Space-themed Lego models — rotating ride vehicles that are customized by passengers and a next-generation animatronic named Biff Dipper — are prominent parts of the indoor coaster.

Near the entrance is a brick-by-brick and way-bigger-than-life model of Lego set 918, a spaceship introduced in 1979.

It’s “a classic ship, but it’s got some extra flourishes that you only really find in the Legoland park,” says Rosie Brailsford, senior project director for Merlin Magic Making, the creative arm of Merlin Entertainments.

About four years ago, Brailsford was instructed to work with Lego Group to develop an attraction that would work on a global platform, she says.

“They have a line, kind of from the ’70s and various different iterations of that, which is what you will find in Lego Galaxy,” she says. “So, it’s kind of a merge of past and present and opportunity for future iterations as well.”

Brailsford guided the Orlando Sentinel on an exclusive walk-through — no riding yet — of the attraction, which opens to the public Feb. 27.

What’s outside

The new coaster is on the site of the Flying School ride that was closed in August 2023. The exterior queue looks down at the park’s Driving School attraction. There are two entrances, including one from Legoland’s water park.

The spaceship is surrounded by Lego characters, including photo opportunities. The Alien Tourist figure — outfitted in a floral shirt, red shorts, aqua hat and big old-school camera — takes snaps of a green and antennaed alien family. A Duplo play area dubbed Tot Spot and designed for the youngest visitors, includes a Lego Shuttle. (A shade structure is being added.) Nearby are large Lego space flowers and a robot dog.

Early on, potential riders meet Capt. Olivia on screen.

“She’s welcoming you to the Lego Galaxy, telling you about a little snippet of the mission that you’re going to go on,” Brailsford says.

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A large screen televises a 10-minute loop of details about what’s coming up.

“There are little moments of backstory here, so that if you are milling around in the land, you’ve already started to absorb in your subconscious what’s going on,” Brailsford says.

What’s going on? In the Galacticoaster universe, they are bracing for “the asteroid of probable destruction.”

What’s inside

The front lobby features a large blocky version of the Lego Galaxy logo, which is a bit interplanetary and a bit NASA meatball. Below it are actual assembled Lego models on display, some of which are vintage and difficult to find, Brailsford says.

A series of halls and customized posters lead to a big Briefing Room with animatronic Biff Dipper, the chief engineer. He’s about 4 feet tall and standing on an elevated platform. His arms, legs and head move, and his face is animated below the visor of his space helmet. He greets future riders — there can be as many as 80 people in the room — and explains the goal. It’s us versus the asteroid.

“Most of our minifigures in our Legoland are static, smooth minifigures. … Biff is essentially next generation of how we want to do that on a show basis,” Brailsford says. They partnered with Engineered Arts of Cornwall, United Kingdom, to create this figure, which sports 45 facial animations, Legoland says.

Merlin is “working really closely with Lego to make sure all of that motion that they do is true to how a minifigure would move, and we’re not just making them do random things,” she says.

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Other on-screen characters give ride instructions and advance the storyline of how to deal with that asteroid. Plans A and B (one involving a giant net) were flops, and they need help with Plan C. It involves “separator swarms.”

The room includes interesting visuals such as a blueprint for vehicle options and a sign that reads “Interested in time travel? Meet here last Monday, 2 p.m.”

From here, Biff sends riders into a room where ride vehicle options are selected. Riders pick design features for wings, tail, nose and such. The choices range from practical to fanciful — add-ons such as hamburger wings and disco balls. The console allows 15 seconds for each selection, and then the total look is uploaded onto an RFID-enabled bracelet. There are more than 600 possible combinations.

The idea, we’re told, is to make the spacecraft “so awesome that it grabs the separators’ attention like nothing else.” Also, don’t let them catch you.

Next stop: the Galacticoaster loading bay.

The ride stuff

Passengers navigate a moving sidewalk to the in-real-life vehicles, which seat four passengers across and have lap bars that lower from overhead.

The ride moves into an airlock space, and there “you’ll see yourself in your awesome creation,” Brailsford says. You’ll linger for about 10 seconds, “then you will launch, up to 40 miles an hour, off on your adventure,” she says.

“And you have your kind of save-the-day moment on the ride.”

The Sentinel walk-through did not include a ride-through. Brailsford said the experience is smooth and the launch makes it punchy, probably more intense than the Dragon coaster, its Legoland Florida sister attraction. The height requirement is 36 inches for riders accompanied by an adult. Unaccompanied visitors must be at least 48 inches tall.

“It’s not like terrifying or anything, but being indoors, we do feel like they’ll get a little bit more of that thrill factor as well,” she says. “Because it’s dark, you don’t necessarily quite know where you’re going.”

The spinning is programmed, she said. “It’s not like a free spinning.”

Legoland’s website says to expect “Special effects, synchronized lighting and surprise appearances from classic Lego Space characters.”

Ride time is about 1 minute and 30 seconds, and, per theme park tradition, the exit is through the gift shop (official name: Orbital Outpost).

Another Galacticoaster is under construction that’s set to open March 6 at Legoland California, and, in theory, there could be more. There are also Legoland theme parks in New York, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Malaysia, Dubai, Japan, South Korea and China.

“We have, like, a base story and land concept that we can adjust and tweak if we were to roll a version of it out,” Brailsford says. “It might not necessarily be this ride. It might be a different ride with another story from the world.”

