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Five takeaways from Clippers' 112-96 win over Utah

Written By kolimtiga on Minggu, 30 November 2014 | 23.50

1. For the second consecutive game, Blake Griffin started strong.

He had 13 points in the first quarter, making six of nine shots against the Utah Jazz on Saturday night, and had five rebounds in the first.

On Friday night against the Houston Rockets, Griffin had 12 first-quarter points en route to 30 points.

He finished with 28 points on 13-for-18 shooting against the Jazz.

2.Tired or not, DeAndre Jordan played with energy.

And that was never more evident than in the first quarter.

Jordan controlled the backboards in the first, collecting seven rebounds, the same as the entire Jazz team had. He had three offensive rebounds in the first.

He finished with 12 rebounds, four offensive.

3. Jamal Crawford has the most uncanny ability to score last-second shots while being fouled.

With Jazz rookie guard Dante Exum defending him, Crawford pulled up for a jump shot that rolled around and went in with 0.6 seconds left in the first half. Exum was called for a foul on the play, looking perplexed. Crawford made the free throw for the three-point play.

4. The Clippers shot the basketball very well against the Jazz, making 56.3% of their shots, 39.3% of their three-pointers.

5. The Clippers took care of the basketball, turning it over just 11 times against the Jazz.

Chris Paul, who handles the ball more than any other player on the team, had two of the turnovers. But Paul also had 10 assists.

broderick.turner@latimes.com

Twitter:@BA_Turner

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Nebraska fires Coach Bo Pelini after 9-3 season

Nebraska fired Coach Bo Pelini on Sunday on the heels of a 9-3 campaign that included late-season losses to Wisconsin and Minnesota that dissolved the Cornhuskers' chances of playing in the Big Ten championship game.

Pelini's firing is effective immediately, Nebraska Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst said in a statement.

"Earlier this morning, I informed Coach Bo Pelini of our decision to move forward in a new direction. Coach Pelini served our university admirably for seven years and led our football program's transition to the Big Ten Conference. We wish Coach Pelini and his wonderful family all the best and thank him for his dedicated service to the university."

Pelini served as Nebraska head coach for seven seasons, compiling a 66-27 overall record and a 3-3 record in bowl games.

Pelini recorded at least nine wins in each of his seasons with the Cornhuskers. However, Nebraska, which has won five national titles in college football, the last coming in 1997, was never in the hunt for a championship under Pelini. The Cornhuskers have failed to win a conference title since 1999.

Nebraska started the season 8-1 and was tied at the top of the Big Ten West Division standings until it suffered a 59-24 blowout loss at Wisconsin on Nov. 15. The Cornhuskers then lost at home to Minnesota before closing out conference play Friday with a 37-34 overtime win over Iowa.

Nebraska has yet to announce who will coach the team for its upcoming bowl game. The university has scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. PST.

8:30 a.m.: This story has been updated with additional background and details.

This story was first published at 8:12 a.m.

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12hrs.net is for when your sightseeing time is limited

Here's a website that can help when you're hot to travel but short on time.

Name: 12HRS

Available: 12hrs.net

What it does: Provides 12-hour itineraries for travelers who are fond of great discoveries and love design, music and fashion. Available for 13 destinations in Europe and North America, including Berlin; Copenhagen; Paris; Vancouver, Canada; San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; and more.

What's hot: The giant magazine-quality photos are beguiling, but make sure you read the text. If you delve deeper, you'll find experience-driven travel tips that hit the mark for romantic hipsters as well as practical travelers. Unlike most time-based travel itineraries, these are paced correctly. You might be tired at the end of the day, but you'll have visited heaps of brag-worthy hot spots that may or may not be in the guidebooks.

What's not: Sometimes 12 hours are not enough. Additional content on a city, for example, might have its own page. Make sure you scroll all the way past the map to the bottom of the guide to link to additional content, if available, in the "Still Curious?" section.

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12hrs.net is for when your sightseeing time is limited

Here's a website that can help when you're hot to travel but short on time.

Name: 12HRS

Available: 12hrs.net

23.50 | 0 komentar | Read More

Nebraska fires Coach Bo Pelini after 9-3 season

Pelini's firing is effective immediately, Nebraska Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst said in a statement.

Pelini served as Nebraska head coach for seven seasons, compiling a 66-27 overall record and a 3-3 record in bowl games.

Nebraska has yet to announce who will coach the team for its upcoming bowl game. The university has scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. PST.

8:30 a.m.: This story has been updated with additional background and details.

This story was first published at 8:12 a.m.

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Larry Agenbroad dies at 81; paleontologist led Mammoth Site excavation

Written By kolimtiga on Sabtu, 08 November 2014 | 23.50

On an archaeological dig in Arizona in the 1960s, something gnawed at paleontologist Larry Agenbroad every time human artifacts were uncovered. The excavation team went wild taking photographs and planning articles to burnish their credentials. But they ignored other remains clearly visible in the pit — the bones of giant mammoths who were killed there.

"He would say, 'We just left them and walked away.' It struck a chord with him," said his son Brett. "He felt those remains were as important as anything human."

Agenbroad's compassion turned him into one of the world's leading authorities on the giant beasts that disappeared thousands of years ago. Over the next four decades he took part in digs from Siberia to California's Channel Islands and helped create the Mammoth Site, an unusual research center and museum in Hot Springs, S.D., where mammoth skeletons are displayed in the ground where the creatures died.

"The name Larry Agenbroad is really synonymous with Ice Age mammoths worldwide," said Jim Mead, a paleontologist at East Tennessee State University, who called his longtime colleague "a great mammoth researcher."

Agenbroad, who was chief scientist and director of the Mammoth Site, died Oct. 31 in Hot Springs from complications of kidney failure, his son said. He was 81.

The Mammoth Site evolved from a construction crew's discovery of a mammoth tusk on a Hot Springs hilltop in 1974. The son of the contractor had been a student of Agenbroad's at Chadron State College in Nebraska and alerted his former professor to the find.

Working with Mead and others, Agenbroad soon determined that the area was, as Mead recalled, "a mammoth site of mammoth proportions." They estimated that it held the fossil remains of as many as 100 mammoths — believed to be the largest such concentration in the world. The remains of 61 have been recovered so far.

"It's a spectacular site, virtually unique in the world," said Daniel Fisher, a renowned mammoth researcher who directs the University of Michigan's Museum of Paleontology. "Agenbroad's work has done a great deal to interpret the circumstances leading to this unusual accumulation of fossil material. The site is so dramatic that it has acted as a catalyst and focal point for a great deal of scientific and popular interest in mammoths and the Ice Age."

Agenbroad and his team found that most of the mammoths were males in their prime years. He theorized that while looking for food during an ice age winter they were drawn to the vegetation growing around a sinkhole, the sides of which were sharply sloped and covered with slippery shale.

To the adolescent males, the rewards outweighed the peril.

"They could sweep off three feet of snow and get last year's grass, which is about as exciting as a bowl of cereal with no sugar, berries or milk," Agenbroad told Smithsonian magazine in 2010. "Or they could go for the salad bar of plants still growing around the edge of the sinkhole."

Weighing 14 tons each, with tusks 12 to 14 feet long, the bulky beasts slid into the sinkhole and never got out.

Agenbroad knew that their remains had to be left there.

"It's more meaningful this way because the bones will never look more awesome than they do in the ground," he told National Geographic in 1983.

One of six children, Agenbroad was born on a farm near Nampa, Idaho, on April 3, 1933.

He studied at Boise Junior College before heading to the University of Arizona, where he earned a master's degree in 1962 and a doctorate in 1967 in geologic engineering. He spent most of his academic career at Chadron State College and Northern Arizona University.

Besides his son Brett, of Unalakleet, Alaska, Agenbroad is survived by his wife of 54 years, Wanda, of Hot Springs, son Finn of Denver, a brother, a sister and six grandchildren.

