Air Force One switcheroo a ‘Russian nesting doll of scandal’

Mr. President, can you tell us about your ride on the airport catering truck in Furkey? Why did you need to do that? Well, it's only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they'd like to do. So I go by Secret Service and the military. They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they said. I guess it was a threat out there. I didn't really ask them much about it. I get a lot of threats. President Trump speaking to reporters on the Tarmac Tuesday after an uneventful flight from Ohio to D.C. It follows a much more eventful flight back from a NATO conference in Turkey last month. Trump boarded Air Force One, greeted reporters, and then snuck off the plane in an airport catering container before boarding a different plane. The subterfuge followed intel that Iran may have been targeting the president. and Air Force One with a missile strike. The press pool, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and senior aide Stephen Miller were left on the decoy plane. The White House covered up the gambit until it was uncovered in the Washington Post earlier this week. Now Trump is downplaying the incident and the security threats to everyone left on board. We're going to break down the layers of this scandal with Garrett Graf. He writes the blog Doomsday Scenario and is the author of numerous books, including Raven Rock, the story of the U.S. government's secret plan to save itself while the rest of us died. Welcome back to Press Play. Thank you. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Okay, so you wrote that book on how for decades the government has created plans and bunkers to survive an attack while the rest of us fend for ourselves. Does this decoy plane operation fit within that tradition? A little bit. I mean, it's a big part, you know, one of the things that we often miss. understand is that all of these fancy toys that the president of the United States gets, whether it's Air Force One, whether it's Marine One, whether it's his armored limousine, are really armored communication suites that are both meant to help defend and secure the president and also ensure that at all times the president is... in communication and able to command our nuclear operations wherever he is on the surface of the planet or up in the sky. Okay, so let me lay out what happened. After the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was supposed to take his new plane, the Qataris had given him. But despite... hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded upgrades, it does not have the defensive capabilities necessary to fend off a missile strike, apparently. So instead, he got on the old Air Force one after some warning of a possible attack by Iran. But then, before that plane took off, he was ferried off that plane and secretly put on a military plane with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

And the press pool, and as I mentioned, several cabinet members were left behind on Air Force One. Apparently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio knew about this, but no one else did that we know of. And you described this episode as part of a Russian nesting doll of scandal. So I want to break down these levels, and it begins with the Katari Jet, which was to become the new Air Force One, the so-called Palace in the Sky. This is scandal number one. What did the Qataris get out of it? And how big a scandal is it for the American president? Yeah. So I think that under a normal presidency, the mere act that the president of the United States would accept a half billion dollar plane from a foreign government. that had been in the control of a foreign government for years of use would amount to the largest presidential scandal of most presidential administrations. It is both simultaneously, almost certainly unconstitutional from a foreign gift standpoint. It's also a stunning security risk. And it's one that, you know, was on display in the literal first trip that this plane ended up making. It was rushed into use by the president. It takes the government years and years to build a new Air Force one from scratch. There's all sorts of special communications capabilities. The planes are hardened against electromagnetic pulse attacks. There are different defensive capabilities that are installed in this. And effectively, all of that was short-cutted in order to get this plane ready for the 4th of July so that Donald Trump could fly it to this NATO summit in Turkey. And right off the bat, we saw the first time the plane... on that first trip confronted the possibility of an active threat, they had to take it out of service. And they had to use one of these blue and white 747s that have been used by presidents now for decades that we sort of traditionally call Air Force One. Yeah. Well, it appears Air Force One also, the old one wasn't. safe enough for the president in this particular incident. How come? Well, I don't know that we can make that determination. What it appears happened here is that the regular Air Force one, the blue and white 747, was used as a decoy plane in the face of a threat. Now, there's been a lot of...

