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Building a palate for tasting whiskey — or anything for that matter — takes time. There’s simply no getting around that. There are no shortcuts. There are no insider “tricks.” You have to put in the work, period. Because a well-developed palate is where technique meets training meets time. So let’s talk about actually building a whiskey palate.

Building a whiskey palate is about activating flavor receptors on your tongue. It’s about smell receptors in your olfactory and your brain translating them to something you recognize (you cannot crave something you’ve never eaten/drunk before). Whiskey has a makeup of a lot of chemicals — terpenes, esters, fatty acids, etc. — that produce about a thousand different flavor notes in any given pour. The number of flavor notes from those chemical compounds that you can detect and translate into a smell, a flavor, or a memory depends on how activated your palate is via your olfactory and taste buds and that’s based on what you’ve actually experienced in your life.

Look, I don’t want to be indelicate, but the blander your life and eating habits are, the fewer smell and flavor notes you’ll be able to find in a whiskey. It’s that simple. The more exposure you give yourself to life, the more you’ll be able to enjoy the nuances within it. That’s science, not my philosophy.

It’s also important to remember that smell is paramount in all of this. About 80 percent of everything you taste is actually based on what you can smell. Vanilla, for instance, has no taste. It’s all about the smell, which might blow some minds out there. But again, this is science. You can run this experiment at home if you’re incredulous. Simply pinch your nose completely shut and taste some Coke or super hoppy IPA or your favorite whiskey (making sure not to smell it first). I’ll wait.

The flavor should be almost gone, except for the bitterest parts of the IPA (which links to our ancestral need to identify “bitter” as “poisonous”). Very broadly, our tongue tastes basic notes: Umami, sweet, savory, bitter, sour. Our olfactory and Rolodex of flavors, smells, and experiences filed away in our brains translate those base flavors into, say, mushrooms, vanilla, soy sauce, bitter orange, and sour fruit. And then how those flavors express themselves on your palate (and in your mind) — butter-fried chanterelles, sushi rice soaked in soy sauce, vanilla pound cake, Campari, sour cherry pie — are only there and that specific if you’ve experienced those things before.

My point is, building a palate is more than just eating some good food and tasting a couple of hundred whiskeys — though you need to do that too. It’s about creating a full sensory experience in your memory bank and muscle memory that your brain can pull from to identify the massive amount of flavor notes that are chemically floating around in a glass of whiskey.

Below, I’m going to go through some of the things I’ve done to expand my palate and some of the things I’m doing currently. Hopefully, it’ll inspire you to take a chance and go out there and expand your palate too. And who am I to expound on all of this? Well, I make my living based on my palate and have for a long time. I probably should get it insured by Llyods of London or something, shouldn’t I?

Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months

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• We Blind Tasted Classic Bourbons And Were Shocked By The Winner
• The Best-Known Basic Bottles Of Bourbon, Blind Tasted And Ranked
• All The Double Gold-Winning Straight Bourbons From This Year’s San Francisco World Spirits Competition

PART I — Continue To Build Your Palate With Everything You Do

Very simply, you need to live more, eat more, drink more, and experience more to expand and grow your palate. For instance, being afraid of experiencing food from a different culture that’s outside of your norm means that you’ll never have a memory of the flavors or smells that food or drink is associated with. That means that, in turn, you’ll never be able to find similar flavor notes in a whiskey. In very basic terms, if you’ve never eaten funky creamy gorgonzola, you’re never going to find that note in a punchy Chianti or a cognac-finished 15-year-old bourbon.

I was extremely lucky as a child. I lived on a 10-acre working farm with a fruit orchard and 1/4-acre garden, Scottish Highlander cows, hogs, chickens, barn cats, and farm dogs right on the Salish Sea. I grew up foraging in the Olympic Mountains, fishing in the Pacific, and hunting for wild game. I rarely ate processed or boxed food. It was an experiential wonderland. And look, I was still allowed to go to Dairy Queen and McDonald’s. It wasn’t a cult farm situation — I had Taco Tuesdays in elementary school too.

