Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Kyle Mooney
Now that he has a baby, Kyle Mooney doesn’t leave a certain L.A. radius much if he doesn’t have to. And he’s content with that. The “Saturday Night Live” alum spends most of his time in Pasadena, Glendale, Highland Park and, most of all, Eagle Rock, where he lives with his wife and their infant daughter. “I felt like the ‘artsiness’ of it was something I could relate to,” says Mooney, explaining why he was drawn to the neighborhood. “Highland Park 1734839354 feels a little bit like what Silver Lake did when I was in my 20s, but we were really struck by the neighborhood in Eagle Rock. I think it’s pretty special and quaint in an awesome way.”
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.
Mooney has been revisiting the past lately, both on and off the screen. The actor and comedian made his directorial debut with “Y2K,” an early aughts set horror movie that imagines a world where machines actually do rise up against humanity as feared at the turn of the millennium. The film, in theaters now, will arrive available to watch at home on Dec. 24.
Outside of work, Mooney has been revisiting the past lately. He recently reinstated a love for baseball that was born during his childhood days in Little League. “It’s such a nerdy sport but for some reason it does something for me, it’s something that tickles my brain,” he says.
Mooney’s ideal Sunday includes baseball trivia, the hottest of hot sauces and multiple walks around the neighborhood. “Sundays have a very special place in my heart because when I worked on ‘SNL,’ that was my only day off,” he said. “So we would really take advantage of it and try to get as much fun stuff in as possible.”
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
8:30 a.m.: “Late” morning wake up
Throughout my 20s, I used to try to sleep in as late as possible so that if I woke up at 4 p.m., I could get away with only having to pay for dinner. And then when I was on “SNL,” the schedule is built for late night so you’re pretty used to sleeping in as late as you can just so you can handle [working] into the early morning.
Our schedule now is pretty much based around the baby. My wife and I switch off every couple days who wakes up with her. She gets up typically around 6-ish, sometimes as early as 5:30 a.m. So if I could sleep in until 9 a.m. or 9:30 a.m., that would be rad.
8:35 a.m.: Baseball trivia games in bed
When I wake up, I always play this [mobile] game called Immaculate Grid that’s a baseball stats game. It’s just recollecting stats that players have had and [recalling] the history of baseball. When baseball season’s going, I have like three other friends [who also play] and we send each other our scores. So I’ll play that and then I’ll hang with the baby.
I loved baseball as a kid. I got really into collecting cards and the history of it. There’s a Ken Burns documentary on baseball and they produced this big old book that my dad would read with me at bedtime when I was in fourth or fifth grade.
I really got back into baseball in the last couple years — I am from San Diego and I’m a Padres fan — and it was a funny feeling as the Dodgers were amid a World Series run to be wearing a San Diego baseball cap. Never before had I felt like a bad guy. This year was the first year where I was like “You know, I’m actually not going to wear my hat [in public].”
10 a.m.: Me-time while baby naps
I try to go to the gym when I can, but if not, I like to jog around the neighborhood. Being able to say that I jogged a mile or a mile and a half feels like a win.
When I’m on my jog, I’ll always listen to music and sometimes try to edit a playlist. That’s something that relaxes me. I turned 40 this past year and my wife and I had a shared birthday party so there was a lot of prep for building the playlist. Around that time, on these jogs I was adding songs to a massive playlist that was like 14 hours long and then making cuts, dwindling it down until it was like six hours of music that we could pass off to the DJ to pull from. The music I love the most for a party environment is ’80s R&B and funk, maybe Italo disco and yacht rock.
11 a.m.: Venture outdoors for brunch and margaritas
One of the places down the street from us is called Relentless, they’re great. They have a great margarita. And we almost every time get the cauliflower wings. They also occasionally have natural wine, which is something that both my wife and I are really into. They’re always good about making a scrambled egg for our baby that sometimes she’ll eat, which is a major win.
We also like to go to the Hermosillo, which is a bar in Highland Park that has great food. I love their cheeseburger, hot dog and fried pickles. They have a great outdoor area where you can hang with kids and there’s a lot of families so you don’t feel like you’re spoiling anyone’s time by having a loud child. We also sometimes go to Mijares in Pasadena for margaritas, chips and salsa and that classic, old-school Mexican cuisine.
11 a.m.: Alternate plan? Have a burning meal
We also go sometimes to the Greyhound, which is a bar and restaurant in Highland Park and Glendale. These days they have a great selection of wings and various sauces. The last time I got the hottest one. I like trying whatever the “fire, extreme danger, high voltage” wing is, especially if I’m at a new place. When we order takeout, if we’re getting Indian food or Thai food, I’ll put in a note like “Please make this as spicy as possible.” One of the spiciest dishes I’ve ever tasted was at Jitlada and they have a competition surrounding it. That was one that I probably had maybe four or five bites and was like “I actually can’t handle it.” I think it’s only happened maybe twice in my life where I’m like, “I can’t go any further.”
I did a Hot Ones Versus recently with Fred Durst, who’s in our movie. He was suffering. They claim we had their spiciest wing. I was grabbing them when I didn’t even have to, just enjoying them. I’m like “it’s not that spicy” but I looked like a clown with a big red ring around my lips.
3 p.m.: Second walk of the day
Both in the morning and [before dinner] in the evening, we’ll work in a walk with the whole family. I put her in the Baby Bjorn and we’ll walk around the neighborhood and look at birds and doggies and squirrels. One of the really awesome parts about Eagle Rock is that it’s full of nice people, so we see a lot of familiar faces and know a lot of the folks that we run into. And my wife and I can catch up on gossip if we want to.
4:30 p.m.: Dinnertime
Going out to eat twice in a day, I don’t know how often we do it. A place we love to go to a lot is Colombo’s down the street from us. It is definitely walkable but we typically drive just because it’s pretty hilly. I love Colombo’s, we’ve just figured out our order: I like the sausage and peppers dish, the steak, the fried mozzarella. My wife tends to do a make-your-own pasta with angel hair, garlic and butter. And then if I can handle it, I’ll get a cocktail martini.
6 p.m.: Gradual wind-down back home
Hopefully baby’s had food at dinner. If not, we’ll make her a little something. Maybe we’ll allow ourselves to watch a little TV, all of us together. Right now she’s really into the “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,” she will also watch “Ms. Rachel.” And then we’ll get her ready for bed and read some stories and sing some songs. And then depending on our level of exhaustion, sometimes we’ll have friends come over and play Quiplash or something like that.
Usually we will just try to watch a movie on demand or rent one. We’re very bad at finishing them the same night. It almost always takes two days to the point that sometimes we’re paying twice to watch it.
Right now we’re in Christmas zone, so we’ll probably start revisiting the Christmas classics: There’s this animated movie from the ’70s that Rankin/Bass did called “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” that’s about a broken clock, essentially. And I love “A Garfield Christmas.” I’m a “Love, Actually” fan as well. And there’s always a black-and-white Christmas movie that I’ve never seen so sometimes we’ll find something that’s old but new to us.
8 p.m.: YouTube rabbit hole before bed
I like to shower [before bed] and sometimes I’ll go on baseballreference.com and learn about some baseball players. It’s just something to constantly be studying for the competition with my friends.
I truly can entertain myself on the internet for several hours. One recent YouTube search was “’80s Christmas specials.” I’m really obsessed with the idea that there are all these specials that aired on TV that just became lost media, they’re not on DVD or streaming or anything like that. “Flash Beagle” was a Charlie Brown cartoon from the early ’80s that was a spoof of the movie “Flash Dance.” Snoopy’s in a headband dancing and for some reason I’m obsessed.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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