year

John Carpenter has this one recurring nightmare.

“I’m in a huge, massive town I don’t really know,” he says, “and I’m looking for the movie district. And inevitably all the theaters are closed down. They’re all closed down. That’s what the dream is.”

I’m visiting Carpenter at his longtime production house in Hollywood on one of L.A.’s unjustly sunny October afternoons. A vintage “Halloween” pinball machine and a life-size Nosferatu hover near his easy chair. I tell him I don’t think Freud would have too much trouble interpreting that particular dream.

“No, I know,” he says, laughing. “I don’t have too much trouble with that either.”

Nonetheless, it truly haunts him — “and it has haunted me over the years for many dreams in a row,” he continues. “I’m either with family or a group, and I go off to do something and I get completely lost. [Freud] wouldn’t have too much trouble figuring that out either. I mean, none of this is very mysterious.”

Carpenter is a gruff but approachable 77 these days, his career as a film director receding in the rearview. The last feature he made was 2010’s “The Ward.” His unofficial retirement was partly chosen, partly imposed by a capricious industry. The great movie poster artist Drew Struzan died two days before I visited — Carpenter says he never met Struzan but loved his work, especially his striking painting for the director’s icy 1982 creature movie “The Thing” — and I note how that whole enterprise of selling a movie with a piece of handmade art is a lost one.

“The whole movie business that I knew, that I grew up with, is gone,” he replies. “All gone.”

John Carpenter with John Mulaney, appearing as a part of “Everybody’s in L.A.” at the Sunset Gower Studios in May 2024.

(Adam Rose / Netflix)

It hasn’t, thankfully, made him want to escape from L.A. He still lives here with his wife, Sandy King, who runs the graphic novel imprint Storm King Comics, which Carpenter contributes to. He gamely appeared on John Mulaney’s “Everybody’s in L.A.” series on Netflix and, earlier this year, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. gave him a Career Achievement Award — a belated lovefest for a veteran who was sidelined after “The Thing” flopped, cast out into indie darkness and was never personally nominated for an Oscar.

The thing that does keep Carpenter busy these days (other than watching Warriors basketball and playing videogames) is the thing that might have an even bigger cultural footprint than his movies: his music. With his adult son Cody and godson, Daniel Davies, Carpenter is once again performing live concerts of his film scores and instrumental albums in a run at downtown’s Belasco this weekend and next.

The synthy, hypnotic scores that became his signature in films like “Halloween” and “Escape from New York” not only outnumber his output as a director — he’s scored movies for several other filmmakers and recently made a handshake deal in public to score Bong Joon Ho’s next feature — but their influence and popularity are much more evident in 2025 than the style of his image-making.

From “Stranger Things” to “F1,” Carpenter’s minimalist palette of retro electronica combined with the groove-based, trancelike ethos of his music (which now includes four “Lost Themes” records) is the coin of the realm so many modern artists are chasing.

Very few composers today are trying to sound like John Williams; many of them want to sound like John Carpenter. The Kentucky-raised skeptic with the long white hair doesn’t believe me when I express this.

“Well, see, I must be stupid,” he says, “because I don’t get it.”

“The true evil in the world comes from people,” says Carpenter. “I know that nature’s pretty rough, but not like men.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Carpenter is quick to put himself down. He always says that he scored his own films because he was the only composer he could afford, and that he only used synths because they were cheap and he couldn’t properly write music for an orchestra. When I tell him that Daniel Wyman, the instrumentalist who helped program and execute the “Halloween” score in 1978, praised Carpenter’s innate knowledge of the “circle of fifths” and secondary dominants — bedrocks of Western musical theory that allowed Carpenter’s scores to keep the tension cooking — he huffs.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Carpenter says, halfway between self-deprecation and something more rascally. “It all comes, probably, from the years I spent in our front room with my father and listening to classical music. I’m sure I’m just digging this s— out.”

Whether by osmosis or genetics or possibly black magic, Carpenter clearly absorbed his powers from his father, Dr. Howard Carpenter, a classically trained violinist and composer. Classical music filled the childhood home in Bowling Green and for young John it was all about “Bach, Bach and Bach. He’s my favorite. I just can’t get enough of Johann there.”

It makes sense. Bach’s music has a circular spell quality and the pipe organ, resounding with reverb in gargantuan cathedrals, was the original synthesizer.

“He’s the Rock of Ages of music,” says Carpenter, who particularly loves the fugue nicknamed “St. Anne” and the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. “Everybody would go back to Mozart or Beethoven. They are astonishing — Beethoven is especially astonishing — but they’re not my style. I don’t feel it like I do with Bach. I immediately got him.”

Carpenter was also a film score freak since Day 1. He cites the early electronic music in 1956’s “Forbidden Planet” and claims Bernard Herrmann and Dimitri Tiomkin as his two all-time favorites. Just listen, he says, to the way Tiomkin’s music transitions from the westerny fanfare under the Winchester Pictures logo to the swirling, menacing orchestral storm that accompanies “The Thing From Another World” title card in that 1951 sci-fi picture that Carpenter remixed as “The Thing.”

“The music is so weird, I cannot follow it,” he says. “But I love it.”

Yet Carpenter feels more personally indebted to rock ‘n’ roll: the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors. He wanted to be a rock star ever since he grew his hair long and bought a guitar in high school. He sang and performed R&B and psychedelic rock for sororities on the Western Kentucky campus as well as on a tour of the U.S. Army bases in Germany. He formed the rock trio Coupe de Villes with his buddies at USC and they made an album and played wrap parties.

He also kept soaking up contemporary influences, listening to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” while location scouting for “Halloween.” Peter Fonda later introduced Carpenter to Zevon and he wanted the director to adapt the song into a film that never happened (starring Fonda as the werewolf, but “this time he gets the girl,” Carpenter recalls). In the ’80s he blasted Metallica with his two boys and he still loves Devo.

It’s incredibly rare for a film director to score their own films, rarer still for one to spend decades on stage as a performing musician. The requisite personalities would seem diametrical.

“My dad was a performing musician, so it was just part of the family,” Carpenter says. However, until 2016, when Carpenter first toured with his music, he was consumed with stage fright. “I had an incident when I was in a play in high school,” he says. “I went up and I forgot my lines. Shame descended upon me and I had a tough time. I was scared all the time.”

The director credits his touring drummer, Scott Seiver, for helping him beat it.

“Your adrenaline carries you to another planet when that thing starts,” he sighs with pleasure. “You hear a wall of screaming people. It’s a big time.”

He pushes back against the idea that directors “hide behind the camera.”

“The pressure, that’s the biggest thing,” Carpenter says. “You put yourself under pressure from the studio, you’re carrying all this money, crew, you want to be on time.”

He remembers seeing some haggard making-of footage of himself in post-production on “Ghost of Mars” in 2001 and thinking: Oh my God, this guy is in trouble. “I had to stop,” he says. “I can’t do this to myself anymore. I can’t take this kind of stress — it’ll kill you, as it has so many other directors. The music came along and it’s from God. It’s a blessing.”

John Carpenter is grateful but he doesn’t believe in God. He believes that, when we die, “we just disperse — our energy disperses, and we return to what we were. We’re all stardust up there and the darkness created us, in a sense. So that’s what we have to make peace with. I point up to the infinite, the space between stars. But things stop when you die. Your heart stops, brain — everything stops. You get cold. Your energy dissipates and it just… ends. The End.”

This is not exactly a peaceful thought for him.

“I mean, I don’t want to die,” he adds. “I’m not looking forward to that. But what can you do? I can’t control it. But that’s what I believe and I’m alone in it. I can’t put that on anybody else. Everybody has their own beliefs, their own gods, their own afterlife.”

He describes himself as a “long-term optimist but a short-term pessimist.”

“I have hope,” he says, “put it that way.” Yet he looks around and sees a lot of evil.

“The true evil in the world comes from people,” says Carpenter, who has long used cinematic allegories to skewer capitalist pigs and bloodthirsty governments. “I know that nature’s pretty rough, but not like men. You see pictures of lions taking down their prey and you see the face of the prey and you say: ‘Oh, man.’ Humans do things like that and enjoy it. Or they do things like that for power or pleasure. Humans are evil but they’re capable of massive good — and they’re capable of the greatest art form we have: music.”

The greatest?

“You don’t have to talk about it. You just sit and listen to it. It’s not my favorite,” he clarifies, alluding to his first love, cinema — “but it’s the one that transcends centuries.”

Music has always been kinder to him than the movie business. That business recently reared its ugly head when A24 tossed his completed score for “Death of a Unicorn.” (At least he owns the rights and will be putting it out sometime soon.) In addition to the high he gets from playing live, he is currently working on a heavy metal concept album complete with dialogue. It’s called “Cathedral” and he’ll be playing some of it at the Belasco.

It’s essentially a movie in music form, based on a dream Carpenter had. Though not one he finds scary. What scares Carpenter, it seems, is not being in control.

That happened to him in the movie world, it’s happening more and more as what he calls the “frailties of age” mount and it happens in that nightmare about getting lost in a big city and not finding any theaters.

“But I can’t do anything about it,” he says. “What can I do? See, the only thing I can do is what I can control: music. And watching basketball.”

SALT LAKE CITY — Walker Kessler had 22 points and nine rebounds, Lauri Markkanen scored 20 and the Utah Jazz beat the Clippers 129-108 on Wednesday night in the season opener for both teams.

Brice Sensabaugh added 20 points off the bench for Utah, which set a team record for points in a season opener.

Kessler, the longest-tenured member of the Jazz, went 7 for 7 from the field. He blocked four shots and finished with four assists.

The new-look Clippers appeared confused on the court at times in a disappointing debut for a team with lofty aspirations. Ivica Zubac led them with 19 points and seven rebounds. James Harden and Brook Lopez each scored 15. Kawhi Leonard had 10 points on 3-of-9 shooting.

It was their most lopsided season-opening loss in 17 years.

Utah made its first 19 shots in the paint, as crisp passing and precise ball movement led to layups and dunks.

Widely expected to finish near the bottom of the NBA this season, the Jazz had 38 assists on 48 baskets and shot 55% from the field. Keyonte George led Utah with nine assists to go with his 16 points.

Ace Bailey, the No. 5 pick in this year’s draft, has been ill and was limited to 20 minutes for the Jazz. He scored two points.

Bradley Beal also was on a minutes restriction in his Clippers debut and had five points.

Taylor Hendricks, who sustained a gruesome broken leg in the third game last season, returned to the court and looked bouncy coming off the bench for Utah. He finished with 13 points and five rebounds.

The Jazz led 78-47 at halftime after shooting 71.8% from the field. The Clippers gave up 78 points in a half only once last season, while the Jazz hadn’t scored that many in a first half since the 2023-24 season.

Utah was 12 for 12 on two-point field goals and added four threes in the first quarter.

As a Los Angeles City Council aide, Jose Ugarte failed to disclose years worth of outside income he made from lobbying and consulting — and, as a result, was prepared to pay a fine.

