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

FOOTBALL

Sports reporter Nathan Fenno has an incredible story on former USC football star Kevin Ellison. You can read the whole story by clicking here. If you don’t believe me, here’s an excerpt that should lead you to read the whole thing:

The brains arrive at all hours in white cardboard boxes stamped “RUSH!” Inside each package is an inch-and-a-half-thick foam liner and a red bag protecting an ordinary white plastic bucket.

When a courier service delivered Kevin Ellison’s brain to the Bedford VA Medical Center near Boston just after 2 p.m. on Jan. 22, Dr. Victor Alvarez performed the routine he has done so many times that he’s stopped counting.

The neuropathologist unpacked the box, weighed the brain and examined it for contusions or hemorrhages. He snapped dozens of pictures with various exposures to capture differences in shape and color not apparent to the naked eye.

Alvarez processes most of the brains donated to the partnership between the Department of Veterans Affairs, Boston University CTE Center and the Concussion Legacy Foundation. He moves with care and speed, knowing each brain represents a family searching for answers.

Ellison’s family donated his brain to be studied for CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the devastating neurodegenerative disease found in people who have suffered repeated head trauma but can be diagnosed only after death. Football players are its most prominent victims.

It had been three months since Ellison died at age 31 — and nearly a decade since his days on the football field as a hard-hitting defensive back, team captain and fan favorite at USC. He went on to play one season for the San Diego Chargers. The three words tattooed on his left arm summed up his approach to life: “Be the best.”

Ellison had been living in an apartment behind his mother’s home in Inglewood. He had earned an economics degree in college, but at the end he no longer drove and struggled to keep jobs. He had a headache that never really left. His neck hurt and he felt dizzy. He couldn’t sleep, heard voices, talked to the sky.

Sometimes the old Kevin returned, his mother recalled. But she could tell when the darkness approached. His grin faded. His eyes wandered. He took long showers to escape, the sound drifting into the living room….

To read the rest, click here.

Read more

Dylan Hernandez: So long as football thrives, the Kevin Ellisons will pay the toll

Video: How CTE changes everything about football

LAKERS

The Lakers beat the Nuggets, 105-96, improving to 18-3 this season, bouncing back from a loss to the Dallas Mavericks.

Against the second best team in the Western Conference, a bruising defensive powerhouse that entered the night tied for the best defensive rating in the NBA, the Lakers scored 60 first half points and did enough the rest of the game to secure the win.

LeBron James scored 23 points and Anthony Davis scored 25. Rajon Rondo and Dwight Howard also scored in double figures. The Nuggets were led by guard Jamal Murray, who scored 22 points.

Read more

Dwight Howard’s a force in new role with Lakers

CLIPPERS

Chastened after a porous first half, the Clippers closed off Portland’s driving lanes to the rim, took away good three-point looks and didn’t allow Carmelo Anthony to add to his charmed beginning with the Trail Blazers over the course of the final 24 minutes en route to a 117-97 victory.

“Just imposed our will on the defensive end,” said forward Montrezl Harrell, whose campaign for the NBA’s top reserve continued after 26 points and nine rebounds, with no turnovers, in 30 minutes.

In their last game at Staples Center before beginning a six-game trip, the Clippers (16-6) improved to 13-1 at home. Paul George scored 25 points and Patrick Patterson scored 19 off the bench, with George making six three-pointers and Patterson making five.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF RANKINGS

1. Ohio State

2. Louisiana State

3. Clemson

4. Georgia

5. Utah

6. Oklahoma

7. Baylor

8. Wisconsin

9. Florida

10. Penn State

11. Auburn

12. Alabama

13. Oregon

14. Michigan

15. Notre Dame

16. Iowa

17. Memphis

18. Minnesota

19. Boise State

20. Cincinnati

21. Appalachian State

22. USC

23. Virginia

24. Navy

25. Oklahoma State

If the season ended today, these would be the projected New Year’s six bowl games:

Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Ariz. (Playoff semifinal Dec. 28)

No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 4 Georgia

Peach Bowl in Atlanta (Playoff semifinal Dec. 28)

No. 2 Louisiana State vs. No. 3 Clemson

Cotton Bowl in Arlington, Texas (Dec. 28)

No. 7 Baylor vs. No. 17 Memphis

Orange Bowl in Miami Gardens, Fla. (Dec. 30)

No. 10 Penn State vs. No. 23 Virginia

Rose Bowl in Pasadena (Jan. 1)

No. 5 Utah vs. No. 8 Wisconsin

Sugar Bowl in New Orleans (Jan. 1)

No. 6 Oklahoma vs. No. 9 Florida

The final rankings will be released Sunday.

RAMS

The Rams put kick returner JoJo Natson on injured reserve because of a hamstring injury. Natson, 25, has averaged 22.2 yards per kickoff return, and 7.8 yards per punt return.

Rookie running back Darrell Henderson is expected to replace Natson for kickoff returns on Sunday against the Seattle Seahawks at the Coliseum. Rookie Nsimba Webster is expected to replace Natson for punt returns.