a lot of reporting in the last 24 to 36 hours about the credibility of that threat. But for the purposes of this conversation, let's treat it as a serious one because the military and the Secret Service acted as such. And so they took the president off of the 747 and put him on a smaller plane known as a C-32. and flew him out on that plane with Defense Secretary Pete Hagsatch. And what is remarkable about that is that we have never, in modern American history, had a moment where the people that... The press corps did not know the whereabouts of the president of the United States on international travel. And you can imagine all of the ways that this could have gone catastrophically wrong if something had happened to the plane that was being used as a decoy that people thought the president was aboard. Or if something had happened to the plane that the president was actually aboard, in both instances, you would have had immense confusion about the status and security and whereabouts of the president of the United States, which is a matter of great geopolitical concern and national security. Not to mention the fact that this decoy plane could have been shot down. Exactly. You know, there are a lot of parts of these security procedures that are typical. The president of the United States in traveling in and out of war zones has used unmarked planes. Sometimes he'll travel aboard, you know, unmarked cargo planes in and out of war zones to keep a low profile. President Clinton in the year 2000 while visiting Pakistan arrived on a unmarked sort of smaller jet. And there have been times where the, you know, members of the press corps have been... misled about where the president actually is when President Biden traveled to Ukraine on a secret trip. Actually, the regular White House press corps was kept in the dark and thought that his schedule was sort of unfolding normally in Washington. But in an instance like that, what actually ended up happening... was the White House had arranged in advance to take a second press pool with president by two Ukraine, who were with him at all times, knew where he was, and would have been able to confirm his whereabouts if needed. So this is the first time that we've ever seen the press lied to.

and kept in the dark about the whereabouts of the president on an international trip. Even before you get to the second aspect that you just mentioned, which is the stunning use of the U.S. government of unwitting reporters and White House staff as a decoy. to absorb potentially an Iranian assassination attack. We've never seen unwitting... White House staff or reporters or, you know, Americans of any kind used as a decoy in presidential travel before. Right. And so, and you note that at the end of your really great and well-researched and written piece, the end of it is even more dire by Trump's standing orders that. if he's killed to bomb Iran, quote, at levels they've never seen before, essentially use a nuclear weapon from what I can determine. And so how does that fit into this whole plane gate escapade? Yeah. And this is one of the things that is a hallmark of a lot of Donald Trump scandals is that. how scandalous they are only becomes apparent later on as sort of more facts fit into the puzzle. And this was a case where in early July, just days after returning from this Turkey trip, President Trump posted on social media about how he had left standing orders basically to nuke Iran into oblivion if anything happened to him. And at the time, it was a very weird comment. People didn't really know what to make of it. The U.S. doesn't have a mechanism for what's called a dead man switch in nuclear parlance there that would sort of, you know, leave standing orders like that. But it was thought to be a sort of speculative future threat. Whereas I think we now understand as we get more details that this was actually probably a conversation that unfolded. in advance of or was informed by this potential Iranian threat in Turkey. And to me, it's an indication of just how serious this incident was and just how escalatory this incident could have been had something happened to either the president or the decoy plane in that moment. Yeah, and then going forward, this just underscores the mistrust between the White House and the press corps and that the press corps, they don't take the president's words, any president's words at face value without checking them. But in this particular case, it seems like there's an added level now of mistrust based on the fact that there is so much duplicity going on by the White House.

Exactly. And I think one of the things that a lot of people are missing and you're seeing a lot of the media coverage missing is that people are sort of treating this as, you know, a silly incident in laughing at, you know, President Trump being carried away in a catering truck. And the status and security and whereabouts of the president of the United States is an incredibly important subject. And in the president's actions and the White House's actions here really, I think, show that they misunderstand why there is a White House press corps in the first place following the president as the press pool, which is you need for our own democracy, for the stability of financial systems, for military command and control. to reassure our allies, to reassure adversaries. You need to be able to have independent corroboration. Proof of life. Of the status, security and whereabouts of the president of the United States. Garrett, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Garrett Graf, he writes the blog Doomsday Scenario, and he's also the author of several books.

