PLANO, Texas — As it turned out, it would never be enough.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn tried for more than a year to show President Trump and Texas Republicans that he and the president were on the same team.
Cornyn posted a photo of himself reading Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” He proposed legislation to rename a stretch of interstate in Trump’s honor. Perhaps most glaringly, the Senate institutionalist who long supported the filibuster reversed his position in a failed effort to advance voting restrictions that are a priority for the president.
None of it worked. On Tuesday, Cornyn became the latest in a line of Republicans who lost their primaries after falling out of favor with a president with little tolerance for dissent and a seemingly insatiable appetite for retribution. The four-term senator lost by double digits to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who Trump endorsed last week as “a true MAGA Warrior.”
Cornyn, on the other hand, “was VERY disloyal to me,” Trump wrote on social media.
Trump’s intervention in the Texas runoff came after weeks of successfully backing primary challengers in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky as revenge against incumbents who broke with his agenda.
Cornyn’s attempt to avoid the same fate made even some of his supporters wince.
“You look at the positions he took to please the president and the groveling and whatever,” said former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, a Republican and Trump critic who didn’t seek reelection during the president’s first midterm in 2018. “It was rather painful to watch.”
Trump took an uncommonly equanimous approach to Tuesday’s results the following morning.
“Congratulations to Ken Paxton on such a tremendous win, and to John Cornyn for having run a strong and powerful race but, more importantly, having had a truly great career,” he wrote on social media. “John will remain my friend for a long time to come, as we both watch Ken become a fantastic, common sense Senator, one who is respected by all.”
Cornyn started early with ad touting pro-Trump voting record
Cornyn’s loss wasn’t for a lack of political gymnastics and astronomical campaign spending.
His campaign began running an advertisement last summer — part of an astounding nearly-$100-million air war by the senator and allied groups — with Cornyn looking into the camera and saying, “I voted with President Trump 99% of the time.”
On Cornyn’s campaign homepage, Trump and Cornyn stand side-by-side with thumbs pointed upward in an image aimed at projecting solidarity. Deeper in the website, the category titled “The Trump-Cornyn Record” notes the senator’s role securing votes for Trump’s signature 2017 tax cut bill.
Cornyn has also been championing provisions in Trump’s signature tax-and-spending legislation to finance work on the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
The senator had dismissed the project as “naive” during Trump’s 2016 campaign. But in January, he stood along a section of completed wall in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley touting the measure’s $11 billion for Texas contractors’ work at “the direction of the president of the United States, to whom I am very grateful.”
Cornyn’s 2023 dismissal of Trump’s return glares in background
Cornyn’s praise for his party’s leader and president were not unusual, but they clash with a statement Cornyn made in May 2023, when Trump was mounting his presidential comeback campaign.
“Trump’s time has passed him by,” he told reporters. “I don’t think President Trump understands that when you run in a general election, you have to appeal to voters beyond your base.”
Trump would go on to easily win the nomination and carry every battleground state in the general election.
Cornyn would hew closely to the president for the first 16 months of his second administration, hoping at the outside chance of his endorsement or to keeping him from weighing in at all.
But Trump did not forget the past slights.
“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” he wrote on social media while endorsing Paxton.
Smaller gestures, and one big one
Cornyn has playfully worked to promote Trump fandom, last year posting a picture on social media of himself thoughtfully peering into the pages of Trump’s 1987 memoir and business advice book, “The Art of the Deal.”
In a more obvious gesture, he proposed designating a section of a U.S. highway from the Texas Gulf Coast to Montana as “Interstate 47,” to honor a 47th president with a well-documented love of naming things after himself. In a news release about the proposal, filed just over two weeks before Tuesday’s runoff, Cornyn said it would be known as the “Trump Interstate.”
The more tectonic shift occurred in March, after Trump had teased a possible endorsement of either Cornyn or Paxton in the runoff.
Paxton swiftly said he would consider dropping his candidacy if the Republican-controlled Senate lifted the filibuster and passed the SAVE America Act, a series of voting restrictions that Trump has described as an essential part of his agenda.
The following week, Cornyn wrote an op-ed in the New York Post — Trump’s favorite hometown newspaper — backing away from his previous support of the filibuster. He vowed to “support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary” to get the bill “through the Senate and on the president’s desk for his signature.”
Flake watched with unease.
“I know John and his long-held positions on the filibuster and the Senate’s institutions,” he said. “No office is worth that.”