KINGS

Kings coach Todd McLellan made sure to be clear on two points Tuesday afternoon, during a discussion with media members about the state of coaching in the NHL amid a recent wave of player abuse and mistreatment allegations that has swept across the league.

“I think the line between right and wrong is pretty clear,” McLellan said, before adding: “I think players and coaches, 99.9% of the time, do a real good job of not crossing the line.”

Several serious instances when coaches have erred, however, have made their way to the forefront in the past couple of weeks, setting into motion an existential debate within the sport about what is acceptable, and what is not.

“The best analogy I can use is, my elementary school experience was completely different than the elementary school experience that my kids went through,” McLellan continued. “No one stands in the corner anymore. No one puts their heads on their desks. Ears aren’t pulled. You don’t go to the principal’s office to see or get the strap.

“Society has changed. The coaches that I had growing up did a tremendous job for me as an individual. Hockey and life. I’m appreciative of them. The soft side, but the hard side as well. They helped me by being hard on me sometimes. I hold no ill will to any coaches that were direct with me or pushed me — not physically — but pushed me to become a better player. Challenged me.”

Read more

Luc Robitaille makes the rounds to ensure Kings stay relevant in L.A.

DODGERS

Dodgers officials recently met with pitcher Stephen Strasburg and third baseman Anthony Rendon, two of the top free agents on the market.

Both players are clients of Scott Boras and have spent their entire careers with the Washington Nationals, the team that knocked the Dodgers out of the National League Division Series in October en route to winning the World Series.

The Dodgers have not landed a marquee free agent beyond re-signing Justin Turner and Kenley Jansen since Andrew Friedman was hired to head the front office five years ago. The Dodgers have made offers to prominent players, only to be outbid by other teams. Just last winter they met with Bryce Harper and presented the outfielder a rich, short-term deal. He elected to sign a 13-year, $330-million contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

To lure Rendon or Strasburg, they’ll likely need a more aggressive approach.

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 David Pohlod of Oak Park:

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In 1984 my high school buddy took me to my first baseball game in San Diego. Saw Tony Gwynn get a hit. But unfamiliar with the game, at the seventh-inning stretch, I thought the game was over and started to leave the stadium. In 1986 my new girlfriend (now wife) declared: “…no dates out this week, World Series comes first…,” so I became a baseball (Padres) fan.

Naturally, I became a Gwynn fan. In the 1998 World Series, Game 1, Gwynn hits a home run in the fifth. After the series, Gwynn gives an interview in San Diego and states (with that big beautiful grin of his): “Man! I saw that home run on the big screen in the stadium, my swing was perfect, it was a home run that put us in the lead, and I looked great on national television!”

He was just so happy to help the Padres get a shot at the title. Miss that guy a ton.

TODAY’S LOCAL MAJOR SPORTS SCHEDULE

All times Pacific

Lakers at Utah, 6 p.m., Spectrum Sportsnet, 710 ESPN

Washington at Kings, 7 p.m., FSW

BORN ON THIS DATE

1868: Baseball player Jesse Burkett (d. 1953)

1930: Baseball player/manager Harvey Kuenn (d. 1988)

1931: Hockey player/coach Alex Delvecchio

1938: Equestrian Richard Meade (d. 2015)

1955: Kings player/executive Dave Taylor

1956: Basketball player Bernard King

1957: Baseball player Lee Smith

1957: Race car driver Raul Boesel

1961: Football player/coach Frank Reich

1963: Pole vaulter Sergey Bubka

1971: Boxer Shannon Briggs

1973: Basketball player Corliss Williamson

1985: Fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad

DIED ON THIS DATE

1944: Baseball player Roger Bresnahan, 65

AND FINALLY

Dave Taylor vs. Wayne Gretzky. 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.

It’s Thanksgiving morning. The temperature is in the low 50s. There’s a few rain drops. Lake Balboa Birmingham football players are walking onto their field for practice.

Sophomore Arlis Boardingham, who is 6 feet 4 and 205 pounds, arrives wearing a wool mask that covers his entire face except for his eyes. He’s also wearing a thermal long sleeve shirt under his jersey, gloves and compression pants. It’s as if he’s prepared to play at Lambeau Field in Green Bay during a snow storm.

“I don’t like to be cold,” he says. “My parents always tell me, ‘If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.’”

If you want to meet a 15-year-old with big plans, big dreams and big days ahead, it’s Boardingham, a receiver and defensive end who has all the qualities of someone going places.

“He’s still a puppy,” coach Jim Rose said. “When he becomes a dog, watch the bite on him.”

With size 15 shoes and growing strength, Boardingham is already making an impact. He’s closing in on 50 receptions with 10 touchdowns for an 8-4 Birmingham team that makes its first appearance in a CIF state championship bowl game, hosting Oxnard Pacifica on Saturday night in Division 2-A.

Rose said Boardingham is “10 times better’’ than he was as a freshman.

“If he’s 10 times better next year, holy cow. Watch out,” Rose said.

