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
They set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
Brothers Leo and Oliver Kremer visited karaoke spots around the globe and almost always had the same impression.
“The drinks weren’t always great, the aesthetics weren’t always so glamorous, the sound wasn’t always awesome and the lights were often generic,” says Leo, a former bassist of the band Third Eye Blind.
As devout karaoke fans, they wanted to level up the experience. So they dreamed up Mic Drop, an upscale karaoke lounge in West Hollywood that opens Thursday. It’s located inside the original Larrabee Studios, a historic 1920s building formerly owned by Carole King and her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin — and the spot where King recorded some of her biggest hits. Third Eye Blind band members Stephan Jenkins and Brad Hargreaves are investors of the new venue.
Inside the two-story, 6,300-square-foot venue with 13 private karaoke rooms and an electrifying main stage, you can feel like a rock star in front of a cheering audience. Want to check it out? Here are six things to know.
The Kremer brothers hired sculptor Shawn HibmaCronan to create an 8-foot-tall disco-themed microphone for their karaoke lounge.
1. Take your pick between a private karaoke experience or the main stage
A unique element of Mic Drop is that it offers both private karaoke rooms and a main stage experience for those who wish to sing in front of a crowd. The 13 private rooms range from six- to 45-person capacity. Each of the karaoke rooms are named after a famous recording studio such as Electric Lady, Abbey Road, Shangri La and of course, Larrabee Studios. There is a two-hour minimum on all rentals and hourly rates depend on the room size and day of the week.
But if you’re ready to take the center stage, it’s free to sing — at least technically. All you have to do is pay a $10 fee at the door, which is essentially a token that goes toward your first drink. Then you can put your name on the list with the KJ (karaoke jockey) who keeps the crowd energized throughout the night and even hits the stage at times.
Harrison Baum, left, of Santa Monica, and Amanda Stagner, 27, of Los Angeles, sing in one of the 13 private karaoke rooms.
2. Thumping, high sound quality was a top priority
As someone who toured the world playing bass for Third Eye Blind, top-tier sound was a nonnegotiable for Leo. “Typically with karaoke, the sound is kind of teeny, there’s not a lot of bass and the vocal is super hot and sitting on top too much,” he says. To combat this, he and his brother teamed up with Pineapple Audio, an audio visual company based in Chicago, to design their crisp sound system. They also installed concert-grade speakers and custom subwoofers from a European audio equipment manufacturer called Celto, and bought gold-plated Sennheiser wireless microphones, which they loved so much that they had an 8-foot-tall replica made for their main room. Designed by artist Shawn HibmaCronan, the “macrophone,” as they call it, has roughly 30,000 mirror tiles. “It spins and throws incredible disco light everywhere,” says Leo.
Karaoke jockeys Sophie St. John, 27, second from left, and Cameron Armstrong, 30, right, get the crowd involved with their song picks at Mic Drop.
3. A concert-level performance isn’t complete without good stage lighting and a haze machine
Each karaoke room features a disco ball and dynamic lighting that syncs up with whatever song you’re singing, which makes you feel like you are a professional performer. There’s also a haze machine hidden under the leather seats. Meanwhile, the main stage is concert-ready with additional dancing lasers and spotlights.
Brett Adams, left, of Sherman Oaks, and Patrick Riley of Studio City sing karaoke together inside a private lounge at Mic Drop.
4. The song selection is vast, offering classics and new hits
One of the worst things that can happen when you go to karaoke is not being able to find the song you want to sing. At Mic Drop, the odds of this happening are slim to none. The venue uses a popular karaoke service called KaraFun, which has a catalog of more than 600,000 songs (and adds 400 new tracks every month), according to its website. Take your pick from country, R&B, jazz, rap, pop, love duets and more. (Two newish selections I spotted were Raye’s “Where Is my Husband” and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which both released late last year.) In the private karaoke rooms, there’s also a fun feature on Karafun called “battle mode,” which allows you and your crew of up to 20 people to compete in real time. KaraFun also has an entertaining music trivia game, which I tested out with the founders and came in second place.
The design inspiration for Mic Drop was 1920s music lounges and 1970s disco culture, says designer Amy Morris.
5. The interiors are inspired by 1920s music lounges mixed with ‘70s disco vibes
A disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
If you took the sophisticated aesthetic of 1920s music lounges and mixed it with the vibrant and playful era of 1970s disco culture, you’d find Mic Drop.
When you walk into the lounge, the first thing you’ll see is a bright red check-in desk that resembles a performer’s dressing room with vanity lights, several mirrors and a range of wigs. “So much of karaoke is about getting into character and letting go of the day, so we had the idea to sell the wigs,” says Oliver. As you continue into the lounge, the focal point is the stage, which is adorned with zebra-printed carpet and dramatic, red velvet curtains. For seating, slide into the red velvet banquettes or plop onto a gold tiger velvet stool. Upstairs, you’ll find the intimate karaoke studios, which are decorated with red velvet walls and brass, curved doorways that echo the building’s deco arches, says Mic Drop’s interior designer, Amy Morris of the Morris Project.
Sarah Rothman, center, of Oakland, and friend Rachel Bernstein, left, of Los Angeles, wait at the bar.
6. You can order nontraditional karaoke bites as you wait for your turn to sing
While Mic Drop offers some of the food you’d typically find at a karaoke lounge such as tater tots, truffle popcorn and pizza, the venue has some surprising options as well. For example, a 57 gram caviar service (served with chips, crème fraîche and chives) and shrimp cocktail from Santa Monica Seafood. For their pizza program, the Kremer brothers teamed up with Avalou’s Italian Pizza Company, which is run by Louis Lombardi who starred in “The Sopranos.” He’s the brainchild behind my favorite dish, the Fuhgeddaboudit pizza, which is made with pastrami, pickles and mustard. It might sound repulsive, but trust me.
As for the cheeky cocktails, they are all named after famous musicians and songs such as the Pink Pony Club (a tart cherry pomegranate drink with vodka named after Chappell Roan), Green Eyes (a sake sour with kiwi and melon named after Green Day) and Megroni Thee Stallion (an elevated negroni named after Megan Thee Stallion).
When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
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