The plan is this. You're basically going to walk up, meet him in front.
Hey. I'm Eddie. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you, too.
He's going to give you a little, like, like, lowdown on what porn-star karaoke is.
He's got a harmonica
- 'cause he usually plays harmonica here. - That's what he said.
They have the song lined up, so whenever you go to the stage...
We need some girls up here, Dave.
Unfortunately, I don't know the lyrics to our theme song.
- I don't know that. - ♪ Good and delicious ♪
♪ Shanghai, Moscow, check out the pictures ♪
Yeah, something about turkey, turkey, chicken, bacon.
♪ The schedule's vicious ♪
♪ Welcome ♪ Oh, see?
♪ L.A., New York, MIA, or London ♪
♪ The schedule's vicious ♪ welcome to Huang's World ♪
♪ Welcome to Huang's world ♪
- Man, I got this shit. - You should keep that.
♪ Y'all in the wrong world ♪
- ♪ Bass drop ♪ - ♪ So look here, man ♪
♪ Welcome to "Huang's World" ♪
♪ World traveler ♪
♪ The food, ooh, good and delicious ♪
♪ Shanghai, Moscow, check out the pictures ♪
♪ L.A., New York, M-I-A, or London ♪
♪ The schedule's vicious ♪
♪ Welcome to "Huang's World"! ♪
♪ Baddest thing I've ever seen now ♪
♪ Get out of my dream now ♪
♪ Oh, my God, when she walk out ♪
♪ Man, for real, I can't hold out ♪
♪ Ain't gon' lie, she look just nice ♪
♪ Scoop her up and get lit now ♪
♪ Messin' around like ♪
♪ Bustin' it down from head to toe ♪
♪ Kickin' it high and bring it low ♪
♪ Movin' that body to calypso ♪
♪ Sickin' that body to calypso ♪
♪ Kick it on high and bring it low ♪
♪ Movin' it fast, then take it slow ♪
♪ Movin' that body to calypso ♪
- ♪ Sickin' that body to calypso ♪ - ♪ Man ♪
♪♪
- Hey, what's up? - How's it going?
Hey, I'm good. What can I get for you?
- I'll do a Hennessy - On the rocks.
- Henny on the rocks? All righty. - Yeah. Thanks.
The Beanery is a very, very historic location in L.A.,
and it's a bar that a lot of artists used to hang at here in this neighborhood.
It was next to the Ferus Gallery.
Kienholz was there. Lichtenstein was there.
Warhol was there. They'd all come drink here.
And Kienholz actually did a very famous work, recreating the Beanery,
except everyone had clocks as faces stopped at 10:10.
The idea is to replicate the feel of the Beanery.
How many connections, how many ideas happened
while hanging out, killing time in this bar?
Because we're in a city that's so dependent on the car
and has such a thirst for convenience, it begs the question,
if you're removing that aspect from the experience,
and you're just getting the food Postmated
or delivered to you, what are you gaining, and what are you losing?
♪♪
So one of the first innovations in dining
for the purpose of convenience was the cafeteria,
and Clifton's is the oldest cafeteria
in all of Los Angeles, one of the oldest in the nation.
And we're going to explore how cafeterias changed restaurants,
culture, our neighborhoods, and our food system forever.
♪♪
Hi. Are you Charles?
- Yes. - Hey. I'm Eddie.
You were the L.A. Times food critic for 18 years?
I was a restaurant critic for the Times for 6 years,
and then I joined the staff as a food writer.
- This is the last cafeteria - In L.A.?
It's the last cafeteria in L.A.
with a direct history to the past.
Cafeteria service is the fastest,
most efficient way of serving large numbers of people,
so over the years, it became associated with institutional dining.
What are you going to get today?
I think I'll get a salad because... - Okay. - ...the people who went
to cafeterias tended to be health foodies.
Oh, I'm more for the hard stuff.
♪♪
Like, in all your time as a food critic, a historian, writer, has L.A.'s food
ever been more exciting than it is today?
- In a way, it was more exciting - In the 1980s
When California cuisine was being created, but new cuisines have been coming in,
and I think the level of food is getting better.
For me, the really interesting things that happen
in L.A. food culture are the California cuisine,
the ability for immigrant and ethnic communities to serve their food unadultured,
but I think the most impactful has been convenience food.
So much of L.A. is literally driven by the car.
And so you have the cafeteria.
But then the cafeteria becomes the hamburger stand,
and the hamburger stand becomes the drive-through.
And I don't think America or the global food system has ever been the same
since the advent of the double drive-through.
Yeah, that's true.
