Seminal novelists of the genre such as Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour had already idealized the American Frontier in hundreds of best-selling books and stories. But Williams, a University of Denver professor for 30 years, took a darker view of U.S. expansion, one that dissected the heroic myths of archetypal cowboys, ranch hands and outlaws.

Director Gabe Polsky, who fought for more than a decade to turn “Butcher’s Crossing” into a movie, said he “never really connected with the genre.”

“Never. I tried to watch (Westerns) a little bit and just kind of disconnected because it was about searching for the Indians and bank robberies and revenge and all of that.”

In 2022, Polsky’s cinematic version, which stars Nicholas Cage, debuted on the film festival circuit, and is now in theaters.

As a novel, the coming-of-age story was arguably the first Western to subvert the genre’s morally certain, decades-old formulas. Williams preceded giants of the revisionist and anti-Western such as Cormac McCarthy (“No Country for Old Men”) and Larry McMurtry (“Lonesome Dove”), although his influence is only lately appreciated by critics and readers.

Williams, who also wrote 1965’s literary masterpiece “Stoner,” invests in the emotional lives of his characters as “Butcher’s Crossing” depicts a thrilling, stomach-churning buffalo hunt. Harvard dropout — and naive Ralph Waldo Emerson devotee — William Andrews trades Boston for the Kansas frontier in an effort to expand his horizons. There he joins buffalo hunter Miller (just one name), whose epic, money-making quest involves finding and skinning a legendary herd of Colorado buffalo to secure his biggest payout yet.

Like the book, the film — which stars Fred Hechinger (“The White Lotus”) as Andrews, and a fearsome Cage as Miller — is set in the early 1870s when Colorado was still a territory riven by murderous land grabs and precious-metal rushes.

“They’re hunting buffalo, but they’re also going out on this crazy sort of ‘Moby Dick’ search,” Polsky said of the movie, which was shot in the Blackfoot Nation in Northwest Montana due to the size and availability of the tribe’s buffalo herd.

In addition to Moby Dick, reviews have likened it to “Apocalypse Now” as it traces Miller’s mental unraveling on the cursed trek to claim and offload more buffalo hides than anyone actually wanted. “It’s an American tragedy, almost like ‘Death of a Salesman’ in a way,” Polsky said.

The movie hit theaters on Oct. 20, less than a week after the release of the new Ken Burns documentary, “The American Buffalo.” They cover roughly the time period in U.S. history, when the American bison population plummeted from about 60 million in 1860 to fewer than 300 in the span of just 20 years, Polsky said. The movie doesn’t shy from the horror, eschewing special effects and showing real animal skinning on screen.

“It was shot on Blackfeet land near Glacier National Park, and we promised we’d show them the movie before it came out,” said Polsky, whose team made good on the promise. “To do it with them really made a lot of sense because of their history with the animal and how important the animal is to them. We did a lot of ceremony with them before we shot, and they gave us lessons on skinning. Everything was real.”

Blackfeet representatives “loved the movie and were profusely thankful and talked a lot about it,” added Polsky, who pointed out that there are no Indigenous people on screen. “They understood right away you don’t need Native Americans to have these clichéd scenes in there with them. It says everything you need to say with what the hunters did. The (Indigenous people) are lurking. They’re watching. These hunters are self-destructive. Nature will correct you.”

Like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a historically based feature about the racist savagery and murder of Indigenous people (in this case, 1920s Osage people whose land contained oil), it’s part of a re-examination of the evil wrought by ambitious men.

Despite its Montana shooting location, Polsky said the film remains rooted in Colorado.

“Montana had better (production) incentives, but the story is based here and I wrote it here,” he said. “I rented an apartment and mainly wrote the film at the Basalt Library. It was the first draft, so I took the book and started page by page trying to mold it into something cinematic. The novel has so much detail.”

Securing Cage to star afforded it Hollywood appeal. Polsky and his brother/business partner Alan first met Cage while producing 2009’s wild “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” which starred Cage as an amoral police officer with severe substance use disorders.

“I don’t know many A-list people on a first-name basis, but (Cage) was the first guy I thought of,” Polsky said. “He’s got that mysterious intensity, and believe me, on set he was even more intense. No one wanted to get near him. I don’t want to say he was a dark force, but he had electricity going through him at all times and everyone was just like ‘Ah! I don’t want to get shot.’”

Cage’s version of Method acting paid off in his performance, but he was also a consummate professional whose deep knowledge of the script and creative ideas during filming helped Polsky see it in a different way.

“He actually brought that buffalo coat he’s wearing on screen,” Polsky said. “He got it online. The glasses, the shaving-his-head thing — those were his ideas, too. He understands that the drive and ambition that created this country were also very destructive. It’s not a happy story all the time, and these real-life guys were individual forces of nature themselves.”

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

Seminal novelists of the genre such as Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour had already idealized the American Frontier in hundreds of best-selling books and stories. But Williams, a University of Denver professor for 30 years, took a darker view of U.S. expansion, one that dissected the heroic myths of archetypal cowboys, ranch hands and outlaws.

Director Gabe Polsky, who fought for more than a decade to turn “Butcher’s Crossing” into a movie, said he “never really connected with the genre.”

“Never. I tried to watch (Westerns) a little bit and just kind of disconnected because it was about searching for the Indians and bank robberies and revenge and all of that.”

In 2022, Polsky’s cinematic version, which stars Nicholas Cage, debuted on the film festival circuit, and is now in theaters.

As a novel, the coming-of-age story was arguably the first Western to subvert the genre’s morally certain, decades-old formulas. Williams preceded giants of the revisionist and anti-Western such as Cormac McCarthy (“No Country for Old Men”) and Larry McMurtry (“Lonesome Dove”), although his influence is only lately appreciated by critics and readers.

Williams, who also wrote 1965’s literary masterpiece “Stoner,” invests in the emotional lives of his characters as “Butcher’s Crossing” depicts a thrilling, stomach-churning buffalo hunt. Harvard dropout — and naive Ralph Waldo Emerson devotee — William Andrews trades Boston for the Kansas frontier in an effort to expand his horizons. There he joins buffalo hunter Miller (just one name), whose epic, money-making quest involves finding and skinning a legendary herd of Colorado buffalo to secure his biggest payout yet.

Like the book, the film — which stars Fred Hechinger (“The White Lotus”) as Andrews, and a fearsome Cage as Miller — is set in the early 1870s when Colorado was still a territory riven by murderous land grabs and precious-metal rushes.

“They’re hunting buffalo, but they’re also going out on this crazy sort of ‘Moby Dick’ search,” Polsky said of the movie, which was shot in the Blackfoot Nation in Northwest Montana due to the size and availability of the tribe’s buffalo herd.

In addition to Moby Dick, reviews have likened it to “Apocalypse Now” as it traces Miller’s mental unraveling on the cursed trek to claim and offload more buffalo hides than anyone actually wanted. “It’s an American tragedy, almost like ‘Death of a Salesman’ in a way,” Polsky said.

The movie hit theaters on Oct. 20, less than a week after the release of the new Ken Burns documentary, “The American Buffalo.” They cover roughly the time period in U.S. history, when the American bison population plummeted from about 60 million in 1860 to fewer than 300 in the span of just 20 years, Polsky said. The movie doesn’t shy from the horror, eschewing special effects and showing real animal skinning on screen.

“It was shot on Blackfeet land near Glacier National Park, and we promised we’d show them the movie before it came out,” said Polsky, whose team made good on the promise. “To do it with them really made a lot of sense because of their history with the animal and how important the animal is to them. We did a lot of ceremony with them before we shot, and they gave us lessons on skinning. Everything was real.”

Blackfeet representatives “loved the movie and were profusely thankful and talked a lot about it,” added Polsky, who pointed out that there are no Indigenous people on screen. “They understood right away you don’t need Native Americans to have these clichéd scenes in there with them. It says everything you need to say with what the hunters did. The (Indigenous people) are lurking. They’re watching. These hunters are self-destructive. Nature will correct you.”

Like Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” a historically based feature about the racist savagery and murder of Indigenous people (in this case, 1920s Osage people whose land contained oil), it’s part of a re-examination of the evil wrought by ambitious men.

Despite its Montana shooting location, Polsky said the film remains rooted in Colorado.

“Montana had better (production) incentives, but the story is based here and I wrote it here,” he said. “I rented an apartment and mainly wrote the film at the Basalt Library. It was the first draft, so I took the book and started page by page trying to mold it into something cinematic. The novel has so much detail.”

Securing Cage to star afforded it Hollywood appeal. Polsky and his brother/business partner Alan first met Cage while producing 2009’s wild “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” which starred Cage as an amoral police officer with severe substance use disorders.

“I don’t know many A-list people on a first-name basis, but (Cage) was the first guy I thought of,” Polsky said. “He’s got that mysterious intensity, and believe me, on set he was even more intense. No one wanted to get near him. I don’t want to say he was a dark force, but he had electricity going through him at all times and everyone was just like ‘Ah! I don’t want to get shot.’”

Cage’s version of Method acting paid off in his performance, but he was also a consummate professional whose deep knowledge of the script and creative ideas during filming helped Polsky see it in a different way.

“He actually brought that buffalo coat he’s wearing on screen,” Polsky said. “He got it online. The glasses, the shaving-his-head thing — those were his ideas, too. He understands that the drive and ambition that created this country were also very destructive. It’s not a happy story all the time, and these real-life guys were individual forces of nature themselves.”

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, In The Know, to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox.

NEW YORK — Cher will come out of “retirement” to perform in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, appearing in the lineup just before the only star big enough to have the “Believe” singer as an opener: Santa Claus.

The Grammy-, Emmy- and Oscar-winner will perform at the end of the 2023 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan, thrilling the audience before the man of the hour closes the festivities.

Timing will be perfect for the 77-year-old superstar, who just released her first new album in five years, “Christmas.” She’s also expected to drop a 25th anniversary edition of 1998’s “Believe” on Friday.

This year’s parade will begin 30 minutes earlier than usual, at 8:30 a.m., to accommodate a packed schedule of performers and celebrities, Macy’s announced Wednesday.

“Our talented team of Macy’s Studios artisans and production specialists work year-round to deliver the nation’s most beloved holiday event, live on Thanksgiving morning,” parade producer Will Cross said in a statement.

Grammy winner Jon Batiste will open the parade. Other performers include Pentatonix, Manuel Turizo, Chicago, Brandy and Jessie James Decker, among many more.

This year’s parade will include 5,000 volunteers, 16 featured character balloons, 26 floats, 32 heritage and novelty balloons, 12 marching bands and nine performance groups. One of the marching bands will come from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, site of a mass shooting in 2018.

Olympic gymnastics silver medalist Jordan Chiles, Paralympic swimming gold medalist Jessica Long and 2023 Miss America Grace Stanke will be in attendance, with parade organizers teasing “additional stars to be announced.”

There will be seven new massive balloons this year, including Po from “Kung Fu Panda” and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Classics including SpongeBob, Ronald McDonald and Pikachu will return as well.

Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Al Roker from the “Today” show will host the festivities on NBC.

In recent years, Macy’s has sought to have superstars perform near the end of the parade to signal Santa’s entrance. The “Queen of Christmas,” Mariah Carey, got the honor last year.

©2023 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

There’s the time in 1968 when blues legend Muddy Waters declared Ivers – who sat in and played with Waters while still a student at Harvard University – to be the greatest living harmonica player.

Or maybe you start in the mid-’70s, when Ivers, now living in Los Angeles, dipped into film music with works such as co-writing and singing “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)” for David Lynch’s “Eraserhead.”

Around that same time, he recorded several avant-garde pop albums, such as 1974’s “Terminal Love.” Ivers even opened for Fleetwood Mac at Universal Amphitheatre in 1976, but bombed. (Could it have been that he took the stage wearing only a diaper? Perhaps!)

Jump ahead to the early ’80s, and Ivers was the host of “New Wave Theatre,” the first show to put L.A. punk bands such as Fear, 45 Grave, Suburban Lawns, Angry Samoans, Grey Factor and Bad Religion on TV.

But all that crazy, beautiful, now mostly forgotten creativity ended up overshadowed by his death.

On March 3, 1983, Ivers was found bludgeoned to death in his apartment. Four decades later, the crime remains unsolved.

“I mean, all of us thought Peter Ivers was going to go to the top of the charts, and then everything flopped,” says filmmaker Penelope Spheeris, a friend of Ivers through the punk rock scene she chronicled in the 1981 documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization.”

Spheeris, whose films include “Wayne’s World” and “Suburbia,” is the host of “Peter and the Acid King,” a new podcast about Ivers’s life and death from iHeartPodcasts and Imagine Audio.

However, given all the mystery and menace that still swirls around the circumstances of his death, at first she wasn’t sure she wanted to get involved.

Spheeris signs on

TV producer Alan Sachs, the co-creator of “Welcome Back, Kotter,” was a close friend of Ivers. He’s also the creator of “Peter and the Acid King,” an outgrowth of his years of looking for the truth about Ivers’ death.

“I knew Alan Sachs from back in what I call the punk rock days,” Spheeris says. “So that would be right around ’79, ’80 through ’84. I knew him very well back then because we were at clubs together all the time.

“I hadn’t seen him for a long time, and I ran into him in a parking lot and he asked me I would do an interview about Peter, our mutual friend,” she says. “And I said, ‘Only if so-and-so is not alive anymore.”

Sachs told her that so-and-so, the person Spheeris had long thought might have killed Ivers, was dead. She did the interview, and that was that for a little while.

“A couple of years later – that’s how long Alan’s been working on this – I get a call,” Spheeris says. “And he said, ‘Can you maybe think about being the host for a podcast based on Peter’s life and that period of time?’

“I said, ‘I don’t know, I make movies, I’m not a podcast person,’” she says.

Eventually, and only after she was comfortable the podcast wouldn’t focus too much on the grim, grisly details of Ivers’s death, Spheeris was in.

“It was a concern, which has dissipated as I’ve gone through it and done narration,” she says. “I think the team over there at Imagine has done an amazing job at respecting Peter and the request I made about not getting into anything too graphic. I did have some apprehension about sensationalizing someone’s murder, you know.

“It’s a thin line; it’s like a tightrope here,” Spheeris says. “We’re trying to give respect to him and remember his legacy, and then not be too exploitive.”

An instant appeal

Spheeris isn’t quite sure when she first met Ivers. She thinks it was probably at the Zero Club, the notorious after-hours punk club at the time.

“He just sort of made you want to know him,” Spheeris says.

Before long, they were fellow travelers of the nightlife of Hollywood bars, punk circles, and house parties in Laurel Canyon.

“I bought a house in Laurel Canyon in 1974, which I still own, thank god,” Spheeris says. “So I know all the back roads here, and we used to have these lines of cars following each other, going to parties. So I would go to parties with him, and we’d see each other and got to know each other pretty well by hanging out.”

