Scott Mills’ ‘work wife’ Tina Daheley has broken her silence on an ‘awful week’Credit: InstagramScott was fired this week over allegations surrounding his ‘personal conduct’Credit: BBCTina shared a photo of her in bed as she recovered from fluCredit: Instagram
The Sun understands that his contract was terminated within five days of the complaint being made.
“I’ve had for the past week (being parent to a primary school aged child is like having a subscription service to viruses!).”
Tina then revealed when she would be returning to her hosting duties.
“Good news is I’m over the worst of it and looking forward to spending two weeks with my family over the Easter hols from tomorrow after what’s been an incredibly difficult past week,” she said.
His Mercedes-Benz Vans Under the Bonnet: On the Road podcast has also been taken off Spotify.
The four part series created in 2025 with the Under the Bonnet report, shone the spotlight on varying issues for van drivers including everything from road conditions to mental health.
It comes after it transpired the broadcaster was questioned by police under caution in 2018 – when he was in his 40s, the Mirror reports.
The interview was related to alleged offences which took place between 1997 and 2000.
The case was dropped in full due to a lack of evidence.
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told The Mirror: “In December 2016, the Met began an investigation following a referral from another police force.
“The investigation related to allegations of serious sexual offences against a teenage boy.”
The spokesperson said a man, who was in his 40s at the time of the interview, was questioned by police under caution in July 2018.
“A full file of evidence was submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service, who determined the evidential threshold had not been met to bring charges,” the Met said.
“Following this advice, the investigation was closed in May 2019.”
The allegations, which did not result in any charges, were reported to have taken place between 1997 and 2000.
Scott began at Radio 1 in 1998 presenting the early morning slot before earning his own breakfast show The Scott Mills Show.
A BBC spokesperson told The Sun: “While we do not comment on matters relating to individuals, we can confirm Scott Mills is no longer contracted to work with the BBC.”
Scott’s pals have also claimed they ‘can’t reach him’ amid the ‘teen boy sex probe’Credit: Splash
Legendary street artist and activist Shepard Fairey was omnipresent at the High Desert Art Fair, which unfolded in and around Pioneertown over two unseasonably hot days last weekend. Founded more than seven years ago by art dealer Nicholas Fahey and artist manager Candice Lawler, the event has morphed from a few dozen people in Lawler’s living room to a few thousand roaming the dusty, sunny environs of the kitschy Old West town, with ancillary events in Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree.
Fairey, who bought a home in the area during the COVID-19 pandemic, DJ’d a spirited opening night party at the Red Dog Saloon — spinning punk, post-punk and new wave hits by Joy Division, Fugazi and Black Flag to a packed house of art fans wearing paint-splattered DIY couture — and he spoke during the weekend’s most anticipated panel alongside Devo frontman and gallery owner Mark Mothersbaugh in a conversation moderated by singer-songwriter Harper Simon, son of folk icon Paul Simon.
Artist Shepard Fairey DJ’d the opening night party of High Desert Art Fair at the Red Dog Saloon in Pioneertown. The set was heavy of punk, post-punk and new wave.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
Fairey was forthcoming about his opinions on art, politics and technology, drawing applause at one point for saying that using AI in art is not something to be afraid of. His assessment came after he lamented the fact that social media algorithms punish “decency” and reward “flamboyant narcissism and controversy.” He then joked that the “algorithm’s gonna love this. S— is gonna go nuts,” before talking about his recent collaboration with the digital artist known as Beeple who’s notorious in the art world for selling an NFT of his art in 2021 for $69.3 million.
The Red Dog Saloon was packed with art and music fans during the Friday night opening party of the High Desert Art Fair, which drew thousands of people to Pioneertown during the last weekend in March.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
“He’s either the vanguard of a new way of working, and a maverick, a trailblazer, or he’s the worst thing that’s happened to art ever, or in between, or both, or neither,” Fairey said as the crowd laughed. “That’s totally my opinion.”
During a late-March event held in Fairey’s hometown of Charleston, S.C., Beeple Studios presented “Shepard Fairey: Obey and Resist,” which leveraged AI to help guests create their own Fairey-inspired paintings. During the panel, Fairey called the results “almost idiot-proof.”
He then elaborated on his feelings about AI’s encroachment on the art world, saying that if he were part of the “traditional art world thinking” he wouldn’t dare “go over to the dark side of digital art and AI, because that’s cheating.”
“All those same people a few hundred years ago when Da Vinci was using the camera obscura were like, ‘Get your proportions right, just by eye. Don’t use a cheating tool,’” Fairey said before taking the analogy to cave paintings and noting that those same types of naysayers would’ve been unhappy when it was discovered that horse hairs at the end of a stick were useful for distributing pigment and might have said, “That’s not keeping it real, bro. Use bloody elbow like everyone else.”
Fairey called that type of thinking “idiotic.”
“A tool in service of someone with a genuine vision that bends the tool to their will, rather than having themselves bent to the tool — that’s what creativity is about,” Fairey said.
The conversation about AI art started when Mothersbaugh, who was headlining a music set at Pappy & Harriet’s later that night, admitted that he was “fooling around with AI” and “just making myself laugh, like mutating old Devo photos and videos. It cracks me up. … I don’t know what is ever going to happen with it. Maybe they’ll just always live on my phone and eventually get thrown away or lost or something.”
The stage is set for an experimental music show by the General, featuring the stylings of Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a rock ‘n’ roll art fair
The idea that AI won’t cannibalize artists and their work on a massive scale is refreshingly utopian, but in many ways so was the fair itself. It takes magical thinking to grow anything in the harsh desert environment, which is why artists have been making the trek for decades. There was a youthful, rock ‘n’ roll vibe to the proceedings that was punk in quality but earnest in its quest to be seen.
Mothersbaugh’s gallery, MutMuz, occupied one of 20 rooms reconfigured as show spaces at the Pioneertown Motel, as did Gross!, a Chinatown gallery founded by former Liars drummer Julian Gross and populated with the work of musicians such as Karen O, O’s costume designer Christian Joy and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe.
A work of painted fabric by Karen O‘s costume designer Christian Joy hangs in Gross! Gallery at the Pioneertown Motel during High Desert Art Fair. The gallery is owned by former Liars drummer Julian Gross who features plenty of work by fellow artists.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
Desert pioneers are key to the spirit of the place
The fair featured tours of a number of the most interesting attractions in the area, including the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree and artist Andrea Zittel’s arts outpost and residency program, High Desert Test Sites.
Old computers are stacked at the center of an installation titled “Carousel” (1996) by Noah Purifoy at the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
Purifoy’s fantastical assemblages made of found objects and unloved detritus provided the most fitting example of the creative desert mindset. Outsider art in every sense of the word, and laden with scathing political and social commentary, Purifoy’s installations morph and change in the elements. A nonprofit exists to preserve them, but tour guide Teri Rommelmann said preservation efforts aren’t meant to alter the course of nature and time, but rather to save the work from sinking into the sand.
Noah Purifoy’s 2001 installation “White/Colored” is the most frequently vandalized piece in the outdoor Joshua Tree museum dedicated to his work.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
Another aspect of the preservation work is erasing vandalism, which happened most during the pandemic, and was quite telling in its main target: An installation featuring a water fountain marked “White” next to a toilet affixed with a water fountain mouthpiece and labeled “Colored.”
Noah Purifoy’s sculpture “Ode to Frank Gehry” (2000) stands in the sand as part of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art. The piece was once featured in a show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and transporting it can be quite tricky.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
At High Desert Test Sites, Zittel’s famous A-Z West escape pods are no longer used for camping after the city said the nonprofit would have to attain a commercial camping permit to continue. Nonetheless, the organization’s 80 acres are home to a variety of artist residencies, which use the windswept isolation of the desert to activate dormant ideas. It was just announced that environmental artist Lita Albuquerque will have a residency at the site.
Andrea Zittel’s famous A-Z West escape pods at High Desert Test Sites can no longer be used for camping, but they still dot the nonprofit’s 80 acres of land as an example of the creativity that the desert environment unleashes.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
The tiled kitchen that artist Andrea Zittel designed for the main residence at High Desert Test Sites, which she lived in for nearly 20 years and can now be rented by artists in residence.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
Art is everywhere in the desert — and growing
The success of this year’s High Desert Art Fair bodes well for the future of the area as a cultural destination.
Next year will see the return of Desert X, which for the first time will keep its large-scale, site-specific installations up for six months, timed to coincide with other SoCal cultural happenings including the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and Frieze. There are also semi-permanent art installations everywhere in the area, including along driveways and the roadside. This includes a hair salon and museum in Joshua Tree, and the recently opened Reset Hotel in Twentynine Palms features dozens of rooms in retrofitted shipping containers, some with outdoor bathtubs and firepits. The hotel has also carved desert trails in its backyard, with plans to build an art park filled with installations.
The shipping container rooms at the new Reset Hotel in Twentynine Palms feature outdoor living spaces with firepits and bathtubs. Some overlook trails that will lead to a planned art park on the property.
(Jessica Gelt / Los Angeles Times)
An influx of artists, collectors and art fans will surely have an impact on an area that is already wary of gentrification and the rising cost of living that accompanies it. But there will be no stopping progress, only a utopian, Fairey-like hope that those who come will be inspired to keep and nurture the magical qualities of the place.
Liverpool could not play on the Monday because of the Champions League, so Sky Sports could swap the games.
Everton‘s game is on a Monday, but it was not picked for a Monday. So it may not count as part of the Monday allocation.
Sky Sports says the process involves so many bodies, including clubs and the police, that much of the decision-making is taken out of their hands.
The order of first, second and third-choice picks between Sky and TNT Sports can also have an influence.
It is clear that the five-appearance maximum is a just loose limit.
Supporters will simply see their club has been picked six, seven or eight times.
Manchester United will almost certainly be in Europe next season, so will join the band of clubs largely shielded from the Friday-Monday package.
But with at least eight Premier League clubs set to be in Europe, the issue is not going to go away.
If Tottenham stay in the Premier League they will go to the top of the list for Friday and Monday selection, given they have a large fan base and are viewed as a glamourous club.
Everton fans say the scenario is “damaging supporter accessibility, matchday experience, and long-term engagement”.
It’s an hour before Monroe High’s baseball team takes infield practice. In the dugout dressed in his uniform, Miguel Gonzalez has his scissors out giving a free haircut to a teammate.
“Ten out of 10,” infielder Alexander Hernandez said when describing Gonzalez’s barber skills.
His pitching skills aren’t bad either. He struck out 12 in six innings in his season debut. He’s 5-0 with a 0.69 ERA. He’s a four-year varsity player for the surprising Vikings, who are 13-1 to start this season under second-year coach Eddie Alcantar.
The fact that Gonzalez is still playing might come as the biggest surprise if you knew all the responsibilities he faces as an 18-year-old.
Alcantar was getting worried last January when Gonzalez didn’t show up for winter workouts.
“I have a rule if you don’t show up for practice, you don’t play,” Alcantar said.
They finally met and Gonzalez revealed he’s been too busy working as a barber. And then came the big news: He’s going to become a father in July.
The Monroe High baseball team is off to an 13-1 start.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
It’s a delicate balancing act between work, school, baseball and the seriousness of being a parent as a teenager.
“I’ve been able to figure scheduling little by little,” Gonzalez said. “I do sleep. Maybe five hours.”
Gonzalez said he worked seven days a week as a barber during the summer. He’s been saving for his future while also making sure he did not have to ask his parents for money. He works weekends and sometimes has to leave practice after an hour for work.
As far as baseball, he added a slider this season, picked up some velocity and tries to throw three pitches for strikes.
Against Eagle Rock, he struck out 10 and gave up two hits in a 3-1 win. Against Arleta, he struck out 10 in six innings during a 6-1 victory with one walk. Against Westchester, he got two outs — both strikeouts — in a 3-1 win. Against Vaughn, he gave up two hits in six innings of a 2-0 victory..
Pitcher Miguel Gonzalez has helped Monroe to an 13-1 start with a 5-0 record and 0.69 ERA.
(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)
He said his parents have been supportive: “They have told me it’s a really big responsibility.”
After high school, he plans to go to an occupational school to learn more about being a barber. He’d love to continue playing baseball, but that will depend on his development and his priorities. So far, his balancing act is keeping him levelheaded and determined.
He’s been working since he was 5 when he helped his father in landscaping. He switched to cutting hair and loves it. His clients swear by him.
A pilot has revealed his one method of balancing work and family life in the industry, despite the seriously long hours and time away from home that comes with the role
Christine Younan Deputy Editor Social Newsdesk
11:27, 29 Mar 2026
The pilot revealed how he balanced work and family (stock image)(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
It’s widely recognised that pilots work lengthy shifts and spend considerable periods away from home. While on duty, they usually work between 10-14 hours daily, encompassing flight time, briefings and taxiing, although this can stretch to 16 hours when unexpected situations arise.
Throughout the week, the schedule can become more demanding, with pilots working up to 60 hours across 7 consecutive days, averaging around 20 hours weekly in the air. While travelling to different countries constantly and experiencing the world sounds thrilling, it can prove incredibly challenging for pilots with families.
One pilot has recently shared how he successfully balanced his career with family life. During a TikTok Q&A session, Captain Steve, employed by American Airlines, outlined his approach to making it work.
Following someone sharing their ambition to become an airline pilot, they ask: “What is your advice on a work-life balance in the industry?”
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Steve responds: “Well it’s like anything else if you travel, you have to balance being on the road and being home, the electronics help these days, you can FaceTime, communicate much more effectively and frequently than you did back then.”
When his children were young, the pilot succeeded in spending quality time at home while working as a reserve for the airline.