I also had chores. Stacking bales of hay, polishing my dad’s boots, splitting firewood, mowing acres of lawn, washing the cars, and feeding animals. At the same time, I grew up in cafe kitchens that my grandmother owned. I was sorting lettuce leaves and sandwich rolls when I was five. Half of my family are Eastern European immigrants who cooked foods you find in Poland, Russia, Germany, and Lithuania. The other half is Indigenous folks from the Olympic Peninsula where gooey duck, oysters, elk, chanterelles, and wild huckleberries reigned supreme (amongst a million other things).

The point of all this is that I had a lucky childhood that started building a palate on my senses and in my brain before I ever knew what a freakin’ palate was. Those sense memories stick with me to this day and they inform what I taste when a eat or drink anything.

All of that is just my childhood. I could get into what 20 years of living abroad and traveling to somewhere around 80 countries added to my “well of experiences” too. Each stop was a new experience, a new smell, a new taste for the ol’ brain to file away that, in turn, informs my palate to this day. What I tasted in a pour of Wild Turkey 101 while living in Berlin is extremely different than what I taste in the exact same pour living in northern Kentucky. The air is different. The trees are different. My diet is different. The barometric pressure is different. The water is different.

All of this adds up. It’ll add up in your life too and already has throughout your entire life.

How do you continue to expand and build your palate and your brain’s memory of smells and tastes? Take the time to actually stop and smell the air. Taste the water. Feel the barometric pressure in the space around you. All of this makes a difference. Only you can build your palate. And you can only do that by taking the time to experience things.

To really build a pro palate, you cannot be afraid of new flavors, new experiences, or new smells. No one likes blue cheese or whiskey or vegemite the first time they try it. But over time, your palate expands, your brain creates new connections that it can translate, and then those flavors start to become tolerable, then they’re fine, and then, over time, they become desirable. That only happens if you put in the effort to expand your palate by eating, drinking, and experiencing the world around you.

Okay, let’s get into more direct ways that you can actually do some of this in the whiskey sphere.

PART II — Find A Whiskey And Food Pairing Experience Locally

The fastest way to test your new and expanding palate is to go to you a local whiskey bar for a food and whiskey pairing. Very generally, good high-end whiskey bars will have a deep calendar of events wherein great chefs will build entire tasting menus around a whiskey flight or two.

The beauty of joining a whiskey and food pairing is that you can expand your palate while also testing what you already have working on your palate. You can find new flavors while linking them to a pour of whiskey in real-time. That means a good pairing is often just as much about revelation as it is about sharpening already existing palate skills.

Naturally, this will depend on where you live. Still, it’s much easier to find a good whiskey bar in 2022 than it was even five years ago. If you’re in Seattle, The Ballard Cut is the place you want to be. Check their calendar here. If you’re in DC, Jack Rose Dining Saloon is the place to expand your palate and test your mettle. Bardstown Bourbon Company in Bardstown, Kentucky offers a great food program next to a wide array of bourbons that touch on old and new. Dead Rabbit in NYC, Delilah’s in Chicago, Seven Grand Austin, the list goes on and on.

PART III — Go To Whisky Shows And Taste Everything You Can

One of the other easiest things you can do right now is to go to whiskey events. Consumer events like Whisky Live!, Kentucky Bourbon Festival, and Bourbon & Beyond, to name only a few, are great places to experience whiskey and expand your palate in multiple ways.

Events like Whisky Live! (which had a show in Nashville this summer), are buy-in events where you pay a single fee and then can sample as much whiskey as you can, with a free buffet lunch to boot. Huge brands like Michter’s and Gordon & McPhail bring amazing bottles and simply pour them. The Kentucky Bourbon Festival is the same thing but, naturally, with a bourbon-only focus. These places also have experts there to talk to you, talk about taste, talk about process, and talk about the whiskey world in general, talk about food … talk about life.

It’s a great way to both meet people in the industry, but also get a sense of what’s out there. You can taste and ponder and taste again. The best part is there’s often good local food very nearby as well, which helps you expand your palate in non-liquid ways too.

