Kid

Through his decades-long career, Nick Lachey has done it all in Hollywood — he’s acted, he’s released solo albums, he’s led campaigns with brands (including Purina) and he’s reigned on the reality TV circuit, hosting the dating shows “The Ultimatum,” “Perfect Match” and the phenomenon that is “Love Is Blind,” which wrapped up its ninth U.S.-based season last week.

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.

But through it all, he keeps returning to one passion project: 98 Degrees, the swoon-eliciting boy band that catapulted him to stardom in the late ‘90s.

“I’m really blessed to be able to be a part of some incredible shows,” Lachey says. “But truly it all comes back to the band for me. I still continue to love to do that and perform with those guys, so hopefully that will continue for a long, long time.”

Earlier this year, 98 Degrees released their first non-Christmas album in more than a decade, “Full Circle.” It features reworkings of their most iconic songs — including “I Do (Cherish You)” and “The Hardest Thing” — along with five new tracks.

Outside of work, what’s paramount in Lachey’s life “is being a dad and being present for my kids, and really being involved in their life,” he says. He and his wife, Vanessa Lachey, who’s also his “Love Is Blind” co-host, have three young children: Camden, Phoenix and Brooklyn.

The Cincinnati native and die-hard Bengals fan takes us along for his perfect Sunday in L.A., where he’s lived for more than 20 years. It involves football (of course), an indulgent brunch with waffles, relaxing at a Malibu beach and reading a print copy of the L.A. Times — an activity that we can absolutely get behind.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

7:30 a.m.: Coffee and the L.A. Times

I usually wake up around 7 or 7:30 a.m. I’m conditioned to get up when the kids do, so that’s typically the time even on a weekend. The first thing I’m doing on a Sunday is getting a cup of coffee. I’m kind of old-school. I still get the print paper. So I’ll walk out of my front door and go grab my L.A. Times and my cup of coffee, and hopefully have a few moments to myself to read the paper before my kids get up and harass me.

9 a.m.: Football time

Are we in football season? That’s a very important question. If it’s my dream Sunday then we’re in football season so around 8:30 or 9 a.m., I’m turning on “NFL Countdown” and we’re getting ready for the Sunday slate of games. The Cincinnati Bengals are my team. I grew up in Cincinnati so I’m kind of a fan by birth, if you will. Now, the Bengals are pretty good. For the majority of my life, they’ve been absolutely horrible and I’ve just been stuck with them, but it’s kind of fun now that they’re actually competitive [laughs].

12 p.m.: Indulge in waffles at brunch

We’re getting into the afternoon and getting ready for lunch. A place my family and I love to have lunch or maybe a late brunch is More Than Waffles, which is kind of an Encino institution, if you will. I usually get a skillet or an omelet, then combine that with a waffle. I don’t eat that great, but if you’re ever gonna eat bad, Sunday is the day to do it, so you gotta get the waffle. You gotta get the whipped cream and the strawberries. Go for broke.

2 p.m.: Hang out at the beach

A good Sunday is heading out to the beach. I’d take the kids to Zuma to see the ocean for a little bit even if it’s just a drive. It’s nice to take the drive down that way, see the water and feel the wind on your face. I’m not a big get-in-the-water guy. If I’m in the Caribbean or somewhere, maybe. [laughs] It’s a little chilly for me, so I’m more of the lay-on-the-sand, take-in-the-scenery kind of guy at the beach.

5 p.m.: Burritos and margs for dinner

Let’s get back to the house to take a shower and then we’d hit Casa Vega. That’s another one of my favorites in the Valley. My whole family loves it. I like the oven style chicken burrito smothered. You gotta get the chips and guac. You gotta get a house margarita blended, no salt, and you’re good to go.

8 p.m.: Family meeting

We always have a family meeting on Sunday nights to get ready for the week and kind of go over what’s going on. So we’d get the family back to the house, sit down with the kids, and kind of go over the expectations for the week and plan it out. Then you’re into shower and bath time because it’s a school night.

10 p.m.: Mommy and daddy time

Once the kids are down, maybe Vanessa and I will take in whatever show we’re watching at that time. That’s a good cap to a Sunday. I just finished watching “Perfect Match” on Netflix, which is a classic. I love all the Taylor Sheridan [shows]. I’ve already watched them all.

A mutant killer baby. Lampshades and pickle jars that come alive. Sinister sewers. A demonic clown that preys on children.

HBO Max’s “It: Welcome to Derry,” the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s epic 1986 novel about a deadly clown named Pennywise, has already scared up a lot of buzz since its Oct. 26 premiere with its mix of evil events and nightmarish images.

The first episode featuring Robert Preston warning “Ya Got Trouble” via the classic musical “The Music Man” is an ominous introduction to the subsequent terrors. Gruesome sequences revolving around birth in the first two episodes will likely make several viewers cover their eyes. (The second episode drops Friday on HBO Max in time for Halloween, and it will air in its usual 9 p.m. PT Sunday slot on HBO.)

A prequel to 2017’s “It” and 2019’s “It: Chapter Two” — both directed by Andy Muschietti — the new drama is set in 1962 in the fictional small town of Derry, Maine. Bill Skarsgård, who played Pennywise in the films, will reprise his role during the season.

The large ensemble of child actors and adults features several Black characters, including Air Force Maj. Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo); his wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige), a civil rights activist in a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat; and son Will (Blake Cameron James). Also featured is Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), the town’s theater projectionist, and his teen daughter Ronnie (Amanda Christine).

Developed by Muschietti, his sister Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, the creators have prioritized increasing the intensity of the films. But the Muschietti siblings add that they are also incorporating certain messages into the mayhem. Many of the Black characters face bigotry and resistance in the predominantly white town that echo challenges that people of color currently face.

“Stephen is a master of weaving these issues into his stories, and it’s impossible to think of doing one of his stories without having that texture front and center,” Barbara Muschietti said.

The Muschiettis, in a video call, discussed diving deeper into the story of Pennywise, getting their young cast to act like kids from the 1960s, and what gives them nightmares. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Siblings Barbara Muschietti and Andy Muschietti on the set of HBO’s “It: Welcome to Derry.”

(Brooke Palmer / HBO)

How soon after the two “It” movies did the idea of a deeper dive into the world of Pennywise come about?

Andy Muschietti: The novel was the inspiration. There are all these enigmas still lingering, enigmas intentionally left unresolved in the book. Part of the greatness of the novel is that you finish 1,200 pages and at the end, you still have no idea what “It” is and what it wants. It’s all speculation. We had conversations with Bill about how great it would be to do an origin story of Bob Gray, this cryptic character, and give him the opportunity to play the human side, the man behind the clown. It’s about completing the puzzle and uniting the stories that lead one to another, creating a story with the final purpose of getting to this conclusive event, which is the creation of Pennywise, the incarnation of evil.

Barbara Muschietti: Once the idea start percolating, we got in touch with Mr. King and he loved the idea. At the beginning of the pandemic we went to (then-Warner Bros. TV chief) Peter Roth. He bought it in the room and we’ve been on it ever since. Not a day of rest.

“The Music Man” plays a prominent role in the first episode, and it gets dark pretty quickly. I’m a huge fan of that movie, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at that joyful musical the same way again.

Andy Muschietti: I actually wanted us to create a musical ourselves that would pretend to be a movie from 1962. But we would have spent so much money and energy. So we started a quest for the right musical. “The Music Man” was made by Warner Bros. in 1962, and it’s about someone coming to a small town not unlike Derry, talking about trouble, trouble. And it just seemed to fit.

Barbara Muschietti: We also hope a lot of younger people will be curious and go see “The Music Man.”

What is the superpower of “It” that makes it a story that keeps giving and giving?

Andy Muschietti: There are a lot of things people connect to. One of them is childhood. Most of us cherish those years as being full of magic and imagination. We’ve all been children and we’ve all been afraid of something. The novel is a testament to the virtues of childhood, and those virtues normally disappear when you become an adult. Arguably the adults are always the enemy in the world of ‘It.’”

Apart from the clown, there’s a whole mythology that has yet to be connected. My purpose in this series is to reveal the iceberg under the water.

Black characters, including Hank (Stephen Rider), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), Leroy (Jovan Adepo) and Charlotte (Taylour Paige) play central roles in HBO’s “It: Welcome to Derry.” (Brooke Palmer / HBO)

You could not have planned the timing of the show coming on, but it seems like the topical issues addressed in this show, like bigotry, have a relevance to what’s going on in the country today.

Andy Muschietti: What’s going on is not new. It’s just found a new expression. It has been going on and on in cycles. We have this illusion that things are good, but around the corner is another dictator trying to come. We came from Argentina, and we don’t have the kind of racial tension that America has had for hundreds of years. Most of Stephen’s books are a song to empathy in general, and denouncing injustice everywhere. It is important to show, especially in an era where some people in the country are trying to delete history.

Barbara Muschietti: Sadly, these horrors keep haunting us, and racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia is still sadly a human condition, needing to find someone below you that you can punch. Yes, our history makes us a little more sensitive. We live in the United States, it’s a country we love, but it is surprising …

Andy Muschietti: Alarming.

Barbara Muschietti: … that more people are not more concerned.

Andy Muschietti: It’s the fog that Stephen King was talking about. People, basically out of fear, look the other way, trying to suppress things they see, and forget. It’s all part of the same reflection.

It’s immediately obvious that some horrific things will be happening in this show, even more so than the films. The imagery is really nightmarish.

Andy Muschietti: Being a shape-shifter is the thing which keeps giving and giving, and there was a clear intention for us to raise the volume of intensity. You need to meet the expectations of the audience — they don’t want to see more of the same. And we are also dealing with a different time when the collective fears were different because of the social and political situation of that era — the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis — was just around the corner. Then there’s social unrest and segregation.

Barbara Muschietti: I’d like to say it’s all very cathartic. We’re very nice people. I swear.

A demon baby birthed in Episode 1 is among the monsters seen in “Welcome to Derry.”

(HBO)

The show also has a great feel and look to it when it comes to depicting the 1960s.

Andy Muschietti: There was a lot of instinctive respect and attention to accuracy, aesthetically and spiritually. It was the true work of a team in every department, the same folks who had worked on the movies. There was also the research from the writers.

Most of the cast members are kids who did not live in that era. How do you communicate that era and feel to a young cast?

Andy Muschietti: There is a lot of talking. Stephen King knows a lot about this because he was a kid in the 1950s. The book is so rich in detail. We have Ben Perkins, who is a child actor coach. And there is imagination. These kids like to play and at this age, they thrive when you don’t put a lot of restrictions on them. The only thing that went overboard was the cursing.

Barbara Muschietti: That’s one thing that Stephen came back to us with. “There’s too many f—.” We also send the kids with Ben who basically sets up a camp — a bicycle riding camp, a swimming camp, stuff like that which kids in 2024 did not have access to. We’ve been doing that since 2016 very successfully. Because of all of this, all these kids have an incredible bond. They’re friends for life. They get to say goodbye to adolescence on our sets in the most beautiful way.

How long will you keep expanding the ”It” universe?

Andy Muschietti: It’s Derry, Derry, Derry all day. “Welcome” is an arc that expands over three seasons. Why is “It’” Derry, and why is Derry “It”? We will eventually reveal a bigger story revolving around the existence of Pennywise.