In helping Birmingham win the City Section Open Division championship game last week with a 27-20 win over Wilmington Banning, Boardingham dragged along four Banning players before finally being taken down on a 42-yard pass reception. He takes great pride when the ball is in his hands.

“It feels like you’re in control,” he said. ‘You’re the one in power. I like being able to control the destiny of the game. I like holding that responsibility and accountability of making or breaking a game.”

Boardingham’s father, Don, is Birmingham’s track coach. Boardingham’s first athletic event was running 100 meters as a 5-year-old.

“I was nervous but I knew I was going to be good,” he said.

He’s always been bigger and taller than most. He thinks he’ll end up at 6-5, 225 pounds. Rose believes Boardingham will be 245 pounds. “I think he’s going to be a monster,” Rose said.

Boardingham doesn’t go around boasting. He’s focused on pursuing his goal of playing football in college and beyond. He said after playing against City Section power Harbor City Narbonne last season, he learned plenty.

“It was a wakeup call,” he said. “I learned there’s better players out there and more players that could do what I could do. I didn’t like that.”

He immediately hit the weight room and started to work on running better pass routes. He’s also a long jumper and triple jumper. He finished second in the triple jump as a freshman at the City Section championship meet last spring at 43 feet 9 1/2 inches. His goal this spring is to reach 50 feet and make the state finals.

First, Birmingham will enter uncharted territory with its first state bowl game. The Patriots are considered the underdog against Southern Section Division 6 champion Pacifica (13-1), which has a terrific running back in Malik Sherrod (1,469 yards rushing, 34 TDs) and a big-time linebacker in Caleb McCullough.

“It’s an opportunity to make Birmingham history,” Boardingham said. “Everybody is nervous because we don’t know much about Pacifica, but we’re excited.”

L.A.’s elected leaders are on the brink of passing a law that would deprive them of one of their biggest sources of political money — real estate companies with projects pending at City Hall.

Under the proposal, those companies and their executives would be prohibited from giving directly to the election campaigns of city candidates. But enforcement of those new restrictions could still take a while — more than two years.

The prolonged timeline has drawn complaints from critics, who say it will allow incumbent council members in the March 2022 primary campaign to preserve one of their key advantages over challengers.

Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig L.A., said he believes council members slow-walked the new donation restrictions so they could continue collecting checks from real estate interests — and improve their odds of staying in office in 2022. As many as seven incumbents could seek re-election that year.

“Developer money tends to follow the people holding power, not the people challenging power,” said Quan, whose organization is looking to reduce the influence of money in L.A. politics.

The proposed ordinance, scheduled for a vote Wednesday, comes little more than a year after FBI agents raided the home and offices of Councilman Jose Huizar, who for years ran the powerful council committee that greenlights large-scale real estate projects. It also comes as a developer in Harbor Gateway is facing bribery and campaign money-laundering charges tied to city approval of an apartment complex in 2015.

Backers within City Hall say the new fundraising restrictions will help address a longstanding perception that real estate interests have undue influence over planning decisions, among the most important powers wielded by the city’s elected officials.

Council members first proposed a ban on developer donations in January 2017, when city leaders were trying to defeat a ballot measure that would have barred the approval of many large-scale development projects. After voters rejected the measure, the proposal languished. But it was revived in the wake of the FBI raids.

With so many delays, campaign finance reform advocates had resigned themselves to the idea that new fundraising restrictions would not be in place in time for the council’s March 2020 primary election — or any runoff election held in November.

But last month, the council’s rules committee backed an ordinance that also would not go into effect after the March 2022 city primary election.

In other words, candidates could continue taking as much as $800 from each developer during the primary, but would be barred from doing so if they found themselves in a runoff for the November 2022 election.

Officials said the delay would be needed as long as council members insist on having a developer database in place to coincide with the new restrictions, which will take several months to set up. By the time it is up and running, fundraising will already have begun for the March 2022 primary, ethics officials said.

Having the new rules go into effect as part of the November 2022 runoff campaign would “provide certainty for campaigns and all those impacted,” said David Michaelson, chief assistant city attorney, in a memo to council members.

Asked about complaints from activists about the delays — and the fact that council members would continue collecting developer money for two more years — a spokesman for council President Herb Wesson said that his committee, which vetted the new rules, took up the ordinance two months after it was drafted by city lawyers.

Councilman David Ryu, who has spent years pushing for the new restrictions, said through a spokesman that he is not happy with the proposed delay in enforcement. Ryu wants the rules to apply to both the 2022 primary and any runoff, said Estevan Montemayor, the councilman’s deputy chief of staff.

“He’s disappointed that’s not the case and he plans to amend the language [of the ordinance] when the item is before the full City Council,” Montemayor said.

Tyler Joseph, policy director for the Ethics Commission, said an electronic filing system would not be needed for enforcement of a ban on developer donations. Measure H, which prohibited bidders on city contracts from making campaign donations to city candidates, did not require such a database when it was approved in 2011, he said.