Beaumont and Bedayn write for the Associated Press. Bedayn reported from San Antonio. AP writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
Friends, motorists, fellow Americans: The road ahead is far from straight. But it will take us through eight states and dozens of small towns, past Muffler Men and Patel motels, beneath the bright lights of Tulsa and Tucumcari, up close to Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” and Angel Delgadillo’s barber chair.
In other words, it’s Route 66, an American artifact that turns 100 in November and seems to contain more curiosities and paradoxes than the Midwest has cornstalks.
To see all that up close and catch America’s Main Street making ready for its centennial summer, I drove the entire stretch — from Chicago to Albuquerque in one trip, then Albuquerque to Santa Monica in another, a combined 17 days on the road.
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Even before that first day of driving brought me to Springfield, Ill., I’d realized that more days would have been better. As traveler Leonidas Georgiou of Greece told me, “This is a lifetime journey.”
You quickly see that this 2,448-mile route is actually a medley of rural highways, small-town main streets, frontage roads and inescapable bits of Interstate 40. You roll from Midwest farmland to Southwest desert to the Pacific, rising and falling between sea level and 7,000 feet. The roadside signs and buildings, restored and ruined, cry out for more than a drive-by snap. And people are happy to see you, because Route 66 is what keeps some of these towns alive.
Beginning with your first miles — and a cup of coffee at Lou Mitchell’s diner in Chicago — you meet all sorts of travelers. A mother and daughter from New York. The California couple who just retired from the Air Force. The European cop who persuaded his mom to come along, then had her sleep in the car to save money. The “roadies,” many of them retired, who return every year. Some come for the scenery, some for the signage, some for the conversations.
Depending on whom you ask, this might be the most famous highway in the world. It is the inspiration for a short, happy song that’s lasted 80 years (Bobby Troup’s “[Get Your Kicks on] Route 66”) and a long, sad book that’s lasted 87 (John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”). Then again, if you were born in this century, you probably know the road’s story best from the 2006 Disney-Pixar movie “Cars.”
As the miles go by, you realize that Route 66 hasn’t been strictly American for a long time. Many Route 66 merchants and hoteliers say that most of their customers are travelers from abroad. Beyond that, many Route 66 entrepreneurs are from families that came to the U.S. in the last 50 years. I met a restaurateur from Lebanon, one motel owner from the Netherlands and four more motel owners, all named Patel, whose families arrived from India after 1965.
Route 66 west of Seligman, Ariz.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
“You never know what language or accent you’re going to hear,” says Rhys Martin, Tulsa, Okla.-based manager for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preserve Route 66 initiative. “You’ve got new business owners. You’ve got unique cuisine. You’ve got this cultural diversity. You’ve got the African American experience. It’s more complicated than just a trip back in time.”
And this year is especially complicated.
Hundreds of small businesses along the route have been investing in centennial upgrades and celebrations, including a 19-day national caravan that begins June 6 in Santa Monica. But 2025 was slow on 66, in part because many Canadian visitors stayed away after President Trump proposed taking over their country.
1.) Views of the Chicago skyline from Navy Pier. 2.) Millennium Park, Chicago.(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Now, on the brink of summer, soaring gasoline prices could keep many Americans home, and President Trump’s America-first rhetoric and nonresident fees might drive more international travelers elsewhere.
“We all worry about that,” says Terri Ryburn, owner of Ryburn Place Gifts & Gab in a 1930s gas station in Normal, Ill.
“We need new roadies,” says Anna Marie Gonzalez, co-owner of the Aztec Motel & Creative Space in Seligman, Ariz. “And the roadies need to be American this year.”
Now my rented Ford Escape SUV is rolling and my windshield is full of rural Illinois. Water towers, grain elevators, flags on barns. Black and white cows.
The skyline view from Chicago’s Navy Pier is half a day behind me, as are the crowds around the big silver bean in Millennium Park and the great American artworks in the Art Institute of Chicago (where “Nighthawks” hangs).
Experts say that about 85% of the old highway is still drivable. But some states post more signs than others. And everywhere, people steal signs.
Ah, but not these signs. One for a barn sale off Stripmine Road. A warning that Funks Grove has sold out of pure maple syrup. Somebody selling deer pee to hunters.
When I cross the state line, I face a billboard pitching “Uranus Fudge Factory, Missouri’s No. 2 Attraction.”