Coming up, you lose a bunch of weight using a GLP1 drug and you don't tell anyone how you did it. And with good reason, a new study finds there is a lot of stigma around using GLP1s. That's next on Press Buy. There's the story you hear, and then there's the story behind it. Who's telling it? What are their motivations? What's at stake? I'm Brian Reed, and on my show from KCRW, question everything, we tell stories about power and influence and the ways that people are manipulating the truth. And we do that by talking to the people living with the consequences. My feed was flooded without my consent. I was targeted by Instagram. Listen to question everything, wherever you get your podcasts. This is Press Play on 89.9 KCRW. I'm Adeline Brand. The weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s have been touted as miracle drugs. People who have dieted for years can now lose weight and keep it off. The drugs are also credited with lowering the risk of heart disease, stroke, liver disease. They help some people conquer addictions and they may be preventative for dementia. The speed with which they've conquered America is breathtaking. They've been around for diabetes for a while, but only in the past few years have they been prescribed for weight loss specifically. Now, one in eight Americans has tried a GLP1. But like plastic surgery, it's widespread, but little discussed. Not exactly water cooler talk. And a new study reveals why that may be. There's a social stigma around these drugs, even more so than the social stigma around being overweight. Janet Tomiyama recently studied this. She's a psychology professor at UCLA and director of the Diet Stigma and Health Lab there. Welcome to Press Play. Thank you so much. Well, why were you interested in this studying the stigma around using GLP-1s? Well, I've studied weight stigma, which is sort of the negative attitudes and prejudice and discrimination against those perceived to be overweight. For a long time, that's been my bread and butter. So because I was already interested in stigma processes, I suspected that people who would turn to GLP ones might, in fact... be stigmatized as taking the easy way out or somehow not working hard on their health or their weight. Interesting. So you really have to work at it. That's the American ideal. The American way is, yes, willpower, diet, exercise. You're not allowed to take any shortcuts whatsoever. And is that because obesity is considered something like a moral failing, that it's something you can control? It's not a disease. Exactly. So when we think something's controllable, then we really blame them when they don't control that behavior. But weight is about as heritable as height. And we're not out there saying, why don't you grow taller? Like, where's your willpower to grow taller? So weight is really hard to control. We know this from...

decades of seeing people trying to lose weight. Even people like Oprah, who have all the resources, still struggle with weight. And so, you know, that's another reason why these drugs are so incredibly revolutionary. Right. And they have changed the conversation because now people are understanding more about it being a disease because if it can be treated with a drug, then... perhaps it's not necessarily just a question of willpower. So tell me more about how you conducted your study about the social stigma around GLP-1s. Sure. So we recruited a bunch of people. They were sort of matched in demographics to the United States population in terms of age and ethnicity and things like that. And we asked them to rate one of three different targets. One of the people had lost weight through diet and exercise. One of the people had lost weight through using GLP ones. And then we had this third condition, a person who hadn't even attempted to lose weight at all. And so what we found, of course, is that people stigmatize the GLP1 users more harshly and negatively than the person who lost weight through, you know, our beloved diet and exercise methods. The big surprise to us was that the GLP1 users were stigmatized more harshly than someone who never even tried to lose weight. And so that's how... mad we are at people who we perceive to be taking this easy way out. So interesting. And did you expect that finding? No, not at all. In fact, we had to like check it multiple times to say, wait, wait, wait. Did we label these conditions wrong? What's happening here? But I do think it just underscores for me how. easy it is to be judgmental about the way people lose weight. And, you know, this study clearly shows there's a right way and there's a wrong way. And so, you know, it's not surprising to me that people would conceal the fact that they're on GLP ones or, you know, maybe fib a little bit and say, oh, no, you know, I'm on this new diet regimen or whatever. Hmm. Well, is it also because we hear stories about celebrities or we see celebrities all of a sudden looking really thin and we hear about them using GLP ones for, you know, award shows or any time they need to be in public and that it's seen as something that. rich people are using just to lose five pounds. Mm-hmm. Like we see it as maybe like a vanity project. So as a person who studies health, I would love GLP1 used to be purely for...

improving health, you know, so preventing diabetes or improving cardiovascular health. But when we get so fixated on weight as the outcome, that's when I think we get into sticky situations like this where people use it, maybe who don't have the health indications to take gLP ones, nonetheless take them for, you know, getting to a certain number on the scale. Right, but that could also be for health reasons too. You know, there are plenty of people with a very high body mass index who look pristine on their health markers. And there are plenty of people who are very thin and yet have lots of things that are the matter with their health. So I think, you know. Using weight as the end-all be-all marker of health kind of gets us into a weird place where now we're suddenly talking about body size and appearance rather than really focusing on what's important, which is how do your labs look? How's your blood pressure? Like these are the things I wish we would focus on in terms of GLP1 use today. Interesting. Well. For people who are on a GLP1, and as I said in the intro, about one in eight Americans say they've used the medication, so it's a fair number. What does it mean for them when they encounter the social stigma in terms of sticking with it, sticking with the medication or doing something else? Yes, it's kind of like a... bad spiral where their stigma exists so people don't talk about it and therefore the stigma gets more entrenched you know if if we saw our favorite coworkers and our neighbors and our family members openly saying, yeah, I'm on GLP-1s and I'm doing it for my health. I think then we could get into a virtuous circle where, you know, we see, oh, yeah, it's something that many people are doing and they're not vain celebrities, you know, there are people just trying to get on with their life and making medical choices for themselves that they think are best for themselves. But I guess I want to just push back on that a little bit because why is it not okay to be on the drugs for appearance reasons? Because you just want to feel better about how you look. And... Why is that not okay? Because it seems to be that it's okay to use it just for health reasons to lower your markers, like your blood pressure or your cholesterol, but it's not okay to do it if you don't feel like you look good in your pants. Yeah, that's a great question. As I mentioned, I've been studying weight stigma for almost 20 years. And so, of course, people want to escape.