His explorations of a lost world took him to Santa Rosa Island, off the Ventura coast, where a nearly complete skeleton of a pygmy mammoth had been found in 1994. The following year, Agenbroad discovered the lower jawbone of a full-sized mammoth nearby — tantalizing evidence, he said, that mammoths had crossed the channel from the mainland during the Pleistocene Epoch and slowly shrank in the confines of the island.

In 1999 he traveled to Siberia as part of an international team of scientists invited to excavate the corpse of a woolly mammoth that had been locked in ice for more than 20,000 years.

It was an astonishing specimen.

"I usually only see bones and teeth, and in a couple of extraordinary finds, mammoth dung," he said in a 2000 Washington Post interview. But this mammoth was intact — and still covered with long, coarse hair.

"It was," he said, "my first opportunity to pet a mammoth."

Twitter: @ewooLATimes

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Larry Agenbroad dies at 81; paleontologist led Mammoth Site excavation

"He would say, 'We just left them and walked away.' It struck a chord with him," said his son Brett. "He felt those remains were as important as anything human."

Agenbroad, who was chief scientist and director of the Mammoth Site, died Oct. 31 in Hot Springs from complications of kidney failure, his son said. He was 81.

To the adolescent males, the rewards outweighed the peril.

Weighing 14 tons each, with tusks 12 to 14 feet long, the bulky beasts slid into the sinkhole and never got out.

Agenbroad knew that their remains had to be left there.

"It's more meaningful this way because the bones will never look more awesome than they do in the ground," he told National Geographic in 1983.

One of six children, Agenbroad was born on a farm near Nampa, Idaho, on April 3, 1933.

Besides his son Brett, of Unalakleet, Alaska, Agenbroad is survived by his wife of 54 years, Wanda, of Hot Springs, son Finn of Denver, a brother, a sister and six grandchildren.

In 1999 he traveled to Siberia as part of an international team of scientists invited to excavate the corpse of a woolly mammoth that had been locked in ice for more than 20,000 years.

It was an astonishing specimen.

"It was," he said, "my first opportunity to pet a mammoth."

Twitter: @ewooLATimes

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Christianity and folk art in southern Colorado's San Luis Valley

Shortly after dawn, I pulled into this tiny town and studied a mural on the side of the post office. It was more than a painting; it was an illustrated map of Los Caminos Antiguos — the Ancient Roads.

This was the fall road trip I had been looking for, something beyond mountains and golden aspens, something combining history, mystery and a bit of eccentricity.

The 129-mile route winds through an isolated swath of the San Luis Valley, traversing the beating heart of Spanish Colorado, an isolated tableau of luminous landscapes, airy plazas and profound spirituality near the New Mexico border.

And the mural pointed the way.

I headed south on Colorado Highway 159, where chaparral runs like a pale green carpet to the soaring Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The September air was crisp, the colors sharp and the trees turning red and yellow.

Half an hour later, I pulled into San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado and home to the Stations of the Cross Shrine on La Mesa de la Piedad y de la Misericordia — the Hill of Piety and Mercy.

I walked up the scrubby hillside, soon encountering a life-size Pontius Pilate, his hand dipped into a bowl of water as an accuser pointed to a downcast Jesus. The finely sculpted faces radiated cowardice, hatred and despair.

As the path grew steeper, the suffering increased. A Roman guard handed the cross to Jesus. Three women wept as their savior struggled. And finally the Crucifixion.

At the top, the sun illuminated Jesus rising from the cross, arms thrust toward the magnificent, white-domed La Capilla de Todos los Santos, or Chapel of All Saints, just a few feet away. Regardless of your faith, it was an extraordinary sight.

After exploring the chapel's simple interior, I walked back down as a trickle of pilgrims climbed upward.

When I reached the car, I realized I'd lost my keys.

I swiftly retraced my footsteps, asking everyone I passed if they had found any keys. Then I saw them in the gravel just outside the chapel.

A woman standing nearby smiled at me.

"When you asked if I had seen any keys I said a prayer to St. Jude for you," she said. "I used to do that all the time for my mother when she lost her keys. And now you have found them."

I could have used a saint to help me track down Huberto Maestas, the shrine's sculptor. No one answered at his sprawling, hacienda-like house downtown, so I loitered outside his big yellow studio until he pulled in.

Maestas, tall with a white beard, invited me into his cavernous workshop cluttered with statues of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Native Americans and assorted wax heads.

Like others here, he grew up speaking an archaic form of Spanish the conquistadors would have recognized.

"Everyone in this valley speaks Spanish with an old Castilian accent," he said. "We are so remote that the dialect hasn't changed."

Along with the Spanish language, the Catholic Church has bound the valley together since King Philip II of Spain took possession of it 400 years ago. Even so, Maestas never imagined the shrine would become a major pilgrimage site.

"Those sculptures aren't mine anymore," he said. "They belong to the people who visit them. It's a living thing that has become something besides art."

Miracle in the sky

One of the first settlers in San Luis was Dario Gallegos, who opened R&R Market in 1857, one of the oldest family-run businesses in Colorado. I met his great-great-grandson Felix Romero, 67, who now owns the store. Romero believes San Luis — and especially the shrine — has transformative powers.

"By the time you reach the last station you are so changed you come to know yourself as a thought in the mind of God," he said.

Intrigued but baffled by that, I returned to Los Caminos Antiguos and headed west to threadbare San Acacio, where locals say a miracle once saved the town.

It happened in 1853, when a party of Utes galloped toward settlers in a pasture. The desperate men prayed to St. Acacius for deliverance, and he appeared in the sky on horseback, scaring off the raiders. The village built a church in his honor that still stands.

Religious fervor is intense here. Scattered around the back roads are empty moradas, wooden meeting houses once used by the Penitente Brotherhood known for bloody self-flagellation rituals during Lent. The church tried to suppress the practice, but it went on for years. Some say it continues today.

I motored out of San Acacio into a great blue emptiness. The sky is king here, magnifying a world of rich color and subtle beauty beneath it.

As the highway crossed the sleepy Rio Grande, I veered onto a dirt road toward Los Sauces, or the Willows.

After miles of austere landscapes, this felt like Canaan. Horses ran through autumn fields of lavender and swaying sunflowers. Shaggy green willows hung over adobe houses. A river full of rippling cattails flowed nearby.

I later caught up with Dolores Valdez de Pong, who spent much of her childhood here and co-wrote a book with her mother, Olivama Salazar de Valdez, about Los Sauces.

"Spanish tradition was strong," she told me. "We had our own customs for burial and marriage. When someone died, they rang the church bell. The Penitentes would come to the house of the deceased and pray with the family."

Her mother fell ill and died just weeks after the book was published. People came to her bedside for autographed copies until the end.

"So many people told me, 'This is my story, this is my childhood,'" said Valdez de Pong.

I reluctantly left the land of the willows and continued west to Manassa, a tidy Mormon town and home to former heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey, a.k.a. the Manassa Mauler. The log cabin where he was born is now a museum and a statue of Dempsey, who won the title in 1919, stands out front.

I stopped briefly in Conejos to see Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, built in 1856, and said to be the oldest parish in Colorado. The solemn interior glowed with sunbeams suffusing through green, red and blue stained glass.

A few miles south in Antonito I found another cathedral of sorts — a towering, turreted cathedral of junk called Cano's Castle. The reclusive creator, Dominic "Cano" Espinosa, skipped the stained glass and built the place entirely of crushed beer cans, hubcaps and wire. Lest anyone mistake it for a scrap heap, a sign outside declares "Jesus Lord of Kings."

While I was in the neighborhood I met with Michael Ito, who manages the Indiana Jones Home Bed & Breakfast, featured briefly in the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

We went inside and Ito played the DVD showing the young Jones being chased into the house and forced to relinquish the Cross of Coronado.