“While having a filing system is important for disclosure and transparency, the commission has always been in favor of applying the ban as soon as possible,” Joseph said in an email.

With Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Atty. Mike Feuer and City Controller Ron Galperin all facing term limits, contests for citywide offices will be wide open in March 2022. Fundraising for those citywide races begins in March 2020.

In addition, as many as seven council members — Gil Cedillo, Bob Blumenfield, Monica Rodriguez, Curren Price, Mike Bonin, Mitch O’Farrell and Joe Buscaino — have the opportunity to run for re-election in 2022. Fundraising for those seats is scheduled to start in September 2020.

Any race in which the top two vote-getters fail to secure 50% of the vote would head to a runoff in November 2022. Political experts say they don’t expect most council contests to result in a runoff, given the city’s long history of re-electing incumbents.

Under the proposal heading to the council, elected officials at City Hall would still be able to ask real estate developers pursuing L.A. projects to make contributions to their favored charities and governmental initiatives — a practice known as “behesting.”

In addition, developers would continue to have the power to make unlimited donations to “independent expenditure” committees, which support specific candidates but do not coordinate their efforts with them. L.A. cannot legally limit who gives to those committees or how much they can donate.

Advocates of campaign finance reform have voiced disappointment that the proposal before the council is not more ambitious. And Rey López-Calderón, executive director of the watchdog group California Common Cause, said he thinks it’s outrageous that council members are planning such a lengthy delay for enforcement of the new rules.

City leaders should move ahead with the developer donation limits “whether or not they can 100% enforce it,” López-Calderón said.

“It will be great when they update their systems and get a database” to track developers with pending projects, he said. “But what they need to do right now is show the public that they’re serious about changing the culture of Los Angeles City Hall.”

Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.

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Marine Corps says there’s no indication the case is related to earlier high-profile allegations of smuggling by Pendleton Marines.

SAN DIEGO — 

A junior enlisted Marine was arrested early Monday on suspicion of bringing unauthorized immigrants into the U.S. through the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the Marine Corps said in a statement.

The unnamed Marine is assigned to the 1st Marine Division Headquarters Battalion, the statement says, and was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection about 1:30 a.m. Monday. He is being held in civilian custody, the statement says.

“CBP and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) are currently investigating,” the statement said. “The Marine has not served in the Southwest Border Support Mission.”

Maj. Kendra Motz, spokeswoman for the division, said there is no indication at this time that Monday’s arrest has anything to do with other cases of Marines allegedly involved in human smuggling. Those cases largely fell apart after a judge ruled the July 25 arrests of many of them was unlawful.

Although those Marines are part of the same division, they are attached to a different command — 1st Battalion, 5th Marines — than the Marine arrested Monday.

Dyer writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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A storm system will produce moderate to heavy rain in the Southern California region through midday Wednesday, the National Weather Service said. There is a chance of thunderstorms, and the heaviest rain is likely to fall between 4 a.m. and 2 p.m.

A flash flood watch is in effect for Orange County and parts of Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday. The watch means that conditions may lead to flash flooding, the weather service said.

The storm is fed by a weak atmospheric river, which is a plume of subtropical water vapor at the lower and middle levels of the atmosphere. Atmospheric rivers dump moisture when they lift over higher terrain, which causes the moisture to cool and condense, falling as rain.

Rain is predicted to fall at a rate of about a half-inch per hour, but could be three-quarters of an inch per hour or higher in thunderstorms.

Because of the warm nature of this system, snow levels will be at about 8,000 feet, then lower to about 7,000 feet in the afternoon. Accumulations will be about 3 to 6 inches. Although there may not be any snow on Interstate 5 over the Grapevine, roads will still be wet and winds will be gusty.

Precipitation will taper off Wednesday evening.

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Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Dec. 4, and I’m writing from Los Angeles.

Kamala Harris was all smiles and campaign talking points (middle-class tax cuts, affordable childcare, good teacher salaries) as she chopped vegetables and stirred the turkey stock ahead of Thanksgiving dinner with her family last week in Des Moines.

But after the camera crew had packed up and the last of the political reporters cleared out, one has to imagine that kitchen banter in the California senator’s temporary Heartland home took a heavier turn as the Harris family contended with the future.

On Tuesday, Kamala Harris announced that she was suspending her presidential run. The ending to her once ascendant campaign was surprisingly abrupt — it was just Monday that Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he’d soon be stumping for her in Iowa, and a super PAC’s million-dollar ad buy was set to hit Iowa airwaves on Wednesday.

[Read the story: “Kamala Harris drops out of the presidential race” in the Los Angeles Times]

After an initially dazzling debut, the charismatic former prosecutor had fallen hard from the top tier of Democratic candidates in recent months. Her campaign flailed as funds dwindled, and reports of internal team discord kept making their way into the media. The freshman senator had quickly become one of the highest-profile members of Congress, but it seemed that many voters still struggled to ascertain what, exactly, Harris stood for.

