Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to J.B. Smoove
Over the course of J.B. Smoove’s decades-long career as a comedian, actor and writer, he’s become known for many things. His fast-paced, New Yorker cadence and quick-witted comebacks. His wide-brim hats and dapper suits. And of course, his most beloved character, Leon Black, on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which catapulted him into superstardom.
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.
The improvisation-based comedy came to an end earlier this year after 12 seasons (six of which Smoove starred in), but Smoove, whose credits include “Saturday Night Live,” “Real Husbands of Hollywood,” “Spider-Man: Far From Home” and “Mapleworth Murders,” is showing no signs of slowing down. Smoove is set to host “Buy It Now,” a competition series where entrepreneurs pitch their products in front of a live audience and esteemed judges in hopes of being featured on Amazon.com and winning a cash prize. It premieres Oct. 30 on Amazon Prime Video.
Smoove knew he was perfect for the job when he got the call to host the show. “I’m not on the level of Jamie Siminoff or Tabitha [Brown] or Gwyneth [Paltrow],” says the Emmy winner, who recently launched a production company. “But I understand the animal that it is because I am still on my journey to be a great entrepreneur. It takes time and patience.”
We recently caught up with Smoove to ask him how he’d spend the perfect Sunday in Los Angeles, where he’s lived since 2007. Ideally, he and his wife, Shahidah Omar, wouldn’t leave their house, which they call the “777 Resort,” a nickname that commemorates their wedding date and contains everything they could possibly want. But he indulged us by crafting an action-packed day filled with hiking, jet skiing to Catalina Island, drinking an “Herb Your Enthusiasm” cocktail at one of his favorite vegan restaurants and catching up on “Love is Blind.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
6:30 a.m.: Wake up and walk my dogs
I wake up every morning at 6:30 a.m. All of my family is on New York time, so my phone starts ringing at 6 a.m. I’m three hours behind them and they’re already up and kicking. When my alarm goes off in the morning, my dogs want to come to the side of the bed. Their names are Hustle and Flo like the movie “Hustle and Flow.” Hustle has a habit of touching my arm over and over again with his big paw when he’s ready to go out. So I get those guys out, walk the neighborhood a little bit and let them say hi to their [dog] friends.
8:00 a.m.: Cook my special vegan breakfast
Then I’ll bring them back home and now I need to get some breakfast. My wife and I are vegan, but she is a raw vegan right now, so she doesn’t eat what I eat in the morning. On a good day like Sunday Funday, I would make my vegan chicken fried mushrooms and waffles. Sometimes they’re blueberry, sometimes they’re banana. Sometimes they are blueberry-banana. I pick and choose depending on how my taste buds go. A lot of people have a sweet tooth, I have sweet teeth. I also love a little sausage and a little Just Egg, which is one of my favorite egg substitutes.
9:00 a.m.: Crank up my 1968 Lincoln Continental
I crank up the old school. I got a 1968 Lincoln Continental. So I crank the engine up, get it warm, get the bags pumping up and hit the little button in the car that raises it off the ground because I let it take a nap at nighttime. “Old School Sunday” should be an unofficial holiday.
10:00 a.m.: Hike at Fryman Canyon
Next, my wife and I would hike at Fryman Canyon. One lap because we don’t want to wear ourselves out. The heat starts to build up a little bit especially in the summertime. A lot of people are out there early because they don’t want to get hot. It’s an amazing walk. There’s Runyon up the block and then there’s Fryman. Now, Fryman has more trees and shaded areas where you can stop to look at the view. Then the last quarter of it, you walk through a neighborhood with beautiful homes. It’s a beautiful area of town. And sometimes you’ll get lucky and you’ll catch an open house on a Sunday, which I recommend.
12 p.m.: Ride a jet ski to Catalina Island
We’ll finish our walk at Fryman around 11 a.m., then a great thing to do is to go jet skiing in Catalina. A lot of people don’t know about this. You can jet ski to Catalina with this company called Jetski2Catalina and I’m telling you right now, it’s a trip. You go down to Long Beach and you can hop on a jet ski and ride all the way to Catalina. It’s about two hours, but it’s well worth it. Do the one-way trip because your arms are going to get tired if you’re not used to working out or your body vibrating for a long period of time. Ride to Avalon on the island.
2 p.m.: Grab lunch at Maggie’s Blue Rose
By the time you get there, you’re going to be hungry again so grab some lunch to replenish your energy. A place with some good, authentic Mexican food is Maggie’s Blue Rose. I recommend the street corn, but we don’t get cheese on ours because we’re vegan. We’d maybe get a vegan burrito with some beans, rice and sauteed vegetables rolled up nice. A good burrito should be rolled as tight as a cigar if you know what you’re doing.