PART IV — Go To Distilleries And Take Part In Tastings

This is probably the most obvious. But almost every distillery that’s open to the public will have a tasting room.

My advice is to start locally. You don’t need to jump on a flight to Scotland or Kentucky to get started. Though that’s always a fun time if you do. Google your local distilleries and book a guided tasting. The distillery pros will help you understand the basic flavor notes in their whiskeys and also what makes them so prominent.

This is also another chance to experience the world around the distillery. What does it smell like when you walk in? What do the trees and bushes around the warehouse smell like? What’s the air like? What do the barrels smell like? All of these things add to the overall experience and you take them with you when you open that whiskey again back at home.

The more distilleries that you experience, the more sensory memories you’ll have. Then when you do make it to Scotland or Ireland or Kentucky, you’ll have a frame of reference. Plus, you’ll be adding in more sensory memories for your palate to experience yet again. The heather of the Scottish Highlands will finally pop on those scotches, the depth of this Kentucky rickhouses will sneak into the nose of your favorite bourbon, and you’ll start to sense the nuances of the place on the palate of your favorite dram in ways you never could have imagined (literally).

It all builds on and on with the more you do.

PART V — Free Your Mind

This is probably the most important aspect of building a palate. Besides some real DNA-related taste conundrums like cilantro aversion and super-tasters, you have to open your mind to tasting/experiencing everything you can.

Working in the industry for basically a decade now both behind the bar at very high-end cocktail bars and in the industry as a professional spirits judge, writer, and consultant, I can tell you that the biggest thing that gets in people’s way of experiencing and tasting whiskey (and anything else for that matter) is their own pre-conceived notions.

People have a great tenacity for convincing themselves they don’t like something and will refuse to try it or budge on that point. I’ve seen a lot of people refuse to even try something at all because someone they know didn’t like it one time. It’s baffling and stops you from building your own palate. Yes, this is anecdotal but I taste enough whiskey around enough different people to have seen some version of this over and over again. It’s ridiculous.

That’s not to say everything is great and amazing. My grandfather had an old axiom that I still live by to this day. “Always try everything twice just in case someone fucked it up the first time.” Don’t give up on a taste or smell or flavor profile because it doesn’t make the clouds part and the angels sing the first time you experience it. All of our palates are built upon experiencing and trying things again and again that are “good” and “bad” and “great” and “just fine”. Also, sometimes the quality of one product is just shitty while another version of the same thing will be much better — a very true thing in whiskey. None of this exists in a vacuum.

I know saying “open your mind, man” is very woo-woo. But it’s also science. Palates are trained, built, and expanded, not factory-set for life from birth. If you want to build a whiskey palate like a pro, then you have to go out there and experience the world around you, eat new foods, try new drinks, visit new places, and build that sensory life into your everyday life with an open mind.

Hell, you can start right now by going on a short walk and smelling all the trees and bushes in your yard or neighborhood. It’s that easy to start and it doesn’t cost you a single cent. Best of all, you’ll enjoy things more down the road because of this extra effort!

Pablo Alborán is embracing regional Mexican music in his new music video for “Viaje A Ningún Lado.” In the captivating video that was released today (October 14), the Spanish pop star teamed up with Mexican singer Carin León.

Alborán’s music career spans over a decade. His breakthrough hit, “Solamente Tú,” has over 593 million views on YouTube. Last year, his ethereal love song “Saturno” went viral on TikTok. The track has since amassed over 316 million streams on Spotify. There’s no genre limits to Alborán’s sound as he’s collaborated with artists like Ava Max, Sebastián Yatra, and Camilo. He’s continuing to prove that with “Viaje A Ningún Lado” alongside León.

In “Viaje A Ningún Lado,” the banda music sound that León is known for meets a flamenco influence by way of Spain. Alborán masterfully blends both their worlds of music into an empowering kiss-off anthem. Both singers take turns telling their toxic lovers to take a hike out of their lives. Their soulful Spanish and Mexican voices compliment each other well. In the video, a romantic uncoupling takes place as Alborán and León sing together in a bar.