Ivers, who was born in 1946, was a decade or so older than most of the kids in the punk scene spun out of the Masque in Hollywood into clubs from the San Fernando Valley to Chinatown and the South Bay.

“He was so charismatic. It didn’t matter if he was really a punk or not,” she says. “He emitted this vibe like he was a star already. But he wasn’t. I think that’s what kind of drew everybody to him.

“Plus, you know, if you’re really a punk you’re not going to be judgmental about somebody. You’re just gonna let them be who they are.”

Trainwreck TV

“New Wave Theatre” was created by David Jove, a British expat in L.A. with musical aspirations, and Ed Ochs, a former Billboard editor. The show, which aired weekly on a little-viewed UHF channel, was only reluctantly embraced by punk bands such as the Dead Kennedys, the Plugz, and Ivy and the Eaters.

Part of that was the name – few self-respecting punks wanted to be called New Wave – and part of that was Ivers, who as host, wearing a sparkly pink jacket and rambling in a rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness patter about life, art and music made them cringe.

“It was actually brutal to watch,” Spheeris says. “Because it was so bad – in my opinion. I’m sorry. I don’t want that to be a negative reflection on Peter, but it was really bad.

“I mean, the original, real deal punk groups had great objections to the show because it seemed like they were trying to out-weird the real punk scene,” she says. “And I think that’s what they were doing, and that’s why it was a bit offensive.”

Still, people watched it enough that the fledgling USA Network eventually picked it up as part of its “Night Flight” late-night arts and variety show. And the bands kept going on to perform.

“It was a train wreck, that’s a good way to put it,” Spheeris says. “The fact is there were no outlets for the music back then, visual outlets. The reason the DIY concept came about was because punk bands couldn’t get record deals. And punk bands certainly could not get TV broadcast time. There was no place to be seen other than that show.”

So who done it?

“New Wave Theatre” ended with Ivers’ death. For Spheeris, the L.A. party scene ended for her that day too.

“I remember the fear of thinking that there was somebody that we all knew that probably did it,” she says. “I remember being afraid. And even though there were other serial killers and all that around that time, to have someone so close get murdered was really shocking.

“It did change things,” Spheeris says. “It was a big wake-up call. Let me tell you, we were partying back then. I mean, I can’t believe I lived through it. Every single night and a lot of times every weekend during the day and night.

“But when he got killed, it was like a screeching halt. I didn’t want to go out. I was convinced that whoever killed him was in the room.”

Spheeris, who knows how “Peter and the Acid King” ends, says she did not expect the story to go where it did. She had her own suspicions about who murdered her friend.

“Here’s what has really surprised me,” she says. “Back in the day, after Peter died, if was going into a room and that person was there, in a party situation, I would turn around and leave. I remember going back to my house and my heart was beating so fast because I even laid eyes on that guy.”

“But now that people have done all this research, I have to say I’m not convinced anymore that who I thought did it did,” Spheeris says. “So it’s a little unnerving. I’ve learned that person could still be alive and still be dangerous.”

Even with that undercurrent of dread in the story the podcast tells, Spheeris says she’s glad that her friend is getting recognized for what he created during his life, even if it was just a bit too far outside the mainstream for his rock star dreams to have succeeded.

“It had a certain performance art aspect to it, ‘New Wave Theatre,’ and all of his work, really,” she says. “And that’s the thing about good art, you know. It breaks the rules. And good rock and roll, it breaks the rules.

“And Peter was always breaking the rules.”

It almost seems like an anachronism. Taking a trip by train is like something out of the past.

Now, Amtrak is looking to double in size.

By using funds from the 2021 infrastructure bill, Amtrak is making improvements at some of its biggest and most popular hubs. Those include train stations in New York, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia.

“Amtrak is making significant investments to modernize our stations,” said EVP Laura Mason, who is overseeing the company’s internal infrastructure overhaul.

Amtrak’s budget is expected to zoom. Annual capital investments alone are slated to rise to $2.5 billion by 2025. They were $785 million as recently as 2019.

Improvements and renovations are scheduled for Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, New York’s Penn Station and Chicago’s Union Station.

Penn Station in Baltimore, which is over 100 years old, is also expected to undergo improvements and renovations. The station has not seen a refresh in almost 40 years.

The renovations could bring a whole new life to the national railroad company.

In August, Amtrak ordered 10 more Airo trainsets as part of its modernization efforts, bringing the total to 83 trainsets, which are expected to first debut in 2026.

The Amtrak Airo trainsets, which consist of both locomotive and passenger carriages, will modernize Amtrak’s fleet across the country, with greater comfort for passengers, more space for luggage and a greater focus on sustainability, producing 90% less particulate emissions than on traditional diesel trains.

______

©2023 Northstar Travel Media, LLC. Visit at travelpulse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The author was inspired to write her new picture book, “See You On the Other Side,” after she dreamt about it while pregnant with her daughter. Exploring grief as a universal human emotion, the children’s book is an ode to loved ones who have died, with the message that love will be cherished and carried on forever, Minor said.

“It’s a heart-opener. And the words are soothing, like a hug or a blanket. They’re so melodic – you can kind of tell it came from the dream space,” said the author, who lives in the Hollywood Hills.

Featuring evocative, detailed illustrations by artist Mariyah Rahman, the new book aims to be a comforting resource to children who may be grieving a death or who are learning about or coming to terms with the idea of loss.

Because the book itself is the result of loss.

Losing a friend

In 2020, she read an early version of what would become “See You On the Other Side” at the funeral of her friend, Broadway star Nick Cordero, who died during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cordero was married to Minor’s best friend, Amanda Kloots.

“A lot of people’s hearts were opened; there were a lot of tears,” she said. “It felt like it was for Elvis, their son, and for Nick.”

Seeing how people were moved at the funeral, Minor realized her words could provide solace to others – particularly young ones and families – experiencing feelings of loss. She wanted to write a book that would feel inclusive, comforting and uplifting.

Minor, whose debut, “The Sun, Moon and Stars,” was published in 2021, hopes “See You On the Other Side” reframes loss and brings families together to heal, especially in challenging times.

Minor collaborated with illustrator Mariyah Rahman who created the illustrations to pair with her words on grief and comfort.

Rahman, who is from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, got into “kid lit” illustration after going to the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. With “See You On the Other Side” her second picture book, Rahman said that her art style is a reflection of her diverse background, growing up in a mixed family from India, Venezuela and China. Her first book, “Plátanos Are Love,” explores Afro-Latine culture.

“I want any kids who read books that I illustrate to know there are so many kids who look like them,” Rahman said, “especially in a book about grief, to know that they’re not alone.”

She illustrated her deceased dog, Sunshine, in the book as a way to honor him, and dedicated the book to other pets who have passed away. Even her grandmother is reflected in one of the pages.

Reflecting a diverse world

Of the book’s illustrations, Rahman said it was “fun to research different cultures.” Included in the images, there’s a girl placing a letter on the family ofrenda, an altar for Día De Los Muertos, surrounded by orange jacaranda flowers, marigolds and plates of pan dulce; a same-sex couple plays with their child; an Indian family makes traditional bread together.

There’s even a spread about anger, because “it’s very natural to be angry when there’s a big change; something that’s hard to wrap your head around,” Minor said. “After the anger, the storm’s gonna blow over, we can get to the other side.

“You see the things, the shared experiences, the grief, that links us all together. There are feelings of grief coming from kids all over the world.”

Minor agreed that when she was growing up it was hard to find books with people of color in them, so she’s made a mission to make her books more inclusive.

“There’s a (drawing) that looks like my daughter, and she’s like, hey, that’s me,” she said. “I just think it’s so helpful for children to be able to see a reflection back – it lets them relate to it more, and to open their hearts more.”

Minor hopes the book will remind readers young and old of “the truth: that we are all one.”

“We want everyone to feel at home, and to see other cultures and families on the pages,” she said. “One thing that’s always constant is change – and we’re not immune to loss. So I think it is a gift to be able to introduce these topics with children, even in difficult times. We can get to the other side of it if we stay connected to our hearts and to each other. We will see the other side of it.”

“See You On The Other Side” is available online and in stores now. 

To score a table at Don Angie, the Italian-American hotspot in New York’s West Village, the official course of action is to log on to restaurant booking site Resy at 9 a.m. seven days before the desired dining date. At least, that’s the policy that chef-owners Angie Rito and Scott Tacinelli have set up for potential diners.

But those who have recently tried to book those elusive seats via the reservation platform know they rarely open up.

If you head over to Appointment Trader, however, and are willing to pay up to $125 just for the opportunity to walk through the door, you can start bidding on seats for any day for the next few weeks.

The issue of seats disappearing that should be available began last summer, says Rito. “But it has become more pronounced over the last few months.”

She believes that bots—software programs engineered to perfect certain tasks, like swiping up Taylor Swift tickets or restaurant reservations the millisecond seats open up—are mostly to blame.

The operators behind those seat-snatching programs then try to make a quick buck—or several hundred—by reselling the reservations on sites like Appointment Trader. The two-year-old website enables individuals to buy and sell restaurant bookings and finds seats using bots as well as concierges and other people with access to restaurants.

Owners at several other of New York’s hard-to-get-into restaurants, from downtown Indian haunts Dhamaka and Semma to tiny Farra Wine Bar in Tribeca, and the revamped new American spot Virginia’s, also report being burned by bots. “We have noticed certain names making a large amount of reservations, and either no-showing or having different guests utilizing them,” says Isabella Pisacane, a partner and director of hospitality at French bistro Libertine. “Certain guests will appear trepidatious when approaching the maitre’d when checking in, as they’re not using their actual names.”

“It is a very serious issue now, happening to a lot of restaurants and bars,” says GN Chan, co-owner of Double Chicken Please in the Lower East Side and ranked No. 2 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. He notes that the bar began receiving brokered reservations from bots soon after the drinking den was named the best bar in North America earlier this year.

Em Pak, a manager at Double Chicken Please, says that there are some signature ways to tell if a seat has been booked by a bot: Resy accounts may be connected to invalid email addresses comprised of jumbled numbers and letters, or profiles with a history of booking prime time, back-to-back reservations on weekends — such as 7 p.m. reservations every Friday and Saturday for several weekends. Others are the usual disconnected phone numbers attached to bookings and invalid credit cards.

But even though they may suspect suspicious activity in advance, Pak admits that a lot of the time they don’t know for sure, “and we don’t want to risk canceling a reservation that belongs to someone who authentically booked.”

This means that not only does the business miss out on the $20 cancellation fee charged to invalid credit cards, the bar loses time, and eventually customers and revenue, when they hold bot seats that go unfilled.

But Chan—who has seen seats at his bar selling for $340 each on six-month-old Cita marketplace, another website that enables diners to buy and sell restaurant reservations—calls out another issue. When guests drop $100 or more just to walk in the door, “people have [the] wrong expectation when they come” he says because those expectations might be unreasonably high.

Pak says that Resy, which runs the reservations for Double Chicken Please and is owned by American Express, has taken action: They are “deleting confirmed bot profiles and sending what are essentially cease and desist emails to broker profiles,” she says. The actions have helped, Pak adds, but the issue persists. Now, Double Chicken Please has cut down on the number of reserved seats they offer and are welcoming more walk-ins.

A spokesperson for Resy says that the company is taking measures to block bot-booking. “Resy detects and deactivates bad actor accounts, cancels reservations, and blocks bot traffic,” they said over email.

At Tock, another reservation site that books tables at notable restaurants around the world, there’s an in-house Fraud Prevention team that uses a proprietary algorithm to flag suspicious activity. It has used it to block cards and scalper accounts a handful of times. Two months ago, the company added verification techniques to block bots, that include having users check boxes to verify they are real people. Resy also uses a variety of checks, including checking boxes and two-factor authentication for profiles.

Some new sites are testing out their own bot workarounds. ResX, a six-month-old app that began as an Instagram account, is free to use and provides a platform for diners to give away and claim restaurant reservations. For $10 a month, ResX also offers access to what it calls “premium” restaurants, like the power pasta dining spot Misi in Brooklyn. Users earn “tokens” by giving away their reservations; the tokens, in turn, can be used to claim premium reservations.

Longtime ResX user Jake Andrew, who declined to give his last name, has used the app to avoid cancellation charges. That includes trading a table for 8 at Montauk’s Surf Lodge last summer — the definition of valuable culinary real estate in the Hamptons. “I was going to be charged $400, $50 per guest,” he says.

Another new members-only app, Dorsia, works with restaurants to score prime reservations at places like the supper club space 9 Jones and even the impossible-to-get-into Carbone in New York. (The site, whose name has a clear American Psycho connection, also covers cities like Miami, London, the Bay Area and Los Angeles restaurants.)

But a diner must agree to a certain prepaid per-person spend when they book: For example, dinner at Cote Korean Steakhouse might cost $125 per person on a weekday night at 5 p.m.; on a weekend at 9 p.m. that figure might be $175. The benefit is that, although the seats might cost more, the extra money goes to a diner’s food and drinks as opposed to a reseller’s pocket.

For now, the only solution for frustrated restaurateurs is “a lot of added time and effort,” says Don Angie’s Rito. She and her staff are currently reaching out to every customer on Don Angie’s waitlist one-by-one to ensure that they’re a real person who will walk through the door of the restaurant and into a seat.

___

©2023 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

DM frontman Gahan captured everyone’s attention at the packed TD Garden on Tuesday. The singer, in perfect impassioned and overwrought voice, moved around the stage like a flamenco dancer, a ballerina, a stripper, a devilish imp, and a kindly guide across the void and into a throbbing discotheque.

The band’s first Boston concert in more than half a decade had the makings of a goth prom  — Depeche Mode on Halloween, c’mon, sublime! But Depeche Mode’s art is both too monolithic and personal, too absolutely connected to the broken parts of the world, the broken parts in us, to have even a whiff of kitsch.

Gahan and Martin Gore started the show by chanting to the crowd, to the world, into that void: “No rain, no clouds, no pain, no shrouds, no final breaths, no senseless deaths.” A new song, “My Cosmos Is Mine” is a glitchy, eerie anthem, a song that — as much as any in the band’s catalog — speaks to being crushed (it also contains the lyric: “Don’t stare at my soul, I swear it is fine.”)

The boldness and genius of the band is its constant attention to the damaged, an investigation of the existential set to electric, melodic and industrial clicks and beeps (something drawn into harsh light since the sudden passing of founding member Andy Fletcher last year). Gore wrote “My Cosmos Is Mine” right after Russia invaded Ukraine, and while the song rages against war, it also speaks to the intimate, unrelenting relationship with death we carry around.

But in this darkness, despite the confrontational lyrics and moody sonics, Depeche Mode remained a flicking candle in gloom, and that played out song after shattered-and-sharp song.

The band spent a nice amount of time with new LP “Memento Mori,” and got intense (“Wagging Tongue,” “My Favourite Stranger”). And so poppy — new tune “Ghost Again,” a clear meditation on life and death, had such a bright, buoyant hook.

