Lifestyle
How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Mark Duplass
Mark Duplass offers a warning before he starts talking about his ideal Sunday.
“Be prepared,” he says. “There’s not gonna be a lot of leaving the house today.”
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 actor-director-producer has settled into a comfortable rhythm with his wife, Katie Aselton, their two kids and their pack of rambunctious dogs. For them, home is Valley Village, a neighborhood the couple quickly fell in love with. “It’s quiet, super family-friendly and very dog-oriented,” he says.
Duplass’ career, however, has been anything but quiet. He stars alongside Ellen Pompeo and Imogen Faith Reid in Hulu’s “Good American Family,” a ripped-from-the-headlines drama about the Natalia Grace case. Meanwhile, his series “The Creep Tapes” was renewed for a second season on Shudder. Duplass also runs an independent film company with his brother, Jay, and is also a founding partner of the newly relaunched Vidiots, the nonprofit movie theater and rental shop in Eagle Rock.
His nonprofit the Soul Points Fund, which he launched with Aselton in 2020 to support artists, recently shifted gears to help those affected by the Los Angeles fires. “If there’s one thing people in this town know how to do, it’s tackle unexpected problems,” he says. “It happens every day on a film set, so that kind of thinking is second nature.”
For Duplass, Sundays are for slowing down. Here’s how he’d spend his ideal day.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7:30 a.m.: The T-Man rises
Generally, I get up around 7:30. I don’t really stay up too late on weekends. I’m not a big drinker. I deal with a lot of anxiety and depression. So I have very specific rhythms that I need to obtain, which is: Get a lot of sleep. So you’re not gonna find me on a Sunday morning sleeping until 11 because I got off the rails. Daddy doesn’t get off the rails anymore.
First things first: Open the door, both the dogs are up. I am known in the house as “the T-Man,” and what it stands for is “the Treat Man.” But we can’t say “treat,” because if you say “treat,” they’ll freak the f— out. My sweet German shepherd-husky mix, Blue, circles me sweetly. Murphy, who’s my pitty-Staffy mix, is a goddamn maniac, and he’ll jump on me and lunge at me. I give them their absolutely disgusting beef liver treats.
Then we go for coffee No. 1. I get one caffeinated coffee per day because, again, Daddy stays on the rails. I put a little chocolate in it, and I put a little cinnamon in it and I put a little raw sugar in it. Then I see who’s up. Usually it’s Molly, my youngest, who’s 12, and Katie, my wife. My oldest daughter, Ora, who just turned 17, is probably still sleeping at this point. Breakfast is oatmeal with fresh blueberries almost every day. And then a second coffee — going into decaf mode at this point, which is fine for me. It’s just as good. I just want the hot, brown ritual.
10 a.m.: Endorphins up
We have a little home gym, and I do a 20-minute, brutal, fast-paced blast on the elliptical machine to make sure I get my endorphins up and my cardiovascular system going.
The dogs come in there with me, because they know soon as I’m done with that, we’re gonna go out for a walk. I take the two puppies and go for a 40-minute walk. I use that as a nice meditation.
I usually listen to some kind of record. I’m not a playlist guy. I like the full artist’s statement. I’ll try to pull something from my past that will connect me to feeling 16 again or 23 again. Sometimes that’s as ridiculous as the Spin Doctors record that I used to love, or sometimes it’s one of my Indigo Girls records.
11 a.m.: Hot and cold plunges
When I’m done with the walk, I’ve been heating up the hot tub. I do 104 degrees in the hot tub and 57 in the cold plunge, which, not to sound like a broken record, but that’s good for the mental health and good for the body.
Noon: Nothing goes to waste
I’m “the Leftovers Man.” I grew up in the suburbs of New Orleans with an extreme Depression-era mentality bestowed on me by my grandmother and my mother. You do not waste food, even if it’s potentially rotting in the fridge. You just fry it up at intense heat in the pan and hopefully it kills the bacteria.
