bad

Amid stacks of cash and liquor bottles, Tony Montana and Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán sit together inside a painting. One fictional and the other real, the drug lords look nonchalant.

“That’s us!” says filmmaker Raúl “RJ” Sanchez with joyful mischief when I point out the centerpiece on the main wall of their office in Downtown L.A. Sanchez’s partner in artistic crime, Pasqual Gutiérrez, tells me they got the frame nearby at Santee Alley.

Located on a street corner in the Fashion District, their space, which doubles as a man cave, reflects their creative influences, their ties to L.A. and their offbeat sense of humor. Before they moved in 2021, the place was a shoe store called Latino Fashion — the storefront sign remains.

Walk in and you’ll find the bottom half of a mannequin flaunting male genitalia (“That was our stunt penis from [the short film] ‘Shut Up and Fish,’” says Sanchez laughing). There’s also a bulky metal structure that resembles a torture device, a teal green couch (which they got for under $100), photography books and keepsakes on shelves that once displayed footwear. It’s a mini museum to their history so far. Or, as Sanchez calls it, it’s “a living brain.”

Known artistically as Cliqua, the in-demand duo has already worked with some of the music industry’s biggest names. Their resume includes directing videos for Bad Bunny (“La Difícil”), the Weeknd (“Save Your Tears”), J Balvin (“Reggaeton”) and Rosalía (“Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi”).

This year, Gutiérrez crossed over into feature filmmaking with his docufiction debut “Serious People,” a deeply personal “cringe comedy” that he co-directed with longtime friend Ben Mullinkosson. Following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the film had a theatrical release in November and is now available to stream on multiple VOD platforms.

On screen, Gutiérrez and Sanchez play versions of themselves: music video directors in an industry that takes itself too seriously. While expecting his first child with partner Christine Yuan, also a filmmaker, Gutiérrez found himself caught between his commitment to his partnership with Sanchez and his responsibility as a soon-to-be father. The Gutiérrez in “Serious People” hires a doppelganger to replace him in his professional commitments.

“There were some things coming our way where if both Raúl and I weren’t available to do it, they would go away. Clients would be uninterested if it wasn’t the Cliqua brand,” Gutiérrez says. “That was deeply frustrating and haunting for me because it was like, ‘Raúl isn’t choosing to have a baby, but I am. And this is affecting us, because he can’t do everything on his own because people aren’t letting him do it.’”

Though both Gutiérrez and Sanchez fit under the generic identity umbrella of “Mexican American,” each of them knowingly embodies a distinct “flavor of Mexican.”

“I definitely identify with Chicano a lot,” says Gutiérrez. “I am second-generation and growing up I knew about lowriders and East L.A. barrio s—.” Raised between East Los Angeles and Pomona, Gutiérrez believes his Latino identity is unique to L.A.

Sanchez, on the other hand, is the child of immigrants from Mexico City and Jalisco. As a first-generation kid in the South Bay city of Gardena, his worldview was shaped differently.

“We’ve always had that split. You represent more what it is to be in this country for more generations, and I feel like I’m new. The culture I associate with more is Mexican but more rancho s—,” Sanchez explains. A vivid memory for Sanchez is his grandfather slaughtering a pig and driving around South Central on his pickup truck selling it. “The Chicano heritage wasn’t a thing for me, it was more the immigrant experience,” he says.

“I grew up speaking more Spanglish,” says Gutiérrez. “But Spanish was Raúl’s first language.”

Their artistic alliance is an amalgamation of what each brings to their friendship. Sanchez got Gutiérrez into Los Tigres del Norte and corridos, while Gutiérrez introduced him to Lil Rob’s “Summer Nights” and the 1993 movie “Blood In Blood Out,” which Gutiérrez considers a foundational cultural artifact in his life.

“Both of us have crossed towards the other’s side a little more,” says Sanchez. The two met through their then-girlfriends (now their wives and mothers of their respective children) almost a decade ago. At that point they each were already directing music videos.

“We really bonded over that shared experience of, ‘What’s it like trying to navigate this industry as a Latino?’” adds Sanchez.

For Gutiérrez, one of five siblings, his interest in filmmaking is linked to one of his older brothers who had a bit of a double life. “He was a gang member, but he was also a low-key cinephile,” he says. “He used to work in art house theaters, and we used to just watch weird stuff for a little kid to watch. A lot of ‘Blood In Blood Out,’ but also stuff like ‘Amélie.’”