the negative judgment they get for their body size. And so I don't want to make it sound like I'm wagging my finger like, ooh, you're doing this for the wrong reasons. I just think our society's laser focus on weight is what's getting us to this spot where people feel so much of their worth tied up into the number on the scale. And I think that I... don't lay blame on people who want to escape the severe social stigma of obesity and go on GLP-1s. I think I just dream of a future where the weight a person is. It's just, you know, like another aspect about them, nothing that's worth moralization or judgment or anything like that. Well, Jenna, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. That's Janet Tomiyama. She's a health psychologist and director of UCLA's Diet, Stigma, and Health Lab.

Coming up, we'll have your weekend movie reviews, including a stoner comedy starring Kristen Stewart. I am convinced there's nothing that Kristen Stewart cannot do. If she is starring as the Cheech in a Cheech and Chong comedy and pulling it off with a plum, then she's kind of like stretched to every corner of her talents. That's next on Press Play. This is 89.9 KCRW. I'm Adeline Brand. I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known. Time now for our film review segment. We're in our feelings today because a new Green Day movie has cast my producer, Jack, into the past, where it's the fifth grade and Angie Rodriguez definitely like someone else. Jack has it on good authority. What can he do? It's another broken dream on the boulevard. We're going to talk about the new film and three others with our critics. Whitney Seibold, senior writer at Slash Film and co-host of the podcast Critically Acclaimed Network and Amy Nicholson, Film Critic for the Los Angeles Times. Welcome back. Thank you very much. Hello. And let's shed a tear for Jack. I'm so sorry. First up, first up is the end of Oak Street, directed by David Robert Mitchell. It stars Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisie Stella, and Christian Convery. A cosmic event transports a family's suburban street to a different place where there are dinosaurs. Anybody else see that weird light last night? A weird light. I think that our neighborhood. Our house. Our whole street has moved. Now the hell is that even possible? Amy, huh? A suburban block transported into dinosaur land? What's happening? Yeah. Yes, some sort of wormhole we're guessing. We hear that there are strange ripples happening in space. But we're just with this family. trying to figure out how to survive it and they're not really scientists so um this movie is kind of a tonal mess you know it starts off in the Spielbergian drama way of this family really fretting about finances fretting over whether or not they should get a divorce quietly and hathaway is playing a housewife who is really frustrated taking out her um her sadness and her marriage and writing novels that are very thinly veiled tragedies about their life. And then suddenly there's a dino attack. The one thing I will say to this movie's credit is there's a lot of dinosaur attacks, a lot of people get their heads chomped. And then this family runs around and screams. I was not a gigantic fan of this film. Like, I could see its appeal. I definitely want to go back to a time when we have like 80s, four quadrant movies like this opening every single week that we could just take them for granted. But the problem for me was that this movie felt so much like a Spielberg movie that I couldn't see the director himself, David Robert Mitchell in it, who is a really interesting director on his own. He made It Follows. Then he made a film that I thought was really fun under the Silver Lake, a kind of noir with Andrew Garfield. Seeing him do this karaoke Spielberg.

