Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: I had casually known her for 5 years. Was I finally ready to make a move?
In Fairfax, nestled on Beverly Boulevard near Pan Pacific Park, I ran a modest yet beloved pan-Asian restaurant called Buddha’s Belly. More than a place to eat, it was a gathering spot where our team and loyal regulars created an atmosphere of warmth and community. Every day, we exchanged stories about our guests, the generous, the quirky and the kind souls whose smiles lit up our little corner of L.A.
For five years, one regular stood out. The Buddha’s Belly team referred to her as “Aloha.” She had a familiar and beautiful face and she adored our shao bing finger sandwiches and pad Thai. During those five years, all I ever said to her was: “How’s your pad Thai?,” “Nice to see you” and “Thanks for coming in!” Her friendly smile and presence were the highlights of our routine interactions.
Then one hectic afternoon changed everything. Rushing to a meeting and about to leap into my car, I caught a glimpse of Lynda sitting at Table 64, smiling at me through our bamboo-lined patio (a.k.a. “bamboo forest”). I went over to say a quick hi.
“How’s your pad Thai?” I asked, and then I was off.
A couple blocks from the restaurant, I was struck by the feeling that our brief encounter was different this time. There was a spark — a look in her eye. So I did something out of character: I called the manager on duty and asked him to go to Table 64, Seat 3, and ask for her number.
The next day, I found a business card on my desk with Lynda’s cell number. It was on! That small gesture signaled the start of something extraordinary.
Eager to seize the moment, I called and invited her out for a date that same weekend. However, it was her birthday month, and that meant her calendar was booked solid for the next three to four weekends. Not wanting to let time slip away, I proposed an unconventional plan: to join me and an octogenarian friend at our annual opening night at the Hollywood Bowl. Little did I know this would turn out to be equal parts amazing and mortifying. My friend was so excited — she had no filter.
Shortly after picking up our dinner at Joan’s on Third, my friend started asking Lynda questions, first light questions like “Where are you from?” and “What do you do?” Then once seated at the Bowl, her questions continued. But now they were more pointed questions: “Have you ever been married?” and “Do you have kids?”
Amazingly, Lynda didn’t flinch, and her honesty, unfiltered yet graceful, was refreshing and alluring. She had been through life’s fires and knew that when it’s a fit, it should not be based on any false pretense. Although I did manage to get a few questions in that evening, I still chuckle at the memory of myself, sitting back, legs extended with a note pad in hand taking notes!
After dropping her off, she didn’t know if she would hear from me, as she didn’t know anything about me. But I didn’t wait three days to contact Lynda. I called her the next day to make plans to see her again. With it still being her birthday month, I asked her to join me that night for a surf film at the Ford with my best buddy. She said yes, and there we were on another chaperoned date.
By our third date, we were finally alone. We ventured to an underground gem affectionately dubbed the “Blade Runner” restaurant. Hidden on Pico Boulevard behind no obvious sign and characterized by hood-free mesquite grills and stacked wine crates, the place exuded a secret charm. Sharing a bottle of wine with the owner, our conversation deepened, and the electricity between Lynda and me became undeniable.
Our story took another turn when I was opening a new bar named Copa d’Oro (or Cup of Gold) in Santa Monica that was similar to a bar down the street called Bar Copa. The owner of Bar Copa invited me to discuss whether the concept was going to be too like his own. While we waited in the packed room, I instinctively put my hand around the small of Lynda’s back to steady us from the ebb and flow of the crowd of people around us. The intensity of our closeness and the energy between us was palpable, and we soon found ourselves at a quieter bar called Schatzi on Main where we had our first kiss.
Our courtship continued, and it would be defined by ease and grace. There were no mind games or calculations. One of us would ask whether the other was free, and it was an easy yes. Our desire was to be together.
I fondly remember being at a Fatburger not far from where Lynda lived, and I phoned her to ask if she wanted to sit with me as I scarfed down a Double Kingburger with chili and egg (yum!), and she said yes. By the time she arrived, I was halfway through eating the sandwich. But I was practicing a new way of eating a sloppy burger that my brother taught me. Why bother to continuously wipe your mouth when you’re only going to mess it up with the next bite? To save time and energy, wipe your mouth once at the end.
I was practicing this new technique with a smear of sauce on my face, and it didn’t faze her one bit. I could only imagine what her internal monologue was!
After six months of effortless companionship, I asked Lynda to move in, and a year later, while at Zephyr’s Bench, a serene and cherished hiking spot in the Santa Monica Mountains behind Bel-Air, I asked her to marry me.
