frank sinatra

Richard Marx keeps circling back to one word during our interview: elegance.

The descriptor works for the artist’s latest album, “After Hours,” a collection of originals and standards that sees the 62-year-old Marx channel his inner, swinging Frank Sinatra. But Marx also uses the word to detail his life with partner Daisy Fuentes, with whom he wrote the light-stepping Latin-tinged new number “Magic Hour.”

“It’s one of my favorite, if not favorite word, these days,” Marx says. “I just want to live my life more elegantly.”

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

How does that manifest? The hitmaker, who rose to fame with the now timeless ballad “Right Here Waiting,” never hopes to miss a small indulgence such as a nightly martini. Marx was born in Chicago but says he has fully acclimated to the Southern California lifestyle. It’s on the hiking trails, for instance, where he does his best songwriting, and it’s around the firepit where he and Fuentes share their deepest conversations.

Splitting time between two homes — one “in the deep Valley” and another in Malibu — Marx these days appears intent on aging gracefully. It’s partly what drew him to record an album that lovingly pays homage to the likes of Sinatra and Dean Martin.

“When I recorded this album, I dressed up,” he says. “I put on a suit like Sinatra used to do. It makes sense, since in the last dozen years since I met Daisy — she’s sort of old-school — we’ve tried to be as elegant about everything as we possibly can.”

Marx shares with us his ideas for a most elegant Sunday in L.A.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

8:30 a.m.: Sun and meditation

I start every day when I’m in California with an iced coffee of some kind, sitting in the sun for 20 minutes. No sunscreen, just 20 minutes of vitamin D. I don’t look at my phone. This is my 20-minute meditation with a little caffeine and the sun on my skin. That’s so important to me.

9:30 a.m.: Brunch at home or in Malibu

Daisy is a really great cook. She’s great across the board, but her breakfast and brunch talent is off the charts. So usually on a Sunday we’re going to stay home and she’s going to make some brunch. If we go out, one of my favorite Sundays, even when we’re here in the Valley, is to drive over the hill and go to the Malibu Country Mart or stop in the Marmalade Cafe or the Carbon Beach Club, which is in the Malibu Beach Inn. There’s a couple places we love in Malibu. There’s a place called Ollo’s that has great breakfast. It’s in a strip mall with Ralph’s.

11 a.m.: More sun on the trails

I’m addicted to hiking and so is Daisy. There are some really great hikes out here in the Valley — Las Virgenes — but my favorite hikes are in Malibu, whether it’s Solstice Canyon or the Westward Beach hike. It’s not a challenging hike physically, but it’s probably the most gorgeous hike. What’s the point of being in California if you’re not outside? Sunday is a day I need to be out hiking in the sun and sweating.

About 30% of the time I’m writing in my head, even if I don’t want to be. It happens. If Daisy is with me, I love to not take my phone because I like to be unencumbered and to not think about it. What will happen is then I’ll have to have her open her voice notes and sing a melody into it. I’ve written so many songs in the great outdoors. I saw an interview with Sting where he said that lyrics hide behind bushes and trees and under rocks. He goes outside too. I knew I liked Sting.

2:30 p.m.: Time to chill with a book

And then it’s really just a matter of relaxing, getting some time to sit with a great book in the afternoon. I always have a couple books going at the same time. I haven’t been reading hardly any fiction for a while, but I just started reading Scott Galloway’s book, “Notes on Being a Man.” He’s an investment guy and he’s got companies, but he’s become really big on social media. He’s an interesting guy, and I’m totally into that book. I’m almost finished with Charlie Sheen’s memoir. I saw the documentary, which I thought was amazing. His story is fascinating, and the quality of that filmmaking, especially in the use of the old movie footage, I thought was world-class. So I’m finishing Charlie’s book. Those are the two I’m reading right now.

4:30 p.m.: Pre-dinner martinis

As great a cook as Daisy is, we like to go out for dinner. Our favorite thing is to go someplace for martinis and a little bite of something and then another place for dinner. With more martinis. I can’t focus enough on the martinis.

If I had to pick one martini spot, it’s Lucky’s in Malibu. First of all, it’s an incredible martini, but they do a whole presentation. They bring it over to the table and shake it at the table. It’s a generous pour. You usually get a little sidecar. Being vegetarian, it’s a little challenging, but it’s a great place for us. There’s also a place called V’s. It’s a local place that’s been there a long time. They have a tiny little bar when you first walk in the door with a couple little hi-tops. That’s a really nice place to stop and get a quick drink and maybe a flatbread.

