NEW YORK (AP) — Record executive Clive Davis says he’s bisexual.
In his new memoir, out Tuesday, the 80-year-old, who is twice divorced, reveals that he had sex with a man in the 1970s. Davis writes in “The Soundtrack of My Life” that he hadn’t been repressed or confused during his marriages and that sex with a man “provided welcome relief.”
He also writes that he started dating a man from 1990 to 2004, which he says was a “tough adjustment” for his son Mitchell. He says after “one trying year,” he and his son worked things out. Davis is the father of three children.
Davis is the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment. He writes that he’s been in a “strong monogamous relationship” with a man for the last seven years.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Your dilemma of wanting to get your parents to change their ways to eat better and exercise reminds me of an old joke:
How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.
Sounds like your parents may be about as motivated as the light bulb right now. Still, there are things you can do to encourage them to move in a healthier direction. But the first step should not be to hand them a book. Unless you lay some prior groundwork, that gesture may seem almost as patronizing as an impatient tone of voice – and probably as likely to backfire.
Instead, start a conversation in a caring, nonjudgmental way. Ask, don’t tell. “Say, ‘You know, I might not know what I am talking about, but I am really concerned about you,” suggested Kevin Leman, a psychologist in Tucson, Ariz., and author of 42 books on changing behavior in families and relationships. Ask simply if there is anything you can do to help.
Leading by example is also more effective than lecturing. “The son can role-model health by inviting his parents to dinner and serving healthful items that he is fairly certain they will find acceptable, or ask them if they are interested in going out dancing with him and his wife,” suggested Ann Constance, director of the Upper Peninsula Diabetes Outreach Network in Michigan.
Pleasure is a better motivator for change than pain or threats. Use the grandchildren as bait. Ask if they want to take the grandchildren to the zoo or a park that would require a good bit of walking around for everyone. Or the grandchildren could ask them to come along on one of those 2K fund-raiser-walks that many schools hold. After all, a day with the grandchildren is always a pleasure in itself. (O.K., usually a pleasure.)
Tempted to give them the gift of a health club membership? “Save your money,” Dr. Leman said. Try a more indirect (and cheaper) approach. Create a mixed-tape of up-tempo music from their era. (“Songs they listened to from the ages of 12-to-17, which is what we all listen to for the rest of our lives,” said Dr. Leman) They will enjoy it any time — maybe even while walking.
If you really want someone you love to make a change, the key is to ask them to do something small and easy first because that increases the chances they will do something larger later. Psychologists call that “the foot in the door technique,” said Adam Davey, associate professor of public health at Temple University in Philadelphia, referring to a classic 1966 experiment called “Compliance Without Pressure.” In the study, which has been duplicated by others in many forms, researchers asked people to sign a petition or place a small card in a window in their home or car about keeping California beautiful or supporting safe driving. About two weeks later, the same people were asked to put a huge sign that practically covered their entire front lawn advocating the same cause.
“A surprisingly large number of those who agreed to the small sign agreed to the billboard,” because agreeing to the first small task built a bond between asker and askee “that increases the likelihood of complying with a subsequent larger request,” Dr. Davey explained.
Any plan for behavioral change is most likely to succeed if it is very specific, measurable and achievable, according to Ms.Constance.
And the new behavior should also be integrated into daily life — and repeated until it becomes a habit. For example, if you want to walk more, start with a 10-minute walk after dinner on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Ms. Constance suggested. The next week, bump it up to 12 minutes.
Don’t give up, even if you meet initial resistance — it is never too late for your parents or you or any of us to change. “Taking up an exercise program into one’s 80s and 90s to build strength and flexibility can result in very tangible and enduring benefits in a surprisingly short time,” insisted Dr Davey.
As for instructive reading, Dr. Leman is partial to one of his own books, “Have a New You by Friday,” and Dr. Davey recommends “Biomarkers: The 10 Keys to Prolonging Vitality,” by William Evans. Ms. Constance recommends the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web site on physical activity and exercise tips for the elderly, as well as the National Institute of Health’s site on the DASH diet.
LONDON — Lawmakers in Brussels moved Tuesday to shore up the sagging market for carbon emissions permits, a key component of the European Union’s efforts to reduce air pollution.
Prices of carbon allowances, which permit companies to emit greenhouse gases, fell last month to as low as €2.80 per ton, or $3.75, compared with €9 per ton a year ago and €30 per ton in 2008. To reduce the supply of permits and drive up the price, the environmental committee of the European Parliament voted to allow the European Commission to reduce the number of allowances to be auctioned over the next three years.
