Lifestyle
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.
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.’”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Alfre Woodard plays a retired journalist in the Netflix series The Boroughs.
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Alfre Woodard still remembers what it felt like to act in her first play as a teenager in Tulsa, Okla: “It was as if I’d been walking around on dry land my whole life, doing the breaststroke … and then just somebody came by me and tipped me in the water,” she says.
Woodard was hooked: Acting, she says, “propelled me into just the most open freedom I’ve ever felt in my life.” After college at Boston University, she moved to Los Angeles and thrust herself into the entertainment industry. Her TV and film credits include critically acclaimed roles in Hill Street Blues, Cross Creek, Crooklyn and 12 Years a Slave.
In the new Netflix series The Boroughs, Woodard plays Judy, a former journalist living in an upscale retirement community where something supernatural is preying on the residents. The ensemble cast is mostly actors over 60, while the showrunners are decades younger.
Woodward says the generational gap led to some interesting meetings early, like a Zoom meeting held by human resources where the cast was particularly rowdy.
“It was very irreverent kind of stuff going on,” Woodard says. “We’re hearing things like ‘You can’t call people honey.’ What about baby? No, you can’t … Can I say ‘You know, your butt looks really good in those jeans?’ Just giggling and laughing. But that’s our generation, and that’s one of the things that I think we bring to The Boroughs.”
For Woodard, The Boroughs is also a chance to spotlight senior citizens, a population rarely featured prominently on screen.
“That’s the thing about accumulating years is people take away your humanity when they look at you,” she says. “But … just like anybody playing music, anybody painting, the longer you do it, the more fine-tuned you are at it. We’re constantly in the process of becoming more of our true selves. So look to your elders.”
Interview highlights
On her Emmy-winning 1983 performance on Hill Street Blues, in which she played a mother whose young son was killed by police
I understood quickly what honesty was. Honesty in portrayal, in terms of your intention, that’s what you bring. … It’s like being on-pitch when you hit a note. Everybody can recognize a flat or a sharp note. … They know something’s off, so your job is to use your mouth, your fingers, however you’re playing the instrument. And for an actor, your body — and especially your heart and your mind — is your instrument.
On the research she did in order to play a prison warden in the 2019 film Clemency
Just walking through the prisons, you recognize the boys and the girls who … got off the track, and it was because people weren’t listening to them. They didn’t have my father or my mother or my teachers. … The great thing about being an actor is you have to learn something. Not just the skill, knowing about the skill of what your character is doing, but you have to come off your own opinions to do something. … You listen with your heart.
On representing Black culture on screen in the 1980s and ’90s
A lot of the country and certainly the world didn’t know we were as complex and … smart and whole, because we’d never been presented that way on screen. The whole point [of] storytelling is for the help of the community, and it always has been. Since the griots, since people first stood up around the fire, we need stories like food and water. That’s how we know who we are. The recreating, the retelling of the story lets the tribe look at itself, laugh, cry, get scared — but to reflect and to know how to walk forward.
On starting Sistahs Soiree, a pre-Oscar party for Black and Latina actors
The reason I started it was people would say things like, “Oh, you’re so great, too bad there’s not any roles for Black women.” It was like, no, I have to answer you. If it’s the Queen of England, yeah, let all the Kates be Queen Elizabeth. But if there’s 99 other roles, then shame on you for not seeing all these women who are not only prolific but profound. They have a track record and they have made bank for people. … And I got tired of hearing, … [fans say] “You know who would have been better in that?” You know what, you don’t do that to the Kates, don’t that to us.
On the secret to staying in the entertainment industry for as long as she has
There’s nothing in my history to know to [give up]. I don’t know how to do that. My father would say … “Why don’t you run for [class] president?” … And that was in my school [where] there were only 10 Black kids. “Oh, you know, they’re gonna let a guy do it.” My father … goes, “Well, then you gotta figure out a way to get it from him, don’t you?” You never said, “I can’t because somebody won’t let me.”
Ann Marie Baldonado and Nico Gonzalez Wisler produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Clare Lombardo adapted it for the web.
Two-thousand, four-hundred and forty-eight miles. That was the span of Route 66 when highway officials stitched it together to link Chicago, Los Angeles and countless cities and towns in between. But as an enduring American symbol, this highway reaches much further than that, inspiring books, songs, movies and countless road trips.
It turns 100 this year, so with summer coming, we drove it all.
Across eight states, we scouted out vintage motels, new businesses, neon signs, friendly Muffler Men, road food, vivid characters and 20th century ruins. We also kept our eyes open for hints of the road’s evolution, from the Dust Bowl years, segregation and the postwar boom to the freeway-era slump and the reemergence of Route 66 as a long, winding and living historic landmark.
Now we’re taking you along for the ride. If you’ve ever daydreamed about covering some part of the famous roadway, hop on in and let’s get our kicks, shall we?
Keke Palmer in I Love Boosters.
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In the new film I Love Boosters, Keke Palmer is the ringleader of a shoplifting crew that squares off with an unethical fashion CEO played by Demi Moore. It’s from the bizarro visionary director Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You) and it may be his most delightfully unhinged project yet.
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