3:30 p.m.: Rent a golf cart and go zip lining
Then you gotta rent a golf cart to ride around the island and look at the houses. People don’t know that there aren’t many cars on Catalina Island, that’s why everyone has golf carts. So some of the golf carts are tricked out and look cool because people who live there want to have the nicest one. They also have zip lining on the island — this is a must do. The zip lining is sickening because you can hear the people screaming. [Imitates zip line and screams] I recommend tying your shoes tight because you don’t want to lose a shoe halfway down. You’ll be very upset. Also, don’t ever wear flip flops on a zip line.
7 p.m.: Catch a boat back to Long Beach
By the time you finish zip lining, you’ll want to take the ferry back to Long Beach. Get there early and get a good seat by the window, preferably in the front of the boat so you can see where you’re going. Or some people like to see where they’ve been and watch the island get further and further from them. It’s up to you. It’s a shorter trip going back. You get back in about an hour.
9 p.m.: Enjoy an “Herb Your Enthusiasm” cocktail at Planta
Now, you want to get back into your vehicle and head to Planta in Marina Del Rey. This is a straight vegan spot, but the food is excellent. They have a cocktail there called the “Herb Your Enthusiasm,” a play on words to “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” So every time I go there, the bartender recognizes me and says, “Hey man. I see what the hell you’re doing, the ‘Herb Your Enthusiasm.’” That’s my favorite cocktail. My wife and I will kick it at the bar. We might order something light since it’s getting late like some avocado cucumber sushi.
11 p.m.: Drive home in the classic whip
We’ll get back into the old school and head back to the crib. Now, this car has suicide doors. All the doors open from the middle outward. So we’ll roll all the windows down and play some good, old school R&B music. Sometimes I’ll light up a cigar.
11:30 p.m.: Binge watch our favorite shows
Once we get home, we’ll watch our favorite shows. We’re zombie fanatics. We’ll watch “Walking Dead,” “The Last of Us,” something in that genre. Or we’ll watch something silly. Have you seen this new pop the balloon dating show? It’s a mess, but it’s hilarious to us because people stand up there trying to find somebody. It’s just funny to see them struggle. It’s always funny when someone walks out there and all the balloons pop before they even open their mouth. I’m like, “Let the dude speak! Give him a chance.” We like “Love is Blind” too. My wife and I bet money on who’s going to say yes at the altar and who’s going to say no. We’re not big on comedies. You would think a comedian would like comedies. I never watch comedies. My favorite genre are James Bond movies. I just love James Bond and Daniel Craig. If he needs a replacement, I’ll put my name in the hat. I got two O’s in my name. [Laughs]
1 a.m.: Debate about “Love is Blind” before bed
Then we’re going from the living room to the bedroom and we’ll say, “One more episode” before we go to bed and we never make it through that episode. We always get halfway through it and our heads start nodding. Then we’ll turn the lights on and talk about who we think is still going to be together on “Love is Blind” and that will keep us up for another 30 minutes. We’ll go to bed around 2 a.m., then I’ll have four and a half hours of sleep before I gotta get up at 6:30 a.m. again.
There’s a three-story house in Baltimore that looks a bit imposing. You walk up the stone steps before even getting up to the porch, and then you enter the door and you’re greeted with a glass case of literary awards. It’s The Clifton House, formerly home of Lucille Clifton.
The National Book Award-winning poet lived there with her husband, Fred, starting in 1967 until the bank foreclosed on the house in 1980. Clifton’s daughter, Sidney Clifton, has since revived the house and turned it into a cultural hub, hosting artists, readings, workshops and more. But even during a February visit, in the mid-afternoon with no organized events on, the house feels full.
The corner of Lucille Clifton’s bedroom, where she would wake up and write in the mornings
Andrew Limbong/NPR
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Andrew Limbong/NPR
“There’s a presence here,” Clifton House Executive Director Joël Díaz told me. “There’s a presence here that sits at attention.”
Sometimes, rooms where famous writers worked can be places of ineffable magic. Other times, they can just be rooms.
Princeton University Press
Katie da Cunha Lewin is the author of the new book, The Writer’s Room: The Hidden Worlds That Shape the Books We Love, which explores the appeal of these rooms. Lewin is a big Virginia Woolf fan, and the very first place Lewin visited working on the book was Monk’s House — Woolf’s summer home in Sussex, England. On the way there, there were dreams of seeing Woolf’s desk, of retracing Woolf’s steps and imagining what her creative process would feel like. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment for Lewin — everything interesting was behind glass, she said. Still, in the book Lewin writes about how she took a picture of the room and saved it on her phone, going back to check it and re-check it, “in the hope it would allow me some of its magic.”
Let’s be real, writing is a little boring. Unlike a band on fire in the recording studio, or a painter possessed in their studio, the visual image of a writer sitting at a desk click-clacking away at a keyboard or scribbling on a piece of paper isn’t particularly exciting. And yet, the myth of the writer’s room continues to enrapture us. You can head to Massachusetts to see where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women. Or go down to Florida to visit the home of Zora Neale Hurston. Or book a stay at the Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in Alabama, where the famous couple lived for a time. But what, exactly, is the draw?