bummed me out a little bit. But there's a middle stretch in this movie where he decides it's just those dumb comedy. He's like, whatever, they're dumb, run around, be morons. And in that stretch, I actually had a good time with this film. And I assume this was on purpose to be an homage to Spielberg because you said it was based in 1982 or takes place in 1982, which is when ET came out. Yeah, very much. And it's produced by JJ Abrams, who did kind of the same thing with Super 8. They're just trying to say, hello, we are the new Spielberg. Whitney? Do you say hello back? A little bit, but it's like waving to somebody on a departing ship. This is something I very much recognized. These were the kinds of movies I grew up watching. So part of me is definitely going to react to this retro 80s, kind of amblin entertainment vibe that the filmmakers are clearly going for. But at the same time, it does feel really dated. It feels like the kind of gigantic entertainment that we kind of put on the shelf a long time ago. I can't say if a younger audience is going to connect to something like this. So, yeah, it's behind the times, but it is enjoyable. The end of Oak Street in select theaters today and theaters everywhere tomorrow. Next up, The Wrong Girls. It's directed by Dylan Meyer. And it stars Alia Shackat and Kristen Stewart as two stoners who do experimental drugs and then become telepathic. I have no idea why you thought it would be a good idea to take the drugs. You are dumb as rocks and you should be dead. We're very important fugitives. We're runaways. This is you and me, malls. We're in this together. People are trying to kill us for science. There are Vikings. We have to let's see now. And we have to go to Mexico. They want to do experiments on us because we're special now. The cats are d'u. That is true. All right, Whitney, I feel like I'm Stone, just listening to that. What's happening? So the plot of this movie is pretty wild. Kristen Stewart and Alia Shalkat are best friends and roommates. The Alia Shalkat character dreams of being a chef. Kristen Stewart is... Kind of at her wits end in her life. She goes to a concert where she is mistaken for somebody else by a character played by Lakeith Stanfield, who proceeds to give her a suitcase full of these mysterious vials of fluid. She doesn't know what they're supposed to be. She and her roommate are too high to really understand they need money. They figure it's drugs. They try selling it. They taste it. And, of course, it's an experimental drug that makes them psychic when they get high. And they run afoul of a team of Danish secret agent guys who are trying to kill them. They try to sell the drugs at a party. It becomes a rather wild, a little peaker-esque adventure as they go out and try to interact with the world when they're completely blitzed out of their gourds.

Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawcat are perfect. They are both so, so funny. I am convinced there's nothing that Kristen Stewart cannot do. If she is starring as the Cheech in a Cheech and Chong comedy and pulling it off with a plum, then she's kind of like stretched to every corner of her talents. I think it might be kind of silly to complain about the pacing in a stoner movie. This thing does really start to drag after a while. They start dropping in all of these extra plot points and all of these other superpowers and all these new characters right near the end. So I'm starting to feel a little bit worn out by the end. But then... I wasn't high while I was watching this movie. So maybe I was just in the wrong state of mind. Kristen Stewart's character wears a Langer's ball cap at one point. Somebody wears an amoeba t-shirt. That's that kind of thing. And, yeah, sort of watching these two stoners wander aimlessly around Los Angeles thinking thoughts at each other and talking to their psychic cats, who are played by Seth Rogan and Kumail Nanjani, is a bit of a hoot. Amy, talking cats? Yeah, I saw this early in the morning, Stone Cold Sober and had a complete blast with it, even though, and I can't believe I'm saying this as a person with two annoying cats of my own. These cats are talking way too much. I'm going to need these cats to settle down. No, this movie is so fun. And the writer and director here, Dylan Meyer, is also Kristen Stewart's wife. And the film really has this feel of just people who know what Kristen Stewart can do, who know that Kristen Stewart at home is a gigantic goofball. You know, and it feels very... Taylor made to show off how funny she can be. She's hilarious in this. They're having so much fun at these characters that at one point they do a whole sequence where they're just wearing trash bags that they've tried to cut. around to look like their couture fancy clothes. It's so hyper-local in the Los Angeles way that you can tell that they're even wearing the specific soup plantation that closed in Los Phyllis, you know? This film really reminds me in a way of a film that came out of a summer gildughty and a celebrity sex pass, which is also hyper-L-A, crowded with stars, uses kind of a retro silly premise, a suitcase swap, mistaken identity, just to put forth some characters that we just want to see goof off and run around. And I have had such a blast. we keep seeing more of these movies. The Wrong Girls, now playing in select theaters. Next up, Union County. This is directed by Adam Meeks. It stars Will Poulter and Noah Centineo, and it's about a recovering addict in Ohio who navigates a drug court program. We treat everyone on a case-by-case basis. There's no rubric, but back to jail is always an option. Okay. You see the guy over there making up with that girl? That's my brother. That's my friend, Kim. Sorry about that. When you're in this program, Cody, you have to comply with the rules.

