WASHINGTON — 

President Trump lashed out at 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg on Thursday, a day after she was named by Time as its Person of the Year, calling her selection “ridiculous.”

The Swedish teen has become a symbol of a growing movement of young climate activists after leading weekly school strikes in Sweden that inspired similar actions in about 100 cities worldwide. She has drawn large crowds with her fiery appearances at protests and conferences over the past year and a half.

In a Thursday morning tweet, Trump said, “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend!”

He added: “Chill Greta, Chill!”

Thunberg responded Thursday by changing her Twitter profile bio to read: “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”

It’s not the first time Trump has lashed out after not being recognized for his influence. In 2015, Trump attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for “ruining Germany” after she was named Person of the Year, when he was listed as a runner-up.

Trump is the second world leader to take aim at Thunberg this week, after her concern over the slayings of indigenous Brazilians in the Amazon drew a harsh rebuke from the Latin American nation’s president Tuesday.

“Greta said that the Indians died because they were defending the Amazon,” Jair Bolsonaro said. “It’s impressive that the press is giving space to a brat like that,” he added, using the Portuguese word ”pirralha.”

Thunberg responded by changing her bio on Twitter, where she has over 3 million followers, to “Pirralha.”

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Hello, my name is John Cherwa and welcome back to our horse racing newsletter as we see how the whip issue is dealt with at the CHRB meeting.

The big news on Thursday will probably not be the racing at Los Alamitos but the California Horse Racing Board meeting that precedes it. Most of the stuff is procedural, as usual, and there are only 12 items before public comment.

But, it’s item 12 that should bring the most interest: “12. Discussion and action by the Board regarding the proposed addition of CHRB Rule 1688, Use of Riding Crop.”

Talk about an undersell, like: “12. Violation of Nuclear Treaty 1234, foreign country launches missile at U.S. coast.”

Here’s what I think you can expect on Thursday. I don’t believe either of the proposed new rules will be passed, but they will be discussed. The Board wants to get it right the first time and, I believe, is open to other ideas and proposals.

And, of course, any action that changes the proposed rules will have to go through the 45-day public comment period. So, whatever happens probably wouldn’t happen until March at the very earliest.

One thing that is making the rounds is to look at the experiment at Woodbine, where jockeys can’t use the whip in an overhand way but can use it underhanded. This might be the compromise position, or at least a start on the way to reform. It could receive some traction because it’s both restrictive and also gives the jockey a tool at their disposal.

The Jockey Guild is also a player in this and it has a proposal. It sent out a news release on Wednesday with a copy of a letter sent to the CHRB and proposed changes to the ARCI guidelines.

Here are the changes that seem most interesting, such as eliminating the “three-strike rule” and replacing it with a full-race rule. Here’s an excerpt:

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“D) Limiting the use of the riding crop in the forehand (up) position to 7 times throughout the race on the shoulder and/or hind quarters; and

“(E) The rider may tap the horse on the shoulder or hind quarters, as long as the crop is utilized in the backhand (down) position, as necessary.”

In addition, jockeys would be limited to raising the crop to the helmet and there would be post-race inspection of the horse by a veterinarian after the race.

So, how this shakes out will be interesting to watch. As I normally do, I try to not take a position on a story I have to report on, although I have violated that a time or two. So, that’s what I’m doing here and leaving the opinion to you.

The job of the CHRB is a tough one. It has to come up with a proposal that satisfies both Sacramento and the entities it must regulate. Again, this is a slow process, so I wouldn’t expect more than another proposal, hopefully one that satisfies everyone, to come out of Thursday’s meeting.

Also interesting will be the report by Rick Baedeker, the executive director. Most of us want to know about the status of the long-awaited report on the Santa Anita deaths, which was promised in December. The logical release date would be between the end of Los Alamitos and the start of Santa Anita. But, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it was also postponed.

The common theme here is things are better when aligned with others. The CHRB rule on riding crops works best if aligned with the Thoroughbred Safety Coalition, The Jockey Guild and anyone else who has a dog in the hunt. The CHRB investigation would be best if aligned with the investigation being done by the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

There does seem to be one no-brainer, and one that probably should not require public discussion. “No. 11. Public hearing and action by the Board regarding the proposed addition of CHRB rule 1867.1, use of Bisphosphonates Prohibited, to prohibit the administration of bisphosphonates to any horse within a CHRB inclosure.”

Don’t know about bisphosphonates? Give this a read by clicking here.

Los Alamitos daytime preview

You don’t see a card like Thursday’s at Los Alamitos very often. There are eight races, starting at 1 p.m., and seven of them are 5 ½ furlongs and the other is five furlongs. Six (really seven, because a starter allowance has claiming horses) are some form of claiming races. The other is an allowance/optional claimer for Cal-bred fillies and mares going 5 ½ furlongs. (Of course.) And that’s what we’ll call the feature.

Time for Suzzie is the 7-2 favorite for trainer Vladimir Cerin and jockey J.C. Diaz, Jr. She has won four of 10 this year, all claiming wins, so this would normally be a bit of a step up, but since it’s against all Cal-breds, it should mitigate the competition.

Sunrise Royal, at 4-1, is the second favorite in this nine-horse race and runs for Eric Kruljac and Effrain Hernandez. She has won one of six this year but has been running at the allowance level, She won last out at Del Mar.

Here are the field sizes, in order: 6, 7, 7, 8, 6, 7, 9, 9.

Ciaran Thornton’s Lrc picks of the day

RACE THREE: No. 7 Leedslimit (12-1)

I could play it safe today but that is not the value-players way! Jockey Edgar Payera has hit with a couple of price horse so far at the meet. This mostly nighttime jockey has a 12-1 value play today in Leedslimit for trainer Lin Melton. Trainer is 25% in claiming races and this jockey is one for one for him. These $8k claimers tend to bring chaos so let’s chase it on this horse who was a winner last out at a great price and comes to this race with a sharp work in tow.

Sunday’s result: Heywoods Beach went off at 18-1 and stalked well but lacked the necessary kick to hit the board.

Ciaran Thornton is the handicapper for Californiapick4.com, which offers daily full card picks, longshots of the day, best bets of the day.

Golden Gate weekend preview

Here’s our weekly look at the best racing going on at Golden Gate Fields. As with the last meeting, we’re delighted to have race caller and all-around good guy Matt Dinerman as our host for previews and other musings. So, take it away, Matt.

“Last week, Golden Gate Fields officials announced that the late Pick 4 pools this Saturday and Sunday will be a guaranteed $100,000. There is an early post time of 11:45 a.m. both days. On Sunday, there are mandatory payouts of the 20-cent Golden Pick Six, the Rolling Super High Five and the early and late Pick 5’s. First post on Thursday and Friday remains 12:45 p.m.

