-Firestone area, learning about bike safety and local resources. Participants should bring water, along with their bike and helmet. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Prance down open streets in Glendale The city of Glendale will close 1.3 miles of Glendale Avenue from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday for its first car-free open streets event. Let’s Go Glendale will feature live music (including a strolling mariachi) and other arts and culture programming. Visitors can walk, run, bike or take the route in any other preferred people-powered way. Learn more at glendaleca.gov.
The must-read
A female black bear and her cub scour a South Lake Tahoe neighborhood in search of food.
(Corey Arnold / For The Times)
It’s rare to see a black bear in the wild, and it’s even rarer for someone to be hurt by one, much less killed. That’s why it was so startling when news broke of the death of Patrice Miller, 71, who, a coroner’s report found, was killed by a black bear in her home. Times reporters Jessica Garrison and Lila Seidman wrote in their recent story that questions — and even disbelief — still exists around how Miller died. “We don’t believe the bear did it,” said Ann Bryant, executive director of the Bear League in the Tahoe Basin. “And I will go on record as saying that.” The bear in question has been killed. What remains is an intense debate over how California should manage its population of an estimated 65,405 black bears, especially those found lumbering around mountain towns.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
The U.S. Forest Service is taking public comment through Monday on its proposal to log trees and clear chaparral across 90,700 acres in Los Padres National Forest, which sits north of L.A. County and features gorgeous landscapes. “But this plan falls short and threatens habitat in many areas,” according to advocacy nonprofit ForestWatch. “The project emphasizes vegetation removal in remote areas — places that pose little threat to public safety but are rich in biodiversity, cultural value and recreational importance. The plan also allows for commercial logging, and it overlaps with roadless areas and endangered species critical habitat.” You can learn more at the organization’s website, where you can submit your comment as well. You can also submit your comment on this federal website.
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.
In something of a grand gesture, Caleb Williams stood at a lectern Wednesday to explain that excerpts from an upcoming book were old news. A year after scheming to avoid playing for the Bears, he is committed to turning around the franchise.
Leaping from the USC campus to the top rung of the NFL draft a year ago, Williams aspired to be like John Elway and Eli Manning.
Just not in the way one might expect.
Sure, he wanted to lead a team to multiple Super Bowl titles like those two quarterbacks, whose career statistics were remarkably similar. Both played 16 years in the NFL for only one team — Elway with the Denver Broncos and Manning with the New York Giants — and both passed for 50,000 yards and 300 touchdowns.
But Williams, egged on by his father, is described in American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback by ESPN journalist Seth Wickersham as entertaining creative ways to spurn the team that held the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft.
Just like Elway and Manning had done.
Elway proclaimed his refusal to play for the Baltimore Colts after they drafted him first overall in 1983, leading to a trade to the Broncos. Manning refused to play for the San Diego Chargers after being drafted first overall in 2004, forcing a trade to the Giants.
However, Williams was unsuccessful in his effort. The Bears drafted him and he pledged his allegiance to them while enduring a rocky rookie season in which he was sacked more than any other NFL quarterback and the team struggled to a 5-12 record.
Yet he felt compelled to hold a news conference at the Bears training camp in Lake Forest, Ill., to explain why he entertained thoughts of spurning Chicago and instead landing in, say, Minnesota. Williams admitted he and his parents discussed ways to dodge the Bears.
Williams couldn’t speak for his father. Carl Williams told Wickersham that “Chicago is the place quarterbacks go to die,” and consulted with Manning’s father, Archie, a former NFL quarterback who had helped strategize his son’s trade from the Chargers to the Giants.
But Williams made it clear he is all in with new Bears head coach Ben Johnson and the franchise’s commitment to turning around its fortunes. He said he changed his tune about Chicago after meeting with Bears brass ahead of last year’s draft.
“After I came on my visit here, it was a … deliberate and determined answer that I wanted to come here,” Williams said. “I wanted to be here. I love being here.”
“I wanted to come here and be the guy and be a part and be a reason why the Chicago Bears turn this thing around.”
“This thing” is a franchise that hasn’t posted a winning record since 2018 and whose all-time leading passer is the middling Jay Cutler. The Bears’ most renowned quarterback is Sid Luckman, who helped them win four NFL championships in the 1940s while passing for a paltry 14,686 yards in 11 seasons. They won one more pre-Super Bowl title, in 1963, and have won only one of the LIX (59) Super Bowls, in 1985.
No wonder Carl Williams was against his son — a Heisman Trophy winner at USC in 2022 — getting locked into what amounts to a five-year rookie contract with Chicago. That son, now a 23-year-old man, said he no longer responds unquestioningly to his father’s marching orders.
“I shut him down quite a bit,” Williams said. “He has ideas and he’s a smart man and so I listen. I always listen.
“I’m very fortunate to be in this position in the sense of playing quarterback, but also very fortunate to have a very strong-minded father. We talk very often, my mom and my dad are my best friends, so being able to have conversations with them to understand that everything they say is also portrayed on me.”
Wickersham’s book will be published in September. Another excerpt describes Williams as becoming enamored with the idea of playing for Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell after they had a predraft meeting.
But the overriding theme of his four-minute opening statement at the news conference was that he is focused on becoming the best quarterback possible for the Chicago Bears. He’d prefer that everyone just forget that he had misgivings a year ago.
“We are here focused on the future,” he said, “we are here focused on the present and really trying to get this train going, picking up steam and choo-chooing along.”
