Category: News

This article originally appeared on 03.15.16

As a parent, it sometimes feels like you’re supposed to be fueled entirely by selfless love and a “spiritual connection” to your children.

But you know what? You matter, too! And there’s nothing wrong with needing a little soul-nourishment that doesn’t end with you on your knees scrubbing barf out of the carpet.

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Yes, it’s possible to love your kids deeply but also be a little overwhelmed by what your life has become. It’s totally normal to need a little more than just love to keep yourself going.

With that in mind, here are 10 things all parents can agree on about the tiny, but hardly insignificant, pleasures of the daily parent-grind.

1. You’ve determined that one and a half is the perfect number of drinks.

Perfection.

Drinking alcohol is fun! It’s also a brief reminder of what it used to be like when you were allowed to have adult fun. But each drink also increases the amount it will suck if and when the kids wake up early or in the middle of the night.

The magic number usually tends to be around two drinks, less the half beer left sitting on your night stand after you’ve just given up and passed out, netting a perfect 1.5.

2. You hate washing dishes, but you love that warm dishwater.

Washing dishes while holding baby? Parenting level: expert.

Children are basically mystical fairies that fill your home with dirty dishes while you aren’t looking.

Washing those dishes is an endless, thankless chore, but at least soaking your hands in the hot, frothy water feels kind of nice.

3. You know that silence really is golden.

…

No, no, don’t ruin it. Just listen.

Ahhh…

4. You don’t drive just to get places.

Most people think cars are just motorized hunks of metal that take you from Point A to Point B.

Parents know that they are, in fact, complex machines designed to make children fall asleep while you pick up dinner at the drive-through, or even just drive aimlessly through an area without a lot of stoplights.

5. You cherish the days where nothing happens.

Getting up, going to work, eating dinner, and going to bed. That’s all we really want.

Any day where no one gets sick, injured, or inexplicably, inconsolably cranky is a success.

6. You also love Mondays. (Really.)

Having a young child is kind of like making a bomb out of household items and carrying it around with you. Even if you’re really careful, there’s a chance it might explode.

Monday (for many of us) means dropping the kids at school or daycare where, short of severe injury or illness, anything that happens after that is their problem.

7. You have a new appreciation for waking up naturally.

I barely remember what this feels like..

Being kissed awake by the sun’s heavenly rays is so rare that when it does happen, you assume your child must have died in their sleep. But once you confirm that all’s well and melt back into a peaceful slumber, there’s no better feeling in the world.

8. You know that hot showers are everything.

See: Warm dishwater, silence.

9. You hang out with other parents to put everything into perspective.

Hanging around a bunch of parents is amazing. Everyone’s wearing sweats, no one’s in shape, and showering is totally optional. Everyone’s just trying to get by, OK?

And if you have to go home because your kid’s having a meltdown, they’re all too busy cutting food into small pieces or monitoring timeout to give you the side-eye.

10. You drink coffee like it is the source of all life.

Drinking coffee doesn’t really have the same effect as getting more sleep, but it’s possible to convince yourself otherwise. Sometimes, though, you’ll drink coffee too late in the day and have trouble sleeping.

The only solution to that? Yep. More coffee.

Being a parent is hard. It’s OK to admit it.

It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. It doesn’t matter if you’re sick. It doesn’t matter if it’s your birthday. It doesn’t even matter if you’re tired and sick ON your birthday. (And you will be.)

At least, that’s how it can feel.

But psychiatrist Gail Saltz told TODAY Parents, “You have to put your oxygen mask on first,” so to speak. “If you go to pieces, everyone is going down with you.”

That’s why we’re all so desperate for that spa day or for a beer with friends. But it might be a while before we can get one on the books.

In the meantime, it pays to look for the little moments in between that give us the juice we need to keep going.

This article originally appeared on 07.01.16

Some 300 million people live in the United States. And over 40 million of them are immigrants.

Now, some people might have you believe that too many immigrants might cause us to lose our identity as Americans or that we ought to be fighting and clinging to “the way things were.”