"You lost this time, kid," says the patronizing goon, "but that doesn't mean you have to like it."

Ito shut off the movie.

"And that's Antonito's 15 minutes of fame," he said.

Say hello to Kit

The next day I drove north to the Fort Garland Museum in Fort Garland, where I had begun my trip.

The fort protected Spanish settlers from Indian attacks and was commanded by famed scout and soldier Kit Carson. There were exhibits of early Spanish life and mannequins of Carson and his wife, Josefa Jaramillo, in their actual living quarters.

Before ending my trip, I visited little Blanca at the foot of majestic Blanca Peak.

I stopped at Forest Tango Art Works, a studio of brilliantly colored Southwestern-style paintings, sculptures and antiques.

Owner Joyce Garcia Henrie grew up in the valley and spoke only Spanish until she was 5. She also created the mural I used as my guide for the trip.

"This valley is one of the most beautiful places in Colorado," she said. "And there is an interesting pocket of people here."

That was an understatement. In two days I'd experienced natural beauty, obscure history and a powerful spirituality that at times proved exhilarating.

Felix Romero was right. "The valley will change you," he told me, "and you'll leave with a happy heart."

If you go

THE BEST WAY TO LOS CAMINOS ANTIGUOS

From LAX, United, Southwest, American and Frontier offer nonstop service to Denver; Southwest offers direct service (stop, no change of planes); and Delta, United, Southwest, US Airways and American offer connecting service (change of planes). Restricted round-trip fares begin at $388, including all taxes and fees. From LAX, American, Southwest and United offer nonstop service to Albuquerque; Southwest offers direct service; and Southwest, US Airways, American, Delta and United offer connecting service. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $370, including taxes and fees.

Los Caminos Antiguos Scenic Byway is about 129 miles long and winds around the San Luis Valley. You can start in Alamosa, Colo., and follow the route to Chama, N.M., about 167 miles from Albuquerque. Or you can design your own journey. I drove five hours from Denver to Fort Garland, where I began the trip.

WHERE TO STAY

San Luis Inn, 132 Main St., San Luis, Colo.; (719) 672-3399. Single rooms cost $75. The drive can be done in a day, but I decided to spend the night at the basic San Luis Inn. There are more accommodations in Antonito, Alamosa and Fort Garland.

TOURS

The Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railway offers steam train rides throughout the San Luis Valley. For information on trips, go to http://www.cumbrestoltec.com.

TO LEARN MORE

There are many websites about this part of Colorado. Here are a few:

Sangres.com: http://www.sangres.com/colorado/scenic-byways/caminosantiguos.htm#.VCzXl8J0yM9

Southern Colorado Guide: http://www.southern-colorado-guide.com/los-caminos-antiguos.html

San Luis Valley Heritage: http://www.slvheritage.com/heritage-attractions/los-caminos-antiguos-scenic-historic-byway

travel@latimes.com

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What we learned from the Ducks' 3-2 shootout loss to Arizona

The Ducks had only two three-game stretches at home without a victory all of last season, and those slumps came in February and March.

This is far from panic time. The Ducks (10-3-2) own the best record in the NHL and have a Sunday showdown with Pacific Division rival Vancouver from which to draw motivation to end their two-game home losing streak.

But, as Friday's 3-2 shootout loss to the Arizona Coyotes showed, things are out of kilter.

Thoughts of scoring slumps are distracting

Former Canuck Ryan Kesler, coming off a 25-goal season with Montreal, has scored only once in 12 games and couldn't find the net on six shots Friday.

Forward Andrew Cogliano has just one goal following his career-best 21 last season. And Jakob Silfverberg remains without a goal through 15 games, although he did log a shootout goal Friday.

The Ducks led the NHL in goals last season, but their goals-per-game average has dipped more than a full goal to 2.1 through 15 games.

"Once you get one … they all need a goal, and if they get a goal, they'll start going in," Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau said.

Get some orange juice in Corey Perry, quick

The NHL goals leader missed his second consecutive game with flu symptoms, and the absence has been noticeable, especially in the pressure moments when Perry's focus sharpens.

"He scores goals in big times for us," Ducks center Ryan Getzlaf said of his first-line mate. "Obviously, as a group, we have to rally and fill that void collectively. For me, it's different. There's plays, I know he's there and [now] there's nobody there. Those are plays I need to adjust to."

Cam Fowler's lower-body injury needs to be minor

With goalie John Gibson out six weeks because of a groin injury and Fowler's top defensive pair mate, Ben Lovejoy, sidelined because of a fractured finger, Boudreau was seen asking a team doctor for a "good update" after Friday's game.

Fowler collided with Arizona's Martin Erat in the third period and left for the dressing room. News from his evaluation should come at Saturday's practice.

While defenseman Bryan Allen (six hits, three blocked shots) was sharp in his debut Friday, the Ducks need Fowler on the ice.

The Dany Heatley project is not going well

The promise of Heatley's arrival was uplifting in September, but the former two-time 50-goal scorer was a healthy scratch for the third time in six games Friday and he doesn't have a point.

Boudreau said Heatley has had sufficient time to become comfortable with his new teammates and the time has come for him to start producing.

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Larry Agenbroad dies at 81; paleontologist led Mammoth Site excavation

"He would say, 'We just left them and walked away.' It struck a chord with him," said his son Brett. "He felt those remains were as important as anything human."

Agenbroad, who was chief scientist and director of the Mammoth Site, died Oct. 31 in Hot Springs from complications of kidney failure, his son said. He was 81.

To the adolescent males, the rewards outweighed the peril.

Weighing 14 tons each, with tusks 12 to 14 feet long, the bulky beasts slid into the sinkhole and never got out.

Agenbroad knew that their remains had to be left there.

"It's more meaningful this way because the bones will never look more awesome than they do in the ground," he told National Geographic in 1983.

One of six children, Agenbroad was born on a farm near Nampa, Idaho, on April 3, 1933.

Besides his son Brett, of Unalakleet, Alaska, Agenbroad is survived by his wife of 54 years, Wanda, of Hot Springs, son Finn of Denver, a brother, a sister and six grandchildren.

In 1999 he traveled to Siberia as part of an international team of scientists invited to excavate the corpse of a woolly mammoth that had been locked in ice for more than 20,000 years.

It was an astonishing specimen.

"It was," he said, "my first opportunity to pet a mammoth."

Twitter: @ewooLATimes

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Hong Kong student leaders say they may stay on the streets until June

Written By kolimtiga on Jumat, 07 November 2014 | 23.50

Student leaders of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests said Friday they might stay on the streets until next June if their attempt to seek talks with authorities in Beijing fails to resolve their political impasse.

The Hong Kong Federation of Students, a leading protest group, backed off earlier plans to send a delegation to the Chinese capital to seek a direct dialogue with top Communist Party leaders during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place in coming days. Such a move while more than a dozen world leaders -- including President Obama -- are in Beijing could have been regarded as highly provocative.

The student group has instead reached out to former Hong Kong leader Tung Chee-Hwa, asking him to arrange a meeting between students and a senior Chinese official either in Hong Kong or Beijing to discuss the framework for the semi-autonomous territory's 2017 election.

Alex Chow, secretary-general of the federation, said a one-time dialogue can hardly solve the problem, and that the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement might persist until June 2015. That's when Hong Kong's Legislative Council is expected to vote on the Hong Kong government's proposal for how the 2017 chief executive election should work. The proposal, which will be put forth by chief executive Leung Chun-Ying, is likely to echo an August decision that drove thousands of protesters to the streets.

"Everyone agreed we won't retreat for no reason before the legislature takes a vote on the political reform bill," said Chow. Twenty-six of the city's 27 lawmakers from the so-called pan-democrats group have said they will veto any proposal for the 2017 chief executive election that does not meet international standards for universal suffrage.