“Race three on Friday is Leg D of the Stronach 5 wager. A field of 10 will sprint five furlongs in a maiden special weight for 2-year-old fillies. My top pick is Anatolia from the Blaine Wright barn. She is a filly by Pioneerof (cq) The Nile who has some sharp works in the mornings and gets Blaine’s go-to rider, Juan Hernandez.

“Don’t Unzip Me is also interesting: the daughter of Honor Code is out of the stakes winning turf sprint dam Unzip Me, who won four Grade 3 races in a 25-race career while earning more than $959,000. Don’t Unzip Me was purchased for $130,000 as a yearling by Tommy Town Thoroughbreds and is currently conditioned by Jonathan Wong. Unlike the aforementioned, Lady Crocker has racing experience and makes her second lifetime start for trainer Reid France. The daughter of Curlin is out of the Grade 2-winning turf route mare Foxysox and could improve with a race under her belt. She is a full sibling to Santa Anita stakes winner Curlin’s Fox.

“There are two stakes this weekend: $75,000 Bear Fan Stakes for Cal-bred fillies and mares sprinting six furlongs on Saturday, and the $50,000 Miss America Stakes for fillies and mares going 1 1/16 miles on Sunday. Although the Miss America is scheduled for turf, there is a chance the race will moved to the Tapeta given the wet weather over the past week and projected into Friday. The forecasts calls for a sunny sky on Saturday and Sunday. The Bear Fan drew a field of seven, led by Southern California shippers Lippy (trained by Doug O’Neill) and Apache Princess (Keith Desormeaux).

“With four more race days at this meet, it would take a miracle for Hernandez to drop to second or lower in the jockey standings. The 27-year-old journeyman holds an 18-win lead (50 wins) over veteran Frank Alvarado. Jonathan Wong has the most wins of any trainer at the current meeting with 24 victories. Isidro Tamayo is five wins behind in second and looks like the main danger to dethrone Wong, who has won the past five training titles.

“Have a great holiday break, folks, and we’ll see you back for opening day of the winter/spring meet on Dec. 26. A special thanks goes out to all of our dedicated customers who are supporting our product, and to this newsletter and its readers for allowing us to be a part of this piece every week.”

Final thought

If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter you can click here and sign up. Remember, it’s free, and all we need is your email, nothing more. Tell your friends, or even people you don’t like that much.

Any thoughts, you can reach me at [email protected]. You can also feed my ego by following me on Twitter @jcherwa.

Now, the star of the show, Thursday’s entries.

Los Alamitos Race Course Entries for Thursday, December 12.

Los Alamitos Race Course, Los Alamitos, California. 4th day of a 8-day meet.

FIRST RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $17,000. Claiming. Fillies. 3 year olds. Claiming Prices $12,500-$10,500.

SECOND RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $21,000. Maiden Claiming. 2 year olds. Claiming Prices $50,000-$40,000.

THIRD RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $14,000. Claiming. 3 year olds and up. Claiming Price $8,000.

FOURTH RACE.

5 Furlongs. Purse: $14,000. Claiming. Fillies and Mares. 3 year olds and up. Claiming Price $8,000.

FIFTH RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $20,000. Starter Allowance. Fillies and Mares. 3 year olds and up.

SIXTH RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $17,000. Maiden Claiming. 3 year olds. Claiming Prices $30,000-$28,000.

SEVENTH RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $45,000. Allowance Optional Claiming. Fillies and Mares. 3 year olds and up. Claiming Price $20,000. State bred.

EIGHTH RACE.

5½ Furlongs. Purse: $21,000. Maiden Claiming. 2 year olds. Claiming Prices $50,000-$40,000. State bred.

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

ANGELS

So do you bat them Mike Trout–Anthony Rendon–Shohei Ohtani, or Rendon-Trout-Ohtani, or some other combination? That’s a good problem that Angels manager Joe Maddon will have next season, as the Angels agreed to a seven-year, $245-million deal with Rendon on Wednesday night at the baseball winter meetings in San Diego.

Rendon, 29, cashed in on his best season as a major leaguer and was considered the top position player on the market. He had his choice of suitors, including the Dodgers, after declining the Washington Nationals’ reported offer of seven years and over $200 million at the end of the season.

The Texas Rangers had hoped Rendon, a Texas native raised in Houston, would sign with them out of a desire to play close to home. He was instead pulled to Anaheim, where Angels owner Arte Moreno has drawn other big-name free-agent position players such as Albert Pujols and Josh Hamilton.

Rendon will not fill the void atop the Angels’ starting rotation. But he will provide an infusion of power at a position that previously had little. Without Rendon’s bat, the Angels would have likely relied on David Fletcher and Tommy La Stella at third base. Although La Stella became an All-Star in part because he tapped into his power in his first season drawing regular starts, Fletcher uses a contact-first approach and doesn’t bat with much pop.

Rendon hit .319 with 34 home runs and a 1.010 on-base-plus-slugging percentage while maintaining his defensive excellence at third base. He led the majors with 126 runs batted in and was named an All-Star for the first time. He finished seventh in the majors with 7.0 Wins Above Replacement and third in National League MVP voting.

He continued his elite performance in the playoffs, batting .328 with five home runs, eight doubles and 21 runs batted in to help guide the Nationals to a championship.

DODGERS

The Dodgers were looking for someone they believe could dominate batters in the later innings. On Wednesday, they addressed the priority, agreeing to a one-year, $10-million contract with Blake Treinen, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The news comes after the Dodgers missed out on Gerrit Cole, the offseason’s top free-agent prize, Tuesday night, but terms were agreed upon before Cole’s decision to sign with the New York Yankees.

Treinen’s career has been a story of fluctuation. In 2018, he was arguably the best reliever in baseball, posting an 0.78 ERA and 38 saves as the Oakland Athletics’ closer. Last season, the 31-year-old right-hander regressed and finished with a 4.91 ERA. He lost his job as closer and was non-tendered earlier this month. He has 71 saves and a 2.97 ERA in six seasons.

BASEBALL

Five months after Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs died in a hotel room with two opioids in his bloodstream, Major League Baseball and its players’ union have agreed on a new drug policy that would add opioid testing for major leaguers and would not punish marijuana use in the major or minor leagues.

The policy, which would be implemented next season, is expected to be announced Thursday, according to a person with knowledge of the policy who requested anonymity.

The new policy is expected to call for treatment, rather than suspension, for players testing positive for opioids. Major league players have not been subject to opioid or marijuana testing, barring reasonable cause or participation in a treatment program.