I have to ask — what gives you two nightmares? What is scary to you?

Barbara Muschietti: Fascism. Guns.

Andy Muschietti: Violence in general. We’ve come so far as a civilization, and it seems like we haven’t learned anything. What happened to empathy, and seeing what makes us similar, instead of things that divide us?

Barbara Muschietti: And love and respect.

TORONTO — Tyler Glasnow threw seven, maybe eight, pitches in the bullpen. There was no more time to wait. The red emergency light was flashing.

For 14 years, Glasnow has made a nice living as a pitcher. He has thrown hard, if not always durably or effectively.

There is one thing he had not done. In 320 games, from the minors to the majors, from the Arizona Fall League to the World Series, he never had earned a save.

Until Friday, that is, and only after the Dodgers presented him with this opportunity out of equal parts confidence and desperation: Please save us. The winning run is at the plate with no one out. If you fail, we lose the World Series.

No pressure, kid.

He is not one of the more intense personalities on the roster, which makes him a good fit in a situation in which someone else might think twice, or more, at the magnitude of the moment.

“I honestly didn’t have time to think about it,” Glasnow said.

In Game 6 on Friday, the Dodgers in order used a starter to start, a reliever to relieve, the closer of the moment, and then Glasnow to close. In Game 7 on Saturday, the Dodgers plan to start Shohei Ohtani, likely followed by a parade of starters.

Glasnow, who said he could not recall ever pitching on back-to-back days, could be one of them.

“I threw three pitches,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”

The Dodgers had asked him to be ready to go in relief on Friday, so he moseyed on down to the bullpen in the second inning. He didn’t really believe he would pitch. After all, Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto had thrown consecutive complete games. If Yamamoto could not throw another, Glasnow did not believe he would be the first guy called.

He was not. Justin Wrobleski was, protecting a 3-1 lead, and he delivered a scoreless seventh inning. Closer Roki Sasaki was next, and the Dodgers planned for him to work the eighth and ninth.

Glasnow said bullpen coach Josh Bard warned him to be on alert. Sasaki walked two in the eighth but escaped. He hit a batter and gave up a double to lead off the ninth, and the Dodgers rushed in Glasnow.

“I warmed up very little, got out there,” Glasnow said. “It was like no thinking at all.”

The Dodgers’ scouting reports gave Glasnow and catcher Will Smith reason to believe Ernie Clement would try to jump on the first pitch, so Glasnow said he threw a two-seam fastball that he seldom throws to right-handed batters. Clement popped up.

The next batter, Andrés Giménez, hit a sinking fly ball to left fielder Kiké Hernández. Off the bat, Glasnow said he feared a hit.

If the ball falls in, Giménez has a single and the Dodgers’ lead shrinks to one run. If the ball skips past Hernández, the Blue Jays tie the score.

Glasnow said he had three brief thoughts, in order:

1: “Please don’t be a hit.”

Hernández charged hard and made the running catch.

2: “Sweet, it’s not a hit.”

Hernández threw to second base for the game-ending double play.

3: “Nice, a double play.”

Wrobleski tipped his cap to his new bullpen mate.

“He’s a beast, man,” Wrobleski said. “To be able to come in in that spot, it takes a lot of mental strength and toughness. He did it. I didn’t expect anything less out of him, but it was awesome.”

Wrobleski was pretty good himself. The Dodgers optioned him the maximum five times last year and four times this year. He did not pitch in the first three rounds of the playoffs, and his previous two World Series appearances came in a mop-up role and during an 18-inning game.

Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski reacts after striking out Toronto’s Andrés Giménez to end the seventh inning in Game 6 of the World Series on Friday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

On Friday, they entrusted him with helping to keep their season alive. They got three critical outs from Wrobleski, who is not even making $1 million this season, and three more from Glasnow, who is making $30 million.

“We got a lot of guys that aren’t making what everybody thinks they’re making, especially down in that bullpen,” Wrobleski said. ”We were talking about it the other day. There’s a spot for everybody. If you keep grinding, you can wedge yourself in.”

He did. He was recruited by Clemson out of high school, then basically cut from the team.

“They told me to leave,” he said.

Did a new coach come in?

“No, I was just bad,” he said. “I had like a 10.3 ERA.”

Glasnow signed with the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Hart High in Santa Clarita. In the majors, the Pirates tried him in relief without offering him a chance to close. Did they fail to recognize a budding bullpen star? “I never threw strikes,” he said. “I just wasn’t that good.”

We’ve all heard stories about the kid who goes into his backyard with a wiffle ball, taking a swing and pretending to be the batter who hits the home run in the World Series.

Glasnow doesn’t hit.

“I’ve had all sorts of daydreams about every pitching thing possible as a kid — relieving, closing out a game, starting in the World Series,” he said. “I thought about it all the time. So it’s pretty wild. I haven’t really processed it, either. I think going out to be able to get a save in the World Series is pretty wild.”

The game-ending double play was reviewed by instant replay, so Glasnow missed out on the trademark closer experience: the last out, immediately followed by the handshake line. Instead, everyone looked to the giant video board and waited.

Eventually, an informal line formed.

“I got some dap-ups,” he said. He smiled broadly, then walked out into the Toronto night, the proud owner of his first professional save. For his team, and for Los Angeles, he had kept the hope of a parade alive.

Septuagenarian TV star Kelsey Grammer is still growing his family, most recently with the arrival of his newest child.

The beloved “Cheers” and “Frasier” actor, who turned 70 in February, is now a father of eight. Grammer announced he and wife Kayte Walsh welcomed their fourth child together during his appearance on the “Pod Meets World” podcast.”

We just had our fourth one, it just became eight kids,” he said during the podcast episode, published Monday. “Christopher, that’s [who] just joined the family.”

The Emmy-winning TV veteran said his newest son arrived “three days” before the episode taped and joked with podcast hosts Rider Strong, Danielle Fishel and Will Friedle that he has “clusters” of children of different ages.

Grammer and Walsh, 46, married in 2011 and also share a teenage daughter and two sons. People reported in June that the couple was expecting a child again, publishing photos of the two taking a stroll through London.

The five-time Emmy winner has been married four times. Before Walsh, he was married to dancer-model Camille Donatacci. He was also briefly married to Leigh-Anne Csuhany, and dance instructor Doreen Alderman before that. His seven other children, the eldest being actor Spencer Grammer, hail from those previous relationships.

The sitcom star became a grandfather in October 2011, when his son Spencer welcomed a son with ex-husband James Hesketh.

In the past, Grammer has been open about the “beauty of being an older dad.” He told the Guardian in 2018 that raising children later in life he feels fortunate to “get a chance to kinda try it again. That’s been a real gift.”

The actor announced the arrival of his eighth child while promoting his book “Karen: A Brother Remembers,” released in May, about the brutal murder of his sister at age 18 and his lifelong battle with grief. During the episode, Fishel asked the actor how much his children knew about his late sister.

He explained his older children have varying degrees of knowledge about his sister, while his younger kids will have to wait to learn more and read his book. “Some of the stuff is too brutal, they don’t really need to be exposed to that yet,” he said.

Throughout the podcast episode, Grammer also recalled the proceedings in his sister’s case and learning how to process the loss while delivering laughs on TV.

“I didn’t walk around talking about it a lot, it’s been with me since the day it happened,” he said.

It’s dead certain that if you’ve been a television critic for, ahem, a number of years, you’re going to have reviewed a passel of shows based on the writing of Stephen King, America’s most adapted, if not necessarily most adaptable author. (It’s been a mere three months since the last, “The Institute,” on MGM+.) The latest float in this long parade premieres Sunday on HBO — it’s “It: Welcome to Derry,” a prequel to the 2017 film, “It” (and its 2019 follow-up, “It: Chapter Two”) based on King’s 1986 creepy clown novel, each of which made a packet. (There was a 1990 TV miniseries version as well.)

Developed by Andy Muschietti (director of the films), Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs, “Derry” is an extension of the brand rather than an adaptation, which features a white-faced circus-style clown called Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård, back from the movies) who lives in the sewer and comes around every 27 years to feed on children’s fear — fear being the preferred dish of many famous monsters of filmland, and white-faced circus clowns having lost all goodwill in the culture. (No thanks to King. Or Krusty.) And while I assume some of the series’ points may be found within King’s original 1,138-page novel, life is short and that is going to have to remain an assumption. In any case, it’s very much a work of television — not what I’d call prestige television, despite a modicum of well-done fright effects — just ordinary, workman-like TV, with monsters. (Or one monster in many forms.)

It’s 1962 in Derry, Maine, and everywhere else. (Subsequent seasons — prequel prequels — will reportedly be set in 1935 and 1908.) The Cold War is heating up. Schoolchildren, forced to watch animated films about the effects of a nuclear blast, are ducking and covering beneath their desks (a psychological rather than a practical exercise). But the threat of annihilation has done nothing to slow them in their teenage rituals. Bullies chase a target down the street. A group of snobby girls is called the Pattycakes, because they play patty cake, and their leader is named Patty. On the other hand are the kids we care about, the outsiders, banded together in unpopularity. It’s a paradoxical quality of horror films that to be an outsider either qualifies you as a hero or the monster — the insiders are usually just food. Not that the monsters are particular about whom they eat.

We open in a movie theater. Robert Preston is on the screen in “The Music Man,” performing “Ya Got Trouble.” (Chronologically accurate foreshadowing!) In the audience is Matty (Miles Ekhardt), a boy way too old to be sucking on a pacifier. Chased from the theater — he’s been sneaking in — it’s a snowy night, and he accepts a ride from a seemingly normal family, who quickly turn abnormal. Suddenly it’s four months later and Matty is an officially missing child.

Taylour Paige, Blake Cameron James and Jovan Adepo play the Hanlon family, who have just moved to Derry, Maine.

(Brooke Palmer / HBO)

The series begins promisingly, setting up (as in “It,” or, hmmm, “Stranger Things”) a company of junior investigators. Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) has a lot of thoughts about aliens and sex; Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler) is studious and serious and has thoughts about Matty. Lilly (Clara Stack) is called “loony” because she spent time in a sanitarium — the King-canonical Juniper Hill Asylum — after her father died in a pickle factory accident. (Not played for laughs, although the pickle is perhaps the funniest of all foods.) Lilly thinks she heard Matty singing “Trouble” through the drain in her bathtub; Ronnie (Amanda Christine), the daughter of the cinema’s projectionist Hank (Stephen Rider), has heard voices in the theater’s pipes. The kids run the film, and supernatural mayhem ensues. It’s pretty crazy! Gross hallucinations — or are they? — will afflict them through the series.

Meanwhile, Air Force Maj. Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) has been transferred to the local base, where secret doings are afoot, involving (classic plot line) the military’s desire to claim and weaponize whatever barely understood dangerous thing that’s out there in the woods. (His value to this operation is that he cannot feel fear, the result of a brain injury.) The Hanlons — including wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige), a civil rights activist in a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat, and son Will (Blake Cameron James) — are Black (as are Ronnie and her father, seemingly accounting for 100% of Derry’s in-town African American population). “Don’t be looking for trouble,” Leroy tells Charlotte, who responds, “There’s going to be trouble anywhere we go. That’s the country you swore your life to defend.” Will, who is scientific, will become friends with Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), an appealingly goofy kid in a band uniform; they’ll both wind up on the Pennywise case.