But the city’s Ethics Commission has now rejected a $17,500 settlement agreement with the council candidate. Two commissioners said the fine was not quite large enough.

“We need to signal that this is a serious violation,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, the president of the commission, who voted against the settlement.

Ugarte is deputy chief of staff to Curren Price and is running to replace his longtime boss on the City Council. Price has endorsed him. But the council aide failed to report outside income from his consulting firm, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to Ethics Commission documents.

He said the failure to report the outside income was a “clerical reporting error.”

Although two of the commissioners want a steeper fine against Ugarte, the suggested bump isn’t that large.

Two commissioners voted in favor of the $17,500 settlement, but Kulkarni and another commissioner, Terry Kaufmann, agreed the settlement amount should be around $20,000.

It’s an amount that they believe could send a clearer message.

“There is great concern about what is happening in Los Angeles. … Individuals routinely violate the laws we put in place to ensure trust,” Kulkarni said.

Kaufmann added that she was concerned by the fact that Ugarte still worked for a council member and was running for office.

The proposed settlement with Ugarte included seven counts against him, and each comes with a potential $5,000 penalty. But since Ugarte was cooperative, the commission’s director of enforcement reduced the overall penalty by 50%, bringing it down from $35,000 to the $17,500 figure.

Ugarte told The Times that his work with Ugarte & Associates never overlapped with his time in Price’s office.

He started working for Price in 2013 but left the office in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was formed in 2018 and still conducts business. He co-owns the company with his sister.

DEMI Moore poses in a cage-style dress — but says she feels freer than ever.

The screen star, 62, was in celebratory mood after being named one of Glamour Magazine’s Women of the Year.

It comes after she won a Best Actress Golden Globe for her role in horror flick The Substance.

Demi was interviewed by Substance co-star Margaret Qualley for the mag.

She said: “With everything I’ve been through, which has been a lot, I wouldn’t trade where I am today.”

She added a difference with her younger self is the “freedom to know I don’t have to have the answer, and life is not going to be completely stolen from me if I somehow don’t know”.

NO MOORE PARTIES

Demi Moore skips distributor’s Oscars after-party following shocking loss

During Demi Moore’s emotional Golden Globes acceptance speech, she spoke of having been at a “low point” and not thinking she was “enough”.

The actress has battled countless traumas and rejections during her life – including her biological dad leaving before she was born, saving her drug addicted mum from suicide, two spells in rehab and being raped aged 15. 

The star of Ghost, Indecent Proposal and A Few Good Men’s return to form in the satirical horror movie The Substance is one of the greatest Hollywood comebacks of all time.

Having struggled to land a hit movie over the past couple of decades, Demi thought “this was it.”

And when you learn of what the mother-of-three has been through, you’ll know why her best actress win at the Globes on Sunday meant so much.

In her speech, which has gone viral, Demi said: “In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough, or pretty enough, or skinny enough, or are basically just not enough, I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know you will never be enough but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’”

WASHINGTON — The White House started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build President Trump’s $250-million ballroom despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agency that oversees such projects.

Dramatic photos of the demolition work that began Monday showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a park near the Treasury Department, which is next to the East Wing.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that the plan now called for the demolition of the entire East Wing and that the tear-down should be completed by Sunday. Citing a source, The Times said it marks an escalation over earlier plans for the ballroom.

Trump announced the start of construction in a social media post and referenced the work while hosting 2025 college baseball champs Louisiana State University and LSU-Shreveport in the East Room. He noted the work was happening “right behind us.”

“We have a lot of construction going on, which you might hear periodically,” he said, adding, “It just started today.”

The White House has moved ahead with the massive construction project despite not yet having sign-off from the National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction work and major renovations to government buildings in the Washington area.

Its chairman, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary and one of Trump’s top aides, said at the commission’s September meeting that the agency does not have jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation work for buildings on federal property.

“What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Scharf said last month.

It was unclear whether the White House had submitted the ballroom plans for the agency’s review and approval. The White House did not respond to a request for comment and the commission’s offices are closed because of the government shutdown.

The Republican president had said in July when the project was announced that the ballroom would not interfere with the mansion itself.

“It’ll be near it but not touching it and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of,” he said of the White House.

The East Wing houses several offices, including those of the first lady. It was built in 1902 and and has been renovated over the years, with a second story added in 1942, according to the White House.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said those East Wing offices will be temporarily relocated during construction and that wing of the building will be modernized and renovated.

“Nothing will be torn down,” Leavitt said when she announced the project in July.

Trump insists that presidents have desired such a ballroom for 150 years and that he’s adding the massive 90,000-square-foot, glass-walled space because the East Room, which is the largest room in the White House with an approximately 200-person capacity, is too small. He also has said he does not like the idea of hosting kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers in pavilions on the South Lawn.

Trump said in the social media announcement that the project would be completed “with zero cost to the American Taxpayer! The White House Ballroom is being privately funded by many generous Patriots, Great American Companies, and, yours truly.”

The ballroom will be the biggest structural change to the Executive Mansion since the addition in 1948 of the Truman Balcony overlooking the South Lawn, even dwarfing the residence itself.

At a dinner he hosted last week for some of the wealthy business executives who are donating money toward the construction cost, Trump said the project had grown in size and now will accommodate 999 people. The capacity was 650 seated people at the July announcement.

The White House has said it will disclose information on who has contributed money to build the ballroom, but has yet to do so.

Trump also said at last week’s event that the head of Carrier Global Corp., a leading manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, had offered to donate the air-conditioning system for the ballroom.

Carrier confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday that it had done so. A cost estimate was not immediately available.

“Carrier is honored to provide the new iconic ballroom at the White House with a world-class, energy-efficient HVAC system, bringing comfort to distinguished guests and dignitaries in this historic setting for years to come,” the company said in an emailed statement.

The clearing of trees on the south grounds and other site preparation work for the construction started in September. Plans call for the ballroom to be ready before Trump’s term ends in January 2029.

Superville writes for the Associated Press.

For much of the year, the Dodgers’ starting rotation felt broken.

In large part, because the pitcher acquired to be its anchor was struggling to find himself.

It’s easy to forget now, with Blake Snell in the midst of a historic October performance that has helped lead the Dodgers back to the World Series. But for most of his debut season in Los Angeles, the two-time Cy Young Award winner and $182 million offseason signing was grappling with frustration, enduring what he described recently as “the hardest year of my career.”

First, there was well-documented early adversity: A shoulder problem that Snell quietly pitched through in two underwhelming starts at the beginning of the campaign, before sidelining him on the injured list for the next four months.

Then, there was an ordeal Snell detailed last week for the first time: In late August, on the same day his wife Haeley gave birth to the couple’s second child, Snell got so sick in the hospital that he fainted, was taken to the emergency room, and kept overnight hooked up to IV fluids.

“This is awful,” he thought to himself then.

Which now, has made his dominant postseason — including an 0.86 ERA in his first three playoff outings, and a scheduled Game 1 start in the World Series on Friday night — all the more gratifying.

“It’s been a lot,” Snell told The Times last week, while reflecting on a difficult season now primed for a triumphant final act. “But that’s what this is all about. Find the best in yourself. Fight through all the doubt, the bull—. And figure it out.”

In many ways, figuring things out has been the story of the Dodgers’ entire season. From their inconsistent and injury-riddled offense. To their underperforming and injury-ravaged bullpen. To their ever-evolving rotation, most of all.

Early in the year, that group dealt with its own rash of injuries, losing Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki and others in a harrowing flashback to 2024.

This time, most of their top arms returned healthy. But up until six weeks ago, they still faced genuine questions for the fall.

At that point, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was mired in an up-and-down stretch following his All-Star selection in the first half of the year, raising worries he could be tiring en route to making a career-high 30 starts.

Glasnow had returned from his early-season shoulder problem, but grinded through six starts from July 29 to Aug. 30 with an ERA above 4.00.

And while Shohei Ohtani was pitching well, he was also continuing to build up in his return from a second career Tommy John surgery.

Suddenly, it all left Snell to be the linchpin for the pitching staff — thrusting him to the center of the late-season resurgence that was soon to come.

“With every great starting staff, you got to have that anchor,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Having him get back to pitch the way he did, sort of raised the bar for everyone.”

This past winter, the Dodgers made Snell their top priority for a reason.

They looked at the patchwork rotation that nearly derailed their 2024 World Series run, and decided the year’s staff needed another star to build around.

Yamamoto, Glasnow and Ohtani already provided a well-established foundation. Clayton Kershaw, Emmet Sheehan, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May offered plenty of depth to withstand a 162-game marathon.

What was missing, however, was another bona fide ace; the kind capable of swinging postseason series and transforming October fortunes. In Snell, they saw such potential. His presence, they hoped, would complete their title-defense blueprint.

“As we were talking about ways that we could put ourselves in the best position to win a World Series in 2025,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said the day Snell was introduced by the club, “all conversations kept coming back to Blake.”

For most of the year, of course, Snell’s impact was limited. After his two injury-hampered starts at the beginning of the season, he remained out of action until after the trade deadline.

During that time, the Dodgers slow-played Snell’s recovery — putting him through a meticulous process (similar to their handling of Glasnow and Ohtani) that was designed to have him ready for the stretch run of the season, and hopefully peaking in time for the start of the playoffs.

Upon his initial return in early August, Snell seemed to be on track, with the left-hander posting a sub-2.00 ERA in his first four outings off the IL.

Then, however, came another unforeseen setback, after he rushed home from an Aug. 22 outing in San Diego for the birth of his child.

By the time Snell’s wife went into labor later that week, the 32-year-old arrived at the hospital feeling “extremely sick,” he recounted last week. At one point, as he got up from a couch to go hold his newly born baby, he said he passed out and fainted right there in the room.

Snell was taken to the emergency room and stayed there overnight, getting two IVs to combat an unspecified illness undoubtedly compounded by exhaustion.

“I couldn’t really stand,” he said. “I just felt awful.”

And yet, a few days later, there Snell was back atop the Dodger Stadium mound; making sure that, after his extended absence earlier in the campaign, he wouldn’t miss another start.

“That’s what I signed up to do,” Snell said. “When I pitch, I just forget about it. I don’t allow a lot of excuses.”

Snell’s illness was unknown at the time, but the physical toll it had taken quickly became obvious. His velocity was noticeably down in a three-run, 5 ⅓ innings start on Aug. 29 against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Six days later, he toiled again during a “frustrating” outing in Pittsburgh, yielding a season-high nine hits and five runs to the lowly Pirates.

Pushing through those games, though, gave Snell a key to hone in on for the rest of the season. “If this is who you are today, figure it out,” he told himself. And finally, with no more disruptions to his routine, improvement flowed quickly.

Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell puts his arm around catcher Ben Rortvedt as they walk back to the dugout together on Sept. 17.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Snell struck out a season-high 11 batters over six scoreless innings in a Sept. 10 win against the Colorado Rockies. He topped that a week later with 12 punchouts in seven scoreless frames against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Snell said after that outing, which was followed by one more six-inning, one-run start in his regular-season finale in Arizona: “[I’m] starting to be able to play catch with more intent and work on stuff … Coming through in the push to the postseason, and being able to make it, that’s what the whole season is for.”

The old adage in baseball is that hitting can be contagious.

In the case of this year’s Dodgers, starting pitching evidently can be, too.

As Snell got hot in September, so did the rest of the team’s resurgent rotation. Yamamoto rediscovered his early-season form, winning National League pitcher of the month with an immaculate 0.67 ERA in four starts. Glasnow finished the month with a 2.49 mark, after finally refining the mechanics of his throw. Ohtani, meanwhile, got stretched out to six innings, maintaining his two-way dominance over repeated full-length appearances.

The bar had been raised, with the constant cycle of gems continuing to push it a little bit higher.

The pitchers rode off the momentum and relished in their shared success; to the point that Roberts joked they almost seemed to be competing to outdo one another.

“I think we’re all good,” Glasnow said. “So it was just a matter of time until all of us did good at the same time.”

But in these playoffs, no one has been more lethal than Snell. In his 21 innings so far, he has thrown a scoreless frame in all but one.

Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell walks off the mound after striking out the last batter of the second inning of Game 2 of the NLDS against the Philadelphia Phillies.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

He was good in his first start, producing seven innings of two-run ball against the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card round. He was superb in the next, going six scoreless against the Phillies in a hostile road environment.

His masterpiece, however, came in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series, when he tossed eight scoreless innings, struck out 10 batters, and ruthlessly toyed with a Milwaukee Brewers lineup helpless to adjust to his manipulative changeup.

“We’ve all known this: Blake, when he’s right, is the best pitcher in the game,” Kershaw, his future Hall of Fame teammate, said afterward. “To have a guy that can do that, set the tone, and just have a guy that you can count on like that, it’s huge.”

For his part, Snell continues to insist that “I feel like I could be way better.” After his repeated setbacks earlier this year, he claims that, “even now, I’m still battling.”

The numbers, of course, tell a different story. In the live-ball era (since 1920), only three other pitchers with 20 or more innings in a postseason had at least 20 strikeouts and a sub-1.00 ERA (Sandy Koufax in 1965, John Smoltz in 1996 and Justin Verlander in 2013).

On Friday night, Snell will be on the bump once again, trying to continue a dazzling streak for himself and his rotation.

What once felt like the hardest year of his career, is now four wins away from being the most fulfilling.

“It’s what you have to go through to win a World Series,” he said. “You can find an excuse, or you can find a way to figure it out.”

PORTLAND, Maine — His U.S. Senate campaign under fire, Maine Democrat Graham Platner said Wednesday that a tattoo on his chest has been covered to no longer reflect an image widely recognized as a Nazi symbol.

The first-time political candidate said he got the skull and crossbones tattoo in 2007, when he was in his 20s and in the Marine Corps. It happened during a night of drinking while he was on leave in Croatia, he said, adding he was unaware until recently that the image has been associated with Nazi police.

Platner, in an Associated Press interview, said that while his campaign initially said he would remove the tattoo, he chose to cover it up with another tattoo due to the limited options where he lives in rural Maine.

“Going to a tattoo removal place is going to take a while,” he said. “I wanted this thing off my body.”

The initial tattoo image resembled a specific symbol of Hitler’s paramilitary Schutzstaffel, or SS, which was responsible for the systematic murders of millions of Jews and others in Europe during World War II. Platner didn’t offer details about the new tattoo, but offered to send the AP a photo later Wednesday.

The oyster farmer is mounting a progressive campaign against Republican Susan Collins, who has held the Senate seat for 30 years. The crowded Democratic primary field includes two-term Gov. Janet Mills.

Platner said he had never been questioned about the tattoo’s connections to Nazi symbols in the 20 years he has had it. He said it was there when he enlisted in the Army, which requires an examination for tattoos of hate symbols.

“I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail,” Platner said.

Questions about the tattoo come after the recent discovery of Platner’s now-deleted online statements that included dismissing military sexual assaults, questioning Black patrons’ gratuity habits and criticizing police officers and rural Americans.

Platner has apologized for those comments, saying they were made after he left the Army in 2012, when he was struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

He has resisted calls to drop out of the race and has the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who has described Platner as a stronger candidate for the seat than Mills. Another primary rival, Jordan Wood, a onetime chief of staff to former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Platner should drop out because “Democrats need to be able to condemn Trump’s actions with moral clarity” and Platner “no longer can.”

Platner said he was not ashamed to confront his past comments and actions because it reflects the lessons he needed to take to get where he is today.

“I don’t look at this as a liability,” he told the AP. “I look at this as is a life that I have lived, a journey that has been difficult, that has been full of struggle, that has also gotten me to where I am today. And I’m very proud of who I am.”

Platner planned a town hall Wednesday in Ogunquit, Maine.

Kruesi and Whittle write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I.

Michael Jordan was nervous.

All he had to do was sink a free throw, but a lot was riding on that one shot.

It had nothing to do with a championship or a scoring title or the outcome of any meaningful game.

It had everything to do with being Michael Jordan, the man considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time.

In his new role as a special contributor to NBC’s coverage of the NBA — which returned to the network Tuesday night after a 23-year absence — Jordan was interviewed by Mike Tirico in a segment called “MJ: Insights to Excellence.”

In it, the six-time NBA champion who is still the league’s all-time leader in points per game made a somewhat startling admission.

“I haven’t picked up a ball in years,” Jordan said.

Pressed on the matter by a stunned Tirico, Jordan said he was last persuaded to shoot a ball when he was renting a house during the Ryder Cup (he did not specify that it was the most recent edition of biennial event that took place last month in Farmingdale, N.Y.).

The house had a basketball court, and the home owner wanted his grandchildren to see the legendary player in action. Jordan agreed to attempt one free throw.

“When I stepped up to shoot your free throw, it’s the most nervous I’ve been in years,” Jordan said. “The reason being is those kids heard the stories of the parents about what I did 30 years ago. So the expectation is 30 years prior, and I haven’t touched the basketball.”

But this is Air Jordan we’re talking about.

He swished it, right?

Right???

“Absolutely,” Jordan said. “The most gratifying event that made my whole week is that is that I was able to please that kid, not knowing if I could.”

Jordan retired as a player for the third and final time in 2003. Since then, he has become a highly successful businessman — he was the controlling owner of the Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets from 2010-2023 (he still retains a minority ownership in the team) and is the controlling owner of the NASCAR Cup Series team 23XI Racing — with a net worth of close to $4 billion.

In addition to his business pursuits, Jordan told Tirico, he strives to spend as much time as possible with his family.

“You never really know when you in the prime of your career how much time you really do not have for family,” Jordan said. “That’s what I have time to do now. I mean, the most valuable asset I have is time. So that’s probably why you don’t see enough of me, because that time I’m trying to spend with family members and things that I’ve been missing out on for such a long time.”

All that said, however, Jordan admits he still loves basketball and does wish he could be out there on the court playing at his peak.

“In all honesty, I wish I could take a magic pill, put on shorts and go out and play the game of basketball today,” Jordan said. “Because that’s who I am. That type of competition, that type of competitiveness is what I live for, and I miss it. I miss that aspect of playing the game of basketball, being able to challenge myself against what people see as great basketball.

“But it’s better for me to be sitting here talking to you, as opposed to popping my Achilles and I’m in a wheelchair for a while, but it’s nice to be able to share the things that can still make the game great going forward.”

VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is expected to soon announce that it will return a few dozen artifacts to Indigenous communities in Canada as part of its reckoning with the Catholic Church’s troubled role in helping suppress Indigenous culture in the Americas, officials said Wednesday.

The items, including an Inuit kayak, are part of the Vatican Museum’s ethnographic collection, known as the Anima Mundi museum. The collection has been a source of controversy for the Vatican amid the broader museum debate over the restitution of cultural goods taken from Indigenous peoples during colonial periods.

Negotiations on returning the Vatican items accelerated after Pope Francis in 2022 met with Indigenous leaders who had traveled to the Vatican to receive his apology for the church’s role in running Canada’s disastrous residential schools. During their visit, they were shown some objects in the collection, including wampum belts, war clubs and masks, and asked for them to be returned.

Francis later said he was in favor of returning the items and others in the Vatican collection on a case-by-case basis, saying: “In the case where you can return things, where it’s necessary to make a gesture, better to do it.”

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Wednesday it has been working with Indigenous groups on returning the items to their “originating communities.” It said it expected the Holy See to announce the return. Vatican and Canadian officials said they expected an announcement in the coming weeks, and that the items could arrive on Canadian soil before the end of the year.

The Globe and Mail newspaper first reported on the progress in the restitution negotiations.

Doubt cast on whether the items were freely given

Most of the items in the Vatican collection were sent to Rome by Catholic missionaries for a 1925 exhibition in the Vatican gardens that was a highlight of that year’s Holy Year.

The Vatican insists the items were “gifts” to Pope Pius XI, who wanted to celebrate the church’s global reach, its missionaries and the lives of the Indigenous peoples they evangelized.

But historians, Indigenous groups and experts have long questioned whether the items could really have been offered freely, given the power imbalances at play in Catholic missions at the time. In those years, Catholic religious orders were helping to enforce the Canadian government’s forced assimilation policy of eliminating Indigenous traditions, which Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called “cultural genocide.”

Part of that policy included confiscating items used in Indigenous spiritual and traditional rituals, such as the 1885 potlatch ban that prohibited the integral First Nations ceremony. Those confiscated items ended up in museums in Canada, the U.S. and Europe, as well as private collections.

The return of the items in the Vatican collection will follow the “church-to-church” model the Holy See used in 2023, when it gave its Parthenon Marbles to the Orthodox Christian Church in Greece. The three fragments were described by the Vatican as a “donation” to the Orthodox church, not a state-to-state repatriation to the Greek government.

In this case, the Vatican is expected to hand over the items to the Canadian bishops conference, with the explicit understanding that the ultimate keepers will be the Indigenous communities, a Canadian official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are not concluded.

What happens after the items are returned

The items, accompanied by whatever provenance information the Vatican has, will be taken first to the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec. There, experts and Indigenous groups will try to identify where the items originated, down to the specific community, and what should be done with them, the official said.

The official declined to say how many items were under negotiation or who decided what would be returned, but said the total numbered “a few dozen.” The aim is to get the items back this year, the official said, noting the 2025 Jubilee which celebrates hope but is also a time for repentance.

This year’s Jubilee comes on the centenary of the 1925 Holy Year and missionary exhibit, which is now so controversial that its 100th anniversary has been virtually ignored by the Vatican, which celebrates a lot of anniversaries.

The Assembly of First Nations said some logistical issues need to be finalized before the objects can be returned, including establishing protocols.