After the committee’s vote, prices fell to around €4.60 per ton, from a close of €5.13 on Monday. But the panel’s vote had been expected, and the plan still needs approval from the full European Parliament and the governments of the Union’s 27 member states.
“It is really the first step in a long, long process,” said Kash Burchett, an analyst at the energy research firm IHS.
The committee’s vote — 38 to 25, with 2 abstentions — is “a lifeline for the carbon market and for emissions trading as a policy tool for curbing emissions,” said Stig Schjoelset, head of carbon analysis at Thomson Reuters Point Carbon, a market research firm in Oslo.
If the vote had gone the other way, Mr. Schjoelset said, the Emissions Trading System would have been “more or less dead.”
The European Union introduced the system in 2005 in a bid to force polluters like utilities and manufacturers to reduce their carbon emissions. Under the system, companies are allocated a certain number of permits, each allowing them to emit one metric ton of carbon dioxide per year. If emissions exceed the level allowed by the permits, the companies must buy additional permits. Companies that do not comply face heavy fines.
The total number of permits is scheduled to be reduced over time, forcing a corresponding reduction in emissions. The Union is on track to meet its goal of reducing emissions in 2020 to 80 percent of 1990 levels, but that is mainly because the recession has reduced industrial activity and energy use. As a result, companies have a surplus of permits on hand, which depresses their price.
It is widely believed that the European Commission has handed out too many credits. In 2012, for example, ArcelorMittal, the Luxembourg-based steel maker, sold 21.8 million tons of credits — about one quarter of the number it received from the commission — for $220 million. The company said it spent the proceeds on energy-saving investments.
Advocates say that carbon pricing, if properly managed, is the most efficient way to lower emissions. By putting a hefty price on carbon, the system lets investment decisions drive emissions reductions, rather than having governments dictate investment in particular clean energy sources like solar or wind.
But industrialists and analysts say that single-digit prices for carbon permits do not provide sufficient incentive for companies to switch to cleaner fuels and energy-efficient technology.
“Driving energy investment in Europe through a higher carbon price will lower costs,” said David Hone, the chief climate adviser to Royal Dutch Shell and the chairman of the International Emissions Trading Association in Geneva. “That price signal isn’t there today.”
Mr. Schjoelset said a price of €30 to €40 per ton was needed to encourage electricity producers to switch from coal to natural gas, a cleaner fuel. He said it would take a price of €60 to €150 per ton to push utilities to invest in expensive carbon-reducing technologies like carbon capture and storage.
Politicians and analysts said the Parliament committee’s vote might be the first step in restoring the credibility of the Emissions Trading System, which is still considered the world’s flagship carbon program.
“It is important that we get this right, and the sooner we get it right the better,” the European climate action commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, said during an interview Monday.
The plan approved Tuesday would take 900 million carbon credits that are now scheduled to be auctioned from 2013 to 2015 and “backload” them so they are auctioned in 2019 and 2020. That will put a dent in the surplus of carbon credits, which is estimated at two billion tons.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: February 19, 2013
An earlier version of this article misidentified an analyst at IHT, an energy research firm. He is Kash Burchett, not Kass Burchett.
Longtime Lakers owner Jerry Buss has died at the age of 80. Last week, it was revealed that he was hospitalized with an undisclosed form of cancer.
When Jerry Buss bought the Lakers in 1979, he wanted to build a championship team. But that wasn't all.
The new owner gave courtside seats to movie stars. He hired pretty women to dance during timeouts. He spent freely on big stars and encouraged a fast-paced, exuberant style of play.
As the Lakers sprinted to one NBA title after another, Buss cut an audacious figure in the stands, an aging playboy in blue jeans, often with a younger woman by his side.
PHOTOS: Jerry Buss through the years
"I really tried to create a Laker image, a distinct identity," he once said. "I think we've been successful. I mean, the Lakers are pretty damn Hollywood."
Buss died Monday of complications of cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to his longtime spokesman, Bob Steiner. Buss was 80.
Lakers fans will remember Buss for bringing extraordinary success — 10 championships in three-plus decades — but equally important to his legacy was a sense of showmanship that transformed pro basketball from sport to spectacle.
