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Jack in the Box and HOT ONES Team Up for Spicy Munchie Meals
There are some interviewers who are absolutely elite at their jobs. For example, when it comes to music, Nardwuar always digs up the most obscure elements of an artist’s life and career in a fun way. One of our favorite celebrity interviewers is Sean Evans, the host of Hot Ones. The idea of diving in deep with insightful questions while eating wings that make a subject’s eyes water is honestly genius. Hot Ones has had many viral moments and interesting guests, but a recent one is truly unlike the others. Hot Ones is teaming up with Jack in the Box for The Hot Ones Munchie Meal, and Jack himself stopped by to chill with Sean. Jack in the Box
Somehow, Jack in the Box is celebrating 75 years of delicious food, and they are spicing it up for real. This collaboration brings back the (wildly delicious) Sriracha Curly Fry Burger andgives us a Chicken Tater Melt that’s Buffalo-inspired. Fans can also get a limited-edition soccer-themed collectible with each meal. There’s a Jack Mini Bobblehead and a Jack Mini Jersey Keychain. Each item comes in five collectible variations.
Click To View Gallery Nerdist Nerdist Jack in the Box Jack in the BoxWe were lucky to score a very cool box with a Jack Mini Bobblehead and a jersey keychain as well. There were also three Hot Ones sauces to enjoy: Buffalo, Sriracha, and an Apollo sauce that’s supposed to make your mouth burn in the best way.
Don’t worry, you’re able to get packets of these sauces with your meals to test them out, and then perhaps buy a big bottle to keep at home. This collaboration runs through July 22, so make your way to the drive-thru as soon as possible and grab a Jack in the Box Hot Ones meal.
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Nourishing Each Other in a Time of Insecurity
Many in our community are feeling insecure right now. The effects of federal policy changes under H.R.1 (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) are hitting home in very real ways. There have already been drastic funding cuts and eligibility restrictions for CalFresh and Medi-Cal. And as of July 1, dental coverage for adult Medi-Cal members with insufficient immigration status will be eliminated. Our local nonprofits are facing rising demand and deep uncertainty.
In this moment, a question keeps coming to mind: What is the opposite of insecurity?
For food insecurity, it isn’t just the absence of hunger. It’s nourishment. For lack of access to medical care, it’s not just an appointment. It’s about being cared for holistically, with dignity.
Every day, our community nourishes each other in extraordinary ways. At dawn, Grey Bears volunteers come together and pack hundreds of grocery bags with shared purpose and love. At Cabrillo College, a mom working on her nursing degree is greeted with a warm smile at the wellness center when she picks up groceries for her family. At Salud Para La Gente, a physician cares for a patient in their native language and connects them to services to support their well-being. It’s the volunteer bringing Meals on Wheels to the door of a senior and a family picking up groceries and their preschooler at an early education center. It’s the volunteer at Second Harvest supporting over 60 food pantries across our County.
We know how to nourish each other, and we know how to nourish this community. We always have.
This month, the Community Foundation invested $2.1 million in Community Grants to 103 nonprofit partners—fueling work that keeps Santa Cruz County strong, connected, and nourished. These annual grants are made possible thanks to the generosity and foresight of dozens of families from previous generations, along with locals who made recent gifts to our Greatest Needs Fund.
Community Grants provide steady, unrestricted, and flexible funding that allows nonprofits to direct resources where they are needed most, whether that means sustaining core services or adapting programs as conditions change. For safety net organizations facing steep fiscal cliffs, this support helps leaders make informed decisions, protect what’s most essential, and navigate necessary transitions.
“Funding is helping power our response to a historic shift in healthcare policy: fueling advocacy, strategic outreach to teens who will retain their Medi-Cal benefits, and direct care for the growing number of patients losing coverage,” says Laura Marcus, CEO of Dientes Community Dental. “The Foundation’s support gives us the ability to plan ahead, weather the storm, and keep our doors open to those who have nowhere else to turn.”
While Community Grants play a role in sustaining access to food, shelter, and health care, the scope of our investment is intentionally broad. Grants also support arts and culture, conservation, education and youth development, and community‑based initiatives that enrich lives and strengthen opportunities across Santa Cruz County. Community well‑being is bigger than any one sector. When we support the full ecosystem—from healthcare to the arts to the environment—we help create a community that’s more resilient and able to care for one another.