The hamburger rose around the same time in the late 1890s
in several different places, but the first cheeseburger was here in the 1920s.
In 1928, there's already an ad for a chili cheeseburger
and the idea of lettuce and tomato.
When I went east, I found out that you didn't get that
unless you asked for a California hamburger.
♪♪
So you'll see here, "the original Marty's home of the combo."
It's a hot dog and a hamburger on a hamburger bun.
So this is Jim Starr, owner, restaurateur of Golden State Cafe.
You make one of the best hamburgers in L.A.
And I think the staples on the west side that hold people down and provide food...
- Totally. - ...are the hamburger stands.
- How's it going, James? - I told him he had to get
- a chili-cheese combo. - This is the place right here, my man.
Okay. We should do this. Let's do one chili-cheese combo...
- Okay. - ...and one pastrami burger.
- All right. - And we split them.
- That sounds good, too. - How long you been here?
This place has been here since 1958.
- Is Marty the owner? - Yeah.
Well, Howard, it's Marty's son, - which is in the family still. Yeah. - Okay.
Yeah, Howard was on the grill when I was growing up.
- Wow. - O.G.
♪♪
This is hands down the wildest hamburger I've ever had.
Yeah, it falls apart, but that's sort of the idea
that it's just a total shit show of a hamburger.
No punches are pulled here.
Onion ring, pastrami, hamburger bite.
I like what you're doing.
So many innovations in food happened because of the hamburger business,
because it became such a competitive field.
- Right. Sure. - Everyone wanted to sell hamburgers.
Yeah, then you had Ray Kroc come in with the innovation of, like,
"I have a machine that can make three milkshakes at once,
- or I can automate - Your burger process," you know?
But with the automation of the hamburger, they took the trappings of it
and the things that were scalable and just took off.
That's why I love places like Marty's.
You know, they've held onto that vibe from the '50s
where it's all about interacting with the guy
who's actually grilling your hamburger.
The human element, it's still not there.
You can't scale and maintain the contact with the consumer.
Yeah, for sure. And from day 1, - all they're thinking about - Is, like, the brand
And, "How do we open 100 units of this thing?"
They're not thinking about, "How do we give the customer
the best possible experience?"
Or about preserving the culture.
♪♪
In a lot of major cities, there's probably a boutique butcher
in your neighborhood that's a little more up-market, selling grass-fed meat,
antibiotic-, hormone-free, sustainable.
And we wanted to come to Belcampo here in Santa Monica
to show you what butchers are doing to reverse the damage
that's been done to the food system.
♪♪
In America, the food system has been reversed so much
that these practices that you have... sustainable meats, grass-fed,
antibiotic, hormone-free, this is, like, a health trend.
- Well, I don't think - It's really so much a trend
As it is a re-emergence of Old-World styles.
I think, over the past few years, there's been such a cognitive disconnect
between where food comes from and where it's consumed in the urban environment.
♪♪
And... And so this is the question for me.
How do we get this movement at a price point
that people can consume this quality of meat on an everyday basis?
It is surprisingly affordable.
I've got some velvet heel.
This is the shank.
This is the key ingredient to the most famous - Taiwanese dish of all time. - Yeah.
Beef noodle soup uses beef shank.
- How much per pound is this? - I mean, - It's about $20 a pound... - $20 a pound.
Which, you know, for an 8-ounce portion is 10 bucks.
I'm not trying to get you on anything.
- Sure. - But I just want to have a realistic conversation.
- Yeah. - This is the most beautiful beef shank I've ever seen,
But it is also by far the most - expensive beef shank I've ever seen... - Yeah.
'cause, you know, in Chinatown, I could get this maybe $5 or $6 a pound.
That's not a fair comparison.
The level of education has to get to a point
where we find this to be a necessity...
- Yeah. - ...where it's not just a treat set aside
For an elite group of people that can afford it.
That's the entire goal is to make this completely accessible to everybody.
Also, I want to see the paradigm shift from food
as being something that you consume
to food being a part of your overall health and well-being.
If you eat less, you could probably eat better.
Absolutely.
♪♪
Every time we've seen people selling, you know, high-end, sustainable,
antibiotic-free, grass-fed meat, it's always in, like, a boutique.
Then it clicked in my head to come here, because when I ate here,
I noticed, oh, you use heirloom rice.
You're talking about it as a superfood.
It's very sustainable, yet you only have nine seats.
- Yeah. - It's super affordable.
Knowing just Filipinos in general,
$9 is already the top of the ceiling for them, you know?
But I know that, for a downtown crowd,
$9 to $10 would be perfect to come here every day.
