“Across the country and, indeed, across California, there is a growing war over what kids can be taught about queer issues,” Times reporter Kevin Rector writes in a new personal essay.
“Conservatives want to ban the mere mention of queer people in schools and forbid LGBTQ+-inclusive school curricula. They want to ban drag queens from reading to kids, ban pride flags in classrooms and ban pride merchandise in stores. They want to ban young adult books with queer characters, ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender kids and try again to ban same-sex marriage, which provides many queer kids with hope for a fulfilled future,” he writes.
“With the protection of children as their stated rationale, today’s most ardent conservatives have taken up as a cornerstone of their political platform the idea that our nation and its children would be a lot better off if everyone under the LGBTQ+ umbrella were shoved collectively back into the closet, so that the rest of the country might move forward pretending we don’t exist.”
“But we do exist. And thank goodness,” writes Rector. “LGBTQ+ people have helped define this country. Our contributions to the nation’s cultural identity are indelible.”
This essay is published as part of “Our Queerest Century,” a Times series highlighting contributions of LGBTQ+ people since the 1924 founding of the nation’s first gay rights organization. Read it, and the rest of the stories in the series, at the link in our bio.
🎨 Rachelle Baker @indoorcargirl / For The Times
📸 Sakuma / Associated Press
At an unaddressed location in the Mojave Desert, a small group gathered to test new fireworks for the Macy’s 4th of July show in New York City.
The team tried out more than 200 brand-new shells — a small sampling of what is to come on Independence Day, said Will Coss, executive producer of the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks. And about 30% of the fireworks they were testing were unseen in the United States, according to Gary Souza, a pyrotechnic designer for Pyro Spectaculars by Souza.
Gary, along with brother Jim, represents the fourth generation of the 100-year-old family business. The fifth and sixth generations of the family also were present at the test. “It’s really evolved into more of a friendship,” said Jim, who’s president and CEO of the company.
A staple of Independence Day for almost five decades, the 48th annual Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks show will feature more than 60,000 shells during the 25-minute show. Last year, Macy’s introduced New York City’s first live drone show. This year, Macy’s and Souza are aiming higher: They are showcasing the nation’s first-ever fireworks on drone show, Jim said. The Federal Aviation Administration only just approved the practice a few weeks ago, he added.
Born and raised in New York City, Coss calls his job — and the opportunity to put on the iconic show — a “dream come true.”
“There is only one Fourth of July in New York City,” Coss said, “and we are grateful and fortunate enough to be the team that brings it to life.”
Read more at the link in bio.
📷 Macy’s Inc.
Alt-rock icon @Beck is stopping at the Hollywood Bowl for a show with the @laphil as part of a tour on which he’s performing orchestral renditions of tunes from throughout his catalog.
“We’re doing songs we don’t usually perform live because they don’t work without the orchestra,” Beck told The Times’ Mikael Wood.
Known for hits such as “Loser,” “Where It’s At” and “E-Pro,” Beck said his approach to greatest hits-style sets is evolving.
“There’s songs I’d do 10, 15, 20 years ago that would cause a predictable reaction from the audience. And now, because of streaming or the just evolution of taste, there’s other songs that have come out of the woodwork that people like more. I did a song called ‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime’ for ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ — it wasn’t in my repertoire at all, but because of the film, there’s a whole generation of people who know me for that song.”
Read more at the link in @latimes_entertainment ’s bio.
📸 : @dania_maxwell at the Spare Room at the Roosevelt Hotel
🖊️: @mikael.wood#beck#music#laphil#hollywoodbowl#hollywood#roosevelthotel
“The doors to the Bear may be open, but the elephant is still in the kitchen,” writes Times columnist Mary McNamara.
“#TheBear , FX’s Emmy-sweeping, meme-generating, kitchen-whites selling, deeply immersive experience of a series dropped on Hulu on Wednesday, and viewers are scrambling to see what kind of sweat-of-their-brow delicacies it serves up next,” writes McNamara. “By exposing the world to the wonder of the Chicago beef sandwich, the regimented patois of the kitchen and a cast that appears to have been assembled in heaven, ‘The Bear’ has taken restaurant culture to a whole new ‘Yes, chef!’ level.”
