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Austin Monfort was hanging out at Gilley’s — a famous country music bar — in Las Vegas, Nevada on September 30, 2017, when he saw Chantal Melanson on the dance floor. He approached her and she made fun of him for not wearing cowboy boots.

Both were in Vegas for the Route 91 Harvest, a three-day country music festival from September 29 to October 1, 2017.

The two began chatting and realized there was some chemistry. “It just felt like we knew each other forever. We went to grab a bite after the bar and exchanged numbers,” Chantal told Metro.

The next day, Chantal texted Austin and they met up at the festival. The two found a spot near the stage and danced the day away with Austin’s friends.

At 10 pm, as Jason Aldean performed on stage, Stephen Paddock opened fire on the concert from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

“We thought it was fireworks at the beginning since all big concerts usually have some kind of fireworks, however when it wasn’t stopping, everyone dropped to the ground,” Chantal told Metro.

“We were on the ground across from each other so we both were looking at each other. We stayed on the ground for a while and the shots were not stopping,” she said.

“Everyone ran in different directions but Austin stayed with me and we ran together. We ran across the entire festival grounds stopping a few times to get shelter,” she added.

Fifty-nine of the festival-goers died in the shooting and 869 of the 22,000 attendees were injured. Paddock died by suicide in his hotel room.

Chantal and Austin jumped in a taxi to get to safety and saw a woman limping towards them who had been shot in the leg and the stomach. So they drove with her to the hospital.

“We stayed in the hospital overnight due to lockdown and Austin never left my side,” Chantal said. “He held me throughout the night and kept me safe. After what we had just gone through, he was my safe place.”

After the tragedy, Austin returned to his home in California and Chantal flew back to Canada, but they talked with each other every day through Facetime and quickly fell in love.

Their relationship helped them get through the trauma of living through the shooting. “We’ve dealt with everything by focusing on the positive,” Chantal said. “There was a reason we met when we did. We needed each other in this chaos.”

Six weeks later, Austin flew up to Canada to see Chantal. “And we never spent more than six weeks apart either me going to California or him Canada,” she said.

After eighteen months together Austin proposed to Chantal in Laguna Beach, California.

“He brought me to our favorite beach and there was no one around. It was perfect,” Chantal said. “His heart was beating out of his chest when he gave me a hug and he got down on one knee and proposed, followed by a beautiful three-course meal.”

Austin wore cowboy boots for the occasion as a nod to their first conversation.

For immigration reasons, Austin and Chantal had a quick courthouse wedding on November 1, 2019, but they plan to have a big celebration for both of their families soon. The couple hoped to get married in Vegas on May 8, but that’s been postponed due to coronavirus.

“It’s been a bit stressful as so much planning has gone into it with my whole family living in Canada and his California,” Chantal said.

“Okay, but hear me out: Ew.” —Me trying to reason with the directors of these films.

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It’s basically the “feels so good to be bad” starter kit. 😈👑🍎🐚

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“Normal it will not be, at least until we have herd immunity and we have a vaccine,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.

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One major question that exists regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is how many people have actually been impacted by the virus. Whether it be individuals who fell ill but never got their case confirmed or were asymptomatic carriers, scientists are still trying their best to get as much information as possible to map out the best possible plan for combatting this novel coronavirus.

Major League Baseball wants to play a role in helping this question get answered. According to Jeff Passan of ESPN, the league will participate in a study Stanford University, USC, and the Sports Medicine Research and Testing Laboratory will run in the coming days. As Passan explained, these researchers are looking for a pair of antibodies that form after someone has COVID-19 in their system — one is produced early on in the process of combatting the virus, while the other stays in a person’s body after they have recovered.

Those involved with the study stressed that this is not happening as part of a plan to fast-track MLB’s hopes of playing game as soon as possible. Via ESPN:

The goal of the study is to get a better sense of the virus’ true infection rate by utilizing a nationwide sample. The speed with which MLB coordinated logistics and ensured participation from a wide range of people, including players, front-office staff, concession workers and others, made it the right choice for the study, according to doctors running it.

An important thing to note here is that these — which are done via a finger prick and take a sample of a person’s blood — are different from the ones needed to diagnose the virus. Molly Knight of The Athletic reported that three unspecified teams will not participate in the study, while one of the doctors at the helm of all this praised MLB for its willingness to hop on board and speed up a process that would normally take a long, long time.

“This will be the first time we will be able to see how truly prevalent COVID-19 has spread throughout the United States,” Dr. Jar Bhattacharya said. “And instead of it taking years to pull together a study of this scope, especially with stay-at-home orders, MLB has helped us turn it around in a matter of weeks.”

This is not the only similar study occurring to try and get some insight into the scope of the virus, as the National Institute of Health announced its desire to find 10,000 volunteers to get a sense of how many Americans have built up antibodies to COVID-19. As for when games can resume, that is still a big unknown, as there has been no update on whether or not MLB will be able to move forward with its proposed plan for a bubble league in Arizona.

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Hey all you cool cats and kittens out there. It’s hard to remember the last time a documentary became such a global phenomenon that it dominated the conversation for weeks after it was released and infiltrated nearly every aspect of our culture. Yet here we are, and the world still can’t seem to get enough of the completely batsh*t crazy Netflix sensation Tiger King.

And there’s good reason for that. Not only is it one of the strangest and most relentlessly entertaining spectacles in recent memory, it came into our lives at the perfect cultural moment as the world went on lock-down amid the coronavirus pandemic, trapping us in our homes and making us desperate for a distraction.

Just when you thought the craze might be slowing down a bit, your favorite characters are up to their old tricks again, this time in the form of an NBA 2K simulation courtesy of YouTube user 2K Toro.

Joe Exotic, Jeff Lowe, Doc Antle, and of course, the inimitable Carole Baskin are all featured here in a matchup between, naturally, Team Exotic and Team Baskin.

The documentary has been such a phenomenon that it actually prompted officials to reopen the investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Baskin’s husband, Don Lewis. There is also reportedly a film or television series in the works based on these characters and events. The main takeaway is that we haven’t heard the last of this. Not by a long shot.

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We don’t usually share 16-second teasers for a limited series based on a character who was created in the 1930s, but we’ll make an exception for Perry Mason.

HBO’s Perry Mason has a killer cast, led by Matthew Rhys (The Americans), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), John Lithgow, and Shea Whigham; also, the brief teaser was shared in the thirstiest way possible. “Matthew Rhys can peek into my window any night of the week,” HBO’s official account tweeted, which, can you blame them?

Robert Downey, Jr., who’s producing the series through his and his wife Susan’s Team Downey production company, got in on the fun, too, tweeting, “I know it’s Tuesday because I’m still wearing my Sunday pajamas. I ALSO know a way to get an exclusive sneak peek at PERRY MASON. All my love, DSB (double-scrub Bob).” Here’s more:

[T]he reimagined Perry Mason is set in 1932 Los Angeles. While the rest of the country recovers from the Great Depression, this city is booming! Oil! Olympic Games! Talking Pictures! Evangelical Fervor! And a child kidnapping gone very, very wrong! Based on characters created by Erle Stanley Gardner, the limited series follows the origins of American Fiction’s most legendary criminal defense lawyer, Perry Mason. When the case of the decade breaks down his door, Mason’s relentless pursuit of the truth reveals a fractured city and just maybe, a pathway to redemption for himself.

Perry Mason premieres later this year.