“For First Nations, these items are not artifacts. They are living, sacred pieces of our cultures and ceremonies and must be treated as the invaluable objects that they are,” National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak told Canadian Press.

Gloria Bell, associate professor of art history at McGill University who has conducted extensive research on the 1925 exhibit, said the items were acquired during an era of “Catholic Imperialism” by a pope who “praised missionaries and their genocidal labors in Indigenous communities as ‘heroes of the faith.’”

“This planned return marks a significant shift in the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and perhaps the beginning of healing,” said Bell, who is of Metis ancestry and wrote about the 1925 exhibit in “Eternal Sovereigns: Indigenous Artists, Activists, and Travelers Reframing Rome.”

Winfield writes for the Associated Press.

Hi and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. I was hoping for Seattle, since they had never made the World Series before.

Here we are on Wednesday, with the World Series two days away. It will have been a week off for the Dodgers, while the Toronto Blue Jays will have had only three days off. They say that rust will hurt a batter more than it will a pitcher. Will the time off hurt the Dodgers?

Before this season, there have been four times when one league’s LCS went seven games and the other league’s went four games, giving them much more time off before the World Series. One of these you will be very familiar with:

1988
NLCS: Dodgers defeat the Mets, 4-3
ALCS: A’s defeat the Red Sox, 4-0
World Series: Dodgers defeat the A’s, 4-1

Oakland, which had the mighty Bash Brothers of José Canseco and Mark McGwire, hit .177 in the series, with Canseco and McGwire getting only one hit each (both were homers). They scored 11 runs in the series, and never more than four in a game, which came in Game 1 on Canseco’s grand slam off of Tim Belcher. This seemed not so much a case of rust as it was the A’s running into an outstanding Dodger pitching staff, led by Orel Hershiser, who pitched a three-hit shutout in Game 2. The Dodgers hit .246 in the series and outhomered the A’s, 5-2.

2006
NLCS: Cardinals defeat the Mets, 4-3
ALCS: Tigers defeat the A’s. 4-0
World Series: Cardinals defeat the Tigers, 4-1

The Tigers hit .199 in the series and scored 11 runs. The Cardinals went 83-78 during the season, including 12-17 in September, so they weren’t exactly a juggernaut. Plácido Polanco went 0 for 17, Curtis Granderson went two for 21 and Magglio Ordóñez went two for 19. They had three guys who hit .353 or better, so it was all or nothing for their offense. Neither side hit well, as the Cardinals hit just .226.

2007
NLCS: Rockies defeat the Diamondbacks, 4-0
ALCS: Red Sox defeat the Indians, 4-3
World Series: Red Sox defeat the Rockies, 4-0

The Rockies hit .218 in the series and scored 10 runs. The Red Sox hit .333 and scored 29 runs, so this was more a case of bad pitching by the Rockies, as their starting pitchers combined for an 8.33 ERA. The Red Sox hit an amazing 18 doubles in four games.

2012
NLCS: Giants defeat the Cardinals, 4-3
ALCS: Tigers defeat the Yankees, 4-0
World Series: Giants defeat the Tigers, 4-0

The Tigers hit .159 in the series and scored only six runs. Jhonny Peralta went one for 15, Prince Fielder went one for 14, Miguel Cabrera went three for 13. The Giants hit .242 and scored 16 runs.

So, the teams that had extra time off lost all four World Series and went 4-16 in the 20 games played. Three of the four hit below .200.

That stat does not bode well for the Dodgers, but it is an extremely small sample size. Keep in mind the Dodgers had six days off before the start of last year’s postseason, and that turned out just fine.

What are the Dodgers doing to combat the extra time off? Jack Harris wrote a story on it you can check out here.

Some key takeaways:

—Now, as they did back last year, the Dodgers are incorporating more simulated game activities into their schedule. On Sunday, they played a seven-inning sim game. On Monday, they took more rounds of live batting practice.

—“I think it’s nice to have rest and kind of let everybody take a deep breath and rest up or whatnot. … Just rest up and keep sharpening your skills.” Mookie Betts said.

—“All we’re trying to do right here is get four more wins to win a World Series,” Miguel Rojas said. “Last year, when we had the bye, and the year before, we were trying to get through one more month of baseball. You’re trying to prepare for that. You’re trying to get some guys healthy. I just feel like the difference with this one [versus] the one we had the last couple years is everybody is locked in on winning the World Series. We’re really close to doing that. And winning four more games is the most important thing.”

America hates the Dodgers

The people at Betonline.ag have analzyed tweets, hashtags and direct keyword phrases about whom fans are rooting for. On X, 92% of fans are rooting for Toronto.

The state-by-state rooting breakdown:

Dodgers – 4 states (California, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah)
Blue Jays – 46 states (All other states)

Poll results

We asked, “Which team would you like to see the Dodgers play in the World Series?”

After 16,483 votes:

Seattle, 84.3%
Toronto, 15.7%

Poll time

What is your prediction for this World Series?

Click here to vote in our survey.

In case you missed it

Shaikin: Most MLB owners want to curb big spenders like the Dodgers. What does the union say?

World Series preview: Are the Dodgers actually the favorites? | Dodgers Debate

Here’s how to see the Dodgers in the World Series in person without a ticket

Nine concerns the Dodgers should have about facing the Blue Jays in the World Series

How Dodgers are navigating their World Series bye week: ‘Keep sharpening your skills’

Why the Dodgers’ return to the World Series was only a matter of time

Shohei Ohtani highlighted in film tracing history of Japanese and American baseball

And finally

Vin Scully and special guest Fernando Valenzuela throw out the first pitch before Game 2 of the 2017 World Series. Watch and listen here.

Until next time…

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

With two weeks left in the regular season for high school football, it’s become clear there’s a large and growing list of candidates for coach of the year. They are considered based on exceeding expectations, winning championships or helping to engineer a program turnaround when no one saw it coming.

Let’s review the great coaching performances so far this season:

Los Alamitos football coach Ray Fenton stands with his players on Thursday during an Alpha League opener at SoFi Stadium.

(Craig Weston)

• Ray Fenton, Los Alamitos: The man looks so fit he could run around any stadium without breaking a sweat. Few expected the Griffins to be 8-0 at this point, let alone be in the running for a Southern Section Division 1 playoff berth. He’s molded a team of best friends into believing in themselves no matter the opponent. San Clemente and Mission Viejo are the only teams standing in the way of a 10-0 regular season.

• Terrance Whitehead, Crenshaw: When head coach Robert Garrett was placed on administrative leave before the season began, the Crenshaw grad and longtime assistant took over. Garrett helped train him, and Crenshaw is 7-1 going into a Coliseum League title decider against King/Drew on Friday. The Cougars have discipline, resiliency and are playing to make Garrett and his assistants proud.

  

  Crenshaw interim coach Terrance Whitehead speaking with quarterback Danniel Flowers.

  (Robert H. Helfman)

• Brad Vonnahme, Crespi: Who predicted the Celts would be 8-0 and headed to the Del Rey League championship in Vonnahme’s third season of a massive rebuilding job? He hasn’t brought in transfers, rather relying on players who start out as freshmen learning the game and move up. There’s a group of sophomores being developed who could be very good in the coming seasons.

• Jason Negro, St. John Bosco: The Braves have established themselves as the No. 1 team in California, if not the nation, while relying on an improving sophomore quarterback and four receivers headed to college success. He knows championships are won with the help of the offensive and defensive lines, and those are the areas to watch as the playoffs approach.

  

  St. John Bosco coach Jason Negro has his team ranked No. 1 in the nation.

  (Craig Weston)

• Jon Ellinghouse, Sierra Canyon: The Trailblazers are 8-0 and no one has come close to beating them. The season will be based on whether they can break through and disrupt the St. John Bosco-Mater Dei domination. Their defense is clearly the best in Southern California.
• Dylen Smith, Palisades: He lost his field, lost his weight room and nearly lost his team to the Palisades fire. And yet, the Dolphins have persevered and are 8-0 with players who stayed and a couple new ones who wanted to experience an adventure with no guarantee of success.
• Chad Johnson, Mission Viejo: With the Diablos (7-1) having wins over Santa Margarita, Folsom and San Diego Lincoln, Johnson challenged his team with a difficult nonleague schedule and they’ve met that challenge. He placed his trust in quarterback Luke Fahey, and don’t doubt how far this team can advance.
• Rick Clausen, Westlake: An assistant coach all his life, Clausen decided to accept the head coaching position even though his wife died of cancer. He’s somehow managed to balance parenting duties and coaching duties, helping a Westlake team go from 0-10 last season to 8-0 this season in his rookie year.
• Tony Henney, Dana Hills: Wherever Henney goes, he succeeds. He’s been head coach at Nordhoff, Trabuco Hills, St. Bonaventure and Westlake. He has Dana Hills at 8-0 going into a game on Friday against 8-0 Laguna Beach, whose own coach, John Shanahan, surrounded himself with an elite group of assistants, including former JSerra head coach Scott McKnight. The winner of the battle of the unbeatens might not be stopped the rest of the way.

• Kevin Hettig, Corona del Mar: With his team 8-0 and tough games ahead, Hettig has quietly and competently prepared the Sea Kings to stay focused and keep improving each week.

  

  Corona del Mar head coach Kevin Hettig, quarterback Brady Annett, and NMUSD superintendent Dr. Wesley Smith.

  (Don Leach/Staff Photographer)

• Jason Miller, Leuzinger: Who loses his only quarterback who can pass and still keeps the team winning? Miller and the Olympians (6-1) are on the verge of ending Inglewood’s reign as a league champion by using 5-foot-8 Journee Tonga as his versatile offensive weapon and replacement quarterback.

• Mike Moon, Oxnard Pacifica: Moon is trying to get his always underrated 8-0 team to run the table in the Marmonte League. He’s helped develop junior quarterback Taylor Lee while managing rising expectations and winning close games.

  

  Mike Moon of Oxnard Pacifica has his team at 8-0.

  (Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

• Raymond Carter, Torrance: The former All-City running back at Crenshaw has his team at 8-0, beating local team after local team led by junior quarterback Gibson Turner, who has 20 touchdown passes.
• Mark Carson, Rio Hondo Prep: Year after year, Carson has Rio Hondo Prep ready to succeed. This year’s 8-0 start is no different. A challenge ahead will be playing in a tougher playoff division.
• Darryl Goree, Palm Springs: An 8-0 start has the Indians being the talk of town. Senior linebacker Koa Rapolla has been turned loose and is averaging 13 tackles a game.
• Rick Curtis, Crean Lutheran: Curtis figured out how to best use one of the best athletes in the Southland, quarterback/point guard Caden Jones, and it has led to an 8-0 record.

A few months ago, my younger daughter, Darby, and I were settling into our seats at the local AMC. As the previews rolled, she gasped. “I know that voice,” she said. “That’s Aidan. Mom, that’s Aidan.”