Typically, the kids — also including Marge (Matilda Lawler, the secret weapon of “Station Eleven” and “The Santa Clauses”), Lilly’s socially desperate friend — are the strongest element in the story and the show; their energy overwhelms the obviousness of the narrative, and whatever takes us away from them, into pace-slowing side plots, is time less well spent.

What else? There’s a Native American element — including the old Indian burial ground story — represented by Rose (Kimberly Guerrero), who runs a thrift store (called Second Hand Rose, in a nice nod to Fanny Brice) and whose indomitable air makes her a kind of counterpart and potential ally to Charlotte. Manifest destiny gets a mention, and the plot will conventionally pose Native humbleness against white hubris. Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) is a Black serviceman with a tragic mental gift, used cruelly by his superiors — a familiar King type. Racism is a recurring theme without becoming a consistent plot point, with messages for 2025. (Rich: “This is America. You can’t just throw people in jail for nothing.” Will: “Are we talking about the same country?”)

Also: A statue of Paul Bunyan is going up in town — and in fact a 31-foot-tall Bunyan statue was unveiled in Bangor, Maine, in 1959. This is pointed to a couple of times, so I would imagine some kind of Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man scenario coming in the series’ unseen back half. Or something.

Horror, especially body-horror — there are two monstrous birth sequences in the five episodes, out of nine, available to review — has, you may have noticed, moved from the fringes to the center of popular (even high) culture, with A-list stars signing on and Oscar and Emmy nominations not unlikely. Indeed, the good, cheap, unrespectable, unambitious variety of scare flick has mostly disappeared from the big screen. That “Welcome to Derry” is more of a cheesy B-picture than its makers might like to imagine, assembled from worked-over tropes — somewhat excusable for King having originated many of them — is more in its favor than not. TV remains a haven for cheesiness. Long may it remain so.

The sports court on Carnival Radiance.

(Carnival Cruise Line)

Sails to: Ensenada, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, La Paz, Cabo San Lucas and Catalina Island via three- to five-day wintertime voyages
Cost: Starting at about $200 per person

Carnival Radiance is one of the cruise line’s oldest vessels, having launched in 2000 under its original name, Carnival Victory. Following a $200 million refresh in 2021, it’s become a staple along the Long Beach waterfront.

The 2,984-guest ship offers a variety of shorter trips, which first-time cruisers may appreciate. Some of its staterooms connect, allowing extended families to vacation together. And most of its outdoor activities — such as mini-golf, a sports court and a two-level ropes course — are conveniently clustered together. Nearby are waterslides and pools, one of which sits under a large movie screen.

Like Carnival Firenze, Radiance also has NASA and Dr. Seuss-themed activities, in addition to an at-sea Build-a-Bear workshop and “Zumbini,” a kid-friendly Zumba class.

Picky eaters need not fret. Radiance has 15 dining options, nine of which are included in the cost of your cruise. A few have celebrity names attached to them: along with Guy Fieri’s Burger Joint and barbecue restaurant, there’s also a chicken counter from basketball star Shaquille O’Neal.

If you’ve tested the waters with a short Carnival Radiance cruise and can’t get enough, the ship will also be embarking on a 14-day round-trip voyage in early January to Kahului, Maui; Honolulu, Oahu; Nawiliwili, Kauai; Hilo, Hawaii; and Ensenada, Mexico.

An estimated 7 million Americans turned out Saturday to peacefully protest against the breakdown of our checks-and-balances democracy into a Trump-driven autocracy, rife with grift but light on civil rights.

Trump’s response? An AI video of himself wearing a crown inside a fighter plane, dumping what appears to be feces on these very protesters. In a later interview, he called participants of the “No Kings” events “whacked out” and “not representative of this country.”

I’m beginning to fear he’s right. What if the majority of Americans really do believe this sort of behavior by our president, or by anyone really, is acceptable? Even funny? A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that 81% of Republicans approve of the way Trump is handling his job. Seriously, the vast majority of Republicans are just fine with Trump’s policies and behavior.

According to MAGA, non-MAGA people are just too uptight these days.

Vice Troll JD Vance has become a relentless force for not just defending the most base and cruel of behaviors, but celebrating them. House Speaker Mike Johnson has made the spineless, limp justification of these behaviors an art form.

Between the two approaches to groveling to Trump’s ego and mendacity is everything you need to know about the future of the Republican Party. It will stop at nothing to debase and dehumanize any opposition — openly acknowledging that it dreams of burying in excrement even those who peacefully object.

Not even singer Kenny Loggins is safe. His “Top Gun” hit “Danger Zone” was used in the video. When he objected with a statement of unity, saying, “Too many people are trying to tear us apart, and we need to find new ways to come together. We’re all Americans, and we’re all patriotic. There is no ‘us and them’,” the White House responded with … a dismissive meme, clearly the new norm when responding to critics.

It may seem obvious, and even old news that this administration lacks accountability. But the use of memes and AI videos as communication, devoid of truth or consequence, adds a new level of danger to the disconnect.

These non-replies not only remove reality from the equation, but remove the need for an actual response — creating a ruling class that does not feel any obligation to explain or defend its actions to the ruled.

Politico published a story last week detailing the racist, misogynistic and hate-filled back-and-forth of an official, party-sanctioned “young Republican” group. Since most of our current politicians are part of the gerontocracy, that young is relative — these are adults, in their 20s and 30s — and they are considered the next generation of party leaders, in a party that has already skewed so far right that it defends secret police.

Here’s a sample.

Bobby Walker, the former vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans, called rape “epic,” according to Politico.

Another member of the chat called Black Americans “watermelon people.”

“Great. I love Hitler,” wrote another when told delegates would vote for the most far-right candidate.

There was also gas chamber “humor” in there and one straight up, “I’m ready to watch people burn now,” from a woman in the conversation, Anne KayKaty, New York’s Young Republican’s national committee member, according to the Hill.

Group members engaged in slurs against South Asians, another popular target of the far right these days. There’s an entire vein of racism devoted to the idea that Indians smell bad, in case you were unaware.

Speaking of a woman mistakenly believed to be South Asian, one group member — Vermont state Sen. Samuel Douglass, wrote: “She just didn’t bathe often.”

While some in the Republican party have denounced, albeit half-heartedly, the comments, others, including Vance, have gone on the attack. Vance, whose wife is Indian, claims everyone is making a big deal out of nothing.

“But the reality is that kids do stupid things. Especially young boys, they tell edgy, offensive jokes. Like, that’s what kids do,” Vance said. “And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

Not to be outdone, Johnson responded to the poop jet video by somehow insinuating there is an elevated meaning to it.

“The president was using social media to make a point,” Johnson said, calling it “satire.”

Satire is meant to embarrass and humiliate, to call out through humor the indefensible. I’ll buy the first part of that. Trump meant to embarrass and humiliate. But protesting, of course, is anything but indefensible and the use of feces as a weapon is a way of degrading those “No Kings” participants so that Trump doesn’t have to answer to their anger — no different than degrading Black people and women in that group chat.

Those 7 million Americans who demonstrated on Saturday simply do not matter to Trump, or to Republicans. Not their healthcare, not their ability to pay the bills, not their worry that a country they love is turning in to one where their leader literally illustrates that he can defecate on them.

But not everyone can be king.

While the young Republicans believe they shared in their leader’s immunity, it turns out they don’t. That Vermont state senator? He resigned after the Republican governor put on pressure.

Maybe 7 million Americans angry at Trump can’t convince him to change his ways, but enough outraged Vermont voters can make change in their corner of the country.

Which is why the one thing Trump does fear is the midterms, when voters get to shape our own little corners of America — and by extension, whether Trump gets to keep using his throne.

Rapper Cardi B is willing to get “nasty” when it comes to defending her kids.

Following the release of her second full-length album “Am I the Drama?” in September, the “I Like It” singer publicly feuded with Nicki Minaj. Both rappers’ children were also pulled into the fracas.

In a recent interview with Paper magazine, Cardi B opened up about the combative exchange.

“This week I showed the world that I will get the most nasty about mine. I never had to get that nasty for my kids. But I did, and I really feel like a lioness,” she said. “This has been one of the moments I got tested the most about being a parent.”

The beef between music’s biggest female rappers has been an ongoing saga dating back to 2017. The most recent spat took place on X in late September, when Minaj belittled Cardi B’s record sales. The two proceeded to tear apart each other’s personal and professional lives.

Cardi B called out Minaj for feuding with her on X instead of celebrating her son’s birthday. Minaj called Cardi B’s 7-year-old daughter “ugly,” among other mean-spirited names, and started to question her son’s brain development. The spat ended with Cardi B asking to meet up with Minaj — they have not posted about each other since.

Cardi described her behavior as that of a “mother warrior” and explained the lengths she would go to protect her kin. The 33-year-old performer is currently pregnant with her fourth child, her first with New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs. The “WAP” performer shares three children — Kulture, Wave and Blossom — with rapper Offset.

“Am I the Drama?” is Cardi B’s first full-length project in seven years. The 23-track album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard 200 and hit platinum 10 days after its initial release. Her debut, “Invasion of Privacy,” earned her a Grammy for rap album in 2019 and made her the first solo female artist to win in that category.

While doing press for her newest LP, Cardi B hasn’t strayed away from talking about parenthood. She told Paper that she aims to instill a hardworking mentality in her children.

“You have to hope that your kids have that work ethic in them, and I just pray that they do,” she said. “I don’t want one of them to feel they’re behind their siblings. You just got to work and not think too much. … Procrastination is what kills you. It’s what slows you. Don’t ask too much questions. Just go and f— do it.”

Are you ready, kids? Because you’ll soon be able to visit a certain pineapple house without going under the sea.

Universal unveiled new details Wednesday about the various themed lands of its new theme park geared toward families with younger kids. Among them are areas that will spotlight the worlds of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Shrek,” “Minions” and “Jurassic World” with character meet-and-greets, interactive shows, sensory gardens and, of course, rides.

Universal Kids Resort will feature seven lands: Shrek’s Swamp, Puss in Boots Del Mar, Minions vs. Minions: Bello Bay Club, Jurassic World Adventure Camp, TrollsFest, SpongeBob SquarePants Bikini Bottom and Isle of Curiosity.

“Universal Kids Resort [is] designed to bring our youngest guests and families together through play, creativity, and beloved characters and stories,” Universal Creative President Molly Murphy said in a statement. “It’s a destination made for kids and, as a regional theme park, brings Universal’s signature storytelling to families close to home.”

Guests will start their visit at the Isle of Curiosity with the chance to meet Gabby from “Gabby’s Dollhouse” or head to a dance party. Shrek and Fiona will be on hand to greet families at Shrek’s Swamp, which also includes a photo opportunity at an onion carriage and two interactive play areas for kids that want to splash or stomp their hearts out.

A rendering of a play area in SpongeBob SquarePants Bikini Bottom at Universal Kids Resort.

(Universal Destinations & Experiences)

Those interested in meeting Puss in Boots, Mama Luna and Perrito from “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” (2022) can head to Puss in Boots Del Mar, where there will also be some carnival games. The Minions-obsessed water ride enthusiasts in the family will want to check out Minions vs. Minions: Bello Bay Club, while budding paleontologists and dinosaur lovers won’t want to miss the chance to see a newly hatched baby dinosaur at Jurassic World Adventure Camp.