The policy also would allow major and minor leaguers to use marijuana for pain relief without fear of discipline. Until now, minor league players have been subject to testing for marijuana and could be suspended for repeated use.

LAKERS

The Lakers (22-3) beat the Orlando Magic (11-13) 96-87 behind a triple-double from LeBron James, who finished with 25 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists. James was 11 for 24 shooting and Anthony Davis made six of 20 shots, to finish with 16 points, 12 rebounds, two blocked shots and two steals.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope added 15 points, making five of 10 shots and four of seven three-pointers. Jared Dudley, whose playing time increased with Kyle Kuzma out because of a sprained left ankle, scored nine points, making three of four three-point attempts.

The Lakers have now won 12 road games in a row.

“What I love about this win is we can win in a variety of different ways,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “We have great versatility. The last game we played 140 points and we were able to secure that victory in a different style of game. This one was more of a grind-it-out game and our defense held up.”

CLIPPERS

Kawhi Leonard got his ring, and the Los Angeles Clippers got another win.

Leonard scored 23 points in his return to Toronto, Lou Williams had 18 and the Clippers won their third straight game, beating the slumping Raptors 112-92.

Maurice Harkless scored 14 points and Paul George had 13 as the Clippers evened their road record at 6-6.

Before the game, Leonard received his championship ring from the 2018-19 season, when he helped Toronto beat Golden State in six games for the franchise’s first NBA title.

Read more

Kawhi Leonard is moved by stirring tribute, ovations in return to Canada

RAMS

Before the season, the Rams removed a potential burden from quarterback Jared Goff’s shoulders by signing him to a massive extension.

The $134-million deal, which included a record $110 million in guarantees, preemptively ensured that Goff would not have to play the final season of his rookie contract in 2020 while trying to prove his worth.

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott is doing just that — he reportedly turned down a $30-million-a-year deal before the season — and he has not flinched.

Prescott is earning about $2.1 million this season, according to overthecap.com. He has passed for an NFL-best 4,122 yards, and has connected for 24 touchdown passes, with 11 interceptions.

“He’s been doing a great job,” Goff said Wednesday. “There has been a lot of outside noise, and I think he’s handled it as well as he can.”

Would Goff be surprised if Prescott ultimately agrees to an extension that eclipses his deal?

“Not at all,” Goff said. “He’s a great player and he deserves everything coming his way.”

Goff, the first pick in the 2016 NFL draft, and Prescott, a fourth-round pick that year, will play against each other as pros for the third time Sunday when the Rams travel to AT&T Stadium for a game with playoff implications for both teams.

CHARGERS

Anthony Lynn said Jerry Tillery understood the coach’s decision Sunday to not have the Chargers rookie defensive tackle active for the game against Jacksonville.

He understood it, Lynn explained, but didn’t like it.

On Wednesday, Tillery confirmed that story.

“We had a conversation,” Tillery said. “He told me how he felt and I told him how I felt, and that was it. That was the end of it.”

A first-round choice in April, Tillery had appeared in all 12 games — including three starts — before Sunday.

But against the Jaguars, Lynn opted to have veteran Sylvester Williams active over Tillery because Williams is 30 pounds heavier and better equipped to stop the run.

Tillery said being inactive was discouraging but said he feels good about the progress he’s made this season.

“I want to play,” he said. “That’s it. At the end of the day, I wasn’t out there. They made me inactive. That’s how it went.”

BOBBLEHEADS

Who doesn’t love bobbleheads?

I get emails all the time from readers of this newsletter or the Dodgers newsletter asking where I can find a certain bobblehead. I never had a good answer until now. I have a bunch of bobbleheads, and am always looking for more. Most of them are Dodgers bobbleheads, but sometimes I miss out on giveaways or sometimes I just can’t find one I really want. If that sounds like someone you know, I have stumbled on a website that may help you find the perfect bobblehead as a Christmas present for someone you love. My Christmas present for me was a limited edition Bret Hart–Steve Austin bobblehead that recreates a memorable scene from their classic WrestleMania 13 match. The site is easy to navigate and is a great place for you to start your bobblehead search. And at least now I have an answer for those of you who write me about one.

YOUR FAVORITE SPORTS MOMENT

What is your all-time favorite local sports moment? Email me at [email protected] and tell me what it is and why, and it could appear in a future Sports newsletter.

This moment comes from Eliot Brown:

My favorite sports moment involved, as a few others seem to, Coach John Wooden and came about 20 years ago with my son who was around 10 at the time.

We were being taken to our table at a delicatessen on Ventura in Tarzana, and as we approached our booth, I noticed that there was a man sitting by himself, two booths from us.

When I told my son that the man is Coach Wooden my son asked how I was sure. I told him that Coach is always having breakfast at a coffee shop up the street and that I’ve seen him there many times. I then told my son to go visit him, just say hello.

At first, my son hesitated, didn’t want to disturb Coach having dinner. Normally, I’d agree, but, then I remembered how Coach loved talking to people, especially young people.

So, I “encouraged” my son again to go over to him and just say hi. So, he did.

I expected my son to come back in just a couple of minutes. Instead, Coach Wooden engaged him for almost 20 minutes and when he came back, my son said “What a cool guy!”

I asked what Coach talked about & he said “Being a good person, work hard, honor your family & friends, and about a Pyramid”. Then, he showed me a business card Coach gave him that had the “Pyramid to Success” logo on it with Coach’s signature.

Here was this unassuming man, this legend, sitting at a table by himself, literally no one recognizing him (or if they did, they kept their distance), stops his dinner to take 20 minutes of his time to talk with a 10 year old, my son. 20+ years have passed since then, but it’s a vivid memory I’ll never forget!

TODAY’S LOCAL MAJOR SPORTS SCHEDULE

All times Pacific

Kings at Ducks, 7 p.m., FSW, PRIME

BORN ON THIS DATE

1914: Former Dodger and Angel executive Buzzie Bavasi (d. 2008)

1932: Basketball player Bob Pettit

1946: Race car driver Emerson Fittipaldi

1950: Hockey player Billy Smith

1952: Gymnast Cathy Rigby

1962: Tennis player Tracy Austin

1964: Football player Haywood Jeffires

1967: Football player John Randle

1970: Football player Orlando Brown

1972: Runner Wilson Kipketer

1977: Former Dodger Orlando Hudson

1981: Aerial skier Jeret Peterson

DIED ON THIS DATE

1991: Baseball player Ken Keltner, 75

2006: Basketball player Paul Arizin, 77

AND FINALLY

Tracy Austin vs. Chris Evert in the 1979 U.S. Open final. Watch it here.