Insecurity is injustice. We should be able to rely on strong public systems to protect our neighbors, but right now those systems are falling short. What we do now is up to us. It’s up to us in how we give and how we come together. We need to make sure that that Cabrillo mom finishes her nursing degree and gets a good paying job. We need to make sure that our hardworking neighbors get the healthcare they need. And we need to make sure that our seniors are not living in hunger and isolation.
Nourishing each other is justice.
As a community, we must keep paying attention, listening to the needs of our neighbors, and showing up. That shared commitment has served us for generations and it will continue to sustain us in the years ahead.
Susan True is the CEO of Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.
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Barney Frank, My Dad, and the Boston They Remade
Sometime around 1970, Barney Frank called the head of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, all worked up.
Back then, Frank was the top aide to Boston Mayor Kevin White. Elected in 1968, White was a reformer, at least at first. And he’d empowered the BRA director, a guy named Hale Champion, to professionalize the agency by firing old political patronage hires on the payroll.
But there were limits. The BRA had gotten federal money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to renovate Quincy Market, the old colonial area around Faneuil Hall that had fallen into disrepair. Those funds were made possible by Speaker of the House John McCormack, the political boss from the Boston area who preceded Tip O’Neal as Democratic leader and served in Congress for more than four decades.
One of the BRA officials on the chopping block, Frank told Champion, had to stay on: “He’s McCormack’s guy.”
“We’ve never seen him, Barney,” Champion countered. “He doesn’t come to work.”
“I don’t give a shit if he’s dead,” said Frank, who died last month at 86. “You want your HUD money? Keep paying him.”
That, at least, is how my father—at the time the press guy for the BRA—told it.
“I don’t give a shit if he’s dead,” Barney supposedly said. “You want your HUD money? Keep paying him.”
My dad had covered City Hall as a reporter before joining the White administration. He later managed real estate development for the Massachusetts Port Authority, mostly on the South Boston waterfront. The anecdotes he’d tell were heavy on politics and planning, set in locations around the city he’d encountered when he arrived in the mid-60s: In the press room at Old City Hall, a tabloid guy had cheerfully admitted to making up quotes from city councilors, correctly predicting they wouldn’t notice or care. At a South Boston restaurant, crooked state reps had sold their influence for just a few free meals.
I first knew some local politicians—Mike Dukakis, Ray Flynn, Father Drinan, and Barney, as Dad called him—as characters in those stories.
In 1968, my dad wrote what may have been the first newspaper profile of Frank, in the Boston Globe. It was largely laudatory. But my father, himself often unkempt, made much of the young aide’s messiness. There was an anecdote about Barney wandering City Hall shoeless, and a quip that Frank had “occasional moments of neatness.”
The Boston GlobeLater, my dad continued to refer to Barney with a kind of bemused appreciation. But also, I think, with leftover competitiveness toward a onetime sort-of peer who had ascended so high.
Another favorite story featured a City Hall softball game, where my father was the catcher. Barney was attempting to score. To avoid being tagged out, he tried, like he was Pete Rose, to run my dad over. My father claimed he’d used his old football training to knock the future House Banking Committee chairman to the ground.
That two Jews, from Bayonne and Brooklyn, would collide there, amid the Irish who dominated city hall, was less surprising after White’s election. White had hired a young, relatively diverse staff, with more minorities, non-Bostonians, and women—among them my mother, a Minnesotan who joined City Hall directly from Radcliffe.
These people were liberals, Kennedy-influenced products of the 1960s. Many lived in Cambridge, worked in Boston, and moved to Brookline, buying big old houses for amazingly low prices. They worked in city and the state government, with the belief that diligent, pragmatic policies could improve things. Today’s Massachusetts—regulated, prosperous, educated, and relatively healthy—makes a case that they were right.
Moving around the city with my brother and me, Dad pushed this gospel with localized anecdotes that were kind of like parables. In Back Bay, relaxed zoning on corner properties gave developers some of what they wanted, but preserved the neighborhood’s historic look. In East Boston, Massport moved entire three-deckers when the airport expanded. At the redeveloped Commonwealth Pier, in South Boston, which Fidelity took over, they couldn’t get rid of the seagulls that crapped everywhere—until a maintenance guy went on the roof with a shotgun.