“For an adult child of an alcoholic, however, ‘The Bear’ isn’t about restaurants,” McNamara writes in her latest column. Read it at the link in @latimes_entertainment ’s bio.
📸 FX
Many California native plants are adapted to survive fire, with some even activated by the smoke or heat that comes through a charred landscape.
@safinazzal visited nonprofit native plant nursery @theodorepayne to learn more about the main adaptations a plant can have against fire.
Student loan borrowers enrolled in a new federal repayment plan could see their monthly payments cut in half in the near future, thanks to a last-minute reprieve by a federal appeals court.
At the moment, though, the legal wrangling is sowing confusion throughout the student-aid system, with millions of borrowers’ monthly payments thrown into doubt. And the relief granted by the court was only temporary, so the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, or SAVE, may not be able to offer reduced payments in the long run.
Read the full story at the link in bio.
Robert Towne, the screenwriting icon who won an Academy Award for his original script for “Chinatown,” died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.
In a screenwriting career launched in 1960 as a writer for low-budget producer-director Roger Corman, Towne earned an early reputation in Hollywood as a sought-after “script doctor,” stepping in to do uncredited work on troubled screenplays for movies such as “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) and “The Godfather” (1972).
A Los Angeles native born during the Depression, Towne was perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed, influential screenplay, “Chinatown.” Directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, the 1974 film classic is set in 1937 Los Angeles and features Nicholson as private investigator J.J. “Jake” Gittes, who is hired to investigate a supposedly cheating husband but instead finds himself enmeshed in a dark mystery involving deception, murder, and a vast water and land conspiracy in the San Fernando Valley.
Towne received rare public acknowledgment of his behind-the-scenes work in 1973 when “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola accepted a screenwriting Oscar for that landmark film and, “giving credit where credit is due,” thanked him for writing “the very beautiful scene between Marlon [Brando] and Al Pacino in the garden” — a scene Towne wrote the night before it was shot that illustrates the transfer of power from the aged Mafia don to his son Michael and indirectly captures the love between the two characters.
Two years later, the press was calling Towne “the hottest writer in Hollywood.”
Read more about his life and legacy at the link in @latimes_entertainment ’s bio.
📸 Bob Carey / Los Angeles Times
#chinatown#thegodfather#screenplay#film#cinema#writing#oscars
The blue cube of Alhambra! @tomexploresla had been curious about for a while and decided to dig into its history and got a tour of the grounds from an employee who’s worked there for the last 20 years. #latimes#acmartin#architecturalhistory
Tech scion David Ellison has reached a preliminary deal to buy the Redstone family holding company, National Amusements Inc., which would give his Skydance Media control over Paramount Global, according to three people close the situation who were not authorized to comment.
Details of the deal were not immediately available, but the move represents another dramatic reversal by media mogul Shari Redstone, who controls National Amusements and its 77% voting shares in Paramount Global.
Learn more at the link in @latimes_entertainment ’s bio.
📸 Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times
Patrice Pastor, a billionaire real estate developer from the tiny European nation of Monaco, has been on a buying spree in and around Carmel-by-the-Sea, dropping more than $100 million on at least 18 properties over the last decade. So much so that his presence has become a source of intrigue, and for some, downright suspicion, in this moneyed one-square-mile town of 3,200 people.
He says he first came to Carmel-by-the-Sea at age 7 during a trip with his father, and that he had never seen his dad more relaxed. The memory stuck with him. He now owns multiple homes in town and visits several times a year.
Pastor bought the Hog’s Breath Building, the site of the pub once owned by actor Clint Eastwood. He bought the L’Auberge Carmel hotel, which houses a Michelin star restaurant. He snapped up the Der Ling building, a 1924 shop, done in fairytale-style architecture next to a stone pathway leading to a hidden garden.
“It’s not like he picked up a book one day and was like, ‘Let me find the best place to invest.’ It’s that he personally loves it here,’” said Claire Totten, a spokeswoman for Esperanza Carmel LLC, the local branch of his international real estate company.