My colleagues, political reporters Melanie Mason and Michael Finnegan, wrote that ultimately, “her run foundered with a muddled purpose, campaign infighting and an inability to sustain support from vital Democratic voting blocs, particularly African Americans.”

The early California primary, with its newly relevant position in early March, had once seemed like a possible powerhouse advantage for the California senator. But as her support among California Democratic primary voters slipped into the single digits, it instead loomed as a potentially bruising defeat on her home turf.

The support of much of the California political establishment, which had largely lined up behind Harris, will once again be up for grabs with her out of the race.

But regardless of one’s feelings about Harris, it’s striking to see a historically diverse Democratic field appearing to solidify into a top tier that’s increasingly lacking minority voices.

[Read the story “Democrats value diversity, but the presidential field is increasingly white” in the Los Angeles Times]

With Harris gone, not a single person of color has yet qualified to be onstage for the Dec. “`19 primary debate in Los Angeles, though that could still change before next week’s deadline to qualify.

And now, here’s what’s happening:

TOP STORIES

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday will hold its first impeachment hearing, signifying a new — and unpredictable — step in the Democrats’ inquiry into President Trump. If the Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), was staid and serious during weeks of closed-door depositions and nine days of public hearings, the Judiciary Committee is expected to be more rambunctious. Its membership is far larger than the Intelligence Committee and includes some of the most partisan Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Los Angeles Times

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai will take over the top job at the search giant’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., as co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin step away from their roles as CEO and president, respectively. Page and Brin, who founded Google in 1998, will continue to serve as Alphabet “board members, shareholders and co-founders,” they wrote in a company blog post Tuesday. Los Angeles Times

L.A. STORIES

Fifty songs for a new Los Angeles: Ready your playlists. Here is music writer Randall Roberts’ compendium of songs that paint a panoramic portrait of Los Angeles in the 21st century. (Plus: A behind-the-scenes look at how Roberts compiled the list.) Los Angeles Times

Visitors to Griffith Park can leave their cars at home. A new free weekend shuttle will take people from the Vermont/Sunset station to 12 stops around the park. Los Angeles Times

A troubled former USC football star died at 31. His family hoped that studying his brain for CTE would help others. Los Angeles Times

The Dodgers recently met with two of the top free agents on the market, pitcher Stephen Strasburg and third baseman Anthony Rendon. (Not to be confused with current Speaker of the California State Assembly Anthony Rendon, who has a doctorate in political science but does not appear to have ever played professional sports.) Los Angeles Times

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POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

L.A. Councilwoman Nury Martinez will be the next City Council president, making her the first Latina to hold the powerful position. She will replace Councilman Herb Wesson, who announced last week that he was stepping down as president to focus on his campaign for a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Los Angeles Times

CRIME AND COURTS

Prosecutors expect to seek at least a year in prison for Rep. Duncan Hunter. Hunter pleaded guilty Tuesday to one count of conspiracy to misuse campaign funds and is expected to resign from Congress before facing a prison sentence. Los Angeles Times

Stanford says that the college admissions scandal mastermind approached seven coaches there. Only one, a former sailing coach who pleaded guilty earlier this year, went along with the scheme, according to the school’s review. Mercury News

HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

More rain ahead, after the wettest November in years for parts of L.A. County. An atmospheric river, swelled with subtropical moisture that’s sweeping in from the west, is expected to move into the southern portion of the Central Coast and Los Angeles County. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Protesters at Amazon’s San Bernardino center decried the company’s labor practices and negative affects on local air quality. San Bernardino Sun

These are the best hidden-gem restaurants in every Bay Area city, at least according to this writer. SF Gate

“It’s a basic human need.” The San Francisco Diaper Bank works to make free diapers available for families who receive food stamps. San Francisco Chronicle

Another Barrio Logan art gallery will close its doors amid rising rents. The owners of the 6-year-old La Bodega Gallery say they were “gentrified out” of the predominantly Latino community south of downtown San Diego. Chicano Art Gallery, which opened around the same time as La Bodega, also shuttered earlier this year. San Diego Union-Tribune

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles: rain, 62. San Diego: rain, 65. San Francisco: rain, 57. San Jose: rain, 59. Sacramento: rain, 55. More weather is here.

AND FINALLY

-poet Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel, “First Spring in California, 1936”

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.

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In 1923, prominent Los Angeles music booster Artie Mason Carter, known as the “mother of the Hollywood Bowl,” made a grand declaration on the city’s future: “It is impossible to sing and frown, and there is no better way of molding this city, with its continuous influx of strangers, into one solid mass of fine citizenship, than through community singing.”

Mrs. J.J. Carter, as she was called in this paper during the 1920s, may have been wrong about the ability to sing and frown — she was unaware that mumble rap and death metal were in our future — but nearly a century later, her idea of shaping a city through music is compelling. So many songwriters have planted stories in L.A. neighborhoods and intersections we drive through daily that it’s hard to keep up with the volume.