“Viaje A Ningún Lado” will be included on Alborán’s upcoming album La Cuarta Hoja that’s due out November 2. The US leg of Theater Tour 2022 kicks off in LA on November 9. Alborán’s song “Castillos De Arena” is nominated for Record Of The Year at 2022 Latin Grammy Awards.

Pablo Alborán is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In Netflix’s upcoming series Blockbuster (it debuts November 3rd), Tyler Alvarez is one of six eccentric employees at the former video rental giant’s last existing store. While his character, Carlos, is a 24-year-old aspiring film director, Alvarez shines bright in front of the camera.

In one of his earliest roles, Alvarez played Benny Mendoza on Orange Is The New Black, the trouble-making, potty-mouthed son of inmate Gloria Mendoza (Selenis Levya). He landed his breakthrough role in 2017 as the investigative, thorough Peter Maldonado on the Peabody-winning American Vandal. In between seasons, he and Tamara Yajia stared in a YouTube miniseries called Me Llamo Alma, which taught Spanish lessons as Yajia’s Alma put Alvarez’s Miguel in various awkward situations.

Alvarez’s latest role sees the actor coming into his own, as a confident, queer, Latino man, on a mission to make his dreams come true. Throughout the series, viewers see Carlos navigate dating as a bisexual man, making his immigrant parents proud, and using his directorial ambitions to help keep the last Blockbuster in business, by way of TikToks and viral moments.

In his career thus far, Carlos and Alvarez have the most in common out of any of the other characters he’s played. They are both movie buffs, they both admit to being “high strung, at times,” and they are both of Cuban descent, the latter of which, Alvarez specifically requested for Carlos.

Here’s Alvarez talking with us about the show, almost passing on some of his most signature roles, and on the many aspects of his character and his self.

From watching you play Benny on Orange Is The New Black, to the Me Llamo Alma videos, and now, Blockbuster, I feel like I’ve watched you grow up on-screen. Where did your love of acting begin?

My old babysitter, who took care of me when my mom and dad were working, would walk me to pre-K. She said to me that every single day while she was walking me to pre-K, I would say, “I don’t wanna go to school, I’m gonna be an actor one day.” And that was a shock to me because I thought that I had decided that I wanted to do this at like 11 or 12. It was just something that was innately inside of me my whole life. I loved performing as a kid, I used to put on shows for my family. I joke around saying I love acting as much as I love my mother.

New York is a very arts-centered city. What are some of your fondest memories of growing up in the Bronx?

My parents divorced when I was really young, so I moved with my mom to Long Island after that. But my dad moved to the same block that I grew up on in the Bronx. I go back there very frequently. What I love about this neighborhood is, like, one person comes outside, another person comes outside, then another person comes outside. The neighborhood kind of all hangs out together on the same block.

What do you remember about Blockbuster, the video store?

Obviously, my memories of Blockbuster, are limited, but I remember going to the Blockbuster in Washington Heights with my dad and my brother. On a hot summer night, you could walk in and it’d be freezing in there. And you could smell the little buckets of popcorn they had while you were checking out. I would rent video games too, all the time from there.

What was the audition process like for Blockbuster, the TV show?

When I first got the audition, I was looking for a drama as a series that I wanted to do. So I wasn’t too interested in [Blockbuster] when it first came around, but my agent was telling me “Just read the script.” And I read it and fell in love with it, and it all worked out perfectly. And thank God, it always happens that way. I have to tell you, most of the projects that I end up doing, like, even American Vandal, I was so close to not doing it. Thank God I did, because it was so meant to be. Even the last movie I did, Crush, I was like,” I don’t know if I wanna do it.” And then I made the best of friends [on set.]

I’m glad you ended up doing Crush, because I totally made a meme out of your character telling Rowan Blanchard’s character, “you listened to Phoebe Bridgers for eight hours straight last night, which is concerning because she only has two albums.”