Yet, he has created quite the buzz in this gracefully aging town where, according to Zillow, the typical home price is $2.2 million.
The city has rejected several of his design proposals, including two for The Pit.
Development — including upgrades to private homes — is notoriously slow here. The city strictly regulates architecture to maintain the so-called village character of this woodsy place. Carmel uses no street addresses (people give their homes whimsical names instead), and has no streetlights or sidewalks in residential areas.
Read more at the link in bio.
📷 Genaro Molina
“It’s a weird thing to point a camera at if you’re not making ‘Psycho,’” says Ti West, the director behind @A24 ’s newest horror franchise, as he stands in front of the house from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film.
West calls his trilogy “movie-flavored movies” — artifice and dreams are the top notes. “X” is about scrappy strivers trying to break into the business; “Pearl,” about the dangers of buying into the fantasies on screen. #MaXXXine , the highest-profile film of his career, wrestles with accepting that Hollywood isn’t quite what one hopes.
“We just kind of manifested it, built this entire trilogy into existence. And it’s been incredible to see it unfold,” Mia Goth says. In addition to playing multiple roles across this mini-franchise, Goth co-wrote “Pearl” and executive-produced the last two films.
“It is not lost on me that there is a meta thing happening with these movies and me and Mia, and that’s gratifying and strange,” West says. “And it’s also something that we’ve never taken any time to stop and talk about. We were too busy making movies.”
Read our full interview with West and learn more about the iconic local locations seen in the film at the link in @latimes_entertainment ’s bio.
📸 @jason_armond ; @myung_chun ; A24
![Robert Towne, the screenwriting icon who won an Academy Award for his original script for “Chinatown,” died Monday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 89.In a screenwriting career launched in 1960 as a writer for low-budget producer-director Roger Corman, Towne earned an early reputation in Hollywood as a sought-after “script doctor,” stepping in to do uncredited work on troubled screenplays for movies such as “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) and “The Godfather” (1972).A Los Angeles native born during the Depression, Towne was perhaps best known for the critically acclaimed, influential screenplay, “Chinatown.” Directed by Roman Polanski and starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, the 1974 film classic is set in 1937 Los Angeles and features Nicholson as private investigator J.J. “Jake” Gittes, who is hired to investigate a supposedly cheating husband but instead finds himself enmeshed in a dark mystery involving deception, murder, and a vast water and land conspiracy in the San Fernando Valley.Towne received rare public acknowledgment of his behind-the-scenes work in 1973 when “Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola accepted a screenwriting Oscar for that landmark film and, “giving credit where credit is due,” thanked him for writing “the very beautiful scene between Marlon [Brando] and Al Pacino in the garden” — a scene Towne wrote the night before it was shot that illustrates the transfer of power from the aged Mafia don to his son Michael and indirectly captures the love between the two characters.Two years later, the press was calling Towne “the hottest writer in Hollywood.”Read more about his life and legacy at the link in @latimes_entertainment’s bio. Bob Carey / Los Angeles Times#chinatown #thegodfather #screenplay #film #cinema #writing #oscars](https://sp1.pixwox.com/p/pt_6811114573687258466567_0_55edb1c488df227b97186d6d049d9d95.jpg?v/t39.30808-6/449760681_18317510350195718_5182629866697870752_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_e35_p828x828_sh0.08&efg=eyJ2ZW5jb2RlX3RhZyI6ImltYWdlX3VybGdlbi4xMzUweDE2ODcuc2RyLmYzMDgwOCJ9&_nc_ht=scontent-sea1-1.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=102&_nc_ohc=B_xumtpLxG4Q7kNvgHaIFha&edm=ABmJApAAAAAA&ccb=7-5&ig_cache_key=MzQwMzYyMTgwOTIzNjEyNzI5OQ%3D%3D.2-ccb7-5&oh=00_AYCqM8Xd33GVlzPEQ9lxZ3jWWWw3g4ChXhm2FsTnPMZyrw&oe=668BAA5C&_nc_sid=b41fef)
