The Salton Sea is a shallow, saline, endorheic rift lake located directly on the San Andreas Fault, predominantly in California's Imperial Valley. The lake occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink in the Colorado Desert of Imperial and Riverside counties in Southern California. Like Death Valley, it is below sea level. Currently, its surface is 226 ft (69 m) below sea level. The deepest area of the sea is 5 ft (1.5 m) higher than the lowest point of Death Valley. The sea is fed by the New, Whitewater, and Alamo rivers, as well as agricultural runoff drainage systems and creeks.

The Sea was created by a flood in 1905, in which water from the Colorado River flowed into the area. While it varies in dimensions and area with fluctuations in agricultural runoff and rainfall, the Salton Sea averages 15 mi (24 km) by 35 mi (56 km). With an average area of roughly 525 sq mi (1,360 km²), the Salton Sea is the largest lake in California. Average annual inflow is 1,360,000 acre·ft (1.68 km³), which is enough to maintain a maximum depth of 52 ft (16 m) and a total volume of about 7,500,000 acre·ft (9.3 km³).

Gil Evans (13 May 1912, Toronto, Canada – 20 March 1988, Cuernavaca, Mexico) was a jazz pianist, arranger, composer and bandleader, active in the United States. He played an important role in the development of cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and jazz fusion, and collaborated extensively with Miles Davis.

Born Ian Ernest Gilmore Green, his name was changed early on to Evans, the name of his stepfather. His family moved to Stockton, California where he spent most of his youth. After 1946, he lived and worked primarily in New York City, living for many years at Westbeth Artists Community.

Between 1941 and 1948, he worked as an arranger for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra. Evans' modest basement apartment behind a New York City Chinese laundry soon became a meeting place for musicians looking to develop new musical styles outside of the dominant bebop style of the day. Those present included the leading bebop performer Charlie Parker himself, as well as Gerry Mulligan and John Carisi. In 1948, Evans, with Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, and others, collaborated on a band book for a nonet. These ensembles, larger than the trio-to-quintet "combos", but smaller than the "big bands" which were on the brink of becoming economically unviable, allowed the arrangers to have a larger pallette of colors by using French horns and tuba. Claude Thornhill had employed hornist John Graas in 1942,and composer-arranger Bob Graettinger had scored for horns and tubas with the Stan Kenton orchestra, but the "Kenton sound" was in the context of a dense orchestral wall of sound that Evans avoided.

Val Edward Kilmer (born December 31, 1959) is an American actor. Originally a stage actor, Kilmer is best known for his role as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's The Doors, as Bruce Wayne/Batman in Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever. He became popular in the mid-1980s after a string of appearances in comedy films, starting with Top Secret! (1984), then the cult classic Real Genius (1985), as well as blockbuster action films, including a supporting role in Top Gun and a lead role in Willow.

Kilmer was born in in Los Angeles, California, the son of Gladys (née Ekstadt) and Eugene Kilmer, an aerospace equipment distributor and real estate developer. Kilmer's grandfather was a gold miner in New Mexico; the poet Joyce Kilmer is a distant cousin of Kilmer's. Kilmer is of German, Swedish, Irish, and Cherokee descent. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley with his two siblings, older brother Mark and younger brother Wesley (who died at 15 due to an epileptic seizure in a swimming pool). His parents divorced when he was nine years old.

Bradley Darryl "BD" Wong (born October 24, 1960) is an American actor, best known for his roles as Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as Father Ray Mukada on HBO's Oz, Henry Wu in the movie Jurassic Park, and for his Tony Award winning role as Song Liling in the Broadway production of M. Butterfly. He starred as Dr. Lee on NBC series Awake from March to May 2012.

Wong was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Roberta Christine (née Leong), a telephone company supervisor, and William D. Wong. He is of Chinese descent. Wong attended Lincoln High School before attending San Francisco State University.

Wong gained attention for his Broadway debut in M. Butterfly opposite John Lithgow. The play won multiple awards, including several for Wong. He is notable as the only actor to be honored with the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award,Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and Theatre World Award for the same role. In addition to his long-running stint on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as FBI psychiatrist Dr. George Huang, he has had recurring roles in All American Girl and as a prison priest on Oz, with guest appearances on The X-Files and Sesame Street. On the big screen, he has appeared in The Freshman (1990), the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride and its 1995 sequel, Father of the Bride Part II, Jurassic Park (1993), Executive Decision (1996) and Slappy and the Stinkers (1997). He also provided the voice of Captain Shang in Disney's Mulan (1998) and its direct-to-video sequel. He returned to Broadway as Linus in a revival of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, alongside Anthony Rapp, Roger Bart and Kristin Chenoweth, and the 2004 revival of Stephen Sondheim's Pacific Overtures. In 2008, he starred in the one-man show Herringbone, in which he portrays 11 roles, at the McCarter Theatre at Princeton University. He brought the show to the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego the following year.

Vincent Phillip D'Onofrio (born June 30, 1959) is an American actor, director, film producer, writer, and singer. Often referred to as an actor's actor, his work as a character actor has earned him the nickname "The Human Chameleon". He first gained attention for his role as Private Leonard Lawrence in the war film Full Metal Jacket and later for his role as Detective Robert Goren in the crime TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Vincent D'Onofrio was born in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, to Gennaro (Gene) D’Onofrio, an interior designer and theater production assistant, and Phyllis, a waitress and restaurant manager. The couple met while Gene was stationed in Hawaii with the U. S. Air Force; they later relocated to New York.^{[citation needed]} In 1956 they had their first child, Antoinette, who now owns the Rib City restaurant in American Fork, Utah. She was followed by Elizabeth (1957), an actress and drama coach now residing in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, then by Vincent.