After reading about these California beaches, can you blame me for thinking about the south of France right about now? And, you know, the movies at Cannes this year were pretty good too. In fact, we might have another best picture Oscar winner from the festival.
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, which is back in your inbox after a springtime sabbatical. Today, I’m looking at the news out of the Cannes Film Festival, wondering if Neon’s publicity team will be getting any rest this coming awards season.
The Cannes-to-Oscars pipeline is flowing
Last year’s Cannes Film Festival gave us a Demi Moore comeback (“The Substance”), an overstuffed, ambitious movie musical that everyone loved until they didn’t (“Emilia Pérez”) and a freewheeling Cinderella story that became the actual Cinderella story of the 2024-25 awards season (“Anora”).
Sean Baker’s “Anora” became just the fourth film to take the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and then go on to win the Oscar for best picture. But it had been only five years since Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” pulled off that feat, so this would seem to be the direction that the academy is going. As the major Hollywood studios have doubled down on IP, indies like A24 and Neon have stepped up, delivering original, daring films that win the hearts of critics, awards voters and, sometimes, moviegoers.
Neon brought “Anora” to Cannes last year, confident that it would make an ideal launching pad. This year, the studio bought films at the festival — among them the taut, tart revenge thriller “It Was Just an Accident,” from dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and the anarchic political thriller “The Secret Agent” from Brazil’s Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi holds the Palme d’Or after winning the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize for “It Was Just an Accident.”
(Sameer Al-Doumy / AFP/Getty Images)
“It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme, making it the sixth consecutive time Neon has won the award. Despite being one of the world’s most celebrated and influential filmmakers for movies like “No Bears” and “The White Balloon,” Panahi has never received any recognition at the Oscars. That will change this coming year.
Another movie that might deliver the goods is a title Neon announced at Cannes last year, “Sentimental Value,” an intense family drama that earned a 15-minute standing ovation.
Or was it 17? Or 19? The audience at the Grand Théâtre Lumière might still be standing and applauding; who knows with these Cannes festivalgoers. I’d be long gone, heading to the nearest wine bar. The point is: People love this movie. It won the Grand Prix, Cannes’ second-highest honor.
“Sentimental Value” is a dysfunctional family dramedy focusing on the relationship between a flawed father (the great Stellan Skarsgård) and his actor daughter (Renate Reinsve, extraordinary), two people who are better at their jobs than they are at grappling with their emotions. They’re both sad and lonely, and the film circles a reconciliation, one that’s only possible through their artistic endeavors.
Norwegian director Joachim Trier directed and co-wrote “Sentimental Value,” and it’s his third collaboration with Reinsve, following her debut in the 2011 historical drama “Oslo, August 31st” and the brilliant “The Worst Person in the World,” for which she won Cannes’ best actress prize in 2021. Reinsve somehow failed to make the cut at the Oscars that year, an oversight that will likely be corrected several months from now.
Jennifer Lawrence in Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love.”
(Festival de Cannes)
But it’s not just about the prix
Reinsve could well be joined in the category by a past Oscar winner, Jennifer Lawrence, who elicited rave reviews for her turn as a new mother coping with a raft of feelings after giving birth in Lynne Ramsay’s Cannes competition title “Die, My Love.” Critics have mostly been kind to the film, which Mubi bought at the festival for $24 million.
Just don’t label it a postpartum-depression drama, for which Ramsay pointedly chastised reviewers.
“This whole postpartum thing is just bull—,” she told film critic Elvis Mitchell. “It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it’s also about a creative block.”
However you want to read it, “Die, My Love” looks like a comeback for Lawrence, last seen onscreen two years ago, showing her comic chops in the sweetly raunchy “No Hard Feelings.” Lawrence won the lead actress Oscar for the 2012 film “Silver Linings Playbook” and has been nominated three other times — for “Winter’s Bone,” “American Hustle” and “Joy.”
With Ramsay’s movie, which co-stars Robert Pattinson as her husband, Lawrence may well have printed her return ticket to the ceremony, which would be welcome. The Oscars are always more fun when she’s in the room.
UCLA softball is heading to its 33rd Women’s College World Series after rallying from a game down to win the Columbia Super Regional, defeating South Carolina 5-0 in the series decider at Beckham Field on Sunday.
After Jordan Woolery kept UCLA’s (54-11) season alive with a walk-off home run in Game 2, she picked up right where she left off with a first-inning RBI single off South Carolina (44-17) starting pitcher Sam Gress. The Bruins failed to tack on runs with the bases loaded, but Kaitlyn Terry made sure the early tally was enough.
Terry threw 5 ⅔ innings of two-hit shutout ball with four strikeouts before giving way to Saturday’s starting pitcher, Taylor Tinsley.
Woolery delivered a critical insurance run in the fifth inning when she poked an infield single through the right side of South Carolina’s infield shift to bring Jessica Clements around after her one-out double.
After Tinsley pitched out of a jam with the tying runs on base in the sixth, UCLA added three runs in the seventh to put the game out of reach thanks to back-to-back RBIs from Rylee Slimp and Alexis Ramirez.
UCLA will play fellow Big Ten school Oregon on Thursday in Oklahoma City.
Academy Award winner Billy Bob Thornton, who plays chain-smoking crisis manager Tommy Norris in Taylor Sheridan’s latest hit “Landman,”seems like a guy who can’t be intimidated. But get him in a room with Allison Janney and the truth comes out.
“I was afraid of you,” he tells her sheepishly on The Envelope’s Emmy Roundtable for drama actors.