Toward the end of the week, I’ll bake a big chicken and the family will eat a third of it for dinner, and then I have that to pull from. I keep a very strategic group of frozen vegetables and frozen rice in my freezer that can be paired with the chicken and different kinds of sauces: “Oh, maybe this can be a soy-based meal” or, “We’re going to take it more to Mexico for this one.” And I make a big stir-fry. And usually two or three people in the family partake of that.
2 p.m.: The village Vidiot
This is where the day in my “ideal” Sunday would shift a little bit. [On an ideal Sunday], I would go to Vidiots for either a 2 or a 4 o’clock movie. Vidiots is my church. Sometimes they’re playing a family-friendly Japanime movie we all want to see — some of the family will come with. Or the Mubi Microcinema in Vidiots is showing second-run art-house movies.
I just feel so good there. It’s connected to my whole life. There was a view-and-brew second-run art-house cinema in New Orleans called Movie Pitchers that I went to for years in high school. I went to college in Austin and, of course, we had Alamo Drafthouse. And I lived in New York, so I’ve always had a theater like that.
3:30 p.m.: A strategic cold one
You got the Fosters Freeze next to Vidiots in case you want to do something nasty to yourself after a screening. Or, one of my favorite things to do is have a drink around like 3:30 or 4 o’clock at the pinball bar [Walt’s] on an empty stomach, so I can get a relatively cheap buzz on without putting too much alcohol in my body. And then have dinner so it doesn’t have any mood damage or hangover damage for me. And I can still remember who I was — that New Orleans kid at 14 years old who did so many drugs. So. Many. Drugs. I can’t believe I’m here.
4:30 p.m.: Zankou and Rummikub with the folks
My parents live in Pasadena, and we’re very, very close with them, and they’re very close with my kids. They’re in their late 70s. My dad’s gonna turn 80 this year.
You ever watch a movie and someone’s dying at the end of it, and they’re like, “Man, I just wish we could have had more memories like that one trip we took here’?” There’s not just one memory with my parents and my brother and his family. We have hundreds, and they’re great. So there’s no making up for lost time, but I just selfishly want more of it.
All this time we spent together has now fully taken the pressure off. It’s not like, “We’ve got to go to Europe and do it all up.” All we want to do together is: My parents come over, I order Zankou Chicken, and we will play Bananagrams or Rummikub or there’s a puzzle going on. We’ll look at some old videos of when the kids were younger, which they love to do. And it’s really boring in the best way — it’s very comforting.
7 p.m.: “Alone” in a crowd
So I do some dishes, and Ora, my oldest, will scatter to go work on an audition or talk to her boyfriend. Katie and I will put on “Alone” on the History Channel. It’s the slightly low-rent, Canadian version of “Survivor.” You learn a lot about berries and ethical hunting. But more importantly, you have a lot of personalities who have not really had the luxury, or in some cases, horror, of existentially facing themselves.
9 p.m.: Rekindling his love of books
When you have kids, something funny happens, which is, when they’re very young, you get them in bed, and then you race to get in bed yourself, because you’re constantly trying to store up sleep because you know they’re gonna wake you up. My wife and I have stayed on that schedule, even though we don’t have to anymore. Our kids are 12 and 17, but we love just getting into bed around 9 o’clock or so.
We get our books. I love my Kindle because I’ve got it connected to my Los Angeles Public Library account. The public library — they make you wait. So there will be a book I really want to read, and it’ll be like an eight-week waiting list, and then when it comes in, it’s like Christmas.
Then I go into the bathroom, brush my teeth, and take my very important 20 milligrams of citalopram — [an] SSRI — which keeps Daddy on the rails. I’ve been taking that for 16 years. And I take a little probiotic because I am 48.
I say five little things as I close my eyes before I go to bed that I am either grateful for or excited about for the next day, which is self-help 101, as basic as it comes, but that s— works. Just to sit there in bed and say, “I’m gonna open the door, and those frickin’ dogs are going to be so happy to see me, and I’m gonna be able to bring them joy. So even if the whole day goes to s— tomorrow, I’m gonna have this wonderful little interaction with these little puppies that I love.” I try to center myself before I zonk out.