Now, more than 17 years later, with two beautiful boys and our pandemic dog in tow, I can say I found my own aloha right here in the vibrant chaos of Los Angeles.
The author lives in Santa Monica with his wife and two children. They go to the Hollywood Bowl every chance they can. He’s also aspiring to make it into the Guinness World Records book.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Nearly 280 filmmakers entered the Internet Archive’s Public Domain Film Remix Contest this year. Above, a still from King of Jazz. The 1930 film was used as source material in several contest submissions.
Universal Pictures/Internet Archive
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Universal Pictures/Internet Archive
One of the most unusual of the creative treasures to enter the public domain this month is King of Jazz. The plotless, experimental 1930 musical film shot in early Technicolor centers on influential bandleader Paul Whiteman, nicknamed “The King of Jazz.”
In one memorable scene, the portly, mustachioed Whiteman opens a small bag and winks at the camera as miniature musicians file out one after another like a colony of ants and take their places on an ornate, table-top bandstand.
A new video based on clips from King of Jazz has won this year’s Public Domain Film Remix Contest — an annual competition that invites filmmakers from around the world to reimagine often long-forgotten literary classics, films, cartoons, music, and visual art that are now in the public domain. This means creators can use these materials freely, without copyright restrictions. In 2026, works created in 1930 entered the public domain.
Titled Rhapsody, Reimagined, the roughly two-minute video captures the King of Jazz‘s surreal quality: Cookie-cutter rows of musicians, showgirls, office workers and random furniture cascade across the screen as Whiteman’s winking face looks on.
“I wanted to transform the figures and bodies into more dream-like shapes through collage and looping and repetition,” said Seattle-based filmmaker Andrea Hale, who created the piece in collaboration with composer Greg Hardgrave. For video artists, Hale said discovering what’s new in the public domain each January is a thrill. “We’re always looking for things to draw from,” Hale said. “Opening that up to a bigger spread of materials is amazing. That’s the dream.”
A massive repository of content
The Internet Archive, the San Francisco-based nonprofit library behind the contest, digitizes and provides public access to a massive repository of content, including many materials used by contest participants. “These materials have often just been in film canisters for decades,” said digital librarian Brewster Kahle, who founded the Internet Archive in 1996.
This year’s submissions range from a reworking of the 1930 film The Blue Angel starring Betty Boop — another public domain entrant this year — instead of Marlene Dietrich, to an AI-generated take on the 1930 Nancy Drew book The Mystery at Lilac Inn.
Kahle said the Internet Archive received nearly 280 entries this time around, the highest number since the competition launched six years ago. “Things are not just musty, old archival documentation of the past,” Kahle said. “People are bringing them to life in new and different ways, without fear of being sued.”
The public domain in the era of AI
Lawsuits have become a growing concern for artists and copyright holders, especially with the rise of generative AI. Recent years have seen a surge in online video takedowns and copyright infringement disputes.
Media companies are trying to address the problem through deals with tech firms, such as Disney and OpenAI’s plan, announced late last year, to introduce a service allowing users to create short videos based on copyrighted characters, including Cinderella and Darth Vader.
“On the one hand, these licensing agreements seem quite a clean solution to thorny legal questions,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. “But what’s exciting about the public domain is that material, after a long, robust 95-year copyright term, is just simply free for anyone — without a team of lawyers, without a licensing agreement, without having to work for Disney or OpenAI — to just put online,” Jenkins said.
Jenkins also pointed out an interesting twist for people who create new works using materials from the public domain. “You actually get a copyright in your remix,” she said. “Just like Disney has copyrights in all of its remakes of wonderful public domain works like Snow White or Cinderella.” (The Brothers Grimm popularized these two characters in their 19th century collection Grimm’s Fairy Tales. But their roots are much deeper, going back to European folklore collections of the 1600s and beyond.)
However, this only applies to works created by humans — U.S. copyright law currently doesn’t recognize works authored by AI. And Jenkins further cautioned that creators only get a copyright in their new creative contributions to the remix, and not the underlying material.
This year’s Public Domain Film Remix Contest winner Andrea Hale said she’s using a Creative Commons license for Rhapsody, Reimagined. This means the filmmaker retains the copyright to her work but grants permissions that allow other people to freely use, share, and build upon it. “I’m keeping with the spirit of the public domain,” Hale said.
Mitt Romney’s Sister-In-Law
Suicide Note In Book of Mormon, Xanax In System
Published
Mitt Romney‘s sister-in-law left a handwritten suicide note tucked inside a Book of Mormon and had Xanax in her system when she died … according to the L.A. County Medical Examiner.