In order for a reform proposal to be passed in the legislature, it has to have the support of two-thirds of the city's 70 lawmakers.

Protesters in Hong Kong, a former British territory that returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a framework known as "one country, two systems," took to the streets in late September after the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress laid down a tougher-than-expected framework for Hong Kong's 2017 election for chief executive. The panel essentially decreed that only two or three candidates would be allowed and all must pass muster with a screening committee.

A two-hour dialogue between protest leaders and five Hong Kong government officials last month yielded little common ground. The session was the first of what was expected to be several rounds of talks aimed at resolving the political crisis, but a second round has yet to be scheduled.

In an open letter to Tung, who was chief executive from 1997 to 2005, the student group appealed to him to "demonstrate the statesmanship" to help the demands of Hong Kongers be heard.

The group urged Tung to respond by Sunday. Otherwise, they said they would head to Beijing directly to seek talks after APEC.

Tung is a close ally of China's president, Xi Jinping. He led a delegation of Hong Kong tycoons and business elites to meet Xi in Beijing in mid-September.

The 77-year-old held a press conference last month to urge students to leave the streets, adding that the central government had heard the protesters' voice but believes the city should implement democracy gradually.

Chow responded that Chinese leaders cannot hear the views of most Hong Kong people by just meeting with tycoons.

Hui is a special corrrespondent.

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Another judge stands up for the people with a blistering dissent

Judicial dissents often make for the most important, interesting and entertaining reading in major cases.

Now comes Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, bidding to take her place next to great dissenters Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the first Justice John Marshall Harlan with a penetrating and uncompromising minority opinion in the latest gay marriage case.

In that decision, handed down Thursday, the appeals court ruled 2-1 to uphold gay marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. It was the first defeat for gay marriage after a long string of court victories, including the overturning of the infamous Defense of Marriage Act by the Supreme Court last year.

Daughtrey, a Clinton appointee, identifies the central irrelevancy of the majority's argument upholding the bans: that they were enacted by voters, and thus deserve overwhelming deference from the courts. A panel of three judges simply doesn't have the right, the majority says, "to make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens who live within the four states of the Sixth Circuit."

Never mind the 14th Amendment, which gives the federal government the authority to prevent the states from abridging Americans' civil rights, the majority wrote. Its drafters (in the 1860s) didn't understand it "to require the States to change the definition of marriage."

Daughtrey summons a "quick answer" to this argument: The drafters "undoubtedly did not understand that it would also require school desegregation in 1955 of the end of miscegenation laws across the country." Judicial rulings, she observes, have been the key to ending these and other examples of racial discrimination, not "the democratic election process to which the majority suggests we should defer."

What most distinguishes Daughtrey's dissent from the majority opinion written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton and joined by Deborah L. Cook, both George W. Bush appointees, is the presence of the flesh-and-blood plaintiffs. They exist in the majority opinion only as abstractions. Daughtrey tells their stories.

Among them are Michigan plaintiffs April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, unmarried lesbians and nurses who have lived together for eight years. in that time they have adopted three children, two of them special needs kids--actually, because Michigan doesn't allow gay couples to adopt, Rowse has adopted two and DeBoer the third.

They coordinate their schedules to make sure one is always at home with the children, and undeniably provide exactly the kind of "close-knit, loving environment" that marriage is supposed to foster, and that the majority bizarrely contends would suffer across the circuit if gay marriage were upheld. If something were to happen to either of the parents, there would be no legal guarantee keeping the family together.

Daughtrey is perplexed by the majority's flat refusal to absorb the findings of the four other federal appeals courts that have overturned gay marriage bans, making the appellate level, until now, unanimous. "Because the correct result is so obvious," she writes, it's tempting to speculate that the majority upheld the bans precisely to create a circuit split requiring an explicit ruling on gay marriage from the Supreme Court.

That's not the only bizarre element of the majority opinion. At its very outset, Sutton acknowledges that the legalization of gay marriage in the U.S. is a foregone conclusion. "From the vantage point of 2014," he writes, "the question is not whether American law will allow gay couples to marry; it is when and how that will happen."

Since 2003, he adds, 19 states and the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. Despite his insistence that it's not the courts' place to do so, he acknowledges that only in some of these states has this happened by legislation or voter initiative. In others, the change has been dictated by state or federal courts. "Nor does this momentum show any signs of slowing." (Indeed, a state judge in Missouri overturned that state's gay marriage ban on Wednesday, just as the appeals court was handing down its ruling for four neighboring states.)

This places the majority in the admitted position of trying to hold back an inexorable tide. That didn't work for King Canute in ancient times, and it's not likely to work now. And it's proper to ask, as Daughtrey does in her closing, who if anyone benefits from a deliberate narrowing of the fundamental civil and legal right of marriage.

She reminds her colleagues that they all took a solemn oath to uphold the rights of all persons. "If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate," she writes, "our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams."

Keep up to date with the Economy Hub. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see our Facebook page, or email mhiltzik@latimes.com.

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Hong Kong student leaders say they may stay on the streets until June

In order for a reform proposal to be passed in the legislature, it has to have the support of two-thirds of the city's 70 lawmakers.

In an open letter to Tung, who was chief executive from 1997 to 2005, the student group appealed to him to "demonstrate the statesmanship" to help the demands of Hong Kongers be heard.

The group urged Tung to respond by Sunday. Otherwise, they said they would head to Beijing directly to seek talks after APEC.

Tung is a close ally of China's president, Xi Jinping. He led a delegation of Hong Kong tycoons and business elites to meet Xi in Beijing in mid-September.

Chow responded that Chinese leaders cannot hear the views of most Hong Kong people by just meeting with tycoons.

Hui is a special corrrespondent.

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Another judge stands up for the people with a blistering dissent

Judicial dissents often make for the most important, interesting and entertaining reading in major cases.

Keep up to date with the Economy Hub. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see our Facebook page, or email mhiltzik@latimes.com.

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'Any Sunday' sequel rides in as energetic eye candy

Bruce Brown's 1971 Oscar-nominated documentary "On Any Sunday" celebrated motorcycle racers and enthusiasts (like Brown himself) in the immersive manner of his noteworthy surf movie, "The Endless Summer."

Now his son Dana (of "Step Into Liquid" fame), clearly intent on updating Dad's work, has directed and narrated "On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter," a high-energy sequel spotlighting two-wheel passion around the world, including motocross champs (James Stewart), daredevils (Robbie Maddison) and the international stars of the global MotoGP circuit (Marc Marquez).

The movie zips from place to race — the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Pikes Peak hill climb, a crazy off-road competition in Austria — with the attention span of someone over-juiced on Red Bull, whose logo is emblazoned everywhere because the company's media arm produced the movie. As lifestyle flicks go, it's energetic eye candy, with the Ultra HD slo-mo, slick aerial views and thumb-size cams putting a 21st century stamp on the original film's POV innovations.

But over-editing too often disrupts the flow of the more beautiful shots, and some engaging personalities, like deaf racer Ashley Fiolek, get short shrift in an effort to sell motorcycles as a community builder and even a tool for bringing healthcare to remote regions of Africa.

"Next Chapter" may not exhibit the scrappy charm that characterized the first film's glimpse into a marginalized but colorful world, but for devotees, Dana Brown has assembled a love letter to a now-global culture.

"On Any Sunday: The Next Chapter."

Rated PG for perilous action, crashes, brief language.

Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.

Playing: AMC Burbank Town Center 8.