7 p.m.: Dinner and a scene

I’m going to sound so obnoxious saying this, but I really love Craig’s. I love going there. We feel at home there. They take good care of us. If I’m going to Craig’s for dinner, I’m looking forward to it all day. I always run into people I know. It’s a hot spot of activity. It’s just about feeling comfortable.

It’s a scene-y place, but I got s—-faced at Craig’s with Rod Stewart one night. We got so drunk together. It was just the two of us, like 2½ years ago. We’ve become really great friends, and we had a driver, of course, but it was such a fun night and I’ve had so many fun nights at Craig’s, with my family and friends. It’s an industry place, but it happens to be my industry so it’s really fun for me, especially when I run into someone I haven’t seen for a while or I meet somebody who I admire.

9:30 p.m.: Relax on the balcony

Daisy and I, we talk. We have endless conversations. I still have so much to tell her, and so much I want her to tell me. We’ve been together 12 years, and one of my favorite things is to come home, and we have a firepit outside our house here or in Malibu we have a beautiful balcony overlooking the beach. In either of those places we’ll just sit and talk for hours, until we’re sleepy. There’s not a lot of going to the movies or going out. Once we come back from dinner, we love our time to wind down.

This is a column about lies. Big lies. Presidential lies. Dumb lies. The type of lies that have made life in the United States a daily dumpster fire of bad news. The kind of lies that would’ve made Frank Sinatra want to knock out a palooka.

More on Ol’ Blue Eyes in a bit.

For now let me tell you about one victim of President Trump’s mountain of lies whose brush with the administration defined our 2025.

On June 7, Brayan Ramos-Brito drove east on Alondra Boulevard from Compton toward a Chevron in Paramount to buy some snacks. It was his day off. It also was the weekend when Trump unleashed his deportation Leviathan on Southern California in a campaign that hasn’t stopped.

Ramos-Brito, a cook, had no idea that was going on as traffic froze on Alondra in front of a Home Depot. A “stay-at-home type of guy,” he didn’t even vote in the 2024 election because “politics isn’t my thing.”

But as the slender 30-year-old sat in his car, he saw federal immigration agents who had gathered across the street from the Home Depot fire flash-bang grenades at protesters who were screaming at them to leave. That’s when the moment “got to me.”

Ramos-Britos, a U.S citizen, got out of his car to yell at la migra, accusing those who looked Latino of being a “disgrace.” He said one of them shoved him into a scrum of protesters. After that, “all I remember were knees and kicks” by agents before they dragged him on the pavement and into the back of a van.

For hours Ramos-Brito and others stayed zip-tied inside as “craziness” erupted outside. Hundreds more residents arrived, as did L.A. County sheriff’s deputies. Smoke from blazes set by the former and tear gas canisters tossed by the latter seeped inside the van — “we kept telling agents we couldn’t breath, but they just ignored us.”

Photos and footage from the Paramount protest went viral and sparked an even bigger rally the following day near downtown L.A. that devolved into torched Waymo cars and concrete blocks hurled at California Highway Patrol vehicles. Soon, Trump called up the National Guard and Marines to occupy the City of Angels under the pretense that anarchy now ruled here — even though protests were confined to pockets of the metropolis. Siccing the National Guard on cities is something Trump has since tried to replicate across the country in any place that has dared to push back against immigration sweeps.

Ramos-Brito spent two weeks in a detention facility in Santa Ana stuffed in a cell with undocumented immigrants facing deportation. He faced federal felony charges of assaulting a federal agent and was accused of being one of the Paramount protest’s ringleaders as well.

Prosecutors tried to scare him into pleading guilty with threats of years in prison. Despite having no money to hire a lawyer, he refused: “I wasn’t going to take the blame for something I didn’t do.”

Federal public defender Cuauhtémoc Ortega represented Ramos-Brito during a two-day September trial. Ortega screened video footage to the jury that proved his client’s version of what happened and easily caught federal agents contradicting each other and their own field reports.

The jury took about an hour to acquit Ramos-Brito on misdemeanor assault charges. He wants to move on — but the mendacity of the administration won’t let him.

The lies it used to try to railroad an innocent man turned out not to be an aberration but a playbook for Trump’s 2025.

