The scene in question in the headline is actually more than one scene. In this case, I’m referring to the punk, ska and hardcore scenes in L.A. and the IE; specifically, in Pomona, San Bernardino and Riverside.
The city of Riverside once had an amazing music scene that provided local youth with free access to ska, punk and hardcore music, as well as spaces for young artists to practice their stagecraft. A new exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum features tons of memorabilia from that time, which you can read here: https://lataco.com/punk-hardcore-ska-riverside
I’m as far as one can get from being a plant daddy without being actively against it. So it was a day well spent covering the 39th Annual Inter-City Cactus and Succulent Show & Sale for L.A. Taco.
I felt a sense of calm and relaxation while surrounded by over 1,800 cacti and succulents at the Los Angeles County Arboretum. Maybe I’ll be a plant daddy soon enough after all! Just one succulent, man!
Everyone by now knows the story: dozens/hundreds/thousands of Dodger fans are disillusioned/upset/angry with the team for not saying anything during the continued federal siege of Los Angeles by Homeland Security enforcement departments (ICE mainly, but CPB and HSI are in the mix as well along with the Marines and National Guard).
Last month, I was one of the first to break that story and I did so in L.A. Public Press.
The timeline from when the story came to be and was published is an interesting one. I began work on it on a Tuesday. That morning, news outlets announced the sale of the Los Angeles Lakers to Mark Warner & Guggenheim Partners. Warner and Guggenheim are also the majority owners of the Dodgers.
My article above went live the next afternoon. That same night, the L.A. Times revealed a PR scoop that the Dodgers were going to announce something regarding the fans demand for a statement.
Thursday morning, federal vehicles and agents were discovered just outside one of the parking lots at Dodger stadium. This was the same morning that the Dodgers were set to make an announcement. Now they were stuck doing damage control…and they did so as well as they did damage control over their non-statement. Too little, too late.
Jack Kirby needed to make a statement; a loud one clear in its message and intention.
22,000 people had rallied at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939 at what became the largest gathering of Nazis in the USA. One block away at Fleischer Studios, Kirby, born Jacob Kurtzberg to Austrian-born Jewish immigrants, partnered with fellow Jewish-American Joe Simon to respond to the growing anti-Semitic and fascist menace at home. Their response arrived on December 1940 with the publication of Captain America Comics, featuring the titular star-spangled superhero making his debut by cracking Adolf Hitler’s jaw with a flying haymaker.
A copy of the original and iconic comic book sits behind a protective case inside the Skirball Cultural Center as part of the Jack Kirby: Heroes and Humanity exhibit, currently on display through 2026.
The exhibit treats visitors through a walking tour of Kirby’s life and work, from his upbringing in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to his artistic career in New York and California as a comics artist/writer, ending with a reflection on his continuing influence on millions worldwide more than three decades after his death.
The schism that divides Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber’s vision for the league (and the sport in general) and the sport’s too-often-forgotten-by-design history was on full display on September 25, 2024 thanks to a cup trophy double-header in the USA.
The day began with Club América of Liga MX lifting the Campeones Cup trophy after defeating the Columbus Crew of MLS. Hours later, Los Angeles FC lifted the US Open Cup title at home in an overtime thriller against Sporting Kansas City.
The former is one of the tournaments invented by long-running MLS commissioner Don Garber. The Campeones Cup pits the winner of Liga MX’s Copa de Campeones Cup and the MLS league winner. This one-off game spawned the separate, month-long Leagues Cup, which is an all MLS vs all Liga MX affair and the latest in big ideas of Garber’s lifelong escapades in US and CONCACAF (and soon-to-be global?!) soccer.
The antithesis to these ideas is the US Open Cup. Founded in 1913, the tournament has hosted US teams from every division and continues to do so today…and that’s in spite of Garber’s attempted meddling in all facets of US soccer.
It was around this time last year that MLS announced that it would not field any teams in the US Open Cup and would instead send in the MLS reserve sides to the tournament. The pushback was swift, but only eight of 29 MLS teams decided to continue competing as normal. The others were replaced by their MLS Next Pro counterparts.
