Hasta La Gadget!

There was shock and surprise as Twitter blew up around 12:30 p.m. EDT on Friday as LeBron James announced his much-awaited decision via Sports Illustrated “I’m Coming Home.”

I was not surprised at all. I totally understood. Where you grew up is part of your soul. A piece of you is always there. You return to your roots one way or another. LeBron James is returning to Cleveland in a big way.

Andre Knott of WTAM in Cleveland, the Cavaliers flagship station, has covered LeBron since his high school days and attended the same high school. Knott told my Sacramento, CA news radio station KFBK the main thing he kept hearing from people recently is that Lebron and his wife, Savannah, both natives of Akron, wanted to come home.

“They wanted their kids to go to the same schools they went to,” Knott said. “They’re from northeast Ohio. When they got down to Miami they realized it was a different way of life a little bit. They want their kids to grow up the same way they did.”

I understand completely. I grew up in a cramped three-family house in the tiny, blue-collar town of Wallington, New Jersey. Both my parents were factory workers who spent their free time playing sports with their kids and instilling values. My move to Los Angeles was a culture shock at first with its emphasis on wealth. I love California, as Lebron must have loved his beachfront mansion in Miami, but part of your heart will always be where you grew up. Lebron was raised in inner city Akron by a single Mom. In his words from his Sports Illustrated essay, it was in Akron where he first walked, ran, cried and bled.

Dr. Paul Salitsky teaches sports psychology at the University of California, Davis. He said Lebron’s personal and heartfelt essay in Sports Illustrated is “an interesting display of maturity.”

“He’s grown up. The way he talked about what was important to him and kind of displayed a maturity I haven’t seen from him previously,” Salitsky said.

Knott told the story of Lebron’s high school librarian who predicted three years ago King James would return to Cleveland because…

“He’s a people pleaser,” Knott said. “He wants to please the people who mean the most to him.”

“I really think this is really a decision from the heart.”

The 2014 World Cup will come to a close on Sunday, when Germany takes on Argentina in the championship match, the last of 64 played over the past month. It will be a momentous and bittersweet ending for the die hard fans who have tuned in around the world, cheering on their nations and at times, enjoying the opportunity to take some time off work to watch soccer.

So, as we prepare to embark on the nearly four-year wait for the next World Cup, we ask you: How closely were you paying attention to the world’s most popular sporting event? Take this quiz to find out, and be sure to click the key icon when you’re done to check out the correct answers.

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Old habits die hard. Especially when the habits are religious traditions and the agents of change seek to persecute those traditions. “Fiddler on the Roof,” written by Joseph Stein, music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, directed by Phyllis B. Gitlin for the Long Beach Playhouse Mainstage Theatre, is a moving and painful account of the conflict.

Set in 1905, in the village of Anatevka, Russia, the story features Tevye (Martin Feldman). He’s a poor milkman, a dedicated husband/father, and a devout Jew. He’s married to Golde (Harriet Whitmyer). They’ve got five daughters. They include Tzeitel (Jennifer Bales), Hodel (Melissa Deni), Chava (Sara Lipowsky), Shprintze (Hannah Smith), and Bielke (Mariyah Duffie).

The three eldest want boyfriends. Their choice of suitors, though, exasperates Tevye. Not least because they forgo the services of Yente the matchmaker (Roxanne Martinez). Tzeitel rejects a wealthy butcher, Lazar Wolfe (Richard DeVicariis). Instead, she choses a poor tailor, Motel (Jeremy Krasovic). Hodel chooses Perchik (Dennis Adrian Dyck), the family tutor full of revolutionary ideas. Chava chooses Fyedka (Evan Battle) because he shares her love of reading.

The story’s bittersweet. It’s not just that Tevye has to make a hardscrabble living, to ensure good marriages for his daughters, to keep the faith. He also has to contend with changing social values and the threat of pogroms.

Gitlin emphasizes the sweet over the bitter. The three oldest daughters are bubbly and vivacious. The low-key courtship scenes and the wedding are exuberant. The scenes of daily life are hustle bustle engaging. The family may be poor but they have each other and they have their religion.

The production’s success depends on simplicity. Here, the contrast between cramped quarters and soaring dreams rings true. Gitlin shows a remarkable sense of space. She creates busyness and activity without making the production seem crowded and chaotic. As a result, the production is both intimate and airy. When Tevye speaks to God, you feel the sky open up. When he speaks to his wife and his three oldest daughters, it’s as close as close can be.

The Mainstage’s proscenium stage is especially effective. At times it houses up to 24 characters at one time. Whether it’s a yard, a tavern, or a bedroom, we’re smack dab in the middle of the characters’ lives. Their joys and tribulations are our joys and tribulations.

The two leads are well cast. Feldman shines the long-suffering, ever-hopeful Tevye. In his day-to-day life he rolls with the punches, soldiers on. When he prays to his God, though, he opens up, like he’s talking to his favorite bartender. His opposite is Whitmyer’s Golde. She’s hardheaded. She keeps everyone, including her quixotic husband, in check. Together they form the family’s core, a core tested by events changing all around them.

The Fiddler (Brenna Hanlan) lyrically holds things together. She and her music represent tradition and stability in a story of far-reaching change. That’s the best thing about this production. Music articulates the joys and the challenges that Tevye and his family face. As the family marches off at the end to God-knows-where, only the music, alas, remains.