But the now duo (rounded out brilliantly by the amazing drummer Christian Eigner and multi-instrumentalist Peter Gordeno) also resurrected a ton of old existential — and sexual — jams, those hits goth kids and goth adults made rock standards in the ’80s and ’90s.

Gahan, intensity and playfulness positively oozing from him, took control of the audience over and over again. That big voice, those grandiose movements and his indomitable charisma, stomped and crept through the crowd for “Walking in My Shoes” and “I Feel You” and “Never Let Me Down Again” and “Personal Jesus” and…

Beside him, Gore was an ideal foil with his high harmonies, jagged guitar, vintage and modern synth pulses. And when alone — Gahan left the stage so Gore could front the band for “A Question of Lust” and a piano ballad version of “Strangelove” — he provided all the wounded tenderness and intimacy Gahan doesn’t have.

In the wake of Andy Fletcher’s death, the band may have not carried on. It would have been another loss. Without Gahan and Gore around, who will lead us into the heart of darkness and the heat of the discotheque? Who will ask big questions you can dance to do and shout along with?

From peacocks and astronauts to artists and comic book characters, get a glimpse inside Heidi Klum’s 22nd annual Halloween Party presented by Patron El Alto at Marquee on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023, in New York City.

Make-ahead foods, such as scones, can be ideal because they are delicious at room temperature, which means can accommodate guests who are early risers as well as those who prefer to sleep in.

This recipe for “Lemon-Ginger Scones” from “Simply Scratch” (Avery) by Laurie McNamara produces refreshing flavor in a buttery scone. Serve with tea or coffee and guests will be in heaven.

TAG GOES HERE

Lemon-Ginger Scones

INGREDIENTS

1/2 cup cold heavy cream

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon organic lemon extract

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) ice-cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1/4 cup finely diced candied ginger

2 tablespoons grated lemon zest

1/4 cup powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.

In a 2-cup liquid measuring cup, use a fork to beat together the heavy cream, eggs, lemon extract, and vanilla until combined. Chill until ready to use. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Drop in the ice-cold butter and use a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse wet sand.

Pour in the chilled cream mixture, ginger and lemon zest and use a rubber spatula to stir until just combined. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it a few times before forming it into a ball. With floured fingers, flatten it out into a 1 1/2-inch-thick round. Cut the round into 8 equal-sized wedges and transfer them to the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking. Transfer the baked scones to a wire rack to cool.

Once the scones have cooled, dust generously with powdered sugar before serving.

Makes 8 scones

Be sure to use real old fashioned rolled oats (not quick oats) for these to have the crispy texture you’re after. I prefer the richness and salty flavor of Irish butter in my baking, but feel free to substitute standard salted butter. If you want to make just one cookie sheet full and save the rest for fresh-baked cookies at a later time, wrap the remaining dough in plastic wrap and roll it into a thick log before placing it in the freezer, so you can just slice it into half-inch thick discs to bake when the craving strikes.

TAG GOES HERE

Crispy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Comfort Cookies

INGREDIENTS

1 cup butter, room temperature

2/3 cup white sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup ground flax meal

¾ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon sea salt

2 cups old fashioned rolled oats (not instant)

½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1½ cups chopped walnuts

2 cups dark chocolate chips/chunks

¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, optional, for sprinkling tops

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 3 cookie sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set aside.

In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or in a large bowl with a whisk), beat the butter, white sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Add the egg and vanilla and beat another 30 seconds, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

In a separate bowl, combine the whole wheat flour, flax meal, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt. With the mixer on the lowest speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just incorporated, about 10 seconds. Next, mix in the oats and shredded coconut until fully incorporated. Finally, mix in the walnuts and chocolate chips with a large rubber spatula until evenly distributed. The dough will be a bit crumbly.

Place 2- to 3-tablespoon mounds of the dough onto the cookie sheets, spacing the mounds about three inches apart, and then flatten each mound with your palm until it forms a flat circle, about ½-inch thick. Lightly sprinkle the coarse sea salt over the tops before baking.

Bake one cookie sheet at a time on the center rack of the oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and crisp. Allow to cool completely on the baking sheet for an extra crispy cookie. Once completely cool, store in an airtight container for up to five days. Makes about 2½ dozen cookies

Registered dietitian and food writer Laura McLively is the author of “The Berkeley Bowl Cookbook.” Follow her at @myberkeleybowl and www.lauramclively.com./Tribune News Service

What took so long?

“We’ve been trying,” Alamo CEO Tim League explained in a phone interview. “These things just move at a bit of a glacial pace. I think we’ve been actively looking in Boston for eight years.

“For us at least there’s a little bit of a COVID silver lining because theaters after a couple of years became available and we really fell in love with this location.”

The Drafthouse, with 10 screens, is located at 60 Seaport Blvd. All provide dine-in service brought to seats by Alamo Drafthouse’s wait staff.  All seating is assigned. Reservations may be made in person, online or a mobile app purchase. Those under 18 cannot come in alone; they must be with an adult.

What stands out about Alamo Drafthouse theaters is the full food and drink menus with all courses — appetizer, entree, dessert — and full bar options including cocktails, spirits, award-winning milkshakes and a huge local draft beer selection.

Menus are available at each seat, where guests can order.  Call buttons offer quick access to a server.

Drafthouse asks that all guests arrive 30 minutes prior to a show for a specially crafted pre-show program unique to each film, and to allow for the full service experience.

That translates as its famous and strict “No Talking/No Texting” policy. Young children are not allowed (except for special kids’ events).

With Boston the 40th Drafthouse in an expanding nationwide chain, what decides, ‘This is where our next Alamo Drafthouse goes’?

“A complicated question,” League, 53, allowed. “For this particular one, since it was an existing theater, this is where it was going to be.

“We come here and spend a good bit of time in the area to see what it feels like nights. I really liked the breweries, the restaurants and just the entertainment scene around sports and the liveliness of people that are walking around, day and night.”

The chain scoffs at the notion that people don’t want to go see movies in movie theaters anymore.

“That same argument happened with the advent of streaming and streaming content. It’s available – but that doesn’t matter if you want to get out of the house! Restaurants are doing this right”.

And, League added, with blockbusters like “Barbie” “It’s been an incredible year for people to understand again how amazing it is to sit in a theater and experience great movies.”

I use a small amount of sherry with soy sauce. If you don’t have sherry on hand, you can buy it in small bottles or splits in a wine store. Or use unsalted chicken broth instead.

You can use regular sesame oil instead of toasted sesame oil.

If using dried noodles instead of fresh, boil 2 to 3 minutes longer.

TAG GOES HERE

Honey Glazed Stir-Fried Pork

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon dry sherry

1 tablespoon honey

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

3/4 pound pork tenderloin, sliced into 1/2-inch strips

1/4 pound fresh or steamed Chinese noodles

4 teaspoons toasted sesame oil, divided use

1/4 pound broccoli florets

2 cups sliced onion

2 cups sliced red bell pepper

DIRECTIONS

Place a large pot of water on to boil. In a small bowl, stir together the soy sauce, sherry, honey, and red pepper flakes. Add the pork strips and toss well. Ser aside. When water comes to a boil, add the noodles and boil for 2 minutes. Test to make sure they are soft. Boil another minute, if needed. Remove 2 tablespoons water to a bowl and add 2 teaspoons sesame oil and noodles. Toss well. Drain the noodles and add to the bowl. Toss well, divide in half and place on two dinner plates.

Heat a wok or skillet over high heat. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons sesame oil. Add the pork with the marinade and stir fry for 1 minute. Remove to a plate. Add the broccoli, onion and red bell pepper and stir-fry for 2 minutes return the meat to the wok continue to stir-fry 1 minute. Divide in half and add to the two dinner plates over the noodles.
Yield 2 servings.

Recipe by Linda Gassenheimer

(Linda Gassenheimer is the author of over 30 cookbooks, including her newest, “The 12-Week Diabetes Cookbook.” /Tribune News Service

During my time at the health care facility, I became acquainted with an elderly gentleman. We became good friends, and remain good friends to this day. I visit with him several times a week, when time allows, and we talk on the telephone.

The problem is, his family doesn’t like that I am a homosexual male and that I have such a close relationship with him. He does not want me to stop visiting, nor do I want to. What can I do to make everyone relax, so he and I can still remain good friends without someone disapproving? — Unappreciated Friend

Dear Friend: I wish I understood exactly what the family’s objection is to your friendship with this person. Are they afraid you are after his money? Or are they incapable of understanding that homosexuals can (and do!) have platonic friendships with straight folks?

If you and that gentleman want to remain friends, you may have to grow a thicker skin. You cannot please everyone, and whether his family “approves” is beside the point. I hope you will keep doing what you have been doing because it is beneficial for that man to have a friend he can count on.

Dear Abby: My sister, who is quite a bit older than me, was married to a man for more than 20 years. He was a part of my family from the time I was 3. When I was a teenager, he made a “move” on me, which was disgusting because I trusted him. My family swept it under the rug and downplays it to this day. If that wasn’t enough, I twice caught him cheating on my sister. They eventually divorced.

As an adult, I want nothing to do with him. However, my sister and mother insist on him being involved in our important gatherings. I feel they completely disregard my feelings, and I have since removed myself from those gatherings. I feel cheated, but they say it’s “necessary” for him to be around their shared children, and they keep trying to make me feel like I am being unreasonable. Am I? — Little Sister in Tennessee

Dear Sister: You are not unreasonable; you are pragmatic. You come from a family that prefers to ignore misbehavior rather than confront and deal with it. I don’t know if you have had psychotherapy, but from what you have written you might have — and with a very competent therapist.
Enforcing boundaries is not unreasonable. While your sister and mother may prefer hiding their heads in the sand “for the sake of the children,” who by now should be pretty close to adulthood, you have every right to keep your distance. From my perspective, what you are doing is healthy.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com

DM frontman Gahan captured everyone’s attention at the packed TD Garden on Tuesday. The singer, in perfect impassioned and overwrought voice, moved around the stage like a flamenco dancer, a ballerina, a stripper, a devilish imp, and a kindly guide across the void and into a throbbing discotheque.

The band’s first Boston concert in more than half a decade had the makings of a goth prom  — Depeche Mode on Halloween, c’mon, sublime! But Depeche Mode’s art is both too monolithic and personal, too absolutely connected to the broken parts of the world, the broken parts in us, to have even a whiff of kitsch.

Gahan and Martin Gore started the show by chanting to the crowd, to the world, into that void: “No rain, no clouds, no pain, no shrouds, no final breaths, no senseless deaths.” A new song, “My Cosmos Is Mine” is a glitchy, eerie anthem, a song that — as much as any in the band’s catalog — speaks to being crushed (it also contains the lyric: “Don’t stare at my soul, I swear it is fine.”)

The boldness and genius of the band is its constant attention to the damaged, an investigation of the existential set to electric, melodic and industrial clicks and beeps (something drawn into harsh light since the sudden passing of founding member Andy Fletcher last year). Gore wrote “My Cosmos Is Mine” right after Russia invaded Ukraine, and while the song rages against war, it also speaks to the intimate, unrelenting relationship with death we carry around.

But in this darkness, despite the confrontational lyrics and moody sonics, Depeche Mode remained a flicking candle in gloom, and that played out song after shattered-and-sharp song.

The band spent a nice amount of time with new LP “Memento Mori,” and got intense (“Wagging Tongue,” “My Favourite Stranger”). And so poppy — new tune “Ghost Again,” a clear meditation on life and death, had such a bright, buoyant hook.

But the now duo (rounded out brilliantly by the amazing drummer Christian Eigner and multi-instrumentalist Peter Gordeno) also resurrected a ton of old existential — and sexual — jams, those hits goth kids and goth adults made rock standards in the ’80s and ’90s.

Gahan, intensity and playfulness positively oozing from him, took control of the audience over and over again. That big voice, those grandiose movements and his indomitable charisma, stomped and crept through the crowd for “Walking in My Shoes” and “I Feel You” and “Never Let Me Down Again” and “Personal Jesus” and…

Beside him, Gore was an ideal foil with his high harmonies, jagged guitar, vintage and modern synth pulses. And when alone — Gahan left the stage so Gore could front the band for “A Question of Lust” and a piano ballad version of “Strangelove” — he provided all the wounded tenderness and intimacy Gahan doesn’t have.

In the wake of Andy Fletcher’s death, the band may have not carried on. It would have been another loss. Without Gahan and Gore around, who will lead us into the heart of darkness and the heat of the discotheque? Who will ask big questions you can dance to do and shout along with?

You’ve probably heard of “workcations” that combine work travel with leisure trips, often in desirable locations. But there’s a new twist on this trend: The “hush trip,” in which employees don’t tell their bosses they’re actually working from vacation locales. These secret getaways by remote workers while on the clock seem to be gaining in popularity and frequency, although many companies frown upon this activity.

Thinking about taking a hush trip, especially during the upcoming holiday season? Read on to learn more about the benefits and risks of this practice, what employers think of hush trips and ways to pay for your next holiday trip.

Understanding the hush trip phenomenon

A hush trip can be defined as an excursion where an employee works remotely, usually in a vacation spot, without disclosing to their boss or colleagues where they’re temporarily located, according to Vicki Salemi, a career expert with Monster.

“Hush trips are growing more popular because more workers see opportunities to work remotely in places other than their homes,” she says. Salemi cites a recent Monster poll that reveals approximately one-third of workers didn’t think their managers needed to know that they were working from somewhere other than their home. A further one-fifth of respondents didn’t think their managers would approve of a “workcation,” and 16 percent believed their managers and colleagues would have a negative view of hush trips.

Joshua Bienstock, an associate professor at New York Institute of Technology’s School of Management and a practicing employment and labor lawyer, says he understands why hush trips have become more common.

“Employees are stressed out in a 24/7 world,” he explains. “As more workplaces recognize the utility of remote work, many employees can do their work in any place. So the thinking seems to be, ‘Why not combine my work and vacation by taking a hush trip?’”

Peter Strebel, president of RateGain, a provider of SaaS solutions for the travel and hospitality industry and former chairman of Omni Hotels & Resorts, isn’t surprised by the rise of hush trips.

“Many times, they occur when workers do not have vacation time to spare or are saving vacation days for a longer trip. Hush trips are in-demand among remote workers because they allow them to do their jobs during work hours and take advantage of amenities after work or on the weekends,” says Strebel. Given that 64% of full-time workers support fully remote work schedules, according to Bankrate data, there’s clear demand for the type of flexibility that enables hush getaways.

Pros and cons of taking a hush trip during the holidays

Thinking about taking a hush trip? It’s important to weigh the pluses and minuses of this decision.

“The pros of taking a hush trip during the upcoming holiday season are to combine the best of both worlds — being able to work from an enjoyable location and get paid for it,” Salemi notes. “As soon as you log off, you can quickly toggle to vacation mode, which may make you happier and more productive.” Further, she says, more than half of those surveyed by Monster report feeling less anxious when taking hush trips because they get a change of scenery without tapping into their paid time off.