So what's it going to be? Okay, Amy, there are non-actors who are actually recovering addicts in real life playing alongside Will Poulter. Tell us about this mix. Yeah, it's a strange kind of film. It's almost a... Sundance movie taking place inside of a documentary because this is set in Ohio at the adult recovery court, which is a system of recovery where they like, you know, ask the people who are struggling with addiction to write letters, to write check-in diaries to kind of show up and tell their stories in court every day to the judge. There's a real close bond in this group between the counselors and the courts and the people who are trying to struggle to get over drug addiction. And so you're watching these two. you know, recognizable movie stars, sit in the courtroom with these real people. And you get a sense of just... how hard it is to still make it through the system anyways, that there are so many small compliance rules that you need to be on top of that these two brothers played by Noah and Taneo and Will Poulter, it's hard for them to do everything perfectly. And you see when they screw up, they just get this slight little reprimand and then they slide back down to step one. They get really sad that this is a world where everybody is existing in the thinnest of margins where just a changed bus route is the sort of thing that can send somebody, you know, back to square one. I will say it's not the most compelling watch. You know, we spend most of our time with Will, who's the inward of the Foster Brothers, but we are mostly just watching Will watch everybody listening to stories, hearing stories, and not really able to express himself very much. He opens up slightly towards the end and gets a little bit more interesting. But it's realism, you know, and the realism has a weight, even if the film itself is kind of dull. Oh, Whitney? I found, this is going to be a strange thing to say, I found the dullness compelling. I liked the kind of open-endedness of the drama because this is the way these people's lives are kind of shaped because they are. constantly struggling forward, there's not much else they can really do with their lives, but focus on this program. I think Will Poulter is, he's a great actor all around, and I think he really kind of settles into this role really, really well. He does have this kind of observer quality, however, because in the opening scenes, we see them kind of lining up and giving their introductions. And then Will Poulter steps up and, like, your brain automatically activates. Like, oh, well, there's the movie star. There is a little bit of a tonal clash, I think, between what this film is trying to capture in terms of realism and what this film is trying to capture in terms of its drama and its story. And I think it's only when it starts to lose sight of...

drama and story and sort of those artifices of filmmaking and starts to turn into something a little bit more realistic, everyday kitchen sink, that it starts to become a little bit more interesting. And by the end, when people are confessing their feelings, you finally buy it. Union County is playing at the new art beginning tomorrow. Last up is Nimrods. It's directed by Lee Kirk. It stars Mason Thames and McKenna Grace. An unknown band travels across the United States to open for Green Day. Tracheco called what? He loved our demo. He invited us to LA to open for them on New Year's. Can I take your car? No, because you don't have a license. Come on! Well, how are we getting there? We're taking Wayne's car. It's true. Nightway to a drink. Okay, Whitney, this is really a Green Day movie? What's going on? This is very much a Green Day movie. Green Day is in it. Green Day are producers and Green Day are credited as the storywriters. And the three main characters of this movie are very clearly kind of Green Day analogs. And I think this is supposed to capture what the band members themselves went through when they were young and still kind of coming up as these little pop punk punks. The three main characters are... in a band that they call analog dogs, but nobody can pronounce their name correctly. They only get the first four letters. And they are able to meet Green Day at like a record store signing. They hand over their demo. One of the characters, Big Brother, catches wind of this and decides to play a prank. He calls them as one of the members of Green Day and says, hey, come out to Hollywood. They're in Kansas City and open for us for this one concert. And they think it's real. So what proceeds is this wild road trip comedy where they run afoul of various eccentric characters that they meet on the road. It is... off the rack, very pat kind of coming of age stuff. A lot of the character types we've seen, there's the pretty girl, this indie rocker girl that they meet at a concert that one of the characters really kind of falls in love with. One of the characters is really kind of a nerdy type. He's really kind of square. He's definitely not a punk and he's constantly worried about what his mom is going to think. And the other character is kind of the one with the dirty sense of humor. These are character types we've seen before. And yet there's something really... that really works about this movie. Even though everything is really, really predictable and yet it really worked for me. I was just having a grand old time. It could help that the band that they're going to follow is a real band and hear a lot of Green Day music on the soundtrack. Sounds like you are a Green Day fan. I'm actually not. Green Day was a little bit, I guess I was a teenager when Green Day hit, but I was more of an offspring fan and never the tween shall meet. Amy, which are you? I have a classic Green Day Duky fan, and I was sad that it wasn't more Duky. They were playing a lot of Green Day. I didn't know. But this did get me interested to say, like, hold up, our young kids today, because this movie is set today. Our kids today really into Green Day, and apparently they are. Apparently, like, Gen Z really loves Green Day, which they are.