He added: “I did reserve on the airline and didn’t work as much on reserve, I’d get called a few times a month, maybe for a trip where when you’re regular line holder, you’re going to fly four or five times.
“Was it a big difference? Yeah, it was a huge difference because I got to spend more time with my kids and I still got paid as an airline pilot to be on call.”
While working as a reserve wasn’t straightforward for Steve but he “made the sacrifice”.
He went on: “There were some inconveniences with being on call as well but I made that sacrifice to be with my family so there is a way to work it up, where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Numerous elements influence working hours. Short-haul pilots might complete 4-6 legs per day (consecutive flights). Long-haul pilots typically endure lengthier stints, such as 12-15 hours on a single extended flight.
Early starts, such as 5am, can cut into allowable duty hours owing to fatigue regulations. Between shifts, pilots must receive a minimum of 10 hours of rest, incorporating 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep.
The anti-nuclear artists collective whose work is on display at Pitzer College in Claremont never predicted a nuclear proliferation crisis would break out in the Middle East during their exhibit, or how grimly topical their work would quickly become as a result.
“Atomic Dragons,” wrapping April 4 with a closing-day symposium of nuclear experts, is the work of SWANS, which stands for Slow War Against the Nuclear State. The group is made up of artists, activists and academics with ties to the nuclear industry, including children and spouses of nuclear industrial complex workers — putting a new spin on the “nuclear family.”
The show examines the environmental and human cost of the atomic era through an artistic lens, tracing present day nuclear risk back to its Cold War roots.
The SWANS’ warning call has always been clear, but ”Atomic Dragons” took on a whole new meaning when the United States and Israel launched a joint assault on Iran over its illicit stockpile of nuclear materials Feb. 28, three weeks after the show opened.
“We’re at the start of what will be an exceedingly dangerous period in terms of the Iranian nuclear program,” nuclear policy expert Scott Sagan, who co-directs Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, said. “We’re likely to have a major, major conflict over this.”
In a time of acute nuclear anxiety, SWANS is an outlet through which the artists process the fear and gravity of our atomic reality.
Fiona Amundsen, “Yoshino Cherry Tree, Sanyo Buntokuden, Hiroshima (lovingly held),” 2025, from the series, “The Trees are Leaking Light,” 2024-25, 4 x 5 inch negative processed using seaweed, gathered from the ocean current of the Fukushima wastewater release, inkjet washi photograph.
(Chloe Shrager)
“My maybe-naive hope is that the artworks help to provide an avenue into that understanding of the severity of what it means to play with the nuclear,” said Fiona Amundsen, whose arresting film photography of three trees in Hiroshima that survived the 1945 nuclear bomb was developed using contaminated seaweed growing in the Fukushima wastewater release line.
The resulting images are dotted with delicate white flares: trace amounts of radioactive tritium that transferred to the film from the nuclear effluent during the chemical processing, bearing physical witness to the usually invisible effects of radiation.
Amundsen’s work is in keeping with the rest of the show, which fills two halls at the liberal arts school with visual and multimedia works that probe the persistence of radioactive materials. Artifacts from the birth of the nuclear age are also featured, including items recovered from postwar Hiroshima and a letter from the father of the nuclear bomb, Robert J. Oppenheimer.
The artworks are as likely to unsettle as they are to move.
elin o’Hara slavick, selection from “There Have Been 528 Atmospheric Nuclear Tests to Date,” 2022, photo-chemical drawings on outdated and fogged silver gelatin paper.
(Chloe Shrager)
Slavick said she found the abandoned silver-gelatin paper, which was fogged despite being stored in closed boxes, in the basement of the university near a door labeled “Radiation Science,” which led her to believe radiation exposure from Caltech’s Manhattan Project past distorted the photographic paper.
SWANS seems to double as a support group for families impacted by the nuclear industry. Many members believe they’ve lost loved ones to radiation, or were themselves likely impacted by early-life exposure as children of Manhattan Project engineers. The tension between the anti-nuclear artwork and its artists’ familial ties to the production of the very technology they reject is an enticing dance of its own.
Judith Dancoff, “The Milk Pathway (still),” 2023, video, briefcase, antique milk bottles, and tempera.
(Chloe Shrager)
Writer Judith Dancoff links her hyperthyroidism and long-term reproductive issues from a pituitary gland tumor to childhood radiation exposure during a summer spent at the Oak Ridge uranium enrichment site in Tennessee where her father worked as a student of Oppenheimer. Her father died young of cancer, and the story is woven into her featured SWANS work.
One of the largest pieces on display at “Atomic Dragons” is Nancy Buchanan’s interactive full-wall exhibit of documents her father brought home from his government work as a Manhattan Project physicist, alongside material from the FBI file on his mysterious death, on display for viewers to read under looming red letters spelling out “SECURITY.”
Nancy Buchanan, “Security,” 1987, installation with file folders, photos, map pins, and documents.
(Chloe Shrager)
The current crisis in Iran has sent memories bubbling to the surface for the collective, and chills down the spines of viewers.
Many have expressed fears of an Orwellian-style forever war, or worse, the use of the atomic weapon invented “to end all wars” in a twisted attempt to do so, poisoning the region as a byproduct. But nuclear policy expert Sagan said the likelihood of the conflict escalating to involve nuclear weapons is “exceedingly low,” even if Iran has the capability to build them.
Iran possesses enough 60% highly-enriched uranium to build about 10 nuclear weapons if further enriched to 90% weapons grade, he said. This could take a matter of weeks to complete depending on the state of Iran’s enrichment centrifuges, which Trump claimed to have “obliterated” during air strikes in June.
Iran could also craft a primitive nuclear device out of minimally enriched materials for an offensive attack (“60% could actually create an explosion, it just wouldn’t be a very efficient one,” according to Sagan), but George Perkovich, senior fellow for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program and author of “How to Assess Nuclear Threats in the 21st Century,” points out that “you have to build more than one for it to be useful,” especially under the wrath of a nuclear-armed West’s expected response.
What is more likely, and probably more dangerous, experts say, is the now-heightened long-term risk of global proliferation. “This war is going to suggest to some countries that if they want to secure their sovereignty, they need nuclear weapons,” Sagan said.
elin o’Hara slavick, selection from “There Have Been 528 Atmospheric Nuclear Tests to Date,” 2022, photo-chemical drawings on outdated and fogged silver gelatin paper.
(Chloe Shrager)
Since 1968, the world nuclear order has rested on the delicate architecture of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, enforcing the international norm that countries without nuclear weapons won’t try to get them, and countries with nuclear weapons won’t help arm their allies. Now, experts say the rulebook has been thrown out.
“What this does is it breaks the old system that was based on the non-proliferation treaty,” said Perkovich, who has worked on nuclear issues for 44 years. “It’s now ‘might makes right,’ everybody’s on their own, friends versus enemies. I think the terms now change, and we’re not bargaining.”
Though the timing of the military operation in Iran with the “Atomic Dragons” exhibit could not be described as kismet as much as brutally ironic, slavick said the “sick and sad thing” is that “it’s always topical when you’re an American.”
“We do this. We wage wars. We are the leading nuclear country,” she said, speaking to the heart of the SWANS message: In a world where nuclear materials exist, it is not a matter of if humans will be harmed, but when.
There is a historic relationship between visual art and nuclear war, said Jim Walsh, a senior research associate at the MIT Security Studies Program on nuclear weapons risk issues in Iran and North Korea, who is also a speaker at the exhibit’s closing symposium. As the world enters a “more disruptive period” after the post-Cold War cooling of nuclear tensions, he expects to soon see “a flowering of artistic projects,” as nuclear risk reaches a local peak. “It’s a super powerful thing involving life and death, the planet, the entire environment, love and hate,” he said.
“Atomic Dragons,” which also features work created decades ago, highlights questions that are as relevant today as they were at the dawn of the nuclear era: Can we make the world safe enough so we can once again dream? Is the strength of a country found in its military rather than its culture? Is fear our gross national product?
Symposium: Art, Science, and the Nuclear Legacy
A talk by nuclear expert panelists Jim Walsh and David Richardson, as well as a viewing of the “Atomic Dragons” art exhibit and a conversation with the artists. Coffee and a light lunch will be served.
When: Saturday, April 4, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Where: George C. S. Benson Auditorium, Pitzer College Tickets:Free RSVP Info: Details on event website
A ribbon may seem like the easy choice to help you find your bag among a sea of luggage, but one airport worker says there’s a reason why this hack isn’t recommended. Here’s what you can do instead.
This common hack can cause issues with your bags(Image: Getty Images)
If you were to rank the most stressful parts of flying, then finding your luggage at the carousel would no doubt come near the top.
You wait and wait for the luggage belt to start up, and once it does, there’s a huge rush of people grabbing their cases, many of which look strikingly similar. That’s why there are so many hacks out there to help you ensure your suitcase stands out from the dozens of others on the conveyor.
A common hack is to take a colourful piece of ribbon and tie it around a handle, which means when it’s coming down the belt, you can spot it among the other similarly coloured cases.
However, according to one airport worker, using this hack with ribbon, string, or any other dangly item could be a bad idea, and could even delay your luggage pickup even further.
John, who works at Dublin Airport, previously spoke to RSVPLiveabout why travellers should avoid the hack, saying: “Ribbons that people tie onto their suitcases to help identify them can cause issues with the bag being scanned in the baggage hall.
“If the bag can’t be scanned automatically it can end up in manual processing, which could mean your bag doesn’t make it to the flight”.
As well as interfering with scanning systems, ribbons and other items can also get stuck in the conveyor belt’s machinery, which means the entire carousel could automatically come to a stop, delaying everybody’s bags.
Old airline stickers and tags from previous flights can also cause issues according to John. Machines may not know which barcode to scan, causing delays, or it could even mean your luggage is sent to the wrong destination.
If you want to personalise your case to make it stand out from the crowd, use a colourful luggage strap, add some coloured tape around a handle, or add a distinctive sticker so you can spot it on the carousel.
Luggage covers are another option for checked bags. These covers slip over your suitcase and are available in bright colours and prints, or even personalised options. As a bonus, these covers can help to protect the exterior of your case from damage when being handled. You can also opt for waterproof covers, so if your luggage is left on a trolley in the rain or is close to a leak, the contents won’t be damaged.
Airport workers have also warned that the colour of the case that you choose is important. Black suitcases are the most common choice for travellers, but they’re the most likely to be lost or stolen.
Finding a black suitcase can also be incredibly difficult. Many lost property offices will be full of suitcases of the exact same type and colour, making it less likely you’ll be reunited with your bag.
Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com
A TV insider has shared what they claim is the real reason behind a ‘blunder’ on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent
BGT fans spotted a blunder during a magician’s act last week(Image: ITV)
A TV insider has revealed what he claims is a behind-the-scenes Britain’s Got Talent secret ploy following a ‘blunder’ during a recent episode of the ITV programme.
The hit talent competition recently made a triumphant return to our screens as judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, Alesha Dixon and KSI reunited with presenters Ant and Dec in the hunt for Britain’s next talented superstar.
Contestants have pulled out all the stops in an attempt to impress the panel and secure a life-changing £250,000 cash prize and a coveted slot at the Royal Variety Performance.
Amongst the numerous performers who have graced the stage so far is magician Fabian Fox and BGT fans know full well that magic acts are amongst the most-loved performances on the programme.
Last weekend the young magician introduced himself to judges Amanda Holden, KSI, Alesha Dixon and guest judge Stacey Solomon, while two large platforms with curtains attached stood behind him on the stage, reports Belfast Live.
However, his trick sparked conversation amongst fans as he ‘transported’ a woman and man from one of the platforms to the other using his own powers.
The way viewers were going to be able to tell that it was the same woman transported onto the platform was that she was going to be holding one white sports trainer at the point of teleportation.
Yet viewers watching at home were swift to notice an editing blunder as initially the lady was holding a trainer with the laces undone, then, when she “teleported” to the other platform, the laces were mysteriously tied up.
According to TikTok user @adamjamesonTV, who works in television, it was no accident and programme producers did that deliberately to attract more audiences.
Mirror has approached ITV for comment.
In footage shared to his account, he displayed an image of the ‘error’ and stated: “So everybody thinks this was an editing blunder on Britain’s Got Talent but they’re wrong.
“First of all, this edit is seen by so many people before it actually gets broadcast. There’s no way on earth they missed it.”
He went on: “Second of all, the fact that they kept this blunder in means that he’s definitely not going to win the show. Their argument will be that they’re showing the act as it was and therefore they’re doing nothing to manipulate the performance.
“However, their real reason is the fact that you guys will all stick it on social media and talk about the show. If you’re talking about the show, the show gets more viewers and the traction gets bigger. Essentially, he’s just become another pawn in Britain’s Got Talent’s machine.”
He concluded: “If they wanted him to win, they would have cut this bit out, gone to a wide shot and nobody would have known. But whether you like it or not, Britain’s Got Talent is not about having a fair talent competition. It’s about viewers and viewers equals money.”
Britain’s Got Talent airs Saturday nights on ITV and ITVX.
More than a century after the Gilded Age, we have entered another: The gilded age of Trump.
A little over a year after President Trump was sworn into office for the second time, the country has borne witness to a striking aesthetic makeover of the White House and Washington, D.C. A week ago, when the Trump-packed Commission of Fine Arts approved a 24-karat commemorative coin stamped with Trump’s image, that makeover ascended to staggering new heights.
The coin, which breaks with the country’s longstanding tradition of not featuring a living person on its currency, joins a swiftly growing list of other Trumpian imprints on arts and culture, including architectural choices deemed gaudy and garish by experts and laypeople alike.