Whether as Bob Seger’s action-movie rocker “Hollywood Nights” or San Pedro singer and songwriter Miguel’s more romantic retelling in a song of the same name, this accumulation of geo-located lyrics is embedded in our narrative landscape. It’s in Becky G’s Randy’s Donuts reference in “Becky From the Block” and 2Pac’s “To Live and Die in L.A.” line, “Remember KDAY? Weekends, Crenshaw, MLK?”

Some write about L.A. because it’s what they know. Others project the dreams of a migrating nation into the musical charter. They do it to be cool or to prove they understand the city.

These constantly evolving ways of seeing and hearing Los Angeles generated the seed of the idea that became the “50 Songs for a New L.A.” project. It’s the third in a series I started in 2017 with an exploration of Sunset Boulevard and music. In 2018, Times data and graphic journalist Priya Krishnakumar and I followed that with a deep dive into Rosecrans Avenue in South Los Angeles. Considered rap’s main street, Rosecrans has been the setting for dozens of songs for seminal artists including 2Pac, Kendrick Lamar, YG, Snoop and DJ Quik.

But for this project, we decided to pull back and look at Los Angeles as whole, and then focus on songs that mention specific neighborhoods, townships, streets and buildings. One history of the city, after all, can be tracked by an ever-expanding data set that contains every instance in which lyricists have represented its neighborhoods and streets, shuttered businesses and vanished orange groves in song. Each lyrical reference becomes a geo-locatable map point, another dot on an ever-expanding song cycle.

“You’ve got neighborhoods where entire genres dwell and exist,” singer-songwriter Devendra Banhart said when discussing the project. “Like hair metal. There’s a hair metal section of L.A., still.”

Priya and I brainstormed many ways to attack this question. For a few months, I scoured lyric site Genius, pored through books on Los Angeles music history and put out calls on social media asking for references. I input data on lyrics to about 500 songs a spreadsheet. But as I was doing this, an editor asked a basic question on this increasingly unwieldy data set: “What are you trying to say in this project?”

Other than, “Gosh, there are a lot of songs about this place,” I didn’t have a good answer. Eventually, though, we came up with a few questions worthy of exploring: How does the world hear contemporary Los Angeles? How do songwriters craft memorable work about this place?

To answer the latter question, I spoke with musicians Banhart, Schoolboy Q, St. Vincent, Courtney Love, Jhené Aiko, Phoebe Bridgers, Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino, Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, Los Abandoned’s María del Pilar, David Gaston Green and others to hear them tell origin stories on their songs.

The documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself” explores the city one movie scene at a time. Ed Ruscha’s “Sunset Strip” photo series locked into history the storefronts of 1966. Here, we look at the ways individual songs have come to define the city over the last quarter century. From our massive spreadsheet, we curated this collection of 50 songs that paint a panoramic portrait of Los Angeles in the 21st century.

What is the sound of 21st century L.A.? Writer Josh Kun described it in his essential essay “Los Angeles Is Singing” as a kind of unfurling score, one that “opens up into a centuries-long songbook of local odes and regional hymns and three-minute GPS pop-songs that come to life at full volume.”

“Song Writer Believes Local Future Brilliant,” read a 1922 headline in The Times. “Los Angeles, within a very short time, will be the principal center of musical influence in the United States,” songwriter Henry R. Cohen said in advance of a performance at Grauman’s Theatre.

Cohen’s evidence: “There has never been a musical success scoring in Los Angeles that hasn’t won its way in New York and elsewhere throughout this entire country. In other words, if the song is good enough for Los Angeles it is good enough for the whole world.”

The tattered lives of a million failed songwriting careers confirms that’s no longer true, if it ever was. But the sentiment remains. Those who successfully represent a city’s psyche become part of its DNA.

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When it comes to legends, it’s hard to think of two actors more deserving of the title than Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce — both have been knighted for their contributions to the arts, both have long and storied resumes on stage, film and television. So when Fernando Meirelles began to consider who might be up to the task of portraying modern-day icons of the Catholic Church in his dramatic two-hander “The Two Popes,” the “City of God” director knew exactly where to turn.

Casting Hopkins as the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict and Pryce as the progressive Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, who later becomes Pope Francis, allowed the filmmaker to humanize both men and gave their back-and-forth an electrifying spark. “I didn’t want a movie about a pope talking to a cardinal, but about two men who disagree on everything, looking for common ground,” Meirelles said of his approach to his new Netflix film. “Jonathan captured the soul of Pope Francis. Hopkins has given Benedict a charisma that we, the general public, may not be aware of, which helped the film.”

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A study of two central figures with opposing points of view, “The Two Popes” is just one of several high-profile two-handers dominating the awards conversation this fall, as writers and directors embrace the format to tell an array of stories. Some are political, others much less so, but all strive to offer visceral character portraits animated by intelligent, insightful, even daring performances.

Indeed, the format is ideal for showcasing intimate character work, with actors, writers and directors having the space to hone in on the way relationships evolve and change over the course of a story.