Performances are 8pm, Friday and Saturday, and 2pm, Sunday. The show runs until August 16. Tickets are $14 – $21. The Playhouse is located at 5021 E. Anaheim Street, Long Beach, CA 90804. For more information, call (562) 494-1014, option 1, or visit www.lbplayhouse.org.

Back in April CNNx launched, letting viewers jump through the news of the day and watch what they want, when they want. The only problem? Other than the fact that it’s restricted to CNN’s iPad app and web site, only subscribers to a few providers…

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Adolescent girls in braids and pigtails and teenage boys wearing jeans and sneakers sat alongside their parents in the courtroom of Immigration Judge Frank Travieso to hear how long they might be allowed to stay in the United States.

Travieso grabbed four thick books and dropped each one on his desk with a thud, warning the families in his Los Angeles courtroom about the thousands of pages of immigration laws and interpretations that could affect their cases and urging them to get a lawyer. “This is even smaller print,” he said of the 1,200-page book containing regulations during the hearing last month. “I am not trying to scare you, but I’m trying to ensure your children get a full and fair hearing.”

He then sent them on their way and told them to report back in February.

The scene is one that could become more common as the country’s already backlogged immigration courts brace for a deluge of tens of thousands of Central American children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months.

The court system is so overwhelmed that it can currently take three years to get a hearing, and many believe the delays will only get worse in the months ahead. For many immigrants, the delays in the court system work in their favor because they know they have so long before their cases are resolved.

“This situation just happens to be a magnitude unlike anything we have ever seen,” said Lauren Alder Reid, counsel for legislative and public affairs at the U.S. Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the courts.

Immigration courts in the United States have long been troubled. The courts, overseen by the Department of Justice, have more than 375,000 cases being handled by just 243 judges, according to the agency.

It can take months or years to get hearings for immigrants who aren’t in detention facilities, let alone a resolution. Immigration lawyers said judges are already setting hearings for 2017.

The Obama administration has said it will move quickly to process thousands of immigrant children and families arriving on the Texas border fleeing violence and extortion from gangs in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Since October, more than 57,000 unaccompanied children have reached the U.S., prompting the government to set up temporary shelters and fly immigrants to other states to be processed. Officials have asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funding to cope with the crisis, including the hiring of more judges.

After Central American immigrants are apprehended at the border, they are usually processed at one of several facilities that have been set up across Texas and the Southwest.

Children are placed in shelters and reunited with family members in the U.S. before being told to report to an immigration office and ultimately given a date before a judge in a process that can take years.

In immigration court, many immigrants fail to attend their hearings and are issued deportation orders. More than one in five immigrants not in federal custody were given court orders in their absence during the 2013 fiscal year, according to court statistics.

Obama administration critics say the huge delays only encourage more immigrants to try to come here and turn themselves in at the border, knowing they’ll be allowed to wait years for their cases to be resolved.

“The system is so dysfunctional,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies. “They get to stay, and the more time they spend here, the more difficult it is to get them removed.”

Vaughan said courts ought to handle cases in reverse order, tackling those on the border first to speed up deportations and deter would-be immigrants and stem the surge.

Since the influx, the immigration courts have temporarily reassigned seven judges to hear cases in southern Texas and three judges to handle hearings at a recently created New Mexico detention facility via teleconferencing, Alder Reid said. She could not say how many cases have been postponed but expects the latest influx of immigrants will have a significant impact.

“The number of non-detained backlog cases is going to rise from overwhelming to overwhelming times ten,” said Bruce Einhorn, a retired immigration judge in Los Angeles. “Until we enlarge the court system, we should brace ourselves for a bloody mess.”

The huge flow of immigrants into the court system has also created legal issues for the immigrants themselves.

Attorneys are typically not provided at government expense or required in immigration court, and children may end up in court on their own with only a relative to vouch for them.

Megan McKenna, advocacy director for Kids in Need of Defense, said her organization’s offices in Houston and New York were flooded this month with requests for pro-bono lawyers. She estimates the number of children lacking attorneys has jumped from about half to at least 70 percent since the influx began three years ago.

Immigrant advocates fearing the administration may try to curtail children’s access to the courts to cope with the crunch sued this week to try to get the government to give them lawyers.

At the border, adults who fail to prove they have a fear of returning to their country could be deported more quickly and without seeing a judge. Government officials and lawmakers are debating ways to handle the children’s cases more swiftly, much like they do with Mexican youth, who often don’t get a hearing in court.

Unaccompanied children from Central America, however, are reunited with family and given a court date. Those abandoned or abused by their parents may apply for a special legal status, and those fleeing violence can apply for asylum at a government office.

The immigration courts currently have more than 41,000 juvenile cases, including those involving unaccompanied border-crossers as well as long-time residents facing deportation and adults who were initially apprehended as children.

In immigration court in Los Angeles, Marta Vasquez, 55, was told by Travieso to bring her teenage daughter back next year with an update on her application for asylum. Vasquez, who came here fleeing an abusive husband in Guatemala nine years ago, left the building without fear that her family would be torn apart by deportation — at least not any time soon.

“These are the first court dates,” Vasquez later said. “Only God knows if this is going to be short or is going to be long.”