“Really?” says Janney, the Oscar-, Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning performer who appears as cunning Vice President Grace Penn on the Netflix political thriller “The Diplomat.”
“The first time I met Allison, it was at another press function thing,” he says to the room. “And just seeing you, as an actor, and parts you play … But also, you have this very dignified quality about you.”
“It’s my height, I think.”
“No,” he continues. “You just have the face of someone who is powerful and really intelligent. So some idiot like me comes in, and I’m like, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t talk to her.’”
This is what happens when you gather seven Emmy contenders whose performances so convincingly shape our perceptions of who they are in real life. This year’s group also included Sterling K. Brown, who plays Xavier Collins, a Secret Service agent seeking the truth in Hulu’s “Paradise”; Britt Lower, who plays both wealthy heiress Helena Eagan and defiant data refiner Helly R. in Apple TV+’s “Severance”; Jason Isaacs, who plays Timothy Ratliff, an American financier desperately trying to keep a secret from his family in HBO’s “The White Lotus”; Noah Wyle, who plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, a senior attending physician at a Pittsburgh trauma center in Max’s “The Pitt”; and Kaitlin Olson, who plays the underestimated but brilliant police consultant Morgan Gillory in ABC’s “High Potential.”
Read on for excerpts from our discussion about how they tap into their layered performances, navigate the business and more — and watch video of the roundtable below.
The 2025 Emmy Drama Roundtable. Back row from left: Britt Lower, Jason Isaacs, Noah Wyle and Kaitlin Olson. From row from left: Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Janney and Sterling K. Brown.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Tell me about an “Oh, my God, did that just happen?” moment — good or bad — from your early years on a Hollywood set. Kaitlin, your first credit was “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I can’t imagine what it’s like making Larry David laugh.
Olson: Oh, you just have to scream in his face and insult him, and then he thinks that’s really, really funny. But yeah, there were no marks and there were no lines. So I didn’t really have an “Oh, my God” moment. You just talk and shut up when you should shut up.
Isaacs: On my first day [on 1989’s “The Tall Guy”], I remember I arrived first thing in the morning. I was playing Surgeon No. 2 in a dream sequence that Jeff Goldblum was in. The director, who’s hassled and busy, he goes, “OK, we’re going to start with you. We’re coming in on the dolly. But because I’m on a very wide lens, if you could start the eyeline somewhere near the bottom of the jib and then just go to the corner of bottle, then take it to the edge of the matte box when we’re getting close.” And I went, “Right … What the f— did any of those words mean?” Jeff is just out of frame. And he’s in his underpants, and it’s a dream sequence for him. And we’re just about to go and roll the cameras, and Jeff goes, “Hold on a second.” And he stands up and he starts standing on a chair reciting Byron love poems even though he was not in the shot. I’m like, “I don’t understand what the hell is going on here.” Years later, I sat next to him at a wedding and I said, “Do you remember that night?” He went, “Yeah.”
Jason Isaacs of “The White Lotus.”
Have there been moments where you fell out of love with acting or where you felt like, “This isn’t working out”?
Janney: My career didn’t start till I was 38 or something, because I’m so tall, and I was literally uncastable. I went to the Johnson O’Connor [Research Foundation]. And I did three days of testing to see what else I could possibly do.
Issacs: What is that?
Janney: It’s an aptitude testing place. They ask you to do all this stuff, and at the end of it they say, “This is what you should be.” And they told me I should be a systems analyst. I had no idea what that was. And the next day, I got cast understudying Faith Prince and Kate Nelligan in “Bad Habits,” a play at the Manhattan Theatre Club.
Allison Janney of “The Diplomat.”
Brown: I’ve never fallen out of love with it. I was an economics major in college who wound up switching to drama. When I got out of grad school and [was] hopping around through regional theater, I wound up booking a TV show, “Army Wives,” for six years, and a few years into the show, I was like, “I think I’ve done everything that I want to do with the character.” So when they came dangling the carrot for people to reup after Season 6, I was like, “I’m curious to see what else the universe has in store.” I was able to pay off student loans. We had our first child, I had a home and I was like, “Let’s take a gamble on Brown.” I did a pilot for AMC that didn’t get picked up; then had a recurring [role] on “Person of Interest” for six episodes. I was like, “Oh, man, I got a wife and a kid and a house. Did I mess up? Should I have stayed on the show or not?”
Then I auditioned for [“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”], and I didn’t hear anything for four months. I was down in New Mexico shooting this movie, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” and I was having this really sort of morbid moment of going through my IMDb Pro account and looking at everybody who had booked all of the things that I had auditioned for. I was like, “Oh, Bokeem Woodbine booked Season 2 of ‘Fargo.’ Good for him.” And I got a call from my manager saying, “They want you to screen test with Sarah Paulson for this thing.” I was the only person that they brought in to audition for it.
Sterling K. Brown of “Paradise.”
Your series are largely confronting or commenting on real-world anxieties or subjects that are changing in our world in real time. Noah, with Dr. Robbie and what he says about what’s going on in the healthcare system — we’re seeing him cope with the aftermath of COVID-19. We’re seeing stories that are very timely about vaccinations. Talk about what was important to you with this series and what you wanted to show through these characters.
