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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Paul Scheer

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Paul Scheer

Paul Scheer’s memoir, “Joyful Recollections of Trauma,” is not just a collection of harrowing — and often humorous confessions — but also a reminder that to persevere, we must strive to maintain our passions. Scheer’s first loves come through in prose, and also on his pair of podcasts — “How Did This Get Made?” with his wife, June Diane Raphael, and friend Jason Mantzoukas, and “Unspooled” with film critic Amy Nicholson. Both explore Scheer’s appreciation of Hollywood.

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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.

“As a kid, my escapes were movies and TV shows,” Scheer says. “I wanted to be in scenes with those characters. I don’t even know if I wanted to be actor as much as I wanted to live in those worlds. I wanted to be in the ‘Different Strokes’ apartment. I wanted to ride that train on ‘Silver Spoons.’”

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The former New Yorker, whose credits include “The League,” “Black Monday” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” gushes about a recent appearance on “Night Court” as a “full circle moment,” noting the original series was one he watched ardently as a child.

Today, film figures heavily into Scheer’s downtime. While the Los Feliz resident notes that his Sundays are primarily focused on his children, who are 10 and 7, they are also an opportunity to share other aspects of his fandom with his family, particularly sports.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

7 a.m.: A cold plunge and pancakes

No coffee will treat me as well as a nice cold plunge. I have an inflatable cold plunge. The first thing I do is I pop that chiller on and get that water down to 50 degrees. I get in there for about six minutes.

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Sunday is also a day I get to enjoy take-in from my favorite restaurants. If I have my druthers, I would love to order in pancakes from Du-par’s. I think they’re the best. Even though I live far away from them, I will get them and pop them in the oven and get them back to their deliciousness.

7:30 a.m.: Double-check the kids’ sporting schedules

My weekends are devoted to my kids. I am going nonstop from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. but it’s nothing anyone else can be doing. I’m at an AAU tournament in Seal Beach, then I’m driving to Beverly Hills for a soccer thing. I’m coaching that team. It’s great, but it’s not relaxed. It’s not like we get a bagel from Courage Bagels and then figure things out.

8:30 a.m.: Take the family for a ‘street hike’

We don’t go in the fashionable places. We’re not going to go up to Runyon Canyon. We hike in our neighborhood — an urban hike, a street hike. We have our dog Bingo and go for a street hike.

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9:30 a.m.: Pickleball on the driveway or bike to a tennis court

Normally, what we’ve been doing on Sundays — it’s one of my favorite things — my family has really gotten into pickleball. We play that at our house, or we go to Vermont Canyon, which is right by the Greek Theatre, and we will play tennis. We ride our bikes over to the Vermont Canyon tennis courts after we’ve navigated the impossible parks and recreation website to reserve those courts, and we will play for about an hour.

11 a.m.: Hit a driving range

We are an active family. Neither June nor I are golfers, but we do have drivers and clubs and we’ll go to a driving range with the kids and hit balls around. As a parent, this day is longer than you think. You need to have a Swiss Army tool of things to do. We’re lucky to live near Griffith Park, which gives us a multitude of options. We’ve become active because the kids want to be active, so that translates to finding yourself at Dave & Buster’s on a Sunday afternoon because June has gotten really into football and the kids can be playing games.

12:30 p.m.: Hope there’s a Clippers game

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If it’s a perfect Sunday, it means there’s a 12:30 p.m. Clippers game; however, this [was] the last year of the 12:30 p.m. games. [Editor’s note: The Clippers are moving into their own venue, and therefore will likely no longer need to schedule the early afternoon games that were a necessity when sharing an arena.] If you know anything about the Clippers, 12:30 p.m. games are probably some of our worst outings as a team, but it’s also the only time I can bring the entire family to a Clippers game.

So I would change my season tickets to get these Sunday tickets, and my family would head down to Crypto.com — I have a hard time saying that name — and stock up on snacks and supplies. I’d hit a LudoBird. My kids do Blaze Pizza. Then, we either watch a two-hour amazing game, or we leave disheartened, but no matter what, we will come out with some sort of merch that we didn’t quite need.