That concludes the newsletter for today. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, please email me at [email protected]. If you want to subscribe, click here

When Magic forward Jonathan Isaac fouled Dwight Howard, a crowd of Isaac’s teammates were around him. Some scuffling ensued and suddenly Howard was surrounded.

Enter Jared Dudley.

“Dwight gets fouled a lot but Dwight fouls a lot, so it goes both ways, sometimes it’s going to be chippy,” Dudley said. “Sometimes they jack him up but sometimes it’s actually the other way around. I don’t care if my teammate’s in the wrong or not. It’s like if you have a son, if you have kids at home and they’re in trouble, you’ll stand up for your son regardless of if it’s a teacher going at him — it’s my son. And if it’s my teammate, just, you know, gonna keep it like that.”

Dudley couldn’t quite reach the action, so he pushed the pile and was ejected for his efforts.

“That’s all it takes to get ejected?” LeBron James said. “A little shove?”

The Lakers appreciated Dudley’s willingness to get in the fray for his teammate. And that was only one part of his contribution to the Lakers in their 96-87 win over the Orlando Magic.

With Kyle Kuzma out because of a lingering ankle injury, Dudley’s role during the game increased. He played well during his 21 minutes on the court, making three of the four three-pointers he attempted. He scored nine points, grabbed two rebounds and had a plus-minus rating of plus-16 — the best on the team.

“Credit him for staying ready, and he doesn’t play a lot,” Lakers coach Frank Vogel said. “He knows his role. Knows that he’s not going to play always on a night-to-night basis, but when he’s needed he’s going to come in and produce.”

Dudley is in his 13th NBA season and knew when he joined the Lakers that his usage would be limited. So far this season he’s played in 15 games and averaged 6.7 minutes per game.

At the same time, he understood that injuries would happen through the course of the season, prompting the team to rely on him at certain times.

“My number’s eventually going to get called, it’s one of the reasons I wanted to come here,” Dudley said.

From the start, he also knew that he’d have an opportunity to protect his teammates at times.

“He told you guys at media day his job is to come in here if somebody goes crazy, do something crazy to me or AD or whoever on the team, he’s going to be the muscle,” James said. “He’s not ready to go but when something happens he can get that switch.”

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, Dec. 12, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.

On a September afternoon nine years ago, a man named Manuel Jaminez Xum was fatally shot by LAPD officers not far from MacArthur Park in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles.

At the time of the shooting, the 37-year-old day laborer was allegedly drunk and threatening passersby with a knife. Authorities said police repeatedly ordered him to drop the weapon, but that Jaminez raised the knife over his head and moved toward one officer, who opened fire.

The commands were delivered in English and Spanish. But Jaminez, who died at the scene, spoke K’iché — an indigenous language spoken by Guatemalan Maya.

The shooting, which later was declared justified by LAPD’s oversight body, incited violent protests in the largely immigrant neighborhood and made headlines in Jaminez’s home country of Guatemala.

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It also made the need for outreach between the department and non-Spanish-speaking Mexican and Central American communities acutely clear, as my colleague Metro reporter Leila Miller wrote in a story published Thursday.

K’iché is one of many indigenous languages that are common in Los Angeles’ immigrant communities. There are also Guatemalan Maya who speak Q’anjob’al, and Mexicans who speak languages such as Zapotec, Mixteco and Triqui. (At least 185 languages are spoken in total in the Los Angeles metro area, according to census data.)

[Read the story: “Nine years after Guatemalan man’s shooting, LAPD officers get help to identify indigenous languages” in the Los Angeles Times]

As the story details, indigenous Mexican community leaders began organizing training for officers in the LAPD in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The department itself is about half Latino.

Later this month, LAPD officers will begin carrying pocket cards that can help them identify an indigenous language, and if necessary, call an interpreter. Miller’s story explains how — nearly a decade after the shooting — those pocket cards came to be. Similar pocket cards already exist for Korean and American Sign Language.

And now, here’s what’s happening across California:

TOP STORIES

California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu has implored the Legislature to bar a “pervasive” police practice of using deception to obtain confessions from suspects who have invoked their right to remain silent. Writing in a dissent, Liu was responding to a decision to decline review of a Los Angeles case in which a suspect was tricked into confessing by an undercover deputy placed in his cell with a hidden recorder. Los Angeles Times

L.A. STORIES

Bel-Air’s Chartwell estate sold for about $150 million, a new California price record. Some know the residence of late media mogul A. Jerrold Perenchio as “The Beverly Hillbillies” mansion. Los Angeles Times

A fake pipe bomb — a Hollywood prop — panicked a Burbank neighborhood. Apartments were evacuated. Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles’ beloved mammoths will not be going extinct. A design team has been chosen for the redesign of La Brea Tar Pits, and unlike other plans, the winning proposal keeps L.A.’s most famous proboscideans right where they’ve always been. Los Angeles Times

Smile now, cry later: After 42 years, Lowrider Magazine will cease to print. “What started as a DIY zine by San Jose State University students Larry Gonzalez, Sonny Madrid, and David Nunez celebrating emerging lowrider culture in the 1970s went on to be a cultural icon in the U.S. and beyond.” L.A. Taco

Here are the biggest snubs and surprises from the SAG Award nominations, which were announced Wednesday and will be closely scrutinized by Oscar prognosticators for clues of which way this year’s awards season winds are blowing. Los Angeles Times

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POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

The Justice Department’s internal watchdog pushed back strongly Wednesday at President Trump and other critics who have rejected his conclusion that the FBI was justified in starting a counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 into whether the Trump campaign was cooperating with Russia. Los Angeles Times

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) underwent surgery in Washington on Tuesday to have a heart stent placed after having chest pains. Los Angeles Times

Californians cast a weary eye toward Mike Bloomberg on his first campaign stop in the state. The billionaire media tycoon appeared at a former auto repair shop in Stockton with Mayor Michael Tubbs, who endorsed Bloomberg earlier in the week. San Francisco Chronicle

Orange County officials are considering adding toll lanes to several major freeways to relieve increasing congestion as the county continues to grow. In the next decade, the 405, 5, 55, 57 and 91 freeways could see added express toll lanes, based on studies presented to the Orange County Transportation Authority. Los Angeles Times

CRIME AND COURTS

Harvey Weinsten has reached a $47-million settlement with his accusers and creditors. A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Delaware still must formally approve a deal that would bring an end to one chapter of the scandal that rocked the entertainment industry, decimated the Weinstein Co. and propelled #MeToo into a global movement.Los Angeles Times

Federal authorities charged three people with supplying the fentanyl that killed a father and his 13-month-old son in Santa Rosa earlier this year. The drugs were traced to San Francisco’s Tenderloin. San Francisco Chronicle

HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Congress has reached a deal on a spending bill that would require the military to stop using firefighting foam containing toxic chemicals linked to cancer, but would abandon efforts to place stronger regulations on the chemicals. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

The Angels signed elite third baseman Anthony Rendon to a seven-year, $245-million contract. Rendon had his choice of suitors, including the Dodgers, after declining the Washington Nationals’ reported offer of seven years and over $200 million at the end of the season. Los Angeles Times

Still time to see the light: The”Field of Light” installation in Paso Robles was supposed to close Jan. 5, but due to overwhelming public demand, it will stay open through the end of June. Los Angeles Times

Have you always dreamed of getting drunk at multiple bars in the Inland Empire while dressed in a full Santa suit? Well, sometimes (e.g. this Saturday) very specific dreams do come true. Riverside Press-Enterprise

Once a cult event, salmon watching in Marin now attracts thousands of viewers. The annual spectacle started this week. San Francisco Chronicle

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles: partly sunny, 69. San Diego: sunny, 68. San Francisco: rain, 60. San Jose: cloudy, 66. Sacramento: cloudy, 60. More weather is here.

AND FINALLY

Today’s California Memory comes from Larry Mayer:

“My first memory of California was on arrival at SFO on a TWA Douglas DC-3 in 1952. After a 17-hour flight from Minneapolis with my mother, grandmother and two younger sisters, we were exhausted. Our father was there at the airport to meet us; everybody was so happy to see him. The three adults carried us little ones out to the car parked at the curb for the ride to the apartment Dad had waiting for us in Stonestown. In my new bed I slept fitfully. I remember waking up to tell Dad about my anxious dreams of air travel as he tried to comfort me. I was 4 years old.”

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints, ideas and unrelated book recommendations to Julia Wick. Follow her on Twitter @Sherlyholmes.

I went to New Zealand on a long-planned vacation to see the setting for “The Lord of the Rings” movies and the mountain scenery.

But as the earthquake reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I had another goal. I wanted to visit Christchurch, a seaside city on the South Island. For people in the seismic community, there are many lessons California can learn from Christchurch, and I wanted to see it for myself.

On Feb. 22, 2011, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake ruptured right under Christchurch. There have been bigger earthquakes since around the globe that have been more destructive. But Christchurch bears a distinct resemblance to California cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. We share similar building codes, architectural styles, proximity to major faults, and that familiar denial that comes with living in earthquake country.

So when the sightseeing ended, I spent another week in Christchurch.

I was immediately struck by how much Christchurch had been altered by the quake and how the idea of a “full recovery” was a fantasy. Some voiced optimism of Christchurch being reborn as a safer, and in some ways more vibrant, city; others voiced regret at a lost decade.

The whole story reminded me how, in California and elsewhere, it’s easy to fall into the trap of being too optimistic in the early days after a disaster, where we celebrate heroes and come together as a community and think we can rebuild quickly. That can set up a time of disillusionment and despair, when it becomes clear that rebuilding will be a task that will last a generation or more.

The overall lesson I learned: Be realistic about the challenges the rebuilding will face. It will be far more difficult than anything we might have experienced in our lifetime. And by doing whatever we can before disaster strikes, the easier it will be to recover as best we can.

Here are five lessons I learned from my visit to Christchurch:

1. Recovery will be slower than anyone would like.

Consider the last true catastrophic California quake. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, estimated to be a magnitude 7.8, caused the collapse of many buildings across the city before sweeping fires destroyed nearly 500 city blocks, turning about 200,000 people — half of the city’s population — homeless. More than 3,000 people died. One study found that the 1906 earthquake stunted cities closest to the worst shaking for decades; they suffered from lower annual population growth continuing at least through 1970.

“People were deciding to not go to places that were hit as hard,” said study coauthor Katherine Eriksson, an assistant professor of economics at UC Davis.

The destruction played a role in halting San Francisco’s run as the undisputed king of the Pacific Coast, which came as Los Angeles gained in prominence.

San Francisco really didn’t fully regain its influence and might until the 1980s, said Ilan Noy, a professor specializing in the economics of disasters at Victoria University in New Zealand. “San Francisco fully recovers only when it develops this new engine of income, which is high-tech,” Noy said.

In Christchurch, progress for the recovery was hampered as officials overpromised and then underfunded rebuilding efforts. “They said everything would be done in five years,” Christchurch City Councilman Raf Manji told me this year before he left office. “They haven’t even started some of the projects — eight years later.”

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2. The mental scars can be widespread.

People don’t like to talk about post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety once the shaking begins. But it’s a major issue.

A year after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, The Times published a poll that showed startling levels of emotional damage from the earthquake.

More than half of those responding to the poll said they and their children continued to suffer from sleeplessness, jittery nerves, fearfulness or other emotional upset. Some said the smallest noises set their anxiety off. “I’m still very nervous and jumpy,” one L.A. resident said. “When my neighbor’s washing machine got off balance the other day, I thought we were having another earthquake.”

Normally, a substantial proportion of post-traumatic mental illness is resolved within one or two years, but that doesn’t always happen; a slow recovery can be particularly taxing for the population.

A study of victims of Hurricane Katrina found that rates of post-traumatic stress disorder rose from 15% to 21% between a period of about half a year to 1½ years after the hurricane; and serious mental illness rose from 11% to 14%.

In the New Orleans metropolitan area about half a year after Katrina hit, about 30% had PTSD; and nearly half had an anxiety mood disorder.

3. The warnings about dangerous buildings are not overblown.

For decades, seismic experts have said certain types of buildings are at high risk of collapse in a major quake. Christchurch proved them right. They include buildings made of brick or stone built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as more modern concrete buildings, including office towers built through the 1980s.

Just two concrete buildings catastrophically collapsed in the 2011 earthquake, killing 133 people, accounting for more than two-thirds of the death toll in the disaster.

Many brick and stone structures also collapsed, killing more than 40 others. Most were not inside collapsing buildings, but were killed by falling debris while they were outside or in vehicles.

While some big cities like L.A. and San Francisco have pushed to retrofit or demolish brick buildings, a number of smaller California cities have not. Most California cities have not ordered potentially vulnerable concrete buildings to be strengthened, including San Francisco.

4. New Zealand’s recovery was helped by earthquake insurance. California is nowhere near as insured.

California and New Zealand both have tried to tackle seismic safety issues, but Kiwis are well ahead of the Golden State when it comes to insurance.