Hush trips can also enable you to travel at non-peak times, such as flying mid-week on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, when rates are often cheaper.

“This allows you to avoid the peak vacation travel time of weekends and the higher rate of business travel on Mondays and Fridays,” Stebel points out. “For example, a person planning a hush trip from Boston to New York City for the holidays could take an early flight on Tuesday morning, work from the hotel lobby until the room is ready and plan to take in Rockefeller Center after work.”

On the other hand, it’s easy to get distracted during a hush trip. “The holiday season can feel more chaotic and stressful than non-holiday times of the year. Being in a new location and trying to concentrate on work with distractions at your fingertips may be challenging and could compound your stress,” cautions Salemi.

Strebel agrees, adding that traveling anywhere during the holiday season can be complicated. “A large number of travelers are on the move at this time of year, which increases the risks of flight delays or hotel overbookings,” he continues. “A delayed flight, for example, could force a remote worker to take calls from the airport, which is not an ideal scenario.”

Likely the biggest disadvantage of engaging in a hush trip is that your company could find out. This could land you in hot water with your employer — perhaps jeopardizing your job.

What do companies think of hush trips?

Hush trip acceptance and employer policies vary from company to company. But rest assured that most employers would like to know ahead of time if you expect to work in a different location than your home.

“The issue essentially comes down to whether you can effectively do your job with a host of distractions nearby. It’s up to you to ensure your work is done well and without disruption,” Strebel says. “I believe employers should consider flexibility with hush trips, as blanket policies condemning them can hurt morale. Similarly, an employee should tread carefully when on a hush trip, as it could cause tension with coworkers.”

Andrew Lokenauth, a personal finance expert and owner of BeFluentInFinance.com, says hush trips are discouraged by most businesses. “Employers have concerns about productivity, security and liability,” he says. “But some will tolerate a hush trip if it’s done discreetly and the work is completed to satisfaction.”

Ideally, employers would encourage workcations, creating cultures in which employees don’t need to keep secrets — including where they’re working from — from them.

“But other employers may have the mindset that everyone needs to be accountable and only work in the office or from a home office where they know your technology is reliable and where you can be easily reached,” Salemi explains. “Even though you may be doing an amazing job and can work well or even better while sitting on the beach, there may be a stigma around it.”

“A hush trip can positively impact employees who plan on traveling for the holidays,” adds Salemi. “For instance, maybe the trip involves staying with relatives who bring you immense joy. Rather than having to choose between working from home or seeing your relatives, you can do both.”

Paying for a holiday hush trip

If you’re expecting to travel this holiday season and make it a hush trip, think carefully about how you’ll fund this getaway. Cash always comes in handy, but using credit cards can make it safe, convenient and simple to pay for a flight, hotel stay, food and other transactions.

Consider that the majority of credit cards provide zero-liability fraud protection for unauthorized charges, as long as you report them within 30 days. Even if your card issuer doesn’t offer zero liability, the Fair Credit Billing Act limits your liability for unauthorized charges to a maximum of $50.

Moreover, if unauthorized charges occur on your credit card, you can often address the issue before your payment is due, preventing any actual loss of funds. That’s one reason using credit cards while traveling is preferred to using a debit card: If the latter is stolen or compromised, resolving the matter can be more time-consuming, as you’ll need to wait for the funds to be restored to your bank account.

With the right credit card in your wallet during a holiday hush trip, you can also earn cash back, points or miles on your typical expenditures. When you open a new rewards credit card, you may also qualify for a welcome bonus after reaching a specific spending threshold.

To maximize credit card rewards, it’s crucial to select a card that aligns with your spending patterns. For instance, frequent travelers might prefer a travel credit card, which earns points or miles for future travel and offers perks like lounge access and credits for traveler programs like TSA PreCheck. Alternatively, a cash back card with bonus rewards on everyday spending categories such as groceries and gas stations might provide more value for others.

Additional credit card perks can significantly enhance your experience, including travel protections, no foreign transaction fees, annual statement credits for specific purchases and discounts with partner brands.

Just remember to be careful when using credit cards during a hush trip. If, for instance, you use a credit card given to you by your employer, they may be able to track where your purchases were made. This could get you in trouble if your company doesn’t know where you’re working from.

The bottom line

Think carefully about taking a hush trip between now and New Year’s, rather than telling your employer you’re going on a “workcation.” The latter may prove less risky and stressful, but still allow you to enjoy some needed leisure time in a desirable spot.

“Do your research ahead of time to ease worries and anxiety,” recommends Salemi. “Your destination should have a dedicated workspace and fast Internet speed so you won’t miss a beat. Consider time zone differences, as well. If you are going overseas and it’s six hours earlier, ensure that you are working the same six hours that you would have been if you had remained at home.”

Lokenauth agrees. “Be discreet when taking a hush trip, and don’t publicize your actions on social media,” he advises. “Try to sync your schedule with your coworkers to avoid suspicions. And limit long or frequent hush trips to avoid getting caught.”

_________

(Visit Bankrate online at bankrate.com.)

©2023 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The 71-year-old scatters the walkway to her house on Denver’s Northside with the rich, orange petals of the cempasúchil — marigold — flowers. The blossoms, grown by Salazar, are synonymous with the traditional Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos as they are thought to be fragrant enough to attract the spirits of deceased loved ones to their family’s homes and altars.

On Thursday, Day of the Dead, Salazar’s family will pack the matriarch’s home and gather around a sacred altar overflowing with photos of the dead and ofrendas — offerings — made up of the departed’s favorite earthly delights. The day serves as a reunion between the living and the dead when the veil between realms is considered thinnest.

“It is really peaceful,” Salazar said. “I am happy to know that when you’re gone, there is a beyond, and that beyond is powerful. It is a nostalgic day to remember where you came from and who you came from.”

Lit candles guide the path to Salazar’s front door. Garlands of marigolds and papel picado — colorful, decorative paper cutouts — line Salazar’s porch, letting passersby in this realm and the next know that a celebration of life, death and remembrance is brewing inside.

Salazar — a storied artist and former director of Santa Fe Art District’s Latin American art museum Museo de las Americas —  helped popularize Day of the Dead in Denver during the burgeoning Chicano movement in the 1970s. Even though the celebration is more widely recognized today, Salazar still enjoys teaching new celebrants the ancient ways of Día de los Muertos — the rites and rituals her grandmother passed to her that she passed to her daughter who now teaches her granddaughter.

While Día de los Muertos iconography like sugar skulls can often be found alongside witch hats and fun-sized candy bars at the grocery store, Day of the Dead is not simply a Mexican version of Halloween, Salazar said. The holiday, a blend of Indigenous and Latino cultural traditions dating back thousands of years, focuses on honoring ancestry and commemorating death as a part of life by building altars that serve as shrines to memorialize lost loved ones.

“I want people to remember me when I am gone, so I remember those I have lost,” she said.

Loss is universal

The leaders of the Latino Cultural Arts Center know the value of passing traditions on to youth, which is why the center brought Día de los Muertos programming to three Denver schools this year.

The art classroom at Denver’s Valverde Elementary School hummed on Tuesday with an excitement only attainable by a group of children given craft supplies at 9:30 a.m. As the arts center’s Mandy Medrano and Valverde art teacher Kristina Barboza passed out light-up butterfly replicas, faux marigolds and miniature clay pan de muerto — a type of Mexican bread baked for Day of the Dead — the fourth-graders squealed with delight.

Barboza has been teaching Día de los Muertos for six years at Valverde, where a majority of the student body is Hispanic.

“It started off small,” Barboza said. “We’d put an altar together, but post-COVID, it turned into a bigger family celebration because of the needs of our community. Because there was so much loss. Our parents asked for this, and it’s brought our whole community together.”

The students make art to display at a big altar honoring the school community’s lost loved ones. With the help of Latino Cultural Arts Center funding, families will be welcomed on Thursday for food, drinks and mental health resources.

Melissa Roybal, a Denver Public Schools social worker and trauma-informed therapist, volunteers with the arts center to provide mental health services at its Day of the Dead programming.

“We’re trying to destigmatize talking about mental health in the Latino community,” Roybal said. “That’s why it’s so important to have practitioners who look like the communities they’re serving.”

Normalizing mental health can be as simple as word reframing, Roybal said. Instead of using words like “therapy,” Roybal tells people she’s there to help talk things out.

“Everyone has loss,” Medrano said. “It’s universal. I’m never afraid to talk to kids about loss. It’s better to not sugarcoat things and be real about it. It’s a part of who we are as a people.”

Yulissa Robles, 9, was happy to share as she glued pink ribbon to her altar, which she was making to honor her uncle and aunt who passed away.

“My favorite part has been making something that represents my family,” Yulissa said. “At home, we make our altar, too, because we like to represent our culture.”

“A beautiful tapestry”

On Thursday, Salazar prepped her altar-making supplies in her santos — saints — room, a striking part of her home with walls the color of butter and covered from top to bottom in artwork spanning various religions, from crosses to New Mexican saints to tapestries and her own woodwork.

She blessed the offerings before placing them on the altar, bathing them in incense from burning palo santo.

Her fingers brushed the frames and delicate edges of generations-old photographs awaiting their time on the altar. As the day gets closer and Salazar’s preparations head into overdrive, she said she begins dreaming of her deceased family members and knows they are close. She awaits their reunion at the altar with a soft smile.

“Life and death is with you constantly,” Salazar said. “If you ignore that, you only live but half your life.”

Renee Fajardo, coordinator of the Journey Through Our Heritage program at Metropolitan State University of Denver, described typical altar components as elements of the earth: fire in the form of candlelight, water and air represented by feathers or the paper cutouts. Altars often offer salt to protect the body from breaking down as it travels from the world of the dead to the world of the living, Fajardo said. The marigold flowers, pictures of the deceased and sugar skulls are key components, as well.

“It’s a beautiful tapestry — a weaving of people and communities and a particular area coming together to say, ‘This is the way we are going to love and honor our departed loved ones,’” Fajardo said. “It’s really about our humanity as a people that live on the same planet with each other, that we all have families we love and communities, and we all have departed loved ones.”

Family members also add personal touches to the altars reflecting the visitors’ personalities.

Salazar, for example, would like her family to leave her favorite molé at her altar when she dies.

Thanks to Colorado’s Latino and Chicano leaders throughout the years, Day of the Dead celebrations can be found throughout the state, from Westwood’s street festival to the parade along Santa Fe Drive to live dancing and music at the Longmont Museum.

Fajardo, a Denver native with Chicana and Native American roots, said when she thinks about Día de los Muertos, she imagines a future where the sacred remembrance of one’s ancestors lasts longer than the holiday.

“Once you have these pictures and stories of people and ancestors who built the community, we want to encourage people to begin a repository, a history telling,” Fajardo said. “We want it to be more than just looking at the parade and building of altars. How do we collect these stories and make sure the people who come after us recognize who we are in Colorado is a big, historic tradition of people weaving in and out of each other for hundreds of years.”

The best Halloween costumes are usually the ones that sparkle — or scare — with creativity and imagination.

The same can be said for the post-trick-or-treat finger foods served at a Fright Night party.

Sure, you could set the table with an array of chips and dips or offer a big bowl of pretzels for snacking. But if you really want something that’s scary good, take a few extra minutes and whip up a ghoulish treat that conjures up one of the holiday’s most popular monsters — a mummy?

It’s easier than you might think.

All you need is a wheel of brie, a sheet of frozen puff pastry, a half-cup or so of your favorite red jam and a sharp knife to cut the rolled-out dough into strips of “cloth” to wrap the cheese up with its telltale bandages.

This kid-friendly recipe only takes about a half-hour start to finish, and includes a seasonal and super-easy homemade cranberry jam. I brought it to life with candy eyes, but you also could use pecans or small slices of apple topped with raisins or craisins.

Be sure to brush the wrapped dough with egg wash; that’s what gives the finished dish its shiny, golden-brown color and helps as a binder.

It’s best served warm and gooey right out of the oven, with water crackers, apple wedges or slices, crostini, pretzel chips or anything else that’s sturdy and spreadable. If you have leftover jam, put that on the serving platter too, for a bright and zingy finish.

Mummy Baked Brie

PG tested

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 shallot, peeled and finely minced

1 cup fresh cranberries, rinsed

Juice and zest of 1 orange

3 tablespoons sugar

Pinch of sea salt

1 8-ounce wheel of French-style brie

1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed

Egg wash, for baking

Prepare cranberry jam: In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add minced shallot and cook until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes.

Add cranberries to pan along with orange juice, sugar and a pinch of salt. Mix to combine, then bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook until cranberries explode and mixture gets jammy, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Slice brie in half horizontally, and set the top half aside. Spread cranberry jam on the bottom half of the brie. Replace the top half of the brie so that the jam is covered.

Roll out puff pastry on a lightly floured surface into a 12-inch square. Place brie in the center of the dough and make two cuts on both long sides of the dough, from the brie to the edges, to create even thirds. Fold the middle piece on each edge over the brie. (It will be mostly covered with dough.)

Now the fun part! Cut 1/2 -inch-wide strips into the short sides of the dough, from the brie to the edges. Gently stretch the strips over the top of the dough in a crisscross pattern so it looks like mummy wrappings. Tuck any loose ends under the pastry.

Transfer the wrapped brie to the parchment-covered baking tray. Brush the pastry with egg wash and place in hot oven. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until it’s golden brown.

Add large edible eyes, and serve warm (and gooey) with sliced apples, toasted baguette, crackers, dried fruit, nuts and any leftover cranberry jam.

Serves 6-8.

— Gretchen McKay, Post-Gazette

©2023 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

“Five Nights at Freddy’s” isn’t half as scary as one or two of the parent-vs.-parent brawls I witnessed a few years ago at Chuck E. Cheese’s, but that’s another story, too intense for any storytelling medium.

Let’s talk about this story. Video game creator Scott Cawthon’s Chuck E.-inspired 2014 phenomenon takes place in a decrepit Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzajoint, with the requisite ball pit, wonky electrical wiring and smell of death, with a whiff of sheet cake. Its threatening animatronic creatures — a bear, a bunny, a one-pawed fox, a face-eating robo-bird — run the place at night, and are inhabited by the disintegrating bodies and tortured souls of children who … well, spoiler there, a little late on the warning, sorry, moving on.

In the game, you take the role of night security guard Mike. You monitor the barely functional surveillance cameras and, once the robot killers come for you, you try to stay alive. There’s a labyrinth of backstory, dripped out in dribs and drabs, but Cawthon’s simple setup begot many sequels and a welter of spinoffs and subreddits and fan theories. Now it’s a movie.

And? It’s an odd one, indecisive about its tone and intentions. Full-on R-rated sadism? Half the gaming world is already mad about the movie not going in that direction. Instead, the filmmakers and screenwriters chose to squeak by with a PG-13, leaning away from five nights of steadily mounting carnage and body parts and toward a thick layer of earnest new material devoted to Mike’s horrific childhood depicted in frequent flashbacks and nightmares. These take him back, like a dream-state detective, to the Nebraska campground where Mike’s brother was abducted, never to be found.