- You're food of the people. - Yeah.
- That's, like... - Hey.
- What's up, Evan? - Hey, Eddie!
- Yeah. - Whoo! Charles! How are you?
For those who don't know Evan, she is the host
of my favorite food radio show on KCRW.
I just love listening to you driving around on the 10.
I actually think L.A. is the most interesting food city
I've been to for sure in America, and it's top-10 in the world.
We've always embraced people who are working class,
know how to make really good food cheaply, and who have agrarian roots.
Oh, how beautiful is that?
Thank you, Charles.
This is the house-made longaniza.
♪♪
Mmm. Yum.
- Mmm. Really good. - So good.
I love the sausage.
The thing I always notice with the sausage is the black pepper,
because, outside Cantonese food, you don't get that much black pepper
in Asian food, usually white pepper.
Also, just Filipino food is one of those foods that's been around L.A. forever.
So interesting because, you know, this whole conversation
is just an embrace of this incredible immigrant palate,
but then, you know, living in Southern California,
you kind of have to address the, like, health-nut issue, as well.
Yes. And where does that come from?
- When the railroad happened... - Mm-hmm.
People, you know, they started marketing this place like an Eden...
- Manifest Destiny. Yeah. - ...is what it was. Right.
But clean air... Now, this is a time in the mid-1800s where, in the United States,
the White Plague, tuberculosis... huge problem.
So people were escaping for health.
Did these people want to go back once they were cured?
- No. - No, course not.
Yeah. That's like when people now from New York come to Los Angeles,
and they taste the weed, and they never go home.
Absolutely.
And then you also have the seekers, Paramahansa Yogananda, the first yogi,
all of these movements where food is seen as something spiritual are coming in.
So, religion, immigration, and health have always been tied together in L.A.
It's exac... It is a story that was then that is a through line to now.
Thank you.
Dr. Brian's cereal, giving your bacteria the things America took away 80 years ago.
♪♪
♪ Any way the wind blows ♪
♪ I love you ♪
♪ If the skies are dark ♪
♪ Or if the skies are blue ♪
♪♪
We're in beautiful Loma Linda, California.
Loma Linda is one of five regions... Costa Rica, Okinawa, Sardinia,
known as a Blue Zone, and it means that people here
live longer than anywhere else in the world.
And we're going to meet Dr. Brian Bull, who's going to tell us about the diet
that people have in Loma Linda that fosters longevity.
- Hi. How are you? Eddie. - Hello. I'm good.
- Nice to meet you, Dr. Bull. - Brian.
If... You'll have to call me Brian... - Brian. - ...if I'm going to call you Eddie.
Okay. Cool.
You're going shopping with me this morning?
Yes.
Is this Ralph, Ralph Lauren?
Uh, I don't know.
- It's nice.
No, I don't think it is.
- No? - But I think it is a designer.
♪♪
First of all, we're going to pick up some golden flaxseed.
So, in Loma Linda, this is a Seventh Day Adventist stronghold, right?
Yes, and the medical school and all the other
- health-related - Profession schools here...
We have seven of them... are all church-sponsored, who have been here since 1905.
What are the origins of Seventh Day Adventist health practices and diet?
The actual health practices came about by a woman by the name of Ellen White,
- who was one of the founders - Of the church,
And she was the one actually who founded Loma Linda.
The basic principal is that your body is the temple of God
and that we serve God best if we're healthy,
because then we're able to serve our fellow man.
Did you hear that, Dave? Your body should be a temple,
but you treat it like the Ronald McDonald house.
The Ronald McDonald House is... We have one here.
It's a place where people stay if their children
are being treated in the medical center.
Yes. No. Ronald McDonald has a charity - called the Ronald McDonald House. - Yeah.
I say that his body is a Ronald McDonald house
'cause he just eats so many Big Macs.
- I eat a lot of Big Macs.
- So... - Well... - Are you judging me? - No.
If you eat enough red meat, you get four new species of bacteria
in your large intestine.
The fourth produces a toxin, and what that does is it takes spent cholesterol
so that it can't come back to the liver for disposal.
If I eat one McDonald's Big Mac a week... If you only eat meat occasionally...
- Mm-hmm. - ...then you don't have these bacteria.
Change on two.
Change on two. Thank you.
So you're perfectly safe.
I got to check on two, you know?
Got to go check...
♪♪
This is what we're going to be steel-cutting this morning
for breakfast, whole-grain oats.
♪♪
Quinoa.
Yeah.
♪♪
- Coarse oat bran. - Coarse oat bran.
This is foodstuff for the bacteria in the large intestine.
Were you born and raised here in Loma Linda?