Wyle: “ER” was very much a patient-centric show in a lot of ways. And this was more of an exercise to be practitioner- and physician-centric, to really show the toll that the last five years since COVID has taken on that community. The thesis being that it is as fragile as the mental health of the people that we have in those jobs and the quality’s what we received. Even though we had to peer into a crystal ball and try to figure out a year ago what would be the topical cases of today, we were really more interested in how everybody’s coping mechanisms have allowed them to practice what they’ve been doing for the last five years. How they’ve compartmentalized the toll it’s taken on them personally, and explore that in real time. Aggregate tension on a shift where you’re just embedded with them without release. The outset was more about identifying the mental health of the practitioner than identifying the ills in society … Can I just say how effing cool it is to sit at this table with you all and be the uncool one to say that I feel like my impostor syndrome is off the rails right now?
Olson: No way.
Noah Wyle of “The Pitt.”
Hopefully you’ll all guest star on each other’s shows by the time this is over.
Janney: I would love that.
Britt, what really spoke to me about “Severance” was its exploration of grief, but within that too, there’s the corporate overreach and the work-life balance that I think all of us can appreciate. Did it show you anything about how you navigate your work-life balance or what you could do better?
Lower: The cast talks a lot about how the “Severance” procedure is kind of like what we do for a living. We go to work and put on a different outfit and assume a new identity. There were some moments where you’re walking down the corridors on the way to your job, and there’s kind of this meta quality of being inside of a show about compartmentalizing and switching into a different part of yourself. But I think it’s so relatable. I think we do that as humans. We show up differently in different spaces in our lives, whether it’s work or home or going home for the holidays, versus your baseball team. You just put on a different person really.
Britt Lower of “Severance.”
Isaacs: If I go away to do a job on location somewhere, I can actually — even at my ripe old age; I’m a father and I’m a husband — just park my life and forget that. Now I see that metaphor very clearly and it’s irresponsible. I’m so much more comfortable in the fictitious world than I am in the real world.
Do you feel like there’s a misconception that you guys are just all at the pool?
Isaacs: I’m not really an actor anymore; I just do “White Lotus” publicity for a job. And in the billions of interviews, people expect you to say, “It was a holiday. We were in this resort.” Well, we’re not really in the resort. So I’ve said a few times, “You make friends. You lose friends, romances or whatever; things happen between departments and all the backstage drama that we’re all used to.” Well, the online world went mad trying to deconstruct, trying to work out who knew who and who was [doing what]. Actually, I’m talking about all the crew and all the departments — not that it’s anyone’s business. But it’s trying to deconstruct what we all think of each other. And what happened there is so much less interesting than Mike White’s brilliant stories. You shouldn’t be interested in who went to dinner with who. I kind of wish I hadn’t opened my mouth about it, but I don’t want to pretend it was a holiday. Not just the way that the show blew up but also the level of microscopic interest in anything any of us said, tweeted, posted — there aren’t many new experiences for actors who’ve been around a long time, but this one has been shocking, and I’m quite glad that it’s abating now. I’d like to return to my normal life, but I don’t know how people who are uber-famous deal with it.
The level of microscopic interest in anything any of us said, tweeted, posted, is a new — there aren’t many new experiences for actors who’ve been around a long time, but this one has been shocking.
— Jason Isaacs, on fan attention to ‘The White Lotus’
Billy Bob, how did you come to navigate it? You’ve experienced the extreme effects of that.
Thornton: You mean in the world of Hollywood and all that?
Isaacs: Do you go to the supermarket, take the subway … Do you do the stuff I do?
Thornton: It depends on what year it is. I’ve gone through times where I couldn’t go anywhere. Once my life got bigger, and that really happened with … I mean, I was a working actor doing OK, but “Sling Blade” is the one that, literally overnight, it was a crazy thing. From that point on, it’s been pretty steady. What I’ve done to not get involved in all that is I don’t really go anywhere. I’m either working or I’m at home with the family or in a recording studio or on the road. You don’t see me in the [tabloid] magazines, at the parties and all that kind of stuff.
I’ll put it this way. Right now, with “Landman,” we thought it was going to be successful. We had no idea that it was going to be like this. I mean, we’ve got fans in Iceland and stuff. I can’t go to a Walmart in Texas. It’s literally impossible. I tried it. I would walk three feet at a time. Texans, their personalities are also very big, and they don’t really come up and go, “Excuse me, mister.” It’s not like that. It’s like, “Hey man, what’s going on? Get in a picture with me.”
I’ve had a reputation — weirdo. Angelina and I were vampires. We drank each other’s blood. You look on the internet, and there’s some kind of thing you’re trying to look up and, inevitably, it’ll show something else. So you go, “I hate this. I hate the internet, but I got to see it.”
Billy Bob Thornton of “Landman.”
Isaacs: There’s no good version of you. You either look much better on the screen or much better in real life. I wanted to say [looks at Allison], because I was a huge “West Wing” fan, I did some “West Wing,” I couldn’t break out of thinking that Bradley [Whitford] and Janel [Moloney] were, in fact, Josh and Donna. Did people think you were that political? People assumed you were that character?
Janney: I’ve been such a disappointment for people who think that I am C. J. [Cregg, her character on “The West Wing”], because I couldn’t be less like her. I’m not that person who’s able to verbally cut someone down in the second that she needs to. It was so great to play her, but I remember when they had the Democratic National [Convention] in California and there were more people who came up to me and asked me, “After this is over, will you come work for us? Will you come to…” I’m like, “You don’t understand. I’m so not like that.” And now on “The Diplomat,” playing the president of the United States and the smartest person in the room, it’s so much fun for me to play those kind of women because I’m not [like that]. I mean, I’m not an idiot, but I know nothing about being in the world of politics or being manipulative.