Barney, elected to Congress in 1980, had moved on to other matters. But Brookline, where we lived, was in his district, one of the Jewish towns that made up his base. He would show up at all kinds of stuff there—rumpled, verbose, accessible. He once talked to my high school government class for 45 minutes, with his fly open.
But he was also a dick. He yelled at people there, his own constituents, all the time. He was, to be fair, kind of an egalitarian about it. He made many people feel important enough to berate. A girl I knew got an early dose of political disillusionment when her famous congressman, the gay rights icon, told her how little he thought of her opinion. I think it was about the Gulf War. He went to the wedding of the sister of an acquaintance of mine. She said she felt obligated to warn guests to be careful approaching him: “He’s not that nice.”
And it’s easy to imagine how for Barney, growing up as a closeted kid in a tough town, belittling people started as a defense. But when he was the most powerful person in the room, it was bullying. Barney, by all accounts, didn’t yell at Kevin White or Nancy Pelosi. He yelled at his staff.
I would argue, though, that his meanness jibed with the place he represented. The city I recall from childhood was not indifferent. It was hostile. Crime was rising, the newspapers were negative, and the racism of the busing days had become only a little less overt. Even in Brookline, we watched guys get out of their cars to fight over traffic disputes. Everyone seemed to hate Dukakis after he lost the presidential election. People supported the Red Sox by brawling at Fenway and booing the players. Their top target was Jim Rice, a career-long Red Sox player and eventual Hall of Famer. We were at a game where a guy ran on the field and mooned the crowd. He had “R-I-C-E” written on his ass.
I don’t think Barney’s constituents voted for him because he was a jerk. They just didn’t care that much. They didn’t prioritize kindness. They wanted smart and effective. He gave them that.
As a reporter, I learned that Barney was easy to reach. But watch out. At my first reporting job at a weekly paper in Boston, I got him on the phone. But when I tried a question he apparently wasn’t expecting, he said he “wasn’t interested in answering that.” Then he hung up.
Later, covering the House, I published a piece that listed him among lawmakers who didn’t participate in a key Democratic Caucus vote over a contested chairmanship. But unlike the other members I mentioned, Barney was himself running for a different chairmanship, which meant he couldn’t vote. His press secretary demanded a correction to clarify that he hadn’t ducked the vote. Trained by my editors to fight such requests, I declined and went home. When I got off the Metro, I had a 30-second voicemail. Addressing me as Mr. Friedman, my former congressman explained that I was an idiot. It was cutting because he was kind of right.
For awhile, I kept the message. I used to play it for people who thought you had to be important to be yelled at like that by Barney Frank. But I lost the voicemail a long time ago.
I never came close to telling him he’d known my parents, that in fact, my mother reputedly canvassed for him while pushing my brother and me in a stroller. He didn’t give the impression of someone interested in reminiscing.
I never checked my dad’s stories about him. But back at the BRA, supposedly, they kept McCormack’s guy, and got their federal funding. The new Quincy Market was ready for the bicentennial, in 1976.
Barney’s memorial service was held there on Monday, at Faneuil Hall. That’s right by the Greenway, the park over the highway that the Big Dig put underground. The city is nicer, safer, and much richer now. The success of the planners is that it feels like all that was inevitable. Hardly anyone remembers Quincy Market before they fixed it up.
So I mourn Barney along with my father, who died a few years ago. The stories he told are a way to remember those City Hall staffers, and the progress they made in the Boston that’s gone.
Seymour Marine Discovery Center’s new permanent exhibit draws curious visitors for soft opening
Dolphins hear through their jaws and humans hear through their ears, Seymour Marine Discovery Center volunteer Cathy Novak said during a demonstration at the center’s new exhibit.
“Do you think humans can hear through their jaws?” Novak said as she held a tuning fork and striker. “Want to see what it’s like to hear through our jaws?”
Novak then tapped the tuning fork to the striker and placed the vibrating fork on the jawbone of a curious visitor, who plugged their ears and closed their eyes as instructed, to demonstrate that humans can indeed also hear through their jaws.
Novak and several of the center’s staff held a soft opening on Friday of the first new permanent exhibit at the center in 15 years – See More HQ. The bilingual exhibit was designed to build the center as a hub connecting local scientists, community groups and the public around coastal resilience.
With its digital focus, the exhibit presents a changing slate of local researchers and their projects and interactive games. The center will host its grand opening this weekend.