Plenty of people are on guard against these changes. This week a coalition of eight cultural heritage and architectural organizations, including the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Institute of Architects, filed a lawsuit to require the Trump administration to comply with historic preservation laws and get congressional authorization before making any changes to the Kennedy Center.
“The Kennedy Center is not a personal project of any president. It is a national cultural monument built to honor John F. Kennedy and to serve the American people. Federal law requires transparency, expert review, and public participation before it can be fundamentally altered,” Rebecca Miller, executive director of the DC Preservation League, said in a statement.
The same could be said of the White House, the Smithsonian, the NPS and the United States Mint. But Trump doesn’t care about due process, congressional approval or the courts. Time and again he has shown his willingness to go it alone when making big decisions that affect not only America but the world. This includes his actions in Venezuela and Iran. But if he decides he wants to take the Kennedy Center “down to the steel,” as he once threatened, there isn’t really anything that can stop him.
The gilded age of Trump proves that the look of things really does affect how the country sees itself — and how it acts as a result of its new self-image. Golden gaudiness conjures thoughts of empire and imperial rule, but it is also unserious and incidental, bombastic and self-centered. The Trump aesthetic screams, “Me, me, mine!” A willingness to tear down historic structures without care for their symbolic meaning reveals an inability to learn from the past, a tendency that has proved frighteningly perilous.
Will the leader who rises after Trump tear down all that Trump has built? And even if they do, can the damage really be undone?
I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt, keeping it small and simple for posterity. Here’s your arts and culture news for the week.
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FRIDAY
Laura Aguilar The late trailblazing photographer’s exploration of her queer Chicana identity against the natural backdrops of Southern California and the Southwest is on display in the exhibition “Body and Landscape.” More of the artist’s work will be on display starting Sept. 20 in “Laura Aguilar: Day of the Dead.” Through Sept. 7. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org
Cassandra Kulukundis holds the first-ever Oscar for casting for her work on “One Battle After Another” during the Academy Awards, March 15, 2026.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
The Art of Casting With Cassandra Kulukundis recently winning the first Oscar in the category for her work on Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” what better time to learn more about the subject? The academy’s video presentation goes inside the casting process with casting directors discussing their craft and includes previously unseen auditions and screen tests. Through July 6. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org
Brahms & Beethoven Uzbek pianist Behzod Abduraimov performs Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 3” as Paavo Järvi conducts the L.A. Phil in Brahms’ “Second Symphony” and Schumann’s “Overture, Scherzo and Finale.” 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
A performance of “Escape.”
(Traj George Simian)
Escape Diavolo reprises this production featuring its trademark blend of dance, movement and storytelling as 22 artists challenge their abilities against a variety of architectural structures. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 6 p.m. Sundays, through June 14. L’Espace Diavolo, 616 Moulton Ave. diavolo.org
Arshile Gorky: Horizon West In the summer of 1941, the Armenian immigrant artist, his soon-to-be wife Agnes “Mougouch” Magruder and the artist and furniture designer Isamu Noguchi drove from New York City to L.A. Gorky was emerging as one of the most important figures in the nascent Abstract Expressionism movement, and his cross-country adventures had an enormous impact on his art, which is explored in depth in this exhibit. A selection of landscapes include Gorky’s rich, surrealistic paintings and drawings from before, during and after the life-changing trip. (Jessica Gelt) Through April 25. Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, 8980 Santa Monica Blvd. hauserwirth.com
A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West The exhibition reveals Hughes’ time spent in California, Nevada and Mexico during the Great Depression, World War II and into the 1950s, when he produced significant work, including lectures, film scripts, plays and his first book of short stories. Through Sept. 13. California African American Museum, 600 State Drive, Exposition Park. caamuseum.org
The White Album Arthur Jafa’s 2018 30-minute experimental film, a social critique of whiteness, uses found and produced footage to demonstrate how the creative work of Black Americans has been co-opted by white culture throughout history. Through Aug 30. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu
SATURDAY
Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai,”starring Takashi Shimura, from left, Toshiro Mifune and Yoshio Inaba.
(Janus Films)
Darkness and Humanity: The Complete Akira Kurosawa The 1954 classic “Seven Samurai,” starring Toshiro Mifune, kicks off this comprehensive retrospective of the great Japanese filmmaker’s work. 6 p.m. Saturday; series continues through May 30. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org
from rock to rock… aka how magnolia was taken for granite Choreographer Jeremy Nedd’s exploration of the hidden poetry, virtuosic freedom and ownership features five performers examining “the Milly Rock,” a viral dance move. 8 p.m. UCLA Macgowan Hall, Freud Playhouse, 245 Charles E. Young Drive East. cap.ucla.edu
A Queer Arcana: Art, Magic, and Spirit On The exhibition collects an intergenerational group of Queer artists whose work examines hidden and mystical knowledge to find sources of connection and transformation. Through Oct. 18. Palm Springs Art Museum, 101 Museum Drivepsmuseum.org
Ralph Steadman More than 140 original artworks and ephemera, including sketchbooks, handwritten notes and personal photographs are included in “And Another Thing,” a traveling exhibition tracing six decades of the artist and illustrator’s career. Through May 9 Torrance Art Museum, 3320 Civic Center Drivetorranceartmuseum.com
Tonality The vocal ensemble performs “Refuge/Requiem,” a program that includes Caroline Shaw’s 17th-century-influenced contemporary work “To the Hands,” and “1605 Requiem,” composed for the funeral rites of Empress María by Tomás Luis de Victoria. Presented with the Wallis. 7:30 p.m. All Saints’ Beverly Hills, 504 N. Camden Drivethewallis.org
SUNDAY To Sleep With Anger Written and directed by the protean Charles Burnett, this film does more than vividly illuminate South-Central’s rarely portrayed Black middle class. A deft domestic horror story, it’s a contemporary tale with a folkloric twist that has old friend Harry (Danny Glover) visiting a married couple and gradually revealing himself to be a trickster with trouble on his mind. With a terrific ensemble headed by Mary Alice and Paul Butler as the couple in question. (Kenneth Turan) 7 p.m. The 35mm screening includes a Q&A with the filmmaker and Ashley Clark, author of “The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films.” Beginning at 6 p.m. Clark will sign copies of the book. Billy Wilder Theater, UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. cinema.ucla.edu
TUESDAY Philip Glass’ Cocteau Trilogy Pianists and siblings Katia and Marielle Labèque perform the composer’s triptych inspired by the films of Jean Cocteau. Part of the LA Phil’s “Body and Sound” festival. 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Mary Halvorson The contemporary jazz musician, guitarist and composer and new quartet project Canis Major — featuring Dave Adewumi on trumpet, Henry Fraser on bass and Tomas Fujiwara on drums — perform an evening of music designed for deep listening and total immersion. 7 p.m. Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium, 1200 Getty Center Drive, L.A. getty.edu
Arts anywhere
New releases of arts-related media.
Album cover for “Evening Light: Raga Cycle I.”
(Cantaloupe Music)
Evening Light: Raga Cycle I The first release of an eight-album series in which American composer and pianist Michael Harrison collaborates with a global assortment of artists combining Eastern and Western musical traditions. Each chapter represents three hours of day or night following the Indian raga time cycle. For “Evening Light,” Quebec-based Brazilian vocalist Ina Filip co-composed the music with Harrison. Also appearing on the album are American composer Elliot Cole on synthesizer, French composer Benoit Rolland on electro-acoustics and Bangladeshi tabla virtuoso Mir Naqibul Islam. Cantaloupe Music: download ($10).
Book jacket for “Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy” by Daniel Okrent.
(Yale University Press)
Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy Part of Yale University Press’ Jewish Lives series, Daniel Okrent’s new biography of the award-winning composer-lyricist who took Broadway musicals to new heights “is a brisk, engaging read that avoids hagiography,” writes Julia M. Klein in a review for The Times. “Okrent highlights the emotional frailties that coexisted with the brilliance and generosity. He seeks to liberate Sondheim’s reputation from the encrustation of myth and to demystify his relationships, while offering a succinct analysis of his achievements. That’s a tall order for a compact book, especially given its subject’s long, complicated life. Okrent’s failings are, unsurprisingly, primarily those of omission.” Yale University Press: 320 pages, $35
Martha Graham Dance Company: We Are Our Times A two-part documentary goes behind the scenes with the troupe as it prepares for its 100th anniversary celebration. Producer-directors Peter Schnall and Cyndee Readdean followed the dancers from rehearsal to premiere on a global tour, capturing their artistic routines and everyday lives. Episode 1, “American Spirit,” 9 p.m. Friday; Episode 2, ““Athletes of God,” 9 p.m. April 3 on PBS. Streaming at pbs.org and on the PBS app.
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry is photographed in May 2019 with a model of the Grand Avenue Project at his L.A. offices.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Can downtown L.A. still benefit from the vision of late-great architect Frank Gehry, who put so much time and energy into lifting the area up? Times classical music critic Mark Swed says yes in an optimistic column noting that, “So many plans Frank Gehry imagined for L.A. still remain. Gehry bequeathed blueprints and models, sketches and concepts, for his large and devoted team of younger architects and next-generation visionaries equipped to fabricate our way out of angst.” The time to build, Swed writes, is now.
Freelance writer Jane Horowitz got the skinny on the fifth edition of High Desert Art Fair, which arrives in Pioneertown this weekend, transforming “the rooms of the historic Pioneertown Motel into exhibition spaces for 20 galleries and publishers, while expanding into a broader mix of programming — something akin to a mini Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. This year’s edition includes an opening night party with a DJ set by street artist Shepard Fairey, panel discussions, guided meditation and even a sound bath.”
Monty Python” alum Eric Idle poses for a portrait at the Hollywood Pantages.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Malia Mendez sat down with British comedy legend Eric Idle to talk about his spoof musical “Spamalot,” which arrives at the Pantages more than a decade after its last stop at the stage. Over a margarita with a side of chef olives, Idle opened up to Mendez about “his earliest forays into comedy, his legendary run and subsequent break with his former ‘Monty Python’ castmates, and why ‘Spamalot’ arrives in L.A. at the perfect time.”
Times theater critic Charles McNulty headed to the Matrix Theatre to watch Rogue Machine’s production of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 drama “Fairview.” He writes that the play is “a shape-shifting work that eludes an audience’s assumptions at every turn,” and concludes that the new production “may struggle with the slipperiness of Drury’s writing.” The dramatic construction, however, is solid enough to withstand some of the overly broad strokes of the staging.”
Richard Neutra imagined his first Los Angeles project, the Jardinette Apartments, as a prototype for future garden apartment buildings.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Sam Lubell wrote a fascinating story about the painstaking rehabilitation of Modernist architect Richard Neutra’s first L.A. commission: the Jardinette Apartments in Hollywood. The building was hailed a structural and technical breakthrough when it opened in 1928, but it soon dropped from public view and sank into disrepair. The new owner spent more than $5 million on the historic preservation project and the complex may soon go on the market.
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The Hammer Museum Gala on Oct. 8, 2022, in Los Angeles.
(Michelle Groskopf / For The Times)
The Hammer Museum has announced the honorees for its annual gala. They are artist Betye Saar and television creator Darren Star. The highly anticipated event, set to take place in the Hammer’s garden courtyard on May 2, aims to honor impactful artists while raising funds to support the museum’s exhibitions and public programs.
The 80th Ojai Music Festival, set to take place June 11-14, recently announced this season’s programming and artistic collaborators. Much of this year’s event will be devoted to unpacking and performing works that have been central to the 2026 festival’s music director‘s artistic life. “Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most vibrant and adventurous creative forces in our musical world,” said Executive Director Ara Guzelimian in a statement. “It has been an absolute joy to dream up programs together that focus on numerous personal dimensions — his work as composer and conductor, his rich associations with and remarkable history in Los Angeles, the formative influence of his teachers and the giant musical figures of 20th century music, his deep friendships with many peer composers, and his championing of a new generation of composers.”
Washington National Opera Artistic Director Francesca Zambello, who was instrumental in the company’s decision to leave the Kennedy Center after Trump’s takeover, was inducted into the Opera Hall of Fame at the OPERA America Salutes Awards Dinner on March 20, at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it harder for music and movie makers to sue for online piracy, ruling Wednesday that internet providers are usually not liable for copyright infringement even if they know their users are downloading copyrighted works.
In a 9-0 decision, the justices threw out Sony’s lawsuit and a $1-billion verdict against Cox Cable for copyright infringement.
Lower courts upheld a jury’s verdict against Cox’s internet service for contributing to music piracy, which the company did little to stop.
Sony’s lawyers pointed to hundreds of thousands of instances of Cox customers sharing copyrighted works. Put on notice, Cox did little stop it, they said.
But the high court said that is not enough to establish liability for copyright infringement.
“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.
Two decades ago, the court sided with the music and motion picture producers and ruled against Grokster and Napster on the grounds their software was intended to share copyrighted music and movies.
But on Wednesday, the court said “contributory” copyright infringement did not extend to internet service providers based on the actions of some of their users
“Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas said. “Cox neither induced its users’ infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement.”
In its defense, Cox argued that internet service providers could be bankrupted by huge lawsuits for copyright infringement, which they said they did not cause and could not prevent.
LONDON — Years before the rise of Instagram, Banksy figured out that the key to real influence lay in not being famous, exactly, but in being anonymous.
The mystery of his identity has long been part of the value of his art, which for decades and across continents defied authority from public walls and self-shredded on the auction block. Now, Banksy’s apparent unmasking by the Reuters news agency has generated talk about whether the works themselves retain their cultural and financial value.