Live discussion at 10:30: The legacy of Jerry Buss
"Jerry Buss helped set the league on the course it is on today," NBA Commissioner David Stern said. "Remember, he showed us it was about 'Showtime,' the notion that an arena can become the focal point for not just basketball, but entertainment. He made it the place to see and be seen."
His teams featured the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard. He was also smart enough to hire Hall of Fame-caliber coaches in Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.
"I've worked hard and been lucky," Buss said. "With the combination of the two, I've accomplished everything I ever set out to do."
A Depression-era baby, Jerry Hatten Buss was born in Salt Lake City on Jan. 27, 1933, although some sources cite 1934 as his birth year. His parents, Lydus and Jessie Buss, divorced when he was an infant.
His mother struggled to make ends meet as a waitress in tiny Evanston, Wyo., and Buss remembered standing in food lines in the bitter cold. They moved to Southern California when he was 9, but within a few years she remarried and her second husband took the family back to Wyoming.
His stepfather, Cecil Brown, was, as Buss put it, "very tight-fisted." Brown made his living as a plumber and expected his children (one from a previous marriage, another son and a daughter with Jessie) to help.
TIMELINE: Jerry Buss' path
This work included digging ditches in the cold. Buss preferred bell hopping at a local hotel and running a mail-order stamp-collecting business that he started at age 13.
Leaving high school a year early, he worked on the railroad, pumping a hand-driven car up and down the line to make repairs. The job lasted just three months.
Until then, Buss had never much liked academics. But he returned to school and, with a science teacher's encouragement, did well enough to earn a science scholarship to the University of Wyoming.
Before graduating with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, when he was 19 he married a coed named JoAnn Mueller and they would eventually have four children: John, Jim, Jeanie and Janie.
The couple moved to Southern California in 1953 when USC gave Buss a scholarship for graduate school. He earned a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1957. The degree brought him great pride — Lakers employees always called him "Dr. Buss."
Three Fat Amigos! The green one is a Surly Krampus and runs an even larger 29r wheel size. The orange and blue are Salsa Mukluks and this is the park bench stop on Adams Gulch in Sun Valley. We reached this in an unusually hard effort, 'cause behind us were the wolves.
Hitting the trail on a bike made for it... provided the trail is wide, the terrain is reasonable and you aren't in a hurry.
Seen through our Rolling Huts cabin window in the Methow Valley, the Mukluk awaits another ride.
Hunter orange is easy to spot on the trail in the snow, and this bike was ridden on Sun Valley's famous single track. Riding on the cross-country trails is not permitted there like at the Methow.
It was about 2 degrees on this ride and layered like that kid in A Christmas Story. Seen here are REI's Winterflyte jacket and tights. Underneath there's an eVent shell and under that Merino wool liners from ibex.
A big, fat tire that grips and doesn't damage the groomed trail. The blue spots on the rim are from the rim strip that's poking out through drilled out holes. Drilling out the rim removes considerable weight. A Fat Bike rim is essentially two MTB rims welded together.
Rode the 9 Zero 7 over hill and dale on groomed trails in the Methow Valley at about 9 mph. Once on a downhill, hit 12, and it's super fun to ride where you normally can't, even if it's at a tourist pace.
KETCHUM, Idaho – Snow bikes are good for hucking about on groomed trails. They are not good for outrunning wolves.
This became obvious as a group of us, dressed in garish red Lycra suits and riding black, orange and DayGlo-green bikes with cartoonishly large tires, pedaled frantically through the snow after a trio of wolves caught our scent.
The experience made me ponder the point of these bikes, and the questions those building them must answer if snow biking is to catch on. It isn’t as if people often see apex predators when riding. But my encounter with canis lupus highlighted the shortcomings of bikes that are a hell of a lot of fun but struggling to find their place.
Snow bikes are, of course, designed to ride over snow. Fat, cushy tires pumped to a whopping 5 PSI keep you from sinking. Garage tinkerers in Alaska and other cold climes have been building them forever, welding mountain bike rims together to double up on tires and fashioning frames to straddle them. The DIY ethos went corporate a few years ago when industry juggernaut Quality Bicycle Products joined the party.
Although snow bikes remain one of the most esoteric niches in cycling, they are slowly entering the mainstream. A dozen manufactures are making them, as are independent craft builders. There was a Fat Bike Summit last month, where folks got together to talk about land use and access for the bikes. There are some 10,000 snow bikes in the wild, and that number’s expected to double within a year. And the Iditabike, the famous riff on Alaska’s epic Iditarod dogsled race, begins later this month in Anchorage.