How will they comply w/ Art.II.a.ii of US Soccer's Pro League Standards, which require DI outdoor leagues to play in all U.S. Soccer competitions for which they are eligible. Isn't the Open Cup a U.S. Soccer competition? Are they sending MLSNP rosters under the MLS teams' names? https://t.co/DbxCkodRdvpic.twitter.com/hUw0OSzpnz
I almost missed out on the Copa América this year. I attempted to sign up for a press pass as I normally do for a balompié tournament in the US. I say attempted because, unfortunately, the application page for credentials via CONMEBOL left me with more questions than answers I could provide to the ones listed on the request form.
As a friend of mine at ESPN noted: “dude it’s a mess lol – there’s gonna be mistakes and some angry people this summer haha.”
I witnessed the result of CONMEBOL’s questionable leadership first-hand, early-on in the tournament during my brief stint as an official volunteer for the Copa América 2024. A journalist friend of mine at the L.A. Times shared information on how to enroll as a volunteer at the tournament. It was my best chance to at least attend the two group stage games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
View near VIP entrance 10 at SoFi Stadium, adjacent to the YouTube Theater.
The application for volunteers was mercifully easier to complete than the one for journalists. There were numerous categories listed for applicants to choose from depending on their skills and preferences. These were: Training Site, Competitions Support, Team Services, Antidoping, Security, International Relations, Commercial Operations, and Media Operations. The Media Operations option was divided into additional subcategories: mixed zone, conference analyst, press conference analyst, photo analyst, press conference support, and press tribune analyst.
For the latter, I wrote a list of establishments where one can eat and/or watch games in L.A. during the Copa América this summer. The list is based on each competing national team!
My latest story is a fun one for LA Taco. I spent two of the three scheduled days at LA Comic Con! I spoke with over a half-dozen creators (writers, artists and publishers) about their craft and received some insights into the behind-the-scenes world of the comics industry.
An excerpt:
When did you start working on your own comics?
“Far too late! I wish I had gotten to it earlier, but just in the past year, I started writing my own comics. I started with ‘Werewolf Frankenstein,’ which is my ode to Universal monsters and matching them up in interesting ways. So, you take Frankenstein, and he gets into a fight with the Wolfman. Why can’t he now also have werewolf-ism, piece by piece, because he’s made up of all these different body parts? It’s slowly going from body part to body part, and eventually, it’ll get to his brain, and he’ll become a full werewolf, which he doesn’t want. So he’s running around going to different doctors and forcing them to operate on him and figure out ways to beat the werewolf-ism.”
I picked up a new gig as a contributor/freelance writer at A.Frame, the official digital magazine of the Academy of Motion Pictures & Sciences.
I currently have two stories on the site: the first is a Q&A with director Aitch Alberto about their debut feature film Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, an adaptation of a successful young adult novel of the same name.
My goal was to approach this with a really gentle, sensitive, empathetic lens, which we don’t often see when it comes to stories about Latinos. I really wanted to make an elevated YA novel that had something universal. It’s so easy to distill it to one aspect of identity, but I really wanted to explore how all the things around identity inform how you exist in the world.
My other story is also a Q&A, but with director Alejandra Márquez Abella and astronaut José Hernández about the biographical film of Hernández’ life, A Million Miles Away.
I wanted to focus on the community being pivotal to the fulfilling of any endeavor. That was one of the things that mattered the most to me, because I think that’s a very Hispanic, Latino trait. We are used to working in communal efforts and, to me, this was a big part of Jose’s story — not only his family supporting him but also his partner. So, that was a very important thing. Success is not a thing that an individual can achieve by himself or herself. I think you need the whole bunch to be to be enabled to do whatever… The challenge was to fit a 50-year story into a two-hour film.
Have y’all heard about this guy named Messi? He’s pretty good at this soccer thing.
Messi and Inter Miami came to Los Angeles over the Labor Day weekend and I got to witness it first-hand for LA Taco.
EXCERPT:
Although Messi had already been presented to the Inter Miami faithful during a tropical storm more than a month ago and made his sporting debut in the Leagues Cup against historic Mexican club Cruz Azul, it wasn’t until this game in Los Angeles that the full-weight of the moment came to fruition.
The new iteration of Major League Soccer, with an assist from tech and media giant Apple, as the beacon leading the world into the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the main competition with Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Pro League for players, fans, and soft power, was officially here and shepherding the new age of modern football.
Afroxander (aka Iván Fernández) 