(Laughs) Yup, yup.

Tell us about your Blockbuster character, Carlos.

Carlos is a first-generation Cuban American. Carlos has a huge passion for movies and is dying to become a filmmaker, but his strict immigrant parents have their own ideas of what they want his life to be. A lot of immigrant parents come to this country, and they’ve sacrificed a lot to be here, and then they want you to get a job, do something stable, and make money – they almost want you to fulfill their unfulfilled dreams. I see a lot of my friends dealing with the same thing, where it’s like, do I settle and do this stable career? Or do I risk something and go for my dreams? I think a lot of people can relate to that.

He’s bisexual, but at the same time, it doesn’t define him. So often when there’s a queer character, their queerness becomes their whole identity. And with this show, we touch on it, but it’s not all I talk about. It’s one aspect of me. I’m an avid movie… almost a movie snob, which is why working at Blockbuster is perfect for me.

I remember when the show first entered production, story editor Francisco Cabrera-Feo tweeted about bringing more Latino male bisexual representation to television. How does it feel to be the face of this, with Carlos?

I was talking to a friend recently and they were like, ‘I didn’t realize how Latino I was until I came to Hollywood.” And it’s kind of the same thing for me. It’s just who I am in my own life. I’m queer and I am Latino, but I don’t really walk around thinking like, “Oh, I’m queer and Latino.” I just like walking around as Tyler. But in the show, it’s an honor to represent myself in a lot of ways. I am queer, I’m Latino and I love movies.

How do you feel about the current landscape of representation on television, whether it be Latinx representation or LGBTQ+ representation? How do you think it can improve?

I think there’s still a lot of work to be done. I was thinking about how I used to feel like my being Latino was a disadvantage in the industry. How, when I was 15 years old and I was auditioning for the first time, I was like, “I’m not gonna get this. They’re gonna pick a white kid.’ And I knew that. No one told me that, I didn’t have parents in the industry who told me that, I didn’t have agents who said that to me. I somehow just like inherently knew that. And that’s kind of messed up that I knew that without being taught that. Today it’s like, we’re in this time where we’re being celebrated for our differences, which is incredible.

But I think we need to start casting Latinos, not just as side characters. I can name [several movies] where it’s like all the are white, and then their best friend is Latino or a person of color It’s like, just casting them as the sidekick, and cast them as a lead.

What advice can you give to other young, queer, Latinx actors in the industry?

“Who you are won’t inhibit you from getting jobs. And if it does, it’s not something you want to be a part of. That took me a long time to learn. I’ve been out since I was in high school, but I was in the closet a bit in the industry. I didn’t necessarily try to hide it, but I wouldn’t talk about it either. And now that’s not the case. I’m totally out on my social media and in my life. I heard an interview with Viola Davis and she said “If it means something to you, let it cost you something.”

I’ve had a chance to see the first three episodes of Blockbuster and they are fantastic. What can we expect from Carlos at the season continues?

We will see him struggling with whether he should chase his dreams, or continue to play it safe. More things to do with his relationships with love and dealing with his parents’ pressures and uh, and of course, just the antics of trying to save Blockbuster. Because you know, it’s about a small business and basically, all of us are just trying to keep this business afloat.

‘Blockbuster’ debuts on Netflix on November 3.

Elena Rose is making a splash with her debut single. Today (October 14), the Venezuelan-American singer released the remix of “La Ducha” featuring fellow Latina stars Becky G, María Becerra, Tini, and Greeicy.

Rose is a songwriter behind many of today’s Latin music hits. Last year, she co-wrote Selena Gomez’s debut Spanish-language EP Revelación. Rose’s recent smash as a writer includes Becky G and Karol G‘s “Mamiii,” which reached No. 15 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. She also helped pen hits like Tini and Becerra’s “Miénteme,” which has over 431 million views on YouTube. In July, Rose signed with Warner Music Latina to launch her career as an artist.