Mike’s current life feels much the same as his dream state: stuck, bereft and looking for answers. He’s doing all he can to retain custody of his younger sister. And here we run into what the film industry has referred to for more than a century as “story problems.”

Cawthon and fellow screenwriters Seth Cuddeback and Emma Tammi (who also directed) take an earnest interest in developing the central brother-sister relationship. It works, sometimes. As Mike, Josh Hutcherson (”The Hunger Games”) draws you into a character’s sullen state of mind, persuasively, by doing very little. But there’s a ton of complication and clutter in “Five Nights at Freddy’s.”

The adaptation veers from scenes of Mike’s dream state, to the hapless crew of young thugs employed by Mike’s evil aunt (Mary Stuart Masterson, who deserves better) to discredit Mike, so she can gain custody of her niece (Piper Rubio). A kindly police officer (Elizabeth Lail) knows more about the Fazbear emporium of pain than she’s telling. And there’s the unsettling job counselor (Matthew Lillard) who sets up Mike as Fazbear’s newest night watchman.

I don’t care much about neatness with most genre exercises, but this one’s pretty sludgy. I do care about, and resist, the film’s attempt to be a cuddly version of “Saw,” with faces getting sliced open by a robo-critter’s whirring saw blades. To keep the PG-13 rating intact, the camera and editor cut away just before the splurch, nearly every time. This means millions of 8-year-olds will likely be at the multiplexes this weekend, in a funk, alongside older kids and young adults steeped in nostalgia for the hours they spent at home being Mike. Current box office estimates suggest “Five Nights at Freddy’s” should make nearly double its $25 million production budget by Monday.

Cawthon has known great love and great hate online. Two years ago his political views and donations (he’s a Trump fan, in addition to being an anti-abortion Christian Republican) provoked some controversy and online blowback from former fans. In the movie, there’s a scene where Mike longs for the traditional God-fearing family taken away from him so cruelly. Hutcherson knows exactly how hard to stress this bit: just enough for it to register. The premise, meantime, of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” is entirely about the cruelty, and very likely would’ve made more sense as a straight-up R-rated splatterfest.

Then again, would I have liked a more gratuitous take on the same material? Reader, I cannot say. This one’s shorter than the “It” movies, at least. Once a child-abduction horror premise exceeds the 2-hour mark, the EXIT sign to the left of the screen starts looking better than the screen itself.

———

‘FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong violent content, bloody images, and language)

Running time: 1:50

How to watch: In theaters and streaming on Peacock Thursday

———

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Based on a 2012 Wired magazine article inspired by Sergio Juarez’s barrier-breaking approach teaching a classroom of impoverished 12-year-olds, “Radical” continues the positive work of producer and star Eugenio Derbez following his turn as a music teacher in the Oscar-winning Best Picture “CODA.”

The Wired story asked if a young Mexican girl named Paloma in Juarez’s class just might be “The Next Steve Jobs.” She was an undiscovered genius.

Years later the Wired writer Joshua Davis approached Derbez’ production company about a film version.

“Immediately, I connected! These are the stories I want to tell,” Derbez, 62, said in a Zoom interview.  “I find it so powerful. The fact that this girl and this teacher who was behind her, even though they were in the worst conditions, with no resources at all, with a violent environment around them, they succeeded. I don’t want to spoil anything but they did amazing things that year.”

Both Sergio and Paloma, who attended the recent Mexican premiere of the Spanish language/English subtitled picture, were on the set as well.

“We contacted both of them. They were supervising the script and we’re supervising the movie on the set because we wanted to tell the story in an accurate way,” Derbez said. “It’s real. We’re not exaggerating anything. What you see in the movie did happen. And they were there, in a truthful way.”

But Derbez knows how different it is to play someone who is alive and going to be looking and judging.

“It was kind of scary. When the director Christopher Zalla and I were talking about the character, we knew it was a real person and thought that we should not make an impersonation of him.

“The idea was to capture his soul, his essence, his message. More than trying to make me look like him — we’re probably physically different — the idea was to focus on the way he was teaching.”

Sergio arrives at this Mexican border town school with hints to a troubled past. Derbez learned what happened.

“When he was teaching, kids at the end of the year, kids used to come say goodbye and ask for a picture. He noticed less kids were asking for a picture. Then nobody came. He was losing touch and decided to make a huge change.

“He started to research why these kids were quitting school. He knew he had to change that reality.”

“Radical” opens Friday

Both my parents died last year. I was walking on eggshells the entire time. My brothers and sisters seemed to think that I was now a member of the family. They included me in events and told me they loved me. I was so hopeful.

After my mother’s death, I was cut out of the family again. I’m no longer invited to family celebrations or holidays. I am heartbroken and lonely. I have no one left. Family is so important to me. I am embarrassed to admit I am now estranged from everyone. Can you help? — Black Sheep in Kentucky

Dear Black Sheep: Unfortunately, your experience is not unique. I hear it more and more, in one variation or another. It is now time for you to build a family of your own, comprised of friendships with people you can trust. Many people do this, and when they do, find themselves happier and more rewarded than they felt with their relatives.

As you do this, do not look back. Begin not by asking for friendship, but by being honest and befriending others. Look around, and you will see them everywhere. There’s no shame in reaching out, so please do not feel embarrassed about being a member of a very large “club.”

Dear Abby: I’m a Realtor and managing broker helping my fiance’s son, “Mark,” buy a new home. We’re set to close next month. Tonight, my fiance, “Simon,” told me I am not to keep any of my commission — that Mark expects me to give it all to him. Granted, I was planning to give Mark a token of appreciation — a few hundred dollars, perhaps — but not my entire commission!

I told Simon he must have misunderstood, that this is my JOB, my work. No one gives someone their entire paycheck, do they? I don’t think there’s any way Mark would expect 100% of my commission, but Simon says if I don’t agree, there will be “consequences.”

Our relationship is already strained, and I feel this is not only over the top but also completely disrespectful. I’m trying not to rock the boat with the holidays coming up. Please help me. — On the Spot in Illinois

Dear On the Spot: Sometimes it’s better to confront a problem than to ignore it for fear of what you might find out. This is one of those times. Tell your fiance to explain EXACTLY what he meant by “consequences” if you don’t agree to his son’s unreasonable demand. Listen carefully to what he has to say.

If you give in to emotional blackmail this time, it’s only a taste of what you will receive from him and his son in the future. If there is a wedding planned anytime soon, I urge you to slam on the brakes until this matter is ironed out to your satisfaction.

A GENTLE REMINDER TO PARENTS OF YOUNG CHILDREN: Tonight, wee witches and goblins will be out trick-or-treating. Please supervise them closely so they’ll be safe. Happy Halloween, everyone! — Love, ABBY

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com

Admit it, you’re long overdue for a vacation. But saving money in the process makes the reward even sweeter.

As a frequent flyer out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport myself, I’m proud to say I’ve mastered the art of finding deals on travel.

From the best websites to catch flight-and-hotel-deals to taking advantage of mileage programs and more, here are three of my top tips for saving money on your next vacation.

Take advantage of flight deal websites

I first learned of flight deals a decade ago. A few of my social media friends posted a link to a website advertising flights from New York City to Dubai for $189 round trip. Of course, I thought it was too good to be true initially, but after doing my research — and biting the bullet to purchase the deal — I found that there were several websites solely created to post similar travel deals.

A few of my old faithfuls and most trusted websites for deals are:

—The Flight Deal

—Air Fare Spot

—Secret Flying

—Fare Deal Alert.

All of these websites are free to use, and you can get on their email lists, as well, without any paid subscriptions. Also, the sites all occasionally include hotel deals, as well — mostly for international destinations.

Going (previously known as Scott’s Cheap Flights ) is another favorite of many of my colleagues. This site has free options, as well as premium and elite level subscriptions, at $39 and $199 per year, respectively.

Airline mileage programs are your friend

Signing up is the hardest part of joining an airline mileage program, but after that, it’s smooth sailing — or, should I say, flying.

Most airlines have expanded their mileage programs to include additional ways to earn miles from purchases on everyday things. For instance, each time I use my linked debit card at Cuzzo’s Cuisine— the lobster mac has me in a chokehold — I am able to earn miles toward travel. Airlines also allow earnings at certain retail stores, as well as from using rideshare apps. Once you’ve stacked up miles, you can then use them to purchase flights, hotels and even rental cars.

Timing is important

The long-time airline industry rumor has been that fights are always cheapest on Tuesday afternoons and that it’s best to purchase a flight right around six weeks from the day you want to travel. While I can’t 100% vouch for those, I will say that timing does matter.

Luckily, as technology advances, so do the tools that AvGeeks (aviation geeks) conjure up to make our jobs easier.

Flight search engines like Google Flights and SkyScanner allow us to get a bird’s eye view on the best days, months and even times for us to fly to specific destinations.

You can even set fare alerts to let you know when the price of your potential flight increases or decreases. That way, you don’t have to worry about checking back daily, or even hourly, like I used to — especially since airfare can change by the literal second.

I hope that these tips come in handy and help you save on your next getaway!

______

©2023 The Charlotte Observer. Visit at charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LOS ANGELES — There are 63 national parks in the United States, but at the start of 2023, I’d made it to only one.

So when my partner, Reanna, bought us tickets to see Big Thief and Lucinda Williams at Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre, we had an exciting (though surely unoriginal) idea: What if we made it a road trip?

As I began researching the best routes from Los Angeles to Denver, I found variations of what’s been called the Grand Circle road trip, a loop of national parks that typically spans Utah, Colorado and Arizona. It’s popular for its efficiency: If you plan well, you can hit the Southwest marvels of Zion, Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon in about two weeks. Because we’d be driving through California regardless, our own Grand Circle route expanded into an oblong shape — not quite an oval, but perhaps a seal balancing a ball on its nose.

Over the course of 12 days, we were able to fit in nearly a dozen national parks, 3,350 miles of driving, thousands of photos and a shameful amount of roadside hamburgers. (For scale, that distance is similar to driving from L.A.’s Santa Monica Pier to the easternmost point of the contiguous U.S. in Lubec, Maine.)

We would’ve happily spent an extra day in each place to break up the driving, as the quick pace of our trip made us feel absolutely loopy during the last few days when we spent hours in the car forcibly listening to every radio station play the Luke Combs version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

This is an exhaustive recap of our 300-or-so hours on the road, chock-full of small joys, roadside eats and things we should’ve planned better.

To make your own trip as smooth as possible, here are a few crucial tips:

—Buy the America the Beautiful National Park Pass. It costs $80 for the year, and visiting all these national parks would’ve cost us $325 in individual fees.

—Write down essential addresses in advance. Some of these roads (and nearly all of these national parks) have spotty cell service, and you can’t ask for directions if you don’t know where you’re going.

—Bring along a cooler and (at least) one case of bottled water. Hopefully you’re not doing this trip during the peak of summer heat like we did, but it’s vital to have extra water with you in the more remote areas of this trip.

Off to a rocky start

After loading up my car and filling the gas tank, we found ourselves waiting for a tow truck by the Getty Center, just seven miles into our ambitious journey.

My beloved car Marshmallow had broken down on I-405, and though that would’ve sucked on a normal day, it was especially upsetting at the start of a huge road trip. But after crying, calling AAA, my mechanic and my editor, and then looking up rental cars with the help of my wonderful co-worker Chris, we decided it was too late to call it quits.

After picking up a rental, we agreed that heading to Death Valley — where it was 116 degrees — was probably not worth the extra hours on the road. Instead, we made up for lost time by driving straight to Las Vegas, with one bathroom break at EddieWorld.

Our first night on the road was spent at the Venetian in Las Vegas, not because we needed to see a Cirque du Soleil show and people-watch at the local Taco Bell Cantina, but because Vegas is only two hours from the south entrance to Zion National Park.

Exploring Utah’s red rocks, fruit pies, urgent care facilities

As we entered the Beehive State, dropped our car at Springdale’s Under the Eaves Inn and hopped on the town shuttle, Reanna gave me a crash course in Mormon history a la “Under the Banner of Heaven.” But as soon as we entered the park, our minds went virtually blank.

ZION

Zion is one of those places that’s so mind-bogglingly vivid that just riding on the park’s shuttle can be meditative and emotional.

“This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” Re said, gazing out the window. We spent the rest of the ride alternating between staring at the unfathomably large rocks and exchanging silly remarks.

“The dinosaurs saw this s— and now I’m seeing it — nuts!” Re mused.

And though there are a multitude of trails and opportunities for adventure in any national park, Reanna and I are more like lizards than mountain goats. By that, I mean we are not confident hikers, and would rather bask in a cozy place than reach new heights.

So instead of embarking on a challenging trek like Angels Landing or the Narrows, we decided to spend our day exploring the more leisurely Riverside Walk that leads to the start of the Narrows. About a two-mile round trip from the Temple of Sinawava shuttle stop, we were able to take in Zion’s bright orange rocks, admire the park’s lush greenery and take a dip in the electric blue Virgin River. (If you’re hoping to swim at Zion, I’d recommend bringing a dry change of clothes for your journey back to the park entrance, since there’s nothing worse than walking with chafing legs.)

Splashing around in such a picturesque place made me feel a deep sense of reverence, the kind of awe I only experience when I have a moment to appreciate how beautiful and vast the world can be when nature is left to its own devices.

Though we ended our long day before the last shuttle out of the park, we missed the last shuttle back into Springdale, since the two systems are, oddly, not aligned. As we walked back to the inn, we decided to get dinner at the Spotted Dog, where I devoured an ice cream-covered chocolate lava cake with such gusto that I probably scared our waiter.

At the recommendation of a reader named Kathy, who responded to my Essential California newsletter about things to do this summer, we planned our next morning around driving east on Zion’s Highway 9 to take in some of the park’s best red rock scenery. We were devastated to find that the Thunderbird Restaurant she recommended is closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays — meaning we couldn’t try any of its “ho-made” hot apple pies with buttered rum sauce — but we picked up snazzy bolo ties at the gas station across the street.

BRYCE CANYON AND CAPITOL REEF

By the time we made it to Bryce Canyon National Park, the temperatures picked up again and Reanna’s tonsils started battling an illness that we later dubbed “demon strep.” As we drove up the park’s southern scenic drive to Yovimpa and Rainbow Points to see the greatest concentration of hoodoos on Earth — tall, totem-pole-like rock pillars formed from weathering and erosion — it became increasingly clear that Re had to see a doctor. They sat in the passenger seat as we descended the scenic drive, and at each lookout point I ducked out of the car to take photos so Re could see the hoodoos we were passing.

Though we hustled through the park for Re’s sake, I found the hills of spindly hoodoo spires quite hypnotizing. It’s odd to encounter terrain that’s entirely different from anything you’ve ever seen before.