I looked up just in time to see a familiar shock of brown curls. It was indeed Aidan Delbis, former member of the Falcon Players at Crescenta Valley High School in La Crescenta, a kid I had seen perform alongside my daughter in countless student plays.

Only now he was seated at a kitchen table with Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone as the words “Bugonia” and then “directed by Yorgos Lanthimos” flashed across the screen.

“Did you not know?” I asked my daughter. CV is a fine public school with a good theater program, but it isn’t exactly an incubator for nepo babies and aspiring stars. That one of their own had stepped off last year’s graduation stage and into a major film production should have been very big news long before a trailer hit theaters.

“No,” she said, furiously messaging various friends. “But now they will.”

Now they will indeed. When he joined the cast of “Bugonia,” Delbis didn’t just become a part of Lanthimos’ highly anticipated remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 black comedy “Save the Green Planet!” He also entered the mythology of which Hollywood dreams are made: A 17-year old sends in his first-ever open-call submission and lands a major role in a very big movie.

With a script by Will Tracy and obvious Oscar potential, “Bugonia” had its world premiere in August at this year’s Venice Film Festival before launching onto the festival circuit, including screenings in Toronto and New York, in preparation for its release this Friday. A slightly absurdist, darkly funny thriller with political undertones, it revolves around the kidnapping of a pharmaceutical company’s CEO, Michelle (Stone), by wild-eyed conspiracy theorist Teddy (Plemons) and his loyal cousin Don (Delbis).

From left, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons in the movie “Bugonia.”

(Atsushi Nishijima / Focus Features)

Teddy believes Michelle is an alien sent to destroy Earth. Don believes in Teddy. Though he falls in with Teddy’s plans, he often questions them, serving as a continual reminder that even within Teddy’s paranoid view of the universe, there is such a thing as going too far. Don is, in many ways, the heart of the film.

He is also, like the actor who plays him, autistic.

Delbis — who chooses to self-describe as autistic rather than neurodivergent — is not someone who has long nursed dreams of stardom. He took drama classes all through high school, but it wasn’t until his junior year, Delbis says, “that I started to get more into the process. I found the general process of acting, of understanding and investing in different personalities, to be fun and sometimes scary.”

Still, he says, “I wasn’t really sure that I wanted it to be my main career. But it so happened that this happened while I was in high school, and here we are.”

Here is the Four Seasons on a very rainy October afternoon where Delbis, now 19, has just finished his first solo photo shoot and is sitting, fortified by Goldfish crackers (his go-to-snack), for his first long one-on-one interview. He went to some of the film festivals and just returned from “Bugonia’s” London premiere, where he signed autographs on the red carpet and enjoyed flying first class. His parents, Katy and David Delbis, are seated nearby, as is his access and creative coach, Elaine Hall.

Delbis is a tall, good-natured young man who speaks with a distinctive cadence and in an unwaveringly calm tone. Aside from a habit of repeating himself as he searches for what he wants to say next, he seems more comfortable discussing his experience with filmmaking than many of the dozens of more experienced actors I have interviewed in this very hotel over the years.

“We should try to be more empathetic to people with different worldviews because you never really know what those people are going through,” Delbis says. “The movie feels very relevant to that theme.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“It all started,” he says, “when my mom was friends with this agent, April, and one day she sent Mom an audition that seemed pretty promising, so I submitted for that. And they really liked it and called me back.”

It actually started a bit further back than that. With Plemons and Stone already cast, Lanthimos had decided that he wanted a nonprofessional actor to play Don.

“We went really wide in trying to find someone really special,” the Greek-born director of “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” says in a phone interview. “With these two experienced actors, I wanted to bring in a different dynamic. As we looked at people, I felt that the character would be more interesting if he was neurodivergent.”

Casting director Jennifer Venditti put out an open call, which April Smallwood of Spotlight Development saw and sent to Delbis’ mother, Katy.

“A happy-go-lucky young man, neurodivergent — it practically described Aidan,” Katy says in a later interview. La Crescenta may not be an industry hub, but, like many in L.A., the Delbis family has a Hollywood connection. Aidan’s older brother, Tristan (who is also neurodivergent), works at a movie theater; father David is about to retire after years at the Writers Guild Health Fund; and Katy, a self-described “creative,” has done some acting herself. But no one saw film-acting as a potential career for Aidan, who was set to take a gap year after high school. And, Katy says, she had no idea what sort of movie it was for. “It said for a ‘big film,’ but they always say that.”

She thought of it a bit like the time Delbis, a member of the high school track team, decided he also wanted to try out for basketball. “As I drove him to the school,” Katy said, “I told him that he might not get on since there were a lot of kids who had been playing basketball for years, which he had not. He said, ‘Mom, I just want to see what it’s like.’”

Now Delbis wanted to see what it would be like to audition for a “big film.”

Aidan Delbis in the movie “Bugonia.”

(Atsushi Nishijima / Focus Features)

He had recently performed the Vincent Price monologue from “Thriller” for the school talent show, which Katy filmed on her phone, so Smallwood submitted that. Venditti called Smallwood the next day and met with Delbis over Zoom. Thus began a monthslong process of meetings, rehearsals and auditions.

“We focused on him right away,” Venditti says. “He seemed to have it all. And he was very committed.”

“I was really unaware of how big a project it was,” Delbis said. “I had never seen a film by Yorgos.”

In March, Lanthimos, Stone and Plemons were in L.A. for the Oscars, so they all met with Delbis and came away impressed.

Lanthimos thought of casting a neurodivergent actor in a part because it would bring a natural clarity and unfiltered unpredictability to the role. He didn’t consider it any more challenging than working with any other actor. And when he met Delbis, Lanthimos says, “I just thought: That’s him.”

“Just from watching that first tape, you could see there was something so magnetic about him,” said Stone during a recent phone interview. (She is also a producer on the film.) “Don is the audience’s window, the one who can see through the charade.”

Still, there were many more steps to take.

“It’s a big leap for any nonprofessional,” Stone says. “It’s a big part in what is essentially a three-hander.”

From left, director Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis and Jesse Plemons at the Venice Film Festival, where “Bugonia” had its world premiere in August.

(Alessandra Tarantino / Invision / AP)

For an autistic actor, it’s an even bigger leap. As talented as Delbis might be, he also had to be able to handle the pressures, boredom and chaos of a film set. Venditti reached out to Hall. The founder of the Miracle Project and mother to a now-adult neurodivergent son, Hall is an acting coach who has worked for more than 20 years to increase the presence and understanding of neurodivergent and disabled people. She is often asked to gauge the ability of actors to take on a certain role — their ease with the material, their physical stamina, their level of independence and their emotional accessibility.

Delbis, she says, ticked all the boxes. He loves horror films, he was on the track team and he was, at the time, about to travel without his parents on a school trip to Sweden.

He is, as he says himself, “a low-key guy,” so Hall gave him some exercises to help him portray more extreme emotions and prepare him for when other cast members might do the same. (One subsequent rehearsal involved a scene in which one of the actors screamed repeatedly.)

Often, Hall says, perfecting these exercises can take weeks; Delbis, working with his mother, did it in a weekend. She also helped him prepare for his meeting with and then chemistry read with Plemons.

Delbis says he was “a bit nervous, though I don’t know why.” He did not recognize Plemons’ name or his face. “I had watched ‘Breaking Bad,’ but I didn’t realize Jesse played Todd. Halfway through [the read], I told him he looked like Todd and he said, ‘That’s because I played him.’ I’ve seen him in other things since then,” Delbis adds. “He’s a very solid actor.”

More important, he says, “Jesse seemed to me to be a very cool guy.”

That feeling is mutual. “When we brought Aidan in, I was excited and a little nervous,” Plemons says during a phone call from London. They started with one of the more extreme scenes from the film. “I was finding my feet too. When it became apparent that he was going to be fine with the darker scenes, I said, ‘This is him; this is Don.’”

While all this was happening, Delbis was finishing his senior year, which included a starring role in a production of “Almost Maine.” “It was not overly hard,” he says, but sometimes it was a lot. “I did one read and then I had to go to rehearsal for the play.”

Venditti remembers that day very well. “Here we were being so careful, treating him like he was fragile and not wanting to overload him,” she says laughing, “and he’s just calmly multitasking.”

When Delbis got the role in May, he and his family signed a nondisclosure agreement, which is why none of his friends knew his news after graduation, and Delbis and his family flew to the U.K. to begin filming. It was a tough secret for his parents to keep. But “any time it looked like I might slip,” Katy says, “Aidan shut me down.” He celebrated his 18th birthday near the set outside of Windsor, where production ran for three months before moving for two weeks in Atlanta.

Hall was hired to be Delbis’ on-set access and creative coach, a job she believes she has invented, meant to make the experience for neurodivergent and disabled actors easier. She suggested that Lanthimos and Tracy simplify Delbis’ script pages, stripping down the description of action “so he wouldn’t get stuck thinking he had to do exactly what was on the page,” she says, which they were happy to do.

“We didn’t want to put any limits on him,” Lanthimos says.

Delbis chose most of his costumes (except a beekeeping suit, motivated by the plot, which he says “was very hot”), which mirrored his own wardrobe preferences down to the horror film t-shirts and mismatched socks. Even the food Teddy and Don eat during the film reflects Delbis’ taste: mac ’n’ cheese, taquitos, spaghetti.

Hall ensured Delbis had extra time before filming, during which she could help him prepare with rehearsal and centering exercises. She visited the set before he arrived so she could tell him exactly what to expect and worked with the production team to ensure that he had his own space between takes. “They built us a little house, with horror posters on the wall and stuffed animals that looked like his cats,” she says. As there were no Goldfish available in the U.K., the production had them flown in.

“Having Elaine there was amazing,” Venditti says. “The idea of having someone to act as eyes and ears of what people are actually experiencing on set, I think it’s groundbreaking. I don’t know why we haven’t done it before.”

Delbis spent a fair amount of time with Plemons, who Hall said occasionally stepped in to help if she had to be away from set.

“We did a decent amount of goofing around,” Delbis says. “The bond that developed between us occurred quite naturally. I consider Jesse a friend.”

For his part, Plemons enjoyed being around someone who spoke his mind.

“I so appreciated Aidan’s inability to tell a lie,” Plemons says. “On a set, you spend so much time waiting around, and he would say, ‘What are we doing? What is taking so long?’ Which was exactly what I was thinking. He’s a very smart, sensitive, self-assured guy, and if you’re unclear in what you’re saying, he will let you know.”

“Aidan is just so funny,” says his “Bugonia” co-star Emma Stone. “We spent a lot of time together in a basement and Aidan had so many jokes about that.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Stone says that while she and Delbis had a friendly rapport, she hung back a little when they weren’t shooting. “I didn’t want to form the same kind of bond Aidan had with Jesse because [in the film] it’s them against me and I didn’t want to do too much to mess with that.”

But, the two-time Oscar winner says, “Aidan is just so funny. He was on a jag during the kidnapping scene. We spent a lot of time together in a basement and Aidan had so many jokes about that.”