Email me at dbevil@orlandosentinel.com. BlueSky: @themeparksdb. Threads account: @dbevil. X account: @themeparks. Subscribe to the Theme Park Rangers newsletter at orlandosentinel.com/newsletters.

You’ll save money on equipment and time tending the seeds and seedlings. Just transform milk jugs, soda bottles and other items into mini grow chambers to start some of your favorite and hard-to-find transplants from seeds.

Gather flower and vegetable seeds, milk jugs or two-liter soda bottles, duct tape, a quality potting mix and a weatherproof marker. Check the seed packet for information on planting details and timing. Winter sowing dates vary with the growing climate, individual gardener, and the seed variety you are planting.

Winter sowing in Michigan is best done between late December and March, according to experts.

Try starting hardy perennials, hardy and self-seeding annuals, and cold-weather vegetables, now through late winter.  Other flowers and vegetable seeds are typically winter sown at about the same time you would plant them indoors or a month or two before the transplants get moved into the garden. Keep a record of your planting dates and results to help you fine-tune your planting schedule and increase future success.

Wash containers and make four to 12 small holes in the bottom of the jug for drainage. A hot skewer, knife, screwdriver or drill works well for this step. Next, partially cut the jug to create a hinged lid. Make your cut about three to four inches above the bottom, leaving the area with the handle attached so it forms a hinge. Use the bottom of the milk jug handle as your guide.

Place a coffee filter or piece of paper towel over the drainage holes to contain the potting mix while still allowing water to drain. Fill the bottom with moist, quality potting mix. Plant seeds at the depth and spacing recommended on the seed packet. Mix smaller seeds with sand to help with proper spacing. Gently water until the excess runs out the bottom of the container.

Make transplanting easier by using the cardboard tubes from toilet paper to help space winter-sown seedlings. Cut the toilet paper cardboard tubes to the right height and set them in the milk jug. Fill the bottom of the milk jug with potting mix and plant the seeds. Otherwise, plan on doing some careful separating of the individual seedlings in each milk jug or soda bottle.

Label the inside and outside of the jug with a permanent marker. Close the lid and seal it shut with duct tape. Remove the cap before setting your milk jugs in a sunny location outdoors where rain and snow can reach it. Set jugs in a milk crate in windy locations and protect them from curious pets and wildlife if needed.

Water your outdoor seed starting chambers during snow-free and dry weather. This will be much less often than those seedlings growing indoors under artificial lights.

Your plants will be ready to move into the garden at their normal planting time. Just open the lid, harden off the seedlings and move them into the garden.

Melinda Myers is the author of more than 20 gardening books, including “Small Space Gardening” and “Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition.” Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and her website is MelindaMyers.com.

But even after more than 40 years, the most definitive work of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s celebrated career continues to transform and refresh, as evidenced by the current touring production at the Detroit Opera House through Feb. 15.

This version of “Phantom,” the longest-running show in Broadway history and a seven-time Tony Award winner (including Best Musical), is billed as something of a return to form, and its original grandeur, after the sleek, modernized production that was last in town during January of 2019. In truth, however, it’s a hybrid of the two; yes, the “old school” splendor of the Paris Opera House and its environs is being conveyed once again, but with the assistance of contemporary technology that brings a visual richness and an easy flow to its very familiar proceedings.

The deft use of curtaining, high-definition video backdrops and efficient scenery does a lot with — well, not a little, but with less than perhaps was used back in the late 80s. And you don’t feel like it misses a thing. The pyrotechnics that were part of the last “Phantom” incarnation are still there and deployed effectively, especially when “Phantom’s” famed chandelier comes to life at the start of the show and subsequently drops to just a few feet over the audience’s head at the end of Act I.

The Phantom and Christine make their way to the catacombs this time using a single catwalk that lowers during their trip, while the boat journey to his candle-lit lair remains a visually arresting hallmark. The Phantom’s appearances and disappearances are as smooth as Isaiah Bailey’s fluid tenor, and speakers deployed around the venue only add to his moments of disembodied menace. The opera production pieces such as the “Hannibal Rehearsal,” “Il Muto” and “Don Juan Triumphant” feel like shows within a show, and this presentation of “Masquerade” employs mannequins and swirling choreography to start Act II off with a literal bang.

All of that said, the fact remains you can dress “Phantom” up most any way you want, but it’s the music of the night, and those performing it, that make or break any given production. And in this case the show has those bases covered, too.

Jordan Lee Gilbert, who will perform in all but five shows of the Opera House run, is magnificent Christine. She delivers her goosebump-inducing soprano in a manner that serves the songs more than her own skills, and she certainly plays nicely with others; signature duet pieces such as “Angel of Music,” “The Phantom of the Opera” and “The Point of No Return” with Bailey’s Phantom and “All I Ask of You with Raoul (Daniel Lopez) are nothing less than rapturous. Bailey, meanwhile, plays the Phantom with intriguing restraint, leaning into the psychological damage that’s part of his backstory for welcome nuance that makes more disturbingly macabre than monstrous.

And his “Music of the Night” is so authoritative you want to hear it again, immediately, after Bailey sings it.

Also notable in this production are the comic pieces. The likes of Midori Marsh (Carlotta Giudicelli), Christopher Bozeka (Ubaldo Piangi), Jerome Harr (Don Attilio) and William Thomas Evans (Monsieur Firmin) understand the rang of interpretations that are implied in these segments and camp it up accordingly — not to the lengths of, say, the Thenardiers in “Les Miserables,” but with a broad levity that helps to set up “Phantom’s” darker moments.