No. I was born in London, lived there during the Second World War,
and went to Jamaica when I was 7 and grew up there.
Wait. You were in London for the Second World War?
Yeah.
Do you mind if I ask how old you are?
I'm 79.
You look like 55.
- Thank you. - Yeah.
Dave, Dave, baby steps.
We're going to wean you off the Big Mac with baby steps,
- so the next step is vegetarian burger. - But vegetarian bur...
- I need to get it. - I can't get it? Can't have this?
No, you can have that. That's... This is good.
- This is part of your... - I can? Okay.
12-step process from Big Mac to Brian Bull.
- Can we put it in there? - This is step one.
- Okay. - Here. I'll hold this for you.
I'll hold this, 'cause I'm in support of your new diet.
He's going to start right now.
You know, we have fancy grocery stores in L.A., and they sell some of these grains,
but they're in much more complicated packaging.
It's much more expensive, and it's treated like a boutique lifestyle
as opposed to something affordable and accessible every day.
Okay. You're taking that with you?
- Just for the scene. - I'm going to put it back in.
♪♪
Come on in.
- All right. - First thing we're going to do Is steel-cut 4 cups of oat nuts.
This is an incredible view here.
Look at this.
If you start and stop it, it mixes it up.
Have you thought about packaging and selling the cereal?
- No. - 'Cause this is not that easy to make.
Like, the hamburger, right, the hamburger's rise is tied to convenience,
so if you want to change the way people eat,
I feel like if you made this convenient pack for people to cook at home...
I-I mean, I don't know. I think it's a good idea.
You don't think so?
I'm too busy doing research.
Oh. What if we teamed up?
♪♪
And I'd like to ask a blessing before we start.
- Okay. - Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful for this day,
for this good food, and for friends.
Bless this food. We pray in Jesus' name.
- Amen. - Amen.
♪♪
You can taste the oats.
Yeah, it's delicious, and the texture's very good.
Oops. I didn't put salt in it.
Mm, I like it.
Dr. Brian's cereal, giving your bacteria the things America took away 80 years ago.
- Mm. - You know, I like that.
- I like that. - Mm. We forgot the salt, though.
Yes, we did forget the salt.
The problem is I have to stop eating, 'cause we have to drive 90 minutes home,
and I think my intestines are moving.
So, one of the things that I do as a hobby is collect fossils.
And because I'm interested in food, one of my favorite fossils is dinosaur poop.
The technical term is copperlite.
This came from a very big dinosaur that didn't chew its food.
Oh, wow.
- This is the kind of dinosaur - From which it came.
- Oh, it's a brontosaurus? - Yeah.
They ate a couple of tons of food a day, and...
This looks like a cauliflower. Didn't chew well.
- I don't think they had cauliflowers back then. - No? Oh.
Thank you, Dr. Brian.
You're welcome. Pleasure.
Who knew? Come to Loma Linda.
Eat some oatmeal. See some dinosaur poop.
♪♪
- What are we doing? - Dinosaur poop.
♪♪
- Closer? - Yeah. No. - You're good right there.
Look at the camera.
♪♪
Oh, no. I farted.
I was squatting, and it's too much fiber.
I'm sorry.
I got to go.
Take a deep, inhaling breath and just feel the calmness washing over your body.
♪♪
♪ Who is in my temple? ♪
♪ All the doors do open themselves ♪
♪ All the lights do light themselves ♪
♪ Darkness like a dark bird ♪
♪ Flies away, oh, flies away ♪
♪ Who is in my temple? ♪
♪♪
We're at Lake Shrine, and this is ground zero
for the spirituality movement here in L.A.
- Nice to meet you. - Brother Ritananda.
Thanks for having me. This is beautiful.
- Yeah, welcome. - These are meditation gardens Founded by Paramahansa Yogananda
in 1950, an oasis where we encourage people to come and to meditate,
to pray, to contemplate, just to feel God and see him in the beauty of nature.
♪♪
L.A. is known for its health-and-wellness lifestyles.
- There's so many vegans and vegetarians. - Yes.
And L.A. influences so much of the rest of the world
- with its health movement. - Yes.
But a lot of them started here or at least with yogis.
Paramahansa Yogananda has been recommending a vegetarian diet,
well, since 1920 in the United States.
- Mm-hmm. - And it's just... It's not mandatory, but it's beneficial physically,
mentally, and spiritually.
♪♪
Meditating near water is considered very auspicious in India.
The peace of the water, it just provides kind of
an outdoor temple conducive to meditation.
♪♪
We'll begin with a breathing exercise.
