Entertainment
Inside Eddie Huang’s sadboi era and turning a new page with his novel
On the Shelf
Come Undone: A Novel
By Eddie Huang
One World: 240 pages, $29
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Eddie Huang has never felt lighter. Last month, after his debut novel, “Come Undone,” finally released, something shifted.
“I have a family. I feel healed,” he said over coffee and short ribs in Santa Monica hours ahead of a live talk with Ottessa Moshfegh, the bestselling, critically acclaimed author of Huang’s favorite book, “My Year of Rest and Relaxation.”
“People always write me off as a personality or a multi-hyphenate,” he said. “It’s a nice way of saying I’m not really good at anything. But I didn’t have any of that this time.” He leaned forward, serious. “I have to be honest. I do think the Knicks are a big, big part of it.”
His beloved Knicks winning the championship, he said, kept him from spiraling over the book. In person, Huang subdues his ironic braggadocio with polite eye contact and rolling belly laughs at his own jokes. For years, audiences have watched Huang resist whatever box you put him in. His particular brand of cultural fluency — a rapid-fire mix of food, fashion, basketball, politics and pop culture — is what made the “Gua Bao Bad Boy” impossible to categorize.
For most of his career, Huang has seemed constitutionally incapable of standing still. Chef. Memoirist. TV host. Filmmaker. Lawyer. Comic. Podcaster. His first book, “Fresh Off the Boat,” became the longest-running network sitcom centered on an Asian American family, even as Huang publicly distanced himself from the show. Since leaving post-fires L.A. for New York, he’s reopened Baohaus — returning to the kitchen that built his career. Waiting for him at home after the book tour is his wife, Natashia Perrotti, and their 2-year-old son.
Now there’s “Come Undone,” fiction that Huang called his most honest — and vulnerable — work to date.
“It’s sort of this next-gen auto fiction type thing that is creating its own rules,” Moshfegh said ahead of their Q-and-A. “It made me think about my own appreciation for the experience of male heterosexuality and how much it’s been commodified.”
The book follows Hubie, a globe-trotting food-show host drifting through Chateau Marmont, Madeo, Nobu and other “dirtbag L.A” (as Huang coins) spots. He meets Janine, his equal in appetite and id, sending him into a tailspin of yearning and loops of Sky Ferreira’s “Everything Is Embarrassing” on sadboi walks. The “two walking red flags” decide to try to make it work.
Huang called the novel an “autofictional riddle.” The puzzle isn’t especially difficult if you’ve followed his relationship with Perrotti, who co-hosts their podcast, “Canal Street Dreams.” Marrying a writer, she’s learned, often means finding out what he feels by reading it. “We’ll get into a fight,” she said, “and I’ll wake up to a Substack article about it.”
It’s also part of the private life she’s since conceded. “It’s annoying,” she added. “But now I can read it, and maybe understand him a little bit better. He’s trying to communicate through the writing, like sending somebody a song and saying, ‘I want you to listen to these lyrics.’”
The novel goes further, drawing from experiences the couple has never discussed publicly. In the novel, Hubie and Janine’s relationship pivots after an ectopic pregnancy ends in loss. Perrotti said the scene is fictionalized but mirrors a similar experience they had early in their own relationship.
“It brought us closer together,” she said. “It was the catalyst for us realizing we were serious.”
Before Huang could finish the book, the life he was writing about had to fall apart. “This book was very much about breaking up with your family to start your own,” he said. “There was a lot of anger in the book that had not been resolved.”
By the end of 2024, Huang had stopped speaking to his mother. The break followed what he described as a blowup at a Cheesecake Factory. It also unlocked the ending he’d been chasing.
Eddie Huang.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Looking back, Huang thinks the earlier versions failed because he was still arguing with her. He’s still trying, in some way, to communicate with her through his writing. “If there’s one person I wish would read the book,” he said, “it would be my mom.”
There were other chapters he had to close the book on, mainly Hollywood. His foray into fiction coincided with the writers’ strike, drying up all his income and future projects. That same year, he became a father. “I had to accept and realize that my value was not in making money,” he said. “Because for three years, I couldn’t.”