The ME’s report says detectives discovered a Book of Mormon on the front passenger seat of Carrie‘s car. In the final pages of the book, authorities say Carrie left a handwritten suicide note. Medications were also found inside the vehicle.
The report states Carrie had 6.3 ng/mL of Xanax in her system at the time of her death. A witness told first responders Carrie was seen pacing on the top level of the parking structure, watching security cameras, and looking over the edge of the parapet. The report also states surveillance footage captured her final moments.
The medical examiner’s findings note the injury occurred when she fell backward from a seated position on the rooftop parapet.
As we reported … Carrie died from blunt traumatic injuries after falling from the rooftop of a parking structure in Valencia, California, back in October.
Carrie’s husband, Scott Romney — Mitt’s brother — had reported her missing to the Sheriff’s Department. He told authorities she previously drove her car off a cliff two years earlier and had struggled with anxiety, per the report.
At the time of her death, Carrie was also in the middle of a divorce. Scott filed in June, citing “irreconcilable differences.” The couple married in 2016, and Carrie was Scott’s third wife.
This is the last year the Sundance Film Festival will be held in Park City, Utah. It is moving to Boulder, Colo., in 2027. Above, the Egyptian Theatre on Main Street in Park City.
Mandalit del Barco/NPR
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Mandalit del Barco/NPR
The Sundance Film Festival begins for the last time in Park City, Utah before heading to Boulder, Colo., next year. It’s a bittersweet finale for the country’s premier independent film festival, founded by Robert Redford in 1978.
With a gala, the festival plans to pay tribute to the late actor and director, who died of natural causes in September.
“Before he passed earlier this year, [Redford] shared with us this quote: ‘Everybody has a story,’” says the festival’s director, Eugene Hernandez. “This notion is such a great framing for a festival that has always been about finding and sharing with audiences the stories that come from all over the world.”
This year, the festival will screen films that got their starts at Sundance, including Little Miss Sunshine, which went on to be nominated for best picture at the 2007 Oscars.
The festival will also screen a remastered print of the 1969 movie Downhill Racer, in which Redford plays a champion skier. Redford was also a producer on this indie film.
“He would tell this story year after year about getting Downhill Racer made,” recalls Sundance senior programmer John Nein. “It became a way that he understood the notion of protecting independence and protecting the artistic voice of a film. He often used that when he talked to emerging filmmakers, to relate to the struggles that they had in getting their films made the way that they wanted to.”
Nein says one way to recognize that legacy is by programming 40 percent of the slate from first-time filmmakers. More than 16,200 films were submitted from 164 countries. Throughout the year, the Sundance Institute hosts labs and programs and provides grants and fellowships for independent filmmakers.
Over the years, Sundance has been a launching pad for filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Ava DuVernay, The Coen brothers, Ryan Coogler, Chloe Zhao and Paul Thomas Anderson.
Another filmmaker whose career Sundance supported is Rachel Lambert, who says she was inspired by a film Redford directed: Ordinary People.
“It’s a profound legacy a single human being can leave an entire nation’s culture,” she says of Redford. “It’s remarkable.”
Lambert will premiere her newest film, Carousel, a love story starring Chris Pine and Jenny Slate.
Also showing at Sundance: documentaries about Chicano theater pioneer Luis Valdez, singer Courtney Love, tennis star Billie Jean King, and South African leader Nelson Mandela.
Among the features in competition is The Gallerist with Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega.
Another is The Invite, with Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. The Invite‘s producer, David Permut, has been faithfully attending Sundance since the late 1980s, when he was in the audience for Steven Soderbergh’s breakout Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
“I never miss Sundance. I’ve been going every year since,” says Permut. “I stay for 10 days, I’m not in and out like a lot of people from Hollywood when they’re there with their film. I love the second week because it’s basically cinephiles from all over the world.”
Permut showed his first film at Sundance — Three of Hearts — in 1993. Last year, his film Twinless won the festival’s audience award.
“I have 57 movies I want to see this coming Sundance,” he says. “For me, it’s about discovery.”
Actress Hana Mana in The Friend’s House Is Here. The film was smuggled out of Iran to premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Alma Linda Films
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Alma Linda Films
Some filmmakers have gone to great lengths to get their work screened this year — including the Iranian film The Friend’s House is Here.
The drama—set in Tehran’s underground art scene — was shot under the radar of Iranian authorities. Amid the country’s recent political turmoil, members of the film’s crew had to drive 11 hours to smuggle the film over the Turkish border to get it to the festival. According to the film’s publicist, the film’s two main actresses were not heard from for weeks during Iran’s recent unrest. The publicist says the women are now safe but have been denied visas by the United States to attend Sundance.
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