With his father’s support, Gutiérrez attended Chapman University to study film production.

“My pops said, ‘Growing up no one ever asked me what I wanted to do. That wasn’t even an option for me,’” Gutiérrez recalls. “‘And the fact that you got accepted to this school, we’ll just find a way. We’ll take all the loans out. Go try and see how it is.’ My father empowered me to follow my dreams for sure.”

Sanchez had a less linear path into filmmaking. He graduated from UC Berkley with a degree in ancient history with the intent of going to law school. Instead, he returned to L.A. to try his hand at film, an interest that evolved from his enjoyment of video games growing up and film studies courses in college.

But how does one break into making music videos?

“In the beginning, a lot of times you’re shooting videos for your friends,” says Gutiérrez. “If you are creative in L.A., you know other creatives and one of them is a music artist or one of them is a rapper or in a rock band. And you start that way.”

“My sister was dating a rapper, so I was shooting his videos,” adds Sanchez.

Still, they both aspired to make feature films.

“Even when we were at the beginnings of Cliqua, the language we have always used to even talk about music videos has always been film-centric,” says Sanchez. “Those are the influences. We speak in movies.”

After meeting and hanging out for a while, Gutiérrez and Sanchez were eager to work together. That opportunity came with the video for J Balvin’s “Reggaeton,” which they had to sign on to do without being able to do much preparation. In the aftermath of that positive experience, they decided to create Cliqua, which originally also included music artist Milkman (MLKMN).

The name comes from the book “Varrio” by Gusmano Cesaretti, an Italian photographer who documented East L.A. culture in the 1970s, including the Klique Car Club.

The video for J Balvin kick-started their careers. They soon found themselves a niche as reggaeton became globally popular and a new crop of artists revitalized its aesthetic. But even as they eventually crossed over to other corners of the industry and landed consistent work with the Weeknd, they were aware of the limits to their creative freedom.

“Music videos are funny because they’re obviously not truly our work either; we’re at the service of another artist,” explains Sanchez. “We’re executing someone else’s vision even if the brief is generally open. It’s not truly us, but we’re in there.”

“Music videos are hard, man,” adds Gutiérrez. “The difficult thing about music videos that’s different from feature filmmaking is that it’s so fast. You get a concept, and you maybe have two days to come up with an idea and write a treatment for it. Then from there, you have a shoot date, but the shoot date can get pushed and it can get pulled depending on the artist.”

In 2023, Gutiérrez and Sanchez released their first narrative short film, “Shut Up and Fish,” about four “Edgars” (young Latino men with bowl cuts) on a boat. Their impetus was to subvert the expectations of stories involving characters from their community.

“We wanted to make it feel like an [Ingmar] Bergman film, because we’d never seen that, especially with these kids,” says Gutiérrez. One of the actors they cast in the short, Miguel Huerta, plays Gutiérrez’s chaotic doppelganger in “Serious People.”

For “Serious People,” Gutiérrez and Mullinkosson invoked arthouse references, such as the vignettes in the films of Swedish auteur Roy Andersson, or the surveillance feel of Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.” Gutiérrez makes a point of mentioning these inspirations in Q&As and interviews in hopes of igniting the curiosity of those watching “Serious People.”

“Making [that culture] accessible has always been a goal, whether that’s conscious or unconscious,” says Gutiérrez.

It was an anxiety-induced dream that first inspired Gutiérrez to write “Serious People” to satirize the entertainment industry. In the dream, Gutiérrez went on Craigslist to hire a look-alike in order to balance his personal and professional commitments. As soon as he woke up, he told his dream in detail to Yuan, who suggested he turn it into a film.

Gutiérrez brought Mullinkosson on board given his background in documentary, and because he thought co-directing it with Sanchez might make it too meta for comfort.

“This industry is so competitive and so demanding that every single director has a fear that if you say no to a single project, you’re never going to get hit up again,” says Mullinkosson on Zoom from Chengdu, China, where he lives. “At the end of the day, we’re just making movies — like, this isn’t that serious.”

Sanchez hesitated at first about the idea of being on camera, but his loyalty to Gutiérrez proved stronger than the reservations. “I actually got a kick out of seeing myself on screen,” Sanchez says. “When you see yourself projected that big, you start to understand what you feel like to other people in the world, which was a very interesting out-of-body experience.”