He recalled a particular low point researching life insurance policies. “I had to rebuild my whole self. Really love myself despite not being able to offer anybody anything.”
That new certainty didn’t make Huang any less willing to pick fights. Last year, as his documentary “Vice Is Broke” — an autopsy of the media company behind “Huang’s World” and its eventual bankruptcy — awaited release, Huang said distributor Mubi shelved the film after he boycotted the company over Sequoia Capital’s investment in an Israeli defense technology startup. (Mubi denied this and said it still planned to distribute the film.)
The ghost of Vice still lingers in today’s media ecosystem in what he called our “era of cartel journalism:” creators navigating a world of blurred incentives and corporate interests. He traced this instinct to challenge those systems back to Socrates’ “gadfly” — the person whose job was to annoy power. “As a writer, you should be challenging people,” he said. “If your memoir can be turned into a sitcom, it probably wasn’t challenging.”
Eddie Huang.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
After the 2025 L.A. fires drove his new family back to New York, Huang went back to cooking. He worked pop-ups, reopened Baohaus and found himself alongside line cooks half his age. In March 2025, he rewrote the novel in five days. That same month “was the first month I didn’t overdraft my credit card,” he said, with the majority of his income today coming from the restaurant. It’s allowed him to make films, write books and walk away from deals he doesn’t believe in. “Being a chef is the anchor that allows me to maintain my artistic integrity.”
For years, comparisons to Anthony Bourdain followed Huang everywhere. The two eventually became friends.
“He was one of the few people who was as advertised,” Huang said. “Nicer and more generous in person. And wounded.”
Bourdain is the only real person who appears in “Come Undone” under his own name.
When Huang mentions him, he stops talking. He covers his face. Tears come.
“I don’t believe in God,” he said, “but I asked the universe why for many, many years.”
Bourdain’s suicide, he said, was one of the reasons he walked away from “Huang’s World” in 2018. At the time, few people understood why. “It was Tony. It was family. It was everything.”
Eddie Huang.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Now, looking back, Huang thinks he was writing “Come Undone” toward a different ending than the one he’d imagined.
“This book is a guy saying, ‘I don’t want to be like my biological father,’” he said. “And, in the most respectful, loving way, I don’t want to go out like Tony.”
He paused. “I needed to name the sadness in me. I needed to allow myself to be loved.”
Huang is already writing another memoir about getting back into the kitchen. Still, he said, these days, he’d rather write fiction.
Rudi, an L.A. native, is a freelance art and culture writer. She’s at work on her debut novel about a stuttering student journalist.
Paul Wright has created a moodscape of loneliness in this seriously intended, strenuously performed movie, a followup to his 2013 debut feature For Those in Peril. As before, Wright is working with lead actor George MacKay, who here plays Dylan, a troubled restaurant worker embarking on inner and outer journeys of wretchedness, desperate to make sense of a passionately remembered past and heading for the cliff-edge. As before, I think Wright has intelligently absorbed the influence of Terrence Malick in the emphasis on non-narrative ideas of mood and moment, foregrounding fleeting images and perceptions. Wright often intersperses the action with a barrage of millisecond-clips from TV and online, migraine rushes of sensory overload showing us how the world is just somehow too much.
To be honest, Mission is flawed. Some of the action is a bit drama-school-improv; the film’s ambient poetic realism can be shapeless; and in screenwriting terms, suddenly and miraculously finding a pistol out of the blue is borderline preposterous – although on this point Wright does find a way of (almost) subverting Chekhov’s rule about what happens to a gun produced in act one. But Mission is a serious film about a serious, relevant subject: the mental health of young men.
Dylan, played by MacKay, is an intense, lonely, vulnerable guy who has found a job working in an upscale hotel restaurant. He’s doing his best, nursing a crush on co-worker Becky (Emma Naomi), but simmering like a pressure cooker with unexpressed pain. He is tormented with memories of a childhood in which he thinks he was happy for the only time in his life, hanging out with his sister Claire (played as an adult by Rosy McEwen). When he was seven years old, he says, he died for four minutes, and realised what existence was all about.