But if you look around, you’ll see that more than 1 in 10 Americans were born somewhere else — meaning they have their own unique set of amazing experiences to share and their own amazing stories about why they’re here.

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They each have their own ideas about what being an American means to them, too. And they each have their own reasons for celebrating American independence on the Fourth of July.

So if you want to feel proud, excited, and maybe even a teensy bit emotional about being an American this July Fourth, this one’s for you.

Meet five immigrants from all over the country (and all over the world!) who are showing their American pride in many, many shades of red, white, and blue this year.

1. Nayeli Ruvalcaba’s Fourth of July is full of traditional Mexican food and mariachi music.

Ruvalcaba, who was born in Mexico but moved to Chicago when she was 4, spent her early childhood in a mostly caucasian neighborhood called Lakeview. There, she says the Fourth of July was pretty much what you’d expect.

“Everyone would be making ribs and burgers and mac and cheese. And my dad would be drinking Budweisers and Coors Light,” she said with a laugh.

Nayeli with her parents.

But when she was 16, she moved to a more diverse area of the city filled with families from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Poland.

There, she says, their holidays are much more vibrant. Neighbors gather in the alleys and share their customs and cultures with one another. They sing along with music (her boyfriend, who is in a mariachi band, often gets the party going). They play games. And then there’s the food: Nayeli says she loves to chow down on delicious Fourth of July dishes like arrachera (a Mexican skirt steak), polish sausage, guacamole, and, of course, burgers.

“I know it’s an American holiday,” she says. “Buteveryone has their own culture. You just mix it in with what everyoneelse does.”

Nayeli and her boyfriend in full mariachi get-up!

2. Johanna Dodd and her family celebrate their Fourth of July the “old fashioned way” but with a small U.K.-based twist.

A one-year work contract for her husband brought the Dodds to Connecticut from the U.K. years ago. 12 years later, they’re still here.

The Dodds!

On their Fourth of July, she says, “We tend to do what everyone else in town does. We’ll head to the fireworks display with our cooler packed full of food, and, occasionally, we’ll sneak in some alcohol.”

Sounds pretty American to me!

Johanna’s young daughter watches the fireworks.

“The kids run around, there’s lots of glow sticks, lots of football (both kinds) being played, lots of fun stuff happening. As it gets darker, there’s the national anthem, and then out come the fireworks.”

But there is one slightly British twist to the Dodds’ holiday: “We don’t really do the tailgating thing. We bring what we would call ‘an English tea.’ There’s watermelon, yogurts, cheese sandwiches. Kind of a mishmash of both cultures.”

3. Martin Matthews says he never misses a Fourth of July parade and for a powerful reason.

Matthews was 8 years old when he first came to America to escape a civil war in his home country of Liberia. One of his first memories? A huge Fourth of July parade in New Jersey.

“I had never seen anything like that. The flags, the drums, everything. I remember watching in awe.”

Martin with his wife.

He returned to Africa later on but came back to live in America again when fighting broke out in his home country. And when he returned, that big parade stuck in his memory.

“I always loved that about America. It was a place I could be safe. A place I could enjoy freedom,” he said. “To celebrate the independence of the United States holds a deep place in my heart.”

These days, Martin is big on having barbecues with friends to celebrate Independence Day. There are a lot of burgers and hot dogs, but he’ll sometimes mix in traditional African dishes, too, like African-style kabobs, to introduce his friends to his heritage.

“It’s a big thing in Africa for people to put fish on the grill, like the whole fish,” he added. “You put the whole thing on there. It was the first time some of my American friends had ever tried fish on the grill that wasn’t salmon.”

But his favorite thing about the holiday is still the parades. “We get there early and wave our American flags. Every year I always wear some kind of American shirt. We sit there and watch everything. It’s my way of saying thanks to my adopted country.”

4. Jay Pockyarath mixes cricket with an American-style barbecue on Independence Day.

“Ever since I was in eighth grade, all I wanted to do was come to the United States,” he told Upworthy. After finishing college in India, he finally got the chance when studying nuclear medicine at the University of Michigan. From there, he married an American woman and started a family.

“The thing that works [in America] is that it’s a meritocracy,” Pockyarath said. “July Fourth is a celebration of that, in my mind. Of independence. Of the freedom to succeed.”

Jay, who was born in India, proudly flies an American flag outside his home for July Fourth.

Pockyarath has lived in the United States for over 40 years, so it’s no surprise that his holiday celebration looks pretty familiar: steak, hamburgers, and hot dogs on the grill. To him, what’s really important is spending time with family.

“Usually we make up games,” he laughed. “We play cricket — not the way it’s supposed to be played, but with a tennis ball. We make up our own rules.”

5. Natalia Paruz is originally from Israel, and she decorates everything in red, white, and blue.

Natalia is now a musician in New York City.

“First I came here with my parents [about 20 years ago] for a year. At the end of the year, they went back to Israel, and I wanted to stay here,” she told Upworthy.

Now she works as a musician in New York City. And she absolutely, positively loves the Fourth of July.

“It’s a really fun day. It’s a day where you can put politics aside. It’s a day for celebrating the joy of this country.”

Natalia and her husband host friends every year for a big meal. “I love decorating the house for the holiday with the flags. There’s always a big flag hanging from the flagpole. In the back, that’s where I really go all out. Every tree gets some kind of decoration!”

“We make hot dogs, hamburgers — how can you not?” she said. “We also make tahini, which is a traditional Israeli food. It’s made of sesame seeds and it becomes a paste and you spread it on pita bread. Our friends here love it.”

Natalia says an overabundance of food “as if you’re going to entertain a bunch of soldiers” is a nod to her Israeli roots.

This year, she’s going out with friends to watch fireworks. “I wear a T-shirt that has an American flag on it and a bracelet with the colors of the flag. If you’re celebrating, you might as well go to the maximum.”

It turns out, celebrating America means different things to different people. And that’s kind of the point.

In my mind, the only thing better than a Fourth of July party filled with burgers, steaks, beer, and fireworks is a Fourth of July party filled with all of those things plus Mexican food and African music and “English tea” and tahini and mariachi bands and more.

So whether we choose to embrace the “American way” of celebrating Independence Day (red meat and fireworks) or to use it as a chance to celebrate the unique melting pot of culture that is our country today or something in between, I think we can all agree that the America we have now is already pretty great.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Chris Evans is PEOPLE‘s new Sexiest Man Alive. He succeeds fellow Marvel man Paul Rudd and also agreed to share his title with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who maintains that he will hold the title “in perpetuity” after his official 2016 reign. John Oliver pretended to be very unhappy when the Evans announcement surfaced on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, so what are the criteria for this achievement?

Well, there are no set guidelines for this declaration from PEOPLE. At times, it seems that a recipient might have a particular project to promote, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for Evans, who’s been slowing the heck down after a lengthy Captain America run and is currently working on that Amazon Christmas movie with The Rock. However, CNN did speak with PEOPLE Editor-in-Chief Dan Wakeford, who revealed that the process “this year” was that “we really wanted to choose somebody who is kind, and who is good and is nice.”

Obviously, the man in question should also be deemed objectively and subjectively sexy, and from there, Wakeford continued:

“There are so many different variables and ways of approaching it,” Wakeford said. “A starting point often is, when we want to make a decision, is to think about the zeitgeist, think about what is sexy at the moment. What do people find appealing at the moment? … We have more than 90 million consumers a month stepping into the People brand, so we’ve got a lot of data at our fingertips.”

In other words, PEOPLE will do their thing however they wish, but Evans seems like a solid pick! And as also revealed in the cover story, his mom gave her approval, so the deal is sealed.

(Via CNN)

Snoop Dogg’s Death Row Pictures production company offshoot of Death Row Records will have its first film and it’s set to be a Snoop Dogg biopic in conjunction with Universal Pictures. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the biopic is in development and it’ll be directed by Menace II Society and Dead Presidents Director Allen Hughes. The heavyweight team behind the film also includes Black Panther: Wakanda Forever writer Joe Robert Cole. Snoop Dogg, who will also be one of the film’s producers, explained in a statement that he was looking for the right combination of filmmakers to materialize before embarking on a biopic project.

“I waited a long time to put this project together because I wanted to choose the right director, the perfect writer, and the greatest movie company I could partner with that could understand the legacy that I’m trying to portray on screen, and the memory I’m trying to leave behind. It was the perfect marriage. It was holy matrimony, not holy macaroni.”

Despite the announcement and the confirmation of Hughes and Cole’s involvement, the project appears to still be in the very early stages. With that, there’s no word yet in regard to the cast, or who could potentially portray Snoop Dogg in the film. Lakeith Stanfield played Snoop in the N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton, and Stanfield reprising that role would be a dream for both rap heads and movie buffs

One word oftentimes surfaces in reviews of Philly-based four piece Palm‘s discography: innovation. The band’s dizzying style makes it hard to pin down their genre, but they have been labeled math rock, art rock, and avant-pop. But however you describe their sound, it’s clear they push the indie rock envelope — and their third studio album Nicks And Grazes is no different.

The band, made up of members Eve Alpert, Kasra Kurt, Gerasimos Livitsanos, and Hugo Stanley, first formed in 2015 with little previous music experience and one shared goal: to re-imagine the structure of a song. Throughout the band’s catalog, you can hear varying time signatures that switch up in the same track and a patchwork of instruments. But for their Nicks And Grazes LP, Palm added an electronic edge. After spending years mastering the software Ableton, the band were able to further their experimentation. The new 13-track project features songs ranging from 50-seconds to just over 6-minutes and manages to manipulate influences like Japanese pop music and dubstep through an indie rock lens. Their song “Feathers,” for example, juxtaposes dissonant samples with Alpert’s honeyed vocals to create a soundscape that’s both jarring and inviting.

To celebrate their album’s release and current tour, Palm drummer Hugo Stanley sat down with Uproxx to talk oysters, Slint, and Wayne’s World in our latest Q&A.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Goopy, pointy, cold, warm.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

Playful discovery music.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

Maybe Chicago or San Francisco.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work?

Each other.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

It’s impossible to answer but we just had some amazing oysters in Portland, Maine.

What album do you know every word to?

When i actually think about it, very few. Beatles’ Revolver or something.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

Maybe Slint in 2014 in Asbury Park, New Jersey or Neil Young and Patti Smith in New York a couple years earlier.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

Something baggy.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

@insportadas on Instagram.

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

“Choices” by E40.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

“Guy freaks out at trumpeter.”

What album makes for the perfect gift?

John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

A bunker in a supermarket parking lot in Toronto or this crazy squat in St. Louis called Bolozone.

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

I have none.

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

Nirvana or Justin Bieber.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Our friend Kristine helped me move from Philly to NYC recently, that was really nice.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Listen to your body.

What’s the last show you went to?

Ours last night. Before this tour, I saw our friend Sammy Weissberg perform some of his compositions as well as the band in a West Philly basement. It was great.

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

Wayne’s World.

What’s one of your hidden talents?

I don’t know if I still got it but I used to be pretty nice at pogo sticking.

Nicks And Grazes is out now via Saddle Creek. Get it here.

While discussing the emotional process of making Black Panther: Wakanda Forever following the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman, writer/director Ryan Coogler has opened up about another struggle presented by the Marvel sequel: He didn’t know how to swim. With the film focusing on Wakanda’s epic struggle with Namor and the forces of the underwater kingdom of Taloka, several of the film’s scenes required heavy amounts of aquatic filming.

Unlike James Cameron, who kind of threw his Avatar actors in the deep end and forced them to learn how to hold their breath for minutes at a time, Coogler waded in with the cast and took swimming lessons for the first time in his mid-30s. “If the camera’s in the water, actors are in the water, I’ve got to be in there too,” Coogler told Variety as part of a larger discussion about how Black people have been historically excluded from swimming:

“A lot of us were raised to have fear of water,” the 36-year-old filmmaker told Variety, admitting his own trepidation and evoking the various reasons Black people have avoided — or ways they’ve been excluded — from pools and the ocean over the years. “I had to figure out how to swim so I could direct this movie.”

Fortunately, Coogler wasn’t alone in his struggle. While Angela Bassett and Lupita Nyong’o knew how to swim “a little bit,” the two also required instruction for Wakanda Forever‘s underwater filming. Their presence helped Coogler as he quickly became comfortable in the water and literally dove in to produce a blockbuster experience that’s been earning rave reviews.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters on November 11.

(Via Variety)

For Lourdes Leon, being Madonna’s daughter comes with its share of preconceived notions. But the 26-year-old is blazing her own path as both a model who has been a part of Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty Show and now as a recording artist who goes by Lolahol.

Some things are just ingrained in your DNA though and in her latest video for “C*ntradiction,” Lourdes (Lolahol) channels her mother’s most provocative moments. Filmed in an equestrian stable, Lourdes doesn’t leave much to the imagination donning a skimpy skin-tight string number atop a white horse. She then changes into a black corset atop a banquet table and hanging on ropes, and then a body-wrapping white tank top as she sashays in the middle of the barn. The song has a sinister beat that seems inspired by Portishead trip-hop with a pop lean. It was even mastered by Grammy winner Joe Laporta.

“C*ntradiction” is a part of Lolahol’s debut EP, Go, which came out today. Meanwhile, Madonna has been on the radar as of late following a wild appearance on The Tonight Show, coming out as gay in a strange TikTok video, and being trolled by 50 Cent who said she looks like an alien.

Go is out now via Chemical X Records.

Of 2022’s 50 best TV shows so far, as ranked by Metacritic, only one is on the Big Four of television networks: ABC’s Abbott Elementary. The rest is all streaming or cable. But Abbott Elementary isn’t just an Emmy-winning critical favorite: it’s also a huge hit. According to Deadline, the season two premiere is “now ABC’s highest-rated comedy telecast in three years,” since the Modern Family series finale.

After 35 days of multi-platform viewing, the September episode is now up to a 4.12 rating among the 18-49 demographic, according to the network. That’s 73 percent higher than the Season 1 premiere’s 2.38 rating and 623 percent higher than the episode fared in live+same day. It marks the largest delayed-viewing increase for any ABC comedy in terms of demo ratings.

Deadline also reports that “the episode has managed to collect an additional audience of 7.5 million, which is more than double its 2.9 million live+same day viewers,” meaning it’s up “10.4 million viewers across linear and digital platforms.” Abbott Elementary is a hit among both traditionalists who still watch TV live and modern cord cutters; that’s something few comedies (or any non-NCIS show, honestly) on network TV can claim.

Abbott Elementary is off this week, but it will return with a new episode on the 16th.

(Via Deadline)

It’s now clear that 2022 is not the year of cryptocurrency. NFTs have cratered in value, crypto companies continue to struggle and even a proposed merger of two major companies in an effort to keep one solvent might be evaporating as you read this. It’s kind of wild to think how quickly things have changed. It was just February when the world was awash in crypto ads, flooding the Super Bowl and billboards and basically anywhere startups could advertise that they could sell you Ethereum. Even NFTs were still a thing people talked about in mixed company.

It seems we’re a world away from that now, though. As of Tuesday, crypto trader FTX was on the brink of collapse with a competitor, Binance, on the verge of acquiring it just to keep it afloat. As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, the deal was a last-ditch effort to keep thousands of crypto investors from losing it all.

As news spread of FTX’s collapse, crypto markets took a battering, with Bitcoin and Ether both dropping more than 15 percent since Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Mr. Bankman-Fried framed the Binance takeover as a measure to ensure that FTX customers did not lose their money. But the deal is not finalized and its exact terms remain unsettled, leaving open the possibility that FTX’s hundreds of thousands of customers could lose their funds and set off another crash in crypto prices.

That deal, though, might not actually go through. As Coindesk reported later Wednesday, Binance started “strongly” considering backing out of the deal once their executives actually got a look inside FTX’s finances. Which is to say, well, they might actually be worse than first thought.

Binance’s nonbinding letter of intent for the takeover – announced Tuesday as FTX’s financial position appeared to be spiraling out of control – hinged on Binance performing due diligence. Roughly half a day into that process of reviewing FTX’s internal data and loan commitments has led Binance to strongly lean against completing the transaction, the person said.

So what does this mean? Well, if you’re investing in crypto right now, your portfolio may be at risk. News of the merger falling apart caused prices of crypto to dip further on Wednesday, and an actual liquidation of FTX would be a disaster for thousands of investors, including founder Sam Bankman-Fried. And that’s true of some major figures who invested heavily in the market and even promoted crypto back in the salad days of [checks calendar] several months ago. Like, well, Tom Brady. As Gizmodo points out, Brady had apparently invested big in crypto as part of his post-retirement plans.

Back in 2021 Tom Brady and his then wife, Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen, reportedly planted a large stake into the FTX crypto exchange, after having already announced a partnership with FTX and its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried back in 2020. As brand ambassadors, the two gained an unknown equity stake in the company in exchange for crypto, likely FTX’s native coin FTT.

Brady, that means, could be taking a bath on his investment right now, unless he offloaded his assets before things got dicey in the last few weeks. But another big name might actually have made out better than anyone else: Larry David. David, of course, got the proverbial bag in actually starring in the commercial. And the longform message of the commercial is to not “be like Larry David.” But on Wednesday, with news of a Binance/FTX merger on the ropes, plenty of folks on social media were sharing just a small clip from that very expensive commercial from just eight months earlier. Namely, the part where the Curb star was very skeptical.

While Brady definitely had some crypto from his brand ambassadorship with FTX, it doesn’t seem like David was actually saddled with the volatile currency. In a Hollywood Reporter interview with longtime David creative collaborator Jeff Schaffer after the ad debuted in February, payment methods actually came up. And though they apparently asked, everyone involved in that spot got cold hard cash for their efforts.

“We did ask about getting paid in crypto, but I don’t think they were set up for it for us, which was fine,” Schaffer said. “But we definitely did ask.”

In hindsight, it’s a very good thing that they got USD instead of whatever it is FTX may have paid them in. Otherwise, David might have been making a few frantic phone calls this week trying to get out from under what’s starting to look like a very unstable market.

Joe Berlinger continues to turn true-crime TV on its head. The Metallica: Some Kind of Monster helmer previously dramatized Ted Bundy (portrayed by Zac Efron in Extremely Evil, Shockingly Wicked and Vile) before launching the Crime Scene series of miniseries (what a set of words) on Netflix. We previously spoke to Berlinger about the spooky mysteries housed within Crime Scene: Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel. The series continued with The Times Square Killer installment, and now, The Texas Killing Fields, which is executive produced by Berlinger, is nearly upon us.

Over the course of three episodes, the season will take a similar approach to the rest of the seasons, which treat a crime scene like an actual character in the story. And do expect a based-in-fact approach to the 1980s-90s disappearance of four (individual) girls who somehow wound up dead alongside the interstate corridor in between Houston and Galveston. When the trails go cold, one father continued to seek answers, not only for his family but other families who are similarly and tragically affected. All grow frustrated by seemingly dropped balls in these Calder Road cold cases

At this time, the FBI continues to welcome any tips they might receive from people who dig into these still-unsolved murders. And as the below trailer indicates, family members have accused investigators of doing “their best to convince me that I had lost my damn mind” and mishandling/misplacing evidence. We’ll see those accusations unfold on November 29. You can see the Texas Killing Fields docuseries trailer below.