“Vulnerabilities are what make movies special, especially this one because Pasqual, Raúl and Christine opened their real lives to being on camera, and it’s very personal,” says Mullinkosson. “When you can be as brave as them to share your real life, something beautiful happens.”

Gutiérrez and Sanchez, who also became a father soon after our interview, are currently developing a new feature film, “Golden Boy,” which they describe as a “Stand by Me”-type of story about four Edgars. One of them thinks former boxer Oscar De La Hoya is his long-lost father. They go on a journey across California to confront De La Hoya.

“Music is where we started, but the goal has always been to do long-form, to do features,” says Gutiérrez. “And now with ‘Serious People,’ one is out there.”

The year was already a debacle for the Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Karen Bass, with multiple stumbles before and after the epic January blaze that obliterated Pacific Palisades, so it was hard to imagine that things could get worse in the closing days of 2025.

But they have.

A blistering Times investigation found that the Fire Department cleaned up its after-action report, downplaying missteps.

In other words, there was a blatant attempt to mislead the public.

And Bass representatives said they requested that her comments in the final minutes of a video interview — in which she admitted that “both sides botched it” in the Eaton and Palisades fires — be edited out because she thought the interview had ended.

Please.

Together, these developments will echo through the coming mayoral election, in which Bass will be called out repeatedly over one of the greatest disasters in L.A. history. We’re a long way from knowing whether she can survive and win a second term, but Austin Beutner and any other legitimate contenders are being handed gifts that will keep on giving.

In the case of the altered report, kudos to Times reporters Alene Tchekmedyian and Paul Pringle, who have been trying all year to keep the LAFD honest, which is no easy task.

In the latest bombshell dropped by the two reporters, they dug up seven drafts of the department’s self-analysis, or after-action report, and found that it had been altered multiple times to soften damning conclusions.

Language saying LAFD did not fully pre-deploy all crews and engines, despite the forecast of extreme conditions, was removed.

Language saying some crews waited more than an hour for their assignments during the fire was removed.

A section on “failures” became a section on “primary challenges.”

A reference to a violation of national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter injury and death was removed.

The central role of the earlier Lachman fire, allegedly started by an arsonist, was also sanitized. A reference to that unchecked brushfire, which later sparked the inferno, was deleted from one draft, then restored in the final version. But only in a brief reference.

Even before the smoke cleared on Jan. 7, I had one former LAFD official telling me he was certain the earlier fire had not been properly extinguished. Crews should have been sitting on it, but as The Times has reported, that didn’t happen.

What we now know with absolute clarity is that the LAFD cannot be trusted to honestly and thoroughly investigate itself. And yet after having fired one chief, Bass asked the current chief to do an investigation.

Sue Pascoe, who lost her home in the fire and is among the thousands who don’t yet know whether they can afford to rebuild because their insurance — if they had any — doesn’t cover the cost of new construction. Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, had this reaction to the latest expose:

“To kill 12 people, let almost 7,000 homes/businesses burn, and to destroy belongings, memorabilia and memories stored in the homes — someone needs to be held accountable.”

But who will that be?

Although the altered after-action report seems designed to have minimized blame for the LAFD, if not the mayor, the Bass administration said it wasn’t involved.

“We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report,” a spokesperson told the Times. “We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”

Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, told The Times she noticed only small differences between the final report and an earlier report she had seen.

“I was completely OK with it,” she said, adding that the final report “did not in any way obfuscate anything.”

Well I’m not OK with it, and I suspect a lot of people who lost everything in the fire feel the same way. As I’ve said before, the conditions were horrific, and there’s little doubt that firefighters did their best. But the evidence is mounting that the department’s brass blew it, or, to borrow a phrase from Bass, “botched it.”

As The Times’ David Zahniser reported, Bass said her “botched” comment came in a casual context after the podcast had ended. She also said she has made similar comments about the emergency response on numerous occasions.

She has made some critical comments, and as I mentioned, she replaced the fire chief. But the preparation and response were indeed botched. So why did her office want that portion of the interview deleted?

Let’s not forget, while we’re on the subject of botching things, that Bass left the country in the days before the fire despite warnings of catastrophic conditions. And while there’s been some progress in the recovery, her claim that things are moving at “lightning speed” overlooks the fact that thousands of burned out properties haven’t seen a hammer or a hardhat.

On her watch, we’ve seen multiple misses.

On the blunderous hiring and quick departure of a rebuilding czar. On the bungled hiring of a management team whose role was not entirely clear. On a failed tax relief plan for fire victims. On the still-undelievered promise of some building fee waivers.