The academy has long had a soft spot for the two-hander — 1957’s John Huston film “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison” stranded Deborah Kerr’s nun and Robert Mitchum’s Marine on a South Pacific island during World War II and earned two Oscar nominations (for Kerr, and for Huston and co-writer John Lee Mahin’s adapted screenplay). Michael Caine and Julie Walters were nominated for playing a professor and his working-class student in 1983’s “Educating Rita”; Richard Linklater was nominated alongside actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy for 1995’s “Before Sunrise” and 2004’s “Before Sunset,” both of which explored the romance between American Jesse (Hawk) and French-born Celine (Delpy).

If “The Two Popes” personalizes the debate over doctrine and dogma, Universal’s recently released “Queen & Slim” finds a powerful romance in a story that asks important questions about racism and police brutality in modern-day America. The film begins with a white cop stopping a black couple on their way home from an awkward first date. The situation escalates quickly, and soon, the characters are left with no choice but to go on the run. “It’s a two-hander, but it’s also about the people they encounter, how America embraces them or doesn’t embrace them,” said screenwriter-producer Lena Waithe (“The Chi,” “Master of None”).

When Waithe sat down to write the script, she had two prototypes for her protagonists. “I wanted to have her be Malcolm X, and I wanted him to be Martin Luther King, and by the end of the film they would have swapped places,” Waithe said. “Those were my road maps. He is a person who wants to have a simple life, wants to do the right thing, wants to have a family. She’s a person who wants to leave her mark and change things for the better. She’s not turning the other cheek.”

With any project so strongly centered on two characters, casting is key. Once the role of Slim went to “Get Out” lead actor nominee Daniel Kaluuya, Waithe and director Melina Matsoukas felt strongly that they needed a newcomer to play Queen; Jodie Turner-Smith won the part.

“We wanted someone with brown skin — we wanted to really celebrate black skin and black skin being in love and touching each other,” said Waithe, adding of Turner’s audition, “She wasn’t nervous reading with Daniel or in front of us. We realized, that’s who Queen is. She’s not afraid of anyone or anything.”

Similarly, the stars of A24’s hallucinatory 19th-century drama “The Lighthouse,” Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, had an off-screen dynamic that in some ways mirrored their characters’ on-screen relationship. The film, described by director Robert Eggers as a “two-hander about identity,” loosely adapts the story of the Smalls Lighthouse tragedy in Wales, in which two lighthouse keepers, both named Thomas, are marooned after a storm — and only one of them survives. Dafoe plays Thomas Wake, a veteran sailor who mercilessly torments his young apprentice. “Rob’s character is more reticent,” Dafoe said. “He’s more withdrawn. He’s hiding something, and my character … he’s got the speeches, he’s setting the pace.”

Dafoe and Pattinson found their characters’ rapport during a rehearsal period prior to shooting. “Dafoe comes from theater and likes rehearsing,” said Eggers, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother, Max Eggers. “He was giving 110% every single day. Rob doesn’t come from theater. … He likes to surprise himself on set and wants to keep things bottled up. Having Willem go, go, go was making Rob only more contained. That, of course, works very well for the characters because it’s Willem Dafoe’s lighthouse, he feels comfortable there, he’s in charge. Rob doesn’t feel comfortable there. Certainly, there was a tension there. The camera sees truth. It saw this dynamic.”

While “The Lighthouse” descends into a tale of intense discord and strife, “Two Popes” ultimately tells a story about connection and unity. “There is a very current message on the personal level, which is tolerance,” director Meirelles said. “The film shows the effort it takes to hear who we disagree with. … At one point, [Benedict] says to the Argentinian Cardinal: ‘I disagree with everything you say, but for some reason, I think this is your time.’”

The premise is simple: Suppose there were a single Academy Awards ceremony that included all the top movies and performances of all time? Would “Casablanca” beat “The Wizard of Oz”? How would you pick between Ingrid Bergman and Cher? Who would win lead actor, director? Whom would you choose as host?

And if, in this Oscar fanatic’s fever dream, you had all those great performers — Marilyn Monroe, Brad Pitt, the Marx Brothers — in the same audience, would there be some sort of ego overload? Would the universe fold over into itself like a lousy omelet?

That would make good television, as they say.

So, bear with me now as I take a stab at this Ultimate Oscars concept. My list of nominees is personal and reflective of too much tequila over too short a time. It is suffused by a rather sanguine outlook on life that doesn’t necessarily overlap with the dutiful way academy voters typically see things, as if movies were penicillin that could cure all the wrongs of the world.

My list is not based on total Oscar wins, or historical significance. Shamelessly populist, it salutes the pure joy of moviegoing. Remember, I am more of a fan than a critic. I like what I like.

The common thread is that each movie or performance gets better with every viewing:

Best picture

“Back to the Future”

“Casablanca”

“Chinatown”

“Dr. Strangelove”

“The Godfather”

“The Graduate”

“It’s a Wonderful Life”

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

“Rocky”

“The Wizard of Oz”

And the Ultimate Oscar goes to: I want to say “Chinatown,” I want to say “The Graduate,” both of which are brilliant from start to finish. But for sheer entertainment value, the Ultimate Oscar has to go to “The Wizard of Oz,” which somehow blends every genre: a coming-of-age saga, comedy and horror, into one unforgettable flick. It’s probably the only movie nearly everyone in the world has seen.