Kaitlin, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is in its 17th season now. You’re on “Hacks.” When you’re signing on to something like “High Potential,” what factors do you consider when thinking about how long you want to commit to something?
Olson: I don’t ever want to play a character that starts to get old to me. “Sunny” doesn’t feel like that to me because it’s a satire and the world’s always providing us with new content. And we do eight to 10 episodes a season. So it’s 17 seasons, which is insane, but it’s not even 20 episodes. It’s so much fun, which is the reason I’m not sick of that character yet. But I feel the same way as you, [Allison], when I’m playing characters who are super-smart, and then I have to talk about it, I just go into panic mode.
How has it been getting into Morgan’s head?
Olson: I love the other characters that I play, but there’s heart to this, and she’s a good mom and she is very insecure but puts on a big show. I love that she’s scrappy and has to figure it out, and she trusts that she will and doesn’t rely on anybody else to help her figure it out. The most important thing are her kids. I think she’s just fascinating to play.
Kaitlin Olson of “High Potential.”
What’s the most impressive skill you picked up on the job? Noah, you know I’m going to start with you. You went to medical boot camp. You’ve done really well with sutures. You can intubate any one of us, I think.
Wyle: I’ve never performed one.
Isaacs: The night is young.
Wyle: I wish everybody an opportunity to slip into a role that you have such great muscle memory with from another aspect of your life when you play a musician or when you do circusing or whatever. When you do something you’ve done for so long, and then you get to do it again, it is just amazing how much it’s in your body and how you don’t have to worry about that stuff. There was a moment earlier where Sterling choked on the grape in the greenroom. I was so ready to intubate him, even if it wasn’t necessary.
Thornton: I went to air-traffic control school for “Pushing Tin,” so I can still say, “Delta 2376, turn left, 20-0-4-0” and “Clear the Alice approach one-four right, call the tower one-eight-three,” because you just don’t forget it. That’s not air-traffic control, that’s just a line. With Noah, he learns this skill that he has been doing over the years, and that kind of knowledge is invaluable. Anytime you have stuff to do, without just acting, like you’re doing busy work — you’re, like, here’s how you do an appendectomy — and you learn and when you’re picking up the right tools, you’re saying the right stuff, you’re making incisions — that stuff you’ve got to learn.
Isaacs: One of the great privileges of being an actor that maybe doesn’t show up onscreen is you get to walk in people’s shoes. I shadowed heart surgeons and plastic surgeons and politicians and criminals and soldiers, and it’s just an amazing privilege to be in people’s lives and talk about it. And there may be some tiny bit you pick up for the screen.
TRENTON, N.J. — The Trump administration sued four New Jersey cities over their so-called sanctuary city policies aimed at prohibiting police from cooperating with immigration officials, saying the local governments are standing in the way of federal enforcement.
The Justice Department filed the suit Thursday against Newark, Jersey City, Paterson and Hoboken in New Jersey federal court. The lawsuit seeks a judgment against the cities and an injunction to halt them from enacting the so-called sanctuary city policies.
“While states and local governments are free to stand aside as the United States performs this important work, they cannot stand in the way,” the suit says.
It’s the latest case from President Trump’s administration against sanctuary policies. The administration also sued Chicago, Denver, the state of Colorado, and Rochester, N.Y.
There is no official definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities. The terms generally describe limited local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE enforces U.S. immigration laws nationwide but sometimes seeks state and local help.
Messages seeking comment were left Friday with the affected cities.
Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh said his city would fight the suit, calling it an “egregious attempt to score political points at Paterson’s expense.”
“We will not be intimidated,” he said in a text message.
Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla said in a statement the city prides itself on its inclusivity.
“The City of Hoboken will vigorously work to defend our rights, have our day in court, and defeat the Trump Administration’s lawlessness. To be clear: we will not back down,” he said.
The mayors of all four cities are Democrats.
New Jersey’s attorney general adopted a statewide Immigrant Trust Directive in 2018, which bars local police from cooperation with federal officials conducting immigration enforcement. The policies adopted by the four cities are similar.
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that New Jersey’s statewide policy could stand, but it’s unclear how that court’s order might affect the government’s case against the four cities.
NEW YORK — In the interest of doing things differently last October, the Dodgers made a subtle, but profound, change in their travel plans.
In previous postseasons — many of which ended with disappointing early eliminations — the Dodgers would use one wide-body plane to shuttle players, coaches, executives, staff, broadcasters and other members of their bloated playoff traveling party from city to city.
Last year, they opted for a different flight pattern.
Everyone else, meanwhile, flew on a second, separate chartered commercial jet.
“I think it’s just [a way for us to make sure] more of the time we spend is together,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said during last year’s postseason. “Making sure we stayed together as a group.”
Given the results, the Dodgers decided to keep the change in place for this season.
What started as a one-month experiment then, has become a permanent routine for the defending champions now.
This year, in a significant shift to the way they travel, the Dodgers are using two planes on a full-time basis for their regular-season road trips: One for players, just like they did last October; and another for everyone else, from manager Dave Roberts and the rest of his coaching staff to the dozens of other team personnel that make up each trip.
“It was driven by them,” Roberts said of the players, noting their interest in continuing the two-plane itinerary this year. “And we facilitated it.”
“It’s reimagining team travel,” added Scott Akasaki, who as the Dodgers’ senior director of travel has overseen the transition. “It’ll be interesting to see what the positive things that come out of it are.”