In one of the latest twists on the after-action report, Tchekmedyian and Pringle report that the LAFD author was upset about revisions made without his involvement.

What a mess, and the story is likely to smolder into the new year.

If only the Lachman fire had been as watered down as the after-action report.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

It has been a year. And for many of us, not a great one. Fires, political chaos, rising unemployment, the loss of beloved cultural icons — it’s understandable if you want to toss 2025 in the trash heap where it belongs.

And you should, at least symbolically. Ending a collective or personal era with a closing ritual can be therapeutic and allow you to make room for something new. The goal is not to work abracadabra-type magic, but to “enact a symbolic shift,” as University of British Columbia anthropologist Sabina Magliocco puts it.

“When you do a New Year’s ritual, you are symbolically shifting to a new beginning,” she said. “That might involve rituals to usher in good luck or health, more prosperity, more creativity, or just out with the old, in with the new.”

Humanity has been enacting rituals to transition from one year to the next for millennia, and they are part of our lives today — drinking sparkling beverages, watching the ball drop in Times Square, cheering as the clock strikes midnight — these are all ways of celebrating the completion of one cycle and welcoming the start of the next one with joy and the hope that this time may be better.

We’ve collected and created 25 practices to help you say goodbye to 2025. Some of our rituals are serious, others more lighthearted, yet all should be done with intention for maximum effect. We’ve included some places around L.A. that would be ideal for these activities — for instance, Downtown’s Rage Ground where you can (safely) smash a car, or San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, where you can plunge into water that’s freezing by L.A. standards (it’s about 59 degrees).

So sweat it out, sweep it out, dance it out or melt it away. Whichever way you choose to say good riddance, we hope it brings you a bit of peace and helps you slide purposely into the new year (which surely, hopefully, God-willing has to be better than the one we just finished, right?).

— Deborah Netburn

1. Scream into the void

“Scream therapy,” or “primal scream therapy,” dates back to the early ‘70s and is an underrated — and free — way to release bottled-up tension and anger (or a relentlessly stressful year). Find an open expanse with a dramatic view — check out our guide to shout-worthy spots in L.A. — take a few deep breaths, engage your core and let out an unbridled scream. Not ready to howl in a place where other people may be in the vicinity? A primal scream into a pillow at home can offer a similar sense of release. — Deborah Vankin

2. Sweat 2025 out of your system

Koreatown’s Wi Spa, open 24/7, has five progressively hot saunas in a coed community space. But its single hottest sauna — one of the toastiest in all of L.A. — is the Bulgama sauna. It looks like an igloo from the outside, though the interior is made mostly of oak wood. The sauna is set at an intense 231-degrees (by contrast, my gym’s dry sauna is 160-180 degrees). There are no benches to sit on; guests lie on the floor or sit upright against the wall, their faces flushing scarlet and sweat dripping down their cheeks and limbs. Tough it out for as long as you possibly can, perhaps while meditating on all you want to let go of, and sweat out every bit of this difficult year. Just be sure to hydrate afterward. — D.V.

3. Roll down a hill

If the heaviness of 2025 has you feeling stuck, shake up your perspective by making like a 5-year-old and rolling down a grassy hill. Luckily, L.A. is filled with hills perfect for rolling, including the popular Hancock Park near the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum. I guarantee that you’ll feel different at the end of your roll than you did at the start. (And if I’m wrong, try climbing the hill and rolling down again!) — Deborah Netburn

4. Jump into the ocean

The “polar bear plunge” is a popular tradition in many places, including San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach, where people have been jumping into the water on New Year’s Day for at least 73 years. The Cabrillo Beach Polar Bears name a king and queen and hand out polar bear certificates — in fact, so many people joined in last year that the club ran out of certificates. The water in San Pedro is typically about 59 degrees. But this tradition persists in places much colder — for instance, Scheveningen, the Netherlands. There, as many as 10,000 brave bathers show up each New Year’s Eve to dip into the North Sea, which is usually between 37 and 48 degrees Fahrenheit. — Christopher Reynolds

5. Rage … and smash a car!

When I’m angry — like fuming, stomping, raging mad (which is a lot, lately, considering the state of, well, everything) — I often think of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist’s video, “Ever Is Over All.” In it, Rist saunters down an urban sidewalk in a light blue sundress smashing car windows as she goes. The crinkly, cacophonous sound of shattering glass is amplified each time she bashes a car. Sounds awesome, right? You can do the same at L.A. Rage Rooms such as Rage Ground and Break Room Los Angeles. Visitors don protective gear while wrecking an entire automobile — windows, doors, headlights and all — to the angry playlist of their choice. Unleashing rage can be cathartic and healing — not a bad way to put 2025 behind you for f— good! — D.V.