It also raises the question: Why pop the balloon of his mystique in the first place? Many Banksy fans mourned the loss of the mystery and lashed out at the news outlet. One said it was like being told without warning that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.
“I feel like they are telling me how a magic trick is done,” said Thomas Evans, a Denver-based artist on Instagram. “Sometimes I just want to enjoy the magic trick.”
But some art experts say the murals and the message will survive Banksy’s naming because his appeal wasn’t driven solely by his anonymity. He and his works — dark and mischievous — stand as witnesses to injustice, oppression and inequality around the world, from the artist’s native England to walled-off Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank and war-ravaged Ukraine. Subtract his anonymity, they say, and the work still inspires reflection and discussion.
“People buy his works because they absolutely love it,” said Acoris Andipa, director of the Andipa gallery in London. “The main feedback that I get is that they really, frankly, don’t care if they know who he is.”
Naming the ghost — and the backlash — is engagement, too
Banksy, long thought to have been born Robin Gunningham around 1972, grew out of a tradition of street artists who viewed the undercover act of posting their art in public as a subversive form of expression. The postindustrial landscape of his native Bristol was his canvas and gallery. The walls of London, New York and elsewhere gave him a global stage just before the rise of social media.
Banksy’s apparent identity has been an open secret among protective fellow artists, and long been easy to find online for those who wanted to know. The Daily Mail reported in 2008 “compelling evidence suggesting” that was the artist’s birth name. It has been published by other news outlets, including the Associated Press in 2016, as part of their coverage of the detective work.
Reuters reported recently that after the Daily Mail’s story, Banksy changed his legal name to David Jones — the second most-popular name in Britain. It’s also the given name of the late David Bowie, whose Ziggy Stardust rock ‘n’ roll avatar inspired a 2012 Banksy painting of Queen Elizabeth II.
Bansky’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the artist’s spokeswoman declined to participate in this story.
Reuters pieced together that a David Jones traveled to Ukraine with a well-known associate of Banksy’s in late 2022 — just before the artist’s work began appearing on buildings that had been bombed by Russia. Banksy later confirmed that he’d created seven murals in the war zone, including one of a child flipping over a grown man who is wearing a black belt. Russian President Vladimir Putin practices judo.
There’s evidence that even some in the establishment he was protesting have accepted Banksy. They didn’t arrest him, for example, after the Royal Courts of Justice removed a Banksy stencil depicting a judge in a traditional wig and gown beating an unarmed protester with a gavel. Some street artists groused that they might be arrested for creating such graffiti — but when it’s a Banksy, it’s art.
The artist wasn’t always so elusive
On Sept. 17, 2000, a Robin Gunningham was arrested for defacing a Marc Jacobs billboard atop a building on Hudson Street in New York.
In a handwritten signed confession, he described the work on the night in question: “I had been out drinking at a nightclub with friends when I decided to make a humorous adjustment to a billboard on top of the property,” he wrote in court records unearthed by Reuters and confirmed by the AP. “I painted eyeshadow a new mouth and a speach bubble” on the photo of a male model. He was charged with a misdemeanor.
The artist doesn’t need an alleged naming to make news. He created multiple works in London in 2025, and grabbed headlines elsewhere for having his art sold or auctioned for millions. But Banksy has courted a public image centered around morality, justice and guerrilla tactics — he’s often likened to Robin Hood or Batman.
“Banksy woz ere,” he wrote with his animal murals at the London Zoo, which were removed in 2024.
Still, along with the sadness, there’s ample speculation in the art world and on social media that the artist himself orchestrated this round of naming. He didn’t deny the Reuters story.
That “would be very much in line with his practice of stunts and satire,” observed Madeleine White, the senior sales and acquisitions consultant at London’s Hang-Up Gallery. “As they say, ‘All publicity is good publicity.’”
She noted, however, that the backlash is directed at the media — not the artist, or the potency of his work. Reuters says it opted to publish some, but not all, of the information its reporters uncovered about Banksy’s identity, because he is a public figure, whatever his name — and he’s had an outsize influence on public events and discourse. What’s more, much of his work has been done on other people’s property.
Connected to world events
Named or not, Banksy’s stardom lives, art experts say.
It endures in the wonder of his ability to erect new art under the noses of authorities well into the age of social media and ubiquitous surveillance cameras. It appeals because his spectacle and wit draw people in and the settings — the hulk of bombed buildings, for example, or Israel’s towering wall at the border of the West Bank — invite them to reflect. Now, fans are on the lookout for how and whether he’ll respond to the news of Robin Gunningham and David Jones.
Joe Syer, a Banksy expert and founder of MyArtBroker, said that the artist has always responded to world events. “And that’s where the real relevance, and value, sits,” he said.
“If anything, Banksy’s anonymity has functioned less as a celebrity device and more as a way to keep the work universally accessible, detached from personality, ego, or biography,” Syer said in an email. “It allows the work to sit in public space, politically and culturally, without being anchored to an individual in the way the mainstream press often frames it.”
Christopher Banks, founder of the New York-based Objects of Affection Collection, reads Banksy’s naming “not as a biographical event, but as a structural stress test” of the artist’s system of managing his absence.
“Banksy’s best works carry their meaning without the author. He was there,” Banks wrote, citing the artist’s murals in Ukraine and his solidarity with the war’s victims.
“The name matters less than the presence. The presence was always what the work was about.”
Kellman writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Sisak in New York contributed to this report.
Keeping and maintaining friends as an adult is hard, especiallywith the demands of life, travel and work. In volunteering, I encounter more people like myself, which is nice, but sometimes it’s difficult to participate without a lot of commitment to the organizations. I’m wanting to explore smaller, intimate groups to build community with people who I share similar values with. I’m interested in self-growth, psychology, games, mindfulness and yoga. I loved the L.A. Times story “Awaken your inner child at this welcoming collage club for adults” and I would love to know about similar activities. Thanks! —Marlen I.
Looking for things to do in L.A.? Ask us your questions and our expert guides will share highly specific recommendations.
Here’s what we suggest:
Marlen, I couldn’t agree more. As we get older, it can feel more and more difficult to sustain friendships, especially in Los Angeles, where people live so far apart and have busy lives. This struggle is exactly why so many social clubs have been sprouting up in L.A. over the last few years. From board game clubs to junk journaling meetups, there’s so many different ways to connect and maybe try something new. I’ve compiled a list of social clubs and community spaces that I think you’ll enjoy.
Since you’re already familiar with Art+Mind Studios, you should definitely check out Junk Journal Club. Junk journaling is essentially a craft practice that combines elements of collaging, journaling and scrapbooking. With the rise of junk journaling content on social media, the once solo pastime has turned into a lively social scene. Junk Journal Club, dubbed “the original junk journal club,” hosts monthly meetups, which can be found on its Instagram page. When my colleague Malia Mendez went to an event recently, people told her that attending Junk Journal Club “has made befriending strangers easy,” and many of them stay in touch.
Another craft-centered event that’s worth exploring is the Crafters Clubhouse, which founder Victoria Ansah calls “a creative third space for adult makers.” She hosts monthly arts and crafts workshops including activities like scrapbooking, punch needle embroidery and clay art.
Given that you’re interested in yoga and mindfulness, you may like WalkGood LA, a community-centered wellness organization that hosts a variety of activities including a run club and accessible yoga classes. During the pandemic, I found solace in attending their weekly yoga classes called BreatheGood. The outdoor sessions take place every first Sunday at Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area and feature free chiropractic adjustments and healthy food vendors. The vibe of the intergenerational event feels warm and welcoming. All you have to do is show up with your yoga mat. The organization also hosts various classes including yoga, breath work, mindful meditation, mat Pilates and step aerobics at their studio, the WalkGood Yard, in Arlington Heights.
Another social club I recommend is Love, Peace & Spades, which my friend Kevin Clark started in 2022, to create a space where people could play the card game with others. With music provided by a live DJ, the monthly game night feels like being at a family cookout. Spades can be extremely intimidating to start as a beginner playing with pros. But don’t worry. Love, Peace & Spades has instructors who can teach you how to play.
If you’re interested in chess, L.A. Chess Club is “an event with the laid-back ease of a chill game night and all the social and romantic possibility of a night out on the town,” according to Times contributor Martine Thompson, who wrote a story about the event. At the weekly gathering, which features a food vendor, cocktails, tattoo artists and DJs, you can “competitively play chess, learn the game, meet new friends or mingle as a single person,” Thompson shares. Another fun event is RummiKlub, a monthly Rummikub game night that takes place in elevated, design-forward spaces across the city.
L.A. also has several fun creative venues that regularly bring people together, such as Junior High, a nonprofit art gallery and inclusive gathering space that hosts artist showcases, comedy nights, pottery workshops and more. There’s also Nina in Atwater, which holds a variety of gatherings including a monthly series that focuses on mindfulness called “Be Here Now: Simple Tools for an Everyday Nervous System Reset.”
I hope that these suggestions are a good starting point for finding the group, or several groups, that are an ideal fit for you. Just by putting yourself out there and being open, you are bound to build and find community. Best of luck on your journey!
By Neal Allen and Anne Lamott Avery: 208 pages, $27
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
They’re so darn cute together, these two. Neal Allen, father of four, newspaper reporter turned corporate executive turned spiritual coach turned author of two spiritual guidebooks, stands a full head of hair taller than his dread-headed wife, who calls him her “current husband.” He calls her his “remarkable and beautiful partner” and himself “Mr. Anne Lamott.”
And no wonder. Author Anne Lamott has published 21 books, with worldwide sales in the millions. “Bird by Bird,” her 1994 writing handbook, which has sold more than 1 million copies and continues to sell approximately 40,000 copies each year, became a meme before there were memes. Thirty-two years later, the titular phrase has made appearances everywhere from “Ted Lasso” (Coach Beard: “I hate losing.” Coach Lasso: “Bird by bird, Coach.”) to a Gloria Steinem interview in Cosmopolitan (“Every writer, truth-seeker, parent, and activist I know is in love with one or more books by Anne Lamott”).
Ask a famous writer how they do what they do, and “Bird by Bird” will likely get honorable mention. Harlan Coben, whose 35 novels have sold roughly 90 million copies, calls “Bird by Bird” his “favorite writing manual.” “I use it like a coach’s halftime speech to get me fired up to write.”
In a 2007 interview, “Eat Pray Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert called herself Lamott’s “literary offspring.” Paula McLain, who wrote the 2011 blockbuster “The Paris Wife,” told me: “I return to ‘Bird by Bird’ again and again because Anne Lamott tells the truth about how hard this work is — and then somehow makes you laugh about it.”
I reached out to best-selling memoirist and novelist Dani Shapiro to ask if she had her own experience with the book. “A writer is always a beginner,” she said. “And there is no better companion than ‘Bird by Bird.’”
Lamott and Allen partnered to write “Good Writing.”
(Christie Hemm Klok / For The Times)
Lamott, 71, and Allen, 69, met in 2016 on the 50-plus dating site OurTime.com. Nine months later, they bought a woodsy Marin County home with room for Lamott’s son and grandson. Sam, when he was 1 year old, was the subject of his mom’s first bestseller, the 1993 memoir “Operating Instructions.” His son Jax was the subject, at age 1, of his grandmother’s 2012 memoir, “Some Assembly Required.”
“We were watching U.S. Open tennis one night and Neal said, ‘Can I ask you something?’” Lamott told me via email. “I barely looked away from the TV, and he asked me to marry him. I said, ‘Yes, if we can get a cat.’”
After a decade of marriage, Lamott and Allen have undertaken a professional collaboration whose outcome, like their union, is greater than the sum of its parts. “Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences” is as sharply specific as “Bird by Bird” is wanderingly wonderful: as winning a companion piece as two winning companions could create. The table of contents is itself a mini-manual of writerly tips: “Use Strong Verbs.” “Sound Natural.” “Keep it Active.” “Stick with Said.” “Don’t Show Off.”
Lamott and Allen.
(Christie Hemm Klok / For The Times)
I spoke to the late-life lovebirds about their process of marital manuscript-making: the good, the not so good and the blackmailing.
Meredith Maran: How did writing “Bird by Bird” compare to co-authoring “Good Writing”?
Anne Lamott: “Bird by Bird” was literally everything I knew about writing, everything I had been teaching my students for years. It was definitely my book. “Good Writing” was definitely Neal’s book. I just foisted my attention on him and threatened to undermine the marriage if he did not let me contribute.
MM: Neal, what on earth convinced you that you could add something to one of the world’s most popular writing books —written by your wife, no less?
Neal Allen: Oh, I’m not adding anything to “Bird by Bird,” which is a complete classic. It’s everything you need to know about becoming a writer. “Good Writing” is about what comes next: a second draft. And while it’s not fair to call “Bird by Bird” a craft book — it’s much more — it’s fine to define “Good Writing” that way.
“Helping each other with our work is one of the richest aspects of our life as a married couple,” Lamott said.
(Christie Hemm Klok / For The Times)
MM: In producing this joint project, how did you two negotiate the differences between your writing styles and personalities?
AL: We didn’t need to negotiate. Neal somehow manages to be both elegant and welcoming, whereas I think I am more like the class den mother, with a plate of cupcakes, exhorting people not to give up, trying to convince them that they can only share their truth in their own voice, that their voice is plenty good, and that when they get stuck, as we all do, I know some tricks that will help them get back to work.
NA: I once asked AI to describe the difference between my writing and Annie’s. AI answered that I explain things to readers; Annie helps readers reach catharsis. I think that’s absolutely right.
MM: How did you come up with the book’s fab format, whereby each of you writes your own introduction, and then each chapter starts with Neal’s thoughts about one of the 36 rules and ends with Annie’s?