After a stop at the hospital — where the doctor looked at Re’s inflamed tonsils and said, “Oh, good heavens!” — we picked up some amoxicillin at the only pharmacy in town and got back on the road to Capitol Reef. On the way to Torrey, Utah, I got a call from my mechanic, who said my car was fixed and ready to go, and found some lovely open ranges where I got to greet herds of free-roaming cows. Our luck seemed to be turning around.

But the next morning, after sleeping in one of those underwhelming clear geodesic domes that are all over Airbnb, Re somehow felt worse. After they attempted to eat breakfast (and instead had a harrowing bathroom trip), I drove us over to Capitol Reef and we continued our routine: Re sat in the passenger seat like an Oregon Trail character with dysentery; I hopped out to take photos of the cool surroundings; I showed them the photos in the car; and we dutifully carried on.

And though the rocks were stunningly red, my favorite part of Capitol Reef was stopping at the park’s Gifford House, which sells thousands of fruit pies every year between Pi Day and November. While I picked up a phenomenal strawberry-rhubarb pie and an equally delicious apple pie, Re got to hang out with a beautiful horse who lives near the park’s homestead. (Utah has a ton of roadside cows and horses, if that tickles your fancy just as much as it did ours!)

On the way farther East, I was determined to find a small market called Mesa Farm in Caineville, Utah. Though it doesn’t come up properly on digital maps, we followed the mile markers on Highway 24, counting until we hit marker 102 and saw the hand-painted Mesa Farm Market sign with rudimentary illustrations of goats.

Mesa Farm Market isn’t a restaurant — you’ll likely get a cutting board with a few knives — but the atmosphere is absolutely lovely. We got to sample an array of five goat cheeses, which were so delicious that my soft-cheese-hating partner even gave them a taste, and talked with the young farmer who’s been living there (with no running water and limited Wi-Fi) and helping the farm and market this summer.

As Re and I sat on the porch with a loaf of bread, a few cheeses, a French salami, some fresh pesto and two cups of sun tea, we talked about how nice it would be to live in a more rural area like this for a little while.

“If I ever lose my job, maybe I’ll move to a place like this,” Re said.

“We could write books and live totally off the grid,” I said as I ripped another piece of bread. “Get a few cows and never look back.”

And though we entertain that fantasy of living off the land every once in a while, I know deep down that we are both divas who need access to warm showers and movie theaters, so we bid the farm dog Zig adieu and continued on our journey.

GOBLIN VALLEY, CANYONLANDS AND ARCHES

Though it’s not a national park, we wanted to check out Goblin Valley State Park, which is best known as the backdrop for the movie “GalaxyQuest.” On our way there, we made two stops: The first was an art project on the side of Highway 24 called Carl’s Critter Garden, which is filled with metal dinosaurs, tiny prisms and lots of musings about a creature called “zen dog.” And after paying our respects to zen dog and his friends, we filled up our tank at Hollow Mountain — a gas station carved into a big rock.

Goblin Valley is a bit out of the way but cool nonetheless (and for those who only know “goblins” as grotesque little creatures, the word doubles as a title for the park’s unique mushroom-shaped hoodoos). There, among these bobble-headed rocks, we visited the Three Sisters and learned about the odd landscape of hard sandstone and soft siltstone that created the many goblins inside the park. And on our way out, we realized we were driving alongside a galloping pronghorn, which easily kept up with the car since these animals can run at a pace of about 60 miles per hour.

By the time we made it to Monticello, Utah, Re’s throat was feeling worse, but the dysentery jokes got infinitely funnier when we checked into our Airbnb for the night: It was a covered pioneer wagon.

The next morning we rose early, since we were trying to fit two different entrances for Canyonlands and a trip to Arches into the same day. (Sometimes we must set ourselves up for failure and learn the hard way.)

As we made our way into the Needles district of Canyonlands, we realized every other car heading into this region was a Jeep with four-wheel drive. Most of the roads in that district are backcountry roads — meaning our little rental wouldn’t get us very far — but we visited Newspaper Rock, did a dutiful lap of the short scenic drive and hit the road as soon as Re thought their throat might be closing. Truly, what’s a worse place to have a medical emergency than inside a remote region of a national park?

When we finally got to an urgent care in Moab, we realized we probably wouldn’t have time to explore the park’s popular Island in the Sky district — so it goes.

At our second urgent care, Re got an unpleasant penicillin shot that’s often referred to as “the peanut butter shot” because the medication is so thick. But after spending several hours there, we decided to stop at Moab’s Thai Bella for a much-needed bowl of tom kah soup and a phenomenal sous vide duck. Finally, we bravely continued to our last Utah national park.

Arches National Park is a bit too small for the number of visitors it attracts, but that’s why they now use timed entry reservations. We decided to go after 4 p.m., since that’s late enough to forgo a reservation and miss the peak temperatures of the day, which meant the roads were fairly empty.

After seeing the rest of Utah’s parks, Arches’ popularity can be a bit mystifying. “Why is Delicate Arch the most famous?” I heard one child ask a park ranger, referring to the iconic structure that graces Utah’s license plates.

Perhaps it was just the end of a very long day, but we both felt like we had seen enough once we checked out the various roadside overlooks and visited one particularly gross bathroom. (I was admittedly warned that the park is a bit of a tourist trap, but I’m one of those stubborn people who likes to determine things firsthand.) The drive from Arches to our next abode in Fruita, Colorado, passed a lot of towns with no gas, restaurants or bathrooms, so I’d recommend getting your business in order before leaving Moab.

Cooling off with Colorado’s canyons, sand dunes and UFOs

Fruita is a small town about halfway between Moab and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park that’s best known as home to Mike, a local chicken that was able to survive without a head for 18 months in the 1940s. After a night of blissfully cool and quiet sleep there, we made a pit stop at Dinosaur Journey, where Re cried because they were so excited to see all the local fossils, and I bought a glow-in-the-dark T-rex shirt that was definitely meant for a child.

BLACK CANYON OF THE GUNNISON

By the time we made it to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, we were pretty excited to see something other than the hoodoos and arches that we were starting to take for granted. This park was like a full reset: The temperature dropped, the crowds thinned out and the rocks looked like nothing we had ever seen.

Though some people will understandably rank parks based on how challenging or expansive they are, I’d rather remember the way I felt when I visited. So, if you’ll humor me and indulge in that mindset, I can safely say Black Canyon of the Gunnison was one of my favorite parks on this trip, with soaring drop-offs and magnificent metamorphic rocks that made us feel tiny and inconsequential in the best possible way.

As we stood at the edge of the painted wall overlook, Reanna raised their arms to catch the wind as it moved through the canyon. We stayed there for at least half an hour, taking photos for strangers and returning to the edge several times to catch the air under our arms and inhale the crisp breeze.

We decided to grab dinner in the town of Gunnison at High Alpine Brewing Company, which made a great day even better. By the time we hit the road an hour later, I was happily stuffed with a beet and goat cheese salad, half a High Alpine pizza (with lemon-basil ricotta, veggies and garlic oil), and a smoked cherry old-fashioned that was presented in a dramatic glass cloche.

From there we were about two hours from Leadville, which claims the title of “highest incorporated city in North America” at 10,152 feet above sea level. After driving past lakes and through national forests, we made it to the Colorado Trail House, where we were able to snack on a few Twinkies, do a much-needed load of laundry and take a glorious bath in our room’s bright purple tub.

The next morning, after we stopped for breakfast at my aunt and uncle’s house on our way to Denver, Reanna spotted a sign for Rocky Mountain National Park and asked the toughest question of the trip: “Why aren’t we stopping at that park?”

And though I wish I had a better answer, the truth is that I was too distracted planning our visit to the nearby Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater. (And though I neglected the most popular park in Colorado, my colleague Chris was able to write a few of his best tips on our road trip map.)

We had just arrived in Denver before we had to drop our bags at the Queen Anne Bed & Breakfast and head to Red Rocks to claim a seat for the Big Thief and Lucinda Williams concert. And though a nasty thunderstorm nearby didn’t seem to be working in our favor, we endured a rainy two-hour wait for the venue’s doors to open.

The whole process felt a bit like a pilgrimage — driving over 1,000 miles to face thick sheets of rain and waves of thunder — but eventually the venue gave the OK to move inside. We bought some dry shirts and ponchos and settled on an open bench. As everyone watched the show, lightning bolts seemed to come down when the music would swell to a climax, underscoring Adrienne Lenker’s impassioned wails and giving the whole night a mystical feeling. After experiencing Red Rocks’ phenomenal acoustics, national park-worthy red sandstone rocks and an otherworldly performance, our elaborate journey to Colorado and back felt completely vindicated.

GREAT SAND DUNES AND MESA VERDE

In the morning we were back on the road, heading to the largest sand dunes in North America. This was an especially fruitful route for roadside attractions, so we stopped at the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey and later the UFO Watchtower in Hooper. (If you couldn’t already tell, we are fascinated with otherworldly creatures.)

After leaving some snacks, pens and several hot sauce packets from my car at the UFO Watchtower garden (which is thought to overlap with two large vortexes of energy), we picked up sand sled rentals and hit the slopes.

As we approached the sand dunes it felt quite bizarre, like someone hastily dropped a randomly generated feature on Earth without wondering whether it actually belongs there. With another storm rolling in, we didn’t get to ascend any of the park’s tall peaks, but we had enough fun wandering around the lower planes of the Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve. This area is an exercise in admiring the unusual, offering the chance to marvel at a landscape that’s equally simple (it’s basically a huge sandbox) and perplexing (scientists still don’t know how old these massive dunes are). On our way out, there was even a double rainbow, which only added to the enchanting and strange vibe of the surrounding San Luis Valley.

Once we realized our Airbnb was in a fairly remote town with few restaurants, we decided to head in the opposite direction for dinner at the Rubi Slipper, where we ordered two of the most satisfying diner hamburgers on our burger-heavy trip and Re contemplated trying Rocky Mountain oysters (though they chickened out).

As we drove back toward the park to drop our sand sleds and head to Crestone — which is one of the major spiritual centers of America — Re began feeling disconcerted by how dark and empty the surrounding area looks at night. Like being outside on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean, there was virtually nothing around us but pitch-black roads, which are understandably freaky if you think about them for too long. If you’re afraid of wide open spaces, perhaps rural livin’ is not for you.

But after a night of sleep in our Crestone dome, we woke up to the quaint and strange little town, where the majority of residents were wearing mala beads and natural deodorant. As we left one of the few local coffee shops, we overheard people chatting about the full moon and passed a lone shirtless man strumming his guitar from the back of his parked pickup truck.

Colorado had already yielded a wonderful array of natural wonders, but our final stop in the state was Mesa Verde National Park, the nation’s largest archaeological preserve. The hottest commodities in the park are the ranger-led cliff dwelling tours, which include visits to balcony house and cliff palace, but we felt fine seeing cliff palace from the adjacent overlook. Though the dwellings are incredible, we spent the most time hanging out at the highest lookout in Mesa Verde: Park Point. Because most of the foot traffic is around the cliffs, we had the 8,572-foot-high area all to ourselves, so we stopped to feel the breeze, marvel at butterflies and admire the checkerboard of different greens that covers the surrounding area.

At this point you might be wondering: Can glamorous travelers like us sleep inside national parks without camping? The answer is a definite yes: Many of the national parks have rustic hotels and lodges within them, so we spent the night at Mesa Verde’s Far View Lodge, which had absolutely no cell service. Though it was too rainy to join the park’s nightly stargazing program, we decided to grab dinner and a few drinks at the Metate Room. The food was nothing to write home about, but our mediocre meal was supplemented by respectable cocktails and an even better view of the sunset.

The next morning we woke up to wild horses walking by our balcony. We did one last lap around the cliff dwelling lookout points before embarking on one of our longest driving days and heading toward Arizona.

Gazing at petrified wood, the Milky Way and the grandest canyon

The No. 1 tourist trap in the world is apparently the Four Corners Monument, but that didn’t stop us from paying $8 apiece to see where four states converge (and if you plan on going, bring cash since there’s a high likelihood that the card reader won’t work). Inside, we got some delicious Navajo frybread and took some silly photos at the point where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah come together.

PETRIFIED FOREST AND FLAGSTAFF

Our three-hour drive through New Mexico was simultaneously brief and exhausting, so by the time we got to Petrified Forest National Park we were feeling a bit restless.

But the best way to get through the Petrified Forest is in a vehicle, since the park spans 28 miles, and it made the most sense for us to enter one side and exit the other. So we relished every lookout point, wandered the Crystal Forest — which had some of the park’s most impressive fossilized wood — and then begrudgingly continued on our journey to Little America Hotel in Flagstaff.

By the time we reached Flagstaff, we had spent at least 10 hours in the car, which made our brains and bodies feel like absolute mush. After a week of eating burgers and various forms of gas station starch, we were also craving some kind of fresh, veggie-forward meal. This led us to Tinderbox Kitchen, where we had what was undoubtedly the best meal of our whole road trip. After downing a spring salad, a ponzu-brined chicken over miso potato puree, and a divine duck with Brussels sprouts, we rolled our way back to our room to watch a years-old ESPN mullet championship on cable TV and fall asleep.

After thousands of miles on the road, waking up just an hour and a half from the Grand Canyon felt like racing toward a finish line (even if we still had eight hours of driving and another national park to go). Once we picked up sandwiches at Proper Meats + Provisions we were back on the road, pumped to spend the whole day at one of the most spectacular places in the world.

GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is overwhelming, with nearly 600 miles of paved and unpaved trails that get millions of visitors each year. So we started with something basic: following the Trail of Time along the South Rim to learn a bit about the canyon’s geologic timeline. Once that was completed, we were able to hop on a shuttle to explore a few different viewpoints in the park before returning to the El Tovar Hotel, where we were spending the night.

If there’s any time to splurge on a nice hotel, it’s when the hotel has been built right on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Even the second most visited national park empties out significantly by sunset, which meant we were able to sit by the rim and watch as the sky painted new hues on the canyon.

But after the sun went down, we realized how vast the sky really is when it’s uninterrupted by light pollution. Elusive stars began to emerge, dappling the stretches of sky that often look empty between streaks of red and green aircraft lights and astronomical divas like the North Star or Big Dipper. Like many national parks, the Grand Canyon is an international dark sky park, which meant we were able to see the Milky Way hanging over our heads before the moon rose. As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, it brought me back to the elation of being at summer camp for the first time, where the air was filled with giddy crushes and late-night gossip. For the rest of the night, we earnestly reflected on our trip, which gave us so many magical opportunities to sample new lifestyles and states of being together.

To optimize our time gawking at the stars and cuddling on porch swings, we made a late-night dinner reservation at the El Tovar Dining Room, where the food was forgettable (like most national park fare). But we still had a silly time doing math problems on the children’s menu, ordering virgin prickly pear margaritas and sharing two delicious house-made desserts.