Yet as the scene gains participants, especially roadies and mountain bikers who already have a bike or three in the garage, expectations increase. And frankly, snow bikes have a long way to go before they approach the sophistication of a Pivot 5.7, Specialized Stumpjumper, or Jamis Dakar 650b. At this point, the bikes have more in common with beach cruisers than proper mountain bikes.
Don’t get me wrong; riding in the snow is a hoot, because, well, you’re riding in snow. But trudging along at less than 10 mph wears thin after 45 minutes. Snow biking feels like a sport that hasn’t figured out what it wants to do yet, much like mountain biking in the days when crazy Californians bombed down Mount Tam on bikes they’d built themselves.
It’s one thing to ride groomed trails and quite another to scramble up a single track. Fat tires require fat frames, which lack the handling and agility of modern mountain bikes. The bikes are clumsy and, at about 35 pounds, heavy. Trigger shifters are endlessly frustrating when you’re wearing gloves. And riding an 8-inch single track on a 5-inch tire requires exceptional concentration and balance. Bobble your line and you’re off the trail, half-buried in powder. So you bounce along at little more than walking speed, trying to be smooth and find a flow. It’s best to settle in and enjoy the ride. With so much resistance working against your forward momentum, it’s quite an effort to get anywhere.
Before hitting Sun Valley, we rode the Methow Valley. Both resorts are interested in buying fleets of snow bikes to draw well-heeled vacationers to underutilized trails. It’s easy enough to design bikes that roll over groomed snow trails at single-digit speeds, but it isn’t enough to sustain the scene, especially when you consider these machines cost $1,500 to $3,500.
Snow bikes will never replace dedicated single-track or cross-country machines, but if the industry wants them to be anything more than a fad, they’ll have to go faster, shift better, ride stiffer and weigh a lot less. We’d like to see dropper seat posts, internal gears and the ability to adjust tire pressure on the fly, to start.
People made the same complaints about mountain biking back in the day, and look where the sport’s gone. The same thing could happen to snow biking as another generation of builders and tinkerers pushes this budding sport forward — or falls to the wolves.
BERLIN (Reuters) – Half a life-time ago, artist Yoko Ono lay in an Amsterdam hotel bed with husband John Lennon, staging a week-long “bed-in” for peace and feeling they were very alone in their activism.
Today, Ono, whose own energy for campaigning has never tired, sees a world full of activists, maintaining her energy and faith in humanity.
“When John and I did the bed-in, not many people were with us. But now there are so many activists, I don’t know anyone who is not an activist,” she told Reuters in an interview in Berlin on Monday, her 80th birthday.
“Even the corporations – John always used to say the corporations need to be with us… Corporations now say 10-20 percent of their profits will go to such and such charity. They have to do that almost for people to feel good about it.”
The late Beatle and Ono’s 1969 bed-in to protest against the Vietnam war was repeated in Montreal, Canada. Press attention was huge, but much of it was mocking.
Ono, who gave a sell-out concert in Berlin on Sunday alongside their son Sean Lennon which closed with the anthem “Give peace a chance”, said it was still critical to stand up for peace despite new conflicts in the intervening decades.
“I don’t want to be drowning in sadness. I think we have to stand and up and change the world,” she said.
The artist, born to a wealthy Japanese family in Tokyo in 1933, has recently become a passionate opponent of fracking, a controversial procedure which has sharply lifted energy output in the United States but which critics fear pollutes drinking water deep underground and could increase earthquake risks.
“Fracking is an incredible risk to the human race, I don’t know why they even thought of doing it,” she said.
Ono, whose birthday is being marked by a major retrospective of her work in Frankfurt, said she feels she is becoming freer in her art.
“My attitude has changed… I’m allowing things to happen in a way I hadn’t planned before,” she said.
Asked about her feelings on becoming an octogenarian, she said: “I’m surprised. It is a miracle in a sense that I am 80, I am proud about it. Not everybody gets there.”
(Reporting by Alexandra Hudson, editing by Gareth Jones and Paul Casciato)
Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Lillian Bosley, 13, watched cartoons on an iPad at her Myersville, Maryland home. Lillian has Arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, a rare orthopedic disease. More Photos »
Debra Sukin and her husband were determined to take no chances with her second pregnancy. Their first child, Jacob, who had a serious genetic disorder, did not babble when he was a year old and had severe developmental delays. So the second time around, Ms. Sukin had what was then the most advanced prenatal testing.