NA: Annie first asked if she could annotate what I had written. That scared the bejesus out of me. When she started writing her own essays in her own voice, I was quite relieved. One of the format’s surprising strengths is that Annie always gets the last word. I explain the rule; then she helps the reader find their way and resolve their issues with the rule. There’s a downside: I don’t get to respond when she tells the reader to ignore me.
“I’m not adding anything to ‘Bird by Bird,’” Allen said. “It’s everything you need to know about becoming a writer. ‘Good Writing’ is about what comes next: a second draft.”
(Christie Hemm Klok / For The Times)
MM: In your intro, Anne, you recall Neal telling you he was working on a writing book. “Well. Hmmmph,” you replied. “I had written a book on writing once …” How did professional jealousy, competitiveness, possessiveness, or, on the brighter side, tenderness, collaborative spirit and generosity play out as you wrote a writing book together?
AL: We have no competitiveness or jealousy when it comes to each other’s writing. We just want the other person to write the most beautiful work they can. We are each other’s first reader, and editor, and while of course I feel attacked if Neal suggests even the tiniest change to my deathless prose, I have come to understand that his suggested cuts and additions save me from myself. Helping each other with our work is one of the richest aspects of our life as a married couple.
NA: There’s no way around “Bird by Bird,” and I just have to deal with that. My worry was whether Annie really wanted to be associated with my little book. I’m envious of Annie’s brilliance, of course, but we speak the same writing language and we love it equally.
MM: What are each of you proudest of, “Good Writing”-wise?
AL: We just recorded the audio version, and I was surprised by how much practical help the book offers. Also, I love the tone, which is so conversational and sometimes, I hope, pretty funny.
NA: I had the opposite reaction to recording the audio version. I saw all the opportunities for readers to mock me. In the 18 months between writing a final draft and the book showing up in stores, we’ve both flipped from believing it reflects well on us to thinking it’s a disaster. Luckily, both of us haven’t ever thought it sucks at the same time.
MM: That is fortunate. Also, Neal, I’m not sure you answered my question.
NA: What am I proudest of? That the book exists. I carried around these rules for improving sentences for years. I think a lot of writers do a book because they notice it’s not out there, and why isn’t it? And then they shrug, ‘Well, I guess it’s up to me.’ That’s how I came into all three of my books.
AL: May I just add that I’m proud to introduce my seriously charming and breathtakingly wise husband to a wider audience.
Festival of Books
“Written by Hand: Lexicons, Storytelling, and Protecting Human Language in an Age of Artificial Everything” (featuring Anne Lamott and Neal Allen)
Like the mythical city of Brigadoon, Lisa Kudrow’s “The Comeback” has returned to television after many years away, with the difference that time has not stood still for its inhabitants, older in a changing world that values them less and which they navigate with less assurance.
Kudrow, who created and writes the series with Michael Patrick King, was in her youth a player in the twilight of network-dominated television, cast in a smart, influential show with wide, multigenerational appeal; in a quantitative sense, at least, everything would be downhill from there, as the medium transformed and transformed again. “The Comeback” premiered in 2005, just a year after the end of “Friends”; the first season addressed the rise of reality TV, and the next season, in 2014, riffed on dark, streaming “prestige” television.
The new (and final) season, which is both timely and speculative, addresses the impact of artificial intelligence on the medium and the industry, hinting at a dystopian future; this gives it a moral, even political component, not to say a sense of urgency. Not surprisingly, “The Comeback,” as a thing made by humans, comes down firmly on their side — it’s a manifesto at times — even as it acknowledges, uncomfortably, that computer-produced content might be “good enough.”
Once again, Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, who, at 60 — the phrase “of a certain age” repeats throughout the series — still qualifies as a working actor. But she’s been pushed into the further reaches of the profession: Her two-season cozy mystery series, “Mrs. Hatt” (“part-time gardener, solves crime, husband is an ex-police chief”), is on no one’s radar but her own, having shown on Epix. A day’s work on a “no-budget” film is even less rewarding than she had imagined; she lasted all of two episodes on “The Traitors.” Paddling hard to stay current, to improve her brand, she bumbles through a podcast, “Cherish the Time,” without any idea what to do with that time; employs a social media person, Patience (Ella Stiller), with no discernible impact; and posts pictures of herself holding products in hopes of “future collabs.”
Still, she is not poor. Valerie and husband Mark (Damian Young), have moved from Brentwood to a condominium with a view in the (real life) Sierra Towers, overlooking the Sunset Strip, opening the latest “new chapter” in their lives, though just what that chapter for them is hard to say. Mark has lost his job in finance — “You told a joke at work at a time when jokes were illegal,” Valerie says, trying to cheer him, “no one cares now” — but left on a golden parachute; now he builds his day around pickleball. A potential role in a reality show, “Finance Dudes,” isn’t working out to anyone’s satisfaction. He’s on the verge of a three-quarter-life crisis.
When her self-promoting manager/publicist Billy (Dan Bucatinsky) comes to her waving an offer for a new series, for a new network, in which she’ll star, Valerie is more than intrigued, if taken aback when he tells her that it’s being written by AI. (He isn’t supposed to know.) Network head Brandon (Andrew Scott, as blandly discomfiting as his Moriarty on “Sherlock”) assures her that it is “within the Writers Guild agreement,” but that it is also a secret — which will account for a lot of comedy going forward, secrets and lies being the very stuff of the form. “AI is really extraordinary,” he tells Valerie. “After all, it picked you.”
It’s also created a wholly generic multicamera sitcom, “How’s That?,” in which Valerie’s character, Beth, as she describes it, “runs a cute, charming old New England B&B with the help of her hunk nephew, Bo — so Beth and Bo, B&B.” (“Viewers want a break from the complicated confusing storylines of all these dark streaming shows,” says a network exec.) Her eager supporting cast has no idea that the series is being written by anything other than its human faces, unhappily married couple Josh (John Early) and Mary (Abbi Jacobson). Josh, who thinks of himself as “the voice of women of a certain age,” is precious about the jokes he manages to get into the script; Mary couldn’t care less. Untalented writing assistant Marco (Tony Macht) only wants “to get, like, a really nice house.” The AI, meanwhile, is personified to the cast and crew, who know nothing about it, as someone named “Al,” who “works remotely.”
One by one, the old company is introduced into the new season, Valerie finds Jane (Laura Silverman), her former documentarian, working as a cashier at Trader Joe’s, having tired of scuffling as a filmmaker, “begging people to care about the things that I cared about.” When Valerie lets it slip that her new series is AI-generated — “but don’t tell anyone ‘cause that’s a secret” — Jane is inspired to pick up her camera again. Lance Barber will eventually rejoin as screenwriter Paulie G., Valerie’s old nemesis. Robert Michael Morris, who played Mickey, Valerie’s hairdresser and best friend, in earlier seasons, passed away in 2017; Jack O’Brien, as Tommy, occupies a version of that space here.
Valerie may be only moderately successful, but she isn’t a hack. She has an Emmy for “Seeing Red,” the drama at the center of Season 2. She pushes back against the costumer (Benito Skinner) who wants to put her in a caftan. She knows her craft and is nominally proud of belonging to a union. She’s not a diva, but she has her pride. And that she is loyal, even when it does her no good, makes her easy to like. Thrust half-wittingly onto this cutting edge — being the first in an AI comedy, Mark tells her, “is like saying, ‘I was the first one to eat an arm in the Donner Party’” — she is wholly sympathetic, and, eventually, as things bend toward horror in a last-act revelation, a hero.
Though the subject is serious, the approach this time is light and farcical. Partially abandoning the documentary aesthetic of its predecessors — the first season had the look of amateur video, and the second of guerrilla filmmaking — much of this season is shot as a conventional, non-meta television show, allowing us access to private conversations and meetings without having to account for Jane and her crew, or requiring the players to act as if they’re being watched. Paradoxically, without pretending to reality, it makes some things more real.
Playing himself, director James Burrows, whom Valerie convinces to helm her pilot, notes that the jokes AI writes might come fast but are never better than obvious. “Surprising only comes from a group of writers huddled in a corner beating themselves up to beat out a better show,” he says. And just as Valerie is not a character an algorithm could produce, Kudrow is not an actor a machine could ever imagine. She’s no Tilly Norwood, or Tilly Norwood at 60, or Tilly Norwood with quirks applied. There’s no one like her— other than her — for the learning machines to scrape.
You should never settle for “good enough” when better, or best, is available. But that choice is on you.
WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI director who transformed the nation’s premier law enforcement agency into a terrorism-fighting force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and later became special counsel in charge of investigating ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has died. He was 81.
“With deep sadness, we are sharing the news that Bob passed away” on Friday night, his family said in a statement Saturday. “His family asks that their privacy be respected.”
President Trump, responding on social media, said: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” He added: “He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
At the FBI, Mueller set about almost immediately overhauling the bureau’s mission to meet the law enforcement needs of the 21st century, beginning his 12-year tenure just one week before the Sept. 11 attacks and serving across presidents of both political parties. He was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush.
The cataclysmic event instantaneously switched the bureau’s top priority from solving domestic crime to preventing terrorism, a shift that imposed an almost impossibly difficult standard on Mueller and the rest of the federal government: Preventing 99 out of 100 terrorist plots wasn’t good enough.
Later, he was special counsel in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether Russia’s attempts to help Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign amounted to illegal cooperation to sway the outcome.
Mueller was a patrician Princeton graduate and Vietnam veteran who walked away from a lucrative midcareer job to stay in public service, and his old-school, buttoned-down style made him an anachronism during a social-media-saturated era.
In a statement, former President Obama called Mueller “one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI” who saved “countless lives” after transforming the bureau. “But it was his relentless commitment to the rule of law and his unwavering belief in our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time,” Obama added.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. The FBI Agents Assn., a nonprofit advocacy group representing current and former agency employees, lauded Mueller for his “commitment to public service and to the FBI’s mission.“
Investigator of a sitting president
The second-longest-serving director in FBI history, behind only J. Edgar Hoover, Mueller held the job until 2013 after agreeing to Obama’s request to stay on beyond his 10-year term.
After several years in private law practice, Mueller was asked by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to return to public service as special counsel in the Trump-Russia inquiry.
Mueller’s stern visage and taciturn demeanor matched the seriousness of the mission, as his team spent nearly two years quietly conducting one of the most consequential, and divisive, investigations in Justice Department history. He held no news conferences and made no public appearances during the investigation, remaining quiet despite attacks from Trump and his supporters and creating an aura of mystery around his work.
All told, Mueller brought criminal charges against six of the president’s associates, including his campaign chairman and first national security advisor.
His 448-page report released in April 2019 identified substantial contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia but did not allege a criminal conspiracy. He laid out damaging details about Trump’s efforts to seize control of the investigation, and even shut it down, though he declined to decide whether Trump had broken the law, in part because of Justice Department policy barring the indictment of a sitting president.
In perhaps the most memorable language of the report, Mueller pointedly noted: “If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”
The nebulous conclusion did not deliver the knockout punch to the administration that some Trump opponents had hoped for, nor did it trigger a sustained push by House Democrats to impeach the president — though he was later tried and acquitted on impeachment charges related to pressuring Ukraine for campaign dirt on Joe Biden and Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection.
The outcome of the Mueller investigation also left room for Atty. Gen. William Barr to insert his own views. He and his team made their own determination that Trump did not obstruct justice, and he and Mueller privately tangled over a four-page summary letter from Barr that Mueller argued did not adequately capture his report’s damaging conclusion.
Mueller deflated Democrats during a highly anticipated congressional hearing on his report when he offered terse, one-word answers and appeared hesitant at times in his testimony. Frequently, he seemed to waver on details of his investigation. It was hardly the commanding performance many had expected from Mueller, who had a towering reputation in Washington.
Over the next months, Barr made clear his own disagreements with the foundations of the Russia investigation, moving to dismiss a false-statements prosecution that Mueller had brought against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, even though that investigation ended in a guilty plea.
Mueller’s tenure as special counsel was the capstone of a career spent in government.
A transformation at the FBI
His time as FBI director was defined by the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath, as the agency — granted broad new surveillance and national security powers — scrambled to confront an ascendant Al Qaeda, interrupt plots and take terrorists off the street before they could act.
It was a new model of policing for an FBI that had long been accustomed to investigating crimes that had already occurred.
When he became FBI director, “I had expected to focus on areas familiar to me as a prosecutor: drug cases, white-collar criminal cases and violent crime,” Mueller told a group of lawyers in October 2012.
Instead, “we had to focus on long-term, strategic change. We had to enhance our intelligence capabilities and upgrade our technology. We had to build upon strong partnerships and forge new friendships, both here at home and abroad.”
In response, the FBI shifted 2,000 of the total 5,000 agents in the bureau’s criminal programs to national security.
In hindsight, the transformation was a success. At the time, there were problems, and Mueller said as much. In a speech near the end of his tenure, he recalled “those days when we were under attack by the media and being clobbered by Congress; when the attorney general was not at all happy with me.”
Among the issues: The Justice Department’s inspector general found that the FBI circumvented the law to obtain thousands of phone call records for terrorism investigations.
Mueller decided that the FBI would not take part in abusive interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists, but the policy was not effectively communicated down the line for nearly two years.
In an effort to move the FBI into a paperless environment, the bureau spent more than $600 million on two computer systems — one that was 2½ years overdue and a predecessor that was only partly completed and had to be scrapped after consultants declared it obsolete and riddled with problems.
For the nation’s top law enforcement agency, it was a rocky trip through rough terrain.