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Easy dinner recipes: Three great soups for cheese lovers

Written By kolimtiga on Kamis, 06 November 2014 | 23.50

Isn't everything better with cheese? You can't go wrong on a fall night with these rich (and cheesy!) soup ideas:

French onion soup: This classic doesn't even need a recipe. Start with a generous amount of sliced onions gently softened and browned in a deep pot with a little oil and fresh thyme. Add a touch of sherry, scraping the flavoring from the base of the pot, then fill with rich beef broth and bring to a simmer. Plate each serving in a deep oven-proof bowl, topped with a slice or two of crusty French bread and a layer of sliced or grated Gruyere or good Swiss. Pop each bowl under the broiler to melt and lightly brown the cheese, and dinner is served.

Watercress and Stilton soup: Barely wilted watercress lends a wonderful shade of green to this soup, rich with Stilton cheese and garnished with toasted pecans. It makes a wonderful first course or light meal, and the whole dish comes together in about an hour.

Brie 'n' apple soup: You'll love the simplicity of this recipe and the way the flavors pair so naturally. The tart apple notes brighten the soup, complementing the rich creaminess of the melted Brie for an easy yet wonderfully flavorful dish. You can find the recipe below.

BRIE 'N' APPLE SOUP

Total time: 1 hour

Servings: 4

Note: Adapted from Bistro du Soleil. This soup can be made ahead of time through Step 3 and chilled; reheat the purée before continuing the recipe.

2 tablespoons butter

1 small onion, finely chopped

3 stalks celery with leaves, finely chopped

2 large or 3 medium tart apples, such as Granny Smith, peeled, cored and diced

2 tablespoons flour

3 cups chicken broth, divided

1/2 pound cold Brie, rind removed and cheese cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme

Salt and pepper

Brown sugar to taste

Parsley for garnish

1. In a large saucepan heated over medium heat, melt the butter. Stir in the onion, celery and apple and reduce the heat to low. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the contents are soft and slightly golden, about 10 minutes.

2. Sprinkle the flour over and stir to coat the contents. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes to moisten the flour.

3. Whisk in 1 cup of the chicken broth. Increase the heat to medium and continue to whisk until the broth has thickened and begins to bubble, about 3 minutes. Whisk in the remaining broth and bring the contents to a brisk boil, stirring frequently. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cover the saucepan and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and purée the soup in a blender or with an immersion blender. Strain the purée into a clean saucepan. The soup can be made up to this point and chilled; reheat the purée over low heat before serving.

4. Heat the puree over medium-low heat and stir in the Brie cubes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the cheese is fully melted, then whisk until the soup is smooth. Whisk in the heavy cream and thyme, and season to taste with salt and pepper and optional brown sugar.

5. Garnish the soup with parsley before serving. This makes about 1 quart soup.

Each serving: 389 calories; 15 grams protein; 22 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams fiber; 27 grams fat; 17 grams saturated fat; 93 mg. cholesterol; 678 mg. sodium.

Love cooking as much as I do? Follow me @noellecarter

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First a hurricane, now a tempest as Baja's Capella Pedregal changes names

First, Capella Pedregal, one of the most elite resorts in Cabo San Lucas, took a hit from Hurricane Odile. Now comes a tempest of another sort -- a management shakeup and name change.

Meanwhile the hotel itself, closed since Sept. 14, isn't expected to reopen until mid-January at the earliest.

The dispute went public Tuesday, when the Pedregal resort's publicists announced the hotel was changing its name to The Resort at Pedregal and severing its connection to Capella, a management company than runs several high-end hotels worldwide.

The same announcement noted that veteran hotel executive Bob Holland would take over as interim general manager, adding that the change would have "little to no impact" on resort staff.

But that same day, the Capella Hotel Group's CEO, Horst Schulze, issued his own statement to travelpulse.com (and later travelagentcentral.com), asserting that the resort co-owners CarVal Investors had seized control of the property in breach of the Capella Hotel Group's contract. Schulze also said "we have no intention to accept a takeover."

The Capella Hotel Group operates upscale hotels in Mexico, Washington D.C., the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. In the aftermath of Odile, the company donated $10,000 to help Pedregal employees and their families recover.

The trade publications quoted Schulze saying the sudden move in Cabo was "part of an ongoing dispute between the two owners of the asset… We have been caught in the middle."

A spokeswoman at Capella Hotel Group in Atlanta was unable to provide more information Wednesday. Representatives at the Pedregal resort's public relations firm, J Public Relations in San Diego, said the hotel was owned by a Mexican property trust and that "we cannot comment on matters in litigation."

The 24-acre resort, which opened in 2009, includes 66 rooms and suites along with 21 villas, two restaurants and spa and stands near the southernmost tip of the Baja peninsula, accessible only by a 1,000-foot-long private tunnel. Rates typically run north of $600 nightly.

In January, Pedregal received a five-diamond rating from the AAA – one of just two on the Baja peninsula. Readers of Travel&Leisure magazine recently voted it the best hotel in Mexico.

The resort's new website says "the earliest possible date" for reopening will be January, and offers deposit refunds to anyone holding reservations earlier than Jan. 15.

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Spirit's State of the Hate report says cramped seats infuriate fliers

Travelers hate airline seats. The findings come from Florida-based Spirit Airlines, which compiled complaints that it invited in what the carrier calls its "State of the Hate" report.

Low-frills Spirit in July polled people about what they hate most about flying and gave each respondent 8,000 air miles. Of 30,000 consumers who weighed in, 20% said they hated airline seats: "Everything about them: size, shape, getting to them, leg room and reclining."

Meanwhile, 16% of respondents cited lost bags and airline luggage rules, and 15% complained about delays and poor customer service, according to the report released Monday. And 19% "hated on" Spirit for its numerous fees.

Spirit's report concludes that fliers say air travel is a hassle, no matter what airline they're on.

"Spirit assumed that since they asked for candid feedback, most of the hate would be directed at them," an airline statement about the report says. "To their surprise, 60% of the responses received were frustrations with [other airlines]."

You can take a look at other findings and the airline's Vulgarity Index it created from words fliers used in their responses (parental discretion advised).

And just to complete the hate cycle, Consumer Reports magazine last year dubbed Spirit the worst U.S. airline after it "received one of the lowest overall scores for any company we've ever rated." Fliers said Spirit had the rudest flight attendants, according to an Airfarewatchdog survey.

OK, we're done with the hating ... for now.

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Scribd adds audiobooks in Netflix-for-books race

Subscription-based e-book lending service Scribd is now offering audiobooks, the company announced Thursday. Scribd is one of three top contenders -- alongside Oyster and Amazon's Kindle Unlimited -- in the race to become the leading Netflix-for-books provider.

Scribd has added 30,000 audiobooks to its 500,000 e-books, accessible with an $8.99 monthly charge.

The audiobooks are across the genre spectrum. There are literary options such as "The Savage Detectives" by Roberto Bolaño, "No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy and "Hardboiled Wonderland" by Haruki Murakami alongside the bestselling YA trilogy "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.

There are full cast recordings of Shakespeare and classic radio dramas as well as self-help books like "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. And children's books read by celebrities include "Who's in Rabbit's House" read by James Earl Jones, "Chrysanthemum" read by Meryl Streep, "Owen" read by Sarah Jessica Parker and "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs" read by Paul Giamatti.

Popular audiobook narrators Jim Dale, Simon Vance and Katherine Kellgren are also in the mix.

The audiobooks will be available on all platforms; many are running now, but iOS users aren't expected to be up and running until next week.

Amazon, which owns leading audiobook company Audible, has not opened those floodgates to its Kindle Unlimited users. Instead, it has only about 2,000 audiobooks on offer via its version of Netflix-for-books.

Book news and more; I'm @paperhaus on Twitter

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Freddie Mac: Average 30-year mortgage rate rises above 4%

Moving higher for a second week, the 30-year mortgage rate broke back above 4%. Freddie Mac calculated that lenders were offering the most popular home loan at an average of 4.02%.