Poppy and Branch will be among the “Trolls” characters guests can encounter at the musical party land that is TrollsFest, while “SpongeBob” fans can expect some F.U.N. times exploring Mussel Beach and meeting SpongeBob, Patrick and Sandy at SpongeBob SquarePants Bikini Bottom.

“We envisioned this park through the unbridled creativity of kids where infinite imagination, curiosity and free-spirited play were core to our design philosophies,” Brian Robinson, Universal Creative’s executive vice president and chief creative officer, said in a statement.

Universal Kids Resort, which will also include a 300-room on-site hotel, will open in Frisco, Texas, in 2026.

Until recently, no one would have mistaken Arianna Barrios for a wokosa.

The Orange city council member comes from O.C. Republican royalty. Her grandfather, Cruz, was a Mexican immigrant and civil rights pioneer who registered with the GOP in the late 1940s after Democratic leaders wouldn’t help him and other activists fight school segregation against Mexican American students in Orange County. Her second cousin, Steve Ambriz, was a rising GOP star serving on the Orange City Council when he was killed by wrong-way driver in 2006.

The 55-year-old has helped Republicans on policy and handled communications for the Orange County Taxpayers Assn. and the Richard Nixon Foundation. Friendly, smart, quick-witted and a total goodie-goodie, she corrected me last fall when I introduced her to my Chapman University history students as a Republican. To my surprise, the Orange native proclaimed that she has never been a Republican — she started out as a Democrat and is now an independent.

And that’s not the first surprise she’s sprung on me. Her recent rise as one of O.C.’s most vocal politicians opposing President Trump’s deportation machine has been unexpected — and welcome.

She called out her council colleagues in July for not approving a resolution that would have required federal immigration agents to remove their masks and wear IDs within city limits. She connects young activists to legal and financial resources and has participated in neighborhood patrols alerting people that la migra is coming. She has accompanied Orange residents to hearings at Adelanto’s immigration court and hosted a two-part video series for the civic affairs group Orange County Forum on how the U.S. got to this moment in immigration.

Why, Barrios has become so radicalized that she used the hash tag #brownwar throughout the summer and into the fall when posting immigration-related stories on Facebook. That stopped after her husband, an anti-Trump Republican, suggested it was a bit much.

You would expect this of a politician from an O.C. city with a progressive streak, like Santa Ana, Anaheim or even Laguna Woods. But not from Orange, whose city fathers have long cast it as a slice of small-town Americana free from big-city problems or national issues.

And definitely not from Barrios, whose demeanor is usually more baseball mom than strident activist.

“I’ve been asked multiple times, ‘What’s up with Arianna? This is not her,’” said Orange Councilmember Ana Gutierrez, who has seen ICE agents invade her street twice. “Well, when she cares about something, she’s loud.”

Working with Barrios on pro-immigrant actions is “like talking to a young person,” said 20-year-old Chapman student Bianey Chavez, who belongs to a local youth activist group. The two connected at a protest in their hometown’s picturesque Orange Circle. “It’s fresh air for someone of her age and power to be so open-minded and helpful.”

Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava, who has known Barrios for over a decade, said she had “never heard Arianna speak on any issue like this in the past. But it’s great. Maybe she just felt empowered at this point. Maybe anger just boiled up in her, and she couldn’t be quiet anymore.”

That’s exactly what happened, Barrios told me over breakfast at a Mexican café in Old Towne.

The immigration raids that have rocked Orange County as hard as L.A. “just hit all of those buttons,” she said. Wearing a blouse decorated with orange poppies, the bespectacled Barrios looked every bit the polite pol that O.C. leaders had taken her to be. “Not only is it just patently unfair, it’s just so wrong. And it’s so inhumane.

“And one of the things that I can’t stand — and one of things I taught my kids — is if you see a kid being bullied, my expectation of you is that you go up to that kid and you go protect them.”

Councilmember Ariana Barrios holds up a vest and hat she bought from Amazon while arguing about the dangers of ICE imposters.

She credits what her father jokes is “an overactive sense of justice” to her grandparents, who ran a corner store in Santa Ana in the 1940s. Barrios Market became a meeting place for the families who helped organize the 1946 lawsuit that ended Mexican-only schools in California.

Their granddaughter didn’t know any of that history until her 20s, because her upbringing in 1980s Orange County was “like a John Hughes movie.”

“We didn’t even really think of ourselves really as, like, Hispanic — I mean, we all were, but it wasn’t the end-all be-all,” Barrios said. “We were all trying to be Valley girls.”

Living in Nacogdoches, Texas, for a few years in the 1990s “woke her up” to anti-Latino racism. But after returning home to find county and state officials passing anti-immigrant laws, she didn’t join the resistance, as many Latinos of that era did. Instead, Barrios focused on starting on her career in communications and later raising two sons.

“I remember even having my own stereotypical thoughts about [illegal immigration], not really understanding what the experience was, how people got here,” she said.

Things began to change as Barrios worked for school districts “making sure that kids had access. I didn’t care about their status.” It became personal once she was appointed to the Rancho Santiago Community College District Board of Trustees in 2011 and met refugees as well as recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which grants a reprieve from deportation to some immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. She hired some at her PR firm.

The council member brought up the 1986 immigration amnesty that Ronald Reagan signed and an unsuccessful 2001 bill co-sponsored by the late U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) that would have created a pathway to citizenship for people who came to this country without papers as minors.

“That’s what’s so odd about where we are right now,” Barrios said. “The two biggest programs, to get people to protected status and to legal resident status, came out from under Republicans.”

After winning another four-year term in 2024, Barrios figured she’d spend her time trying to fix Orange’s fiscal crisis, especially because she thought “so much of what [Trump] was promising on immigration was rhetoric.”

An onslaught of federal immigration raids in the L.A. area starting in June made her realize things would be different. What finally sparked her furor was when federal agents handcuffed U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla after he crashed a June news conference featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“All of this garbage about [Noem claiming], ‘I didn’t know who he was and he didn’t identify himself’ was bulls—,” she said. “It was just bulls—. But if you’re willing to do that, you’re willing to do anything. There are no limits.”

She admits to sometimes “los[ing] my cool” while speaking out against Trump and his deportation deluge, arguing it’s necessary to spark change in a place like Orange, which has a long history of anti-Latino sentiment. Within walking distance from her home is a former movie theater where Latinos were forced to sit in the balcony into the 1950s. In 2010, the City Council tried to ban day laborers and voted to support an Arizona law that made it legal for local law enforcement to question people about their immigration status.

It’s history Barrios knows and cites now but that barely registered with her back then.

“If people want to be nasty to me, I can’t stop them,” she said. “But I can try and explain where I’m coming from so that, as I told my sister once, it’s not for the person I’m talking to, it’s [for] everybody who’s watching the fight.”

Her husband — who joined her at a No Kings rally during the summer and will join her this weekend at one she helped organized — feels “nervous” about her newfound advocacy, she said.

But her late grandfather and her father, a Democrat who was the first Latino elected to the Orange Unified school board, wouldn’t have hesitated to protest against Trump’s cruelty, she said. “They wouldn’t even think twice about it.”

Barrios asked for a to-go box for her chorizo and eggs, which she barely touched during our hourlong chat. Then she reached into a cream-colored Kate Spade purse to pull out red cards.

“Know Your Rights,” they read, delineating what people can and can’t do if la migra asks them questions.

“I carry these all the time,” she said, leaving some on the table. “I see people and go, ‘Here you go. Just take some, OK?’”

Luc Robitaille knew his hockey playing career was over when it took him longer to get his battered body ready for a game than it did to play it.

“It became harder and harder physically,” said Robitaille, whose next stop was the hall of fame. “I think I knew at that point.”

And once his mind was made up, there was no turning back.

For Anze Kopitar, who is in the peak of good health, the decision was a little different. The Kings’ longtime center announced last month that, at 38, he will retire after this season and spend more time with his family. But, like Robitaille, there will be no turning back.

“I’m not going to change my mind,” he said.

In fact, he’s not going to change anything. Kopitar said he’s approaching this season, his 20th with the Kings, the same way he approached the first 19.

“The last few years, I told myself that I have to enjoy it because you don’t know when the ending is com[ing],” he said. “So I’ve been enjoying it. I’m obviously having a lot of fun, still playing the game. This year won’t be any different.

“The focus is still on this season.”

A season that kicks off Tuesday when the Kings host the Colorado Avalanche. But while Kopitar is starting the season the same way as always, he’s hoping for a different ending since the Kings’ last four years have ended with first-round playoff losses to the Edmonton Oilers.

Another Stanley Cup title would be a nice parting gift, especially since Kopitar, entering a team-record 10th season as captain, would be the first man to hoist the trophy, an honor that went to Dustin Brown when the Kings won in 2012 and 2014.

“I’d like to win every year. I’d like to win this year,” he said.

“My kids weren’t born when we won, so I’d like to win so they can experience that feeling too.”

Kings captain Anze Kopitar skates during a game against the Chicago Blackhawks in March.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

However Kopitar’s season finishes, his career will end with him joining Robitaille, now the Kings president, in the Hockey Hall of Fame. He is the Kings’ all-time leader in games (1,454), assists (838) and winning goals (78) and ranks in the top three in goals, points, plus-minus and power-play scores.

And just nine players in NHL history have played more games with one team than Kopitar, who has spent his entire career with the Kings.

Unlike Robitaille, he’s hardly hobbling off into retirement. He led the Kings with 46 assists and was second with 67 points last season, playing in 81 of 82 games. He also won his third Lady Byng Memorial Trophy, which goes to the player exhibiting the best sportsmanship and gentlemanly conduct in the NHL.

But his two children — daughter Neza, 10, is a talented figure skater and son Jakob, 9, plays hockey — deserve more of his time and attention, he said.

“I still love to be in hockey and I’m still productive,” Kopitar said. “But on the flip side, the kids need their dad to be more present and be a dad, not a hockey player. I can walk away on my own terms and not be forced to retire because of injuries and because the body’s not holding up.”

Anze Kopitar and his wife, Ines, attend a Lakers game at Crypto.com Arena in January 2024.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

That wasn’t Robitaille’s experience. A fractured ankle late in career and lower back pain so severe he could hardly get out of bed, led to his retirement in 2006, less than six months before Kopitar’s NHL debut.

“It kind of felt to me that I had squeezed everything out of the lemon. There was nothing left,” Robitaille said. “I was really at peace.”

As for what advice he’d give his captain, Robitaille said he’ll tell Kopitar to make time to stop and smell the roses on his last trip around the league.

“If you listen to 99% of the guys that retire in any sport, the one thing they miss is the [locker] room,” he said. “So when you know you’re near the end, you’ve got to make sure you pay attention to every one of those little moments that you’re going to miss for the next 50 years of your life.

“You’re playing a game. You’re 30 years old or 40 years old — 38 for Kopi — and he’s playing a game. It’s amazing. Most people don’t get to do that in their life, you know?”

Kopitar’s decision comes with the Kings at a crossroads. They tied team records for points (105) and wins (48) last season while going a franchise-best 31-6-4 at home in Jim Hiller’s first full season as coach. That earned the team second place in the Pacific Division, its best finish in a decade.