The test found no sign of Angelman syndrome, the rare genetic disorder that had struck Jacob. But as months passed, Eli was not crawling or walking or babbling at ages when other babies were.
“Whatever the milestones were, my son was not meeting them,” Ms. Sukin said.
Desperate to find out what is wrong with Eli, now 8, the Sukins, of The Woodlands, Tex., have become pioneers in a new kind of testing that is proving particularly helpful in diagnosing mysterious neurological illnesses in children. Scientists sequence all of a patient’s genes, systematically searching for disease-causing mutations.
A few years ago, this sort of test was so difficult and expensive that it was generally only available to participants in research projects like those sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. But the price has plunged in just a few years from tens of thousands of dollars to around $7,000 to $9,000 for a family. Baylor College of Medicine and a handful of companies are now offering it. Insurers usually pay.
Demand has soared — at Baylor, for example, scientists analyzed 5 to 10 DNA sequences a month when the program started in November 2011. Now they are doing more than 130 analyses a month. At the National Institutes of Health, which handles about 300 cases a year as part of its research program, demand is so great that the program is expected to ultimately take on 800 to 900 a year.
The test is beginning to transform life for patients and families who have often spent years searching for answers. They can now start the grueling process with DNA sequencing, says Dr. Wendy K. Chung, professor of pediatrics and medicine at Columbia University.
“Most people originally thought of using it as a court of last resort,” Dr. Chung said. “Now we can think of it as a first-line test.”
Even if there is no treatment, there is almost always some benefit to diagnosis, geneticists say. It can give patients and their families the certainty of knowing what is wrong and even a prognosis. It can also ease the processing of medical claims, qualifying for special education services, and learning whether subsequent children might be at risk.
“Imagine the people who drive across the whole country looking for that one neurologist who can help, or scrubbing the whole house with Lysol because they think it might be an allergy,” said Richard A. Gibbs, the director of Baylor College of Medicine’s gene sequencing program. “Those kinds of stories are the rule, not the exception.”
Experts caution that gene sequencing is no panacea. It finds a genetic aberration in only about 25 to 30 percent of cases. About 3 percent of patients end up with better management of their disorder. About 1 percent get a treatment and a major benefit.
“People come to us with huge expectations,” said Dr. William A. Gahl, who directs the N.I.H. program. “They think, ‘You will take my DNA and find the causes and give me a treatment.’ ”
“We give the impression that we can do these things because we only publish our successes,” Dr. Gahl said, adding that when patients come to him, “we try to make expectations realistic.”
DNA sequencing was not available when Debra and Steven Sukin began trying to find out what was wrong with Eli. When he was 3, they tried microarray analysis, a genetic test that is nowhere near as sensitive as sequencing. It detected no problems.
“My husband and I looked at each other and said, ‘The good news is that everything is fine; the bad news is that everything is not fine,’ ” Ms. Sukin said.
In November 2011, when Eli was 6, Ms. Sukin consulted Dr. Arthur L. Beaudet, a medical geneticist at Baylor.
“Is there a protein missing?” she recalled asking him. “Is there something biochemical we could be missing?”
By now, DNA sequencing had come of age. Dr. Beaudet said that Eli was a great candidate, and it turned out that the new procedure held an answer.
A single DNA base was altered in a gene called CASK, resulting in a disorder so rare that there are fewer than 10 cases in all the world’s medical literature.
“It really became definitive for my husband and me,” Ms. Sukin said. “We would need to do lifelong planning for dependent care for the rest of his life.”
Now, when doctors bill for medical services, insurers pay without as many questions. And Eli’s schools recognize how profound his needs are. “This isn’t just some kid with dyslexia,” his mother said, adding: “My son needs someone who literally is holding his hand. He runs, he doesn’t know ‘no.’ And he does not talk.”
The typical patient with a mystery disease has neurological problems, and is often a baby or a child. There are reasons for that.
Executives at Reader’s Digest must be hoping that the magazine’s second trip to bankruptcy court in under four years will be its last.
The magazine’s parent filed for Chapter 11 protection late on Sunday in another attempt to cut down the debt that has plagued the pocket-sized publication for years. The company is hoping to convert about $465 million of its debt into equity held by its current creditors.
In a court filing, Reader’s Digest said it held about $1.1 billion in assets and just under $1.2 billion in debt. It has provisionally lined up about $105 million in financing to keep it afloat during the Chapter 11 case.