Rates rose for other loan types as well. Freddie Mac said 15-year fixed mortgages were averaging 3.21%, up from 3.13% a week earlier, and the start rates on adjustable loans edged higher.

The widely watched survey, released Thursday, had shown the 30-year mortgage below 4% for the three prior weeks, bottoming out at 3.92% two weeks ago at the low point for this year.

The rate opened 2014 at about 4.5%, and most economists predicted it would rise higher as the Federal Reserve tapered off an extraordinary economic stimulus program.

Instead, rates fell, even as the Fed cut back on and then ceased its massive purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage securities issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac's chief economist, said that strong economic reports this week raised the prospect of higher inflation and that more investors might dump bonds for stocks and other investments, driving rates higher.

Gross domestic product, the value all goods and services produced in the U.S., as well as an index of manufacturing activity, came in higher than analysts had anticipated.

Freddie Mac asks lenders across the country about rates being offered to solid borrowers who pay about half of 1% of the loan amount in upfront lender fees and discount points.

Third-party fees for services typically paid by borrowers, such as for appraisals, are not included in the survey.

Follow @ScottReckard for news of banks and home loans.

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Tom Brokaw's cellphone becomes election-night star

Written By kolimtiga on Rabu, 05 November 2014 | 23.50

Tom Brokaw, the longtime former anchor of "NBC Nightly News" will always be TV journalism royalty, but Tuesday night, Brokaw introduced America to a new star in the Brokaw house: his cellphone.

Brokaw was live on MSNBC on Tuesday discussing midterm election results with Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews when they were interrupted by a loud, disruptive alert sound. Maddow tried to dismiss it as ambient noise, but Brokaw quickly fessed up: It was the alarm on his cellphone that had begun going off.

"I thought you were on fire," Maddow joked.

Many anchors would have quickly turned off the alarm and continued about their business, but Brokaw has obviously been taking some improv classes these days, because he chose to turn the cellphone mishap into a "bit."

Pressing the phone to his ear, Brokaw engaged in a one-sided conversation.

"Yes, I will remember to bring home the milk. ... Don't worry about it," Brokaw said. "I'll feed the dog in the morning. Just sleep in, it's going to be OK."

Many viewers took to Twitter to say that Brokaw's cellphone shtick was the highlight of the evening.

MSNBC commentator Keith Boykin tweeted, "Guess they didn't have that problem when he was an anchor in the 90s."

Perhaps anchors on CNN should consider some amusing watermelon smashing in 2016.

Follow me on Twitter: @patrickkevinday

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Tom Brokaw's cellphone becomes election-night star

Tom Brokaw, the longtime former anchor of "NBC Nightly News" will always be TV journalism royalty, but Tuesday night, Brokaw introduced America to a new star in the Brokaw house: his cellphone.

"I thought you were on fire," Maddow joked.

Pressing the phone to his ear, Brokaw engaged in a one-sided conversation.

"Yes, I will remember to bring home the milk. ... Don't worry about it," Brokaw said. "I'll feed the dog in the morning. Just sleep in, it's going to be OK."

Many viewers took to Twitter to say that Brokaw's cellphone shtick was the highlight of the evening.

MSNBC commentator Keith Boykin tweeted, "Guess they didn't have that problem when he was an anchor in the 90s."

Perhaps anchors on CNN should consider some amusing watermelon smashing in 2016.

Follow me on Twitter: @patrickkevinday

23.50 | 0 komentar | Read More

Tom Brokaw's cellphone becomes election-night star

Tom Brokaw, the longtime former anchor of "NBC Nightly News" will always be TV journalism royalty, but Tuesday night, Brokaw introduced America to a new star in the Brokaw house: his cellphone.

"I thought you were on fire," Maddow joked.

Pressing the phone to his ear, Brokaw engaged in a one-sided conversation.

"Yes, I will remember to bring home the milk. ... Don't worry about it," Brokaw said. "I'll feed the dog in the morning. Just sleep in, it's going to be OK."

Many viewers took to Twitter to say that Brokaw's cellphone shtick was the highlight of the evening.

MSNBC commentator Keith Boykin tweeted, "Guess they didn't have that problem when he was an anchor in the 90s."

Perhaps anchors on CNN should consider some amusing watermelon smashing in 2016.

Follow me on Twitter: @patrickkevinday

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Home of the Day: Venice contemporary made for walking

By foot is the preferred mode of transportation in the neighborhood around this contemporary residence, which sits among a tightknit collection of homes in the desirable walk streets section of Venice. Clad in rich hardwoods, the three-level floor plan counts a wine cellar built into the staircase and an indoor-outdoor media room among its features. Above the top floor, a rooftop patio pairs a barbecue and wet bar with ocean views.

Location: 26 28th Ave., Venice, 90291

Asking price: $4.795 million

Year built: 2004

House size: 3,862 square feet, three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

Lot size: 2,640 square feet

Features: Hardwood flooring, floor-to-ceiling glass, chef's kitchen, breakfast bar, wine room, formal living room with fireplace, dining room, balcony, media room, rooftop deck with wet bar

About the area: There were 46 homes sold in the 90291 ZIP Code over the last 90 days at a median price of $1.5 million, according to Redfin. The median list price for that area is $1.74 million.

Agent: Tami Pardee, (310) 907-6517, Pardee Properties

To submit a candidate for Home of the Day, send high-resolution color photos via Dropbox.com, permission from the photographer to publish the images and a description of the house to neal.leitereg@latimes.com.

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Home of the Day: Venice contemporary made for walking

Location: 26 28th Ave., Venice, 90291

Asking price: $4.795 million

Year built: 2004

House size: 3,862 square feet, three bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

Lot size: 2,640 square feet

Features: Hardwood flooring, floor-to-ceiling glass, chef's kitchen, breakfast bar, wine room, formal living room with fireplace, dining room, balcony, media room, rooftop deck with wet bar

About the area: There were 46 homes sold in the 90291 ZIP Code over the last 90 days at a median price of $1.5 million, according to Redfin. The median list price for that area is $1.74 million.

Agent: Tami Pardee, (310) 907-6517, Pardee Properties

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Journalism snapshots of the past - which looks like the present

Written By kolimtiga on Selasa, 04 November 2014 | 23.50

Journalism is by nature an art – or a craft, depending on your take – of the present, that old cliché about it being the first draft of history. I see it more as snapshots of time, and it's interesting sometimes to go back through some of the photo albums, as it were, to revisit different times and places.

The New Republic, celebrating its centennial, has been republishing some of the better pieces in its archives, from a remarkable look at the Dachau concentration camp in 1934 when the Nazis were targeting political opponents (its role in the Holocaust was yet to come) to a 1916 interview with an Irish survivor of World War I trench warfare (while the war was still on) to a 1957 piece on Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," a book so controversial the writer had to review the work based on a bowdlerized excerpt.

Monday's reprint was from poet Langston Hughes, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, who also was a pretty good columnist and journalist. The piece follows the 1943 race riot in Harlem, sparked when a white cop shot and wounded a black soldier (sound familiar?). The article stands as testimony to the timelessness of American race and class distinctions, and relations, as Hughes depicted the gaps between white and black New York, and between upper class African Americans living in doorman apartment buildings in the Sugar Hill neighborhood, and the slum dwellers elsewhere in Harlem:

"But under the hill on Eighth Avenue, on Lenox, and on Fifth there are places like this — dark, unpleasant houses with steep stairs and narrow halls, where the rooms are too small, the ceilings too low and the rents too high. There are apartments with a dozen names over each bell. The house is full of roomers. Papa and mama sleep in the living room, the kids in the dining room, lodgers in every alcove, and everything but the kitchen is rented out for sleeping. Cooking and meals are rotated in the kitchen.