Lifestyle
Terry Tempest Williams on why women with big ideas get labeled ‘crazy’ : Wild Card with Rachel Martin
A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: I met Terry Tempest Williams about 25 years ago at a writer’s conference in Yosemite Valley. I was a young reporter who was there to do a story about how literature was addressing climate change and she made such a huge impression on me. I had never heard someone talk about the natural world the way Terry did and she had a spiritual depth I hadn’t encountered in my life at that point.
To this day, Terry’s writing always reorients me towards what is good, what is beautiful, and what is true. Her newest book is called “The Glorians.”
Lifestyle
Meow Wolf taps famed L.A. animation house for its new Los Angeles venue
For its upcoming Los Angeles venue, experiential art firm Meow Wolf will focus on the art of storytelling, with a specific eye toward skewering our city’s moviemaking magic. To help bring that vision to life, Meow Wolf has entered into a creative partnership with Titmouse, one of L.A.’s most renowned independent animation houses.
The Hollywood-based studio behind popular series such as “Big Mouth” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will create animation that will be shown throughout the West L.A. venue, which is on target for a late 2026 opening at the Howard Hughes entertainment complex.
It’s a move that represents a shift for Santa Fe, N.M.-based Meow Wolf. Over the last decade-plus, the art collective has grown beyond its anything-goes, punk-meets-psychedelic roots into an organization with full-scale, maximalist installations in its hometown, Denver, Las Vegas, Houston and the Dallas suburbs. In the past, Meow Wolf kept most of its media in-house.
As part of its larger-than-life participatory art installations, Meow Wolf L.A. will feature a mix of live action and animation, the former filmed by Meow Wolf in its Santa Fe studio. Meow Wolf’s James Stephenson, a senior VP with the company and its creative director of emerging media, said the degree to which the L.A. exhibition will lean into various animation styles necessitated an outside partner. Titmouse’s work, in development by a number of directors with contrasting tones, will be shown on a variety of formats, ranging from cinema screens to full-room projections.
“I really believe in animation as an art form, and I know the Titmouse folks do too,” Stephenson says. “Animation is made by artists. It’s made by artists with their own hands. It’s something that is still very rooted in craft.”
Meow Wolf’s L.A. space is set in a former cinema complex, and will champion its location, taking guests on a journey through a converted movie house and beyond, into a sci-fi-inspired fantasyland with sentient spaceships and a 30-foot-tall mushroom tower. Meow Wolf creatives have spoken of the fantastical movie theater as one that will feature animated, self-aware candy before attendees enter the main exhibition space, making Titmouse’s work some of the first art guests will encounter. Titmouse co-founder Chris Prynoski has said the studio has lined up at least six directors for the exhibit.
An in-progress art installation destined for Meow Wolf L.A. at the art collective’s Santa Fe, N.M., headquarters. The L.A. exhibition will feature animation from Titmouse.
(Gabriela Campos / For The Times)
Titmouse, says Stephenson, is the right partner because “they’re known less for a house style, and more for a house vibe.” Over the years, Titmouse has been behind such diverse shows as “Scavengers Reign,” owning a Jean Giraud influence rooted in French and Spanish surrealism, the lively “Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld,” with an unique color palette that took inspiration from anime and Chinese mythology, the exaggerated comic book feel of Adult Swim’s “Metalocalypse,” and the approachable yet expressive tone of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”
“Meow Wolf’s vibe is similar to Titmouse’s vibe,” Stephenson says. “It’s artist-first, artist-driven, independent and kinda edgy. They are always trying to find the edge of what’s possible. They try to see how far they can go, and it’s done for fun and in the spirit of taking risks.”
Prynoski says working with Meow Wolf will give Titmouse a sense of artistic freedom it doesn’t always have when delivering content for more traditional Hollywood partners. He says the multi-director approach is a callback to the early days of Warner Bros. Animation, when individual creators put their own stamp on Looney Tunes material.