Kings captain Anze Kopitar, left, speaks to defenseman Drew Doughty during a game against the Winnipeg Jets in December 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The postseason was déjà vu all over again, however, with the Oilers eliminating the Kings.

General manager Rob Blake resigned four days later and was replaced by Ken Holland, who won four Stanley Cups as GM of the Detroit Red Wings. The Kings’ core is also in transition because when Kopitar steps aside, only defenseman Drew Doughty will remain from their Stanley Cup-winning teams.

“Passing the torch, [we]’ve been trying to for the past few years, been trying to mentor some of the kids in this locker room,” Kopitar said. “Maybe that’s what it is.”

Holland had mixed results in his first summer with the Kings, adding forwards Corey Perry (who will miss the first month of the season because of a knee injury) and Joel Armia, defensemen Brian Dumoulin and Cody Ceci and goalkeeper Anton Forsberg, and re-signing winger Andrei Kuzmenko to a club-friendly contract.

Also back are leading scorers Kevin Fiala and Adrian Kempe, who had 35 goals each, wingers Warren Foegele and Quinton Byfield and goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who had a career-best 2.02 goals-against average and finished third in Vezina Trophy voting.

But Holland lost veteran defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov to the New York Rangers and failed to land Mitch Marner, the summer’s most-sought player, who wound up in Las Vegas.

And now he’s the team’s first general manager in two decades who has been forced to ponder a future without Anze Kopitar.

Anze Kopitar takes the ice before a game against the Winnipeg Jets in December 2023.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“We’re really going to enjoy having Kopi in the lineup this year. But next summer it’s going to be a big void,” Holland said on the Canucks Central podcast. “He’s big and strong. And it’s hard to find big, strong, talented centermen.

“He’s very intelligent. And I think the team follows his lead.”

As for Kopitar, he’s not thinking past the next nine months. He has the rest of his life to figure out what comes next.

“I haven’t really given too much thought of what’s going to happen [next], except for being home for my kids,” he said. “I’ll take my time and then see what, see what life throws at me.

“I’m going to miss the game of hockey. What I’m not gonna miss is working out, getting ready for the season, all the hours you’ve got to put in. But the game itself, of course, I’m going to miss it. It’s been here for the better part of 35 years. But listen, the summers are going to be more enjoyable.”

For the past five years, I’ve been interviewing Hollywood professionals about what they wish they’d known when they were starting out. The entertainment business can feel opaque and overwhelming, and many who navigated it the hard way said they want to help level the playing field for those arriving with passion but without connections.

The best advice — which is collected in a book I co-wrote with my former Times colleague Jon Healey, “Breaking Into New Hollywood: A Career Guide to a Changing Industry” — was often about how they handled chaos. The key to longevity, many said, is how you manage the rejection, instability and heartbreak that are unavoidable in the industry.

And as Hollywood has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, strikes, recessions and periods of contraction — some reports estimate Hollywood jobs were down 25% in 2024 from their 2022 peak — many of them have had to take their own advice. Decades-long industry veterans have pivoted to adjacent professions, including teaching and advertising. Some of them have left Hollywood altogether.

But others have landed their dream jobs. They’ve learned how to build something from nothing. They’ve gotten to show what they’re capable of, once someone finally gave them a chance.

The most sensible advice to give young people who dream of working in the entertainment industry, they said, is to run in the other direction — or at least have a backup plan. There are so many practical, safer choices that can result in a happy, fulfilling career.

But dreams have a way of resurfacing, no matter how deep you try to bury them. So here’s what I would tell my own kids if they felt Hollywood was their calling.

Learn how all the different parts of Hollywood come together and figure out which jobs best suit your skills.

Many people, when they imagine working in Hollywood, think of only the most high-profile jobs: actor, writer, director and producer. But Hollywood is made of hundreds, if not thousands, of careers, from pre-production, production and post-production, to representation (publicists, agents and managers), design and more.

Some questions you can ask yourself: Do I like being in front of the camera or do I prefer being behind it? Do I want to be on set or would I prefer a desk job? Do I want a leadership role or do I prefer going deep into the day-to-day details? This can help you determine which path you should pursue.

Consider whether this is something you’d do even if no one paid you to do it.

Many Hollywood professionals will tell you not to take unpaid gigs, as it devalues your work and the industry itself. But that’s different from the time and effort you’ll have to devote to becoming extremely reliable at your craft — as well as the work you’ll do to convince people to give you the job (filming auditions, developing pitch decks, building portfolios and creating demo reels).

People across the industry consistently told us it often takes five to seven years before you earn a living wage. You not only have to keep wanting to do it for that long, with no guarantees of success, but you have to see it as an investment in yourself as an artist.

Anchor yourself with two essentials: money and community.

People who come into the industry with wealth and connections will have an advantage. But if you don’t know anyone in the industry, be diligent about saving and investing the money that you’re making from your day job or side gigs.

Prioritize networking by joining or creating your own communities. Networking isn’t just about attending intimidating Hollywood events — it can also mean going to film festivals, taking classes, joining a gym, engaging with your favorite social media influencers, collaborating on passion projects, joining Facebook groups or finding other whisper networks.

Make friends inside of the industry who are going through the same struggles so you can lift each other up. But also make friends outside of the industry who will remind you that there is life outside of Hollywood.

Figure out how you’re going to distinguish yourself.

Hollywood is an extremely competitive industry. The harsh reality is that most people are replaceable. So why would a producer or showrunner hire you over someone else? What unique skills or viewpoints could you bring to a project? Figure this out; it will be your advantage and calling card.

And once you pinpoint what sets you apart, create your own work (whether it’s sketches, designs, animations, TikTok videos or web series) and put what you’re proud of online. You’ll need to get very comfortable with self-promotion. Make sure that you’re on people’s minds if a job opens up that you’d be perfect for.

Learn AI tools.

If I were talking to a current working professional about AI, we would discuss its ethical and legal implications and what unions can do to protect worker rights and fight for fair compensation.

But if I were talking to a young person starting their career, I’d say, embrace the technology and figure out how it can make you more — not less — creative.

Know that it’s good to take breaks from Hollywood — and OK to leave.

Hollywood veterans will tell you that they’ve seen the industry rise and fall, again and again. Each time there’s an upturn, it feels like it won’t last. And each time there’s a downturn, it feels like it might be the end.

If Hollywood is your calling, you owe it to yourself to try, but if your experience in the industry starts to resemble a destructive relationship, you owe it to yourself to take some space or call it quits.

But for as long as you’re out there hustling, have fun on the roller coaster and appreciate every moment you get paid to do what you love.

A few years ago, Jaleel White got really into game shows.

The actor, most widely known for his role as the nerdy, suspenders-pulling neighbor Steve Urkel on “Family Matters,” began appearing as a celebrity guest on shows like “25 Words or Less,” Anthony Anderson’s “To Tell the Truth” and “Pictionary” with Jerry O’Connell.

“I just enjoyed winning the money for the people,” White says. “It’s strangely equally gratifying.”

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.

Soon, his longtime producer friend asked if he wanted to host a game show. He did. “Flip Side” is a survey-based competition in which two teamstry to determine how the majority of a crowd voted on various this-or-that questions for a chance to win $10,000. Its second season aired earlier this month.

White says that, in a way, hosting the show feels similar to being on a sitcom.

“When I did sitcom, I really felt the audience,” White says. “I really felt where the audience wanted to go emotionally in our storytelling, and I would play with it. I would consciously hear them and be like, ‘Milk that or dial that down.‘” He adds that he thrives off that “symbiotic” interaction, which is similar to engaging with contestants.

White is also developing a TV show based on his memoir, “Growing Up Urkel,” which was released last year.
While the Pasadena native’s Sundays during the NFL season are typically dedicated to Chargers games, he takes us along on his ideal day in L.A., which involves eating fluffy pancakes after church, checking out a show or game at the immersive venue Cosm and playing footgolf.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

9:30 a.m.: Sleep in, then head to church
If I’m not shooting “Flip Side,” so man, I might not get up before 9:30 a.m. I typically stay up late. I’m just a late-night person by nature. My mom said that she would stay up late a lot while she was pregnant with me, eating Mexican food, so I think biologically that turned me into a night owl, and I really appreciate great Mexican food [laughs]. If I’m on my game, I like to go to Oasis church on Wilshire. Shout to Pastor Julian. I think he’s one of the most underrated spiritual voices in the city, and he’s a pastor who wears Js, so that’s just kind of cool in itself to get the word like that.

Noon: Time for pancakes
If you want to have the best pancakes in the city after you go to church, [go to] Redbird, which is near downtown L.A. Their pancakes are crazy with the char on the edges. Not everybody makes them like that. I also like Takagi Coffee on West Third Street. It’s a Japanese cafe and they have soufflé pancakes. Those are my two favorite pancake spots to hit after church. We get screwed in the cost of living in L.A., but the cultural exchange that we experience daily is so taken for granted. In L.A., I just gave you an all-American spot and a Japanese coffeehouse after leaving a very diverse church.

2 p.m.: Experience a game or a show at Cosm
I rarely get to the movies these days and I feel terrible. I want to try to be like Kevin Bacon and encourage people to go to the movies and experience communal entertainment again. But one of my favorite places is Cosm in Inglewood. They are revolutionizing the sports bar business model. You can catch Cirque du Soleil with your family. You can catch a game. It’s just a big screen. It’s an experience that actually puts you on the field, so you feel like you’re actually at the game. Sometimes they get wild and they start shooting T-shirts with the T-shirt gun into the stadium seats.

5 p.m. Play footgolf
But if you’re on a budget, a really fun thing to do actually is to play footgolf. One of the best footgolf courses is at Rancho Park. It’s literally golf with your feet, a soccer ball and an oversized hole. We’ll go out there, smoke some purple, grab some snacks and just be out there like kids, betting on each hole [laughs]. That’s the adult way of doing it, but you can also do it with the kids. You can hit up a good taco truck beforehand. I think Mariscos Jalisco is my favorite taco truck. They make a crunchy shrimp taco that is just ridiculous.

8 p.m.: Order in from Goop
At this point, we’re kind of scrounging for dinner. I got to admit it, Gwyneth Paltrow be killing it with the Goop [Kitchen] order in. ’Cause I’ve eaten junk all day, so now I gotta start cleaning it up. Get yourself a salad from Goop, and really at this point, I’m probably on my couch trying to catch up on some binge TV with the lady and prepare for Monday.

11:30 p.m.: Binge TV until bed
On a Sunday, I can probably do a little bit better, somewhere around 11:30 p.m. or midnight. I’m going to get my series binge on, and we have to watch the highlights from the games that we just attended. I recently finished up “Forever” on Netflix and “Wednesday” is back. I’m such a kid. I love Tim Burton. I’m all over the place in my film and TV appreciation. People would be really shocked by what I enjoy.

“Is football a game or a religion?” the sports broadcaster Howard Cosell once asked with exasperation. The horror film “Him,” a striking but vacuous gridiron Grand Guignol by Justin Tipping (“Kicks”) takes it as faith that the answer is both. Any fan with a sacred good luck ritual and any player who’s thanked the man upstairs for a touchdown knows the two overlap as tightly as a freshly laced pigskin.