6. Burn some incense — or join a safe, fire department-sanctioned communal blaze

Maybe you’ll spark some sage, as people do when hoping to rid a room of bad vibes. You could also burn a little incense, cedar, yerba santa, palo santo, rosemary, mugwort, juniper or sandalwood. Or, if you crave a bigger blaze, you could head up to Solvang, where on Friday, Jan. 9, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department will supervise a community Christmas Tree Burn. Local authorities bill the event as “a powerful safety demonstration” in the empty lot next to the Mission Santa Ines (1760 Mission Drive). But you’ll know that it’s really about purging the vile remnants of the last year. — C.R.

7. Walk a labyrinth

Labyrinths can be a great tool for release. To make a labyrinth walk extra meaningful, find a trinket or stone that represents 2025 to you and then walk slowly toward the labyrinth’s center, infusing the stone with whatever you want to leave behind in 2025. When you get to the center of the labyrinth, drop the stone, and breathe out the year. As you leave the center, imagine filling yourself up with your hopes for the new year. Looking for a labyrinth to walk? Check out our list of great labyrinths in the L.A. area, including the one at Peace Awareness that uses the same pattern design as the labyrinth at the Chartres Cathedral in France — D.N.

8. Travel through time

If you visit the Time Travel Mart in Echo Park or Mar Vista, you’ll come to understand that its true mission is to promote literacy and writing skills among kids. But the goofball retail goods in both shops — alleged supplies for chrononauts — are a comfort to anyone seeking maximum distance from 2025. Buy candles honoring patron saints of time travel (including theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein and Ronald Mallett). Pick up some robot milk or canned mammoth. Or, perhaps best of all, grab a copy of “The Time Traveler’s Almanac,” a 2013 collection of 72 literary “journeys through time” by writers including Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin and H.G. Wells. As the largest collection of time-travel stories ever assembled, it won’t just take you to 2026, but far beyond. — C.R.

9. Dance it out

Shake your booty, swing your limbs, wriggle your hips. Literally shake off the year while working up a sweat at any number of dance events. I do it at Zumba class; others at nightclubs and dance parties. LA Dance Project offers weekly, community dance classes for all levels; Wiggle Room holds improvisational movement workshops; Pony Sweat, a “fiercely noncompetitive dance aerobics celebration,” holds $10 classes on Monday nights; and Ecstatic Dance LA is a “substance-free, all ages community celebration” of dance. Even the Los Angeles Public Library holds free ‘80s-era dance classes. Or travel to another part of the world for the night at ¡BAILE!, a recurring world music dance party — one of many in L.A. You’ll forget all about 2025, if just momentarily. — D.V.

10. Challenge yourself with one of L.A.’s hardest hikes

You made it through a hard year. Celebrate by making it through a hard hike. For a serious challenge, try the Vital Link Trail at Wildwood Canyon Park in Burbank where you’ll do an elevation gain of 1,700 feet in just two miles. Because the trail is sandy and has some erosion, it’s best to navigate it with trekking poles. Also, remember that “challenging” is a relative term. If Vital Link Trail is not for you, check out other options on our list of local hikes for all skill levels. — D.N.

11. Write a year-end letter

This could be a pep talk, a condemnation of the last 12 months, a breakup letter to your past self or a hopeful letter to your future self. Or take control of your life by starting a diary, as the main character does in the Helen Fielding novel and subsequent Renée Zellweger movie “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Maybe with less smoking, drinking and mixing it up with Hugh Grant. — C.R.

12. Visit a cemetery to reflect on the past

L.A.’s legendary Hollywood Forever Cemetery just held an end-of-year event with a cord-cutting meditation meant to help participants “dispel the shadows” of their lives and let go of what no longer serves them. You could create a similar ritual. Visit one of the city’s many cemeteries and as you stroll through the space, think about laying to rest what’s been weighing on you most this past year. — Michelle Woo

13. Be your own Death Bear

More than a decade ago, New York performance artist Nate Hill created a Death Bear character. He would appear at people’s homes in a strange black PVC costume, then remove items that triggered bad memories and take them away forever to his Death Bear Cave, location unspecified. Hill seems to have retired Death Bear, but you could always create your character to vanquish bad memories. — C.R.

14. Bury the year

You could throw 2025 in the trash, but consider composting it instead. Write down “2025” on a small scrap of paper along with an few aspects of the year you would like to leave behind. Bury the paper in a garden or a flower pot along with some seeds of your choice. Over the next few weeks, watch with satisfaction as a budding seedling transmutes 2025 into something beautiful and fresh. — D.N.

15. Shed 2025 along with your dead skin with an intense body scrub

Vigorous, bracing, borderline painful, there is nothing like a no-frills full-body scrub at one of L.A.’s many Korean spas. For as little as $50 you will feel like you’ve removed the hard crust of the bygone year from your body, emerging shiny, soft and new. Let the shedding begin! — D.N.

16. Cut your hair

Or change it. Various cultures have ideas about this and exactly when you should do it. I say the sooner we turn the page, the better. Along with shedding skin, getting a trim is one of the most literal ways you can change your body to signal a new era. — C.R.

17. Purge your closet — and donate

This summer, the fluff and fold I bring my laundry to burned down — with three enormous bags of my clothing and linens inside. At first I was upset: beyond its practical function, our clothing is an extension of our identity and often beloved items house emotional memories from the places they’ve traveled to. It felt like a loss, not to mention a financial burden. But surprisingly quickly, silver linings surfaced. My closet was roomier and more navigable — it was easier to put outfits together. Friends and family offered blankets, sheets and sweaters, and I felt supported. I somehow also felt lighter? A purposeful, DIY closet purging can feel cathartic at the end of year. And in hauling off a bag or two of your clothing to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, you’ll not only be releasing a little bit of 2025, but helping others, who need your recycled goods, in the process. — D.V.

18. Cry in the shower

I get my best creative ideas in the shower. And I indulge my fiercest sobbing sessions there as well. The act of crying — anywhere — lowers stress hormones such as cortisol and releases feel-good hormones like oxytocin. But there’s something about being in a cozy, private space, ensconced by rushing water and plumes of steam, that allows me to fully release and opens the floodgates. Try it. Bonus: no tear-stained face afterward. — D.V.

19. Rearrange your house

Switch up the energy in your home by switching up the placement of your furniture. It will help you see your space, and perhaps your life, in a fresh light. The bed in that corner? That was so 2025. The dresser on that wall? Last year’s news! Try working with the items you have before going out to buy something new. — D.N.

20. Sweep the worst of 2025 out the door

Deep cleaning followed by ritually sweeping misfortune and bad energy out of your home before the start of the Lunar New Year is a tradition in Chinese culture. I’ve also seen ritual sweeping practiced by modern witches and other spiritual questers. The ritual itself is simple but deeply symbolic: For a fresh start to the new year, fully clean your house top to bottom and then finish by holding a broom just a bit off the floor and use a sweeping motion to push the bad energy out of your house. — D.N.

21. Make a physical threshold and cross it

New Year’s Eve party idea: Just before midnight create a physical threshold on the ground using a stick, a piece of string, or draw an actual line in the sand if you happen to be at the beach (this is L.A. after all). As the clock strikes midnight, invite guests to cross the threshold one by one and cheer as you step into 2026 and leave 2025 behind. — D.N.

22. Watch 2025 melt away

Find a small candle and carve “2025” onto the side of it using a small knife. Light the candle and let it burn until 2025 has melted away. — D.N.

23. Watch the sunset

Is there a more symbolic way to say farewell to 2025 than watching the sun literally dip below the horizon for the final time on this god-awful year? Consider this nature’s ball drop. — D.N.

24. Toss 2025 into the waves

Tashlich is a Jewish new year ritual of symbolically releasing your sins by throwing them into a natural body of water. When I was a kid, my family used bread crumbs to represent our sins. Now I use small stones or torn-up bits of leaves to keep from polluting the environment. Whatever you use, hold it in your hand and imagine what it is that you want to release. Then toss it into the water and imagine yourself letting it go. The Jewish new year holiday, Rosh Hashanah, is celebrated in early fall, but there’s no reason you can’t give this ritual a whirl on the Gregorian calendar’s new year too. — D.N.