So while they’re claiming “Phantom” is “back” in some manner, the truth is it’s never left. It’s just that over the course of a long history it’s shown a capacity for change, and in this latest production it’s overwhelmingly for the good.

“The Phantom of the Opera” runs through Feb. 15 at the Detroit Opera House, 1526 Broadway St., Detroit. A special Open Caption performance takes place at 6:30 p.m. Feb. 8. 313-872-1000 or broadwayindetroit.com.

In a Sara Levine novel — and so far, she’s only written two in 25 years — the heroine would likely take that as a sign, like some kind of cosmic irony that an emergency was definitely occurring.

Levine suggested we meet at a dog beach because “The Hitch,” her new novel — her first since “Treasure Island!!!,” Levine’s beloved 2012 cult classic — centers on a dog attack in Evanston that leaves a corgi dead and a 6-year-old boy certain he’s possessed by the dead dog’s soul. But like “Treasure Island!!!,” it’s also funny and unhinged and so relatable you wonder if Levine, who chairs the writing department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has been slowly making a case for the lost art of the literary comedy novel.

Indeed, Levine’s characters are so queasily recognizable, this wasn’t even the first time in recent months that I felt as if I had stepped unwittingly into a Sara Levine story. By some twist of completely off-the-wall fate, the same week I was reading an early copy of “The Hitch,” I was bitten several times by a dog. Seriously. It was bonkers. I was walking through a restaurant patio on the North Shore and a dog launched itself onto my calf like I was sirloin. My first thought: Why me? I felt like that guy in a movie who hasn’t yet become a werewolf but all of the neighborhood dogs know he’s a werewolf and start barking. And yet, it wasn’t even the dog attack that reminded me of Levine — it was the way diners glared at me, as if I interrupted their burgers. I felt a weird shame.

When I told Levine this — and that I was not that excited to hang out at a dog beach anyway, considering — she told me about the attack in Evanston that led to “The Hitch.”

“So I was walking my dog by (Evanston Township High School) and he’s a little goldendoodle and this dog — no leash, but with a pink collar — suddenly appears in the alley. It’s a pit bull. I’m not anti-pit bull and I don’t mean to stereotype. She’s a little pit, but pits do have strong jaws and she attacks my dog. This was 2020. I have these horrible voice memos with my dog wailing. Anyway, now I’m in a crisis, and what am I doing to do? I’m terrible in a crisis. I also don’t want to hurt the other dog. If I let my dog off the leash he might get hit by car, so I’m frozen there, and I’m also trying to separate them, but I’m also thinking I can’t kick this dog — even with what’s happening in front of me, I couldn’t do it. The house on the corner has a Newfoundland standing in the yard, and the woman at the house sees me. She tells me to run for her car, but it’s actually a truck with a flatbed. She grabs a shovel and starts swinging at the dog, and my legs at this point are jelly but we make it into the flatbed and the pitbull is just launching itself at us, just like Cujo. My first thought was, Did I make this happen? I had started writing about a dog, so: Did I bring this on? That’s nutty, but it’s how you feel at times when things happen.”

Levine’s novels feel right for early 2026, for this gray period when we’re all expected to reassess our lives, make changes and emerge in the spring with clearer heads. The way certain works of fiction can do, her books could double as perverse self-help, starring heroines who go out of their ways to show how not to conduct your life. Her writing voice, sardonic, breezy, chimes with Joy Williams and Donald Barthelme, but it’s hard not to hear “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and even “The Office” — that nexus where unraveling people lacking self-awareness stumble across empathy.

The heroine of “Treasure Island!!!” — a 25-year old clerk of a “pet library” — reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s legendary adventure and quickly reassess her narrow timid life, deciding there and then to live by a credo culled from Stevenson: Boldness, Resolution, Independence, Horn-blowing. But by the end, she kills a parrot and is so obsessed with “Treasure Island,” family and friends stage an intervention between her and the novel. The heroine of “The Hitch” could be related, if only tangentially: Her name is Rose Cutler and she is an Evanston yogurt company CEO (as well as “antiracist, secular Jewish feminist eco-warrior”). Rose is also perilously up her own keister. She does not want children (“not for one atom-spitting second”) but she is never so shy with opinions about the way her brother and sister-in-law raise their own kid. When they go on vacation, Rose jumps at the chance to play aunt for a week — which is when the dog attack occurs, her nephew decides (cheerfully) the dog’s soul leapt bodies, and worse.

Rose is a micromanager, and lousy in a crisis. It spoils nothing to say the closest she gets to enlightenment is a brief ah-ha: “Sometimes my mind gets active as a prairie dog and I build elaborate tunnels underground, room after room of judgement and justification.”

The writer Roxane Gay — who once included Levine’s work in an essay on unlikeable women characters (“Not Here to Make Friends”) — said that just after she landed her own imprint (Roxane Gay Books) at Grove Atlantic, she sought out Levine and asked what she was working on: “It had been some time since ‘Treasure Island!!!’ and Sara did not disappoint. The writing voice I fell in love with was still there, but she had grown, and though this Rose character was older, you’re reminded that sometimes we don’t really outgrow our lesser selves — that sometimes we just learn to live with them, you know?”