“I went through all of ‘Bugonia’ thinking I had never seen Emma in anything,” Delbis says. “Then I realized my parents had shown me a clip of a woman getting very involved in a birthday card — ‘Pocketful of Sunshine’ — and that was from ‘Easy A.’”

When he was filming, Delbis was all business. Several of the takes which he ad-libbed made it into the film and Delbis is proud of that.

“Despite being in more extreme situations than I’ve been in, there’s something of Don’s emotion and struggles that did feel very familiar to me,” he says. “Feelings of great distress and helplessness and conflictedness and confusion. I have felt that in classes in high school.”

“Aidan has great instincts,” Lanthimos says. “In a scene toward the end [of the film], he was so moving, it was the first time I have ever teared up on set.

There were difficult days — one moment with Plemons, Delbis says, took many takes. “It was hot AF and involved me getting more worked up that I am used to getting,” he remembers. But he appreciated Lanthimos’ willingness to let him try things. “In one scene, Jesse throws a chair and I thought that seemed pretty cool. So at the end of the day, they let me throw a chair. I hope that makes it into the outtakes reel.”

He was also very pleased when the crew threw him a s’mores party at the end of filming. “There was a fire pit on set that looked perfect for s’mores,” he says. “And I told them that, so it was my idea to have a s’mores party.”

Delbis is happy with how the film turned out, including his performance. “I think I looked pretty baller in that suit,” he says of one scene. Though he doesn’t have an opinion on the authenticity debate — whether autistic actors should always be the ones to play autistic characters — he thinks it’s “cool that writers and directors are starting to be more conscientious and give more realistic and respectful depictions of neurodivergent people and characters.”

He is more concerned that audiences understand what he thinks is the most important message of the movie.

“We should try to be more empathetic to people with different worldviews because you never really know what those people are going through,” he says. “The movie feels very relevant to that theme. God knows, people aren’t always willing to be tolerant.”

At a car lot just off the 405 in the San Fernando Valley, there is more than meets the eye.

Galpin Motors sells new and used Fords — touting itself as one of the largest dealerships in the world. But next door, it also displays exotic rides: Shelby Cobras. A vintage purple Rolls-Royce. Sylvester Stallone’s Harley from “The Expendables.”

And then there’s the on-site diner, the Horseless Carriage, where the vinyl-covered booths have hosted generations of Valley power brokers and men who have shaped the policies of the Los Angeles Police Department for decades.

Bert Boeckmann, owner and president of Galpin Motors, stands with new Fords in his showroom.

( Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Former Galpin boss Herbert “Bert” Boeckmann was an influential figure in local politics and a member of the city’s Board of Police Commissioners, the civilian panel that oversees the LAPD. A longtime lawyer for car dealer, Alan Skobin, also served on the commission.

Now, another member of the Galpin Motors family is poised to carry on the legacy.

The City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether Jeffrey Skobin, a vice president at Galpin, will follow in his father Alan’s footsteps and join the commission.

Appointed by Mayor Karen Bass, the younger Skobin, 45, already serves on an advisory board that gives the mayor input on issues facing the Valley. He did not respond to an interview request from The Times.

Skobin cleared one hurdle last week, when the council’s public safety committee approved his nomination by a 3-1 vote.

Several committee members professed to knowing Skobin’s family, with one lauding him for the “good stock you come from.”

Skobin said he wouldn’t take the role of commissioner lightly. The five-member panel acts like a corporate board of directors, setting LAPD policies, approving its budget and scrutinizing police shootings.

“I recognize the seriousness of this role and the gravity of this responsibility,” Skobin told the committee. “My story is deeply tied to Los Angeles.”

A mega-dealership with five franchises, Galpin has long wielded influence as a source of jobs and tax revenue for the city. It was Boeckmann who established the business as a powerful player in local politics.

Rare classic Porsche sports cars on display in the Galpin Hall of Customs during the LA Auto Show’s opening day at Los Angeles Convention Center in 2021.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Boeckmann was a self-made millionaire who started out as a car salesman in 1953, seven years after Galpin opened. He eventually bought out the company’s founder, Frank Galpin.

In the decades that followed, he amassed a large corporate empire in the Valley that also included vast land holdings and a film production company.

Boeckmann and his wife, Jane, longtime publisher of the Valley magazine, backed George W. Bush for president, Gray Davis for governor and Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor.

Galpin’s website features a picture of Boeckmann and his wife meeting California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1974. “When I think about what’s right in America, I will always think of men like Bert Boeckmann,” said the future president, according to the company.

Samantha Stevens, a Los Angeles political consultant and former legislative staffer, said candidates routinely made pilgrimages to the Galpin lot on Roscoe Boulevard to court Boekmann.

“Everybody would go and ask for their support, not just the money. You wanted the name on the endorsement list,” Stevens said.

Although Boeckmann leaned conservative, she said, he was also a force behind the scenes in L.A.’s left-leaning City Hall and seemed to put aside politics when he found causes or candidates that he believed in — including a failed push for the Valley to break away and form its own city.

Ford Explorers on a Galpin storage lot on Woodley Avenue near Van Nuys Airport.

(Los Angeles Times)

“I remember sending my liberal Democrat candidates to meet with them, and they would get donations,” Stevens said.

First appointed to the Police Commission by then-Mayor Tom Bradley in 1983, Boeckmann served two stints under three mayors.

During his 17 combined years on the panel, Boeckmann gained a reputation as its most conservative member — with critics calling him an apologist for former Chief Daryl Gates.

He sat on the commission during two of the darkest chapters in LAPD history: The fallout of the 1991 beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the Rampart corruption scandal, which uncovered cops planting evidence, dealing drugs and committing other crimes.

Boekmann died in 2023 at age 93, but the company still maintains close ties with both the LAPD and City Hall.

Campaign finance records show that Galpin and its employees, including Jeffrey Skobin, have made contributions to numerous local, state and politicians, though not Bass’ mayoral campaign.

Yet when Bass announced the possibility of laying off city workers earlier this year, she chose Galpin as the backdrop of her news conference to rally support.

Last November, less than a week after taking over as LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell held a meet- and-greet at the company’s gleaming showroom of exotic cars across the street.

Galpin twice supported McDonnell’s campaigns for Los Angeles County sheriff, with records showing tens of thousands of dollars in donations during his successful run in 2014 and his failed re-election bid four years later.

In years’ past, the company came under scrutiny after it was revealed that Boeckmann leased city land and sold cars to the city. A controversy arose when the City Council spent $2.4 million to help buy a 239-acre parcel from Boeckmann in Mandeville Canyon. For a time, the LAPD stored some undercover vehicles on Galpin properties.

Those deep ties have led to questions about whether Skobin can be an effective police watchdog. The mayor’s office scrutinized Skobin’s business for any conflicts of interest before putting forward his nomination, city officials said.

LAPD Capt. Johnny Smith said Galpin has given to countless charitable causes and regularly provides meeting space for community groups.

“Their support has always come from a place of partnership, grounded in the belief that together, we can do better for this city we all love,” said Smith, who said he has known the Skobin family for years.

Alan Skobin, 74, told The Times his work on the police commission, on which he served from 2003 to 2012, gave his son a unique window into how the department functions — and what it takes to provide police oversight.

An auto enthusiast views the Batmobile, which was formerly a Ford Futura, on display at Galpin Hall of Customs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Number one, don’t take things that are brought to you at face value. Look beyond the surface,” he said. “Always remember you are a representative of the public, and keep that perspective. Continue to be a good listener of various views.”

The elder Skobin recalled how his teenage son once came home upset over a traffic stop that occurred while he was driving to school with a friend, who was Black. The teens felt they were pulled over for no reason — and the incident left a lasting impression about discrimination by law enforcement, Skobin said.

“One thing I know about LAPD is things slip,” he said. “And Jeff is the kind of person that will look into those things.”

The only vote against the younger Skobin when he appeared before the council’s public safety committee last week came from Hugo Soto-Martinez, who peppered him with questions about his reaction to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration raids.

“Heartbreaking,” Skobin said, noting that roughly half of Galpin’s employees are of Mexican descent. He is also married to a Mexican American woman.

Soto-Martinez also pressed him on how he would respond if he discovered that local law enforcement shares license plate reader data with federal authorities.

The license plate data allows law enforcement to track the movements of Angelenos in their vehicles without court orders, and some worry that they could potentially be used to track people for deportation.

“I think I would take a position to seek to understand the legality of that, what options there are,” Skobin said.

If this World Series is going to turn into a food fight about the economics of baseball, Dave Roberts tossed the first meatball.

The Dodgers had just been presented with the National League Championship trophy. Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, had something to say to a sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium, and to an audience watching on national television.

“They said the Dodgers are ruining baseball,” Roberts hollered. “Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.”

The Dodgers had just vanquished the Milwaukee Brewers, a team that did everything right, with four starting pitchers whose contracts total $1.35 billion.

The Brewers led the major leagues in victories this year. They have made the playoffs seven times in the past eight years, and yet their previous manager and general manager fled for big cities, in the hope of applying small-market smarts to teams with large-market resources.

The Dodgers will spend half a billion dollars on player payroll and luxury tax payments this year, a figure that the Brewers and other small-market teams might never spend in this lifetime, or the next one.

The Brewers will make about $35 million in local television rights this year. The Dodgers make 10 times that much — and they’ll make more than $500 million per year by the end of their SportsNet LA contract in 2038.

Is revenue disparity a problem for the sport?

The owners say yes. They are expected to push for a salary cap in next year’s collective bargaining negotiations. A cap is anathema to the players’ union. At the All-Star Game, union executive director Tony Clark called a cap “institutionalized collusion.”

The union could say, yes, revenue disparity is the big issue and propose something besides a cap.

But that is not what the union is saying. The union does not agree that revenue disparity is the issue, at least to the extent that the players should participate in solving it. Put another way: Tarik Skubal should not get less than market value in free agency to appease the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

For the most part, the union believes the owners should resolve the issue among themselves.

And the fundamental difference might be this: To most of the owners, the Dodgers’ spending is the big problem, or at least the symptom of a big problem. This was Commissioner Rob Manfred at the owners’ meetings last February: “Do people perceive that the playing field is balanced and fair and/or do people believe that money dictates who wins?”

To the union, the problem is not one of perception. The union believes the problem is that the Dodgers’ spending exposes other owners who would love a salary cap that would give them cover — not to mention cost certainty that could increase profits and franchise values.

“Players across the league show up every day ready to compete and ready to win,” Clark told The Times. “Excuses aren’t tolerated between the lines, and they shouldn’t be accepted outside them either.

“When decision-makers off the field mirror the competitive drive exhibited on it, everybody wins and baseball’s future is limitless. Fans and players alike deserve — and should demand — far more accountability from those to whom much is given.”

Tony Clark, executive director of the MLB Players’ Assn., speaks during a news conference in New York in March 2022.

