Brass

So much for tradition. USC Coach Lane Kiffin and Athletic Director Pat Haden said Wednesday that they were surprised to learn that UCLA plans to wear an alternate uniform design when the teams play Saturday at the Coliseum. On Tuesday, UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero announced on his blog that UCLA would "be unveiling a uniform that we have been working on with the Adidas design team for several months. " The Bruins are expected to wear all-white uniforms and white helmets.

Before he came to Southern California in 2002, Fidel Bernabe played trumpet in a small town in Mexico and believed himself to be very talented. Los Angeles had many bandas - Mexican brass bands that play dance music at parties and nightclubs - that worked year-round. Surely there must be a band that could use his gifts, he thought. But once here, he found competition intense. Bernabe rarely found two nights of trumpeting work and had to take a day job in a sewing factory.

The musical instruments kids play in school bands and orchestras are traveling denizens of bacteria and fungi, say the authors of a new study. Music education is great for kids, they note, but please, please wash the instruments! Researchers at Oklahoma State University bravely examined 13 instruments that belonged to a high school band. Six of the instruments had been played the previous week and seven hadn't been played in a month. Swabs were taken of 117 different sites on the instruments, including the mouthpieces, internal chambers and even the carrying cases.

A federal agency is accusing two former executives of a giant failed credit union in Los Angeles County of fraud for their roles in adding millions of dollars to retirement payouts for themselves and other top brass at the financial institution. A lawsuit by the regulators also alleges breach of fiduciary duty and negligence by the two executives and 14 other officers and directors of Western Corporate Federal Credit Union in San Dimas. WesCorp, as it was known, was seized by the government in March 2009 after incurring nearly $7 billion in losses, largely because of bad investments in mortgage-backed bonds.

Rob McConnell, a celebrated composer, arranger and valve trombonist who led the Boss Brass, one of Canada's best and best-known big bands, has died. He was 75. McConnell, a three-time Grammy winner, died May 1 at a Toronto hospital, his family announced. He had cancer, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences said on its website. Although he formed the band in 1968, it was almost unknown to American audiences until 1981, when McConnell brought the 21-man ensemble to California for a series of concerts, The Times reported in 1981.

Granted, upper-level donors to "Incognito" had a special preview night and a short head start. But the playing field was otherwise level at the May 1 anonymous art sale at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Within minutes of the opening, more than 800 people streamed into the museum to scrutinize the 600-plus artworks. Donated by emerging and established artists ( Yoko Ono, Larry Bell, Nancy Rubins and Ed Moses among them), each piece cost $300, measured 8 by 10 inches and concealed its signature until after purchase.

Accompanied by a Los Angeles Police Department motorcycle escort, a memorial wall for fallen officers was delivered Tuesday to the department's new downtown headquarters. LAPD staff gathered at the windows and in the street with cellphone cameras to record the arrival of the nearly 11,000-pound brass structure from Kansas City, where it was assembled. But when a crane finally hoisted the wall onto an elevated plaza in front of the Police Administration Building on West 1st Street, the horrified designers realized that it was facing the wrong way. After hurried consultations with contractors, it became apparent that it would not be possible to simply flip the wall around to face the area where ceremonies will be held, because brackets securing it to the ground would no longer be aligned.

After weeks of wrangling, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens will present the Board of Supervisors today with restructuring plans that include $20.5 million in cuts -- the most significant in the department's history. "These are services that we believe are quite important to maintaining public safety, that we're not just going to be able to continue," sheriff's spokesman John McDonald said.