This week’s filing is the latest effort by the 91-year-old publisher, whose magazine once resided on many an American household’s coffee table, to fix itself in a difficult economic environment.
“After considering a wide range of alternatives, we believe this course of action will most effectively enable us to maintain our momentum in transforming the business and allow us to capitalize on the growing strength and presence of our outstanding brands and products,” Robert E. Guth , the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Reader’s Digest last filed for bankruptcy in 2009, emerging a year later under the control of lenders like JPMorgan Chase.
That reorganization substantially cut the publisher’s debt, and afterward the company worked to further shrink its footprint. It jettisoned nonessential publications in a series of deals, including the $180 million sale of Allrecipes.com and the $4.3 million sale of Every Day With Rachael Ray, both to the Meredith Corporation.
Most of the money from those transactions went toward paying down a still significant debt burden. But the company remained pressured by what it described in a court filing as the steep declines that still bedevil the media industry. Last year, the publisher began negotiating with its lenders, including Wells Fargo, about amending some of its debt obligations. That process eventually led to a “pre-negotiated agreement” with creditors, that will be put into effect by the bankruptcy filing.
This time, Reader’s Digest is hoping to spend even less time in court. Mr. Guth said in a court filing that the publisher aims to emerge from bankruptcy protection in about four months.
The company’s biggest unsecured creditors include firms represented by Luxor Capital. The Federal Trade Commission also contends that it is owed $8.8 million in a settlement claim.
Reader’s Digest is being advised by Evercore Partners and the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.
A stylish crowd waited beneath a flashing marquee outside the Fonda Theatre. "Appearing tonight!" the sign read. "Eric Garcetti 4 Mayor."
In a city where political campaigns are typically waged at neighborhood meetings, not Hollywood concert halls, last week's star-studded fundraiser for Garcetti highlighted the entertainment industry's outsized role in this year's mayoral race. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel started the show with a stand-up routine and musician Moby got the crowd of several hundred dancing. Actress Amy Smart urged everyone to tweet about the campaign, and actor Will Ferrell beamed in via video to pledge that if Garcetti is elected, every resident in the city will receive free waffles.
Hollywood is taking to City Hall politics like never before, veterans say, with power players such as Steven Spielberg leading a major fundraising effort and celebrities such as Salma Hayek weighing in via YouTube. A Times analysis of city Ethics Commission records found that actors, producers, directors and others in the industry have donated more than $746,000 directly to candidates, with some $462,000 going to Garcetti and $226,000 to City Controller Wendy Greuel.
Several of Greuel's big-name celebrity supporters, including Tobey Maguire, Kate Hudson and Zooey Deschanel, recently hosted a fundraiser for her at an exclusive club on the Sunset Strip. She is getting extra help from Spielberg and his former partners at DreamWorks, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who have given at least $150,000 and are raising more for an independent group funding aTV ad blitz on her behalf.
The burst of support is coming from an industry often maligned for paying little attention to local politics.
While Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is often photographed at red carpet events and former Mayor Tom Bradley was famously close to actor Gregory Peck, serious Hollywood money and star power has tended to remain tantalizingly out of reach for local politicians. "It's no secret that the entertainment industry has never really focused on the city that houses it," said Steve Soboroff, who ran for mayor and lost in 2001.
Political consultant Garry South, who has worked on mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns, recalled having to pay celebrities to appear at fundraisers in the past. Hollywood has long embraced candidates in presidential and congressional elections, South said, in part because they have more influence over causes favored by celebrities.
"The mayor of L.A. is not going to get us out of Afghanistan. The mayor of L.A. is not going to determine whether or not gay marriage is legal," South said. "The local issues are just not as sexy."
But this year, if you're a part of the Hollywood establishment, chances are you've gotten invitations to fundraisers for Greuel, Garcetti or both.
The difference this time is that both candidates have worked to cultivate deep Hollywood connections, observers say. Garcetti has represented Hollywood for 12 years, overseeing a development boom and presiding over ceremonies to add stars — Kimmel recently got one — on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Greuel is a former executive at DreamWorks, where she worked with the moguls who founded the studio. She has also served for 10 years on the board of the California Film Commission.
City Councilwoman Jan Perry and entertainment attorney Kevin James have reaped far less financial support from the industry, records show, although each claims a share of celebrity endorsements. Dick Van Dyke sponsored a fundraiser for Perry and Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black has given to James.