Levine told Gay that not every reader is a fan of unlikeable woman characters. She told Gay about the (smallish) subset of Goodreads reviewers who describe her women as “utterly unlikeable” and “irredeemable.” Gay told me, “I don’t know why writers are so willing to expose themselves to Goodreads. Some people have a parasocial relationship with book characters, and it meets a puritanical streak where people decide they don’t like a character who is a ‘bad person,’ forgetting flawed people exist. Rose is convinced she knows the right way to do things and her ethics are in the right place — bless her heart.”

Levine’s sweet spot is what literary scholars have long called “unreliable narration” — she even taught a class at Brown University (where she got her Ph.D. in English) on the topic. Levine said: “My father’s a psychiatrist and he tells me we’re all unreliable narrators. But in a novel, it means there’s a deficit of comprehension from the character telling the story and that deficit is part of the story. But when I hear from people who hated ‘Treasure Island!!!,’ often they think I’m the narrator. My feelings get hurt. But maybe they don’t understand that gap. It took me a long time to realize it.

“Or maybe ‘unreliable’ is the wrong term for this. Should I just refer to my characters as ‘difficult women’? No, maybe not — I was at a party recently and told someone I write about ‘difficult women’ and this person said, ‘OK, wait, what do you mean by difficult …?’”

Horror novelist Paul Tremblay — whom Levine consulted to get a sense of how to handle the possession part of “The Hitch” — is a big fan of Levine, and included “Treasure Island!!!” on his ballot for the New York Times poll of the best books of the 21st century. Part of that appreciation, he said, is “how she is reviving an old tradition of first-person a-hole narrators. Think of ‘Confederacy of Dunces,’ or the novels of Sam Lipsyte, except publishers don’t like books by women who go there. Readers are getting more literal, I think. It can feel like a risk to just include any moral uncertainty in a novel now. I hear this especially from younger readers, who want to know what the moral is, and the thing is we are not writing to bestow morals but explain what it means to be human, which can be dark and uncomfortable — all words I would use to describe Sara’s books.”

You could also argue the long afterlife of “Treasure Island!!” — a perpetual word-of-mouth bookseller favorite, handed down to friends who can relate to spiraling exhaustion — is a mirror of contemporary America. Or at least indie culture: Rose Byrne is likely to grab an Oscar nomination soon for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” as a stressed mother who makes a series of bad decisions; she’d slide neatly into Levine’s books. Levine is one of your favorite literary writers’ best-kept secrets: Blurbs for “The Hitch” came from Elizabeth Gilbert, Rumaan Alam, Adam Levin and Chicagoan Michael Zapata, who told me: “Blurbs can be blurby, but the one I wrote was truly sincere.” “Treasure Island!!!,” which has yet to be adapted to TV or film (but probably will be one day), has already been developed (and dropped) by Natalie Portman and James Franco.

Levine sounds almost naive about the depth of this love.

She told me another established screenwriter got pretty far with “Treasure Island!!!” but then appeared to bail and never signed their contract; Levine never heard from the woman again. One day, during a class at SAIC, she projected an email exchange between her and the writer as an illustration of professional etiquette. “I had to explain how she opted out of the project, and as students do, one took out his phone and googled the woman’s name and a minute later replied, ‘Oh, Sara, no — that woman had died. That’s probably why she never got back to you.’”

Sounds like a Sara Levine story, I said.

“It does?” she asked.

To be frank, the biggest disappointment about Sara Levine is that she’s not nuts. I anticipated erratic and flighty and I got calm and rational. James McManus, author of the poker memoir “Positively Fifth Street,” who taught alongside Levine for 25 years, said: “She is as sane and responsible an adult as they come. In fact, (SAIC) wanted her to move into even more active leadership roles, but that can be a time suck, creatively.”

She has long gray hair and large cartoon eyes and comes across as naturally funny. She said people do expect her to be a wacko. “Someone introduced me at a party recently as ‘one of the most sane people’ at the Art Institute, or maybe it was ‘the least insane.’”

Levine, who is 55, grew up outside Cleveland and wrote a couple of plays that were produced when she was still a teenager (one professionally, for a Cleveland theater group). She went to Northwestern for theater only to find her way to creative writing. She then bounced from Brown to the University of Iowa to SAIC, which she joined in 2000. She describes herself as “ornery” that entire time. She threatened to drop out of Brown, refused to start a novel, moved to Iowa to teach non-fiction, only to decide, “‘I don’t want to live here, I don’t want to teach this my whole life’ — it was like looking into my coffin.”

She found she was more interested in “‘hysterical’ voices, the more obstreperous personalities of fiction.” “Treasure Island!!!,” which she began to see if she could write a novel after years of short stories and nonfiction academia, took a decade, but she found that she was more ambitious than she knew. She also learned she had a knack for describing everyday suburbia with cutting precision: “The Hitch” is filled with Evanston parents who over-schedule kids so much you wonder if they “can’t sit still in a room” with children. Doctor’s offices offer “six televisions playing six different channels.” Vast expanses of Illinois contain “a strip of road that featured an abandoned movie theatre, a discount shoe store, and a cemetery bordered by a six-foot high metal fence capped with snow,” as well as a hospital “founded in affiliation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church and rooted in the belief that all persons were created in the image of God, a hospital that had not in the past five years received higher than a two-star Yelp review.”

After “Treasure Island!!!,” she wrote a big sprawling novel titled “Leave It,” a more lyrical and somber kaleidoscope of Evanston characters; she didn’t want to follow one “difficult woman” with a second. She gave it to her agent, but then soon after, she pulled it back and shelved it.