Indeed, as club officials looked ahead to their 2025 title defense this winter, they quickly warmed to the idea of making the two-plane system permanent.
Already, they had bought into the positive impacts it had on team chemistry during the playoffs, believing it to be a contributing factor to the heightened level of camaraderie players cited as a driving force behind their 2024 championship.
But as they mapped out ways to ease the burdens of a grueling 162-game season, they recognized other logistical benefits that could result from the added travel investment.
“Our ownership was incredibly supportive of the idea,” general manager Brandon Gomes said. “And yeah, it seems like it’s gone well so far.”
For starters, players now have more comfortable seating arrangements on flights, able to spread out on an aircraft that includes only a handful of additional clubhouse support staff.
“It’s providing an environment where our players are more apt to get rest and recovery, with just less people on the plane and more room to move around,” Akasaki said.
And after the team experienced several lengthy travel-day delays last year because of mechanical problems with their charter, they now have a “fail-safe” contingency plan, as Gomes described it; always having a second plane available to transport team members to their next city as scheduled.
“In theory, the players and critical staff can hop on the working plane and go,” Akasaki echoed, “while the remaining folks stay behind until the mechanical problem gets resolved.”
Four road trips into this year, however, no trickle-down effect has been as lauded as the changes the Dodgers have made to their actual travel schedule.
In the days of traditional single-plane travel, the Dodgers would typically wait to fly out of Los Angeles if they had an off day between the end of a homestand and the start of a road trip. It meant one extra night at home, but a later arrival into cities on the eve of an away series.
“When you’re spending your off day on the plane,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said, “you don’t ever feel like you’re as recovered.”
Using two planes for road trips has allowed the Dodgers players to leave right after the final game of a homestand, which so far this season has been followed by an off day. “When you’re spending your off day on the plane,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said, “you don’t ever feel like you’re as recovered.”
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
With the benefit of a second plane, the Dodgers can do things differently now.
Though each of the team’s first four homestands this year have been followed by an open date, the players’ plane has departed immediately after all four getaway-day games, getting them into road cities the same night (or, in the case of Wednesday’s flight to New York this week, early the next morning) before the rest of the traveling party arrives the following afternoon.
“I think it’s better,” Freeman said. “It gives us actually a whole day off.”
“It’s nice to just have the off day [without having to fly],” Muncy added. “You’re tired on the off day, but then you can get a full night’s sleep to rest and recover. That felt pretty good.”
Sometimes, that extra day affords players with rare additional personal time — giving someone like Muncy, a Dallas-area native, a full afternoon to see family before last month’s Easter weekend series in Texas.
But even for other guys, Muncy added, “it was, let me go lay out by the pool, or let me go grab some lunch somewhere, and then we’ll go get a nice dinner. It just gives you the whole day to kind of recover. I think it’ll be a better change for us.”
Accounting for a second plane, of course, does add complexities to the planning of each road trip. The truckloads of equipment the Dodgers travel with has to be specifically sorted and loaded onto the correct flight. The team has to coordinate between two airline partners, chartering a Boeing 757 from Delta and a Boeing 737-800 from United, to handle travel parties sometimes upwards of 100 in all. Akasaki now even has a bigger team of people who help with the planning process, too.
“From Andrew [Friedman, president of baseball operations] on down, it was like, ‘Hey, this is a big thing, and it’s a lot for one person to handle,” Akasaki said. “So [they asked], ‘What do you need to keep this all organized?’ That’s been very helpful.”
The team also had to account for potential other negatives. There were considerations made over the environmental impact of using a second plane, according to one person involved in the process but not authorized to speak publicly. There were more simple day-to-day changes to the rhythm of the team’s season as well.
“Like, you can’t have that organic conversation in the back of the plane between a staff member and a player like you used to,” Akasaki noted.
But, in the end, the pros outweighed the cons.
“You can still have that [conversation] in the clubhouse,” Akasaki noted.
Plus, for an organization that has long tried to maximize its monstrous financial resources to become a premier destination for star talent in baseball, being able to pitch prospective free agents on the luxury of using two planes certainly “doesn’t hurt” either, Gomes quipped.
With the Dodgers’ new travel system believed to be unique among MLB clubs, Roberts noted that “there’s a lot of other teams already asking about the two planes.”
And to this point, players said, the reviews have been positive.
“It’s still early,” Muncy noted. “I’ve only ever done it the one way since I’ve been here, so I don’t know what the other way is like” over the course of a full season.
But, Freeman joked with a grin, “I haven’t heard one complaint about it.”
Last year, I started teaching you, dear Wilder, what to do if you see an animal on the trail who could possibly hurt you. We’ve learned a lot together!
I explained the importance of observing a bear’s behavior to determine your best course of action. Same goes for coyotes. I also taught you that, if you actually see a mountain lion, you want to make so much noise they think, “‘What the hell is that?’” and leave.
We learned how you should not throw rocks at rattlesnakes to get them to move off trail, but it is sometimes OK to give them a little nudge with a long stick or hiking pole. (Read: sometimes.)
I hope, like me, you feel safer and more prepared should you encounter one of these critters in the woods. Now, I want to instruct you on the importance of dancing at the beach. Yes, it’s for your safety. It’s a specific type of boogie known as the “stingray shuffle.”
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Stingrays live all over the world, including right here along the coastline of Southern California. Round stingrays, a sand-colored little cutie, are the most common of this cartilaginous fish group to be found around our beaches, and thus, the one you are most likely to step on.