Operated by UC Santa Cruz, the marine center is a museum and education center located on the Westside at 100 McAllister Way. The new exhibit is in the first room that visitors engage with when they walk inside, and the center has three large adjacent rooms including the aquarium. The completion of the exhibit marks the first part of the center’s broader transformation.
Seymour Marine Discovery Center Executive Director Jonathan Hicken discusses the new permanent exhibit. Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa CruzJonathan Hicken, the center’s executive director, said he’s “over the moon” to see this first part of the center’s multiyear transformation come to fruition.
“I’m so excited. This is the first step in our transformation to be this community hub for coastal resilience,” he said. “That’s really how I see us amplifying the science and the stories and the solutions happening in Santa Cruz … I’ve dreamed of this moment for years.”
Hicken said the See More HQ exhibit cost about $500,000, and that the center’s remaining renovation projects will cost about $5 million total. The project is community-funded, and Hicken said the UC Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience funded half of the new permanent exhibit. He said the remaining projects will begin when they reach their fundraising goal and they don’t yet have a timeline for that.
To celebrate the new exhibit, Seymour Center is hosting two days of activities Saturday and Sunday. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., there will be aquarium feedings, story time and guided outdoor tours. For more information on hours and admission, visit its website.
Have news that should be in Lookout Briefs? Send your news releases, including contact information, to news@lookoutlocal.com.
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LEGO Designers on Creating Pokémon SMART Play Sets
LEGO and Pokémon are teaming up for a dozen incredible new sets that use SMART play technology. It allows you to truly bring your favorite Pokémon characters to life and become their trainer. You can even feed them and give them a little tickle, too. Fans can pre-order their sets now and look forward to their release in August.
Of course, the journey to bring LEGO Pokémon SMART play sets to the masses has been years in the making and included a ton of research, development, and careful designing. We attended a LEGO Pokémon demo event in London and had the pleasure of speaking with LEGO Group Designers Siddharth Muthyala and Mike Anderson about their love for Pokémon, what they learned from kids during testing, and Easter eggs that will spark joy.
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LEGO Pokémon Sets Breakdown: Training Tech, Easter Eggs, and MoreNerdist: I am curious about the research and development process that you went through. Take me back to how you came up with designs and worked with kids to bring this project to life?
Siddharth Muthyala: It’s been several years of development. Mike and I have been part of this project since the beginning and, at LEGO, anything we do, we play test. So each time we build a prototype or a new model, we take it to children and get feedback. It’s not so much testing and researching, it’s more like co-creation.
As we do our play tests, we’re learning from what they’re telling us and we’re also taking notes on what they want from us… We take a Pokémon and we ask, “What stories do you tell with Squirtle?” And we bring that feedback into play sets that we design. So it’s been a process of almost bi-weekly checking in with the kids, the fans, and having them tell their stories of how they would play with each Pokémon and trying to bring that to life.
LEGO/The Pokémon CompanyMike Anderson: Of course we are also very inspired by the original animation and the games as well. In the very beginning, we brought in a lot of the game mechanics. For example, you would like, like as a gamer, we thought, okay, you would heal the Pokémon until it was fully healed. And then you would stop because that’s what you do in the game. But then when we bring that into a kids room, they just continue. The kids see it differently. In a game, we would maybe have a limit to how many times you can heal in a battle because that’s a gaming kind of way of thinking.
But the kids are like, “I want to decide that. ” So we wanted to make this open play experience where it’s the kids that make their journey. It’s them who are controlling the narrative, the story. Do they start battle and then go training or do they do training first and then battle? It’s really focusing on how they are playing with it, what are the stories they have in their head, and how can we then bring that to life with the SMART brick and these sets.
NerdistMuthyala: Also the Pokémon universe is so rich, right? There’s so many stories you can tell. There are thousands of Pokémon and they all behave differently, they all have their own stories. For us it’s all about bringing that to life and for us we can build that.
Absolutely. Of course, these sets have some pretty iconic Pokémon like Pikachu. How did you go about narrowing down which core characters to use in these LEGO sets?
Muthyala: We have an amazing partnership with Qualcomm One Company International. The company has a lot of data and insights as well on which Pokémon that fans love. Over a couple of years, each time we brought kids in to play, we also had a little questionnaire and asked about their favorites. At the point when we had like over a hundred children coming in, patterns began to emerge and then we started choosing from there.