By this point, you could imagine the breakneck pace of driving from one rock-gazing spot to another — back to back to back — was proving to be a trial of the human spirit. But the next morning, we reluctantly got in the car to drive six more hours to Joshua Tree National Park, which was somehow our most exhausting day on the road. Though it wasn’t our longest stretch of driving, we were feeling extra tired, homesick and cramped by our rental car full of wares and stale snacks.

We broke up that stretch a bit by stopping in Seligman, Arizona, which was the birthplace of historic Route 66 and the inspiration for the Pixar movie “Cars.” After getting another burger at Delgadillo’s Snow Cap Drive-In — a restaurant where they’ll hand you a thimble-sized cup (with a straw cut to size) if you dare to order a small Coke — I paid a visit to Angel Delgadillo’s barber shop and bought a delightfully gaudy Route 66 button-down.

Back to California

Once we finally made it to the south entrance of Joshua Tree, we realized we should’ve booked a room closer to the north exit of the park instead of Palm Springs so we could enter one side and leave the other. (This is why I’d recommend you stay in Pioneertown if you chose to do this trip — don’t make the same mistakes I did!)

But after exploring Joshua Tree and paying visits to a few of our favorite jumbo rocks, we were more than excited to head to the Palm Springs Margaritaville, where we got to lounge in the pool, watch the movie “Cars” and order fish tacos and lava cake to our bed. If room service is a dying art, we are some of its most dedicated patrons.

The final day of driving (a mere three hours back to L.A.) felt like absolutely nothing compared to how far we had already traveled, and we relished having cell service and familiar roads at our disposal. After weeks of driving through different states at all hours of the day and night, Reanna even said that L.A. freeways felt like “driving on easy mode.”

And after throwing out a shameful amount of car trash, watering my plants and doing several loads of laundry, I was relieved to be home again. As some wise stranger on the internet once said, the best feelings in the world are always leaving L.A. and coming back to L.A.

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

LOS ANGLES — The youth of America have spoken, and when it comes to sex onscreen, they say “ewwwww.”

The new UCLA “Teens and Screens” study, conducted by the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, found that across 1,500 members of Gen Z, ages 10 to 24, young people wanted to see platonic relationships between onscreen characters, and many felt sex wasn’t necessary for story plot. (Only the respondents ages 13 to 24 were asked about sexual content.)

“While it’s true that teens want less sex on TV and in movies, what the survey is really saying is that teens want more and different kinds of relationships reflected in the media they watch,” said Yalda T. Uhls, founder and director of CSS, co-author of the study and adjunct professor in UCLA’s Department of Psychology.

The survey found that adolescents want to see “lives like (their) own” depicted onscreen and crave “authenticity.” Teens, plus the 18- to 24-year-old demographic predominantly desired by advertisers, think that sex and romance are too prominent in TV shows and movies.

Among those 13-24, 44.3% felt that romance is overused in media, and 47.5% agreed that sex isn’t needed for the plots of most TV shows and movies. More than half of Gen Z wants to see more content focused on friendships and platonic relationships, with 39% saying they’re especially interested in aromantic and/or asexual characters depicted in film and television.

On a list of stereotypes that irked Gen Z, romantic tropes ranked fourth. This included a dislike of relationships being necessary for happiness, male and female leads always having to end up together romantically, and love triangles.

“We know that young people are suffering an epidemic of loneliness and they’re seeking modeling in the art they consume. While some storytellers use sex and romance as a shortcut to character connection, it’s important for Hollywood to recognize that adolescents want stories that reflect the full spectrum of relationships,” Uhls said, adding that recent studies show young people are having less sex than their parents did at the same age and more are choosing to be single.

Survey results say that Gen Z’s values and desires “reach depths beyond what society has typically explored.” It suggests teens and young adults have grown tired of “stereotypical, heteronormative storytelling that valorizes romantic and/or sexual relationships,” particularly depictions of toxic romance.

While the survey’s findings might appear cut and dried, it can’t be ignored that sex-heavy shows often outperform the rest by staggering margins. According to HBO, “Euphoria” Season 2 episodes averaged 16.3 million viewers. That’s the highest viewership for any season of an HBO series over the last 18 years aside from “Game of Thrones,” which pulled in an average of 46 million viewers across its eighth and final season in 2019.

Both shows were known for their gratuitous sex scenes, and the sexual content often played a key role in the plot. (Spoiler examples: Tyrion Lannister kills his father Tywin with a crossbow for sleeping with his girlfriend. Also, would King Joffrey Baratheon have been such a monster had he not been conceived by two siblings?)

In “Euphoria,” one of the main antagonist characters (Nate Jacobs’ dad, Cal) is a sexual deviant. Entire plot points revolve around Cal, and his sexual proclivities create problems for several of the main characters.

And “Bridgerton,” the Regency-era high-society drama filled with angst, sexual tension and an increasingly risqué honeymoon? In 2021, Deadline reported that Season 1 of “Bridgerton” was watched (partially or in its entirety) by a record 82 million households around the world and at the time quickly became Netflix’s biggest series by a wide margin.

While UCLA’s “Teens and Screens” survey might have studios considering giving Gen Z what it wants, it may be hard to ignore the success of those steamy sex scenes saturating both the big and small screen.

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Fire up the Ghoul Log and get ready to scare yourself silly: Spooky season has arrived.

This year has seen no shortage of horror as Hollywood dug deeper into the fright business, reanimating the “Saw,” “Scream” “Evil Dead” and “The Exorcist” franchises while indie chillers like “Talk to Me” and the microbudget “Skinamarink” helped fuel the fear. (Wanna feel old? “M3GAN” came out nine months ago.)

Now, in time for Halloween, there’s a candy cornucopia of new horror fare at your fingertips.

Hungry for shows to binge? Mike Flanagan’s gothic “The Fall of the House of Usher” (Netflix), R.L. Stine adaptation “Goosebumps” (Disney+ and Hulu) and “Living for the Dead” (Hulu), in which queer ghost hunters visit haunted places for narrator-producer Kristen Stewart, are among a new crop of horror and thriller series.

But if you’re just a ghoul, standing in front of your screen, thirsting for a good old-fashioned scary movie to watch, you’re in luck: This Halloween, there’s something for every kind of horror lover to discover. Skin-crawling supernatural scares, bloodthirsty creatures both hilarious and haunting, and scream-worthy horror icons in the making are just the start.

Read on for the 13 best new horror films to stream and where to find them.

‘When Evil Lurks’

Running time: 1:39

Rating: Not rated

Streaming: Shudder

A grotesque evil is festering in the countryside where brothers Pedro (Ezequiel Rodriguez) and Jaime (Demián Salomon) live, but the moment they think they’ve disposed of it is when the real nightmare begins in “When Evil Lurks.” Writer-director Demián Rugna (“Terrified”) serves up some of the best jolts of the year in this Argentinian gem that cranks up the dread and takes no prisoners as its rural terrors unfold. Lauded by some as the scariest horror movie of 2023, its viscerally effective set pieces will set your nerves on edge, but it’s Rugna’s commitment to leaving no one in his bleak world safe that makes it one of the best new titles genre streamer Shudder has on tap this month beginning Oct. 27.

‘Dark Harvest’

Running time: 1:33

Rating: R (for strong horror violence and gore, language throughout and brief drug use)

Streaming: Rent/buy on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu

Of all the intriguingly odd bits “Dark Harvest” throws into its genre blender — a heightened 1960s Americana setting, a contest with a cash prize, the Pumpkinhead-esque creature that emerges to hunt and be hunted once a year in a “Purge“-like frenzy — the weirdest is that it all somehow works. Credit genre vet David Slade (“30 Days of Night,” “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse”), directing a Michael Gilio script adapted from Norman Partridge’s 2006 novel, for crafting a stylized, splattery fantasy tale that feels at once like the hazy memory of a B-movie VHS you stumbled on as a kid and also a new horror franchise in the making. Luke Kirby, Jeremy Davies and “Twilight” alum Elizabeth Reaser bring heft to a cast that also features newcomers Casey Likes and E’myri Crutchfield as teens trying to escape their town’s darkest secrets. But it’s the razor-fingered creature that crawls out of the cornfields with a belly full of candy and a putrid gourd for a head that’s the star of the show.

Literally anything on Criterion right now

Streaming: Criterion Channel

This one’s a bit of a cheat, but you’re welcome in advance: Run, don’t walk, to the Criterion Channel for arguably the best curated streaming horror offerings this season. In the 14-film “’90s Horror” collection, find cult gems like Frank Henenlotter’s “Frankenhooker” (1990), Eric Red’s “Body Parts” (1991), Ernest R. Dickerson’s “Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight” (1995) and Michael Tolkin’s “The Rapture” (1991). More delights await in the 30-film “Art House Horror” slate of genre classics spanning nearly a century, from the 1922 Swedish silent witchcraft pic “Häxan” and Carl Th. Dreyer’s nightmarish 1932 film “Vampyr” to Kaneto Shindo’s “Onibaba” (1964) and “Kuroneko” (1968) and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s trippy fantasia “Hausu.” And find rare offerings in the 13-title collection of “Pre-Code Horror,” from Tod Browning’s 1932 classic “Freaks” to Michael Curtiz’s 1933 film “Mystery of the Wax Museum,” long thought lost and restored in 2019 to behold in its two-color Technicolor glory.

‘The Oldest View’

Running time: 46 minutes

Rating: Not rated

Streaming: YouTube

The most-talked-about new horror film of the season isn’t in theaters or on a streamer, but on YouTube. Which is why you should turn off the lights and get lost in the viral CG nightmare “The Oldest View,” the latest cinematic brain-melter from 18-year-old prodigy Kane Parsons. Last year, his liminal creepypasta horrorscape “The Backrooms” racked up more than 53 million views and earned the attention of A24 and James Wan’s production company Atomic Monster, with whom the director and VFX whiz is now making a feature version. “The Oldest View” is so far told in three parts, the latest of which (“The Rolling Giant“) runs 46 minutes and notched 1.2 million views in just two weeks. (Watch Parts 1 and 2 here.)

In it, a YouTuber descends into the inexplicable underground staircase he found in the middle of a remote park, leading to somewhere eerily familiar yet utterly, terribly wrong. As for what happens next, suffice to say Parsons has built another uncanny immersive analog nightmare that drags you in deeper with each impossible second — and confirms his rep as a major talent to watch.

‘V/H/S/85’

Running time: 1:56

Rating: Not rated

Streaming: Shudder, AMC+

Another “V/H/S” (six feature-length entries have been unleashed since the horror anthology franchise debuted in 2012), another stab at mining the found-footage genre for new angles. The conceit here still feels a tad random; the last two took place in 1994 and 1999 and now here we are in 1985, a setting best exemplified by David Bruckner‘s entry “Total Copy,” a standalone wraparound mimicking a TV documentary taped off the nightly news concerning a mysterious child and a doomed scientific experiment. Bright spots include Gigi Saul Guerrero‘s kinetic “God of Death,” in which practical charms and true-event inspiration collide in a sobering tether to real history, and Mike P. Nelson’s two-fer shorts “No Wake” and “Ambrosia,” which throw back to totally ’80s summer slashers and home videos only to upend expectations. Natasha Kermani’s VR-gone wrong “TKNOGD” and Scott Derrickson‘s gruesome serial-killer short round out the affair, even as plodding pacing and a lack of cohesion too often make this sequel more chore than delight. Hit “play” and see which bits rattle your bones.

‘Sister Death’

Running time: 1:30

Rating: Not rated

Streaming: Netflix

Spanish supernatural horror “Sister Death” is to the 2017 Ouija-board frightmare “Veronica” as “The Nun” is to “The Conjuring 2“: a prequel that rewinds decades to locate insidious evils in the seemingly safe confines of the church. Director Paco Plaza tells the origin story of the titular nun, a pivotal figure in “Verónica” (also on Netflix) whom we meet as a young novitiate in a Spain still reeling from the civil war as she arrives at a new convent to teach girls. Plaza conjures chilling scenes of creeping dread out of shadow play and religious iconography, torment writ large in star Aria Bedmar’s expressive face, as “Sister Death” escalates toward an ending that brings its historical setting into focus. Less lore-building expansion than character piece, it could stand on its own without the prequel ties and still be one of the more compelling supernatural-psychological horror films of late.

‘No One Will Save You’

Running time: 1:33

Rating: PG-13 (for violent content and terror)

Streaming: Hulu

Her mother may be dearly departed, but Brynn (Kaitlyn Dever) is fine, perfectly fine, spending her days sewing and building model-toy home replicas of her idyllic little town as she writes letters to her BFF, Maude. Right? Well, maybe not. Maybe there’s a reason no one seems to want to talk to her, or give her a hand when telekinetic aliens keep trying to invade her house at night, forcing her to fight for her life. Writer-director Brian Duffield’s “No One Will Save You” dares to veer from the well-trod paths of the alien-abduction subgenre while engineering smashing set pieces, even if a mostly dialogue-free gimmick means a lot of heavy sighing by the tenacious Dever. It’s also one of the only science-fiction-horror films (among a glut of slashers and supernatural scares) this year, and earned endorsements from Guillermo del Toro and Stephen King.

‘Cobweb’

Running time: 1:28

Rating: R

Streaming: Hulu; rent buy on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu

The No. 1 reason to watch “Cobweb,” from first-time director Samuel Bodin? An unhinged Lizzy Caplan, giving it her “Mommie Dearest” best. (Plus, it’s set during Halloween.) Caplan teeters on a knife’s edge as Carol, mother to Peter (Woody Norman), a bullied 8-year-old who befriends the voice he starts hearing from behind his bedroom wall one night. With Cleopatra Coleman as Peter’s sympathetic teacher and Antony Starr as his scary daddy Mark, “Cobweb” spins familiar frights and a reveal you might see coming a mile away. But, again: Lizzy Caplan baking demented cupcakes. Lizzy Caplan massacreing poor, unsuspecting pumpkins. Lizzy Caplan whispering, “We’re doing this because we love you,” as she locks you — I mean, her son — in the basement. These are the morsels of delight everyone deserves on Halloween.

‘Night of the Hunted’

Running time: 1:35

Rating: Not rated

Streaming: Shudder

A woman is cornered by an unknown sniper inside a remote gas station in the middle of the night in the latest from Franck Khalfoun (“P2,” “Maniac”). But how Alice (Camille Rowe) adapts is far more interesting than the reasons why her preachy tormentor (Stasa Stanic), who berates her with pseudo-conservative, toxic-masculine nonsense over a walkie talkie during the ordeal, is perched atop a nearby billboard with her in his sights. Produced by Khalfoun’s sometimes collaborator Alexandre Aja, this English-language remake of David R.L.’s “Night of the Rat” (2015) works best when Alice starts raiding the shelves for convenience products to MacGyver into tools of survival. Watch it as a genre exercise in single-location horror.

