Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: We moved from New York in a doughnut truck. Would L.A. offer new adventures?
We drove up a steep hill in our packed doughnut food truck to see our new house in Glassell Park for the first time. But we weren’t prepared for the stress of that hillside drive. Who knew that such pockets of treacherous roads existed just east of the 2 Freeway?
This was a different level of driving stress than we had ever encountered on New York City or New Jersey roads. There, people whizzed by while holding the horn. Or the wrong lane would take you to a different state. But here in L.A., every turn we made led to a new hazard: a blind curve with a speeding Tesla coming down the other side; a gardener’s pickup truck with protruding tools parked to the side but still taking up half the road; low branches that swatted the top of the truck and then snapped back to spank us in the rear. Wait, this street is two lanes?
I gripped the door, mouth tight, barely breathing. When we finally parked the bright blue doughnut truck in our new driveway, my husband turned to me and said, “Oh man, my butt was clenched that entire time.”
Jersey City to Los Angeles. That was the journey I’d made with Dan, my husband of six years, with his mini-doughnut catering truck as our moving vehicle. We’d park and leave all our belongings alone overnight. I wondered if the truck would make our mattress and towels smell the way Dan did when he came home after working — the greasy sweetness of fried dough and powdered sugar. But the smells didn’t have that much time to sink in. We did it fast.
October 2020 didn’t feel like the time for dilly-dallying with our things in tow, encased in a glaring wrap of — I’ll call it cerulean — with raining sprinkles and the words “Glazed & Confused” plastered around a big pink doughnut.
Our first days here were spent in 92-degree late October (welcome to L.A.!) breaking down boxes in the sun. Our home was coming into focus — not just the house, the place.
After 12 years of being in New York City, I felt unmoored. I didn’t realize right away that the life I was building there was a transient one. Although I had been born, raised and educated in Southern California, I felt I had to go to that hectic place to find myself. What I found was pain and stress and a blue-eyed scruffy Italian guy from North Jersey.
After three years together, we were married in Santa Monica, showing our loved ones that Southern California was home base, even if I didn’t yet understand that. California inspired our next chapter too. While honeymooning in Sonoma, we saw a farmers market stand that made hot bite-sized doughnuts to order. It sparked an idea in Dan. My home state was bearing witness to the biggest moments of our life together.
But after the wedding, we went back to where we lived, and I was reminded of my failures. I had moved to New York after college to pursue a career in writing only for my goals to coincide with the 2008 financial crisis. Then, barely a year later, my sister died of complications from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The days there felt dull and rote, like life was playing in a pre-Oz black-and-white.
While I was pivoting careers and starting a psychotherapy practice, Dan was tiring of 80-hour workweeks managing Manhattan Cold Stone franchises. He sought to build a business on his own terms. He conceived of a food truck catering company that would serve those little doughnuts, fresh and warm in a tray topped with bits and bobs in combinations called S’mores or Salted Caramel Pretzel. Glazed & Confused was born.
As Dan’s business grew, mine sputtered. The depression I had been riddled with in adolescence — where it’s so impossible to imagine having a future that you give up on creating one — had returned in a new adult form. Looking at Dan’s truck, I felt the void in the center of that pink doughnut glaring at me and saying, “There’s a piece missing.” I realized my New York life was Limbo, a suspended place and time marked by loss.
So I started planting the seed. What if we moved to L.A.?
I wasn’t sure it would work. As a therapist, I know that leaving a place doesn’t leave your struggles behind. But if my struggle was about belonging and moving forward with building a life, then I couldn’t deny where I was rooted and where I want to build. As soon as we crossed into California, I felt relief from succumbing to the magnetic pull of home. My hunch was right. We needed to be here, and this truck had brought us.
But now, would Dan come to feel unmoored? He had been born, raised and educated on the East Coast. What if I had doomed him to what I had endured back east?
In a marriage, it can be easy to forget our different emotional realities. Just to be safe, I blanketed Dan in my community, my parents, school friends and cousins who embraced him. I researched the best pizza and bagels in L.A., and we frequented Pizzeria Sei, Shins and Belle’s Bagels so that he wouldn’t feel deprived of his cherished comforts. Turns out, L.A. pizza and bagels can win over a Jersey boy.
As I felt joy looking out the window at the tips of the Dodger Stadium palm trees and the U.S. Bank building, I saw him become taken by the light and color of our hills and sky. Every morning, I’d catch him staring out the window at the glow over that 2 Freeway. I could see him feeling the pride I feel about L.A.
Sometimes I don’t feel I deserve this feeling of contentment. But also, maybe, I’d been through enough. After all, it wasn’t easy: it took a 3,000-mile, 13-year detour to get on the right path — all thanks to a cerulean doughnut truck covered in sprinkles.
The author is a writer and therapist who writes screenplays, nonfiction narratives and critical essays. She was a 2023 script competition finalist at the Austin Film Festival. She lives in Glassell Park. She’s on Instagram: @pallaviyetur
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
Kate Green/Getty Images
hide caption
toggle caption
Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.
But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.
“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
hide caption
toggle caption
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …
The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
Paramount Pictures
hide caption
toggle caption
Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture
Bedford man barred from conducting any securities business in New Hampshire
Newark-bound United flight returns to LA airport for evacuation after reported fire
New Mexico Livestock Board accused of abuse of power in rancher, inspector feud
North Carolina primary could mean Roy Cooper vs Michael Whatley in pivotal fall Senate race
Gas prices rise slightly in North Dakota amid Iran conflict
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Trump sends official notification to Congress on strikes against Iran
Unexpected birth brings hope to near-extinct Amazon tribe
Supreme Court blocks redrawing of New York congressional map, dealing a win for GOP
Map: Earthquake Shakes Central California
Gas prices could jump as Middle East tensions threaten global oil supply
-
World5 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts6 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Denver, CO5 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Louisiana1 week agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Technology1 week agoYouTube TV billing scam emails are hitting inboxes
-
Politics1 week agoOpenAI didn’t contact police despite employees flagging mass shooter’s concerning chatbot interactions: REPORT
-
Technology1 week agoStellantis is in a crisis of its own making
-
Oregon4 days ago2026 OSAA Oregon Wrestling State Championship Results And Brackets – FloWrestling