“I was worried I was reinforcing the ‘hysterical’ woman thing, so I wrote something else, but that something else? Other people do that book well. So I have this narrow track. Twyla Tharp talks about knowing your own creative DNA, and that helped me. I’ve always had teachers who said you need to keep growing, you’ve got to keep pushing, that there is a natural aesthetic restlessness where you should never repeat yourself. I really bought into that. But what if it’s helpful to focus on one form and go very deep into only that? Look at Monet, who spent a lifetime painting haystacks …”

“‘Compares self to Monet,’” I interrupted, joking, pretending to jot that in my notebook.

“Oh, and also Nabokov!” she said, laughing. “And of course Jane Austen! Write that down.”

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com

Palmeri started building the car in 1968, when he was 18 years old, in his home garage in East Detroit alongside his dad. Today the back of the car reads, “In memory of Tony and Jean,” for both of his parents who he credits as part of his car creation.

Since 1953, Detroit Autorama has been an event that showcases craftsmanship on vehicles with classic bodies that are reimagined. This year, the show runs from Feb. 27 to March 1 at Huntington Place, located at 1 Washington Blvd. in Detroit.

This year’s event will feature more than 800 works of art, showcasing one-of-a-kind custom hot rods, trucks, modern and muscle cars and motorcycles.

It will also feature celebrity appearances, live music and entertainment, movie vehicles, Toy-A-Rama featuring nostalgic toys, the Miss Autorama pin-up contest and more.

The Motor City Maven’s 2026 Art Panel Jam and Pinstripers Charity Auction benefitting Leader Dogs for the Blind will also take place at the event. There will be pinstripers demonstrations all weekend and puppies available to meet all weekend as well. The pinstripers charity auctions take place from 4 to 5 p.m. Feb. 27, from noon to 1:30 p.m., 3 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 28 and from noon to 1:30 p.m. and 3 to 4 p.m. March 1.

Other awards that will be presented at the event include the BASF Great 8, announced at 10 a.m. Feb. 27, and the Ridler Award, which will be announced in the afternoon March 1.

The event will also house the 20th annual Autorama Student Career Day Feb. 27, where high school and college students can learn about automotive careers through guest speakers and hands-on experience.

Tickets for the event can be purchased at a discounted price at select O’Reilly Auto Parts locations starting Feb. 7 for $28 general admission and $9 for children between ages 6 and 12. Tickets can also be purchased at the box office for $30 general admission or $10 for children between 6 and 12. Children aged 5 and younger get in for free.

The event takes place from noon to 10 p.m. Feb. 27, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Feb. 28 and from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. March 1.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Brandi Carlile isn’t hedging.

When the multi-Grammy winner steps onto the field at Super Bowl to sing “America the Beautiful,” Carlile said she’ll perform fully live — with no prerecorded safety net, embracing the same risk she believes audiences take every day simply by showing up.

“The people deserve to have you live,” Carlile told The Associated Press on Thursday. “They need you to be taking the risk they’re taking every day when they walk out into those streets.”

That decision sets the tone for how Sunday’s pregame performers are approaching one of music’s most technically demanding stages. Some play it safe while others are fully present.

Carlile, who will perform before kickoff along with Charlie Puth and Coco Jones, described preparation that extends beyond rehearsals and sound checks. Having previously performed in large outdoor venues — including Elton John’s final tour date at Dodger Stadium in 2022 — she said singing in an open-air stadium introduces noticeable sound delay, where performers can hear their own voices echo back moments later.

“I’ve been preparing for it more spiritually than technically,” Carlile said. “I want to sing that song as more of a prayer than a boast.”

Performing live at the Super Bowl has long required a careful balance between authenticity and logistics. Because of stadium acoustics, broadcast delays and the precision demanded by a globally televised event, artists often blend live vocals with backing tracks or use prerecorded elements to ensure consistent sound quality across the venue and broadcast.

The practice is not new. Whitney Houston’s iconic 1991 national anthem performance was later confirmed to have used a prerecorded track. Katy Perry and other halftime performers have also used a mix of live vocals and reinforcement as part of highly choreographed productions.

The approach is common but the choice remains personal, shaped by an artist’s own philosophy and comfort level.

Jones, who will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” framed her preparation less as declaration and more as discipline — rooted in respect for the song itself. Rather than focusing on whether a performance is live or supported, she emphasized repetition, rehearsing until muscle memory takes over.

“I try to overly practice,” she said. “When everything is second nature … I’m just a vessel.”

Jones has performed on stadium stages before, including Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and said the scale amplifies pressure but doesn’t fundamentally change her mindset. She studies lyrics — her own and those she covers — to understand the emotion and intention behind every line before stepping onto the field.

From a sound standpoint, Jones stressed the importance of sound monitoring in a massive stadiums. Jones sought guidance from Alicia Keys, who became the first artist to sing the rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” for the NFL in 2000.

“She just told me, ‘Don’t be nervous — be in the moment,’” Jones said. “That meant a lot coming from her.”

Puth, who will perform the national anthem, said he is approaching the moment as a producer as much as a vocalist — a mindset shaped by years of controlling sound from the studio to the stage. Though he has performed in stadiums before, he said each venue presents its own challenges.

“There’s not one stadium that sounds alike,” Puth said.

Known for his hands-on role in his music, Puth said maintaining control over sound is central to his preparation, particularly in a setting where acoustics, delay and broadcast demands intersect. The national anthem, one of the most scrutinized songs in American music, requires restraint as much as power, especially in a stadium setting, the singer said.