That’s in part because they don’t want to be seen. Round rays are usually less than a foot long and often “cover themselves with mud or sand, leaving only the eyes and spiracles exposed,” according to the Aquarium of the Pacific, “an excellent camouflage technique.”
It’s less likely that you’ll see a bat ray in shallow water. If lucky, you might spot one of those swimming near a local pier.
Although data on the number of stings in L.A. County were not readily available, the experts I spoke to agreed that it’s common enough that you need to be prepared when you visit the beach. I’d usually end with “Let’s dive in!” to be cheeky, but that directly contradicts the advice below. Puns aside, here are five tips to avoid a painful stingray encounter at the beach.
1. Shuffle your feet as you enter the water
Rather than stepping into the ocean, you should shuffle your feet as you enter the water. This is the aforementioned “stingray shuffle,” where you kick up sand, hopefully causing enough of a commotion that it will prompt any rays in the area to swim into deeper water.
“Their first line of defense is to swim away,” said Sara Lesser, education supervisor at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. “That stinger is the last thing they want to use, and they are pretty fast swimmers. If they get spooked, the first thing they’re going to do is try to get away from whatever spooked them.”
A bat ray, a species commonly found along the coast line from Oregon to the Gulf of California.
(Aquarium of the Pacific)
2. Don’t touch rays in the wild
At the aquarium, you can touch rays in a controlled setting around trained staffers. Out in the open ocean, don’t touch any animal, even if you perceive it to be gentle. Rays are wild animals too, and even if you’re out snorkeling, just watch it go by.
“They don’t have any interest or want to interact with us,” Lesser told me. “Snorkeling with them is a great way to see them, but make sure, like with all animals, [you] give them their space and distance. You’re entering their home. Be a quiet observer of them and their habitat.”
3. Be aware of your continued risk of being stung
Stingrays can be found anywhere along the ocean bottom, but you should especially use caution when walking along a nice flat seabed on a calm day when the water is shallow and warm.
“If you kick up enough sand, and you’re around enough people, the stingrays are going to get away from you,” said Pono Barnes, a spokesperson for the ocean lifeguard division of the L.A. County Fire Department. “They’re not going to wait until you get a foot away to swim away. If you’re shuffling around, and relatively in the same spot while you’re enjoying the water, the stingrays are going to clear out and move down the beach where it’s calm.”
Barnes said you don’t have to constantly shuffle your feet, but if you’re the only person out on a sand bar, it’s good to shuffle as you move around. Another option: swim.
Barnes has never been stung and attributes that to swimming to travel through the ocean. “They’re going to stay on the bottom. They’re not going to come up to sting you,” he said.
4. If stung, don’t pee on it
“I would not recommend that, that would not alleviate your pain,” Barnes said.
Given the myth around peeing on a jellyfish’s sting to alleviate pain, I had to ask. Not only does urine not help remove venom from a ray’s barb, it also should not be used to treat a jellyfish sting. Truly, the more you know!
5. Seek actual medical aid
Generally, being stung by a small round ray will feel like you’ve stepped on a piece of glass. That sensation will go away momentarily, only to be replaced by a throbbing pain that will vary in intensity depending on how much venom you received from the ray’s barb.
“I’ve seen linebacker-sized guys that are completely inconsolable, can’t talk because they’re writhing in pain, and then I’ve seen little kids that are totally fine that got stung,” Barnes said. “It really depends on how much venom gets delivered at the time you got stung.”
You should head, hopefully pee-free, to the nearest lifeguard stand.
The lifeguards will assess your injury, make sure the barb isn’t still in your foot and then wash the wound out.
Then, they will place your foot inside a Mylar-type bag where they’ll add the hottest water you can stand to kill the venom.
“What that hot water does is, it essentially cooks off that venom and the protein in the venom, and once that breaks down, the pain goes away,” Barnes said.
(Fun fact: Every morning, lifeguards collect scalding hot water and keep it in insulated containers in case a beachgoer suffers a sting. They’re always prepared for this to happen!)
It can take a few hours for the pain to subside.
“It’ll feel like you’re getting better and that you can take your foot out of the water, and then as soon as you take your foot out of that hot water, you’ll feel that pain start to come back,” Barnes said. “Typically, it’s the end of your beach day.”
The lifeguards will take you to the end of the beach, where your driver will take you home. Lifeguards can even help your driver plan the route home to include the nearest coffee shop or convenience store where you could get a refill on hot water, depending on how far you’re going.
Most people don’t have any other issues once the venom is cooked off. Those who do develop an infection should go to an urgent care and inform the physician they were stung by a stingray, as there are specific antibiotics more effective for marine-related injuries.
I hope you don’t have to ever use this advice. If you do, may your pain be minimal and aid be rendered swiftly!
3 things to do
Volunteers work to restore habitat at a Friends of the L.A. River event.
(Friends of the L.A. River)
1. Clean up habitat down by the L.A. River Volunteers are needed from 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday at the Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Reserve for Friends of the L.A. River’s habitat restoration day and Earth Month celebration, postponed because of rain last month. Participants will restore native habitat in the reserve, yanking invasive plants and making seed balls. Local organizations, including the California Native Plant Society and San Fernando Valley Audubon Society, will teach volunteers about local flora and fauna. Learn more and register at folar.org.
