Moses

More than 40 years ago, a 19-year-old girl left her small ranch home in Cosala, Mexico, for a low-paying job as a housekeeper's assistant in Beverly Hills. "I was afraid and nervous, but I wanted a better life," Ines Campos Mora said. On Saturday night, capping a weeklong Los Angeles celebration of Mexico's independence bicentennial, her son, Sergio Mora, will be introduced amid mariachi music and cheers to fight former world champion Shane Mosley in the main event of a boxing card at Staples Center.

By Betty Hallock and Jessica Gelt Chef David Myers has announced that Sona, his Michelin one-star restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard, will close in May and reopen in a new location in 2011. Myers said contracts are being finalized for the new Sona space, but he would not reveal the location or details about the restaurant other than that he is working with designer Adam Tihany. "Our lease is coming up here this year, and we have an opportunity to re-create, to do something new," Myers said.

Regarded as "the William Faulkner of jazz," pianist and songwriter Mose Allison counts Elvis Costello, Van Morrison and Ray Davies among his legion of fans. Possessed with a honeyed voice and a humorist's eye for detail, Allison is midway through a six-city tour previewing the spring release of his first album in 12 years, "The Way of the World," produced by Largo favorite Joe Henry. Largo at the Coronet, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., L.A. Sat.-Sun., 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. $35. (310) 855-0350.

An upstate New York man has been sentenced to the maximum 25 years in prison for the hate-crime killing of a transgender woman. Dwight DeLee was found guilty of manslaughter last month for shooting Lateisha Green because of anti-gay bias. The 20-year-old construction laborer is only the second person in the nation to be convicted of a hate crime for killing a transgender victim. In April, a man was convicted of first-degree murder and a hate crime in the death of a transgender teen in Colorado.

He stepped to the podium, nervous in front of the tens of thousands at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the millions watching on television. Awestruck, halting at times, he spoke these words: "In the name of all competitors, I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules that govern them, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honor of our teams." This was 25 years ago, the opening ceremony at the Olympics.

Have you ever tried to define God? Or wondered whether it is ethical to eat meat? Or debated if pornography is a sin? For a decade, AskMoses.com has been answering questions like these to a growing worldwide audience. Rabbinic scholars from the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement dispense the free advice online 24 hours a day, six days a week (they don't work on the Sabbath).

SAN DIEGO -- Stepping up to the plate and hitting one out of the park is the consummate American fantasy. Our entire system is built on such a dream -- from schnook to big cheese with one swing of the bat. This obsession with home runs, and the pharmaceutical lengths to which players will go to rack up fat numbers, is the subject of Itamar Moses' "Back Back Back."

Writing plays is occasionally a profession, arguably an art form, unmistakably a craft (hence the odd spelling of "playwright," distant cousin of the wheelwright). But might writing plays also be a mode of thinking -- a way to make sense of the world? "I'm uncertain about a lot of things -- I disagree with myself a lot," says Itamar Moses, 31, a Brooklyn-based playwright represented this fall by no fewer than six productions across the U.S., with more to come in the winter.

Isaac Hayes, the musician, composer and producer whose innovative sound changed the shape of pop music and whose shaved head, bejeweled outfits and regal demeanor embodied African American masculinity in the 1970s, has died. He was 65. Family members found Hayes unresponsive Sunday afternoon next to a treadmill in a downstairs bedroom in his home just east of Memphis, Tenn., said Steve Shular, a spokesman for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office.

A friend once remarked that you don't really get to know a man until he's dead. It was a comment made at the memorial service for a bartender who worked at a newspaper hangout in Oakland called the Hollow Leg. The friend was talking about the eulogies offered on behalf of the bartender whose name was Nels; how he had lived such a noble life beyond pouring Scotch and mixing martinis. He learned about Nels through those who knew him best, and that's one of the ways I'm learning about Charlton Heston, through a friend named Peter Dennis.