3 p.m.: Treat the kids to a movie

I’m always trying to get the family out to see a movie. The New Beverly often has really fun weekend family programming, and the Vista also does interesting weekend programming. I try to convince the family — ‘Let’s go see Fred MacMurray in the ‘The Absent Minded Professor.’ Sometimes it works really great. I showed them ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ for the first time on an afternoon at the New Bev, and it was amazing. I showed them ‘Jason and the Argonauts,’ and it didn’t go as great, even for me.

If we want to see a new movie, we go to the Alamo Drafthouse. That’s where my kids fall in love with movies because they get to eat like pigs for 90 minutes straight. As long as they have a shake in front of them, they’re having a great time, but I try to upgrade their interests. I love the programming at Vidiots. They show amazing afternoon films that are geared toward families. They’re fun movies you woudn’t necessarily think about. It’s not necessarily ‘School of Rock.’ It’s a little more left of center. I like to get my kids’ minds open by seeing older movies.

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3 p.m. Have an alternate plan: trampolines

If it’s a rainy day, or my kids are in a bad mood, there’s one place we can go. One place that turns a frown upside down that’s affordable to all families. It’s called Sky Zone. It’s a trampoline park. It is basically a world of trampolines. Trampoline basketball. Trampolines on the wall. You go over foam pits. You battle with these swords that look like they’re from ‘American Gladiators.’ Sky Zone is our go-to Sunday Funday spot. It is an accident waiting to happen. My pediatrician is like, ‘Don’t go there.’ I once went and tore a glute muscle. But I keep going back.

5:30 p.m. Hunt down fresh takes on chain-restaurant staples

The next big plan of the day is dinner, and I like to take my dinner seriously. I have to pick something that everyone is going to like. I can’t go to a cool restaurant. I have to get the full family on board. I love this [pop-up] restaurant called Chain. It’s a celebrity chef making your favorite fast food items in a way that’s extremely delicious. They’ll do a re-creation of a Taco Bell taco with Wagyu. They just had this thing where they made old-school McDonald’s fries.

One of the best nights I ever had there they re-created Pizza Hut pizza. They rebuilt the entire place to look like an old Pizza Hut, with a salad bar and sneeze guard. Chain is a hit with the family because you get great food but you also get food your kids want to eat. It makes me feel like a kid all over again. I love that vibe. It’s like, to me, when my parents brought me to Bennigan’s.

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8 p.m. Wind down with pie

There will often be a call for ice cream, some stop on the way home. The kids dictate it. But I’m lactose intolerant so I’m going to hit up Magpies. I love their pies. They make these amazing slices. We are all eating our own slice of these frozen yogurt pies. The strawberry one is unbelievable. We often just sit in the car and all eat a slice of our pie.

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Lifestyle

Sharply funny 'Janet Planet' perfectly captures the feel of a long, hot summer

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Sharply funny 'Janet Planet' perfectly captures the feel of a long, hot summer

Mother and daughter Janet (Julianne Nicholson) and Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) share a slow New England summer in Janet Planet.

Courtesy of A24


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Courtesy of A24

Amid the current crop of summer movies, I can’t think of one that captures the feeling of summer more evocatively than Janet Planet. Much of the story takes place in a rustic house in woodsy Western Massachusetts; by day, sunlight streams in through enormous windows, and at night, chirping crickets flood the soundtrack. The celebrated playwright Annie Baker, here writing and directing her first film, has uncanny powers of observation and a talent for evoking time and place. She also has two memorable lead characters and a sharply funny and moving story to tell.

It’s the summer of 1991. The story begins when 11-year-old Lacy, played by the terrific newcomer Zoe Ziegler, calls her mom from camp and demands to be taken home early; her exact words are “I’m gonna kill myself if you don’t come get me.”

Lacy is a shy misfit with big owlish glasses and a flair for deadpan exaggeration. She and her single mom, Janet, who’s played by a subtly luminous Julianne Nicholson, are extremely close, as we can see when Janet duly comes to fetch Lacy and bring her home. Later at their house, Janet puts Lacy to bed and listens to her vent.

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Baker isn’t one to hurry her characters along. Her plays — the best known of which is her Pulitzer-winning 2013 drama, The Flick — have been justly praised for bringing a new kind of naturalism to the stage, especially in the way the actors retain the stammers and silences of normal conversation. She brings that same sensibility to Janet Planet.