After I pass the exit comes the sequel message: “Uranus is behind you.”
The Wagon Wheel Motel stands along Route 66 in Cuba, Mo.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The Route 66 timeline starts in November 1926. That’s when state and federal transportation officials embraced the idea of connecting scores of cities and small towns with one long, paved road.
As I pull over for a barbecue dinner in tiny Cuba, Mo., the 90-year-old Wagon Wheel Motel pops up like a slideshow illustration of that time. The stone-walled motel looks unchanged in decades, but sleepy.
“Never closed,” says a sign in the window with a phone number. “If office locked we are close by.”
The Rockwood Motor Court in Springfield, Mo., is a window into the same era. Built in 1929, my $77 room is compact and the plumbing is delicate, but all the vintage vibes are present. Phyllis Ferguson, desk clerk, owner and “old building hugger,” is full of tips on roadside businesses and where to stay, because “I know these little tourist courts are getting fewer and farther between.”
Boots Court motel opened in 1939 to capitalize on Route 66 traffic in Carthage, Mo.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
In Carthage, Mo., at Boots Court, desk clerk Jason Shelfer shows me a splendidly restored 1939 room where Clark Gable slept and tells me he never appreciated the reach of Route 66 until now.
“When people from Brazil come to Carthage, Missouri,” Shelfer says, “something magical is happening.”
And there’s another side to this magic: 66 can also be invisible up close. Not just because of missing signs, but because it has aliases everywhere. It’s Jackson Boulevard in parts of Chicago, Garrison Avenue in Carthage and Main Street in Galena, Ks., where 18-year-old cashier Kassidy Kell welcomes me into Gearhead Curios.
“Before my job,” she confesses, “I had no idea what the thing was with Route 66.”
It was John Steinbeck who called 66 the Mother Road. But if the Mother Road has a father, it’s probably Cyrus Avery, a Tulsa businessman and big wheel on the Oklahoma Highway Commission in the 1920s. Avery, who now has his own plaza in Tulsa, campaigned for a Chicago-Los Angeles route through his hometown. Little did he know what was coming.
The Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza features a bronze sculpture called “East Meets West,” just off the now-closed Cyrus Avery Route 66 Memorial Bridge in Tulsa, Okla.
(Mike Simons / For The Times)
Within a decade, drought and Depression had forced legions of Dust Bowl migrants from Oklahoma and beyond on desperate journeys west, using Route 66.
A decade beyond that, the end of World War II in 1945 filled the road again, this time with happy travelers.
That postwar era is what many people now think of as a simpler time, and perhaps a better one. But segregation and “sundown towns” were still in place along much of the route. For travelers of color, a carefree road trip would have been impossible. And for many Native Americans, the roadside proliferation of cowboy/Indian caricatures would have been nothing to smile at.
But these were years that reshaped the look of Route 66. Hundreds of motels, shops and gas stations rose along the road, often designed in bold geometry and bright colors.
Mary Beth Babcock at her shop Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios in Tulsa, Okla. In the background is her giant, Stella Atom.
(Mike Simons / For The Times)
Flash forward now to Tulsa’s Meadow Gold District, a.k.a. “land of the giants.” In 2018, retailing veteran Mary Beth Babcock took over an old gas station, dubbed it Buck Atom’s Cosmic Curios on 66, and soon opened more shops nearby.
Then, to get attention and make drivers smile, she put up a few “muffler men” — roadside fiberglass giants. She started with Buck and Stella Atom, a space cowboy and cowgirl who loom over 11th Street, looking to the past and future.
“Americana!” says Babcock. “Road trip! Who wouldn’t want to do that?”
Near the east edge of the Texas panhandle stands the most elegant gas station you’ll ever see: the 1936 U-Drop Inn and Tower Station in Shamrock, which drips with Art Deco style. (No, you can’t get gas there. But you can eat at the cafe inside or charge your Tesla in back.)
In Groom, stopping for gas, I spy the largest cross I have ever seen — 190 feet high and 110 feet wide. Nearby, I glimpse a crooked water tower — built to attract tourists and billed as the Leaning Tower of Texas.
Sorry, Groom. I’m not stopping.
The fastidiously restored U-Drop Inn, a Streamline Moderne filling station and cafe in Shamrock, Texas, is one of the architectural standouts of Route 66. It doesn’t sell gas, though.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
I reach Amarillo just in time, grab paint cans and hustle out to the field where a line of 10 old Cadillacs stand half-buried. As the sun sets, they throw 50-foot shadows while the scent of spray paint fills the air.