"In vast sections below the hill, neighborhood amusement centers are dark are gin mills, candy stores that sell King Kong (and maybe reefers), drug stores that sell geronimoes — dope tablets — to juveniles for pepping up cokes, pool halls where gambling is wide open and barbecue stands that book numbers. Sometimes, even the grocery stores have their little side rackets without the law. White men, more often than Negroes, own these immoral places where kids as well as grown-ups come.

"The kids and the grown-ups are not criminal or low by nature. Poverty, however, and frustration have made some of them too desperate to be decent. Some of them don't try any more. Slum-shocked, I reckon."

The series reminds me of a book Cornell University Press published in 1992, "These United States: Stories from the 1920s," edited by Daniel H. Borus, which drew together a series of old articles The Nation magazine had commissioned by leading writers of the Jazz Age to chronicle their home states. California's entry was by George P. West, a journalist and aide to progressive politician Hiram Johnson.

The Nation makes West's piece available online, but one of the standout observations is this:

"[O]nly the mapmakers and politicians still think of California as an entity. In its human aspects it is sharply divided into north and south. There is San Francisco and there is Los Angeles, each with a million people within an hour's travel. Between the two stretch nearly 500 sparsely settled miles of mountain and valley and desert, and a spiritual gulf wider still. The two communities are the state, in a cultural sense, and they are farther apart, in background and mental habits, than New York and San Francisco, or Chicago and Los Angeles. For ten years there has been a movement to write southern California with a capital S. Its people are as different from the older Californians up San Francisco way as Cromwell's Roundheads were different from the Cavaliers and the seventeenth century successors of Falstaff. It is a difference of origins."

Sometimes the present feels an awful lot like the past.

Follow Scott Martelle on Twitter @smartelle.

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Man pleads not guilty to kidnapping, raping women in Long Beach

A Signal Hill man accused of kidnapping and raping two women this year pleaded not guilty to a host of felony charges Monday and is being held in lieu of $4.5-million bail.

David Faavale Tautolo, 32, is charged with two counts each of kidnapping to commit another crime, forcible rape and one count each of forcible oral copulation, attempted sodomy by force, sodomy by force and criminal threats, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

Prosecutors say that on Jan. 14, Tautolo forced a woman at a bus station into his car and then sexually assaulted her at another location. She managed to get away and call police, but officers couldn't find Tautolo.

Then in October, Tautolo allegedly kidnapped a second woman, drove her to an alley and raped her. The woman called police once she was free and Tautolo was arrested the next day.

Tautolo faces life in prison if convicted on all charges. He's due back in court Jan. 20 for a preliminary hearing.

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.

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Man pleads not guilty to kidnapping, raping women in Long Beach

A Signal Hill man accused of kidnapping and raping two women this year pleaded not guilty to a host of felony charges Monday and is being held in lieu of $4.5-million bail.

Then in October, Tautolo allegedly kidnapped a second woman, drove her to an alley and raped her. The woman called police once she was free and Tautolo was arrested the next day.

Tautolo faces life in prison if convicted on all charges. He's due back in court Jan. 20 for a preliminary hearing.

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna.

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Journalism snapshots of the past - which looks like the present

The Nation makes West's piece available online, but one of the standout observations is this:

Sometimes the present feels an awful lot like the past.

Follow Scott Martelle on Twitter @smartelle.

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Hidden code of two great composers deciphered

The propriety of projecting a composer's personal life onto how we hear and perform the music goes through fads. Half a century ago, the Bay Area was home to Apollonian musicologists who prized structural analysis and dismissed biography as gossip.

We live now in an era where symphonies are valued as coded narrative, where centuries-old opera is related to modern life. And the Bay Area happened to be the place to be last weekend for remarkable revelations about the inner nature of two great composers, Mahler and Handel.

Saturday night, at a Davies Hall lighted up in Giants' orange and black and decorated with images from the Day of the Dead, Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony in a startlingly triumphant performance of Mahler's least-performed and least-understood symphony, the nocturnal and seemingly crazy Seventh.

The following afternoon, San Francisco Opera presented a psychologically and sexually discerning production of one of Handel's rarest and most oddball operas, "Partenope," at War Memorial Opera House.

The confusion over Mahler's symphony begins with its epic, tortured progress from death to glory. Mahler had followed this path before but never in so peculiar a way. The five-movement score, nicknamed "Song of the Night," begins with creepy funereal intimations, progresses through spookily seductive "night-music" dalliances and ends with psychotically over-the-top optimistic music.

For Tilson Thomas, getting what could well have been the most rapturous playing ever from the San Francisco Symphony, that seeming irreconcilable Finale became a meaningful and personal grotesquerie.

In the movement, Mahler transforms the grandiose theme that opens Wagner's opera, "Die Meistersinger," a symbol of all that is noble and good in German art, into an emotional handball to be thrown against different harmonic walls and see what happens to it.

Born Jewish but converted to Catholicism to further his career in anti-Semitic Vienna, Mahler pollutes the "Meistersinger" theme with episodes of vaguely Jewish-sounding dance music, which Tilson Thomas wondrously exaggerated. He relished the harmonic adventure and turned grotesqueries into effusive and overpowering celebration.

The result was as though Beckmesser — the bender of rules who Wagner belittles in his opera and gives Jewish attributes — were dancing on Wagner's grave.

Pierre Boulez has probed Mahler's proto-Modernism in this symphony. Leonard Bernstein uniquely captured its unsettled cultural ferocity. Gustavo Dudamel, in a new recording, makes a case for symphonies as inherently untamable.

Tilson Thomas, though, makes the symphony the revenge of the Thomashefskys. The grandson of these stars of the Yiddish theater, Tilson Thomas is the first to get at this core inner dramatic and psychological essence of the Seventh.

"Partenope," the 27th of Handel's 49 operas, is more crazy stuff. The queen Naples, Partenope, loves her fiancé, Arsace, who is also betrothed to Rosmira, who disguises herself as Eurimene and pretends to love Partenope and fights Emilio, who also loves Partenope, who winds up marrying Armindo.

Christopher Alden's production turns all of this into a Paris salon of Surrealists in the 1920s, with Partenope its hostess. Emilio, like Man Ray, photographs everything. Ormonte, the only one who doesn't appear to love anyone, looks like the composer Erik Satie. The others are hard to place.

The point of making the characters Surrealists is mainly because Surrealists were open to letting emotions be emotions, not necessarily tied to cause and effect. By freeing Handel's opera from its conventional narrative, Alden is also free to directly reveal how subversively Handel makes them compellingly real.

The composer's arias are a compendium of emotional states built around the confusion and insecurities of love and relationships. Alden lets loose those emotions in extravagant ways that call for and get an unusually versatile and accomplished cast, despite the tame though gracious conducting by Julian Wachner.

At one extreme, Armindo, the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, sings while crawling up and falling down stars, while swinging by his hands and while tap dancing. At the other, Arsace, the countertenor David Daniels in a stirring slow aria, all but maps his id while putting on a shoe.

The most theatrical moment for Emilio, tenor Alek Shrader, is singing while locked in a bathroom and trying to escape through a perilously high window. The most outrageous getup is that of Ormonte, bass Philippe Sly, in elaborate red Victorian gown.

And then there is Partenope, in this instance soprano Danielle de Niese as the hostess with the mostess starved for attention. She has sparkling, gorgeous arias. Unlike the others (excepting the bemused Ormonte), she remains mostly unflappable just so long as someone desires her.

De Niese, a Coco Chanel of a Partenope, reigns over this show in high style and high spirits. She has a tendency to telegraph every little expression, but here that seems just right. She may be wronged by Arsace (who, in the end, returns to Rosmira), but her fickleness is stronger than her affections, and yet it is Handel's genius that she wins our affections in doing so.

In the program note, Alden brings up the issue of Handel's sexuality. Circumstantial evidence implies that he could have been gay, and that could explain what contributed to making him so subversive a composer. His operas present psychological and sexual states that can be read different ways. By being ultimately unknowable, he remains ever intriguing and germane.