Baker includes a few loving nods to her background in theater; at various points, Lacy plays with a small puppet theater, complete with handmade clay figurines, and in a later scene, she and Janet attend an outdoor performance featuring actors in elaborate costumes. But the movie never feels stagey. It was shot on 16-millimeter film by Maria von Hausswolff, who previously filmed the visually stunning Icelandic drama Godland, and her use of natural light and precise, fine-grained details feel transportingly cinematic.

The movie is divided into three loose chapters, each one focused on a friend or significant other of Janet’s who becomes a houseguest for a spell. First up is her boyfriend Wayne, played by a gruff Will Patton, who has a daughter around Lacy’s age but doesn’t take too kindly to Lacy herself. He’s soon out the door.

In the second chapter we meet Regina, played by a wonderful Sophie Okonedo, a free-spirited drifter who comes to stay with Janet and Lacy after leaving a local hippie commune — basically a cult, though everyone is careful not to use that word. Regina initially brings a breath of fresh air into the house, though she proves insensitive and tactless, especially around Janet, and soon overstays her welcome.

The third houseguest — Avi, played by Elias Koteas — is Regina’s ex-partner and the leader of that hippie commune. Avi is the most mysterious presence in the movie, and it’s through his short-lived relationship with Janet that we fully grasp how profoundly unhappy she is.

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The title Janet Planet has many meanings — it’s the name of the acupuncture studio that Janet operates out of the house. It’s also a passing reference to the nickname that Van Morrison gave the singer-songwriter Janet Rigsbee, who inspired a lot of his love songs during their five-year marriage. But the title is most meaningful as it frames our understanding of Janet, whose quiet magnetism really does seem to draw other people, especially men, into her orbit. As we see in Nicholson’s heartbreaking performance, it’s been as much a curse as it is a blessing.

One of the movie’s subtlest achievements is the way it clues us into Janet’s perspective, even as it keeps Janet herself at a bit of a distance. Much of the time we’re studying Janet through Lacy’s eyes, and what’s uncanny is the way Baker captures a sense of the girl’s growing disillusionment — that intensely specific moment when a child begins to see even a doting parent in a clear and not always flattering new light. By the end of Janet Planet, not much has happened, and yet something momentous seems to have taken place. You want Baker to return to these characters, to show us how Janet and Lacy continue to change and grow, together and apart, in the years — and the summers — to come.

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Every Southern California theme park ride, ranked

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Every Southern California theme park ride, ranked

(Daniel Sulzberg / For The Times)

Times theme park critic Todd Martens was handed a wild assignment: Rank every theme park ride in Southern California. The mission was dizzying, literally, as he spent months fastening his seatbelt and zipping through mountains, strapping on AR goggles and floating into fairy tales. He judged each attraction not just on sheer entertainment, but on artistry and historical significance.

Here are the results. Below you’ll find guides to Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm and Magic Mountain, with their rides ranked from best to worst. Use them to plan a trip to the park — or to start a debate. What would be your No. 1?

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Sunday Puzzle: Summer movie blockbusters

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Sunday Puzzle: Summer movie blockbusters

Sunday Puzzle

NPR


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On-air challenge: Summer officially arrived this past week, and summer is known for moviegoing. So today I’ve brought a movie puzzle. Every answer is a well-known film with a two-word title. I’ll give you rhymes for the two words. You name the films. (If the title starts with “A” or “The.” ignore that.)
 

Ex. Bad Cracks  –> MAD MAX

  1. Car Doors
  2. Sing Song
  3. Blinding Chemo
  4. Mean Look
  5. Cider Can
  6. The Mayan Spring
  7. Bedding Smashers
  8. The Thing’s Reach

Last week’s challenge: Last week’s challenge comes from listener Shrinidhi Rai, of Pleasanton, Calif. Think of two parts of the human body that start with the same letter of the alphabet. Drop one instance of this letter. Then rearrange the remaining letters to name a third part of the human body, which isn’t near the first two. What body parts are these?

Challenge answer: Neck, nape, kneecap

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Winner: Hal Babcock

This week’s challenge: This week’s challenge comes from listener Laura Kozma, of South River, N.J. Name a famous film actor of the past (4,6). Swap the second and third letters of the first name to name a color. Change the third letter of the last name to get another color. What actor is it?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it here by Thursday, June 27th at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: include a phone number where we can reach you.

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