Sadness

No matter who went home Tuesday night on "The Voice," it was going to feel like a loss. "There were six winners on that stage today," Adam Levine said before the final elimination was revealed, "and you should all be equally proud of what you've accomplished. " Levine might take comfort in his own words, of course, since it was his two remaining team members, Amanda Brown and Melanie Martinez, who were sent home. It was sad to see the back of Martinez's two-toned hair, metaphorically speaking.

PALO ALTO -- Johnathan Franklin appeared calm and composed as he took questions outside UCLA's locker room Friday night. However, the fifth-year senior running back acknowledged that tears had been flowing after the No. 17 Bruins lost to No. 8 Stanford, 27-24, in the Pac-12 Conference championship game at Stanford Stadium. The defeat meant the humble Franklin and fellow seniors would not finish their careers with an appearance in the Rose Bowl. "It's been a long time since I cried after a game," he said.

It's hard enough having a serious condition like cancer or kidney failure. It's even worse, some might think, when your health insurer says you have to buy your medicine from the pharmacy of its choice - or pay the full amount for expensive life-saving drugs elsewhere. Yet that's precisely what Anthem Blue Cross is telling people who require so-called specialty medicines, which are used for complex conditions and can cost thousands of dollars a month. As of Jan. 1, the insurer says, such people can either buy their drugs from the mail-order pharmacy CuraScript or pay full fare at a retail drugstore.

Re "Planned demolition stirs fears," Nov. 25 Thank you for your thoughtful article, in which I was quoted, on the misguided decision by the Santa Monica City Council to allow a developer to eliminate the lovely, leafy neighborhood of seniors at the Village Trailer Park. In our small city, so lacking in parks and green space, we will soon see the historic trailer park replaced by an ugly, claustrophobic housing project that, according to its own environmental impact report, can be expected to cause significant and unavoidable traffic impacts at numerous intersections in Santa Monica and West Los Angeles.

Lakers center Robert Sacre is a rookie, but he learns fast. Asked Friday what he thought of management's decision to fire Mike Brown as coach after the team lost four of its first five games, Sacre gave perhaps the most logical response. "We're the Lakers. We're expected to win," he said before the Lakers took to the court under interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff. Sacre also quickly picked up on the heightened expectations the Lakers face every season, but this season more than most others following their additions of Steve Nash and Dwight Howard.

KABUL, Afghanistan - After years of comings and goings, almost everything about leaving Kabul is familiar: the ride through dusty dawn streets, skirting past old men on bicycles and boys in horse-drawn carts, the long airport trudge through four luggage screenings and pat-downs, the way the plane's wingtips seem to almost scrape the jagged peaks surrounding the city. Everything is the same - but the knowledge that this is the last time. Kabul has been home for more than three years, but on this trip my assignment as a foreign correspondent here is ending, and I will join the American exodus from its long war in Afghanistan.

The ignominious history of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America - and the attempts over the years by the organization's executives to cover it up - have been sadly detailed in court cases and, most recently, in an investigation by the Los Angeles Times. But the most exhaustive chronicles of that abuse reside within the Scouts itself, which a century ago began keeping secret "Ineligible Volunteer" files on men accused of sexual abuse or other transgressions. The files were - and still are - intended as a confidential, internal registry of cases of alleged or confirmed abuse in which volunteers were expelled from the organization and were not to be reinstated.

The new Lavender Diamond album started out as a solo disc by frontwoman Becky Stark that was to be called - wait for it - "Agony, Agony, Agony. " "It became like a joke," said Stark over lunch last week in Los Feliz. She was wearing a vintage floral-print dress that suggested nostalgia for a simpler time, though she compulsively checked her iPhone too, firming up details for an East Coast tour scheduled to begin on Tuesday. Wrecked by a bad breakup years after the release of her Los Angeles band's 2007 debut album, the singer had funneled her feelings of agony into recordings she made with Jonathan Wilson and Nate Walcott, local scenesters known for their involvement in work by Bright Eyes and Dawes.

Like the undead, animated movies are best when they're under control. "ParaNorman,"a dark and slightly dotty 3-D fable about a boy who communes with the dearly and not so dearly departed, sometimes gets a little out of hand, especially at the end. Even so, it may be the most fun you'll have with ghosts and zombies all year. It's a spooky twist on the typical outsider kid's tale of woe. Directed by Sam Fell and Chris Butler from Butler's scattershot script, the stop-motion film centers on Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee)

ORLANDO - Sadness. That is all. Just sadness. Hollow, hopeless, heartbreaking sadness. That is what it feels like to be an Orlando Magic fan right now. Not anger. Not blame. Not even relief. Not now. Not when you are forced to say goodbye to Dwight Howard, the greatest player in your franchise's history, as he takes his talents to Hollywood. As one of my buddies from Ohio tweeted Thursday: "Dear Orlando, We Understand. Sincerely, Cleveland. " How did "The Happiest Place on Earth" become the saddest sports city in America?