But there were many successes as well, including thwarted terrorism plots and headline-making criminal cases like the one against corporate fraudster Bernie Madoff. The Republican also cultivated an apolitical reputation on the job, nearly quitting in a clash with the Bush administration over a surveillance program that he and his successor, James B. Comey, considered unlawful.
He famously stood alongside Comey, then deputy attorney general, during a dramatic 2004 hospital standoff over federal wiretapping rules. The two men planted themselves at the bedside of the ailing Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft to block Bush administration officials from making an end run to get Ashcroft’s permission to reauthorize a secret no-warrant wiretapping program.
In an extraordinary vote of confidence, Congress, at the Obama administration’s request, approved a two-year extension for Mueller to remain at his post beyond its 10-year term.
A Marine who served in Vietnam
Mueller was born in New York City and grew up in a well-to-do suburb of Philadelphia.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree in international relations from New York University. He then joined the Marines, serving three years as an officer during the Vietnam War. He led a rifle platoon and was awarded a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and two Navy Commendation Medals. After his military service, Mueller earned a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Mueller became a federal prosecutor and relished the work of handling criminal cases. He rose quickly through the ranks in U.S. attorneys’ offices in San Francisco and Boston from 1976 to 1988. Later, as head of the Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington, he oversaw a range of high-profile prosecutions that chalked up victories against targets as varied as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and New York crime boss John Gotti.
In a midcareer switch that shocked colleagues, Mueller left a job at a prestigious Boston law firm to join the homicide division of the U.S. attorney’s office in the nation’s capital. There, he immersed himself as a senior litigator in a bulging caseload of unsolved drug-related homicides in a city rife with violence.
Mueller was driven by a career-long passion for the painstaking work of building successful criminal cases. Even as head of the FBI, he would dig into the details of investigations, some of them major cases but others less so, sometimes surprising agents who suddenly found themselves on the phone with the director.
“The management books will tell you that as the head of an organization, you should focus on the vision,” Mueller once said. But “for me there were and are today those areas where one needs to be substantially personally involved,” especially in regard to “the terrorist threat and the need to know and understand that threat to its roots.”
Two terrorist attacks occurred toward the end of Mueller’s watch: the Boston Marathon bombing and the Ft. Hood shootings in Texas. Both weighed heavily on him, he acknowledged in an interview two weeks before his departure.
“You sit down with victims’ families, you see the pain they go through, and you always wonder whether there isn’t something more” that could have been done, he said.
Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Nicolas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
Public murals are among the best ways to honor our heroes, which is why dozens of murals of civil rights icon Cesar Chavez dot California’s landscape. Those images are now deeply upsetting after shocking revelations published in a recent New York Times investigation that allege Chavez sexually abused girls as young as 12 and raped his fellow labor organizer Dolores Huerta.
According to the nonprofit Travel Santa Ana, the Chavez mural, created in 2008 to commemorate the launch day of the city’s KaBoom playground and Jerome Community Learning Garden, is “one of 30 murals around California that was commissioned by a project commemorating Cesar Chavez, initiated by Maria Shriver and former LA Mayor [Antonio] Villaraigosa.”
That’s 30 from a single project — the total number would be impossible to count. It’s hard to overstate the prominence of Chavez’s legacy in California, where his name and likeness are ubiquitous on the sides of bodegas, in parks, on street signs, on schools and memorialized in statues. He was considered a man of the people, which is why murals, created in unassuming local spaces, seemed especially fitting.
It’s now up to the public that revered him and is now grappling with the pain of his misdeeds to decide what should become of his painted image. California lawmakers announced their intention to rename the upcoming Cesar Chavez holiday “Farmworkers Day,” and that idea could be extended to murals of Chavez. These artworks could be remade to instead celebrate the achievements of the many people — especially the women and girls — who marched and fought for the labor movement.
I expect changes to these murals will come swiftly. A statue of Chavez at Fresno State has already been covered and will soon be removed. Maybe it can be melted down to create something new and uplifting. We can paint over the past, but we should never forget.
I’m Arts editor Jessica Gelt, looking forward to gazing at a mural of Huerta in the very near future.
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The week ahead: A curated calendar
FRIDAY Brokentalkers Through music and dance, the Dublin-based theater company presents “Bellow,” the story of Irish accordionist Danny O’Mahony as he revisits key moments when mentorship, mastery of the craft and preservation of the art form influenced his path. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday. UCLA Nimoy Theater, 1262 Westwood Blvd. cap.ucla.edu
Piano recital with Gilles Vonsattel, solo Camerata Pacifica presents the third program of “Beethoven 32,” a three-year Beethoven cycle in which principal pianist Vonsattel performs all 32 of the composer’s piano sonatas. 7 p.m. Friday. Academy of the West, 1070 Fairway Rd., Santa Barbara. 8 p.m. Sunday. The Colburn School, Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. cameratapacifica.org
Sex, Lies and Harold Pinter Two of the playwright’s darkly comic one-acts, “Party Time” and “The Lover,” are paired. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays, through April 26. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
SATURDAY And the Beat Goes On The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles performs American classics from R&B, Motown, gospel and musical theater with Emmy Award-winning host and GMCLA alum Melvin Robert and soprano Nicole Heaston. 8 p.m. Saturday; 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills. GMCLA.org
Cirque Kalabanté’s Afrique en Cirque A celebration of African culture featuring acrobatics accompanied live Afro Jazz, percussion and kora. 8 p.m. Saturday. Carpenter Performing Arts Center, CSULB, 6200 E. Atherton St., Long Beach. carpenterarts.org; 3 p.m. Sunday. The Soraya, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge. thesoraya.org
Artist Todd Gray has a show at Perrotin.
(Kyungmi Shin)
Todd Gray A solo exhibition of the artist’s photosculptures, “Portals,” continues his interest in the effects of colonization, the built environment and the natural world. Gray will be in conversation with LACMA chief executive Michael Govan on Tuesday. Opening reception, 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday; conversation, 6:30 p.m. Tuesday; exhibition continues through May 30. Perrotin Los Angeles, 5036 W Pico Blvd. perrotin.com
Convergence: Contemporary Artists of Armenian Descent More than 20 artists, in work ranging from abstraction to conceptual installations, interrogate the complexities of their cultural identities. Through Aug. 9. Forest Lawn Museum, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale. museum.forestlawn.com
Esther Chung and Ins Choi in “Kim’s Convenience” at the Ahmanson.
(Dahlia Katz)
Kim’s Convenience Playwright Ins Choi stars in this production of his award-winning comedy drama, about a Korean family-run corner store in Toronto, that inspired the TV series. Directed by Weyni Mengesha. Through April 19. Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Avenue, downtown L.A. centertheatregroup.org
‘KPop Demon Hunters’ singalong Bop to the beat of this year’s two-time Oscar-winner — animated feature and original song — at this special Academy screening. 11 a.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org
Miss Velma in the City of Angels In the “Religion and Ritual” section of the ongoing Art of the West exhibition, this new installation features a custom-made dress worn by the charismatic co-founder of the Universal World Church in Los Angeles. Opens Friday. The Autry, 4700 Western Heritage Way. Griffith Park. theautry.org
Ok, Olympia, Let’s Go! Apollo Dukakis wrote and performs the one-act play “You and Me” alongside Kandis Chappell in a multimedia celebration of his sister, the late Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis. Playwright and filmmaker Graham Barnard hosts with special invited guests. 8 p.m. Saturday. 3 p.m. Sunday. Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd. odysseytheatre.com
Song Of The North Hamid Rahmanian created this multimedia production using shadow puppetry and projected animation to reimagine the Persian epic “Shahnameh” about a fierce heroine and her quest to save her beloved. 2 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and March 28 to 29; 7 p.m. Saturday and March 29. Pasadena Playhouse, 39 S. El Molino Ave. pasadenaplayhouse.org
The exhibition “Turner & Constable” at the Tate in London is featured in a new documentary on the two British painters.
Turner & Constable Laemmle’s “Culture Vulture” series presents this documentary on two of Britain’s finest artists — J.M.W. Turner and John Constable — their rivalry as very different landscape painters and the current exhibition at the Tate in London. Directed by David Bickerstaff. 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday; 7 p.m. Monday. Laemmle Glendale, 207 N. Maryland Ave.; Laemmle Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino; Laemmle Monica Film Center, 1332 2nd St. laemmle.com
Vertigo in Concert Sarah Hicks conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing the Bernard Herrmann score for Alfred Hitchcock’s classical psychological thriller live to screen. 8 p.m. Saturday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
SUNDAY Network The American Cinematheque presents screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s prescient 1976 media satire for its 50th anniversary and in tribute to actor Robert Duvall. 7 p.m. Sunday. Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. americancinematheque.com
Yefim Bronfman The pianist performs selections from Schumann, Brahms, Debussy and Beethoven. Rescheduled from Feb. 11. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Geoff Elliott in “Death of a Salesman” at A Noise Within.
(Daniel Reichert)
Death of a Salesman A Noise Within co-artistic director Geoff Elliott steps into the shoes of Arthur Miller’s beleaguered working man. Through April 19. A Noise Within, 3352 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena. anoisewithin.org
Ebell + LA Festival: Powered by Women A free celebration of art, activism and community spirit featuring performances, classes and crafts. 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Ebell of Los Angeles, 741 S. Lucerne Blvd. ebellofla.org
Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges A conversation between the sculptor known for his work inspired by the Black diaspora, African histories and mythologies, and Hammer curator Pablo José Ramírez, plus the premiere of a new eponymous documentary directed by Gabriel Noguez and Sean Rowry and a book signing of the monograph “Akinsanya Kambon: The Hero Avenges.” 2 p.m. Sunday. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. hammer.ucla.edu
MONDAY Lang Lang Plays Beethoven The piano virtuoso joins the Pacific Symphony for performances of Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto No. 3” and Egmont Overture, plus Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, “From the New World.” 8 p.m. Monday. Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. pacificsymphony.org
TUESDAY Gerald Barry’s ‘Salome’ Thomas Adès conducts the L.A. Phil in the U.S. premiere of Barry’s new opera, based on the Oscar Wilde play. 8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.laphil.com
WEDNESDAY Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater The illustrious troupe performs two alternating programs as part of its exclusive multiyear Southern California residency under the leadership of new Artist Director Alicia Graf Mack. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday to March 28; 2 p.m. March 28 to 29. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. musiccenter.org
THURSDAY Level Up! A trans tween feels like she can only be herself in her virtual world in the Latino Theater Company’s world premiere of a resonant, family-friendly play by Gabriel Rivas Gómez. Directed by Fidel Gómez. Previews through April 3. Opens April 4 and runs through May 3. Los Angeles Theatre Center, 514 S. Spring St., downtown L.A. latinotheaterco.org
Arts Anywhere
BroadwayHD Don’t get out to the theater as much as you’d like? This decade-old streaming service could be a viable supplement to your live theater habit. It offers a nice variety of shows from Broadway and the West End, off-Broadway, plays, musicals and virtually anything in between. BroadwayHD: $20 per month or $200 per year.
“Future Relic: Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist” by Daniel Arsham.
(Simon & Schuster)
Future Relic: Failures, Disasters, Detours, and How I Made a Career as an Artist Part memoir, part how-to, contemporary artist Daniel Arsham’s new book shares pragmatic advice on things like how to get a gallery, why you need a great lawyer, how to run a creative business and the importance of building a network of successful people. Bursting onto the scene more than 20 years ago with a bold vision across multiple mediums and accruing an eclectic list of big-name collaborators, including Merce Cunningham, Pharrell Williams, Pokémon, Tiffany & Co. and Cleveland Cavaliers, he quickly found both critical and commercial success. In a 2014 review of the artist’s work, Times contributor Sharon Mizota wrote, “Daniel Arsham’s casts of everyday or recently obsolete objects in sand, volcanic ash or various kinds of rock are like premature fossils, or perhaps eerie premonitions of ruin to come.” At a time when everything in the world is starting to feel obsolete, including us, “Future Relic” could find a place on the bookshelves of many would-be creatives. (Think of it as a companion to Rick Rubin’s “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.”). Authors Equity: 320 pp. $30.
Out of Vienna The acclaimed Berlin-based chamber ensemble Leonkoro Quartet, formed in 2019, has released its stellar debut recording after winning a string of prestigious awards across Europe. An exploration of early 20th-century modernism in the Austrian capital, the album features compositions by Alban Berg, Anton Webern and Erwin Schulhoff. Alpha Classics: Available on CD ($19) or download ($9.25).
— Kevin Crust
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Spring is here, and with it many arts and culture entertainment choices.
McNulty has been extra busy lately and has delivered a series of reviews. Harry Potter fans will enjoy his take on Daniel Radcliffe in Broadway’s “Every Brilliant Thing,” which McNulty calls “an ingenious and touching solo performance piece written by Duncan Macmillan with Jonny Donahoe on the subject of suicide — or more precisely, on the ordinary joys that militate against such a drastic step.”
McNulty also dropped in on the Geffen Playhouse to catch “Dragon Mama,” the second installment in a trilogy written and performed by Sara Porkalob about her Filipina American family. “To be frank, I wasn’t sure I was up for a trilogy on Porkalob’s family history. But after ‘Dragon Mama,’ I can hardly wait for ‘Dragon Baby,’ the third and final segment,” McNulty writes.
Pierre Adeli and Adam J. Jefferis in “The Adding Machine.”
(Bob Turton Photography)
Finally, McNulty checks in with the Actors’ Gang, which is running a production of Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionist satire, “The Adding Machine.” The story, about “an accountant drone aptly named Mr. Zero who, after losing his job to an adding machine, kills his boss and is sentenced to death,” shares uncomfortable modern-day parallels with the threat to workers currently posed by AI, McNulty writes.