New Zealand is unusual for its remarkably high earthquake insurance rate. In California, most homeowners are required by their lenders to have only fire insurance. In New Zealand, however, the government created the New Zealand Earthquake Commission, which is a compulsory addendum to anyone with a standard residential fire insurance policy typically required by lenders, Noy said. More than 95% of residential properties have standard fire insurance, and, as a result, are also insured for earthquakes.

The system wasn’t perfect. There have been complaints about how the commission was ill-prepared to manage the massive influx in claims. And some people were under-insured. But the high insurance rate prevented many from losing it all.

If a major quake hit California, homeowners would be much more exposed. Only about 11% of California homeowners have quake insurance.

Small businesses were also helped by a temporary government program in the months after the earthquake.

The government propped up small businesses and their employees with an earthquake support subsidy — keeping paychecks of $320 a week flowing for between six and 14 weeks. About $122 million was spent on the subsidy.

5. Future California earthquakes can be worse than Christchurch’s.

Worst-case earthquakes hitting California’s oldest and largest cities can be far more destructive than what happened in Christchurch in 2011.

While both sit along major tectonic plate boundaries, California is far more populous than New Zealand, and has much more to lose in a big earthquake.

One nightmarish scenario, although not one especially likely to strike in our lifetime, is a magnitude 7 quake on the Puente Hills thrust fault directly underneath a broad swath of central Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. Such a quake could cause the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, killing 18,000 people and causing 268,000 injuries.

Likelier scenarios are still catastrophic. According to plausible scenarios studied by the U.S. Geological Survey, a magnitude 7 earthquake on the San Francisco Bay Area’s Hayward fault could lead to 800 deaths and 18,000 injuries.

And a magnitude 7.8 on the San Andreas in Southern California would be a catastrophe, sending severe shaking across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern and Ventura counties, and causing 1,800 deaths and 50,000 injuries. Five steel-frame buildings across Southern California could collapse; and 50 additional brittle concrete buildings could partially or completely collapse.

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — 

When a big earthquake strikes, the public’s attention immediately goes to the physically injured, the dead, or to collapsed buildings. But something else also starts: the toll on mental health.

Traumatic stress rises in the aftermath of a disaster, researchers say. One study examining survivors of 10 disasters found that one-third of them suffered a post-disaster diagnosis — with post-traumatic stress disorder being the most prevalent (20%), followed by major depression (16%) and alcohol use disorder (9%).

Worsening mental health has been documented in a number of recent disasters, including the aftermath of the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994 and the magnitude 6.2 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011.

Deteriorating mental health can sometimes be obscured by the phases of a disaster. Immediately after a disaster, researchers have documented that there can be a community emotional high as people enter into a heroic rescue mode, followed by a honeymoon period where a community bonds and there is unrealistic hope that everything can return to normal quickly. But then there can be a long phase downward, and it can be accompanied by stress, exhaustion and fatigue.

“The disillusionment phase is a stark contrast to the honeymoon phase,” the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says. “As optimism turns to discouragement and stress continues to take a toll, negative reactions, such as physical exhaustion or substance use, may begin to surface.”

Experts say it’s important that officials recognize the looming public mental health crisis before a disaster strikes. After the Feb. 22, 2011, Christchurch earthquake, some say mental health services fell short and people suffered. Others say they got good care, and in subsequent years, public health officials embarked on an innovative public mental health campaign called “All Right?” that sought to improve the community’s mental health — a tactic that came back to prominence after shootings at mosques this year led to the deaths of 51 people, New Zealand’s worst mass killing in its modern history.

Here are lessons officials in New Zealand learned:

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Understanding the emotional trauma from the quake can take time.

After the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, there was a widespread worsening of mental health, experts say, with the worst effects found closest to the strongest shaking. Children showed greater signs of post-traumatic stress. Even medical students reported their own mental health deteriorating.

More brain-calming drugs — a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines that includes Xanax and Valium — were dispensed after the earthquake. Researchers found increasing rates of mood and anxiety disorders in the two years after the earthquake.

A 2016 review of studies of 76,000 victims of earthquakes calculated that roughly 1 in 4 survivors experienced PTSD — making earthquakes more likely to cause PTSD than floods or strokes.

“This was mainly because earthquakes were often much more devastating and destructive, and often happened unexpectedly without warning,” the authors wrote.

When aftershocks won’t quit, cake — and kindness — helps.

Part of what made the Christchurch earthquake difficult to recover from psychologically was the unusual length of the aftershock sequence.

“Imagine you had a terrible earthquake, and in every 30 minutes, or hour, or two hours or five hours, you get a little shake that reminds you of how terrible that first shake was,” said Sara McBride, a top public information officer for the emergency response effort in New Zealand. “It happens all day and night … there’s no respite … and you don’t know if the next shake is going to be worse than the last.”

Even officials were prone to distress. One solution? “Constantly feed people cake,” McBride said, who brought out slices after aftershocks turned her subordinates quiet, pale and upset. “Little small moments of compassion and comfort, like really good cake, make a surprising difference.”

A public mental health approach is essential.

Experts say health officials worldwide should pay attention to Christchurch’s mental health issues as a warning for what could come if a disaster strikes their region.

“They should absolutely be concerned,” said Dr. Ben Beaglehole, a psychiatrist who co-wrote many studies on Christchurch’s mental health issues following the quakes.

For all its problems, Christchurch’s mental health issues were partly alleviated, Beaglehole said, by the region’s concerted campaign to improve mental health, and its near-universal rate of earthquake insurance among homeowners.

“If you can do things in the post-disaster environment to make people feel secure and safe enough, with a sense of purpose and belonging, and a future pathway, then I think the adverse effects are going to be minimal,” Beaglehole said. “But if people continue to feel scared and unsafe and uncertain, that’s when people are going to struggle.”

Officials realized the focus on rebuilding the city must be about healthy people, not healthy buildings. A survey found that more than 75% of those surveyed said their home was damaged, and nearly 2 out of 3 grieved for the “lost Christchurch.” Among people who described what they felt when their efforts to hold things together failed, men talked about becoming angry; women described despair, depression and anxiety.

“We will never, ever manage to actually deal with the fallout from a large-scale event one consultation at a time. No system in the world could possibly provide that,” said Evon Currie, general manager of community and population health for the Canterbury District Health Board.

So public health officials conjured a public outreach campaign known as All Right? — emphasizing that it was OK, and actually quite acceptable, to be concerned about one’s mental health, and to move people out of thinking about issues beyond their control to a new mind-set where they are empowered.

Officials credit this public health approach with helping the community deal with the stresses of the quake. A poll of greater Christchurch residents found that the percentage of respondents saying their quality of life was good rose from 73% in 2013 to 81% by 2018.