(Richard Drew / Associated Press)

In its annual estimates, Forbes had the Dodgers’ revenue last season at a league-leading $752 million and the Pirates’ revenue at $326 million. The Pirates turned a profit of $47 million and the Dodgers turned a profit of $21 million, according to those estimates.

The Pirates — and other small-market teams — make more than $100 million each year in their equal split of league revenue (national and international broadcast rights, for instance, and merchandising and licensing) and revenue shared by the Dodgers and other large-market teams. That means the Pirates can cover their player payroll before selling a single ticket, beer, or Primanti sandwich stuffed with meat, cheese and fries.

“The current system is designed so larger markets share massive amounts of revenue with smaller markets to help level the playing field,” Clark said. “Small-market teams have other built-in advantages, and we’ve proposed more in bargaining — and will again.”

The union would be delighted to get a salary floor — that is, a minimum team payroll. The owners would do that if the union agreed to a maximum team payroll — that is, a salary cap.

Whether the owners believe recent and potential future changes — among them a draft lottery, more favorable draft-pick compensation for small-market teams losing free agents, providing additional draft picks for teams that promote prospects sooner and for small-market teams that win — can begin to mitigate revenue disparity is uncertain. Whether the players can condition revenue sharing on team progress also is uncertain.

And, perhaps most critically to owners, the collapse of the cable ecosystem means many teams have lost local television revenue that might not ever bounce completely back, even if Manfred can deliver on his proposed “all teams, all the time, in one place” service.

Whatever the issues might be, fans are not throwing up their hands and walking away. The league sold more tickets this year than in any year since 2017. Almost every week brought an announcement from ESPN, Fox or TNT about a ratings increase, and the league did not complain about the outstanding ratings the Dodgers and New York Yankees attracted in last year’s World Series.

Dodgers fans celebrate after Shohei Ohtani hits the second of his three home runs in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Brewers at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 17.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Payroll is under the control of an owner. Market size is not.

Of the top 15 teams in market size, six made the playoffs. Of the bottom 15 teams in market size, six made the playoffs.

Is that a reasonable exhibition of competitive balance? Would the Dodgers winning the World Series in back-to-back years define competitive imbalance, even if they would become the first team in 25 years to repeat? The only other team currently dedicated to spending like the Dodgers — the New York Mets — has not won the World Series in 39 years.

The Kansas City Chiefs have played in the Super Bowl five times in six years, winning three times. That is because they have Patrick Mahomes, not because the NFL has a salary cap.

In the past three years, the Dodgers are the only team to appear in the final four twice — more diversity than in the final four in the NFL, NBA or NHL, each of which has a salary cap.

The league used to happily distribute information like that. After the winter chants about the Dodgers ruining baseball, the league started talking about how no small-market team had won the World Series in 10 years.

Payroll itself should not define competitive balance, but that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if an owner decides competing with the Dodgers would be no less futile by spending another $25 million on players.

It is premature to count heads now. However, at this point, you wonder whether any team besides the Dodgers and Mets would lobby against the league pursuing a salary cap in negotiations. If the owners really want a salary cap, they need to be prepared to do what the NHL did to get one: shut down the league for an entire season.

We should be talking about the magic of Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts. Instead, on its grandest stage, the talk around baseball will be all about whether its most popular team is ruining the game to the point of depriving us of it come 2027. Well done, everyone.

Angels superstar Mike Trout testified Tuesday morning that he knew team employee Eric Kay had a drug problem but that pitcher Tyler Skaggs showed no signs of drug use.

Trout, a three-time American League Most Valuable Player, has played with the Angels his entire 15-year career and is under contract through the 2030 season. He was a teammate of Skaggs from 2014 to 2019, when the left-handed pitcher died in a Texas hotel room July 1, 2019, after snorting a counterfeit oxycodone pill that contained fentanyl, a powerful opioid.

Key, a former Angels communications director, was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison after being convicted in 2022 of providing the pills that led to the Skaggs’ overdose.

According to trial transcripts, Skaggs lawyer Daniel Dutko asked Trout about his reaction when he learned the next day in a team meeting that Skaggs had died.

“Cried,” Trout answered.

“You loved him like a brother,” the lawyer said as Trout nodded affirmatively. Trout added that he was unaware of any drug use by Skaggs.

Skaggs’ lawyer asked questions to elicit testimony from Trout that would humanize Skaggs, to establish that he was a valued teammate and friend. Trout said he and Skaggs were roommates in 2010 when both were 18 years old and playing for the Angels affiliate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Trout, the highest-paid Angels employee making more than $37 million a year, attended Skaggs’ wedding in 2018.

Neither Dutko nor Angels attorney Todd Theodora asked Trout why he didn’t inform a team executive or human resources when he suspected Kay’s drug use.

Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room in Southlake, Texas, on July 1, 2019, before the Angels were scheduled to start a series against the Texas Rangers. The Tarrant County medical examiner found that in addition to the opioids, Skaggs had a blood-alcohol level of 0.12. The autopsy determined he died from asphyxia after aspirating on his own vomit, and that his death was accidental.

Trout’s testimony followed that of longtime Angels executives Tim Mead and Tom Taylor. Kay reported to Mead nearly his entire 23-year career and worked closely with Taylor, the team’s traveling secretary. Both men testified that they had no idea Kay was addicted to opioids or that Kay supplied Skaggs with drugs.

Skaggs’ widow, Carli Skaggs, and parents Debra Hetman and Darrell Skaggs are seeking $118 million from the Angels for Skaggs’ lost future earnings as well as compensation for pain and anguish, and punitive damages.

The Angels announcement that longtime former big league catcher Kurt Suzuki was hired as manager coincided with Trout’s testimony.

WASHINGTON — Plans are on hold for President Trump to sit down with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to talk about resolving the war in Ukraine, according to a U.S. official.

The meeting had been announced last week. It was supposed to take place in Budapest, although a date had not been set.

The decision was made following a call between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The official requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The back-and-forth over Trump’s plans are the latest bout of whiplash caused by his stutter-step efforts to resolve a conflict that has persisted for nearly four years.

Lee writes for the Associated Press. This is a developing story that will update.

WASHINGTON — As the government shutdown enters its fourth week, Senate Republicans are headed to the White House on Tuesday — not for urgent talks on how to end it but for a display of unity with President Trump as they refuse to negotiate on any Democratic demands.

Senate Democrats, too, are confident in their strategy to keep voting against a House-passed bill that would reopen the government until Republicans, including Trump, engage them on extending health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year.

With both sides showing no signs of movement, it’s unclear how long the stalemate will last — even as hundreds of thousands of federal workers will miss another paycheck in the coming days and states are sounding warnings that key federal programs will soon lapse completely. And the lunch meeting in the White House Rose Garden appears unlikely, for now, to lead to a bipartisan resolution as Senate Republicans are dug in and Trump has followed their lead.

Asked about the message at lunch, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, second in Senate GOP leadership, told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that it will be, “Republicans are united, and I expect the president to say, ‘Stand strong.’”

Senate Republican leader John Thune, of South Dakota said on Monday that he thinks Trump is ready to “get involved on having the discussion” about extending the subsidies. “But I don’t think they are prepared to do that until (Democrats) open up the government,” he said.

Missed paychecks and programs running out of money

While Capitol Hill remains at a standstill, the effects of the shutdown are worsening.

Federal workers are set to miss additional paychecks amid total uncertainty about when they might eventually get paid. Government services like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, and Head Start preschool programs that serve needy families are facing potential cutoffs in funding. On Monday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the National Nuclear Security Administration is furloughing 1,400 federal workers. The Federal Aviation Administration has reported air controller shortages and flight delays in cities across the United States.

And as the shutdown keeps future health costs in limbo for millions of Americans, most U.S. adults are worried about health care becoming more expensive, according to a new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, as they make decisions about next year’s health coverage.

Still, there has been little urgency in Washington as each side believes the other will eventually cave.

“Our position remains the same: We want to end the shutdown as soon as we can and fix the ACA premium crisis that looms over 20 million hardworking Americans,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Monday, referring to the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire in December.

Schumer called the White House meeting a “pep rally” and said it was “shameful” that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has kept the House out of town during the shutdown.

November deadlines

Members of both parties acknowledge that as the shutdown drags on, it is becoming less likely every day that Congress will be able to either extend the subsidies or fund the government through the regular appropriations process. The House GOP bill that Senate Democrats have now rejected 11 times would only keep the government open through Nov. 21.

Thune on Monday hinted that Republicans may propose a longer extension of current funding instead of passing individual spending bills if the shutdown doesn’t end soon. Congress would need to pass an extension beyond Nov. 21, he said, “if not something on a much longer-term basis.”

Democrats are focused on Nov. 1, when next year’s enrollment period for the ACA coverage begins and millions of people will sign up for their coverage without the expanded subsidy help that began during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once those sign-ups begin, they say, it would be much harder to restore the subsidies even if they did have a bipartisan compromise.

“Very soon Americans are going to have to make some really difficult choices about which health care plan they choose for next year,” Schumer said.

What about Trump?

Tuesday’s White House meeting will be a chance for Republican senators to engage with the president on the shutdown after he has been more involved in foreign policy and other issues.

The president last week dismissed Democratic demands as “crazy,” adding, “We’re just not going to do it.”

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven said that Republican senators will talk strategy with the president at Tuesday’s lunch. “Obviously, we’ll talk to him about it, and he’ll give us his ideas, and we’ll talk about ours,” Hoeven said. “Anything we can do to try to get Democrats to join us” and pass the Republican bill to reopen the government, Hoeven said.

Still, GOP lawmakers expect Trump to stay in line with their current posture to reject negotiations until the government is open.

“Until they put something reasonable on the table to talk about, I don’t think there’s anything to talk about,” said Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy.

Democrats say Trump has to be more involved for the government to reopen.

“He needs to get off the sidelines, get off the golf course,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. “We know that House and Senate Republicans don’t do anything without getting permission from their boss, Donald J. Trump.”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves and Matt Brown contributed to this report.

Airbnb Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky said he didn’t integrate his company’s online travel app with OpenAI’s ChatGPT because the startup’s connective tools aren’t “quite ready” yet.

Airbnb will monitor the development of ChatGPT’s app integrations and may consider a tie-up in the future similar to those of its peers Booking Holdings Inc. and Expedia Group Inc., Chesky said in an interview.

“I didn’t think it was quite ready,” he said of ChatGPT’s integration abilities.

Because Airbnb is a community with verified members, OpenAI will have to build a platform so robust that Airbnb’s app can work within the ChatGPT chatbot in an “almost self-contained” manner, Chesky said.

Chesky, who is close friends with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said he advised the AI company on its new capability for third-party developers to make their apps available within the ChatGPT chatbot. The AI company announced those features earlier this month. Airbnb wasn’t among the first apps that are available on the popular chatbot.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment on Chesky’s remarks, but referred to the company’s blog post earlier this month that described the app integration technology as a developer preview, with more features coming soon.