But did that really happen? Or has Dylan just imagined or misremembered it? It’s not explicitly shown in any of the analogue home-video flashbacks of his childhood with Claire. And the fact/fiction borderline is where many of Dylan’s many violent confrontations with strangers appear to take place: shoving a cop, or threatening a guy at a party with knives, things don’t seem to have any consequences. But if they are only happening in his head, then that is where the consequences are accumulating.
Dylan’s crisis moment – and the film’s best moment – arrives when the hotel’s smarmy, creepy CEO James (Emun Elliott) calls in the staff one by one for a performance-assessment interview and Dylan, though clearly uncomfortable, tries his hardest to go along with this workplace pantomime and tell the boss what he thinks he wants to hear. Dylan is however honest and the calamity of this interview actually made me (bleakly) laugh out loud. But the awful truth is that it was the wrong move; MacKay’s performance shows us how Dylan’s inability to go along with the interview is symptomatic of his estrangement from the world. This revelation starts him off on the violent road to nowhere.
In anguish, he tries to reconnect with Claire (McEwen) who is deeply concerned, but also scared and bewildered by his pointless, self-harming fetishisation of the past. She herself has grown up. She has made accommodations with what needs to be done to get along in life. Why can’t Dylan? It’s a mystery. Dylan feels the burden of manhood and the combination of sensitivity and success that is expected of young men. At one point, he yells: “I want a world where the dreamers and the freaks and the good guys win!” Fair point. But Dylan is shouting this at someone whose house he has broken into, while wearing scary goth makeup. His putative victim is entitled to think that Dylan is not one of the good guys. The irony is semi-intentional.
If Dylan is on a mission, it is perhaps not simply to recapture the past, but to force Claire to recapture it alongside him, to confirm that he is right, to provide some company in his loneliness. The film’s interestingly ambiguous and hallucinatory embrace between the siblings leaves unanswered the question of how much his mission can ever succeed.
On Friday night at the SoFi Stadium, there was nothing random about the songs that played just before Karol G took the stage for the first of three evenings at the venue. We can safely assume that the Colombian superstar selected the cuts herself — the perfect tropicoqueta mix to set up the mood.
First, a shadowy “Bésame Mucho”; Elvis Crespo’s merengue smash “Suavemente”; the Afro-Cuban nugget “El Manisero”; and two life-affirming hits by the Queen of Salsa herself, Celia Cruz: “La Vida Es Un Carnaval” and “La Negra Tiene Tumbao.”
These carefully curated gems share a common element: They managed to transcend the stylistic contours of their respective genres and become something bigger — the kind of irresistible, it-takes-a-village anthems that will lure everyone to the dance floor, even if they don’t understand the lyrics.
And that is exactly what Karol G — la bichota, the South American Cleopatra, the woman with the billion-dollar smile — has been doing for global pop since the release of “Tusa,” her imperial duet with Nicki Minaj, back in 2019.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
Karol is currently the 42nd-most-streamed artist on Spotify, and her albums “Mañana Será Bonito” (2023) and “Tropicoqueta” (2025) helped reinvent the sound of contemporary Latin. She emerged from the reggaeton thunderstorm that hijacked the planet, but then guided it smoothly into a different aesthetic territory, far away from the movement’s misogynistic toxicity. Her ongoing collaboration with producer Ovy On The Drums — they’re the same age, 35, both from Medellín — was transformative, combining clanging, tribal beats with liquid textures and a refined, champagne-like lightness.