In the home of young elementary schooler Cameron Cade (Austin Pulliam), the fictional San Antonio Saviors quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is the messiah. Next to the TV, there’s even a shrine with devotional portraits of their icon. When White wins a game while suffering a nasty injury, Cameron’s father seizes the moment to deliver a sermon: “That’s what real men do,” he insists. “They make sacrifices.” The candles on the altar flicker ominously.

Tipping, working from a Blacklist script by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers with Jordan Peele as his producer, considers the sports-as-religion idea so obvious that the film doesn’t bother analyzing why it exists. Instead, “Him” wonders what kind of spiritual practice it is: hero worship or a sinister cult?

Fourteen years later, Cameron (now played by Tyriq Withers) has grown up to become a star college quarterback in line to be the NFL’s top draft pick and take over Isaiah’s position on the Saviors. A violent concussion knocks him off course, but Isaiah, a living legend still leading the team, offers to vouch for the kid if he passes a private training camp at his intimidating desert estate. It couldn’t be more obvious that Isaiah doesn’t have Cameron’s best interests at heart if he blared a warning on the Jumbotron.

The film’s title comes from a bit of braggadocio — “I’m him” — that started sprouting up in sports leagues during the last five years. (It’s why you’ll sometimes see Lakers shooting guard Austin Reaves called “AustHIM” Reaves.) Anointing someone the GOAT, as in “Greatest of All Time,” has been around longer, but the silly thing about both compliments is they’re getting handed out like Halloween candy. Whether Cameron can become the next GOAT is the movie’s main obsession. Yet it resonates, albeit vague and unexplored, with biblical references to goat offerings and images of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb and the movie’s visual allusions to the goat-headed occult idol Baphomet. Plus, it offers us in the audience the thrill of wondering if someone will get spit-roasted.

Cameron enters Isaiah’s home to discover his host surrounded by what looks like taxidermy sheep skins. Nearly all of the film takes place in his compound, a circular warren that looks like a combination of an ancient temple and the Superdome. We’re continually happy to discover all the menacing delights that production designer Jordan Ferrer has concocted. Inside, there’s unnerving minimalist furniture, dramatic saunas and ice baths and an indoor football field with a throwing machine powerful enough to knock out a tooth. Even more terrifying, there’s Isaiah’s lifestyle-influencer wife, Elsie (Julia Fox), who stomps around with a pointy shard of jade that Cameron is supposed to stick up his rear. (You know, for peak performance.) Meanwhile, outside the gates, Isaiah’s cult followers — like visibly brain-fried Marjorie (Naomi Grossman) — are furious that their champion may retire.

Like “Kicks,” Tipping’s excellent 2016 feature debut about a kid who risks his neck for a pair of Nikes, “Him” is about the bloody quest for respect. It wants to be “The Substance” with jockstraps: a Satanic-tinged, steroidal “Rosemary’s Baby.” The film is so stylishly done that I could accept it on those plain terms. Every shot is a stunner, from stark images of eerily spinning footballs to goalposts that loom like devil’s horns. Editor Taylor Joy Mason and cinematographer Kira Kelly have put together queasy-brilliant montages with some kind of an eye-popping camera technique — a mix of thermal imaging, X-ray footage and visual effects — that seems to see right inside the actors’ bodies to their gristle and goo. Bobby Krlic (a.k.a. the Haxan Cloak), who also composed the music for “Midsommar,” wows us with a tragic, thundering score.

But the movie’s thoughts about pain and devotion and locker-room manipulation are still gestating. After I made it to the end of the story and ran it back, little of the plot hung together. I couldn’t with any conviction answer rudimentary questions such as how much does Cameron even want to play football? Or what in Hades will happen to the surviving characters?

Part of the issue is that Tipping and Withers have created a rising football player who might be too authentic. Withers moves with physical confidence and perfect posture and drilled obedience. Participating in a mock media training day, you buy that he was born to sell sneakers.

He speaks with an athlete’s guardedness, too, that post-game interview cadence where each wooden sentence tries to bore the camera into leaving them alone. Cameron describes his football career clinically and neutrally like he’s a product; he refers to himself “performing,” not “playing,” as the latter would imply he’s on the field to have fun.

Surrounded by trainers and doctors and his childhood hero, he acquiesces to pretty much everything, from receiving random injections to a brutal bludgeoning. (At least he doesn’t do you-know-what with that jade crystal.) I’m willing to blame some of that passivity on his head injury, but it’s hard to care about a character who only has a personality for three minutes.

At least Wayans gets to cut loose. His bullying Isaiah sprints from pep talks to threats in the same breath and runs around in nifty outfits covered in weighted beads. He’s in such peak physical condition that you believe Isaiah’s conviction that it’s possible to outrace Father Time. Realizing afterward that Wayans is 53 — almost a decade older than Tom Brady when he retired after announcers even more bold than Cosell treated him like Methuselah — you just might be tempted to bow down to Baphomet yourself.

In the beginning, it was 1981 and bassist Nikki Sixx left London, the glam metal band he’d formed in Hollywood three years earlier, to start a new project with drummer Tommy Lee. Then, they pulled in guitarist Mick Mars, who responded to the duo’s classified ad for a “loud, rude, and aggressive guitar player,” and eventually persuaded singer Vince Neil, a former classmate of Lee’s, to leave his band Rock Candy for Mötley Crüe.

From its start with 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love,” Mötley Crüe lived up to its mismatched epithet, from its diabolical breakout “Shout at the Devil” in 1983 to the late ‘80s with its most commercially successful release, “Dr. Feelgood.”

Addictions, near-death experiences, hiatuses, departures and reunions — Mötley Crüe survived them all. Each step on its musical journey is commemorated on “From the Beginning,” an album that includes the band’s first single “Live Wire” through its most recent track, “Dogs of War,” released 43 years later. The band also revived a Mötley Crüe classic with a newly recorded version of its “Theatre of Pain” ballad “Home Sweet Home,” featuring Dolly Parton, which reentered the charts in 2025 at No. 1, 40 years after the original recording’s release.

“Mötley Crüe and Dolly Parton together is the ultimate clickbait,” says Sixx, with a laugh. He previously played bass on the country legend’s 2023 “Rockstar” album. “I guess it’s part of that wow factor that has been part of the Mötley Crüe fabric for a long time.”

Proceeds from the new recording of “Home Sweet Home” benefit Covenant House, the nonprofit with which the band has partnered for nearly 20 years through its Mötley Crüe Giveback Initiative. Sixx first worked with Covenant House around the publication of his 2007 memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” and helped develop a music program at the Hollywood center. In October 2024, the band also played a series of intimate club shows, dubbed Höllywood Takeöver, at the Troubadour, the Roxy and Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which helped raise $350,000 for the organization.

“These kids are everything,” says Sixx. “These kids are the future. They might end up changing the world. What if one of these kids can cure cancer and they just didn’t have a shot?”

Playing those smaller shows in 2024, which also included the Underworld in Camden, London, and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, is the bare-bones sound, much like rehearsals, that Sixx has always loved.

“One of my favorite parts about being in a band is rehearsal,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. It’s raw, just bass, drums, guitar, and vocals off the floor. Then, you add all the bells and whistles as you go along. When we can do things like that, it just reminds me who we are.”

It’s also part of what keeps Lee excited at this stage of the band’s career, which includes its third residency in Las Vegas in 13 years, which kicked off last week and runs through Oct. 3 at the Dolby Live at Park MGM. (A portion of the ticket proceeds from the 10-show residency will benefit the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.)

“I’ve been married to Nikki and Vince for over 44 years,” says Lee. “Like with any marriage, you gotta create ways to make it exciting, to keep it fun, or else you find yourselves at the breakfast table, with your face in the paper saying ‘Pass the butter.’ So Vegas in Dolby Atmos, new music, club shows, crazy videos, Dolly — we’ve always been trying different stuff to make the audience and us go ‘Oh, f— yeah.”

For Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas has nearly become a second home since the band’s first residency at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2012 and its “An Intimate Evening in Hell” a year later.

“We’ve got this great body of work that you don’t really realize until you get this far,” says Sixx. “But now, we’re in one of those interesting places where, if we don’t play the hits, we get
s—, and if we do play the hits, we get s—.”

“From the Beginning” is Mötley Crüe’s new compilation album.

(Chris Walter)

Some deeper Crüe cuts worth inclusion in the set include “Stick to Your Guns,” a non-single on “Too Fast for Love,” and a song that the Runaways’ ex-manager, producer Kim Fowley, asked a then-teenaged Sixx to write for Blondie in 1979.

“I was 17 years old, and we recorded that song, and because no record company would sign us, we started our own label and got a distribution deal,” Sixx recalls. “When we finally joint-ventured up with Elektra Records in ’82, they said we needed to take a song off since it made the vinyl sound thinner, so ‘Stick to Your Guns’ got cut, but I’ve always loved that song.”

Sixx recently revealed that Guns N’ Roses once considered covering the early Crüe track.

”Now I get people saying, ‘We want to hear, “Stick to Your Guns,” ’ “ says Sixx, laughing. “There’s like eight people that know that song. That’s a good way to shut down an arena.”

For Lee, there’s something more paternal around the band’s lengthy catalog.

“I know every artist says it, but our songs are like our kids,” he says. “And over the years, they grow up and they develop [their] own personalities and character. Some stay pretty close to home, settle down, and start their own family. Others go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday with no shoes and a shaved head, but we love them all the same.”

With every song, Lee says, the band members understand each other more. “We know how to push each other a little further, and hopefully get the greatest out of each other.”

While there’s always room to make new music, Sixx, who has been the band’s chief songwriter since its inception, prefers the pace of releasing singles.

“It’s just a different landscape now,” he says, “so to create one or two ideas, or co-write three is manageable, and it’s also digestible for the fans.”

So many things have changed, and he is also aware of some misconceptions about the band. “The music is Mötley Crüe — Mötley Crüe is not ‘The Dirt,’ ” says Sixx, citing the 2019 film based on the band’s 2001 tell-all memoir. “People have it confused because we were so honest and it became such a part of the fabric of us that they forget about the riff on ‘Kick Start My Heart’ and just remember the hotel that we tried to burn down in Ontario.”

Another misconception, Sixx says, is the band’s split with Mars in 2022. After issuing a statement that Mars had retired from touring due to his ongoing battle with ankylosing spondylitis, the guitarist sued Mötley Crüe in April 2023, alleging that he was forced out of the band and that his bandmates attempted to cut his 25% ownership stake. Guitarist John 5 — who has filled in on lead guitar duties since October 2022, prior to the lawsuit — continues to tour with the band.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” recalls Sixx. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

Although there was no final settlement in court between Mars and the band, a Los Angeles judge ruled in 2024 that the band failed to provide documents to Mars in a timely manner and was ordered to pay his legal fees, Loudwire reported. The underlying dispute regarding the band’s business and Mars’ potential ousting went into private arbitration.
The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mars. The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mick.

Mars’ claims around the band’s use of backing tracks were another point of contention and something Sixx has continued defending. He says the band started playing around with audio enhancements in 1985 and cites the “Girls Girls Girls” track “Wild Side” as a “perfect example” with its sequenced guitar parts. “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mars, who is currently working on his second solo album, was contacted by The Times but declined to comment for the story.