Classical music critic Mark Swed got the scoop on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new season — its first without revered music director Gustavo Dudamel. “For the first time in 64 years, the L.A. Phil will be without a music director, and with no one in waiting in the wings. But you may barely notice. In little more than three months, Dudamel, although newly installed as music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic, will be saying hello once again to his old band at Walt Disney Concert Hall for two weeks of Beethoven,” Swed writes.
Workers install the Francis Bacon 1969 “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” oil painting in the David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
I got to watch workers hang a $142.5-million Francis Bacon triptych on the walls of LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries. The paintings were gifted to the museum by its late trustee, Elaine Wynn. LACMA’s director, Michael Govan, said that part of her interest in supporting the new building was because she wanted the paintings to eventually belong to the public.
Dance writer Steven Vargas penned an interesting profile of choreographer Jacob Jonas and how his battle with Stage 4 lymphoma deepened his connection to his craft.
The news from the Kennedy Center does not stop coming. Late last week, we learned that President Trump had replaced Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell, who presided over the unfolding chaos at the center for a little over a year, with Matt Floca, the vice president of facilities operations at the center. This week, the Trump-appointed board voted to officially close the venue for two years. Trump had already announced his intentions, so the vote amounted to little more than a rubber stamp.
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Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts — better known as the Soraya — on the campus of Cal State Northridge.
(The Soraya)
The Soraya announced its 2026-27 season, which includes six major debuts: singer and actress Audra McDonald, the Grammy Award-winning Snarky Puppy ensemble, Emmet Cohen’s jazz trio, Dance Theatre of Harlem, the National Symphony Orchestra (which will be roving in the wake of the Kennedy Center closure) and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine. Also arriving at the Soraya, according to a note from its publicist, “Domingo Hindoyan leads the LA Phil and soprano Sonya Yoncheva in the world premiere of a new, LA Phil-commissioned song cycle from Miguel Farias. Farias’ incandescent new work is paired with Barber’s ‘Medea’s Dance of Vengeance’ and Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony.”
The first-ever museum survey of the legendary Chicana artist Ofelia Esparza (“Ofelia Esparza: A Retropective “) at Vincent Price Art Museum has been extended through May — now you have no excuse to not get yourself out to see it.
NEW YORK — In a strongly worded decision this week, a federal judge ordered that the Voice of America — an international broadcaster with the mission to provide news for countries around the world that was largely shut down for the last year by the Trump administration — come roaring back to life.
Whether or not that actually happens is uncertain.
The government filed notice Thursday to appeal U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s order two days earlier to put hundreds of VOA employees who have been on paid leave the last year back to work. Lamberth had ruled on March 7 that Kari Lake, President Trump’s choice to oversee the bureaucratic parent U.S. Agency for Global Media, didn’t have the authority to reduce VOA to a skeleton.
The Voice of America was established as a news source in World War II, beaming reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press. Before Trump took office again last year, Voice of America was operating in 49 different languages, heard by an estimated 362 million people.
Trump’s team contended that government-run news sources, which also include Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, were an example of bloated government and that it wanted news reporting more favorable to the current administration. With a greatly reduced staff, VOA currently operates in Iran, Afghanistan, China, North Korea and in countries with a large population of Kurds.
Lamberth, in his decision, said Lake had “repeatedly thumbed her nose” at laws mandating VOA’s operation.
Time to turn the page at VOA?
VOA director Michael Abramowitz said legislators in both parties understand the need for a strong operation and have set aside enough funding for the job to be done. “It is time for all parties to come together and work to rebuild and strengthen the agency,” he said.
Don’t expect that to happen soon. “President Trump was elected to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse across the administration, including the Voice of America — and efforts to improve efficiency at USAGM have been a tremendous success,” said White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly. “This will not be the final say on the matter.”
Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief and a plaintiff in the lawsuit to bring it back, said that “restoring the physical infrastructure is going to take a lot of money and some time, but it can be done. What is more difficult is recovering from the trauma that our newsroom has gone through.”
It’s an open question whether the administration wants a real news organization or a mouthpiece, said David Ensor, a former Voice of America director between 2010 and 2014. “We don’t know — maybe no one does at the moment — what the future holds,” he said.
The administration’s efforts over the last year to bolster friendly outlets and fight coverage that displeases Trump offer a clue, even though Congress has required that Voice of America be an objective and unbiased news source. This week it was announced that Christopher Wallace, an executive at the far-right network Newsmax who had previously spent 15 years at Fox News Channel, will be the new deputy director at VOA. Abramowitz didn’t know he was getting a new deputy until it was announced.
Widakuswara wouldn’t comment on what Wallace’s appointment might mean. “I’m not going to pass judgment before seeing his work,” she said.
While Lamberth ordered more than a thousand employees on leave to go back to work, it’s not clear how many of them moved on to other jobs or retired in the last year. The judge also said he did not have the authority to bring back hundreds of independent contractors who were terminated.
One employee who left is Steve Herman, a former White House bureau chief and national correspondent at VOA and now executive director of the Jordan Center for Journalism Advocacy and Innovation at the University of Mississippi. Despite the court decisions, he questions whether the Trump administration would oversee a return to what the organization used to be.
“I’m a bit of a pessimist,” Herman said. “I think it’s going to be very difficult.”
An administration loath to admit defeat
Besides fighting to shut it down, Trump is loath to admit defeat. The White House recently nominated Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of State for public diplomacy, to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, putting it more firmly within the administration’s control. Her nomination requires Senate approval.
“Is Marco Rubio’s State Department going to allow objective journalism in 49 languages?” Herman asked. “I don’t think so. I would want that to happen, but that’s a fairy tale.”
In the budget bill passed in February, Congress set aside $200 million for Voice of America’s operation. While that represents about a 25% cut in the agency’s previous appropriation, it sent a bipartisan message of support, said Kate Neeper, VOA’s director of strategy and performance evaluation. Besides being a plaintiff with Widakuswara in the lawsuit to restore the agency, she has helped some of her colleagues deal with some of their own problems over the past year, including immigration issues.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm for going back to work,” she said. “People are eager to show up on Monday.”
The hunger for information from Voice of America in Iran when he was director was a clear example of what the organization meant, Ensor said. Surveys showed that between a quarter and a third of Iran’s households tuned in to VOA once a week, primarily on satellite television. Occasionally the government would crack down and confiscate satellite dishes, but Iranians could usually quickly find replacements, he said.
“I believe in Voice of America as a news organization and as a voice of America,” Ensor said. “It was important, and it can be again.”
March 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump threatened to send U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents to airports to cover for the Transportation Security Administration unless Democrats agree to Republican funding plans for the Department of Homeland Security.
On Truth Social, the president posted: “If the Democrats do not allow for Just and Proper Security at our Airports, and elsewhere throughout our Country, ICE will do the job far better than ever done before! The Fascist Democrats will never protect America, but the Republicans will.”
In an earlier post, he said ICE agents at airports “will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia, who have totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota.”
Former acting ICE Director John Sandweg told The Washington Post that the threat is being used as a punishment.
“This is again an example, it seems to me, of the president seeking to utilize ICE in a way that achieves political goals, almost as a punishment,” Sandweg said. “The operations, to me, don’t seem to be designed to focus on public safety.”
The DHS, which includes TSA, shut down on Feb. 14 because Congress couldn’t agree on a funding bill for the department. Democrats don’t want to fund it until guardrails are put on the agency, and Republicans haven’t agreed to Democrats’ demands.
Because of this, TSA workers have been working without pay for more than a month. Some are quitting or taking days off work, creating long lines at airports.
Earlier on Saturday, billionaire Elon Musk offered to pay the TSA salaries during the shutdown.
“I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country,” Musk said on X. Axios reported that based on TSA’s headcount, it would cost him more than $40 million per week. The White House didn’t respond to Musk’s offer.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Saturday told Republicans to support a Democratic bill to fund TSA. He said airport delays have reached a “boiling point.”
“If you want TSA workers to get paid, then vote yes,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement that Trump should focus on his own party.
“Surely, the next thing people want after waiting hours in long TSA lines is to get wrongfully detained by ICE,” she said. “Here’s an idea: instead of sidelining TSA agents and sending ICE to harass travelers, the president should tell Republicans to stop blocking our bill to pay TSA.”
Inara George looks back on it now as wistfully as someone remembering a love affair or a semester abroad.
“It was at this tiny theater on Pico near LaBrea, next to a barbecue place,” she says. “Our backstage was behind the theater, so we’d sit out there wearing these crazy corseted outfits while the guy next door was smoking brisket.”
A fixture of the Los Angeles music scene known for her solo records and as half of the Bird and the Bee, George is recalling the summer she spent working as a 20-something actor in “The Wandering Whore,” a musical set in 18th century London by composer Eliot Douglass and lyricist Philip Littell that played L.A.’s Playwrights’ Arena in August 1997.
“There was a scene where I die,” George adds, “and then I get reanimated by a ghost and someone pays — I don’t know if you need to put this in the article — someone pays to have relations with me.” She sighs.
“It was just such a rich time.”
Three decades later, George’s warm feelings for that era — and especially for the duo who soundtracked it — have led to an exquisite new album, “Songs of Douglass & Littell,” on which she sets aside her own songwriting to interpret nine tunes by these under-the-radar veterans of West Coast musical theater: searching, funny, vividly emotional songs like “Tired Butterfly,” about a busy insect in search of “a little nap,” and “The Extra Nipple,” which ponders a “harsh encounter with another heart.”
Think of the record as George’s take on one of Ella Fitzgerald’s classic “Song Book” LPs from the late ’50s and early ’60s, when the jazz star was systematically enshrining the work of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and other authors of the Great American Songbook.
“These men deserve to have some attention,” George says of Douglass and Littell, the latter of whom she’s known since she was a little girl performing in plays at Topanga Canyon’s Theatricum Botanicum. “I want to give them their flowers.”
Yet if the album is rooted in the creative awakenings of George’s youth, it’s also the 51-year-old’s way of embracing middle age.
Inspired by singers like Helen Merrill and Chet Baker — “Elis & Tom,” a 1974 duo album by Brazil’s Elis Regina and Antônio Carlos Jobim, was another touchstone — George turns on “Songs” from the Bird and the Bee’s blippy electronica and the folky pop of her solo work to a jazzier sound that puts her cool, breathy vocals amid piano, strings and horns.
“This is a grown-up record,” says George, who shares three teenage children with her husband, the movie director Jake Kasdan. “I don’t want to be making music that makes me feel like I’m trying to be younger — I wanted to make something that makes me feel my age.”
Inara George at home this month.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The singer is at home near Griffith Park on a recent afternoon; with her kids at school and Kasdan away on a film shoot, the house is quiet, though signs of music are everywhere: a drum set, a grand piano, a guitar once owned by George’s late father, Lowell George, who founded the cult-fave L.A. rock band Little Feat and who died of a heart attack when Inara was only 4.
“As a woman, it’s a weird time in life — there’s something in-between about it,” she says. “Even the question of what do you wear. When you’re younger, you’re like, I’m gonna wear a dress — is it sexy, is it cute? Now, all of a sudden, all I want to do is wear suits.” She laughs.
Douglass, who plays piano on the new album, hears a “groundedness” in George’s singing all the more remarkable given that the arrangements represent “a new kind of school for her,” he says. “I was wondering how she would approach it, and she’s done it with such aplomb and wisdom.”
On Friday night, Douglass will accompany George — along with more than a dozen other players — in a record-release concert at Largo at the Coronet, with proceeds going to the nonprofit LA Voice, which seeks to organize voters on issues related to immigration and affordable housing.
George happily describes “Songs of Douglass & Littell” as a passion project. “I think you get to a certain point where selling a million records is not your intention,” she says. “Obviously, I wouldn’t make a record like this if I had that intention.” (Counterpoint: the arena-filling success of Laufey.)
“I’m just about the experience,” she adds, “and this has been an amazing experience.”
The experience began one night a few years ago when George hosted a wine-soaked reunion of performers who’d worked with Douglass and Littell back in the ’90s on shows like “The Wandering Whore” and “No Miracle: A Consolation,” the latter a song cycle rooted in the losses of the AIDS epidemic.
Philip Littell, from left, Eliot Douglass and Inara George.
(Thomas Heegard)
After her years of childhood dramatics at the Theatricum — Littell remembers meeting “this bird of a girl with these huge eyes” — George had gone to Boston’s Emerson College to study acting but dropped out and returned to L.A., where she eventually made her name as a musician. (In addition to the Bird and the Bee, her duo with the Grammy-winning producer Greg Kurstin, she’s also played with the Living Sisters and sung with Foo Fighters.)
Yet her postcollege stint in the experimental theater scene always stuck with her, she says. Reconnecting with Littell, whose other work includes the libretto for André Previn’s operatic adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Douglass, who played piano for years with Cirque du Soleil, got George thinking about how she might help preserve their music and bring it to a modern audience.
In 2024, she put together a trio for an intimate gig at Pasadena’s Healing Force of the Universe record store; her old friend Mike Andrews, who produced her solo albums, was there and told her they should record the material. Given the number of ballads she’d worked up, George asked Douglass and Littell to write a couple of new uptempo tunes; among the ones they came up with was the frisky “La Lune S’en Va.”
Does George speak French?
“Not at all,” she says, smiling. “But Philip does. It’s so fun — I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ I think the pronunciation’s OK.”
She and a small crew of musicians cut the album live in the studio over three days — in part an attempt to capture some energy, in part an acknowledgment of an economic reality.