Agent Feroz Taj, who attended Garcetti's Moby concert, said a flurry of activity around the race, involving friends and colleagues, piqued his interest. He said he's never been involved in a political campaign, but now when he receives invites to Greuel events, he says he is supporting Garcetti.
Industry insiders have been buzzing about a letter they say is being circulated by an advisor to Spielberg and Katzenberg, urging people to give $15,000 to an independent group supporting Greuel. The DreamWorks founders have made a difference for Greuel in previous elections. In 2002, financial support from the studio executives and their allies helped her squeak out a victory in one of the closest City Council races in history.
This time around, billionaire media mogul Haim Saban is getting involved, providing his Beverly Hills estate for a Greuel fundraiser featuring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Greuel has also received contributions from Tom Hanks and actresses Mariska Hargitay and Eva Longoria, neither of whom have given to a local political campaign before, according to records.
Garcetti, on the other hand, has picked up contributions from former Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner, as well as newcomers to local politics Jake Gyllenhaal and Hayek, who once traveled with Garcetti on a global warming awareness mission to the South Pole. The actress released a video endorsing Garcetti and thanking him for helping her find her wallet in the snow.
Campaign consultant Sean Clegg linked the industry's burgeoning interest in mayoral politics to President Obama's election, which he said had "a catalyzing effect on Hollywood." Indeed, many Greuel and Garcetti supporters were Obama backers. Hayek hosted a fundraiser for Obama and Longoria served as a co-chair of his reelection campaign.
Clegg is a consultant for Working Californians, an independent campaign committee that hopes to raise and spend at least $2 million supporting Greuel, with donations from Spielberg and others in Hollywood, as well as the union representing Department of Water and Power employees.
Generally, Clegg argued, Hollywood money is different than the special-interest funding campaigns collect. "Money is coming out of the entertainment industry more on belief and less on the transactional considerations," he said.
But Raphael Sonenshein, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said Hollywood's new interest in local elections may be tied to growing concerns about film production being lured elsewhere by tax incentives.
Garcetti and Greuel have both pledged to reverse job losses tied to runaway television and film production, with Garcetti touting a recent proposal to eliminate roughly $231,000 in annual city fees charged for pilot episodes of new TV shows. The number of pilots shot locally has dropped 30% in recent years, but city budget analysts say the tax break would have a minimal effect because city fees represent only a small portion of production costs.
On the council, both candidates voted to eliminate filming fees at most city facilities. Greuel tells audiences she has an insider's perspective on the industry's needs and says she will create an "entertainment cabinet" to help it thrive. "I have sat with studio heads," she said in a recent interview. "They want a city . . . that is a champion for film industry jobs in Los Angeles."
Greuel may have Garcetti beat on experience in the studio front office, but he is the only candidate with his own page on IMDb.com — a closely watched industry website that tracks individuals' film and television credits.
The councilman, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, has made several television appearances, including one for the cable police drama "The Closer." He played the mayor of Los Angeles.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Times staff writer Maloy Moore contributed to this report.
BELLEVUE, Washington — Destiny, the new game from the creator of Halo, isn’t just another shooter. It’s a persistent online multiplayer adventure, designed on a galactic scale, that wants to become your new life.
“It isn’t a game,” went the oft-heard tagline at a preview event on Wednesday. “It’s a world where the most important stories are told by the players, not written by the developers.”
This week, Bungie Studios invited the press into its Seattle-area studio to get the first look at Destiny. Although the event was a little short on details — Bungie and Activision didn’t reveal the launch date, handed out concept art instead of screenshots, and dodged most of my questions — it gave an intriguing glimpse at what the creator of Halo believes is the future of shooters.
Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, and its insanely popular shooter was the killer app that put the original Xbox on the map. Bungie split off from its corporate parent in 2007, and Microsoft produced Halo 4 on its own last year. The development studio partnered up with mega-publisher Activision for its latest project, which was kept mostly secret until now.
Destiny, slated for release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, isn’t exactly an MMO. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg called it a “shared-world shooter” — multiplayer and online, but something less than massive.
“We’re not doing this just because we have the tech,” Hirshberg said. “We have a great idea, and we’re letting the concept lead the tech.”
Built with new development software created specifically for Destiny, this new game is set in Earth’s solar system and takes place after a mysterious cataclysm wipes out most of humanity. The remaining survivors create a “safe zone” underneath a mysterious alien sphere called “The Traveler.”