“You just make sure you don’t over sing,” said Puth, whose Super Bowl appearance arrives ahead of a busy year. His fourth studio album, “Whatever’s Clever,” is set for release March 27, followed by a world tour that will take him through arenas including New York and Los Angeles.

“The moment you start thinking about everybody else, you’re not locked into the music,” he continued. “And that’s when things don’t sound the way they should.”

For Carlile, the Super Bowl also serves as a bridge to what comes next.

Next week, she will launch the Human Tour, her first-ever arena headlining run. It’s a milestone she described as both thrilling and intimidating. But standing alone on the Super Bowl field, she said, offers a kind of preparation no rehearsal room can replicate.

“It’ll be the scariest thing I do this year,” she said. “So once that’s over, the Human Tour is going to be Disneyland all day long.”

Carlile said what she’s learning in this moment. She’s resisting perfection, staying present and trusting herself during her live performance, hoping she along with Puth and Jones’ performances give viewers some form of inspiration.

“You have to wake up and take a risk with yourself,” she said. “That’s what makes performance beautiful.”

NEW YORK (AP) — There are stages, and then there is the Super Bowl halftime show.

On Sunday, fresh off his historic win at the Grammys for his love letter to Puerto Rico, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” Bad Bunny will once again surprise audiences with a performance that is gearing up to be a landmark moment for Latino culture.

But what can you expect from his set?

What we know

Apple Music’s Zane Lowe mentioned that Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance is 13 minutes long during an interview with the superstar on Thursday. Historically, they run 12 to 15 minutes.

In the same conversation, Bad Bunny offered few specifics about what viewers will see Sunday.

“It’s going to be a huge party,” he said, playfully dodging questions about surprise guests and other details. “What people can expect from me … I want to bring to the stage, of course, a lot of my culture. But I really don’t, I don’t want to give any spoilers. It’s going to be fun.”

Beyond that: A minute-and-a-half long trailer for the halftime show posted last month set a jovial tone for his performance. In it, Bad Bunny approaches a Flamboyan tree — more on that below — and presses play on his single “Baile Inolvidable” (“Unforgettable Dance”).

The song is modern salsa, performed with students from the Escuela Libre de Música San Juan. It is a featured single from “Debí Tirar Más Fotos,” an album that marries folkloric tradition in local Borinquen genres like bomba, plena, salsa and música jíbara with contemporary styles like reggaeton, trap and pop.

In the clip, Bad Bunny sways as he’s joined by different dancers across genders, races and ages: Those include a traditional salsa dancer in a red dress, a firefighter, a cowboy and a viejito wearing a pava (“viejito” is an affectionate term for an older man and a “pava” is a kind of straw hat). It’s representative of the superstar’s international appeal; he is currently the most-streamed artist globally on Spotify.

Will Bad Bunny perform entirely in Spanish?

All of Bad Bunny’s music is recorded in Spanish, so it seems like a safe bet. Were he to include English into his set, it would likely appear in a spoken interjection — or it would be featured in text.

In October, Bad Bunny hosted “Saturday Night Live” and said a few sentences in Spanish during his opening monologue. When he concluded, he joked in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn,” a reference to the Super Bowl and his critics.

On Thursday, he joked that fans didn’t actually need to learn Spanish to enjoy his set — but they should be prepared to dance.

What symbols can we expect?

There’s no way to know for sure, but here are a few educated guesses.

Puerto Rican flags: In his song “La Mudanza,” Bad Bunny sings, “Aquí mataron gente por sacar la bandera / Por eso es que ahora yo la llevo donde quiera.” In English: “Here they killed people for showing the flag / That’s why I bring it everywhere I want now.” It appears to be a reference to Law 53 of 1948, better known as the Gag Law, a ruling by the Puerto Rican Legislative Assembly which attempted to suppress the independence movement on the island and criminalized displaying the Puerto Rican flag. It was repealed in 1952. It is also one of many reasons Puerto Ricans are known for waving their flag with pride for their island.

It is almost certain the flag of Puerto Rico will appear in some form on the Super Bowl stage. But its colors are worth noting. If it is shown in red, white and blue, that is the current flag of Puerto Rico and has been since 1952. If there are flags that feature light blue, that is reflective of the Puerto Rican independence movement. A black and white version of the flag has become synonymous with Puerto Rican struggle and resiliency. And if there is a flag that more closely resembles the Dominican Republic’s flag, that is the flag of the Puerto Rican mountain town Lares. It was used in the Grito de Lares, the first short revolt against Spanish rule in Puerto Rico in the 19th century.

Puerto Rican expressions: There may be a few Puerto Rican expressions uttered on stage, beyond just those found in Bad Bunny’s music. That could be anything from “Wepa!” which is used in moments of excitement, not unlike exclaiming “Wow!.” It grew in popularity after the release of Alfonso Vélez’s 1974 salsa song “El Jolgorio (Wepa Wepa Wepa).” Or “Acho, PR es otra cosa,” a phrase that became a fan chant during Bad Bunny’s performance of “Voy a llevarte pa’ PR” during his residency. It translates to “Damn, PR is something else.”

Casita: At Bad Bunny’s residency in Puerto Rico last summer, he performed across two stages. One was built to resemble a casita (“little house”), for the pari de marquesina, a house party. These structures are synonymous with Puerto Rico and the Caribbean at large.