“I use Bugs Bunny as an example,” Prynoski says. “You’ve got a Friz Freleng Bugs Bunny short. You’ve got a Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short. You’ve got a Tex Avery Bugs Bunny short. They’re all different versions of Bugs Bunny, and people who are really paying attention can tell which director directed each one. Even though to the layman, these are all Bugs Bunny, but if you lined them up, they are drawing in different styles, sensibilities and techniques.”
Prynoski says that was a centerpiece of his pitch to Meow Wolf, noting that characters will reappear in multiple installations, each handled by a different artist. Meow Wolf L.A., in fact, will be the firm’s most character-driven exhibition, as guests will follow the storylines of three main protagonists throughout the space.
In announcing the partnership, Meow Wolf and Titmouse released an image from an animated work directed by Luca Vitale. It features a key character having a moment with a hummingbird and it’s done in an elegant, slightly anime-influenced style. It’s an image full of movement, reflecting a character in transition with inviting pastels and bold dashes.
“I like that image because I think it captures some of the sense of wonder that we want people to feel,” Stephenson says. “The character is having an encounter with the elusive nature of creativity and reality in a way that makes them have a different perspective of what’s possible.”
Other contributing animation directors to Meow Wolf L.A. include Space Dawg, Felix Colgrave, Alexander Vanderplank and Phimémon Martin, and Jun Ioneda.
Titmouse’s partnership with Meow Wolf will extend beyond the L.A. exhibition. The two will be working on the development of Meow Wolf New York, which is slated to open some time after Los Angeles, and are collaborating on a planned animated series, which Prynoski is spearheading.
Meow Wolf exhibits are the result of sometimes hundreds of disparate artists coming together in a shared space. Distilling that into a signature, singular style for a series could be a challenge. Stephenson pinpoints some guiding principles.
“You really need to feel the hand of the artist,” he says. “You need to feel a DIY aesthetic. You need to feel the materiality. Those are very specific to what we are.”
Lifestyle
Appeals court denies Trump’s request to halt removal of his name from the Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center on June 28, with its facade signage still covered by a tarp and scaffolding.
Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
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Alex Wroblewski/AFP via Getty Images
On Wednesday, a federal appeals court denied President Trump’s request to stop the removal of his name from Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. The signage on the building has been covered with tarp and scaffolding since June 13, but in a court filing last month, the center’s current executive director said that Trump’s name has been removed.
In their decision, three judges from the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the president had failed to prove that the arts center would be “irreparably injured” without Trump’s name attached to it.

NPR requested comment from the Kennedy Center, but did not receive an immediate reply.
This latest round of court decisions is part of the ongoing litigation filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, against President Trump and the board of the Kennedy Center. In a statement emailed Wednesday to NPR, Beatty said: “Today’s ruling again affirms that this administration’s efforts to rename the Kennedy Center were unlawful. His name no longer desecrates this sacred memorial, which belongs to the American people. Now it is time for the Trump administration to accept this, comply with the law, and take the tarps down.”
In previous court filings, Trump’s legal team had asserted that removing the president’s name from the arts complex, both on the physical building and in its digital materials, would inflict irreparable harm in both time and money already spent. In the denial, the three judges — Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Gregory Katsas — wrote that since Trump’s name has already been removed, “a stay would not avert those harms.”
Furthermore, Trump had claimed that without his name attached, future fundraising would be threatened “and [will] contribute to the financial decline of the Center.” In response, the appeals judges wrote: “Appellants, however, have failed to support this assertion with any specific facts or evidence. They offer only the conclusory assertions of the Kennedy Center’s Executive Director that were made in a factually unsupported declaration.” The center’s current executive director, Matt Floca, specializes in physical plant management.

The presiding judge in the case, Christopher R. Cooper, has ordered that the center provide him a status report on the center’s operation and programming before the end of this month. As of Wednesday, the center’s calendar lists a small roster of programs, including outdoor free movie screenings, workshops for children, and five free live performances in July on its Millennium Stage. In the past, the Kennedy Center presented over 2,000 arts and education events each year, including free daily Millennium Stage performances.

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