2. Glean native plant knowledge in Glendale Officials from Glendale’s Office of Sustainability will lead a 2.8-mile hike at 10 a.m. Saturday through the Catalina Verdugo Trail, where they will teach hikers about native plants such as laurel sumac, sycamores and sages along the path. This lightly moderate path meanders around the Glendale Sports Complex in the San Rafael Hills. It is lush, and as such, long shirts and pants are recommended. Guests should also bring water and sun protection. Register at laworks.com.
3. Meet new plants at the L.A. River Herb Club L.A. will host a walk at 5 p.m. Sunday around the L.A. River, where guides will teach guests about native plants and their medicinal, ecological and cultural significance. Afterward, guests will be invited to imbibe kefir water while sketching plants and adding to their field guides. Art supplies will be provided, but guests are welcome to bring existing pieces to work on. Tickets range from $23.18 to $33.85, with participants encouraged to pay what they can. Register at eventbrite.com.
The must-read
(Marie Doazan / For The Times)
The Sierras offer ample opportunity to backpack to alpine lakes and high peaks, where you’ll have much of the trail to yourself. But it isn’t always doable to drive a few hours north for a backpacking trip. That’s why I put together this helpful guide on how to backpack in our own backyard! There are around 20 backpacking sites around L.A. County, and I chose the best ones to check out this summer. Everything on my list is open. The roads to reach them are paved, and the trails to reach each site are generally well-maintained. I am looking forward to revisiting several spots on my list, including Valley Forge, where the stars will be bright, and the frogs hopefully loud.
Happy adventuring,
P.S.
Good news! This past weekend, a volunteer at Project Monarch L.A. spotted the first butterfly chrysalis that the group has seen in its three years of restoring habitat for the at-risk winged wonder. Since 2023, the project’s volunteers have spent hundreds of hours planting milkweed and native pollinating plants and taken other steps to help Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown be a place where monarchs can reproduce and thrive. In the coming days, the little green chrysalis will hopefully transform into an orange-and-black beauty!
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.
With the contract between USC and Notre Dame set to expire and one of college football’s most storied rivalries in serious danger of ending, officials at USC extended an offer to Notre Dame earlier this month in hopes of continuing the historic series for at least one more season — through the fall of 2026 — a person familiar with the negotiations not authorized to discuss them publicly told The Times.
The future of the rivalry beyond that, in the eyes of USC’s leaders, hinges in large part on what happens with the format of the College Football Playoff — namely, the number of automatic qualifiers guaranteed to the Big Ten in future playoff fields. And until those questions are answered, USC leaders agree the best course forward for its century-old rivalry with Notre Dame would be to continue their arrangement one season at a time.
Anything else would be “a strategically bad decision,” a USC source said.
That timeline is where the two rivals find themselves at an impasse. Notre Dame is seeking a long-term extension of the series, and in an interview with Sports Illustrated earlier this week, Irish athletic director Pete Bevacqua not so subtly suggested that it was USC putting the rivalry at risk.
“I think Southern Cal and Notre Dame should play every year for as long as college football is played,” he told SI’s Pat Forde, “and SC knows that’s how we feel.”
The two blueblood programs have played 95 times since 1924, when the story goes that the wife of legendary Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne convinced her husband to schedule the series so she could visit Southern California every other year. In the century since, only World War II and the COVID-19 pandemic have stood in the way of USC and Notre Dame meeting on the football field. Between them, the two rivals boast 16 national titles, more than any other teams that play an annual college football series.
They’re scheduled to meet again in October in South Bend. What happens to the historic series after that matchup may come down to who blinks in a high-stakes game of chicken between the two schools.
USC has no plans to budge on its position without clarity over whether the Big Ten will have four automatic qualifiers in any future playoff format, a source told The Times. With nine conference games already built into the schedule and the possibility of an annual crossover matchup with the Southeastern Conference still on their radar, USC officials see no reason to commit long term to the Notre Dame matchup without assurances they wouldn’t be punished for scheduling such a marquee nonconference matchup.
The demands of Big Ten travel have also been a part of the conversation at USC, to the point officials broached the potential with Notre Dame of moving the game to the first month of the season. The hope was to better balance its future slate of travel to the Midwest and East Coast. Last season, in their Big Ten debut, the Trojans lost all four of their Big Ten road trips.
But Notre Dame was not receptive to the idea of moving the game, which traditionally has been played in the latter half of the football season.
The Irish agreed earlier this month to a 12-year home-and-home scheduling agreement with Clemson. But while that deal seemed like a precursor to moving on from the USC series, Sports Illustrated reported this week that it was not expected to stand in the way of continuing with the Trojans.
Uncertainty has loomed over the rivalry since last summer when USC coach Lincoln Riley was first asked about its future at Big Ten media days.
“I know it means a lot to a lot of people,” Riley said. “The purist in you [says] no doubt. Now if you get in a position where you got to make a decision on what’s best for SC to help us win a national championship vs. keep that [game], shoot, then you got to look at it.
“And listen, we’re not the first example of that. Look all the way across the country. There have been a lot of other teams sacrificing rivalry games. And I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen. But as we get into this playoff structure, and if it changes or not, we’re in this new conference, we’re going to learn something about this as we go and what the right and the best track is to winning a national championship, that’s going to evolve.”
Those comments led many to point fingers at Riley for laying the groundwork for the rivalry’s possible demise. But as the two sides now stand at an impasse, a person familiar with the discussion at USC insisted that any decision on the series and its future would come from athletic director Jennifer Cohen.
She’ll have plenty to weigh on that front in the coming months, with both schools likely to dig in their heels for the long haul, slinging mud at one another in the meantime.