About stepping into the spotlight, Rose tells Uproxx, “It feels like the right time to do it. It’s always been my dream to make music, to sing, and to be an artist. I needed my time to understand what that really meant. The responsibility that is behind being an artist in the world that we live in today and I take mine very seriously. I feel ready to bring all the love and spread that love with what I do.”

Some of the women that Rose has co-written with are returning the favor: Becky G, Becerra, Tini, and Greeicy feature on Rose’s remix of “La Ducha.” In the sultry song, the women take turns singing about self-love in the shower while thinking about their lovers. In her guest verse, Becky G slyly interpolates her 2014 breakthrough hit “Shower.” Rose assembled the league of extraordinary Latina singers for this girl power remix.

“I admire them so much,” Rose said. “They’re amazing collaborators, but also, they’re my friends, so it came out with women that I admire, that I care about, and that I just wanted to have fun with. It feels like going out with your girls. It feels so amazing.”

Rose is nominated for five Latin Grammy Awards this year as a songwriter. She is happy to be transmitting her music into the world whether as a writer or an artist.

“I want people to feel good [with my music],” Rose said. “I want people to feel that they have a safe space with me. That my music translates a lot of things that they feel, but maybe don’t talk about, or that my music hugs them and gives them love.”

Some artists mentioned here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

One of Latin music’s most famous families is turning to reality TV. On Wednesday (October 12), the trailer was released for The Montaners starring Argentine icon Ricardo Montaner, his sons Mau y Ricky, and Colombian popstar Camilo.

Since emerging in ’80s, Montaner has become one of Latin music’s top-selling artists. Among his biggest hits are “Tan Enamorados” and “La Cima Del Cielo,” the latter of which peaked at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Hot Latin Songs chart. He is the father of Venezuelan duo Mau y Ricky, who have become stars in their own right. The brothers have collaborated with artists like Karol G, Becky G, and Leslie Grace.

In 2020, Montaner’s daughter Evaluna wed Camilo, who has emerged as one of today’s top-selling Latin acts. His music videos on his YouTube page boast over six billion views. Camila Cabello, Shakira, and Selena Gomez have teamed up with Camilo for collaborations. For the first time, Ricardo’s family will be letting the world into their lives with Disney+ docuseries The Montaners.

In the past year, the Montaner family has grown with the birth of Evaluna and Camilo’s daughter Índigo and the arrival of Mau’s son Apollo. Ricky also married his wife, Argentine actress Stefania Roitman. All of that and more will be covered in the show. According to a press release, the series “reveals the Montaners’ most intimate moments, providing unrestricted access to their family life and uncovering the behind the scenes of events that gained great notoriety in the press and on social media.”

The first five episodes of The Montaners will be premiering on Disney+ on November 9. The series was created by the Montaners and Lex Borrero and it was produced by NTERTAIN Studios with Disney Branded Television’s unscripted team.

Tegan And Sara’s new television series, High School, premiered on Amazon Freevee today. Inspired by the sisters’ 2019 memoir of the same name, the show centers around the twins navigating life as teenagers in the ’90s.

“High School is a story about finding your own identity — a journey made even more complicated when you have a twin whose own struggle and self-discovery so closely mimic your own,” an early press release read. “Told through a backdrop of ’90s grunge and rave culture, the series weaves between parallel and discordant memories of twin sisters growing up down the hall from one another.”

Railey and Seazynn Gilliland appear as the adapted versions of the musical duo. Cobie Smulders (How I Met Your Mother) plays their mother, Simone, with Kyle Bornheimer as Simone’s boyfriend, Patrick.

“There was something undeniably intriguing about them: They were sweet and original, impossible not to watch,” Tegan said of the Gilliland sisters, who they discovered and cast through TikTok. “I felt compelled to send Sara the video. ‘Too bad they don’t act,’ I texted her. Sara wasn’t deterred. They were performers, musical and dynamic. ‘You can’t teach charisma,’ Sara said, which they had in spades. Sara was relentless — these were the twins that had to play us. We were overjoyed when they were cast, and we couldn’t be more thrilled that it all worked out.”