The enigmatic sphere imparts players with potent weapons, magic-like powers and defensive technology. Thanks to these gifts, people have begun reclaiming the solar system from alien invaders that moved in while humanity was down.
Bungie fired off a list of design principles that guide Destiny’s creation: Create a world players want to be in. Make it enjoyable by players of all skill levels. Make it enjoyable by people who are “tired, impatient and distracted.” In other words, you don’t have to be loaded for bear and pumped for the firefight of your life every time you log on to Destiny.
After this brief overview, writer/director Joseph Staten used concept art and narration to outline an example of what a typical Destiny player’s experience might be.
Beginning in the “safe zone,” a player would start out from their in-game home and walk into a large common area. From here, the player would be able to explore their surroundings and meet up with friends. Then, they might board their starships and fly to another planet, let’s say Mars, in order to raid territory held by aliens.
During this raid, other real players who traveled to the same zone (like visiting a particular server on an MMO) would be free to come and go as they please. For example, a random participant could simply walk on by. They could stop and observe. Or they could get involved in the fight. In this instance, Staten suggested that a passerby would join the raid and then break off from the group after the spoils were divvied up without any user interface elements to fuss with. Walk away, and it’s done.
Bungie made a point of saying several times over that Destiny will not have any “lobby”-type interfaces, or menus from which to choose from a list of quests. Instead, players will simply immerse themselves in the world and organically choose to participate in whatever activities they stumble upon. Bungie promised solo content, cooperative content, and competitive content, though it provided no further examples of these.
The developer said that by employing very specialized artificial intelligence working entirely behind the scenes, players will encounter other real players who are best suited for them to interact with, based on their experience levels and other factors.
Staten didn’t say how many players would be able to exist in the world at the same time, but said that characters will be placed in proximity to each other based on very specific criteria, not simply to “fill the world up.”
Bungie showed off three distinct character classes throughout the day’s presentations: Hunter, Titan and Warlock. Although no differences were outlined between them apart from the Warlock being able to use a kind of techno-magic, the developer was keen to emphasize the idea that each character in Destiny would be highly customized and unique, and will grow with the player over an extended period of time.
While many games make the same promise, Destiny’s vision of “an extended period of time” isn’t 100 hours. It’s more like 10 years.
Bungie’s plan is for the Destiny story to unfold gradually over the course of 10 “books,” each with a beginning, middle and end. Through this will run an overarching story intended to span the entire decade’s worth of games, although like many other topics covered during the day, Bungie gave little detail about how this will work.
The developer spent a lot of time emphasizing its claim that no game has been made at this scale before. Bungie says it has a whopping 350 in-house developers working on Destiny.
Senior graphics architect Hao Chen gave examples of the sort of impenetrable mathematics formulas that allow Bungie to craft environments and worlds at a speed that it claims was previously impossible.
Bungie’s malleable team system was also said to increase its output. With the ability to co-locate designers, artists, and engineers at any time, Bungie says it can go through exceptionally rapid on-the-spot iteration and improvement for each facet of the game.
Apart from highly improved technology and the basic concept of humanity taking back the solar system, there’s just not a lot of hard information on Destiny at the moment. One thing that was made quite clear is that the game will not be subscription-based. Every presenter was clear in stating that players will not pay a monthly fee to participate in this persistent world.
While fees may not be required, a constant connection to the Internet will be. Since the core concept of Destiny is exploring a world that exists outside of the player’s console and is populated by real people at all times, it “will need to be connected in order for someone to play,” said Bungie chief operating officer Pete Parsons.
Representatives from both Bungie and Activision gave vague answers when Wired pressed for further details, often stating that they “were not ready” to discuss specifics. Whether that means those things are still being kept from the press, or whether they have not yet been determined by the development team, was unclear.
Questions currently unanswered: How will players communicate? How will players interact with each other outside of combat? What content exists in the non-combat “safe zones”? Subscriptions may be out, but what about in-app purchases? Will player versus player combat be available? Will the game ship on a disc or be download only? Will its persistent world allow Xbox and PlayStation gamers to play together? What content and interactions will be possible via smartphones and tablets (which Bungie alluded to)? Will the fancy new tools be licensed to other developers?
And so on.
For now, Bungie is asking us to take it for granted that it will execute on a bold 10-year plan for a very different sort of shooter. In the history of the always-changing gaming industry, no one’s ever been able to pull off a 10-year plan for anything. Can Bungie do it?
