I began writing this after a relentless 24 hours of miserable news. Another mass shooting on a college campus, a massacre of Australian Jews on the first night of Hanukkah, the stabbing deaths of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michelle, in their home, by their adult son. The barrage of bad news in a concentrated period is not unlike the rest of this year, which started with my home of Los Angeles ablaze on the West side and the East side, in the mountains and along the coast. Elon Musk dismantled global food and medical aid like he was just dusting off dirt from his shoulder, and hundreds of thousands of children are dying as a result. And by summer, we were the first of many cities to face brutal ICE raids and effectively, kidnappings, and occupied by National Guard troops, sent by a president who views more than half this country and its millions of immigrants as his enemies.
In the midst of all this misery we still have jobs to do and bills to pay and children to raise. Compared to last year’s recap, this one feels decidedly more dreary. We’re in this time of both frequent natural disaster and self-inflicted national crisis (how is there still no meaningful gun control, it’s a known public health epidemic)!
One of my responses this year has been to create more art and try and make an impact and better connects people or deepens understanding. In the pursuit of generative work, I’ve enjoyed a very “LA” year, both spending more time living here and not traveling as much, and engaging in its entertainment industry. I went to the Oscars for the first time, finished writing the screenplay version of FLAWLESS (though it later died in development, and have spent more than 30 days on location, co-directing a documentary. It features four kids who either lost their homes or were displaced by January’s fires. They range in age from 12 to 17, and I’ve essentially taken on four other kids this year to text with and check up on, in order to embed with their families for mundanities and milestones. By this time next year, I hope we will have a finished film — WINDSWEPT. We need help funding it, so pitch in if you can.
And without further yapping, herewith a recap of my 2025.
Favorite Creator of the Year: Luke Holloway, the guy who turns awkward Tinder conversations into smash hit songs, none of which were bigger than “I have one daughter,” (no shade to K-Pop Demon Hunters)
Favorite Interview of the Year: Pooh Bear, the prolific music producer known for hits with Justin Bieber, among many many others. While we were on stage, he took a concept from the crowd and straight up wrote a hook and post-hook for it within three minutes, then challenged the AI tool Suno to do the same, “in the style of Poo Bear.” And right there on stage we all felt the ineffable quality of humanness in the actual human’s song, showing that at least for now, AI is still pretty mid. CLOSE SECOND: Stacey Abrams, who revealed how much she loves the Amazon TV show, Reacher.
New Places: The Narrows in Zion National Park, Jacksonville, Deadwood, SD, the Angeles National Forest
Favorite Films: Sinners, Rental Family, Splitsville
Firsts: Attending the Oscars, speaking at the Met, TED Talk launch, hosting a podcast for the BBC, pitching networks on my documentary, finishing a screenplay and getting paid for it, a Luchador show in Mexico City, inducing dog vomiting, finding a dead bird in my bed that the cat brought in.
Nerdiest Accomplishment: I won $10 in a category of my tennis pool. We bet on the four majors by picking players seeded 1-10, 11-20 and an unseeded player and see how they fare.
Live Show of the Year: Labiahead, the all-woman Radiohead tribute band featuring Lena TKTK and Charlene Kaye, who is also…
New Friend of the Year: Charlene Kaye. She’s a comedian and musician … a musical comedian. We met through my book, Flawless. She read it and reached out over Instagram, we became Instagram-friendly for a couple years, and this year I pitched her for a TED Talk and in November, she absolutely brought the house down as she closed out TEDNext with her performance-slash-talk that I cannot wait to share once it’s released. CLOSE SECOND: Jena Friedman, another uproariously funny comedian whose hourlong special, MotherF*cker, is a must-see if you can get a ticket.
Most Thrilling Sport Match/Game of the Year: It’s a tie between Game Seven of the World Series and the Men’s Final of the French Open, a grueling five-hour slugfest in which Carlos Alcaraz clawed his way back from two (or was it three) Championship points to best his rival Jannik Sinner,
And in no particular order, this year I:
Joined a hip new coworking space
Started filling in on KCRW’s Press Play
Became the mom of a teen
Covered the costliest natural disaster in global history
Fostered a cat fire survivor
Started filming a documentary
Joined the board of the Birthday Party Project
Hosted a medical podcast
Began hosting a weekly parenting podcast
Twice endured a live mouse in my house that the cat dragged in
Sat in the very front row of the Hollywood Bowl, something all should experience
Saw so much live music: Nelly, Ja Rule, Eve, KC of KC and Jojo, Keith “Babyface” Edmonds, Labiahead, Samora Pinderhughes and the Healing Project Choir, Joshua Bell and the Chamber Orchestra of America
Went to Mexico City with friends for my birthday, got violently ill, then had to endure a full body massage while having the chills and on the precipice of explosive diarrhea at any moment
Got my book and my podcast shouted out (on separate occassions) in the NY Times
Saw the Japanese edition of my book hit shelves
Got sharked by Mark Cuban for a speaking engagement
Decided to shut down our small business started with my girlfriends
Moved in with my man, well, actually, he moved in with us
Won a $35,000 grant for our documentary
Spent a countless number of hours in volleyball gyms and on soccer sidelines, as two out of three of my girls are on travel teams
Ran 149 miles, still way down from my COVID-era highs, but played a lot of tennis
Read 33 books
Wrote 25 newsletter dispatches
Flew 38,097 miles to 25 cities, three countries and spent 66 days away from home
PREVIOUS YEARS IN REVIEW
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