It's always good. It's helps us oxygenate the body,
which makes it alert and yet calm,
and so let's begin. We'll assume the proper posture, gently lift the gaze,
and then take a deep, inhaling breath
and just feel the calmness washing over your body, then a deep, relaxing exhalation
and feel all cares and responsibilities and tension
washing away from your consciousness like a wave has run up the beach
and is now returning to the ocean.
So let us inhale calmly and deeply and feel the calmness
and peace washing over our consciousness.
And then exhale, deep, relaxing inhalation.
Never force it.
And then a deep, relaxing exhalation.
So we inhale. Fill the lungs.
Now as we exhale, take an audit of your body
and make sure all your body is relaxed, your arms, your legs, your back.
If any portion remains tense, just gently tense it
and then relax it until you feel.
This is gonna be, like, one of the hardest workouts you've ever done in your life.
I'm just going to tell you right now.
- Have you ever done this before? - No, I haven't.
Well, we can't talk during class, though.
- We got to respect this. - All right.
- We got to take this seriously. - Oh, hi. How are you? I'm Eddie.
- Hi. Good. - This is my friend, Rachel.
- Thanks for having us. - She's the owner. I do yoga here.
- Okay. - It's hard. It's sweaty.
- You ready? - Yeah.
All right. Let's get to it.
- Start with your feet together. - Okay.
Toes and heels touching, spine straight.
Interlock your 10 fingers.
Place your knuckles underneath your chin.
Push your knuckles into your chin.
Keep your eyes open. Bring your elbows forward,
away from your chest. Squeeze your elbows.
And that's enough.
Feet together, toes and heels touch.
Hands, palms together. Interlock your fingers.
Without bending your elbows, without bending your knees,
both hips press forward, hips opening.
Bring your left shoulder forward.
Open up the chest. Inhale. Stretch up.
Exhale. Come down. Push. Backward bending.
From the coccyx, the neck, the lower back, the middle back,
the upper back, the total spine.
Damn, I'm not flexible.
Bring your arms back with your ears.
Try to touch the wall behind you.
Inhale moves the chest, and on the exhale, push stomach.
♪♪
Did you fall a lot when you started doing this?
Shh.
♪♪
Oh, shit.
♪♪
- I'm very inflexible, huh? - Don't even talk.
- Just do it. - Oh, okay.
♪♪
We have a real problem in this society.
We're... soft.
We evolved running away from wolves and fighting invading tribes,
and now we sit in a cubicle all day, and before that, we sit in traffic,
and along the way, we're eating sugar.
You have to free your mind from all the stress
that's just produced by the human reward systems
that never get fulfilled, all the anxiety that builds up
in your body like a leaky battery.
It's overwhelming energy that never gets released, so your body is intelligent.
Whatever weaknesses that you feel, you have to fix those.
If you don't fix those, you never move past whatever level you're at mentally,
spiritually, emotionally.
You got to fix whatever's holding you back.
♪♪
Just observe the breath.
Observe the breath with the same detachment as if watching somebody else breathing.
And again, as often as the mind wanders away from the breath,
bring it... calmly, bring it back.
And have no care whether the breath flows in or out or not at all.
Use no mental force or willpower to control the breath.
Just merely observe it.
I like to just think that I'm, like, the sales and marketing executive
that got hired by God.
♪♪
Every movement has a melancholy moment where it simply becomes a look.
But at what point does health and wellness become a costume
at a theatrical level that has no utilitarian purpose?
♪♪
So, beauty director at elle.com.
- Yes. - Julie Schott.
And you wrote a very well-trafficked article about the Instagram diet.
It's basically foods that are strictly photogenic.
- It's not about - What you feel like eating.
I met this particular blogger.
I was in Paris.
There were just some staples on her feed that struck me,
- the macaroon shot, - Which is, like, the money shot,
A cappuccino with, like, your hand reaching for it.
And I just started to think about, what if you actually ate this way?
Is this, like, when people take photos of acai bowls, - or, like... - Yes.
It kind of portrays health or, like, maybe more of, like, a vegan look.
So you're projecting health and wellness, but it's really by look,
'cause macarons, they're not good for you, right?
But it's also about where you are, right?
'Cause, like, that was Paris, so, like, we're in L.A.
So L.A., you're going to do the acai bowl
- and, like, the matcha. - Matcha, I don't think, tastes good.
- No, matcha doesn't taste good. - And I don't think it's effective.
Like, I'd rather have regular hot green tea. Yeah.
Right.
But that's the color of, like, urine, so... How do you feel about, like, Erewhon?