Sixx calls Mars’ accusations a “crazy betrayal” to his legacy and to the fans. “Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” adds Sixx. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Another battle the band has found itself in involves Neil’s health problems and the criticism he’s faced following recent performances. Originally scheduled to perform in March and April, Mötley Crüe postponed its Las Vegas shows so the lead singer could undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx says.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

Back in Las Vegas, Lee has looked forward to connecting with fans again, even if those in their teens and 20s were turned on to the band via “The Dirt.”

“Our goal is the same for all: to give them an incredible show,” he says, “to leave it all on the stage.”

Now, more than 40 years into Mötley Crüe, it may have been a patchwork journey of emotions for Sixx, but he wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

“We believe in this band,” he says. “It’s been 44 years. We’ve been in the band longer than we weren’t in the band. We’ve seen everything — everything. I guess that’s why it was a movie.”

This column is the latest in a series on parenting children in the final years of high school, “Emptying the Nest.” Read the last installment, “A Mother’s Plea to Trump.”

My third and youngest child went off to college a week ago, and for the first time in 27 years, my husband and I are living in a house with no kids. It’s a strange and silent place, in which all the beds are neatly made, the floors around them no longer mulched with clothing, charge cords and snack wrappers. There are no discarded once-frozen coffee drinks sweating rings onto wooden tables; no empty Styrofoam takeout containers littering kitchen counters mere inches away from the trash can.

One can walk freely across the family room now, with no fear of tripping over abandoned shoes, balled-up socks or peanut-butter-smeared dishes, and the days remain unpierced by the maddening repetition of overheard TikTok memes and the escalating cries of “mom, Mom, MOM” to indicate an impending celebration or crisis.

My daughter very kindly left me a hamper full of dirty clothes upon her departure and a closet that was essentially an archaeological site of the months’ (years’?) worth of her particular method of tidying her room. My discovery therein of the perfume (in a plastic bag that also included her crumpled prom dress) she had been desperately searching for as she packed for college was sweet but short-lived. Yes, I did tell her to look in her closet and, yes, she did roll her eyes and swear that she did, but it doesn’t matter now.

She is gone, the last of the children who have been the light of so much of my adult life, and I miss her truly, madly, deeply. The sight of her luminous smile and her “nothing’s wrong” grimace; the smell of her floral shampoo and funky basketball shoes; the sound of her singing in the shower and yelling at the dogs to get off her bed.

Those dogs, I hasten to note, are doing the best they can to bridge the void. Sensing that a workday no longer interrupted by my daughter’s frantic search for her jersey/wallet/shoes is no workday at all, Harley has been nudging his toys under my sofa or chair and then whining for me to “find” them while Koda has taken on teenage-affection duty — randomly hurling himself onto my lap for attention only to pull away and vanish once I put my laptop aside and attempt to cuddle.

Still I am bereft and unmoored. The mad scramble to prepare and pack for college is finally over and in its place is … nothing. Well, there is my job, of course. But after 27 years of (often imperfectly) balancing work and motherhood, I feel like a professional juggler who is left with a single ball. For the first time in a very long time, I am the sole proprietor of my day, responsible only for myself.

Already I can see this is going to be a problem.

Not only do I miss my daughter for her own sweet, occasionally maddening self, I miss the structure she, and her siblings, imposed on my life. The school schedule, the after-school schedule, the weekend sports schedule. The doctor’s appointments, the dentist appointments, the haircuts and meal making, the playdates and sleepovers and trips to the playground/zoo/theme park/museum. The bedtimes, the dinner times, homework; the unexpected accommodations for illness, injury and very bad days. Parenthood is many things, but while your children are actual children, it is the clock and calendar.

Which are also now gone. I am still a working mother, but the “mother” part suddenly requires much less work. With juggling no longer required, my job should be so much easier. And yet it’s not. Facing a different sort of day, I find myself struggling to reset. And so I have created a list of Empty Nest/Labor Day resolutions. (And if they sound suspiciously like the advice I’ve given my kids over the years, well, I guess I am mothering myself.)

1. Popcorn and frozen yogurt are not dinner. After three decades of shopping for and preparing reasonably healthy evening meals, I confess I was looking forward to taking a break. But my post-college drop-off “dinner” is clearly not the answer. Eat some fruit and veggies, for heaven’s sake.
2. Put down the phone. Checking for texts or haunting my child’s Instagram is just sad, and perusing Facebook for friends also dropping kids off at college has thus far only led me to endless video feeds. Sure, watching border collies at work and the outtakes from “This Is 40” is great fun, but is it worth an hour of my one and only life? No.
3. Keep setting the alarm. I may no longer need to be up and dressed in time to take or see my kid off to school, but that alarm has been starting my day for five decades now.
4. Get up, stretch and walk around. Despite having a desk job, I never paid much attention to all those pesky ergonomics instructions. I had kids who regularly demanded that I interrupt my work to get up and do something else (which often required actual running). Now I don’t. So it’s up to me.

5. Go outside at least a few times a day. Even with the playground days in the distant past, it is amazing how often your teenage children require your presence outside — if only to walk across the Target parking lot for the third time in a week or examine the dent “someone” put in your car. Find a way to touch grass that doesn’t involve picking up dog poop.

6. Keep up with the calendar. I was certain that, without the presence of so many child-related appointments/events, I could keep track of my husband’s and my schedules in my head. Three missed appointments later, that’s a hard nope.
7. Plan things for the weekends. For years, our weekends were dominated by sports events. More recently, as the empty nest loomed, my husband and I kept them clear on the off chance that our daughter might want to do something with us. Now we are free to do those weekend things we enjoyed as a couple — and I’m sure we’ll remember what they were in time.

8. Carry tissues. I did not cry when I drove away from my daughter at her New York college — I was frankly too tired from the move-in and too worried about the traffic around JFK airport. But when I made my first trip to Ralphs a few days later and saw her favorite potato chips, I burst into tears. Right in the snack aisle.
9. Bite back the wistful advice. When I was deep in the maelstrom of life with young kids, nothing pushed me closer to the edge of insanity than some older mom telling me to “treasure these moments” because “time moves so fast.” “Not fast enough,” I would think grimly as I balanced a crying baby with an exploding diaper and a whiny toddler with an exploding juice box. Now I am that older mom who can’t believe how quickly time passed. But I’ll try to keep it to myself.
10. Be patient. When the last child goes, it’s as big a life change as when the first child arrives (albeit with less spit-up and more sleep). Everything is different and it will take time to adjust. And just when I get used to my calm, quiet house, my daughter will be home for the holidays, leaving shoes and trash and dirty clothes all over the place. No doubt it will drive me nuts. At the moment, I cannot wait.

E.C. Robinson turned 80 earlier this month. He was head coach at Locke High when Darian Hagen and Sirr Parker were standout City Section football players in the 1980s and 1990s. Then he went to coach at University.

Now one of his sons, Bryan, is head coach at University, with another son, Jason, the offensive coordinator, and he’s serving as a proud “consultant.”

Together, they’re trying to resurrect a University program that was down to less than 25 players three years ago. The roster has increased to more than 70, with the return of a junior varsity team, and the Robinsons are committed to “restoring pride” in the program.

University coach Bryan Robinson (left) and brother Jason Robinson, an assistant, with their father, 80-year-old EC Robinson, a former Locke and University coach.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

It’s a true Los Angeles story, with Bryan calling it “about homecoming, mentorship and generational impact.”

Like his father, Bryan became a teacher. He has been making frequent visits to Emerson Middle School, the feeder school for University, trying to convince students to come out for football.

When he was playing some 20 years ago, most of his classmates started in youth football. These days he must teach from scratch, showing kids how to put on shoulder pads, block and tackle.

“It’s not a lot of guys who’ve played,” he said. “It’s fun but also challenging. I get to instill all our football knowledge while they are raw.”

Bruce Davis, a former UCLA All-American linebacker who went on to win the Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers, is also on the coaching staff.

“My brother, coach Davis and I are big on development,” Bryan said. “We’re not just herding them out there. We’re really spending time fine-tuning these athletes, really developing them so they can compete on a higher level.

University quarterback Jeremy Pacheco (left) and defensive back Tareq Abdul.

(Eric Sondheimer / Los Angeles Times)

The team won its opening game against Lincoln 21-19, with junior Tareq Abdul making two interceptions and sophomore linebacker D’Elliott Jones contributing 12 tackles. Quarterback Jeremy Pacheco returned from a knee injury in 2024 to throw a touchdown pass.

This past week, University improved to 2-0 with a 19-8 win over Fremont. Abdul had another interception, returning it for a touchdown.

EC Robinson said the game has changed since the 1980s, when the focus was on running the football. Now passing is prominent, even in youth football.

He largely stays in the background, observing and offering advice when needed.

“I did a lot when they first got the job a couple years ago,” he said. “I wanted to make sure they were doing the right things with the kids. Paperwork is a big issue, making sure the kids are cleared. During the game, I monitor when you call a timeout. I’m trying to make sure they learn practice structure.”

It’s pretty fun when your father is serving as a mentor and is close by to answer questions about a game he has taught for decades.

As Bryan said, “We’re not just building a team — we’re restoring pride in a program with deep roots in Los Angeles football history.”

Want to get Generation Alpha into movie theaters? Look to video games.

Kids still like to go to the movies, according to a high-profile new research report. But the franchises they care about are not the traditional Hollywood popcorn fare.

Seven of the top 10 entertainment franchises that the youngest generation of moviegoers cares about are video game properties, according to a recent study by National Research Group (NRG).

The top five titles that Gen Alpha kids, generally considered to be those ages 12 and under, say they talk most about were Roblox, “Minecraft,” “Fortnite,” “Grand Theft Auto” and “Pokémon,” all of which originated from the world of video games. The highest-ranked non-video game property was Marvel and Walt Disney Co.’s “The Avengers,” at No. 6.

Studios have started to catch on. Spring’s “A Minecraft Movie,” based on the popular game where users build and explore different worlds, was such a huge success. The film, adapted by Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment for the big screen, grossed $955 million at the global box office, according to Comscore. Young fans packed the theater, cheering during scenes important to gamers.

“Gaming is a deeply important part of Gen Alpha culture because it provides an essential venue for socialization,” said Fergus Navaratnam-Blair, NRG’s vice president of trends and futures. “Social gaming platforms like Roblox and Fortnite give them the opportunity to spend time with their friends, build communities, and develop a sense of their own identity.”

That could present a shift in the way theaters and studios cater to Gen Alpha, a key demographic born 2013 onward, to their future survival. Compared with millennials and Gen X, a higher percentage of Gen Alpha members (38%) said they would see a movie in a theater instead of waiting for it to come to a streaming service if their friends were talking about it, NRG said.

Nearly 60% of Gen Alpha members said they enjoy watching movies in theaters more than at home, according to NRG, which surveyed more than 6,000 U.S. moviegoers in May and June of this year. The majority of kids surveyed ages 6-to-12 said the reason why they go to the theater is to spend time with friends and family and “to make seeing the movie feel like a special event,” according to NRG.