Part of the massive “Viajando Por El Mundo Tropitour,” Friday’s performance confirmed the singer’s stature as one of the most vital and charismatic Latin artists of the 21st century. More than a conventional concert, it felt like a stark, delirious fantasia, a relentless cinematic mosaic of decadent dance numbers and hyper-popped fragmentation presented in five acts, unified by a tropical visual motif: lush vegetation; a blue lagoon where cleansing erotic rituals take place; plumes of purifying fire to expiate the aftertaste of all those failed romances.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
Beginning with the wicked reggaeton beat of “Latina Foreva” — an existential jam about curves and pleasure, the freedom of the flesh — Karol ignited a deafening roar of adoration from the full-capacity crowd. For a moment, I got a taste of what Beatlemania must have sounded like in the 1960s.
As the cameras followed her closely, projecting every playful grimace and flirtatious wink onto the giant video screens, the complexity of her artistic persona became increasingly transparent: an indomitable woman who is deeply connected with primal joy and sensuality, but also vulnerable enough to get her heart broken on the way to the red carpet (and still embrace the experience). In the world of Karol G, what doesn’t kill you makes for an international hit.
Admittedly, it was the aggressive, in-your-face numbers that worked best. Karol sounds even better when surrounded by half-naked dancers — “Gatúbela” and “Ojos Ferrari” were highlights in that respect — and the choreography evoked the sweaty rapture of a full-blown Roman orgy.
(Jill Connelly / For De Los)
But she’s also smart enough to alternate the futurism of neo-reggaeton (the cutting-edge territory where her work with producers like Ovy On The Drums and Tainy has given us some astonishing records) with an affectionate nod to the past glories of Afro-Caribbean lore: the 20th century cultural bubble where Colombian families listened to the “14 Cañonazos Bailables” compilations during the Christmas season.
On the title track of “Tropicoqueta,” she draws an imaginary line that connects her current sexual emancipation to the frisky downbeats of 1950s mambo and the early 2000s movement that jazzed up the Afro-Caribbean classics with a digital bounce. On Friday, she salsified “Provenza” and added the riff of Willie Colón’s “La Murga” as an intro to “Tusa.” Her visual recreation of the “Tropicoqueta” album cover onstage was one of the show’s wittiest moments.
At one point after the success of “Mañana Será Bonito,” Karol must have realized that her newly acquired diva status gave her the chance to voice some valuable thoughts on the merits of Latin American culture.
In between songs, Karol spoke with compassion about the recent earthquakes affecting Colombia and Venezuela — the latter of which is where her poised opening act, Elena Rose, also hails from — but her pan-Latino ideology seeped into the music as well. Her face was covered in tears after she performed “Ese Hombre Es Malo” backed by female mariachi players. At the end of the show, a stunning reading of “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido” revealed the instinctive ease with which she can navigate the sweet, syncopated phrasing of Dominican merengue.
A few tracks from her recently released sixth studio album,”No Me Arrepiento De Sentir Tanto,” displayed a more introspective side. On the dreamy ballad “Después de Ti,” she was joined on guitar by Greg Gonzalez of Cigarettes After Sex, reenacting their performance together from April, when Karol headlined Coachella.
The deafening volume at SoFi was the only aspect of the show that got in the way. The sound stage felt bludgeoned into submission throughout, as the intense distortion of bass, percussion and guitars made the instrument separation within the mix almost inaudible.
That said, the overall experience transcended the sonic elements, as Karol is clearly using the Tropitour as a good reason to celebrate her extraordinary achievements with the fans (she even hugged a security guard).
Somewhere in the venue, a young Latina girl must have been dazzled by this extravagant spectacle and perhaps dreamed of one day following in the footsteps of Carolina Giraldo Navarro: a gifted singer and composer, a woman intelligent enough to cherish the emotional value of dancing the night away.
And that is one solid role model to have.
Movie Reviews
Movie Review: Destination Moon (1950) – Film Masters Blu-ray – HorrorFuel.com: Reviews, Ratings and Where to Watch the Best Horror Movies & TV Shows
With their latest rocket experiment ending in flames n’ failure, Dr. Charles Cargraves (Warner Anderson) and his rocket lovin’ bud, General Thayer (Tom Powers) seek some outside cash to achieve their ultimate goal, sending man to the moon!