Lewin said in an interview that whenever she was at a book event or an author reading, an audience question about the writer’s writing space came up. And yes, some of this is basic fan-driven curiosity. But also “it started to occur to me that it was a central mystery about writing, as if writing is a magic thing that just happens rather than actually labor,” she said.
In a lot of ways, the book is a debunking of the myths we’re presented about writers in their rooms. She writes about the types of writers who couldn’t lock themselves in an office for hours on end, and instead had to find moments in-between to work on their art. She covers the writers who make a big show of their rooms, as a way to seem more writerly. She writes about writers who have had their homes and rooms preserved, versus the ones whose rooms have been lost to time and new real estate developments. The central argument of the book is that there is no magic formula to writing — that there is no daily to-do list to follow, no just-right office chair to buy in order to become a writer. You just have to write.
Bruce Johnston
I’m Riding My Last Wave With The Beach Boys
Published
Bruce Johnston is riding off into the California sunset … at least for now.
The Beach Boys legend announced Wednesday he’s stepping away from touring after six decades with the iconic band. The 83-year-old revealed in a statement to Rolling Stone he’s hanging up his touring hat to focus on what he calls part three of his long music career.
“It’s time for Part Three of my lengthy musical career!” Johnston said. “I can write songs forever, and wait until you hear what’s coming!!! As my major talent beyond singing is songwriting, now is the time to get serious again.”
Johnston famously stepped in for co-founder Brian Wilson in 1965 for live performances, becoming a staple of the Beach Boys’ touring lineup ever since. Now, he says he’s shifting gears toward songwriting and even some speaking engagements … with occasional touring member John Stamos helping him craft what he’ll talk about onstage.
“I might even sing ‘Disney Girls’ & ‘I Write The Songs!!’” he teased.
But don’t call it a full-on farewell tour just yet. Johnston made it clear he’s not shutting the door completely, saying he’s excited to reunite with the band for special occasions, including their upcoming July 2-4 shows at the Hollywood Bowl as part of the Beach Boys’ 2026 tour. The run celebrates both the 60th anniversary of “Pet Sounds” and America’s 250th birthday.
“This isn’t goodbye, it’s see you soon,” he wrote. “I am forever grateful to be a part of the Beach Boys musical legacy.”
In 1982, Jean Muenchrath was injured in a mountaineering accident and on the brink of death when a stranger and his family went out of their way to save her life.
Jean Muenchrath
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Jean Muenchrath
In early May 1982, Jean Muenchrath and her boyfriend set out on a mountaineering trip in the Sierra Nevada, a mountain range in California. They had done many backcountry trips in the area before, so the terrain was somewhat familiar to both of them. But after they reached one of the summits, a violent storm swept in. It began to snow heavily, and soon the pair was engulfed in a blizzard, with thunder and lightning reverberating around them.
“Getting struck and killed by lightning was a real possibility since we were the highest thing around for miles and lightning was striking all around us,” Muenchrath said.
To reach safer ground, they decided to abandon their plan of taking a trail back. Instead, using their ice axes, they climbed down the face of the mountain through steep and icy snow chutes.
They were both skilled at this type of descent, but at one particularly difficult part of the route, Muenchrath slipped and tumbled over 100 feet down the rocky mountain face. She barely survived the fall and suffered life-threatening injuries.
This was before cellular or satellite phones, so calling for help wasn’t an option. The couple was forced to hike through deep snow back to the trailhead. Once they arrived, Muenchrath collapsed in the parking lot. It had been five days since she’d fallen.
”My clothes were bloody. I had multiple fractures in my spine and pelvis, a head injury and gangrene from a deep wound,” Muenchrath said.
Not long after they reached the trailhead parking lot, a car pulled in. A man was driving, with his wife in the passenger seat and their baby in the back. As soon as the man saw Muenchrath’s condition, he ran over to help.
”He gently stroked my head, and he held my face [and] reassured me by saying something like, ‘You’re going to be OK now. I’ll be right back to get you,’” Muenchrath remembered.
For the first time in days, her panic began to lift.
“My unsung hero gave me hope that I’d reach a hospital and I’d survive. He took away my fears.”
Within a few minutes, the man had unpacked his car. His wife agreed to stay back in the parking lot with their baby in order to make room for Muenchrath, her boyfriend and their backpacks.
The man drove them to a nearby town so that the couple could get medical treatment.
“I remember looking into the eyes of my unsung hero as he carried me into the emergency room in Lone Pine, California. I was so weak, I couldn’t find the words to express the gratitude I felt in my heart.”
The gratitude she felt that day only grew. Now, nearly 45 years later, she still thinks about the man and his family.
”He gave me the gift of allowing me to live my life and my dreams,” Muenchrath said.
At some point along the way, the man gave Muenchrath his contact information. But in the chaos of the day, she lost it and has never been able to find him.
”If I knew where my unsung hero was today, I would fly across the country to meet him again. I’d hug him, buy him a meal and tell him how much he continues to mean to me by saving my life. Wherever you are, I say thank you from the depths of my being.”
My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.
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