Pavas: A symbol that is likely familiar to Bad Bunny fans everywhere, a pava is a straw hat traditionally worn by jíbaros, or Puerto Rican rural farmers. It has become a symbol of pride for the island. The singer even wore a leather version of the hat on the red carpet at the 2025 Met Gala.

Flamboyan tree: The second of the two stages at Bad Bunny’s residency focused on showcasing the island’s natural beauty with its flamboyan and plantain trees. The former are a common feature in Puerto Rican art for its flowers, most commonly seen in brilliant red, orange and yellow hues. The image of the tree evokes Puerto Rico almost as immediately as the sound of its national nocturnal residents, el coquí (a frog with a distinctive sing-song-y call heard only at night.)

El Sapo Concho: Not to be mistaken with el coquí, el sapo concho is the endangered Puerto Rican crested toad that Bad Bunny has used an animated version of in his visuals for “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.”

Traditional Puerto Rican instruments: Because much of Bad Bunny’s music pulls from bomba and plena, it is likely that a few of those traditional instruments will be on stage. Look out for a cuatro (a small, four-stringed guitar), güiro/güira (a percussive instrument made of a hollow gourd), palitos (also a percussive instrument resembling two long, wood sticks), cencerro (cow bell) and maracas. For the bomba songs, specifically, there may be a barriel (a barrel) and for plena, a pandereta (tambourine.)

Will there be special guests during the halftime show?

It is impossible to predict, but it would be surprising if Bad Bunny wasn’t joined by other performers — particularly other giants of Latin music, and probably, other Puerto Rican performers. The band Chuwi joined Benito for every night of his San Juan residency; it wouldn’t be out of the question to see them on stage for their collaboration, “Weltita.”

Other potential guests, if the residency is a framework to follow, could include Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez, Young Miko, Wisin y Yandel, Gilberto Santa Rosa and Alfonso Vélez. But the list goes on and on.

Will it be a political performance?

That is in the eye of the beholder. But there is historical precedent for it at the Super Bowl. In 2020, the NFL asked Jennifer Lopez to cut a segment featuring children in cages during her halftime performance, a critique of U.S. immigration policies. She refused. (Bad Bunny was actually a guest performer during that halftime show, which was headlined by Lopez and Shakira.)

Last year, Kendrick Lamar’s set was an artful confrontation of American history and racial dynamics through metaphor, as the actor Samuel L. Jackson, dressed as Uncle Sam, complained of a performance that was “too loud, too reckless, too ghetto” and reminded Lamar to “play the game.”

Bad Bunny has never steered clear of political messaging. He has criticized President Donald Trump on everything from his hurricane response in his native Puerto Rico to his treatment of immigrants. At the Grammys Sunday, he said “ICE out” while accepting his first televised award of the night. His latest tour skipped the continental U.S.; in an interview he said it was at least partially inspired by concerns that his fans could be targeted by immigration agents.

Trump, a Republican, has said he doesn’t plan to attend this year’s game, unlike last year, and he has derided Bad Bunny as a “terrible choice.”

It’s also still a helluva good time.

Amidst its abundance of big laughs, glitzy production numbers and impressive feats of dancing in thigh-high red stilettos, the musical adaptation of the 2005 British film — at Detroit’s Fisher Theatre through Sunday, Feb. 8 — remains more than just the story of a drag queen in London who helps a young man in Northampton reinvent and save his family’s multi-generation shoe business. With a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Cyndi Lauper, It semi soft-sells concepts of inclusion and acceptance, self-realization, determination — and faith. We watch Lola open the minds of Charlie Price and his factory team while also finding common ground and achieving some closure for his own life issues.

Heavy stuff — if you want it to be. And if you just want to kick up your heels and just, as per the song, say an exuberant “Yeah!,” “Kinky Boots” has that for you, too.

The best news is that this touring edition of the show — which won six Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Score for Lauper — features as tight a cast as you’d want, a dialed-in ensemble whose timing is spot-on throughout comic and dramatic moments alike. The actors portray relationships that feel remarkably genuine and relatable, and not always predictable, and they’re also effective when it’s time to break the proverbial fourth wall and bring the audience directly into the party.

“Kinky Boots” always rests on its Lola, of course, and in Omari Collins, aka Scarlett D’ Von Du, the character is in fine hands. This is Collins’ seventh run in the show, and he inhabits Lola with a joy and familiarity drawn from that experience but also with the energy of a first-night performance. Convincing in both boots and boxing gloves, he deftly balances the back story and inner demons with proverbial joie de vivre — and nails every one of his songs, including the torchy “Hold Me in Your Heart” and the heartstring-tugging “Not My Father’s Son” duet with Charlie.

And while “Book of Mormon” veteran Noah Silverman is not overpowering as Charlie, he capably traces that character’s growth and rocks his own spotlight moment, “The Soul of a Man.”

There isn’t a weak link in the rest of the cast, and Jason Daniel Chacon stands out as Don, the factory foreman who experiences his own enlightenment and delivers one of the show’s funniest surprises during the “Raise You Up/Just Be” finale. Lola’s drag queen crew the Angels, meanwhile, are divinely exuberant, and you’d be hard-pressed to find more triumphant experiences anywhere in the stage world than romps such as “Land of Lola,” “Sex Is in the Heel” and “Everybody Say Yeah.”

You may, or may not, come out of “Kinky Boots” with a better sense of “What a Woman Wants.” But you’ll definitely be uplifted and entertained — and maybe have a different view of extravagant footwear.