‘Totally Killer’

Running time: 1:45

Rating: R (for bloody violence, language, sexual material, and teen drug/alcohol use)

Streaming: Amazon Prime

Horror comedy that actually works is woefully rare, so enjoy the tongue-in-cheek ride “Totally Killer” takes you on. Kiernan Shipka understands the assignment as Jamie, a sardonic Gen Z teen who time-travels back to the ’80s to stop the masked killer set to slay her parents’ high school social circle. It’s a rare horror outing for Nahnatchka Khan (“Fresh Off the Boat”), directing from a script by David Matalon, Sasha Perl-Raver and Jen D’Angelo that balances teen slasher riffs with head-spinning sci-fi lore that owes a debt (and pays repeated homage) to “Back to the Future.” And yes, this Blumhouse Television/Amazon Studios collab takes place in the days before Oct. 31, making it another actual Halloween movie to get you in a festive mood.

‘Slotherhouse’

Running time: 1:33

Rating: PG-13 (for violence, bloody images and language)

Streaming: Hulu; rent/buy on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu

Did you miss this horror comedy about a killer sloth on the loose in a sorority house earlier this summer? Fear not, your chances to catch “Slotherhouse,” the deranged brainchild of writers Bradley Fowler and Cady Lanigan, directed by Matthew Goodhue, just multiplied with VOD streaming options and a Hulu debut. Just as ridiculous as its title promises — and, importantly, not trying to be anything but — this is the only movie you may ever see in which a raging three-toed sloth named Alpha, played with surprising range by an obvious puppet, stalks its coed prey on social media, steals a car and takes selfies with its terrified victims. Double-feature it with the public domain sleeper-slasher “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” which arrived on Peacock this month.

‘Suitable Flesh’

Running time: 1:39

Rating: Not rated

Streaming: VOD

Joe Lynch (“Mayhem”) directs Heather Graham in this body-swapping tale with a touch of cosmic horror that takes its pleasures in the hyper-stylized sensory spiral of Elizabeth Derby, a shrink on the brink after she’s seduced by a young client (a magnetic Judah Lewis). Developed for years as a project by the late, great master of horror Stuart Gordon with frequent collaborator Dennis Paoli (“From Beyond,” “Re-Animator”) and adapted by Paoli, “Suitable Flesh” updates H.P. Lovecraft’s 1937 short story “The Thing on the Doorstep” with a gender-flipped twist, gesturing at perusals of power play even if light on transgressive erotic thrills. Barbara Crampton (also a producer), Bruce Davison and Johnathan Schaech co-star.

‘Pet Sematary: Bloodlines’

Running time: 1:24

Rating: R (for horror violence, gore and language)

Streaming: Paramount+

Yes, they made another “Pet Sematary.” This one’s a mostly unnecessary prequel to the 2019 reboot, one that dives into the backstory of a major character from the films and Stephen King’s original novel: Jud Crandall. If that whets your appetite, give this 1969-set origin story a whirl to learn what made poor Jud (Jackson White), then an idealistic young dreamer keen to get the heck out of Ludlow, Maine, remain in a cursed town with supernatural burial grounds that corpses keep finding their way into. Despite a talented cast that includes genre fan catnip in David Duchovny and Pam Grier and a Vietnam War plot thread that diverges from the book, “Bloodlines” struggles to justify its narrative existence. On the other hand, we haven’t gotten many memorable new entries to the Stephen King Cinematic Universe in a minute. And sometimes meh is better than nothing at all.

©2023 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The combination of soy sauce, honey and sherry adds a sweet glaze to this stir-fried pork tenderloin. I added Chinese noodles and broccoli florets to complete this easy meal. These noodles can be found dried in the Asian section of the market or steamed in the produce section. They only need a few minutes to cook. You can use angel hair pasta instead.

I use a small amount of sherry with soy sauce. If you don’t have sherry on hand, you can buy it in small bottles or splits in a wine store. Or use unsalted chicken broth instead.

Helpful Hints:

— You can use regular sesame oil instead of toasted sesame oil.

— If using dried noodles instead of fresh, boil 2 to 3 minutes longer.

Countdown:

— Place water for noodles on to boil.

— Prepare all the ingredients.

— Add pork to marinate in sauce.

— Boil the noodles.

— Stir-fry the pork and vegetables.

Shopping List:

To buy: 1 bottle reduced-sodium soy sauce, 1 small bottle dry sherry, 1 bottle honey, 1 small bottle red pepper flakes, 1/4 pound steamed or fresh Chinese noodles (or angel hair pasta), 1 bottle toasted sesame oil, 3/4 pound pork tenderloin, 1/4 pound broccoli florets, 1 large red bell pepper.

Staples: onion.

———

HONEY GLAZED STIR-FRIED PORK

Recipe by Linda Gassenheimer

1 tablespoon reduced-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon dry sherry

1 tablespoon honey

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

3/4 pound pork tenderloin, sliced into 1/2-inch strips

1/4 pound fresh or steamed Chinese noodles

4 teaspoons toasted sesame oil, divided use

1/4 pound broccoli florets

2 cups sliced onion

2 cups sliced red bell pepper

Place a large pot of water on to boil. In a small bowl, stir together the soy sauce, sherry, honey, and red pepper flakes. Add the pork strips and toss well. Ser aside. When water comes to a boil, add the noodles and boil for 2 minutes. Test to make sure they are soft. Boil another minute, if needed. Remove 2 tablespoons water to a bowl and add 2 teaspoons sesame oil and noodles. Toss well. Drain the noodles and add to the bowl. Toss well, divide in half and place on two dinner plates.

Heat a wok or skillet over high heat. Add the remaining 2 teaspoons sesame oil. Add the pork with the marinade and stir fry for 1 minute. Remove to a plate. Add the broccoli, onion and red bell pepper and stir-fry for 2 minutes return the meat to the wok continue to stir-fry 1 minute. Divide in half and add to the two dinner plates over the noodles.

Yield 2 servings.

Per serving: 616 calories (21% from fat), 14.2 g fat (2.7 g saturated, 5.1 g monounsaturated), 108 mg cholesterol, 47.9 g protein, 71.4 g carbohydrates, 7.1 g fiber, 374 mg sodium.

©2023 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

An offbeat buddy comedy set in 1970 at an all-boys Massachusetts boarding school, the title refers to Giamatti’s single, dedicated but universally hated, long-term teacher Paul Hunham who is to supervise the few students that remain at Barton Academy over Christmas vacation.

Thus a life-changing journey begins for Hunham with his troubled, if brilliant, student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa in his screen debut).

While Payne won his Oscar co-scripting “Sideways,” “Holdovers” lists him only as director.  This project didn’t begin with David Hemingson’s script because, Payne said in a post screening conversation, “There was no script.

“I got the idea for the movie from a fairly obscure 1935 French film called ‘Merlusse’ by the director Marcel Pagnol, who has other masterpieces. That’s maybe one of his more forgotten films. But I saw it at a film festival a dozen years ago and thought, That’s a good premise for a movie. I just held on to it; I didn’t do anything with it.

“I had gone to a private school in Omaha and actually ended up in a boarding school in Massachusetts. Four years ago I got a pilot script, set in a boarding school in Massachusetts, that was very well written. I called the writer and said, ‘I love your script. I don’t want to make it. But would you consider writing a feature set in that very same world?’ And he accepted – that’s how it happened.”

While it wasn’t written specifically for Giamatti, he was the only one considered.  “I’ve been dying to work with that cat again all these years,” Payne said. “This was very much written with him in mind.

“I sent him an early draft, just to check in with him. Because he’s smart, good with material and would have good instincts about it. Like we’re on the right path, both for him specifically and as a movie in general. And he was in.”

As for Angus, Payne’s casting director waded through 800 video submissions – without finding their lead.

“Finally, we activated a plan which was to call the schools where we’re actually going to shoot and say, Whom do you have there?

“And there Dominic was at Deerfield Academy. A senior, a star in the drama department, he’d never been in front of a camera. He wanted to be an actor and was applying to Carnegie Mellon (he got into Carnegie Mellon).

“It was interesting for me to observe that some people have a talent, they’re born to do it.”

“The Holdovers” opens Friday

My nephew doesn’t want to invite these family members to his wedding. My brother-in-law says he will speak to them beforehand to warn them about their alcohol intake, but he insists he won’t attend the wedding if these family members aren’t invited. Neither one is budging, and what is supposed to be a happy occasion is becoming a battleground. Please offer some words of advice that will work for all. — Anti-Alcohol Auntie

Dear Auntie: I’ll try. A wedding celebrates more than the joining of two people in matrimony, it is also the joining together of TWO FAMILIES. Sooner or later, your nephew’s wife and in-laws are going to be exposed to these relatives. Because Dad feels so strongly about them being included, and is willing to talk to them about this beforehand, HE should be put in charge of evicting anyone who acts out because they had too much to drink. This solution isn’t perfect, but it may defuse the situation.

Dear Abby: Why is it, as a man who is capable of going to the symphony as well as watching “The Bachelor,” spending a day shooting rifles or sipping wine, having silly conversations or those where I listen (compared to providing feedback), and is an animal lover (but allergic to some), I cannot attract the women I want? What do you think? — Confused in Tennessee

Dear Confused: If you start looking for candidates who enjoy the symphony and/or watching “The Bachelor,” shooting rifles and sipping wine, enjoy conversation and have a particular affinity for an animal to which you are NOT allergic, you may find someone who thinks you are interesting and attractive.

Although you listed the various interests YOU have, not once did you mention any qualities you would like a prospective mate to have. You might find it helpful to concentrate on that for a while. Emotional compatibility should be at the top of the list.

Dear Abby: We lost our daughter to gun violence, horribly, publicly and violently. We were the subject of news, speculation and gossip. It was several years ago, but people still ask for “details” and ask intrusive questions. It drives me up the wall and hurts my heart. I still struggle with how to respond to these people. What should I say? — Don’t Want to Talk About It

Dear Don’t: Please accept my sympathy for your tragic loss. Consider responding this way: “I’m sure you mean well, but I do not want to discuss this with you, now or ever. Please don’t ask again.”

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Robert Brustein, a giant in the theatrical world as critic, playwright, crusader for artistic integrity and founder of two of the leading regional theaters in the country, has died. He was 96.

Brustein died on Sunday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, according to an emailed statement from Gideon Lester, the artistic director and chief executive of the Fisher Center at Bard University and a decades’ long family friend. Lester said he heard the news from Brustein’s his wife, Doreen Beinart.

Known as a passionate and provocative theater advocate who pushed for boundary-breaking works and for classics to be adventurously modernized, Brustein founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard.

Some of the works he championed upset critics and playgoers unused to nontraditional productions, but he was unapologetic. “I know I’m out of step,” he told The New York Times in 2001. “I’m so out of step I’m almost in step.”

Even in his 80s, Brustein continued offering his opinions on everything from art to politics, lashing out at the Tea Party and describing the pain of breaking ribs on his own blog. He was a distinguished scholar in residence at Suffolk University, a professor of English emeritus at Harvard University and longtime critic at The New Republic.

Born in New York City, Brustein earned a bachelor’s from Amherst and a master’s and Ph.D. from Columbia. A Fulbright scholar, he taught at Cornell, Vassar and Columbia, where he taught drama. He was dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966-1979 and during that time founded the Yale Repertory Theatre.

Yale Rep, a champion of new work, has produced several Pulitzer Prize winners and nominated finalists. Many of its productions have advanced to Broadway and together have garnered 10 Tony Awards and more than 40 nominations.

“The goal is to try and have people in the audience take away something that lasts and will haunt them, be it either a subject for debate or of their dreams,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1997. “They’ll have an unresolved experience.”

After a painful, highly publicized dismissal from Yale, Brustein in 1979 switched to Harvard, where he taught English and founded the American Repertory Theatre in 1980. Then in 1987, he founded the Institute for Advanced Theatre Training, a two-year graduate program. He retired as artistic director from A.R.T. in 2002 but continued serving as its founding director.

A.R.T. has grown into one of the country’s most celebrated theaters and the winner of numerous awards, including the Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2003, it was named one of the top three regional theaters in the country by Time magazine.

Over the course of his long career as director, playwright, and teacher, Brustein aided the artistic development of such theater artists as Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Cherry Jones, Sigourney Weaver, James Naughton, James Lapine, Tony Shalhoub, Linda Lavin, Adam Rapp, William Ivey Long, Steve Zahn, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet and Peter Sellars.

At both Yale Rep and A.R.T., Brustein told The Boston Globe in 2012, he embraced popular theater with a nationalistic streak: “We were trying to liberate American theater from its British overseers. We were trying to find an American style for the classics,” he said.

“I was looking for the energies of popular theater applied to traditional work. I was also looking for new American plays. This was a very important function of ours, to encourage and develop new American playwrights.”

Brustein’s own full-length plays include “Demons,” “The Face Life” and “Spring Forward, Fall Back” and “Nobody Dies on Friday,” based on the real-life relationship between Lee Strasberg and his student Marilyn Monroe.

His work has been produced at the Vineyard Playhouse on Martha’s Vineyard, at Theater J in Washington, D.C., and the Abington Theatre in New York. “Playwriting is not so much a craft as an obsession,” he once observed.

His trilogy on the life and work of William Shakespeare includes “The English Channel,” which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; “Mortal Terror”; and “The Last Will,” a witty play which takes place inside a tavern on the eve of Shakespeare’s theater career and presents the young poet as an intellectual kleptomaniac. Brustein published his first book on Shakespeare, “The Tainted Muse: Prejudice and Presumption in Shakespeare and His Time,” in 2009.

Brustein was a staunch believer that theater should be first and foremost an art form, not just a political platform. He once criticized the African-American playwright August Wilson for declaring that Black people should not participate in colorblind casting but should form their own separatist companies. The pair then aired their differences in 1997 in a high-profile confrontation at New York’s Town Hall.

Brustein, a tall man with a deep voice, also wrote “Shlemiel the First,” based on the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer and set to traditional klezmer music. The light, absurd comedy, which gently mocks the lavishness of other musicals, premiered in 1994 at the American Repertory Theatre and was close to making it to Broadway. It was revived in 2011 by Theatre for a New Audience.

“I think the greatest theater is that which combines the low and the high,” he told the Globe. “One thing I can’t stand is the middle.”

His short plays include “Poker Face,” “Chekhov on Ice” and “Airport Hell.” His other books include “Revolution as Theatre,” “Letters to a Young Actor” and multiple volumes of his essays and criticism.

He won multiple honors, including the George Polk Award for Journalism and an award for distinguished service to the arts from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. In 2010, he was awarded the Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama at the White House and hailed as “a leading force in the development of theater and theater artists in the United States.”

He is survived by his wife, who ran the human rights film program at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government; and a son, Daniel. His first wife, the actress Norma Brustein, died just after he was let go from Yale.

Brustein was asked in 2012 what he thought of the current state of American theater and said tickets were too expensive and the work often failed to find a deep resonance.

“I love entertainment, but entertainment has got to be a serious effort to investigate the American soul through its theater. Novelists understand this, poets understand this, and for a while the playwrights really understood it,” he told the Globe. “We don’t have that anymore. And if we do, it’s not making it on the stage.

___

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits