Month: April 2024

Sydney Sweeney is casual enough about her nude scenes that she invites her family over for Euphoria viewing parties. Her dad and grandfather may have walked out of the room, but her grandma is a “big fan,” she once said. “I bring her usually all over the world to my different sets, and I make her an extra.” Sweeney’s grandmother even thinks she has the “best t*ts in Hollywood.”

Not everyone is as comfortable with getting nude on screen, however.

During a recent appearance on Sirius XM’s The Morning Mash Up, Bridgerton actress Nicola Coughlan was asked about the “saucy” scenes on the Netflix series. “I remember reading that Sydney Sweeney was like, in any of the TV shows or movies, she’s done she’s like, ‘Whatever. My parents love it.’ My parents would not love it,” host Nicole Ryan said. Coughlan replied, “No, no. You grow up Irish Catholtic… that’s just not how we vibe.” She even asked for a PG-rated cut of the show to watch her family.

It all dates to her mother’s surprise at the show’s nudity upon watching season one. “When she first saw Bridgerton, she didn’t know it was gonna be so saucy,” Coughlan recalled. “And then you get a bottom, Jonathan Bailey’s lovely bottom, about two minutes into the first episode ever. And she was like, ‘What is this?’ But then, now she thinks it’s fantastic and really funny, and she keeps talking about bottoms.”

Bridgerton returns to Netflix for season three on May 16.

(Via Cinemablend)

In 2011, I made up a rubric for assessing the output of musical artists. I called it The Five-Albums Test. Well, I didn’t exactly “make it up.” I took something that music fans were already doing informally, put an uncreative name on it, and published a column about it on the internet. That is what they call “music journalism.”

It works like this: You take an artist, you look at their discography, and you judge whether they have put out five consecutive “great” albums. That’s it. That’s the methodology. But why five consecutive great albums? Because it’s more than two consecutive great albums (an impressive achievement), three consecutive great albums (a triumph most artists don’t come close to accomplishing) or four consecutive great albums (true “hall of fame”-level performance). If you have five consecutive great albums, you simply are one of the legends of your life and times.

(You can also be one of the greats if you don’t have five consecutive great albums. Some of the most iconic artists of all time don’t have five consecutive great albums. I could elaborate but that would quickly derail this column from the central premise. You can read more here and here, though I’m not sure I still agree with a lot of what I wrote. Direct any questions/comments/admonishments to 2011 me.)

To pass The Five-Albums Test, you need a lot of elements to fall exactly into place. Some are in your control, but many are not. First, you must achieve a level of success that enables you to make at least five albums of any quality. (Making five consecutive bad albums is, from a longevity perspective, also is an incredible feat.) Second, you need enough great songs — 40 at minimum, though you are skirting EP territory if you don’t have at least 50 — to fill out five great albums. Third, these albums must demonstrate an artistic progression (i.e. “each one is different enough from the others”) that at the same time fortifies an instantly identifiable musical identity (i.e. “each one is similar enough to the others”).

This seemingly contradictory magic trick, of course, is the hardest to execute. But none of this stuff is easy. It’s not enough to merely be a genius songwriter and elite musician. You need a bit of luck to help maneuver the inevitable ups and downs of the music industry, popular taste, and the vagaries of late-capitalism.

It is a test designed for most people to fail.

As a music critic who is fascinated above all else by discographies, I often ask musicians about how they build and shape their bodies of work. When you make an album, do you think about how it fits with your other albums? Do you think of your albums as being in conversation with one another? How concerned are you with how your overall discography looks? I find these questions endlessly fascinating. The musicians I speak with, however, aren’t always as interested. Some musicians like to analyze their own work, but the majority do not. The unspoken worry, I think, is that thinking too much about these things might lead to self-consciousness. There’s also the sticky matter of luck. When there’s so much out of your control, why worry about it?

But in my experience, there is one particular musician who has thought about these questions more — possibly much more — than I have: Ezra Koenig.

On the press tour for Vampire Weekend’s latest album — their fifth — Only God Was Above Us, Koenig has focused mostly on the record’s musical and thematic narratives. As you might have read: This is the “noisy” VW LP, the one with distortion in place of the impeccably clean guitar lines that have defined their aesthetic since the 2007 self-titled LP. Lyrically, Only God Was Above Us is a “New York City album” that ponders the state of the world with an evolving worldview that moves from anger to acceptance.