This is Cadillac Ranch, an art installation from the 1970s where visitors are free to add their own paint, whatever they like. Mine says “Read Something.”
Next comes Tucumcari, N.M., one of the few places to sleep between Albuquerque and Amarillo. Because of that, it used to get thousands of road-trippers. They’d slowly roll down the main drag, choosing favorites from a riot of snappy names and caricatures lit in gleaming neon.
“They tell me it was like driving into a little Las Vegas,” says Gar Engman, owner of Tee Pee Curios.
But I-40 changed everything.
In 1956, President Eisenhower called for a better interstate highway system. By the mid-1960s, wider, faster interstates started opening, flanked by chain hotels and restaurants. After I-40 bypassed Tucumcari in 1981, and train service dropped off as well, Tucumcari crashed. Just about every town along 66 has a version of this story, especially in New Mexico and Arizona.
Visitors to the Cadillac Ranch art installation in Amarillo, Texas, are allowed to spray-paint the 10 Cadillacs half-buried in the ground there.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
So is Tucumcari a ghost town? Not exactly. Many buildings stand empty and the Apache Motel’s vintage sign rests flat in a parking lot like a fallen soldier. But several motels are clearly doing fine, as is Tee Pee Curios. At night you still see a great set of signs. Most dramatic is the Blue Swallow Motel with its bird in flight, cursive letters and promise of “100% refrigerated air” — maybe the most photographed sign on 66. But you can’t ignore Motel Safari, the Roadrunner Lodge and La Cita restaurant, which wears a red sombrero and serves a fine Frito pie.
In Newkirk, N.M., four turkeys cross the road, leaving me groping for a punch line.
In Santa Rosa, N.M., I tiptoe into the Blue Hole, an artesian well that’s always 62 degrees, then tiptoe out again.
Turkeys on Route 66, Newkirk, N.M.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
In Albuquerque, I roll past many blighted blocks on Central Avenue, then jog 65 miles northwest to sample the art and wealth of Santa Fe.
In the farmers market there, I give public poet William Curius $20 to pound out a Route 66 poem on his Royal typewriter. In 20 minutes, he comes up with a solid effort, but it’s nothing compared to his answer when I ask his age.
“I don’t identify with age. This is how you die. Counting each year.”
In Petrified Forest National Park — the only national park directly on the route — I hike among red rocks and howling wind.
By the time I reach Williams, Ariz., several people have told me that the European travelers know more about Route 66 than the Americans do. So when I see four guys from Greece on the sidewalk, I try that idea on them. Alex Andros, age 30, nods immediately.
“If you come to Greece,” he says,”you probably know more Greek mythology than us. So that makes sense.”
Now we arrive at Seligman, Ariz. It’s tiny, with a population south of 800. But in the lore of Route 66, Seligman is big. Because of Angel Delgadillo.
By 1985, though the roadway was still mostly intact, Route 66 was officially obsolete, decommissioned as a federal highway. Starved for visitors, Seligman was dying. But Delgadillo, a barber with deep roots in the town, had an idea. He and his wife, Vilma, rallied business people from nearby towns to seek historic status for their stretch of Route 66. After they prevailed, they started a statewide organization and set a national movement in motion.
Angel & Vilma Delgadillo’s Original Route 66 Gift Shop on Route 66 through Seligman, Ariz. (Mark Lipczynski / For The Times)
Scenes from Route 66 in Williams, Ariz. (Mark Lipczynski / For The Times)
The Delgadillos’ business, now a gift shop, endures on Seligman’s main drag, as do Vilma and Angel, who celebrated his 99th birthday in April. Two daughters help run the shop, which includes an old barber chair where you can sit for a selfie.
The westernmost stretch of 66 in Arizona is a driver’s dream and a magnet for motorcycles. Those 158 miles make up the longest-surviving continuous stretch of Old 66, beginning just east of Seligman, veering away from the railroad tracks, cutting through Kingman, twisting and turning through Oatman and the Black Mountains, eventually rejoining I-40 at the state line.
Then it’s time to cross the Colorado River. Roar through Needles. Pause at the Roy’s sign in Amboy for dusk. Crash for the night in Barstow.
At San Bernardino’s Wigwam Motel, I wind up chatting with a mother-daughter duo of Canadian travelers.
“I was against coming down,” admits Sharon Prinz, 75, of British Columbia.
1.) The stretch of old Route 66 between Kingman and Topock in western Arizona is known as “Arizona Sidewinder” for its 191 turns, often without guardrails. The old mining town of Oatman, known for its roaming donkeys, is on the way. (Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)2.) The Magic Lamp Inn in Rancho Cucamonga. (David Fouts / For The Times)3.) Foothill Drive-In sign on the campus of Azusa Pacific University. (David Fouts / For The Times)
“It’s a timing thing,” says Wendy Prinz, 51, who talked her mom into coming. “If you put off something for a year, you might never get the chance.”
The end is near, and I’m feeling like a marathoner at Mile 25. Creeping along Foothill, Colorado, Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards, I scan the scene for old signs. Rancho Cucamonga’s Magic Lamp Inn! Azusa’s Foothill Drive-In! (But there is no drive-in, just the sign.)
And then, at dusk, it appears: the Santa Monica Pier and the sign declaring I’ve reached the “end of the trail.”
All those miles. Yet already, I’m making a mental list of stops to add and detours to try next time.
A sign marking the end of Route 66 on the Santa Monica Pier.
(David Fouts / For The Times)
“It’s so easy to use up all your time and end up running behind,” says Ian Bowen, manager of the pier’s 66 to Cali kiosk. “It took me six years to do the whole road.” And then, he adds, “you become part of the community.”
And you see how, in so many ways, the road is one long small town. When Brenda at the Midpoint Cafe in Texas sends a guest westward with a coconut cream pie for Robert and Dawn at the Blue Swallow Motel, Robert and Dawn thank her on Facebook (“It’s like a hug in a box”) and scores of roadies applaud. When Angel Delgadillo turns 99, West Side Lilo’s Cafe is ready with carrot cake. After Beth Hilburn adds a giant outside her Hi-Way Cafe, Mary Beth Babcock heads over from Tulsa to Vinita to say hi.
And when a rookie roadie finishes his first 66 trip, he has to wonder: Who will be out there this summer? Will it be enough to keep this fragile recovery going?
If this is the story of America’s Main Street, what’s the next chapter?
Bad Bunny’s halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl was largely embraced as a milestone for Latin music and Puerto Rican culture on America’s most prominent pop-cultural stage.
The Federal Communications Commission has released a massive trove of viewer complaints against the musician, the show’s broadcast partner NBC, and the NFL.
Many of them expressed outrage at the supposed bawdiness of Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language lyrics and dancing on a broadcast watched by children.
“That was the most disgusting inappropriate show. I had to make all of my children go into the next room!” wrote one traumatized Las Vegas viewer. “The none use [sic] of inappropriate language should stand no matter what language it’s in. This is the most disturbing thing I’ve witnessed on live TV in a long time.”
“NFL halftime show showed 2 men in act of intercourse while behind a pickup truck door,” wrote one aghast Ohioan. “The ratings for NFL [sic] made it safe for my children to watch but they witnessed this and became disturbed.”
Another viewer from Charlotte, NC who, to their credit, seemed familiar with Bad Bunny’s catalog, wrote that they “take issue with the vocal performances of ‘Safaera,’ which is a track widely known for explicit sexual references and graphic lyrical content, and ‘Yo Perreo Sola,’ which had choreography featuring overtly sexualized movements, including widespread twerking, grinding, pelvic thrusts and other sexually suggestive conduct.”
Those viewers were likely not sated by the FCC’s February review of the performance, which found that the songs’ lyrics had been appropriately altered for the broadcast.
Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) had called for the FCC to investigate the broadcast.”What Americans witnessed during the Super Bowl halftime show with Bad Bunny was despicable and never should be allowed to be shown on television again,” Fine told the New York Post.
Many of the viewer complaints mirror President Trump’s post-show social media criticism, calling the performance “one of the worst EVER!”
“Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World,” the president wrote at the time.
Just before the Super Bowl, Bad Bunny had won the Grammy for album with “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” and joined a wave of artists speaking out against violent ICE raids in speeches at the ceremony. The superstar demurred on performing in the continental U.S. for similar fears, instead performing a lengthy Puerto Rican residency.