'Cause, like, Erewhon opened up next to us,
and then we were like, "Oh, we're really advanced
- with our health and wellness now." - Yeah.
Yeah. What are your thoughts on Erewhon?
I guess it's a Whole Foods competitor.
So, a year ago, Erewhon opened up next to the VICE Venice office.
Most of us swore we would never go in there because the prices were exorbitant,
and the health benefits they were promising seemed extremely unrealistic.
But Erewhon has lured pretty much every single VICE employee in.
We come to Erewhon a lot.
I definitely see my health and mood, like, elevate.
We get a lot more work done here.
We get a ton of work done. We walk around Erewhon and talk
and look at expensive produce we're not going to buy.
♪♪
All right. So we talked about being healthy when we come here,
but sometimes, we just want to eat foods, so I'm going to get unhealthy food.
I'm going to get chicken tenders and chicken enchilada
and taquitos. We need no vegetables.
- Thank you. - Anything else I can get you?
The best thing to do at these places is to eat it in line
and throw away the container.
♪♪
What the... I can't believe I just bought Mexican food from these people.
- Hey. What's up, brother? - How's it going? I'm Eddie.
- Jason. Nice to meet you, man. - Nice to meet you.
You're one of the first Erewhon employees, right?
I was here a long time ago.
- This store is new, - But West Hollywood, you know,
Has been here for 40-some years.
How is it that Erewhon started?
Kushi was a macrobiotic master.
He was fermenting miso in a basement.
He got arrested for it back in 1968, and then he opened up a little store.
He opened up one here, and then, before you know it, it took off.
I feel like a lot of people in the health-food movement
were way ahead of their time, and a lot of the roots are in, whether it's religion,
spirituality, Eastern medicine.
But now it's become, like, pop cultural.
Do you think Erewhon would ever have people practicing herbal medicine?
We do have a doctor in each store.
You know, they do injections.
So, where would you like it?
- It can be here. - Wha... Wha... Oh. Wha... I don't...
- Were you about to bend over? - Well, I thought that's...
- 'Cause usually, - That's where you get shots.
- Dave: - Do you give shots in the butt?
Little pinch.
Yeah, well, you can't do this at Whole Foods.
♪♪
My diet definitely got much better since I work next to an Erewhon.
I don't know if my photos do, though.
I can make anything look like sepia that's not sepia.
See, like, I made this fire dish.
It was burnt scallion flounder, and it came out
looking not really as good as it tasted.
Yeah, it looks like you dug this out of a pond or a fish tank.
- So, these are crabs? - Stone crabs.
I would've pumped up the color on the claws
so that they're a little bit more, like, brighter.
Yes. I somehow made stone-crab claws
- look, like, mildly average. - Kind of whatever. Yeah.
Yeah. I feel like this is what my body does to clothes.
♪♪
Okay. I'm going to take one photo from here.
♪♪
Trying to project health and wellness here.
It's also kind of rude when the shot becomes more important than the food
- or your, like, dining guests. - Oh, it's totally rude.
- Right? - Like, when would you ever
- put your foot on the table? - I mean, I just put a Timberland...
Yeah. Instagram has turned me into a savage.
I think this is amazing.
I don't understand this angle.
Like, it's like a fun-house mirror.
I'm not trapping hard enough.
What do you think is the end goal or purpose for these people
who really are proposing a very unlivable lifestyle?
- It, like, fetishizes food. - Yeah.
I mean, I think it just aligns with, like, these pages are a full lifestyle,
so your food fits into your whole aesthetic.
Right now, the fast wellness industry is huge right now.
What's fast wellness?
Fast wellness is, like, a detox plan or, like, a juice with a name, like...
Moon Juice?
♪♪
Gwyneth Paltrow has Goop, and Jessica Alba has Honest,
but it's Amanda Chantal Bacon, a little-known New York import with allegiances
to Ayurvedic medicine, who is the new face promoting a new kind of wellness,
projecting yet another new brand with an idea
for what health and wellness should look and feel like.
♪♪
- Amanda: - The rainbow hour is coming.
- Oh, okay. - It usually happens later.
I don't know why it's happening so early today, but...
Oh, the rainbow comes through the wall.
So how did you get started with the health-and-wellness
food movement and Moon Juice?
It's been the filter that I've lived my life through since I was about 4.
From a very young age, I had such bad bronchitis.
I ran into an Ayurvedic doctor.
He heard me, pulled me aside, and said,
you know, "You're very sick and don't eat sugar,
wheat, dairy," which just sounds like common sense...
- Common sense. - ...to us these days.
But it was, like, pretty wild back then.