Anderson: We also want a lineup where there’s something for everyone together. We wanted to represent the universe. Pokémon are different types and sizes. There are some that can fly, others that can walk, some that can hover. So we were trying to create a lineup where when you start combining them, it feels complete.
LEGO/The Pokémon CompanyI love the variety offered in the sets! During your testing phase, were there things that happened with the kids that were funny or perhaps made you think differently about future choices?
Anderson: I remember when we brought Jigglypuff into the room, kids were like, Okay, now I need all the Pokémon!” They started singing and they would lie them down to sleep… So they take the story with them into the playroom and then they play it out. It really showed that each character sort of has a universe on its own and the kids tapped into the different aspects of it.
We have seen like tests where afterwards instead of hi-fiving Sid to say thanks for playing, they go and hi-five Jigglypuff. They would say, “Can you please take care of Jigglypuff?” because they’d spent time with it.
That’s adorable!
Muthyala: For me, it was the amount of active play with the kids. We developed a battle system. There’s a lot of fun strategy in there with how you attack and defend. Children were standing up and super active and we didn’t expect that. The Pokémon would sometimes break. So we would have to go back and redesign the Pokémon. Charizard was redesigned maybe a hundred times to make sure it’s still fun even when it breaks and you can put it back together really quickly, but also we didn’t want it to break as much. So we’ve designed all the Pokémon so that they are easy to hold and play with.
LEGO/The Pokémon CompanyI love it. What are both of your personal relationships with Pokémon? Were you able to slip some cool Easter eggs into these LEGO Pokémon sets?
Muthyala: I’m a lifelong fan. I’ve been playing with Pokémon for the past 30 years. Games have been my passion… In terms of Easter eggs, the biggest one for me is the SMART tags. Internally we call them the heart, the soul of the Pokémon. So each Pokémon has a unique SMART tag. Originally they were just a tag with Squirtle’s face as an icon, but then we added the type icons, like a little water logo in there. And then we said ‘Let’s add the Pokédex number because that’s important.’ Every design is unique to that Pokémon and they all have a little type icon and their unique Pokédex number in there. That’s sort of Easter egg-like for me.
Anderson: You should go and try and put a smart ring into Jigglypuff, who wakes up slightly differently than the others. The same with Mewtwo If you try to feed Mewtwo, just see what happens!
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JEM AND THE HOLOGRAMS Being Developed as Live-Action Series
- Jem and the Holograms will be the latest ’80s toy and cartoon to get live-action adaptation with a series in development at Amazon MGM Studios.
Amazon MGM Studios is continuing its trend of getting into live-action programming based on ’80s cartoons and toys. After Masters of the Universe and the upcoming Voltron, they are now developing a series based on the hit animated series and toyline, Jem. The news comes to us via Deadline. This series is being made in conjunction with Hasbro, and they describe it as an “elevated live-action take” on the classic cartoon. Surprisingly, Westworld producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are producing. The show is titled Jem and the Holograms, whereas the original show was simply called Jem.
HasbroThe original Jem property was Hasbro’s way of making a dent in Barbie’s reign in the fashion doll market. As was customary in the ’80s, they partnered with an animation studio to produce a series to sell the brand. The show centered on a music industry executive named Jerrica, who used hologram technology to create a light-projected new identity for herself as the rock star Jem. Together with her “truly outrageous” band, the Holograms, she navigated romance and adventure. All while making music videos and topping the charts. In her way were rival “bad girl” rockers the Misfits, who insisted in the theme song that their songs were better. (They were better.)
The original Jem cartoon ran for three seasons, starting in 1985, bringing the MTV aesthetic to kids. The dolls sold well, but Barbie still reigned supreme. Fun fact: When Mattel learned Hasbro was creating Jem, they pushed their own Barbie and the Rockers brand out in stores first. A shady move worthy of the Misfits. A Jem movie, directed by Wicked‘s Jon M. Chu, came out in 2015, but it left out much of what fans loved about the show. It subsequently tanked at the box office. But maybe Jem and the Holograms will fare better. The audience for these ’80s cartoon IPs is now between the ages of 45 and 55. And they prefer to watch streaming fare rather than go to the movies. We have a feeling Jem will do better on Prime Video than in theaters this time around.
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