Abstract: Luminous high-redshift Ly-alpha blobs (LABS), often also known as
Ly-alpha 'nebulae', halos or fuzz in the literature, promise to yield important insights into the physics of massive galaxy formation. As prodigious sources of HI Ly-alpha photons, with ~10-100 kpc spatial extents, they provide an efficient way to select distant galaxies (or proto-galaxies) expected to be undergoing significant mass-assembly. In this talk, I will present results from a recently accepted paper in which we used long slit spectroscopy from GTC+OSIRIS to examine the
geometry, powering, and origin of the LAB and an absorption line system associated with a radio-loud quasar at z=2.54. I will also discuss some interesting new results from long-slit spectropolarimetry of LABs associated with z>2 radio galaxies, and their related continuum structures.