It's the same poison. I used to be in the camp,
I would look at something like the Moon Juice dust and say,
"Hey, this is like what I would've got at the Chinese doctor
or the herbal medicinist."
Mm-hmm.
But now it's, like, packaged and being sold to us.
But the convenience of it and the branding and communication,
- I think, is really necessary. - Mm-hmm.
And it's getting a lot of people interested in it.
I like to just think that I'm, like, the sales and making executive
that got hired by God for some of these plants.
Should I try Sex Dust? 'Cause I have not tried - Sex Dust in the daytime. - Yeah.
- Let's see what happens. - Whoa. You haven't tried Sex Dust in the daytime?
- No. - Man, we'll just send you home - with Power... - Okay.
'cause I want you to take Sex Dust...
- And see how it is? ......and like, go commune... - I'm ready. - ...with nature.
Yeah. May just put my dick in a tree... just get stuck.
I hope that your dick gets stuck in a tree.
I hope so, too.
I'm just warning you now. I am pulling my dick out when I come out of this cryo.
♪♪
Is this the illest ninja in Venice?!
What's really good?
How are you?
- How've you been? - Chilling, man.
What's really?
Dave, how much did you miss Josh?
Yeah, it's been a long time, man.
- You know those hands. - I have the mumps.
I mean, thank you for blessing the show with your presence,
- God, you know? - Yeah.
You are the illest ninja in California.
I wanted to get anal bleaching, but... You could do cryo. You could anal bleaching.
- They have everything? - Yeah.
- What's up, guys? - Hey. How are you?
- How we doing? - We're just sampling all of the health and wellness,
- you know, foods, benefits, activities around town. - Okay.
- Mm-hmm. - Sort of an L.A. experience.
- Yeah. - L.A. experience.
- Yeah. - Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you came to the right place.
- Okay. - So we're going to get you in there.
- It's going to be 3 minutes. - Yeah.
Cold, dry air. Going to be in nothing but your underwear
and some socks and slippers.
Negative-270, 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Okay. - And we'll see what happens from there.
I think you guys are going to do great, going to feel good.
Word.
- Come on in. - I'll let you know what do wear.
Are those UGGs?
Does he keep the Tims on?
- Yeah. - It's kind of...
- You can go in with the Tims on. - I... with the Tims on.
- I shower with the Tims on. - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- Keep the Tims on. - Going to cryo with the Tims on.
As long as your feet are covered, you're set.
Let's see how frosty the Yeezys get in the cryo.
- The frozen Yeezys? - "The frozen Yeezys?"
- No! - Yo, shouts to MeUndies.
- I'm a MeUndies model now. - Yep.
- I got the Tommys. - Yup, yup, yup.
♪♪
- So go ahead and jump in. - Oh.
- Yo, check the Yeezys before. - Yo, that was sweet.
- Yo. - All right? This was not a good choice of footwear.
- You're the Magellan. - This is the most Asiatic
- hype, beast move ever. - And then...
Don't forget your robe. The robe's got to come off.
- What? - Oh, the robe's got to come off.
- Oh, yeah. - That's the fun part of it. - Shit.
Oh, God.
♪♪
I feel like a Tyson's frozen chicken right now.
You doing all right so far?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
I'm chill. I just farted crazy in here.
It's just a stalactite.
- Yo, it's so cold right now. - There's a stalactite coming out
of your ass, a frozen fart.
Damn. 270. Unh!
- You're about halfway there. - The chain is frosty!
My dick is like a grape seed right now.
Yo.
- Yo. - One minute. One minute.
You're almost there.
Oh, God. It's so cold. Can I come out?
Oh, my God.
- 45 seconds. - I have to take a L.
Let me take the L. Let me take the L.
- You're almost there. - Almost there.
Frustrated. "Aah!"
Oh, these Yeezys are so icy right now.
There's only been, like, two others.
You're almost there. There you go. There you go. Nice job.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Peep the Yeezys.
All right. Josh, you ready?
Yeah.
You got the Tims on.
Listen. I never take these off.
- Eddie: - Yo, when I moved to California, I just wore Tims onto the beach,
and everyone looked at me like an alien.
- Don't want to wear a sandal? - From the future.
Yo, my dick game is... It is inside of my body.
I'm just warning you now. I am pulling my dick out
- when I come out of this cryo. - Dave will warm it up.
'Cause he looks crazy.
"Get over here."
Damn. Freezing, man.
You're, like, doing well in there.
Whoo! I'm a big girl.
Besides my dick just, like, looking like a rock shrimp, I'm relatively unaffected.
- Yeah. - What are the health benefits?