While Airbnb has set aside a possible integration with ChatGPT, the company Tuesday announced that it had updated its in-app artificial intelligence tools to let customers take more actions without the need of a live representative.

The company’s AI customer service agent, which it rolled out to all US users in English in May, now displays action buttons and links that can help people complete, say, a reservation change or cancellation.

That has led to a 15% reduction in users needing a live representative, cutting average resolution time to six seconds from nearly three hours, Airbnb said. The company plans to add Spanish and French language support this fall, and 56 more languages next year.

The agent is built upon 13 different AI models, including those from OpenAI, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and open source providers, Chesky said.

“We’re relying a lot on Alibaba’s Qwen model. It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” he said. “We use OpenAI’s latest models, but we typically don’t use them that much in production because there are faster and cheaper models.”

Airbnb, which expanded its business beyond accommodations into tours and individual services earlier this year, also is adding new social features to encourage user connections and eventually make better travel recommendations within the app.

The company unveiled an option for guests to share their Airbnb profile with other travelers after they book an experience. Users who have gone on the same tours can also now directly message one another — privacy safeguards are implemented where the conversation can only continue if the recipient accepts a message request, Airbnb said.

More social features are coming next year, and Chesky said that longer term these features could lend themselves to user-generated content on the app, where people can seek travel inspiration without leaving the Airbnb site.

“I think the social features, the community, that’s probably the most differentiated part of Airbnb,” he said. “People are the reason why I think Airbnb is such a sticky service.”

Lung writes for Bloomberg.

Fortunately for avid bibliophiles, Harper Lee was an inveterate pack rat. Born in rural Monroeville, Ala., in 1926, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird” — whose first name is Nelle, her grandmother Ellen’s name spelled backward — spent much of her adult life in Manhattan after moving there in 1949.

First, she lived in a cold-water flat on the Upper East Side (subsisting on peanut butter sandwiches and meager bookstore and airline ticket agent salaries); then in a room in a Midtown hotel where Edith Wharton and Mark Twain once resided; a third-floor York Avenue walk-up ($20 a month for five years, where “Go Set a Watchman” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” were written); and, finally four decades at 433 E. 82nd St. There, amid “piles of her correspondence and practically every pay stub, telephone bill and canceled check ever issued to her, were notebooks and manuscripts” and eight previously unpublished early short stories and eight once-published essays and magazine articles. Those writings, discovered in her New York City apartment after she died in her Alabama hometown nine years ago, have been gathered into the welcome hybrid compendium “The Land of Sweet Forever.”

The short stories take up the first half of the collection, but it’s an unusual selection in the second half, “Essays and Miscellaneous Pieces,” that may reveal as much about the burgeoning author as the fictional juvenilia. In a contribution to “The Artists’ & Writers’ Cookbook” (1961), along with entries by Lillian Hellman, William Styron and Marianne Moore, Lee offered a one-page recipe for crackling bread, complete with the authorial observation, “some historians say by which alone fell the Confederacy.” The opening instruction is, “First, catch your pig.” After that, the ingredients (water-ground white meal, salt, baking powder, egg, milk) and directions might just as well function as an analogy for the process of writing and editing a manuscript.

In her introduction, Lee’s appointed biographer Casey Cep observes that it “takes enormous patience and unerring instincts to refine a scrap of story into something … keen and moving.” Lee admits to being “more of a rewriter than a writer.” In a 1950 letter to one of her sisters, she outlines her typical writing day, working through at least three drafts:

From around noon, work on the first draft. By dinnertime, I’ve usually put my idea down. I then stop for a sandwich or a full meal, depending on whether I’ve got to think more about the story or just finish it. After dinner, I work on a second draft, which involves sometimes tearing the story up and putting it together again in an entirely different way, or just keeping at it until everything is like I want it. Then I retype it on white paper, conforming to rules of manuscript preparation, and run out & mail it. That sounds simple, but sometimes I have worked through the night on one; usually I end up around two or three in the morning.

It’s all rather like testing, perfecting a recipe. If the product was these eight short stories, then “yes, chef” has baked a perfect loaf.

Each story illuminates Lee’s quintessential talents as the “balladeer of small-town culture” and the chronicler of city life. They display narrative skills, an acute ear for dialogue (especially the vernacular), development of fully rounded characters and vivid descriptions of settings. They also introduce subjects and significant themes — family, friendship, moral compass — that reappear in her nonfiction and novels.

Country life imposes restrictions on childhood characters in the first three stories. In “The Water Tank” anxious 12-year-old Abby Henderson, reacting to schoolyard rumors, believes she’s pregnant because she hugged a boy whose pants were unbuttoned. Anti-authoritarian first grader Dody (one of Harper’s nicknames) in “The Binoculars” is chastised for not tracing but writing her name on the blackboard. Early glimpses of “Mockingbird’s” Scout and Atticus Finch appear in the amusing “The Pinking Shears” when third grader “little Jean Louie” (without the later “s”) undermines gender rules when she whacks off a rambunctious minister’s daughter’s lengthy locks.

In New York City, where “sooner or later you meet everybody you ever knew on Fifth Avenue,” urban stress leads to a shocking monologue with an incendiary conclusion about feuding neighbors in “A Roomful of Kibble,” a frivolous kind of parlor game involving movie titles in “The Viewer and the Viewed,” and a humorous parking incident when one friend agrees to help another with lighting for a fashion show in “This Is Show Business?”

The closing title short story, “The Land of Sweet Forever,” adeptly merges locations and themes. It opens with a satirical nod to Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”: “It is a truth generally acknowledged by the citizens of Maycomb, Ala., that a single woman in possession of little else but a good knowledge of English social history must be in want of someone to talk to.” When adult Jean Louise (now with the “s”) leaves the city for home, she has a hilarious church encounter with someone she hadn’t seen since they were children, 21-year-old Talbert Wade, now with the taint of three years as an economics major at Northwestern University and a patina full of Europe, looking “suspiciously as if he had returned from a tour and had picked up a Brooks Brothers suit on the way home.” Together, they are trying to understand why the doxology, always sung “in one way and one way only” suddenly has been “pepped up” with an energetic organ accompaniment. Before it’s resolved there is an amusing anecdote about a cow obituary in verse and a concluding bow to Voltaire’s “Candide” when Jean Louise concedes that “all things happen for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds.” The story is a resounding example of Lee’s scintillating sense of wry humor.

Big themes of love, family and friendship recur in the eight previously published essays and articles (from 1961 to 2006) that appeared in Vogue, McCall’s, an American Film Institute program (about Gregory Peck), a Book of the Month Club newsletter (on the “little boy next door” Truman Capote and “In Cold Blood”), Alabama History and Heritage Festival, and O, the Oprah Magazine (a letter about the joy of learning to read). In addition to the crackling bread recipe that serves as a fingerpost to Lee’s writing process, the standout essay “Christmas to Me” details how she received a generous gift that changed her life, allowing her to become an accomplished, published writer. In 1956, best friends, lyricist-composer Michael Brown and his wife, Joy, surprised her with an envelope on the tree with a note, “You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas.” That meant $100 every month, covering more than five times her rent.

Juvenilia is tricky. It can be evanescent, exposing weaknesses or revealing strengths and talent. “The Land of Sweet Forever” reinforces Lee’s indelible voice, contributing a rewarding addition and resource to the slim canon of her literary legacy.

The recipe for crackling bread:

First, catch your pig. Then ship it to the abattoir nearest you. Bake what they send back. Remove the solid fat and throw the rest away. Fry fat, drain off liquid grease, and combine the residue (called “cracklings”) with:

1 ½ cups water-ground white meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk

Bake in very hot oven until brown (about 15 minutes).

Result: one pan crackling bread serving 6. Total cost: about $250, depending upon size of pig. Some historians say by this recipe alone fell the Confederacy.

Papinchak, a former English professor, is a freelance book critic in Los Angeles. He has also contributed interviews to Bon Appetit.

After 12 years on the Los Angeles City Council, Curren Price will be term-limited out of the legislative body this coming year.

The candidate he hopes will replace him comes from his staff, his deputy chief of staff, Jose Ugarte, who has been referred to in the past as Price’s “right-hand man.”

But with many months to go before ballots are cast, Ugarte is already in hot water with the city’s Ethics Commission.

According to documents released by the commission, Ugarte has agreed to pay a $17,500 fine for repeatedly failing to disclose outside income he made from his lobbying and consulting firm while also working as a council staffer.

A commission investigation found that Ugarte failed to report outside income from his consulting firm, Ugarte & Associates, for the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to the documents.

The Ugarte proposed settlement is set to go before the Ethics Commission on Wednesday.

“This was an unintentional clerical reporting error on my part. As soon as I was made aware, I took full responsibility and corrected them,” Ugarte said in a statement emailed to The Times. “I take disclosure seriously. Moving forward, I have implemented steps to ensure nothing is missed.”

Ugarte said his work with Ugarte & Associates never overlapped with his time in Price’s office. He started working for Price in 2013, but left the office in 2019. He returned in 2021. Ugarte & Associates was formed in 2018 and still conducts business. He co-owns the company with his sister.

The settlement comes as Ugarte’s boss faces his own ethics quandary.

Price was indicted two years ago on 10 counts of grand theft by embezzlement after his wife’s consulting firm received payments of more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before Price voted to approve projects.

Prosecutors also said Price failed to list his wife’s income on his ethics disclosure forms.

Prosecutors have since filed additional charges against Price saying his wife, Del Richardson, was paid hundreds of thousands by the city housing authority while Price voted in favor of millions in grants to the agency. He also wrote a motion to give $30 million to the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 2020 to 2021, a time frame in which Richardson was paid more than $200,000 by the agency.

Price said he supports Ugarte despite the ethics violation.

“This matter dates back to 2021, when he was not employed by the city, and is clerical in nature,” Price said in a statement texted to The Times. “I wholeheartedly support Jose Ugarte, alongside an unprecedented coalition of elected officials, labor groups, and community leaders who stand behind his character, leadership and proven record of results.”

Ugarte is one of the leading candidates running to represent Council District 9, which covers South Los Angeles. He raised $211,206 in the first reporting cycle of the election, far outpacing his rivals.

One of Ugarte’s opponents, Estuardo Mazariegos, called the Ethics Commission findings “very disturbing.”

The Ethics Commission also alleged that Ugarte’s documents about outside income, known as Form 700s, failed to report clients who gave $10,000 or more to Ugarte & Associates.

Those clients were mostly independent expenditures for local candidates.

His firm was paid $128,050 to help with the reelection campaign of Congressman Jimmy Gomez (D-California). It was also paid $222,000 by Elect California to help with the reelection campaign of Mitch O’Farrell among other clients.

“This proposed settlement raises more questions than it answers: Are these the only payments Ugarte hid? Why was he concealing them from the public? And above all, how did these massive payments in outside interests affect Jose Ugarte’s work as a city employee?” Mazariegos said in a statement to The Times.