Paul W. Downs can’t help it that even on the weekends, his life intersects with “Hacks,” the HBO comedy he co-created and co-showruns with his wife, Lucia Aniello, and their friend Jen Statsky. (He also appears on the show as Jimmy LuSaque Jr., the besieged manager of its two stars, played by Emmy winners Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder.) The fifth and final season of “Hacks” premiered last week, but on Downs’ days off, he often finds himself at its previous filming locations or hanging out with cast members who have become like family.
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.
Downs moved to Los Angeles in 2011, but soon after, he and Aniello were hired to write (and for him to act) on the über-New York show “Broad City,” keeping them away from the West Coast for years. Now the couple live in Los Feliz, which they enjoy with their young son.
“I love Los Feliz because it’s a real neighborhood with restaurants and bars, but also feels close to nature with Griffith Park,” Downs says. “Also it’s very central to my Eastside friends and Westside agents.”
And if he had to live at a local mall, like the character Ava Daniels did in the third season of “Hacks,” which would he choose?
I’m sleeping in if I can, which I can’t because I have a toddler, but let’s say I can sleep ’til 10. That would be insane.
Then I’m making coffee at home. I’m making it with my 4-year-old because he likes to make my coffee now. He always wanted to help, now he really wants to do it on his own. I’m still there to supervise, but he does do a lot of it.
I do batch brew. I’m doing Verve Coffee that I’m grinding there, and then I’m brewing four cups because I need my coffee. I had a Moccamaster for a long time, but I recently got a Simply Good Coffee. There’s no plastic — it’s all glass and metal.
11 a.m.: Chocolate croissants for everyone
We’re driving to Pasadena and we’re going to [Artisanal Goods by] CAR, which is the place to get the best chocolate croissant, I think, in the world. I don’t just think in L.A., I think they’re better than Paris. I’m going there with my wife and my kid and I’m having another coffee and some pastry. We’re ordering three [chocolate croissants]. We’re not doubling up.
11:45 a.m.: The family business
We’re driving to Fair Oaks in Pasadena. There’s a place called T.L. Gurley. We shot “Hacks” there, actually. Not only in Season 1, but also full circle in Season 5. We’re going to shmay around and look at antiques. My kid is going to want to play a vintage pinball machine. We’re going to find a little piece of art for the house or what have you. It’s not necessarily that I’m on the hunt. It’s to pass the time and to have some fun. If I could do anything and have a leisurely day and take my mind off work, that’s what I’m doing.
People love to interact with my kid when he’s there. We’re really training him to appraise things at a young age. My parents are part-time dealers of antiques. My grandmother bought and sold antiques. It’s kind of a family business.
Then we’re going to Chevalier’s Books. What’s sad is that I’m often not looking for leisure material. I’m looking for something that I’m interested in learning more about or writing about, or that they’re turning into a show I want to audition for. But we’re also doing Little Golden Books for my son. He’s obsessed. We’re not huge on screen time, so we really encourage the book-buying.
2:30 p.m.: Cast pool party
We’re having some family fun in the pool and we’re doing that until evening. We invite people over all the time. My sister-in-law is a New Yorker, but she actually wrote last season on “The Rooster” and she’s often writing on shows in L.A., so she’s often here and she’ll have a couple friends come over. I know this sounds like a piece of PR or something, but we’ll really literally have Hannah [Einbinder] and maybe Mark Indelicato from “Hacks” come over to swim. Jen, our co-creator of “Hacks,” will come over.
6:00 p.m.: Family dinner
Sometimes we’ll order Grá to the house, which is a pizza place in Echo Park — excellent sourdough crust pizza. But if we don’t do that, an ideal evening is an early dinner at All Time on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. We’re ordering the ceviche and my son is having all of it and not sharing with anybody at the table.
8:45 p.m.: A thrilling ending to the day
After putting my kid to bed, my wife and I, in an ideal world (full disclosure: we haven’t done this in two years), we’ll watch something together that we’ve been meaning to watch. We have a long list of movies and we either want to revisit or that we haven’t seen that we need to watch.
We don’t watch a lot of comedies. It’s a dream to watch a “Black Bag” or a little espionage thriller. We really like that because it’s so different than the stuff that we’re working on in the day.
Often the things we watch are things that we admire. We like deconstructing it as fans of film and television. We do like talking about the making of it, but it’s less of a critique and more of a listing of the things we appreciated about it.
10:30 p.m.: No work tomorrow
And then it’s lovemaking ’til morning on a perfect Sunday. If it’s a perfect Sunday, there’s also a Monday that’s off.