So don’t dismiss “Kinky Boots” as a trifle, but don’t let

“Kinky Boots” runs through Sunday, Feb. 8, at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. 313-872-1000 or atgtickets.com.

It shows that New Jersey continues to earn its reputation as the travel wasteland of the East Coast, whereas — surprise! — California is doing pretty dang good.

Last year, 248 million U.S. passengers ran up against flight disruptions, according to AirHelp. These were concentrated most heavily at airports along the Eastern Seaboard. On the flip side, the 10 airports with fewest disruptions include Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport and San Diego International Airport (though Honolulu took top place).

The company also determined the worst months of the year for disruptions. It’s all about summer misery, with July and June being the worst.

AirHelp’s biggest airport disruptions in 2025

1 Newark Liberty International Airport: 29.1% of passengers disrupted in 2025

2 O’Hare International Airport: 29%

3 New York LaGuardia Airport: 29 percent

4 Ronald Reagan National Airport: 28.8%

5 Denver International Airport: 27.5%

6 Philadelphia International Airport: 27.3%

7 Miami International Airport: 27%

8 John F. Kennedy International Airport: 27%

9 Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport: 26.1%

10 Orlando International Airport: 26%

Source: airhelp.com

Have you dreamed of creating a calm and cozy spot at home to relax and recharge, but don’t think you can spare the space?

You don’t need a “man cave,” “she shed” or even a whole room to retreat to. Just one corner will do.

One corner, warm lighting, a cozy chair and some plants, says interior and plant stylist Hilton Carter, who specializes in “nature nooks” — tiny wellness sanctuaries that calm the mind, body and spirit.

Carter has hosted plant-forward specials for HBO and PBS, launched a plant and accessories line with Target and authored six books (his most recent is “Unfurled: Designing a Living Home.”)

Nature nooks, he says, improve a home emotionally as well as aesthetically.

Carter, 48, found himself leaning toward plants a decade ago. “I was feeling overwhelmed by the hustle and grind working as a freelance filmmaker in Los Angeles when a project took me to Glen Mills, Pennsylvania,” he said.

There, he popped into a garden-themed café.

“I was all knotted up, and I walked in there and felt a change. It felt like a vacation,” he said.

Not long after, Carter moved to New Orleans and bought a fiddle-leaf fig tree he named Frank. “I was at a crossroads in life, which all of us face, and I faced it with this plant,” he said, adding that he made a vow to love it and keep it alive. “Everything I’ve accomplished since then was all due to that moment.”

A nature nook doesn’t need a lot of plants

Today, Carter, who lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children, has roughly 150 plants at home and another 200 or so in his studio, including Frank, now 14 feet tall. But creating a nature nook with as few as five plants can reap emotional benefits, he said.

Before buying any plants, choose your site, Carter said.

“There is no minimum or maximum size” for a nature-nook corner, he says. The important thing is “how lush you decide to make it.”

Next, assess lighting. “If one side of the corner has a nice-size window and it gets southern-facing light for eight hours of the day, there are particular plants that you could go wild with that could thrive in that light,” Carter said.

“But let’s say you have a north-facing window on one wall and it’s a standard-size window. You probably will want to bring in artificial light.”

Don’t get just any grow lights, though.

“Find those companies that make beautiful grow bulbs. Some have two-color tones, some (replicate) daylight and others make warmer lights” that make the space inviting but still help plants thrive, Carter said.

If relying on natural light, consider the seasons. “It may be brighter in the winter because all the leaves on the trees are gone, but in summer that’s a whole different situation.”

Assess your light and bring that information to a plant shop for guidance.

A comfortable place to sit

Bring in “some sort of accent chair facing whatever direction is going to provide you with joy: facing out the window, where the joy is having that sun caress your face, or facing in if you’re reading,” Carter said.

Select plants realistically.

“Be self-aware about your ability to care for plants,” Carter said. Your nook might start out looking lush and beautiful, but if you don’t take the time to care for the plants, it will look terrible and uninviting within weeks.

Personalize your nature nook

When creating nature nooks for clients, Carter asks them about their favorite vacations or where they spent honeymoons or anniversaries, because bringing in plants from those places can trigger happy memories.

“Think about your happy place,” Carter advised. “Get a sense of what you want to replicate and where you want to be transported to.”

A nature nook is an “escape from the chaos of the world,” he said.

When choosing plants, consider their foliage and how they look together. The glossiness of a burgundy Ficus elastica next to a Monstera ‘Thai Constellation,’ for instance, is striking, he says.

“But if you met your wife in the Pacific Northwest and you’re looking to create a look that’s similar to that, you’re going to get your more shaded plants — ferns, Norfolk pines, things that refer back to that space,” he said.

And don’t overlook pots. A beautiful terracotta planter that fits the space’s vibe will evoke emotion and set the mood of the nook.

Some practical concerns

Consider how tall plants will grow, and how high the ceilings and windows are.

Carter also advises being mindful of the type of flooring. “Use planters that will protect the floor” in case water drains out.

Toxicity is another important matter. “Do you have pets? Do you have kids? What kinds of plants will thrive and keep them safe?” he said.

Enjoying your nook

Once your nature nook is in place, create a routine. Maybe drink your morning coffee there or read there in the evenings. Using the space regularly can be transformative, Carter said.

“I’m much more patient, more kind, considerate and I’m a better listener because of plants,” he said. “I think I’m entirely a more loving individual than before.”

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.