A majority of studies found negative mental health effects resulting from the Christchurch earthquakes, Beaglehole said. One study of hundreds of Christchurch-born adults found a greater rate of mental health disorder among those who endured the quake than those who had moved away before the shaking began.

Earthquake survivors who suffered the most showed clear increases in mental health risk, that study showed.

In addition, Beaglehole said, those already receiving specialist mental health services before the big earthquake saw the severity of their mental health worsen considerably for a number of years.

Disasters can trigger an acute mental health crisis.

Some people believe the earthquake triggered a spell of mental illness.

Eddy Snook took a deep interest in quakes when the Christchurch earthquake sequence began in the months before the deadliest tremor occurred.

It was a natural fit for him. He was an electrical engineer and loved to figure out how things worked. He drove out to the Canterbury Plains on the weekend and plotted fault lines.

But soon, life became difficult. Sam, his childhood best friend, died from cystic fibrosis. Then the February quake hit, and he was shaken. The quake seemed to coincide with major changes in mood and outlook, according to his father, John.

Snook demanded answers about whether the building he worked in was safe.

“He became quite obsessed with it,” his father said. “It became almost a bit too consuming for him.”

He soon quit his job and headed to London. But problems worsened; he stopped eating, and his friends called his parents to fetch him. He received medical help, but in hindsight it wasn’t working.

In 2014, he took his life.

“There are still tears every day,” his father said.

His father said Snook didn’t have the right medical help. “We didn’t anticipate what was going to happen…. I think the help that he had wasn’t really appropriate for his needs.” The medical attention he received didn’t address his problems, was confusing and not really caring, his father thought.

It takes work to stay mentally in check.

Christchurch’s 2011 earthquake forever changed Laylita “Bonnie” Singh’s life.

When the shaking started, something hard smashed into her skull as the unretrofitted brick building she worked in as a tattoo artist apprentice and receptionist came tumbling down.

The blow broke two of her neck vertebrae and six in the middle of her back — compression fractures “from being slammed on the head,” she said. She probably fractured her skull.

Her co-worker and friend didn’t make it.

Unlike Singh, who was trying to grab her phone, Matti McEachen, 25, a fellow tattoo apprentice, had raced to the exit and got to the doorway and then disappeared as the walls began to fall.

Singh was able to crawl out of the rubble, digging herself out. She had to learn how to walk over again; she suffered from survivor’s guilt. The pain persisted; the fatigue constant; the back and neck pain, excruciating.

In spite of all that, Singh held on to a dream of becoming her own tattoo artist.

She now co-owns the area’s only female-owned tattoo shop, Maid of Ink, in Christchurch’s neighboring port community of Lyttelton, after becoming a master tattoo artist under the tutelage of her former female colleagues and then starting a business with them. Her tattoo skills have blossomed — she can draw life-like portraits on calves using a technique called stippling; a single tattoo of angel-like wings on a back can be made of millions of dots.

“It was my driving force in getting well and carrying on,” Singh said.

She has been able to buy a home and raise her daughter as a single mom after she and her husband divorced. She says she makes enough to get by — sometimes business is “very OK,” other times, slim.

But the earthquake’s imprint lasts.

She hoped she’d recover significantly from her head injury in a year. Then a couple of years. Then four years. While she’s gotten much better, there are persisting effects. Sometimes, the back pain is so bad she can’t work.

“I get so tired. I get fatigued. It’s constant,” she says. She’ll have to watch herself. “Oh, if I do that and exert myself, I’ve got a week that I’ve got to pay for that,” she said.

“I just don’t think anyone understands how head injuries affect you until they’ve had one. Because it’s so invisible,” Singh said. Having a head injury felt like living in a fog, where “nothing was clear. Everything was exhausting.”

It takes work to stay mentally in check.

Meditation helps, as does yoga. Regular exercise is a must when she can do it; it’s so important to do the things that make her feel good. She dances, she sings. Writing three things she’s grateful for every day.

“Anything that uplifts you is the key,” she says. “I’m not saying I don’t get depressed — I do. It’s something that comes with trauma.… It affects you for life. So I imagine I’m going to have to do this for the rest of my life…. But I know the tools. As long as I’ve got my tools, I’m OK.”

When the composer and conductor Oliver Knussen, a gentle and towering giant of British music, suddenly died of a massive heart attack at 66 last year, he was beloved. A year and a half later, he is already taking on the stature of a legend. The takeaway from the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s tribute to Knussen both in its weekend concert and Tuesday night Green Umbrella program in Walt Disney Concert Hall is that his legacy will inevitably continue to grow larger and larger.

Since he died, I’ve found myself tirelessly listening to his music, studying his scores, playing his recordings of all kinds of music (each one special in its own, often surprising, way), remembering his conducting live and streamed on the BBC, as well as sharing anecdotes (the supply is inexhaustible) with musicians, his students, his friends.

No one who encountered him can stop talking about Olly. In life, he was a massive man, both in height and girth. His shadow, in death, grows ever larger.

Given how frustratingly late the fanatically perfectionist composer could be in finishing, or never finishing (or not even beginning) his commissions, and given his own lovably quirky and lumbering manner, it could sometimes be hard to fully appreciate just how much Knussen mattered. But as I’ve been surveying his career as composer, conductor, educator and general man about music, I am convinced that he was the greatest British musician of his time.

For all he didn’t finish, especially in his last years, he did, in fact, leave behind a substantial body of work. Each piece, modest or not, witty or wise, is a jewel. Every note had a reason for being. His conducting was never less than illuminating and more often downright revelatory, be it his own music or that of Copland, Carter, Stockhausen, Debussy, Brahms or Britten. He conducted American music with more insight than any other non-American. When you could drag him out of the Kabuki theater, he conducted the works by his close friend Toru Takemitsu in ways that brought tears to eyes of Japanese audiences. His British and American students (he had long association with Tanglewood Music Center) are now among the world’s elite musicians.

An L.A. Phil tribute made perfect sense. It was co-curated by the orchestra’s principal guest conductor Susanna Mälkki and violinist Leila Josefowicz. Both had a long connection with Knussen, as he did with the L.A. Phil. In the 1980s and 1990s, Knussen was regularly invited to conduct here by the orchestra’s executive director, Ernest Fleischmann. This was despite the fact that Fleischmann had once been fired from the London Symphony Orchestra management by Knussen’s father, who was principal bass of the orchestra and head of its player committee.

Knussen was, furthermore, a good friend of Esa-Pekka Salonen. The orchestra commissioned a cello concerto, but it was never finished (if begun).