Peruse any article about OGWAU, and you will see these points asserted and reiterated. But I’m more curious about the glancing comments from Koenig regarding his conception of Vampire Weekend’s overall catalog. In one interview, he listed “patron saints” for each of the band’s albums — Paul Simon for the self-titled, Joe Strummer and Sublime for Contra, Leonard Cohen for Modern Vampires Of The City, and the Grateful Dead and Phish for Father Of The Bride. For OGWAU, he was even more specific, pointing to the 1997 co-headlining tour by Rage Against The Machine and the Wu-Tang Clan, which reads as semi-jokey shorthand for the ’90s crossover of alt-rock and hip-hop that informs the record’s scruffily metallic, urban/suburban sound.

In another interview, Koenig managed to get even more granular, revealing a four-quadrant chart that he made after Father Of The Bride plotting out the vibes for each VW record. One axis was PREPPIE and HIPPIE, and the other was GOTH and SUNSHINE. According to this chart, the first two albums were PREPPIE/SUNSHINE, Modern Vampires was PREPPIE/GOTH, and Father Of The Bride was HIPPIE/SUNSHINE. That leaves HIPPIE/GOTH for Only God Was Above Us, a not-entirely-inappropriate descriptor of the album’s feel.

For skeptics, this level of creative calculation is indicative of an overbearing perfectionism that can be hard to take. But as a music critic, I find that it adds another layer of enjoyment to Vampire Weekend’s records. I appreciate that Ezra Koenig, along with being a songwriter and record-maker, is also a music critic of sorts. It’s just that he applies that analytical part of his brain to the creation of music. His records are, among other (much more important) things, thinkpieces that riff on sets of ideas, styles, and signifiers. And they are organized inside of Vampire Weekend’s discography like chapters in an evolving book.

I witnessed this side of Koenig first hand when I spoke with him in early 2020, right before lockdown, for a New York Times Magazine article. We ended up chatting for 90 minutes, which meant that the majority of the interview never made the 1,200-word piece. The most pertinent bits about Father Of The Bride made the cut, but my favorite parts of our talk were the nerdiest digressions about Vampire Weekend’s catalog.

“There is, straight-up, a decent chunk of people who really fucked with our first album and thought we fell off after that,” he said at one point. “Like, ‘That first album is fun, second one eh, third one ugh.’ These people are generally not major music critics. Or people who spend a lot of time on message boards. But these people exist because I’ve met them tons of times.”

It’s interesting to consider this population that looks at Vampire Weekend like The Strokes, with Vampire Weekend as their Is This It, a one-and-done emblem of a specific, fleeting moment. I imagine there is another subgroup that carries this analogy one step further, with Contra in the role of the underrated and possibly “secretly better” Room On Fire-esque follow-up. But at least inside of VW’s fanbase, The Strokes get left behind with the third album, Modern Vampires Of The City, the consensus “masterpiece” in the catalog. What struck me in our interview was Koenig’s suggestion that MVOTC was consciously constructed as a “serious statement” to woo critics, in the manner of other famous third-album “breakthroughs” like Born To Run, London Calling, and OK Computer.

“We’ve mostly gotten good reviews our whole career. But our first album was controversial. The Village Voice ran opposing reviews,” he said. “People wanted to fight about us in a way that very similar bands didn’t quite get. So, there’s a part of me that wondered what it would feel like to make a record that seemed to be a real crowd-pleaser in that world. And to some extent that was the third album.”

Anyone who disputes that Vampire Weekend passes The Five-Albums Test — for the record, I think they pass with flying colors — will likely have the most reservations with Father Of The Bride, the shaggy 18-track effort from 2019 informed by jam bands and Southern California — “HIPPIE/SUNSHINE” — that put off listeners hooked on the modernist, pop-forward approach of the first three records. I am a fan of FOTB, in no small part because I am also a fan of jam bands and music with Southern Californian vibes. The crunchiness of that record is way up my alley. But for now, I’m less concerned with laying out a critical/aesthetic argument than I am with considering how FOTB fits with the other Vampire Weekend records. When I spoke with Koenig, he implied that the polarization it inspired was practically by design.

“The album format on some level, it can get old really fast. So you have to always find ways in which to break new ground,” he told me. “When you break new ground it’s going to delight some people, alienate others. That’s the nature of the world.”

With VW’s fourth record, their first in six years, some kind of let down was inevitable given how acclaimed their previous effort was. The third LP was a landmark for the long, fading tail of 2000s indie rock, an era that finally more or less wrapped in 2013. By 2019, VW was far removed from anything happening in the vanguard of indie or pop music. Most groups in their position would have raced to keep up. But with Father Of The Bride, Koeing leaned into that separation, zagging as far as possible from the zeitgeist’s zig. His band was now culturally out of step, but on purpose. In that way, FOTB is explicitly the anti-MVOTC, though it did eventually win a Grammy and do fine with most critics. Still, Koenig acknowledged Vampire Weekend’s “proudly washed” image by promoting FOTB as a de-facto solo effort, leaving his bandmates out of press photos. As he recently related to The Guardian, “I just had a feeling that going into the fourth album, seeing a picture of three guys in their mid-30s was kind of like: ‘This is gonna look like damaged goods.’”

Again, that level of self-awareness is bound to annoy those who believe that artists shouldn’t think of their output in terms of critical or public response. But this conception of where each VW record falls is ultimately as thoughtful and smartly constructed as the music, and that carries over to the fifth album.

As Koenig himself I’m sure knows, there are two kinds of “great” fifth albums. The first is the “level up” fifth album, in which a long-running band hits their critical and/or commercial stride several years into their career. Famous examples include: David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall, Prince’s 1999, R.E.M.’s Document, U2’s The Joshua Tree, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, Metallica’s “Black Album, and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Only God Was Above Us is not that kind of record. Like Koenig said, the first album will probably always define the group in the popular consciousness. (“A-Punk” is their most streamed track on Spotify by multiple factors.) And Modern Vampires Of The City has a lock on being the canonical “capstone to the indie era” pick. OGWBU therefore is the second kind of “great” fifth record, the “simultaneously different and similar” album. The sort of LP that is, paradoxically, a career summation that also points forward.

(Three other “simultaneously different and similar” fifth albums that come to mind are extremely un-Vampire Weekend-like: The Who’s Who’s Next, Led Zeppelin’s Houses Of The Holy, and Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.)

How does this apply to Vampire Weekend? The application of distortion immediately sets Only God Was Above Us apart from the other VW albums. In 10 years, there will be no question from which record “Hope” or “Capricorn” or “Mary Boone” derives. (Whereas the tracks from Vampire Weekend and Contra, in Strokes-like fashion, kind of blend together.) OGWAU is definitely different. At the same time, the lyrics immediately ground the LP in an East Coast milieu that was seemingly abandoned after the beloved third-album masterpiece. It sounds like the disaffected narrator of Modern Vampires Of The City with 11 more years of wisdom. OGWAU is definitely similar. HIPPIE/GOTH-ness has been achieved. The album-catalog-as-book, once again, evolves.

The big news of yesterday (April 8), alongside Billie Eilish announcing her new album and Morgan Wallen getting arrested on felony charges, was the solar eclipse that could be seen from parts of the United States. Music frequently accompanies some of life’s biggest moments and it did so yesterday, as Spotify’s daily charts indicate that the celestial occasion had many music fans flocking to the same classic song.

On Spotify’s Daily Top Songs Global chart dated April 8, Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” re-entered at No. 139. Given that the eclipse was a bigger deal in the US than in parts of the world where it wasn’t observable, it fared better in that territory, re-entering the Daily Top Songs USA chart at No. 36. The song earned 699,767 streams in the US yesterday and 1,355,954 globally.

Fun fact: This is the song’s second total week on both charts. Its first time making the ranks was on August 21, 2017, when a total solar eclipse could be seen in states from Oregon to South Carolina.

The song was released in 1983 as the lead single from Tyler’s fifth album, Faster Than The Speed Of Night. The song is one of Tyler’s biggest hits and her most-streamed song on Spotify with over 727 million plays.

Heart and Jimmy Fallon, by the way, performed the song on The Tonight Show yesterday, so check that out below.

Last week, Billie Eilish fans were stunned to learn that the singer apparently considered them to be a close friend: On April 4, Eilish added all 110 million of her Instagram followers to her “close friends” list, a status usually reserved for, as the list’s name suggests, close friends, people you’re more familiar with than millions of strangers who just follow you online. The stunt worked out pretty well, as Eilish gained about 5 million followers in less than a day.

All of this attention Eilish generated, it turns out, was for a specific reason: Yesterday (April 8), as the United States was enamored by the eclipse, Eilish announced a new album, Hit Me Hard And Soft.

Now that the cat is out of the bag with the album news, it looks like the “close friends” stunt is done: Pop Crave noted this morning that Eilish has removed her Instagram followers from the list. All in all, the move seemed to accomplish what it set out to by generating attention for Eilish ahead of a major announcement. As of this morning, she has over 120 million followers, so she’s gained about 10 million since the start of the “close friends” stunt.

Hit Me Hard And Soft is out 5/17 via Darkroom/Interscope Records. Find more information here.

GLENDALE — On Monday evening at State Farm Stadium, Dan Hurley and the UConn Huskies stayed true to the script they’ve written in 12 consecutive NCAA Tournament games. The Huskies were pushed for one half by the Purdue Boilermakers in the national title game but, in what has become typical fashion, UConn put its foot on the floor after halftime, zooming to a double-digit lead that would never be relinquished. The end result was a 75-60 victory and the 2024 national championship, with UConn becoming the first repeat champion in men’s college basketball since the Florida Gators in 2006 and 2007.

At the outset, both teams were energized and performing well on offense. Despite early jitters, both teams connected on 4-of-7 shots before the first media timeout, with UConn’s Cam Spencer scoring seven quick points to give the Huskies a two-point edge.

Edey flashed his considerable brilliance moments later. First, he finished a lob from Braden Smith in emphatic fashion. Edey then followed it with a pair of monstrous blocked shots on the defensive end, and then got the best of Donovan Clingan in the post for a three-point play to tie the game.

Edey scored 14 of the first 23 points for Purdue. On the other end, UConn’s offense was also flowing beautifully, and the Huskies kept pace as a result. The Huskies scored 1.4 points per possession in the first ten minutes of the game, including a seven-point mini-outburst from reserve guard Hassan Diarra.

Both Edey and Clingan took very brief rests in the first half, with each lasting less than a minute on the bench. Each absence was clearly felt, perhaps prompting the respective coaches to fix things quickly, and it added to the synergy of what was already a tightly-contested half. UConn also inched ahead with a 32-25 lead, partly due to a dry spell that saw Purdue miss six out of seven shots.

With Purdue perhaps teetering a bit, Smith put together a 5-0 mini-run for the Boilermakers, including a tough three-pointer to force a UConn timeout.

Smith’s triple also doubled as Purdue’s first long-range connection of the evening, which was notable for the nation’s second-leading team in three-point accuracy. In fact, the Boilermakers attempted only two three-pointers in the first half, perhaps illustrating the effects of UConn’s pressure. Offensively, the Huskies were led by All-American Tristen Newton, who contributed 11 points before halftime, showcasing his creativity and touch.

UConn landed the first punch out of the locker room, pushing the lead to as many as nine points. Then, an unlikely source produced the most captivating single highlight of the evening when Purdue reserve Cam Heide threw down an earth-shattering putback dunk that also happened to be his first field goal of the Final Four.

That was followed by a potentially pivotal moment in which Clingan picked up his third foul with 15:54 remaining. He went to the bench, perhaps opening the door for Purdue, but backup big man Samson Johnson had other ideas. He finished back-to-back dunks after entering the game and gave UConn a 47-34 lead in the process.

While Purdue was able to keep things in the range of 10-12 points for a few more minutes, the infamous UConn knockout blow was coming. Alex Karaban knocked down a triple and, after a miss by Purdue, the Huskies scored in transition to take a 56-40 lead with fewer than ten minutes to play.

Through the first 11 minutes of the second half, Purdue had only 10 points and three field goals, including the bizarre insistence on avoiding three-point shots. While UConn should be credited for defensive emphasis in that area, it was also clear that the Boilermakers were going to win the math battle and, with Edey cooling off after a hot start, things swung to the reigning champs. In the end, UConn led by as many as 18 points in the second half, and the result was never in doubt once UConn assumed full control.

For Purdue, the end result was not what Matt Painter nor his team wanted, but the Boilermakers enjoyed their best season in more than four decades. The Boilermakers reached the Final Four for the first time since 1980 and the national final for the first time since 1969. Edey was the consensus best player in the sport for two straight years, and that was on display on the biggest stage. While he certainly regressed as the game went along, Edey finished with 37 points and 10 rebounds, completing a tournament run in which he exceeded 20 points and 10 rebounds in all six games.

The Boilermakers simply could not keep up with the Huskies at the other four positions, leading Purdue to fall just one game short of matching Virginia’s turnaround from a first round loss to a No. 16 seed to a national title the following season. Of course, much of that can be traced to the utter dominance of UConn for a second straight tournament. Not only did UConn become the first repeat champion in 17 years, but they’re only the third repeat champion in five decades and the third No. 1 overall seed to win the national title since 2004. UConn was utterly dominant for the lion’s share of both tournaments, winning each game by double figures and covering the spread in all 12 contests, which continued in Monday’s final.

While UConn shot only 6-of-22 from three-point range, the team asserted its offensive will in other ways. Chief among them was the offensive glass, with the Huskies grabbing 14 of their own missed shots. UConn also committed only eight turnovers, flipping the possession battle in its direction, and the Huskies operated with precision to make life miserable for Purdue’s defense. The Huskies certainly had athleticism and physicality advantages on the perimeter, both on paper and in practice, but UConn also executed at an elite level on the defensive end to put its stamp on this victory.

Purdue entered the game shooting more than 40 percent from three-point range on nearly 20 attempts per contest, and that helped to boost the Boilermakers to an elite offensive profile this season. Edey did his part to score in the paint, but the Boilermakers were simply unable to create (or make) quality looks from the perimeter, making only one triple during the 40-minute game. That left Purdue without a “plan B” of sorts, allowing UConn to clamp down and maximize its talent advantage.

During the regular season, three men’s college basketball teams — UConn, Purdue, and Houston — stood above the rest. The Cougars suffered debilitating injuries, including the loss of All-American guard Jamal Shead during the tournament, and while that is unfortunate, Houston was never able to showcase its best. That left only two and, over the course of a 40-minute game on Monday and also over 12 NCAA Tournament games over two years, the UConn Huskies vaulted themselves into a different stratosphere. It was a thoroughly dominant effort on the grandest stage of the sport, and the party will continue in Storrs until practice convenes in the fall.

Camden Heide picked one heck of a way to score his first points of the Final Four. Heide, a three-star prospect in the class of 2022, has been a consistent bench option for the Purdue Boilermakers this season as the team made its run to the national championship game, and with the team needing someone to provide a spark in the second half against UConn, Heide came off the bench and did just that.

The Boilermakers trailed the Huskies by nine early on in the second half, and as is usually the case when they want an easy basket, the ball got dumped into Zach Edey. The back-to-back national player of the year shot a hook shot over Donovan Clingan that bounced off the back of the rim, but Heide read this perfectly. He flew in from the perimeter, corralled it with one hand despite needing to cock his arm back, and threw it down.

This is about as good of a putback dunk as you’ll ever see, as Heide managed to snatch this ball away from Clingan and went right over Cam Spencer to finish this one. It was also the first points he scored in the national title game, which, congratulations to him on having the best first basket in a national title game that I’ve ever seen.

In more recent decades, women have started to delay having children or decide to not have them at all. Society has been taught that women must have children when they’re in their 20s because that’s when fertility is highest. Unfortunately it’s true that fertility declines as women age, but pregnancy is still possible up until menopause.

Even if someone previously didn’t want children, with technology they have the option to change their minds much later in life. Many women have taken to the idea of having more life and career experience before brining about children. But the language around pregnancy in women over 35 is still pretty offensive.

This now more common phenomenon of waiting until later in life to have children is medically called a geriatric pregnancy, though some doctors sugar coat it by calling it “advanced maternal age.” Neither of these terms feels indicative of a warm feeling you’re expected to experience while growing a child. BBC’s The Global Story podcast blows through some pretty unfortunate misconceptions and truths about pregnancy after 35 in an interview with the Head of Reproductive Science and Sociology Group, UCL.

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The two women co-hosting the podcast are both moms who waited to have children after the magic number. While having a baby after 35 is considered geriatric, some women are having babies into their 70s. Dr. Ssali says, “last week we successfully delivered this lady who was 70 years of age of twins, a boy and a girl. Previously we had treated her with IVF, again the same process, three years ago and she conceived and delivered a baby girl.”

Of course choosing to have a baby in your 70s is well outside the normal age for childbearing, 35-50 isn’t since many of these women are still capable of natural pregnancy without intervention. A woman’s fertility decreases with age but it doesn’t go down to zero until after menopause has fully set in. If it were impossible to conceive there wouldn’t be a term called, “menopause baby,” which simply means someone became pregnant during their perimenopausal phase.

Professor Joyce Harper, the head of reproductive science and sociology explains, that while women’s eggs lose fertility over the years, the uterus never does. This is why IVF using donated eggs for older hopeful parents can be successful. The trend of later in life babies isn’t one to soon end as the age a woman births her first child increases by one year every decade.

“The average age [for first time moms] globally is 28,” Stephanie Hegarty, BBC Population Correspondent says. “60 years ago the average age was 22 and every decade it’s gone up globally by about a year.”

Hegarty expands on the thought by adding people can continue to have babies as they get older. But when it comes to why people are choosing to have children later in life, economics plays a big part in whether people decide to have children or not. Raising a child is expensive and the cost of living has only gotten more exorbitant while wages have stayed largely the same. The experts on the podcast also said girls and women becoming more educated has pushed desires for motherhood to later years.

It’s certainly something to consider when it comes to terminology. If the trend of increasing average age for women delivering their first child continues, then in another few decades, 35 will be the average age. Will we still be calling it geriatric pregnancy or advanced maternal age, then? Maybe a language change is in order before we reach that stage.

In the age of calculators and smartphones, it’s become less necessary to do math in your head than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean mental math is useless. Knowing how to calculate in your head can be handy, and if you’re lucky enough to learn mental abacus skills from a young age, it can be wicked fast as well.

Video of students demonstrating how quickly they can calculate numbers in their head are blowing people’s minds, as the method is completely foreign for many of us. The use of a physical abacus isn’t generally taught in the United States, other than perhaps a basic introduction to how it works. But precious few of us ever get to see how the ancient counter gets used for mental math.

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The concept is simple and can be taught from a young age, but it takes a bit of time and practice to perfect. Watch what it looks like for basic addition and subtraction at lightning speed, though:

See on Instagram

If you don’t know what they’re doing, it looks like students are just randomly flicking their fingers and wrists. But they are actually envisioning the abacus while they move their fingers, as if they were actually using one.

There are various methods of finger calculations that make use of abacus concepts. Watch another method that uses both hands in action:

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Even very young children can calculate large sums very quickly using these abacus-based mental math methods. Watch these little superstars add two-digit to four-digit numbers like it’s nothing.

How do they do it?

Much of the skill here requires a solid understanding of how an abacus is used to calculate and lots of practice with the physical movements of calculating with it. That’s not exactly simple to explain, as it take a couple of years of practice using an abacus—for these mental calculations, specifically the Japanese soroban abacus—to gain the skills needed to be able to calculate quickly. BBC Global shares how such practices are taught in Japan, not only for mental math but for overall cognitive memory:

Abacus mental math programs online recommend learning it between the ages of 5 to 13. It is possible to learn at older ages, but it might take longer to master compared to younger students.

But if there’s a finger method you want to try for addition and subtraction up to 99, one that’s simple and quick to learn is called chisanbop, in which ones are counted on one hand and 10s are counted on the other. Here’s an explainer video that shows how it works:

Chisanbop!