So, it was initially for rheumatoid arthritis
so, a lot of inflammation, weight loss, mood boost, sleep,
- pain management. - Frosted Yeezys.
- I mean, I can't wait to see the Tims.
This will undo the coke I put in my butt.
- Yes. - Yes.
Oh, God.
Look at this!
Make that lens go all the way out.
- Thank God this door is not open. - Yo.
- Josh... - Damn, son!
Tims are frosted!
The Tims are frosted!
His dick kind of looks like a parrot fish's mouth.
Niggas and Asians have been together since day 1.
What's up? What we doing here?
Where's, uh, our guest?
I don't know.
♪ The bicycles and Jesus, Jesus ♪
Nice of you to show up, mother... ♪ Bicycles and Jesus ♪
I have a prescription, FYI. You know what I'm saying?
- So, you grew up out here. - I grew up, um...
I went to high school, like, a 5-minute walk, Nogales High,
and this spot over here is where niggas would come and play,
like, um, um, like, uh... What was it? Uh,
what was that old-school shooter game, Counterstrike?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, my grandma lived around here.
I had my first bao - at the bakery - Next to this ranch market.
- Hey. - Hello.
- Ni hao. Ni hao. Ni hao. - How are you?
They have the standard, like, lunch foods.
- These are things your moms would make. - Oh.
But, so, me and Dev were hanging out, and we realized your birthday February 26th.
My birthday is March 1st, and we decided we want to come together
for Afro-Asiatic solidarity.
We get along like peas and carrots.
- Pe... - We like... We... We like this.
- We like that. That. - We like this, man.
- Yeah. No. Can you... - Can you flip it a little bit?
Twist that wrist. Oh, there you go.
- Wow. - Yes. Yep. All right now.
♪♪
I wanted to come to Rowland Heights, though, because I always knew about this food,
'cause it's what my grandma had me eat.
But when you're a kid eating Chinese, you're like,
- "Aw, man, we're going - To eat Chinese food again?" - Again.
- You know what I mean? - Yeah.
And I was always interested in fast food.
- You see, it was the opposite for me. - Yeah?
I was like, "...yeah. We're getting Chinese food tonight?"
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You know what I mean? That's just so bomb.
In L.A., what we've seen is food that is the result of convenience culture,
right? Fast food.
We've seen the effect of the hamburger.
We've seen the effect of religion, spirituality.
But the story in L.A.
that I'm the closest to that I love
is the immigrant story that you can see in food.
♪♪
A lot of immigrants moved to the east side of L.A.,
and along with those immigrants came the food,
and there's no more iconic, symbolic food than the taco.
- What's good? - Taco time.
- Passed out in the car for a second. - How was your nap?
I never been to Taco Zone.
Yeah, it's a dope truck. I heard about it but never been.
- They're known for suadero... - All right. Let's do it.
Like, Mexico City chopped brisket.
I just got back from Mexico City, and I was trying to find matchable suadero.
This is literally better than what we were having.
- Why is it you like it? - The way they chop it, they almost do it like a carnitas
and then chop it like machaca, get a hard grill on it after it's been cooked.
- It's that crunch. - Mm-hmm.
You add the moisture back with your salsa and your lemon.
Sometimes, you'll find the best thing at a spot like this.
- Yeah. - Can't sit down at a restaurant, get the same ambiance
of just eating street meat.
Mm-hmm.
♪♪
One of the best horchatas, too.
This and Hennessy, it's, like, K.O.
We may need to do the Hennessy-banana horchata.
- Can you bring some horchata - On Sunday?
- I'll come here. I'll ask them. - Rotten Banana?
- So you a horchata dude. - Let's get a Gatorade bottle of it.
Yo.
♪♪
So, this is the first annual Rotten Bananas Day.
Niggas and Asians have been together since day 1.
Wu-Tang Clan, Last Dragon.
What's the one with Chris Tucker and Jackie?
"Rush Hour"!
- I feel the love. Yo. - My boy, Eddie, is just...
- It's just... I don't know. - Solidarity.
♪♪
My move to L.A. 2 1/2 years ago was not easy.
I had to come out here for work, but there was a lot of trouble.
It was probably the lowest point in my life that I've ever been.
And when I hit bottom, I would just come to CineFile
and stare at the movies, talk to the directors.
And it reminded me that I'm not alone.
And it's something I realize that you can't do on Netflix.
You can't do on Postmates.
There's something really meaningful about going to a store
and getting what you came for and what you wanted or sometimes just what you need.
♪♪
What you eat, what you drink, it's all very important.
But for me, I believe health and wellness starts with community.
♪♪