“Is music just a hobby for me now? Yeah, it is,” says George, who’s putting “Songs” out through her own label, Release Me Records. “I mean, I’m spending money to do it.” She worries about the disappearance of music’s middle class even as she notes happily that “Again & Again” by the Bird and the Bee “recently had a little TikTok moment,” as she puts it. (With 86 million streams, it’s the duo’s most popular track on Spotify, followed by an ethereal cover of the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love.”)
Yet all that seems less important to George than taking the opportunity to honor “these incredibly talented, very sensitive people” who she says shaped the artist she became.
“Their songs just mean so much to me,” she says of Douglass and Littell. “More than ever, this is the music I want to listen to.”
If you’re checking into a hotel room, there’s one item I recommend you should always avoid, and I’m not talking about the kettle and mugs, but something else entirely
10:52, 20 Mar 2026Updated 10:54, 20 Mar 2026
There’s something I always avoid in every hotel room(Image: Amy Jones)
Tapping my keycard onto my hotel room door always leaves me filled with anticipation, excitiment and dread. Lurking behind that door, I know there will be an unwanted item waiting for me on arrival, and it’s something everyone should avoid.
Having previously worked as a hotel receptionist for several years, I gained a few useful insights into the hospitality industry and how it really unravels behind the scenes. From how upgrades really work and the hidden costs of the mini bar, to getting a cheaper rate and handling awkward guest requests, it was a very valuable experience.
Today, it helps me with my own trips, particularly after witnessing just how hotel rooms are cleaned. And let me tell you, those decorative pillows scattered on the bed and the perfectly placed bed throw are not what you want to see in your hotel room.
From my years working in a hotel, I rarely, if ever, saw hotel decorative pillow covers, blankets, or bed throws washed. Perhaps they got a quick spritz of air freshener or a gentle dusting, but there they sat, still unwashed and covered in other guests’ germs and grime.
So now, without fail and on every room check-in, I will grab the decorative cushions and bedspread and toss them into a corner of the room, never to be handled again for the rest of my stay.
It’s not just in budget hotels that I take this course of action. Even if it’s a luxurious four-star hotel with rave reviews, I will avoid those pillows, throws and blankets like the plague. And if that wasn’t enough of a precaution, I will ensure I flip over the bed pillow that the decorative pillow was touching to avoid any cross-contamination.
While it might seem a little drastic and take me back to that time where anti-bac and toilet roll sold out in shops, I can’t shake the feeling of dirty pillows and throws in a hotel room that other people have used. Once you’ve worked at a hotel and witnessed the other side of hospitality, it opens your eyes for better, and for worse.
Yet, that’s not the only feature of a room I advised you to avoid. The mugs are also problematic. Now, I’m not saying this is the case at every hotel, but more often or not, the mugs are not thoroughly washed before the next guest’s arrival.
On more than one occasion, I’ve witnessed housekeepers rinsing the mugs out in the bathroom sink, wiping them with a cloth, and simply placing them back on the table. While it removes coffee or tea dregs, it doesn’t quite cut it for washing a mug used by guests repeatedly.
As part of my personal check-in routine, in addition to ditching pillows and throws, I’ll always boil the kettle to rinse the mugs and glassware out with hot water as a precaution. I’ll also use a little hand soap. I’m not going to be that guest who demands a fresh mug and glass just in case they haven’t been washed up; a simple home sterilisation is enough to put my mind at ease.
Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com
WASHINGTON — Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, abruptly resigned Tuesday, becoming the most senior national security official to break publicly with the Trump administration over its military campaign against Iran.
In a statement posted on social media, Kent said he “cannot in good conscience” continue serving in the administration, contending that Iran had “posed no imminent threat to our nation” and that the United States had been drawn into the conflict through “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
“I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives,” Kent wrote in a letter addressed to President Trump. “I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for.”
Trump, speaking in the Oval Office, dismissed Kent’s concerns, telling reporters that he had long believed the counterterrorism director — whom he nominated to the post in February 2025 — was “very weak on security.” The president insisted that Iran has been a threat to the U.S. “for a long time,” and said that it was a “good thing” Kent is leaving.
The resignation came at an uncertain moment for the administration. The war, which has repeatedly been sold to Americans as “short term” and contained, is now in its third week, with fraying alliances, renewed missile and drone fire on gulf Arab nations from Iran, new Israeli strikes on Iran and Lebanon, mounting casualties and no clear exit strategy.
“If we left right now it would take 10 years for them to rebuild,” Trump told reporters. “We’re not ready to leave yet, but we’ll be leaving in the near future. We’ll be leaving pretty much in the very near future.”
The uncertainty was compounded Tuesday by Israel’s killing of Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, as well as Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, Iran’s militia force.
Trump made reference to the Iranian officials killed without naming them, saying one was “their actual top” and the other was responsible for the killing of 32,000 Iranian protesters in recent weeks.
“It’s an evil group,” he said.
Effect of Larijani’s killing
Iranian officials confirmed the deaths of Larijani and Soleimani via state media Tuesday. In addition to killing the Basij leader, Israel reported striking more than 10 Basij posts, part of an effort to destroy the Islamic Republic’s ability to contain internal unrest and protests.
Benjamin Radd, a political scientist and senior fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, said Larijani’s killing would greatly diminish the Iranian diplomatic and institutional experience, as he was perceived to be “the last of the competent bunch” in power.
Those remaining in power are “generally not the sharpest people, they’re not the people who understand the subtleties of diplomacy, of what negotiating with the U.S. is like,” which clears a path for “a country run by a military junta” comprising Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps leaders, Radd said.
“We’re really going to be moving more toward a military-style dictatorship — behind a clerical robe, if you will,” he said.
The battlefield developments have done little to reassure Washington’s closest allies, most of which have declined to join the fight despite Trump’s recent pleas to allied nations to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil route that has been threatened by Iran’s war efforts.
In a social media post Tuesday, Trump said the United States had been informed by most of its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that they “don’t want to get involved” in the expanding Middle East war — and he claimed the American military no longer needs or wants their help.
“In fact, speaking as President of the United States of America, by far the Most Powerful Country Anywhere in the World, WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!” Trump wrote.
Trump cannot unilaterally remove the U.S. from NATO. In 2023, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — who is now Trump’s secretary of State — successfully pushed a measure barring any president from removing the U.S. from the treaty organization without approval from the Senate or an act of Congress.
“The Senate should maintain oversight on whether or not our nation withdraws from NATO. We must ensure we are protecting our national interests and protecting the security of our democratic allies,” Rubio said at the time.
Some experts viewed Trump’s latest remarks about not needing NATO allies as a result of him having misplayed his hand at the start of the conflict with Iran, which has attempted to widen the war by targeting Gulf Cooperation Council nations in the region.
When Trump started demanding that many other nations join the U.S. in the war effort, or at least in safeguarding the Strait of Hormuz, it was “an attempt on Trump’s side to widen the war the other way,” Radd said, based in part on the fact that other nations, including China and in Europe, are much more reliant on oil from the region than the U.S.
However, it was a “clumsy” move by Trump given his alienation of NATO allies in the past, including during a major speech in Davos, Switzerland, in January, in which the president was “basically shaming and criticizing NATO and European states,” Radd said.
Calling on allies to “step up” after ridiculing them was “ham-handed,” Radd said.
Intelligence official’s departure
In Washington, Kent’s resignation exposed new divisions over the administration’s handling of the war.
On Capitol Hill, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters that he did not know where Kent was “getting his information” to conclude that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S. He said Trump administration officials in classified briefings have asserted that “they had exquisite intelligence and they understood that this was a serious moment for us.”
“The president felt that he had to strike first to prevent mass casualties,” Johnson said.
Several Democrats called on Kent to appear before Congress and tell the American people more about why the administration dragged the U.S. into war in Iran.
“If even officials like Joe Kent do not believe Iran posed an imminent threat, why are we sending more Americans to die in this war?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote on X.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kent’s letter contained “many false claims,” including that Iran posed no imminent threat to the U.S.
“This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over,” Leavitt wrote on X. “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.”
She said that evidence, which has never been detailed publicly, “was compiled from many sources and factors,” and that Trump “would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.”
Leavitt then repeated past justifications for the attack, including that Iran sponsors terrorism abroad and that it was building out its missile capabilities as “a shield” for protection as it continued to develop nuclear capabilities.
The press secretary previously said that Trump had a “feeling” that Iran was going to attack the U.S. or its assets. The president has alleged, without evidence, that Iran was within weeks of having a nuclear weapon.
Leavitt said the added assertion by Kent that Trump decided to attack Iran “based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable.”
Kent, a former political candidate with connections to right-wing extremists, was confirmed in July as head of the National Counterterrorism Center, which analyzes and detects terrorist threats. Before joining the Trump administration, Kent ran two unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in Washington state. He also served in the military, serving 11 deployments as a Green Beret, followed by work at the CIA.
Democrats strongly opposed Kent’s confirmation in the Senate, in part because they were concerned about his ties to far-right figures and promotion of conspiracy theories. During his 2022 congressional campaign, Kent paid Graham Jorgensen, a member of the far-right military group the Proud Boys, for consulting work. He also worked closely with Joey Gibson, the founder of the Christian nationalist group Patriot Prayer, and attracted support from a variety of far-right figures.
During his Senate confirmation hearing, Kent refused to distance himself from a conspiracy theory that federal agents instigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, as well as false claims that Trump, a Republican, won the 2020 election over Democrat Joe Biden.
Democrats grilled Kent on his participation in a group chat on Signal where Trump’s national security team discussed sensitive military plans.
Republicans, meanwhile, were drawn to Kent’s experience in the military and intelligence.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the GOP chair of the Intelligence Committee, said in a floor speech that Kent had “dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and keeping Americans safe.” On Tuesday, Cotton said that he disagreed with Kent’s “misguided assessment” on Iran.
“Iran’s vast missile arsenal and support for terrorism posed a grave and growing threat to America. Indeed, the ayatollahs have maimed and killed thousands of Americans,” Cotton said. “President Trump recognized this threat and made the right call to eliminate it.”
Other conservatives — including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and commentator Candace Owens — called Kent an “American hero.”
Ilan Goldenberg, a former Biden administration official who dealt with the Middle East, wrote on X that while he disagrees with the Iran war, Kent claiming that Israel pressured Trump into the conflict is “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes.”
“Donald Trump is the President of the United States and he is the one ultimately responsible for sending American troops into harms way,” he said.
PHOENIX — The first pitch of the Dodgers’ 2026 season won’t capture the exuberance of the last pitch of 2025. But it will be meaningful in its own right, as the official first step of the team’s quest for a third straight championship.
How poetic that the same arm should deliver both pitches.
“It’s an honor for me,” Dodgers opening day starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto said Tuesday through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “And then it’s opening day at a Dodger Stadium home game, and that’s very [much an] honor to me. I also feel the responsibility.”
Yamamoto is scheduled to make one more Cactus League start, against the Padres on Friday, before taking the Dodger Stadium mound next Thursday when the Diamondbacks come to town. It will be the second opening-day start of Yamamoto’s MLB career, and his first at home.
It will also mark the end of a whirlwind offseason and spring training for Yamamoto, who not only shouldered a demanding postseason workload, but also navigated an especially quick turnaround to pitch for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic.
“It’s hard to put into words,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He is just very driven, he’s very disciplined in his work. That’s some of the things that allows him to compete at a high level. Where most people would feel that you win the World Series MVP, you don’t have enough to pitch in the WBC. He wanted to pitch for his country, and now he’s really excited about the start of 2026.
“He is a very determined person. He really is. We’re just lucky he’s on our team.”
No one needs to be reminded that Yamamoto was a playoff hero last year, but let’s really break down his efforts.
On Oct. 14, Yamamoto made his third start of the postseason and threw a complete game against the Brewers to put the Dodgers ahead 2-0 in the NL Championship Series.
Eleven days later, he tossed another nine innings to help the Dodgers even the series against the Blue Jays. And he wrapped up the World Series with appearances on back-to-back days, starting Game 6 and finishing Game 7.
Yamamoto threw 526 pitches in the postseason, 235 in the World Series alone, and he still touched nearly 97 mph in his final inning of work.
Most pitchers would need at least a full offseason to recover. When Blake Snell slow-played his offseason because of lingering shoulder discomfort after the World Series run, the decision made all the sense in the world.
Yamamoto, however, was already pitching in meaningful games by March 6.
In Yamamoto’s first start of the WBC, he held Chinese Taipei hitless for 2 ⅔ innings. Then in the quarterfinal game against Venezuela last Saturday, he surrendered a leadoff homer to Ronald Acuña Jr. and a second-inning RBI double to Gleyber Torres before settling in for two scoreless innings. The eventual 8-5 loss eliminated Team Japan from the WBC.
“As Team Japan, the result was not what we were aiming for,” Yamamoto said. “But at a personal level, my condition was good.”
The season will be the true test for Yamamoto’s training methods, which have been infamous since before his transition from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, and are already spreading across the Dodgers’ clubhouse. Look no further than shortstop Mookie Betts this week lauding the effects of throwing a javelin.
If they continue to work, Yamamoto could be in the running for the Cy Young Award, after finishing third in National League voting last year.
“There’s high competition, there are a lot of great pitchers out there,” Yamamoto said, “but I hope that I get there.”
Yamamoto’s offseason work, however, wasn’t simply geared toward getting to opening day or winning an individual award. He knows as well as anyone that this team has set a high bar with back-to-back championships.
“The same goal,” Yamamoto said of 2026, “winning a world championship with this team.”
Now over four months removed from that final pitch of the 2025 World Series, one lesson has stuck with Yamamoto.
“I learned how difficult [it is] to get one win,” he said. “As a team, I want to be able to share that joy.”