The stretch of Alondra Boulevard in Paramount where a June 7 protest against immigration agents resulted in the arrest of 30-year-old Compton resident Brayan Ramos-Brito on allegations he assaulted one of them. A jury found him not guilty.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

Lies, of course, have fueled the president’s career from the days he was was a smarmy New York developer riding the coattails of his daddy. This year he and his apologists employed them like never before to try to consolidate their grip on all aspects of American life. They lied about the economy, about the contents of the Epstein files, about the efficacy of vaccines, the worth of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, our supposed noninterventionist foreign policy and so much more.

Above all, or at least most malignantly, Trump and his crew lied about immigrants. The big lie. The lie they thought everyone would believe and thus would excuse all the other lies. They have lied about and maligned just about anyone they don’t see worthy of being a so-called “heritage American,” aka white.

Trump ran for reelection on a promise to focus on targeting “the worst of the worst” but has shrugged his shoulders as most of the people swept up in raids have no criminal record and are sometimes even citizens and permanent residents. He vowed that deporting people would improve the economy despite decades of studies showing the opposite. Trumpworld insists immigrants are destroying the United States — never mind that the commander in chief is the son of a Scotswoman and is married to a Slovenian while vice president JD Vance’s in-laws are from India.

The administration maintains unchecked migration is cultural suicide even as cabinet members sport last names — Kennedy, Rubio, Bondi, Loeffler — once seen by Americans of past generations as synonymous with invading hordes.

This is where Frank Sinatra comes in.

Over the Christmas weekend, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media that his family watched a Christmas special starring the Chairman of the Board and his fellow paisan, Dean Martin.

“Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world,” Miller sneered. It didn’t matter that the crooners were proud children of Italian immigrants who arrived during a time where they were as demonized as Venezuelans and Somalis are now.

Take it from Sinatra himself.

In 1945 he released “The House I Live In,” a short film in which he tells a group of boys chasing one of their Jewish peers to embrace a diverse America. In 1991 as his Republican Party was launching an era of laws in California targeting illegal immigrants, Sinatra penned a Fourth of July essay for The Times opposing such hate.

“Who in the name of God are these people anyway, the ones who elevate themselves above others?” Sinatra wrote. “America is an immigrant country. Maybe not you and me, but those whose love made our lives possible, or their parents or grandparents.”

As 2025 went from one hell month to another, it really felt like Trumpworld’s lies would loom over the land for good. But as the year ends, it seems truth finally is peeking through the storm clouds, like the blue skies Sinatra sang about so beautifully.

Trump’s approval ratings have dropped greatly since his inauguration even among those who voted for him, with his deportation disaster playing a role. Judges and juries are beginning to swat away charges filed against people like Ramos-Brito like they were flies swarming around a dung pile. Under especial scrutiny is Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, the public face of Trump’s deportation ground game.

In November, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis ruled the federal government had to stop using excessive force in Chicago after months of agents firing pepper balls and tear gas at the slightest perceived insult. Her decision reasoned that Bovino’s sworn testimony about a Chicago under siege by pro-immigrant activists was “not credible” because he provided “cute” answers when he wasn’t “outright lying.”

Among the victims of those lies: Scott Blackburn, who was arrested for allegedly assaulting Bovino during an immigration raid even though videos showed the migra man tackle Blackburn like they were playing sandlot football, and Cole Sheridan, whom Bovino claimed injured his groin while arresting him during a protest; federal prosecutors quickly dropped all charges against Sheridan when they realized there was a lack of evidence to back up Bovino’s story.

And then there is Ramos-Brito, who had to endure a federal trial that hinged on Bovino insisting he was guilty of assaulting a federal agent in Paramount. He shook his head in disgust when I told him about Bovino’s continued tall tales.

“Justice was served for me,” Ramos-Brito said, “but not for others. I got lucky.”

Brayan Ramos-Brito, 30, of Compton, was found not guilty of assaulting a federal agent during June’s immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles County.

(Gary Coronado/For The Times)

We spoke in front of the Home Depot where the June 7 protest happened, where Trump’s year of immigration lies went into overdrive. The day laborers who used to gather there for years weren’t around. The gate where la migra and protesters faced off was closed.

Ramos-Brito still drives down that stretch of Alondra Boulevard for his snacks from the Chevron station that stands a block away from where his life forever was changed. It took him months to go public with his story. Scars remain on his ribs, back and shoulders.

“There’s times when little moments come through my head,” he acknowledged.

What finally convinced him to speak up was think about others out there like him. He now realizes speaking out against Trump’s lies is the only way to stop him for good.

“Whoever is going through the same that I did, keep fighting,” Ramos-Brito said softly. “They should look at my experience to give them hope.”