25. Take a final photo

2025 may not have looked like how you hoped it would look, but now you are in control. As the year draws to a close, set yourself a task of taking one final photo of the year that is meaningful to you. Sad or hopeful, lush or desolate: you decide. Perhaps it is someone or something you love. Or a representation of the loss you experienced. We take photos all the time without thinking. Choose to make this one count. — D.N.

Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen were among the familiar faces in the latest batch of photographs released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee in connection to the late Jeffrey Epstein. With the Justice Department preparing to make additional files public, the images underscore an uncomfortable truth for us all: The convicted sex offender moved comfortably among some of the most intelligent men in the world. Rhodes scholars, technology leaders and artists.

Also in the release was a photograph of a woman’s lower leg and foot on what appears to be a bed, with a paperback copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” visible in the background. The 1955 novel centers on a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Epstein, a serial sexual abuser, famously nicknamed one of his private planes “The Lolita Express.” And we are to believe that some of the globe’s brightest minds could not put the dots together?

Donald Trump, who once described himself as “a very stable genius,” included.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.

“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Here’s the reality: Democrats like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked, and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”

Jackson has a point.

Democrats were cherry-picking which photos to release, even if many of the men pictured were aligned with progressives. That includes the president, who was a Democrat when he and Epstein were running together in New York in the 2000s. Trump didn’t register as a Republican until 2009. Now whether the choice of photos and timing was designed to shield political friends or weaponize against perceived enemies isn’t clear. What is clear is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of this is a hoax.

The victims are real. The flight logs are real. The millions that flowed into Epstein’s bank account have wire transfer confirmation numbers that can be traced. What Democrats are doing with the information is politics as usual. And you don’t want politics to dictate who gets justice and who gets vilified.

Whatever the politicians’ intentions, Americans can decide how to react to the disclosures. And what the men around Epstein did with the information they gathered on his jet or his island fits squarely at the heart of the national conversation about masculinity. What kind of men could allow such abuse to continue?

I’m not saying the intelligent men in Epstein’s ecosystem did something criminal, but the lack of whistleblowing before his arrest raises questions about their fortitude for right and wrong. And the Trump White House trying to characterize this conversation as a partisan witch hunt — a hoax — is an ineffective strategy because the pattern with their use of that word is so clear.

We saw what happened on Jan. 6, and Trump tells us the investigation is a hoax. We hear the recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to find votes, and he tells us the investigation is a hoax. Trump campaigned on affordability issues — the cost of bacon, no taxes on tips — but now that he’s in office such talk is a hoax by Democrats. As if we don’t know the price of groceries in real time. Ten years ago, Trump told us he had proof that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We’re still waiting.

In his book, “Art of the Deal,” Trump framed his lies as “truthful hyperbole” but by now we should understand for him hyperbole matters more than truth — and his felony convictions confirm that some of his claims were indeed simply false.

So if there is a hoax, it is the notion that none of the brilliant men whom Epstein kept in his orbit had any idea what was going on.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Carl Carlton, the funk and R&B singer known for upbeat, era-embodying singles like “Everlasting Love” and “She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)” has died. He was 72.

Carlton’s son, Carlton Hudgens II, posted to social media confirming the death on Sunday. “RIP Dad, Legend Carl Carlton singer of She’s a Bad Mama Jama. Long hard fight in life and you will be missed.” The post did not cite a cause of death.

Born Carlton Hudgens in Detroit in 1953, he debuted as “Little Carl” Carlton, but changed his stage name and moved to Houston after he was signed to the local label Back Beat Records. He had a minor soul-scene hit in 1971 with “I Can Feel It,” and broke through nationally in 1974 when his regal cover of Robert Knight’s “Everlasting Love” hit No. 6 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and spent 15 weeks on that chart.

Carlton is perhaps best known for his 1981 single, “She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked),” a grooving and awestruck ode to the female form that hit No. 22 on the Hot 100 and helped his self-titled album that year reach gold status.

The song has enjoyed a long life in popular culture — it’s been sampled by rappers like Foxy Brown, BigXThaPlug and Flo Milli, and frequently appeared on soundtracks for TV shows and films like “Friends.”

He continued releasing records into the ‘80s, and appeared several times on “American Bandstand” and “Soul Train,“ though his output slowed in the ‘90s. In 2003, he performed for Barry Glazer’s TV special, “American Soundtrack: Rhythm, Love, and Soul,” which featured Aretha Franklin and other marquee R&B and soul acts. His last album was 2010’s gospel LP “God Is Good.”