Well, according to Green Day, Green Day says that at their shows it's a lot of kids, which I would like to believe you. I think there is kind of a youthful punk energy to the sound of their music that I could see sticking. In a way, this movie started like what I wished Oak Street had the confidence to do, just have the tone of being like a scuzzy, funny 80s, 90s comedy about some screw up kids, because that's definitely how it feels. And you could even... throw your phones out the window like they do to try to pretend that they really are living in the past. And so I was very on board at this for the beginning. And then there's a moment where they stop and they have to play a show for some strangers at a bar. And you haven't really seen them play yet. And so it's the moment where you think, okay, here's where this movie really tells us what it is. Is this about a band that's really bad or a band that's really great? Is this a movie about success, a movie about failure? And from that point on, the movie just chooses the cornball answer in every single scene. And I got really annoyed. But I will say there's an unknown kid in here. Kyler Hoffman, he's playing that third character, the kind of filthy bassist. He's fantastic. He seems like a new discovery to this film. He's an Oklahoma kid. I think this was shot in Oklahoma. He's amazing. He really feels like... And the kind of punk rocker you've seen in this band that could have been in the 70s hanging out with Gigi Allen. He could be here as a young kid today, like forming his own band. He's fantastic. And I was really glad to at least discover him in this movie. Nimrods now playing in select theaters. And that does it for this week. Was it a dukey? No, it was the time of our lives. It had Nimrods in it. Wow. I know. I'm sorry. Whitney Seibold, Tiniar writer at Slash Film and co-hosts with the podcast Critically Acclaimed Network and Amy Nicholson is Film Critic for the Los Angeles Times. Thank you both. Thank you. Thank you. It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right. I hope you have the time of your life. Coming up, Evan Klyman is here with Breakfast Burrito Recommendations next on Press Play.

This is press play on 89.9 KCRW. I'm Madeline Brand, the breakfast burrito, as much of an L.A. institution as the Hollywood sign, gridlock on the 405, all of that. It's also incredibly portable. Speaking of gridlock, perfect to eat on the go in your car while sitting on that said freeway, the 405 or others. Evan Klyman is here with recommendations from all over the city and from around the KCRW water cooler. Hello. Hello. All right, let's talk about the basics. What does a breakfast burrito have to have that is in your mind non-negotiable? So, you know, it has to have eggs and cheese. And beyond that, you know, it is L.A. I think what I love best about the L.A. experience of breakfast burritos is that they can be homie or chefy or a canvas for a global crossover. But I would say a solid flour tortilla is a must since no one wants the thing unraveling halfway through. And I would also say salsa is a must because who eats breakfast burrito without salsa? And for me, I find the potatoes somewhat problematic because I love beans. And potatoes in a breakfast burrito mostly show up as tots. I know I am in the extreme minority for not being a tot gal. And if the potatoes have to be there, I would prefer them to show up as cottage fries, which some places do. Or actual hash browns, like a nice flat shingle of tender shards with crispness. Okay, what size is a perfect breakfast for you? Okay. I just have to say that according to the eaters, any size. is fine. One critic I read calls them torpedoes, and he's not wrong. I think at a certain point, though, especially with the ones that get very girthy, shall I say, as well as long, the ratio of the tortilla to the filling is off. I love the tortilla part of the experience. Otherwise, I would be eating a bowl. Also, Many of us are eating the thing one-handed as we drive, in which case the giant ones are a safety hazard. Thank you for keeping an eye out for our collective safety. Okay, what about how you layer the ingredients? Is that important? Massively important. I would say it's really the thing that can make a break at breakfast burrito because... You want as much as possible to experience all the ingredients in each bite. And hopefully the cheese will be melty. Maybe you'll even get a cheese pull. And it really needs to be tucked and rolled properly. Neatness and structural integrity really count in a breakfast burrito, at least when you start eating.