“We are seeing the signs within this demographic that they do really value the experience of watching movies in theaters,” Navaratnam-Blair said. “The fact that they have grown up surrounded by phones, tablets, other sorts of devices, if anything, that seems to have made them more appreciative of the opportunities that they do get to switch up from all of that.”

Stories that resonate with Gen Alpha can come from franchises they are already familiar with, like “Minecraft,” or ones such as “Wicked” that inspire them to create fan fiction or show off their fandom by dressing up like the characters, he said.

Already, studios are marketing their films to reach younger consumers on platforms they frequent including Roblox and TikTok.

Movie theaters can help cater to Gen Alpha by making the viewing an experience, such as selling food that is matched to what characters are eating on screen, Navaratnam-Blair said.

Younger audiences also can still be attracted to seeing a movie in a theater if it’s a special event that happens after the title has started streaming. For example, many people attended sing-along showings of the popular animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” in theaters even after streaming it first on Netflix. The sing-along version of the film was the No. 1 movie domestically during the weekend it was briefly in theaters, with an estimated $18 million in ticket sales.

“This is a generation that does offer hope for the future of theatrical moviegoing,” Navaratnam-Blair said. “We just need to understand what it is they’re looking for, that experience, and play into it in a way that gives them what they’re looking for out of that.”

WASHINGTON — Public schools reopened Monday in the nation’s tense capital with parents on edge over the presence in their midst of thousands of National Guard troops — some now armed — and large scatterings of federal law enforcement officers carrying out President Trump’s orders to make the District of Columbia a safer place.

Even as Trump started talking about other cities and again touted a drop in crime that he attributed to his extraordinary effort to take over policing in Washington, D.C., the district’s mayor was lamenting the effect of Trump’s actions on children.

“Parents are anxious. We’ve heard from a lot of them,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a news conference, noting that some might keep their children out of school because of immigration concerns.

“Any attempt to target children is heartless, is mean, is uncalled for and it only hurts us,” she said. “I would just call for everybody to leave our kids alone.”

Rumors of police activity abound

As schools opened across the capital city, parental social media groups and listservs were buzzing with reports and rumors of checkpoints and arrests.

The week began with some patrolling National Guard units now carrying firearms. The change stemmed from a directive issued late last week by his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Armed National Guard troops from Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee were seen around the city Monday. But not every patrol appears to be carrying weapons. An Associated Press photographer said the roughly 30 troops he saw on the National Mall on Monday morning were unarmed.

Armed Guard members in Washington will be operating under long-standing rules for the use of military force inside the U.S., the military task force overseeing all the troops deployed to D.C. said Monday. Those rules, broadly, say that while troops can use force, they should do so only “in response to an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm” and “only as a last resort.”

The task force has directed questions on why the change was necessary to Hegseth’s office. Those officials have declined to answer those questions. Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, Hegseth said that it was common sense to arm them because it meant they were “capable of defending themselves and others.”

Among their duties is picking up trash, the task force said, though it’s unclear how much time they will spend doing that.

Bowser reiterated her opposition to the National Guard’s presence. “I don’t believe that troops should be policing American cities,” she said.

Trump is considering expanding the deployments to other Democratic-led cities, including Baltimore, Chicago and New York, saying the situations in those cities require federal action. In Washington, his administration says more than 1,000 people have been arrested since Aug. 7, including 86 on Sunday.

“We took hundreds of guns away from young kids, who were throwing them around like it was candy. We apprehended scores of illegal aliens. We seized dozens of illegal firearms. There have been zero murders,” Trump said Monday.

Some other cities bristle at the possibility of military on the streets

The possibility of the military patrolling streets of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, prompted immediate backlash, confusion and a trail of sarcastic social media posts.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a first-term Democrat, has called it unconstitutional and threatened legal action. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker deemed it a distraction and unnecessary as crime rates in Chicago are down, as they are nationwide.

Pritzker, often mentioned as a presidential contender, posted an Instagram video Monday of his 6 a.m. walk along a Lake Michigan path filled with runners and walkers.

“I don’t know who in Washington thinks that Chicago is some sort of hellhole, but you may need to look inward,” he said, mocking Trump’s term describing Washington.

Others raised questions about where patrols might go and what role they might play. By square mileage, Chicago is more than three times the size of Washington, and neighborhoods with historically high crime are spread far apart.

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who also worked for the New York Police Department, wondered what the National Guard would do in terms of fighting street violence. He said if there was clear communication, they could help with certain tasks, like perimeter patrol in high-crime neighborhoods, but only as part of a wider plan and in partnership with police.

National Guard troops were used in Chicago to help with the Democratic National Convention last summer and during the 2012 NATO Summit.

Overall, violent crime in Chicago dropped significantly in the first half of 2025, representing the steepest decline in over a decade, according to police data. Shootings and homicides were down more than 30% in the first half of the year compared with the same time last year, and total violent crime dropped by over 22%.

Still, some neighborhoods, including Austin on the city’s West Side, where the Rev. Ira Acree is a pastor, experience persistent high crime.

Acree said he’s received numerous calls from congregants upset about the possible deployment. He said if Trump was serious about crime prevention, he would boost funding for anti-violence initiatives.

“This is a joke,” Acree said. “This move is not about reducing violence. This is reckless leadership and political grandstanding. It’s no secret that our city is on the president’s hit list.”

In June, roughly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines were sent to Los Angeles to deal with protests over the administration’s immigration crackdown. California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other local elected officials objected.

Sherman, Khalil and Tareen write for the Associated Press. Tareen reported from Chicago. AP writers Konstantin Toropin and Will Weissert contributed to this report.

This is an unfamiliar playbook for Carson Palmer.

Sure, he has the NFL pedigree and the Heisman Trophy, and a staff of assistant coaches loaded with pro experience. But he’s the first-year coach at Santa Margarita Catholic High School, his alma mater, and stepping into an elite league of schools while studying not just game tape but reels of red tape.

“This is harder than I thought,” said Palmer, 45, sitting in his office above the practice field. “Year One is tough. The NFL is fast and responsive. Here, changing the playbook software takes an act of Congress. But I’m learning every day.”

Not that he’s complaining. He knew when he took the job eight months ago that his path would be littered with challenges and obstacles. Along with some satisfying successes.

The Heisman Trophy winner and former No. 1 overall pick has spent his adult life in that wafer-thin line at the top, the lofty latitude occupied by the best players in the game. Now, he’s getting back to basics.

“I enjoy seeing a kid make a mistake, then understand the why and fix it,” he said. “You don’t get that in the NFL. There, it’s just a job. Here, there’s joy in learning.”

The Eagles, ranked No. 7 in the Southland by The Times, open their season Friday against No. 6 Mission Viejo.

Said Palmer, engrossed in preparing the program for the last eight months: “It’s time.”

Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer watches over practice on Wednesday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

He will have his hands full in the Trinity League, easily among the most competitive leagues in the country and featuring football powerhouses such as Mater Dei and St. John Bosco.

Are those opposing coaches looking for their Carson Palmer pelt on the wall?

“It’s not about the coach,” Palmer said. “Programs where the coach is the focal point don’t work. It’s about the players 100% of the time. I can help them because I was taught by great minds, but I’m just passing it on.”

Santa Margarita has standouts in brothers Trent and Grant Mosely, both wideouts and Trent committed to play at USC. At quarterback is Trace Johnson, who played high school football in Florida before transferring to spend his senior season with Palmer. His father, Doug Johnson, is Santa Margarita’s quarterbacks coach and played the position in the NFL.

Cornerback Jayden Crowder is heading to California, safety Logan Hirou to UCLA. Dash Fifita, a first-team All-Trinity League linebacker last season and nephew of Santa Margarita’s defensive coordinator, is committed to Arizona, and fellow linebacker Leki Holani is going to Sacramento State.

Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer instructs his players during practice.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Palmer has several assistant coaches with NFL and/or major college football experience, among them running backs coach Mike Karney, a bruising fixture at fullback for the New Orleans Saints; receivers coach T.J. Houshmandzadeh, one of Palmer’s standout targets with the Cincinnati Bengals; offensive line coach Lenny Vandermade, among Palmer’s blockers at USC; defensive coordinator Steve Fifita, a standout at the University of Utah who later played in the NFL; and linebackers coach Rob Thomas, who was Pac-10 defensive player of the year as a UCLA linebacker and played eight NFL seasons with four teams.

“It’s been awesome,” Karney said. “Carson’s been running the program the way it should be run but putting his own twist on it, making it his own. From how we run practice to what we’re doing schematically, there’s a lot of carryover from the NFL.”

Palmer said it isn’t necessary to have a staff with so much playing experience, but it’s helpful.

“These guys know the importance of staff chemistry,” he said. “I’ve heard high school coaches say the hardest part isn’t the kids or the parents, it’s the adults and their egos. That’s why I was intentional about picking guys who get along. No one’s doing this for the money.”

Before accepting the job, Carson frequently consulted with Pete Carroll, his legendary coach at USC who is now leading the Las Vegas Raiders.

Carroll believes Palmer will be successful in this endeavor, but that it will take time.

Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer instructs a player during practice.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“He’s going to take his knocks, I’m sure,” Carroll said. “He’ll have first- and second-year issues like all the coaches do — just getting your act together and trying to figure yourself out.

“We went extensively into that when we got together — helping him understand some of the questions that will be raised: What am I standing for? How hard am I? How tough am I? How open am I? All of those kinds of things that come into coaching.

“He’s tough, he’s demanding, and he has high expectations for anybody that plays — just like he held himself to all those years. I think he’ll do a wonderful job. He has a great love for the school and the setting, and he was really excited about the opportunity to go back. He’ll put his best foot forward, but it’s a challenge now. He’s got good guys working with him, too, so that’ll all help out. He’s going to do just fine.”

Palmer said he frequently gets phone calls from Norm Chow, his offensive coordinator at USC, who delivers a simple and powerful message.

“He keeps calling me and saying, ‘Culture before Xs and O’s,’ then hanging up,” Palmer said. “That sticks with me. It doesn’t matter what you run. It’s, do they believe in it? Do they trust each other? Is there an environment for growth? We don’t haze. We respect each other.”

That meant showing some players the door.

“Some kids didn’t fit culturally with what I envisioned,” he said. “This is the Trinity League. It’s big-boy ball.”

Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer speaks to his players during practice on Wednesday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

And that also means coaching some sophisticated concepts, which he said his players are grasping to a surprising degree.

“I’m just giving them what I was given,” he said. “I use Bruce Arians’ short passing game, Norm Chow’s trick plays, the play-action stuff of [Steve] Sarkisian and [Lane] Kiffin.”

He borrowed, too, from Greg Knapp, the longtime NFL offensive coordinator who died in 2021 after a bicycle accident.

“Greg was a master installer,” said Palmer, who played for him in Oakland in 2012. “He’d give surprise quizzes in the meeting room to keep you awake. ‘What’s the capital of Nevada?’ I do that now. Meetings aren’t sit and stare. We’re on the move.”

How will that translate in terms of wins and losses? We’ll see. One of his old and beloved coaches is optimistic.

“The respect for him is automatic, right?” Chow said. “Just because of who he is. … When you’re coaching, you need to be able to run the room. With Carson, young people say, ‘OK, I’m going to listen.’”

Then, perhaps the highest praise.

“I’d absolutely want my kid to be coached by him,” Chow said. “Because of the human being that he is.”