Partenope, in this exceptional production, is the character we are most drawn to yet remains a mystery. She's Handel.

Follow me on Twitter: @markswed

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Ovation Awards go to Fountain Theatre, 'The Country House'

Written By kolimtiga on Senin, 03 November 2014 | 23.50

The Fountain Theatre in Hollywood and Donald Margulies' "The Country House" at the Geffen Playhouse were among the big winners Sunday evening at the 2014 annual Ovation Awards, which honor excellence in Los Angeles theater.

Sunday's ceremony at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse was hosted by actresses Kate Burton and Katie Lowes.

The Fountain won the award for best season for its productions seen during the 2013-14 period. The Hollywood company won in the same category at the 2010 awards.

The awards for play and musical at large theaters went to the Geffen's "The Country House," currently running on Broadway, and the recent production of "Floyd Collins" at the La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, respectively.

In all, the awards were fairly spread out, with the Geffen, Skylight Theatre Company and Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts receiving four awards each.

The acting honors included Malcolm Barrett for his lead role in "The Recommendation" from the IAMA Theatre Company and Deborah Strang for a revival of "Come Back, Little Sheba" at A Noise Within.

James Barbour won for his role as Jean Valjean in a revival of "Les Misérables" at La Mirada, while "MADTv" alumna Nicole Parker won for her lead role in 3-D Theatricals' production of "Funny Girl" that ran at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.

The playwrighting award went to Meghan Brown won for her drama "The Pliant Girls" at the Fugitive Kind Theatre.

The Ovations are organized by the L.A. Stage Alliance. Here's the full list of winners:

Best Season: Fountain Theatre

Outstanding Play (Large Theatre): "The Country House," Geffen Playhouse

Outstanding Play (Intimate Theatre): "The Recommendation," IAMA Theatre Company

Outstanding Musical (Large Theatre): "Floyd Collins," La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

Outstanding Musical (Intimate Theatre): "110 In the Shade," Actors Co-op

Presented Production: "Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty," Center Theatre Group

Playwright of an Original Play: Meghan Brown, "The Pliant Girls," Fugitive Kind Theater

Ensemble of a Play: "The Country House," Geffen Playhouse

Ensemble of a Musical: "Maurice Hines is Tappin' Thru Life," Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Lead Actor in a Musical: James Barbour, "Les Misérables," La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

Lead Actor in a Play: Malcolm Barrett, "The Recommendation," IAMA Theatre Company

Lead Actress in a Musical: Nicole Parker, "Funny Girl," 3-D Theatricals

Lead Actress in a Play: Deborah Strang, "Come Back, Little Sheba," A Noise Within

Featured Actor in a Musical: Leigh Wakeford, "The Producers," 3-D Theatricals

Featured Actor in a Play: Hugo Armstrong, "Backyard," the Echo Theater Company

Featured Actress in a Musical: Tracy Lore, "Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein," Musical Theatre West

Featured Actress in a Play: Rebecca Gray, "Fireman," The Echo Theater Company

Director of a Musical: Richard Israel, "Floyd Collins," La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts

Director of a Play: Guillermo Cienfuegos, "Henry V," Pacific Resident Theatre

Director of a Play: Amanda McRaven, "The Pliant Girls," Fugitive Kind Theater

Music Direction: Sherrie Maricle, "Maurice Hines is Tappin' Thru Life," Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Lyrics/Composition for a World Premiere Musical: Ross Golan, "The Wrong Man," Skylight Theatre Company

Book of an Original Musical: Ross Golan, "The Wrong Man," Skylight Theatre Company

Choreographer: Kelly Todd, "Lysistrata Jones," Chance Theater

Lighting Design (Intimate Theatre): Jeremy Pivnick, "Everything You Touch," The Theatre @ Boston Court

Lighting Design (Large Theatre): Peter Kaczorowski, "The Country House," Geffen Playhouse

Costume Design (Intimate Theatre): Jenny Foldenauer, "Everything You Touch," The Theatre @ Boston Court

Costume Design (Large Theatre): Michael Krass, "Parfumerie," Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Scenic Design (Intimate Theatre): Jeff McLaughlin, "Pray To Ball," Skylight Theatre Company

Scenic Design (Large Theatre): Allen Moyer, "Parfumerie," Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts

Sound Design (Intimate Theatre): John Zalewski, "Everything You Touch," The Theatre @ Boston Court

Sound Design (Large Theatre): Richard Woodbury, "Slowgirl," Geffen Playhouse

Video Designer: Adam Flemming, Michael Hoy, "The Wrong Man," Skylight Theatre Company

Ovation Honors (Fight Choreography): Ahmed Best, "Backyard," The Echo Theater Company

Ovation Honors (Composition for a Play): Dave Robbins, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Actors' Gang

Ovation Honors (Puppet Design): Michelle Zamora, "Roald Dahl's The Magic Finger," MainStreet Theatre Company

Twitter: @DavidNgLAT

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Five things we learned in USC's victory over Washington State

Written By kolimtiga on Minggu, 02 November 2014 | 23.50

USC defeated Washington State, 44-17, on Saturday at Martin Stadium in Pullman, Wash.

Here are five things we learned about the Trojans in the victory.

USC can bounce back

USC has lost three games, two on last-second plays.

The Trojans bounced back to win the next game every time.

An emotional letdown was possible against Washington State after USC's loss at Utah, which made a trip to the Pac-12 Championship game unlikely.

But USC did not appear to lack motivation against the Cougars, scoring 14 points within the first five minutes and not letting up the rest of the game.

Cody Kessler is comfortable throwing down-field

Quarterback Cody Kessler has been criticized for not throwing down-field enough.

Kessler turned a corner when he passed for a school-record seven touchdowns against Colorado.

He did not hesitate to air it out against Washington State. Kessler completed 21 of 32 passes for a career-high 400 yards and five touchdowns.

Kessler hit Nelson Agholor in stride on a 87-yard touchdown pass play.

Five Trojans receivers averaged more than 10 yards per reception.

Nelson Agholor makes plays

Junior receiver Nelson Agholor produced 291 all-purpose yards and two spectacular touchdowns.

Agholor returned a first-quarter punt 65 yards for a touchdown. It was Agholor's school-record fourth punt return for a touchdown.

He also caught eight passes for a career-best 220 yards, including an 87-yard touchdown.

Agholor eclipsed 100 yards receiving for the third consecutive game.

After two seasons behind Robert Woods and Marqise Lee, Agholor has left no doubt he is capable of filling their shoes.

JuJu Smith has become steady force

Freshman receiver JuJu Smith has steadily proven himself as a reliable playmaker.

Smith caught six passes for 74 yards and three touchdowns.

It was Smith's third consecutive game with a touchdown reception, his first with more than one.

Defense loses playmakers, but others step up

USC played without starting outside linebacker J.R. Tavai, who did not travel to Washington State because of a knee injury.

And the unit took a couple of more hits.

Linebacker Su'a Cravens and safety Leon McQuay were both sidelined because of injuries.

Cravens suffered a knee sprain in the second quarter and will undergo more tests when the team returns to Los Angeles, USC announced.

McQuay was injured in the fourth quarter when he attempted to make an interception and collided with cornerback Adoree' Jackson while attempting to intercept a pass.

USC played backup linebackers Quinton Powell and Charles Burks and walk-on safety Matt Lopes.

Defensive lineman Greg Townsend Jr. started in place of Antwaun Woods, who was limited in practice this week because of an ear infection. Townsend also played as a stand-up rusher. He had a sack and came close to making several others

Questions or comments about USC? Email me at LNThiry@gmail.com or tweet @LindseyThiry and I will respond to select emails in a weekly USC Now mailbag.

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