And I have to say the ones that are finished on a griddle have a certain appeal, although I'm definitely not saying that all need to be that way. I love the seduction of a pliable tortilla. Okay, so you know your Michelin stars. One star means it's worth a stop, two, worth a detour, three, worth a special journey. The same is true of breakfast burritos. I don't know if any of them actually have Michelin stars. There are so many places, so you don't have to go too far to find a great one. And let us begin with one that when we pulled our team here on press play, many mentioned Delia's in Eagle Rock. Yeah, I think Delius is mentioned in almost every list. And I think it's a combination of the fact that their friendly vibe is just legendary. It's not a place you want to just walk up to a window, take your burrito and go. I mean, it's nice to just sit there and eat it. Lots of people choose the Chodiso one. Their salsa is very good. And it's also amazingly reasonably priced at 8.50. It's not too small. It's not too big. I would say it's the... The platonic ideal of a homie burrito. The platonic ideal of a homey burrito. Yeah, of a homey breakfast burrito, yeah. Another one that came up around the water cooler here at KCRW is Cafe Los Felis. Yeah, and that is the global crossover genre. And I should say that most of these places that I talk about, there's a menu of options. But there's usually one that gets all the... attention. In this case, it's their Sujuk burrito. It's a delicious Armenian-cured meat. People love that mash-up. And bread and breakfast is another place that uses, they use Bastorma and Sujc in their burritos. So, yeah, Armenian diaspora very well represented here in breakfast burrito form. That's so interesting. That is such an interesting crossover. Okay, speaking of crossing over, let's cross over to Malibu, PCH. And one that's a staple with surfers called Lilies. I mean, Lilies, with everybody close or far, who knows about it. It's been open and run by the founder Lily Castro for 37 years. I mean, that is unbelievable. They survived the pandemic by taking their... much beloved salsa and packing it in glass jars by the pint. And when I was there on Sunday, many people were walking out with, I mean, literal boxes packed with... gigantic burritos, as well as the sauce. One gentleman had 10 giant burritos. I mean, you could serve easily 20 people with that and four pints of salsa in his box. I would say the move here is the Machaca. What's Machaca? Machaca is an almost jerky shredded beef that is so...

Delicious. I mean, a lot of times you'll see Machaka, and it's just like shredded brisket or like some kind of shredded brazen meat. But real Machaca is different, and it has this amazing chew to it and really intensified beefy flavor. And it's amazing they use it in this burrito. Okay, any other standouts you recommend? I have to say, there's so many. My roundup is like truly excessive this time on Substack. I want to shout out Chori Man down in San Pedro because so many people talk about eating chorizo in their breakfast burritos. And if you're going to put Chaudiso in a breakfast burrito, you might as well have the best in town. I also love that they... fry their eggs so they're runny. They're not scrambled. And that's fabulous. And they don't use tots. I love that. So yay to them. And then I'm going to shout out Kofax because they were amongst the first of the chefi variety. Like many places, there are multiple options, but I'm always going to go for the veggie, which is smoked veggie hash with potatoes, bell peppers and onions, scrambled egg, jack cheese, pico de gallo, and crushed tortilla chips. For a little... Flavor, texture, yum. Yes. And I just want to tell listeners, once I have the substack up next week, please put your favorite in the comments so everybody can see. Okay. I'm going to put mine in. Tacos via Corona in Atwater Village. Evan Klyman hosts KSRW's Good Food every Saturday and Sunday mornings at 10. She's also on Substack, where you can get that very, very long list of where to get the best breakfast burritos. It's at KSRW, goodfood.substack.com. Evan, thank you. Thank you so much, Madeline. If you want a burrito, you can have another bite of mine. And that does it for this week on press play. Our producers are Angie Perrin, Robin Estrin, Jack Ross, Niehart Kash Patel, Zeke Reed, and Eli Chavez. Brian Hartzinski is our managing producer, our technical director, Super Mario Savedra, and Super Dupers Sue Margulis engineered today's broadcast. I'm Madeline Brand. Thanks for being here. I'll be back with you again on Monday.