Lead actress

Ingrid Bergman, “Casablanca”

Cher, “Moonstruck”

Katharine Hepburn, “The Philadelphia Story”

Marilyn Monroe, “Bus Stop”

Meryl Streep, “Sophie’s Choice”

And the Ultimate Oscar goes to: I want to say Bergman because — as writer Susan King points out — she wasn’t even nominated after “Casablanca” came out in 1942. I also want to say Streep. But I can’t forgive her for “Ricki and the Flash.” So it’s Cher in an upset win, though she’s had some real clunkers too.

Lead actor

Anthony Hopkins, “The Silence of the Lambs”

Samuel L. Jackson, “Pulp Fiction”

Lee Marvin, “Cat Ballou”

Jack Nicholson, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”

James Stewart, “It’s a Wonderful Life”

And the Ultimate Oscar goes to: I want to rock your world and go with Lee Marvin, for his performance in perhaps the most underappreciated movie of all time. But nominating him is probably enough. I’ll pick Stewart as the winner here, an Everyman who overcomes a breakdown with honesty, charm and quivering fingers.

Director

Frank Capra, “It’s a Wonderful Life”

Francis Ford Coppola, “Apocalypse Now”

Francis Ford Coppola, “The Godfather”

Roman Polanski, “Chinatown”

Quentin Tarantino, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”

And the Ultimate Oscar goes to: You could get a pretty good term paper out of the similarities in these five wonderful movies. They all have flawed characters, grit and passion, enhanced by a great director’s vision. They make your mind work and your heart beat. I could close my eyes and point. But I won’t. Coppola for “The Godfather” (though “Chinatown” is the better movie).

Original Screenplay

“Chinatown,” by Robert Towne

“Do the Right Thing,” by Spike Lee

“Notorious,” by Ben Hecht

“The Princess Bride,” by William Goldman

“The Producers,” by Mel Brooks

And the Ultimate Oscar goes to: “Chinatown” might be the great American novel, so the statuette goes to Towne. But props to all, especially Goldman. Technically, “Princess Bride” was based on a novel. But it was Goldman’s novel. The brilliant novelist/screenwriter wrote more great movies than anyone, though Brooks is close.

Host

Johnny Carson

Billy Crystal

Jimmy Kimmel

Chris Rock

Jon Stewart

And the host for the Ultimate Oscars should be: In another upset, Jimmy Kimmel. Hey, I warned you it was my list.

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In her first show in L.A., Paris-based Tatiana Trouvé stages architectural interventions in both large galleries at Gagosian. One leans dystopian, the other utopian. Both are ambitiously staged, immersive environments that insinuate themselves into the psychic realm via the physical, dramatically redefining the spaces our bodies move through. Both rely on high production values and impressive scale to effect, as in good theater, subtle interior shifts.

“The Shaman” is the more poetic of the two installations, and also the more sensational — a gasp-worthy disruption of the pristine white box. Trouvé has cast an oak tree in bronze and then felled it. It has landed on its side in a dark pool of water, its severed trunk immersed and its exposed, frizzled spray of roots continuously trickling water from multiple spots.

Whatever unseen force brought the majestic growth down appears also to have shattered the gallery’s raised concrete floor, whose immense, jagged shards pose just enough of a hazard to slow one’s step.

Earthquake, hurricane and flood all come to mind as potential causes of such a scene. Where there is breakage, though, Trouvé inserts hints of repair: one branch rests gently on a marble pillow; blankets and cushions also carved of stone stand ready for use, draped over a metal stand along with a large ring of old keys.

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Trouvé has conjured a natural disaster as fable, stocking the tale with power, fear, tenderness, witness (two sculptural pieces titled “The Guardian” stand by) and mysterious channels of agency. The cataclysm is all too familiar from the nightly news, but indeterminate context and transposed textures turn the contrived calamity into something emblematic, mythic, the stuff of shamanic visions.

In the second gallery, Trouvé presents two closely related series of drawings, mounting them back-to-back on the implied walls of a structure defined only by horizontal and vertical metal struts. The skeletal architecture extends far overhead and in its purity and order exudes a sense of hope and promise after the wreckage in the other room.

In both groups of drawings, Trouvé works in pencil on colored paper stained with bleach or painted in watercolor to mimic such stains. The process recalls Surrealist exercises in automatism, engagements with chance and accident. While the drawings are uneven in interest, at their best the dreamlike fluidity of the indoor and outdoor spaces they evoke — studio, stage set, quarry, home, street — is entrancing.

The disorientation and ambiguity that prevails in the images contrasts explicitly with the stability of the metal armature that supports them. It’s the orchestration of the physical space that has the strongest impact here, the way Trouvé manages to reduce our own scale, casting us as wanderers in the presence of a grand idea.

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