Most of us carry calculators around in our pockets with us at all time, so such practices may feel like a waste of time. But learning new skills that tax our brain is like a workout for our mind, so it’s not a bad idea to give things like this a spin. Even if we don’t learn to calculate large numbers in the blink of an eye, we can at least exercise our mental muscles to keep our brains healthier. And who knows, maybe we’ll get a party trick or two out of it as well.

Kristen Wiig made an epic return to “Saturday Night Live” this week, and along with bringing back her iconic “Aunt Linda” character, she might have created a whole new fan favorite.

In a horror trailer reminiscent of an A24 film, Chloe Fineman and Molly Kearney work up the courage to take their first pilates class. They enter an eerily dark purple room where Wiig, playing a cult-leader Pilates instructor with a fondness for weird pet names, gives them the scariest workout of their life.

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Now, look, pilates is a great form of exercise, with proven benefits for flexibility, core strength and posture. But when it comes to most pilates studios, there’s a certain…vibe. In a word, it’s intense. Anyone who’s been to a class can probably say they have a whole new relationship to discomfort.

And this sketch, along with Wiig’s performance, totally nailed all the typical pilates experience—from the intimidating reformer machines that look like they’re”designed for torture… but somehow, also sex,” to the mind boggling instructions during class (“take those ankle straps around your waist and your knee straps around your head!”) to the unbearable consequence of forgetting your special sticky socks. May god help you.

In fact, it got the seal of approval from bonafide Pilates regulars.

“As a person who has been doing pilates for over 5 years, this is 100% accurate lmao,” one viewer on Youtube wrote.

Another added, “I’ve done Pilates classes, and this made me laugh so hard because it’s all true!”

Even a staff member for a pilates studio chimed in, saying “I work the front desk at a Pilates studio and this is perfectly accurate. I laughed so hard!”

Watch “a chilling new look at girl horror” below:

And don’t forget: embrace the shake!!!

It’s a wonder that humans can get anything done because we are hard-wired to procrastinate. Whenever we consider performing a task that may be boring, unpleasant, or stressful, the brain automatically sends a signal that says why not do it “later” or “tomorrow”?

Humans are natural-born procrastinators because our old brain wants to protect us from potential danger or discomfort. So, when faced with an uncomfortable situation, our brain springs into action and suggests we do it later.

While some people are able to override this reaction, many cannot and researchers believe that around 20% are chronic procrastinators.

As we all know, this knee-jerk reaction can cause all sorts of troubles. It can make it a lot harder to be a good employee, take care of domestic responsibilities, or ensure our school work is done on time. According to Psychological Science, chronic procrastinators have higher levels of anxiety and often have inadequate retirement savings.

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It makes sense. When we put off taking care of the things we need to handle, they have a way of creeping up on us and creating a lot of anxiety.

The good news is that podcast host, author, motivational speaker and former lawyer Mel Robbins has a solution that can help many people bypass the procrastination impulse and get things done. She calls it the 5-Second Rule.

The technique just takes 3 easy steps:

1. Recognize the moment that your mind begins to make excuses and tell you that whatever you need to do—whether it’s the dishes, your homework, or having a meaningful conversation—can be put off ‘til later.
2. Start counting down in your head or out loud, “5-4-3-2-1.”
3. Begin the task once you hit the number 1.

Why does it work? Counting down transitions your brain’s function from the primitive, procrastinating midbrain to the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with decision-making. Also, by counting, your brain focuses on the numbers instead of making excuses, so nothing prevents you from starting the task.

According to Robbins, overcoming procrastination and taking care of business isn’t just about about being motivated.

“You think what you’re missing is motivation, but that’s not true,” says Robbins. “To change, to start a business, to be a better parent, a better companion, and to do all the things you want to achieve in life—you will necessarily have to go through complicated, scary and uncertain things. You’re never going to ‘feel it,’ but you can do it.”

She believes that techniques such as the 5-Second Rule allow us to regain control over our minds and bodies so we can live the lives we are truly meant to enjoy. According to Robbins, asserting control over our thoughts means “regaining confidence in yourself; fighting your fears; stopping stressing; living happier, and finally having the courage to share and defend your ideas.”

So next time you are about to start a new project but your brain tells you to first pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram, simply start counting down from 5. The desire will pass and you’ll have taken the first step toward achieving your goals and getting free from your old brain.