But this is only the start of a web of connections that Knussen wove. It just so happened that the same night as the Green Umbrella “A Tribute to Oliver Knussen,” the Ensemble InterContemporain in Paris had its own “Hommage Á Olly,” and it included Knussen’s “Songs for Sue,” a requiem he wrote for his wife Sue, an education director of the L.A. Phil who died in 2003.

It’s a small world. And it’s a big world. That’s what Knussen was about: encompassing the intimate and the vast.

Five Knussen works were on the two L.A. Phil programs. They contained but 40 minutes of music, but they said a lot. The orchestral concert featured the Violin Concerto and the flashy, brilliant, three-minute fanfare “Flourish With Fireworks,” which Knussen wrote to open Michael Tilson Thomas’ first concert as music director of the London Symphony in 1988. There’s yet another connection. The Green Umbrella featured Knussen’s “Ophelia Dances, Book 1,” which Tilson Thomas conducted from the celesta for its 1975 premiere by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Tilson Thomas happened to be in the audience and in town to lead this week’s L.A. Phil concerts.

The Violin Concerto, the most substantial piece, was written for Pinchas Zukerman in 2002 after a more than 20-year gestation period (not atypical for Knussen). Gustavo Dudamel, in yet another connection, made his New York Philharmonic debut in 2009 conducting the concerto with Zukerman as soloist.

But Josefowicz, who performed the concerto with the L.A. Phil and Salonen in 2005, owns it. She was Knussen’s favored soloist and recorded it with him. The last of her dozens of performances of the concerto with the composer was two months before he died. Over the weekend she was on fire, delivering an almost impossibly fast and deeply stirring performance.

The three movements are only about 16 minutes but easily contain enough material for a 40-minute concerto. The forms are Baroque but made fantastical. With Mälkki in keen support, Josefowicz brought ferociously raw expression to the opening “Recitative” and a poignant lyricism to a too-moving-for-words central “Aria.” Then she turned the “Gigue” into a gripping dance of life and death.

Still, the biggest news of the tribute was “Reflection.” The nine-minute 2016 score for violin and piano was one of Knussen’s last works and his first major one in six years. The inspiration was Gauguin’s “Dans Les Vagues” (In the Waves), which was to have been the subject of a movement for a decades-old Cleveland Orchestra all-but-completed-but-not-to-the-finicky-composer’s-satisfaction commission. Watery figuration in the piano and trills in the violin set a contemplative tone that expands into supreme, stunning lyricism. It is a small, late masterpiece. Josefowicz, joined by pianist John Novacek, made it wistfully sing and dance.

The other Knussen scores were examples of his flair, spunk and fastidiousness. (Knussen liked to joke that he was the only composer or conductor for whom Leopold Stokowski and Pierre Boulez were heroes.) If “Reflection” is a composer dreamily contemplating the depths, “Flourish With Fireworks” is splashing around, and Mälkki made it sparkle.

In the two chamber pieces, Knussen again turned to early music. “Two Organa” gives late 20th century chamber music glitter to 12th century counterpoint. “Ophelia Dances” are a complex web of intertwining solos, reminiscent of Ophelia dancing on the precipice. Both were tightly managed by Mälkki.

The British works that surrounded Knussen’s were all amiable. Huw Watkins’ Piano Quartet mixed easy-going lyricism with unthreatening agitation. Helen Grime’s “A Cold Spring” showed some of Knussen’s love for complication and color filtered through her own inventively melodic character. The sampled gongs and song of Jonathan Harvey’s haunting, electronic “Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco” echoed the gong-like chords that movingly begin and end Knussen’s Violin Concerto. Colin Matthews’ likably lively “Hidden Variables” didn’t hide the John Adams allusions, just their reasons for being.

The reasons for Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony as the concluding work on the weekend orchestra program had to be the commercial need for a blockbuster. But Mälkki loves a good blockbuster, and the exhilaration she and Josefowicz brought to Knussen’s Violin Concerto carried over after intermission to her knockout Beethoven, as if Knussen’s shadow ecstatically spurring her on.

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The filmmaking twins Jen and Sylvia Soska made one of the most vibrant and ferocious horror movies of recent years with 2012’s “American Mary,” a gory exploration into extreme body-modification. The Soskas’ projects since have been more generic; but they’re back on their game with “Rabid,” an uneven but often energizing remake of David Cronenberg’s 1977 cult classic.

Like the original, the new “Rabid” is about a woman named Rose (played here by Laura Vandervoort) who has experimental plastic surgery after a disfiguring accident, waking up with a grotesquely mutated body and a thirst for blood. Her bite soon infects others, turning them into frothing, cannibalistic maniacs.

The Soskas (who also cowrote the movie with John Serge) build on Cronenberg’s original premise. Their “Rabid” doubles as a savage fashion industry satire, as the reborn Rose finds she’s finally cutthroat enough — literally — to impress the catty models and cruel designers she works with.

Frankly, the fashion material draws too much on threadbare clichés. The directors get more juice from their Cronenbergian body-horror. The Soskas bring back a lot of what made “American Mary” memorable, with all their elaborate visions of gaping wounds and warped flesh.

“Rabid” is at its best when it’s assaulting viewers with images of a mutilated Rose consuming a chunky blood-red concoction from an oversize syringe; or when it’s panning across an emergency room filled with snarling subhumans. These scenes also make strong points about self-image and self-control, but in ways that pierce straight into the subconscious.

If “Breathless” star Jean Seberg hadn’t existed, a hard-boiled novelist would have had to invent her — a glittering Hollywood/New Wave icon of modern style and civil rights outspokenness who survived a gantlet of male impresarios only to be laid low by FBI smear tactics harsher than any showbiz gossip monger’s.

And in Benedict Andrews’ color-saturated fever-dream biopic “Seberg,” Kristen Stewart’s knife’s-edge allure helps cut straight to what was lonely, searching and defiant in Seberg as she began an affair with Black Panther revolutionary Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie) that, as dramatized here, triggered spiteful surveillance from one crass, judgmental fed (Vince Vaughn) and stalker-ish protectiveness in a younger colleague (Jack O’Connell).

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It’s difficult, however, to latch on to Seberg’s tragic descent as star, do-gooder, wife, lover or mother when the overwrought and retro-fantastic movie around Stewart plays like an ad for a perfume called Paranoia as conceived by a soap opera writing staff. (Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse are the credited screenwriters.)

Nothing against cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s period panache, but it only ever feels like a gloss, not a coloring, and Zazie Beetz’s role as Jamal’s wife Dorothy is so thankless it’s tempting to read her disappointment face as, “This is how we have to get the Panthers depicted in a major movie?” By the end, Stewart is enough of a force to give Seberg’s darkest moments their due, but it’s too little, too late for the superficial soup that is the movie that bears her name.