They soon enlist smooth-talkin’ aeronautics tycoon Jim Barnes (John Archer) to convince his equally loaded peers to invest in the project… and he isn’t afraid to enlist a then-popular animated bird to lend a helping wing (more on this below dear readers!) to that end!
Before long the project is complete, but the local populace are having a bitch-fest about the radiation they believe the project will surely release… even though the rocket, the Luna, uses steam propulsion… so our heroes decide to launch the rocket early, because fuck the public, that’s why!
With Cargraves, Thayer, et. al. (along with wise-assing substitute radio operator Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson)) acting as crew, the group soon find themselves in space… but after a hard landing on the lunar surface wastes gobs of their fuel, their chances of getting home are in jeopardy… space jeopardy!
Directed by Irving Pichel, and written by a cadre of screenwriters including science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers), Destination Moon manages to steer clear of the leaden pace of many 1950’s more scientific-minded space pics, and instead offers a yarn filled with suspense and clever effects.
That’s not to say the pic doesn’t contain plenty of speculative scientific jargon and tech (some of which is on the money, especially with funding for space technology coming from the private sector), because it surely does… but the plight of the protagonists provides plenty of sci-fi spectacle to balance things out… and the story is well structured with each section of the rockets journey, from creation to utilization, engaging and full of tension once the crew gets to space.
As the film was produced by George Pal (1953’s The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine) you can rest assured there are a plethora of early 1950’s special effects wizardry utilized to make us believe in the daring journey to the stars at hand including large matte paintings, clever sets, wire-work and even a smattering of stop-motion!
On the other side of the coin, there are some unintentionally hilarious moments as our heroes look like they are going to absolutely bust a nut in ecstasy every-time G-forces effect the ship… and the appearance of Woody fucking Woodpecker in a sizzle reel to get investors to fund the rocket it’s jarring as all fuck… and it seemingly goes on forever (but in the positive corner this was entirely new animation produced just for the film).
Accompanying Destination Moon on this Film Masters blu-ray are a duo of audio commentaries (one a scholarly analysis of the film courtesy of Film Historian Justin Humphreys, and the other a thirty nine minute fact and anecdote-packed interview recreation with the late fright flick archivist Bob Burns by film Historian Tom Weaver), a new “making of” mini-doc, a restored version of the film’s trailer, and a pressbook gallery.
Also included is a second disc featuring Lesley Selander’s Flight to Mars from 1951…
Things get a bit lower stakes with this one, as we get our ragtag group of philosophizing scientists and such on board a rocket and blasted to space with the first fifteen minutes of this one, so we get none of creation of the technology needed for the mission which proved really entertaining in Destination Moon… it also goes without saying we don’t get any Woody Woodpecker here… we don’t even get a Chilly Willy cartoon…
After tangling briefly with a meteor shower our crew touches down on Mars… roughly… and after trudging through snow under red skies the gang finds man-made structures… and those that built them!
Will our heroes find friends on the Red Planet or are the intentions of the aliens much more sinister?!!
First things first, the martians here truly suck ass… they sport left-over spacesuits from Destination Moon… when they aren’t dressing like they just stumbled out of a Flash Gordon serial… and consist of normal looking middle-aged men and a lady or two.
As you may have surmised, this is much more of a pulpy sci-fi yarn… we do get some postulating and such, but the inclusion of the aliens make this much more “unrealistic” than the former film in this release, and the concentration here is on the alien society more than the journey it took to get there.
The sets are retro-future cool, and are presented via matte paintings and such, but they lack the impact of those in Destination Moon… and the suspense is much reduced here as well.
As before, we get special features to supplement the feature including another commentary track from Humphreys, a look at the more science-heavy sci-fi features of the ‘50s, a mini-doc on the film’s producer, Walter Mirisch (1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and a restored version of Flight to Mars’ trailer.
Also included in the package is a full color booklet with a new essay by Author Sloan deForest.
Two voyages into the deep reaches of space presented two different ways, this pairing of Destination Moon and Flight to Mars is an enjoyable dip into the early days of 1950’s space-obsessed sci-fi!
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