The first four episodes of High School are currently streaming now on Amazon Freevee. View an early trailer of the show above.

Tegan And Sara is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.

Earlier this week, Fox Business contributor Scott Martin went viral after claiming that it cost him $28 dollars for lunch at Taco Bell. Martin was attempting to criticize the level of inflation under President Joe Biden, but instead, he found himself getting dragged on social media by people wondering how much food he ordered to rack up an almost $30 bill. Taco Bell food is still notoriously cheap as hell. What did the guy eat?

As “$28 of Taco Bell” went viral on Twitter, Martin eventually shared his lunch order, which would’ve been lower had he went with combo meals. Instead, he separately ordered a Burrito Supreme, Nachos Bellgrande, Nacho Cheese Doritos Locos Taco Supreme, Doritos Cheesy Gordita Crunch, and a large frozen Mountain Dew Baja Blast.

After catching wind of Martin’s Taco Bell debacle and seeing what he ordered, The Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. was understandably concerned. The comedian dropped a video asking everyone to pray for Martin and all of the “s**tting” he’ll be doing.

Via The Daily Show on Instagram:

You can’t be eating $28 of Taco Bell on a work day. I bet he called in today for Fox Business. You can’t do a live hit with $28 of Taco Bell in your stomach like that. Somebody check on that man! Like you gotta, what they call it, a wellness check. You gotta do a wellness check. Like when you ain’t heard from your loved one in a while, the police gotta roll by. I bet the police go by the house right now he be in there — s**tting.

Wood ended the video with a personal message for Martin and some friendly advice. “Scott, if you get this, I just want you to know that we care about you,” Wood said. “And we love you. And you gotta shift your weight to one a** cheek at a time on the toilet because otherwise your legs get numb and circulation get cut off.”

Wood then asked for everyone to leave a “Get Well” message for Martin in the comments, and The Daily Show fans did not disappoint.

(Via The Daily Show on Instagram)

Taylor Swift’s sprawling empire is built on Easter eggs. Swifties are searching for the next cleverly hidden foreshadowing at every turn, and the treasure map recently intersected with Charlie Puth. Fresh off the release of his long-awaited third album, Charlie, the 30-year-old pop maven visited The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. He created a song using only a coffee mug, dished on performing with Halsey at the sweet sixteen party for Adam Sandler’s daughter, and was asked about a potential collaboration with Swift.

Fallon pointed toward Puth’s “Light Switch” video, where he painted a fence red and sent Swifties into a tizzy that it was a subtle hint that Puth would soon release a song with the Red mastermind.

“No,” Puth said. “I think we’ve spoken once. But that would be great.”

You can’t blame Swifties for getting their hopes up. Last month, Puth played an intimate New York City show and performed Swift hits “Teardrops On My Guitar,” “Fifteen” and “Blank Space” while dubbing her the “queen of these types of chords” and reminding people to listen to Charlie before Swift’s 10th studio album Midnights inevitably monopolizes the pop zeitgeist upon arrival next Friday (October 21).

While with Fallon, Puth also gave a medley performance of Charlie singles “Left And Right” and “Loser.” Watch that below, or watch his conversation with Fallon above.

Earlier this year, Pusha T claimed his first ever No. 1 album in the country with It’s Almost Dry. “We all can’t be number 1 at the same time, this week it’s mine,” the rapper said at the time as he finally got his flowers. The achievement was well-deserved, as the Pharrell Williams- and Kanye West-produced It’s Almost Dry is nothing short of a contemporary rap triumph as Push continues to make a valiant case as one of the best rappers on the planet — and easily one of the best performers.

So on Thursday night, the Virginia Beach rapper was beamed on TV screens across America when he performed “Just So You Remember” on Late Night With Seth Meyers, and good lord did he rise to the occasion. He stood on the stage by himself and viciously delivered captivating bar after bar on a song loaded with King Push’s signature cocaine raps: “Just so you remember who you dealin’ with. The purest snow we sellin’ white privilege. Designer drugs will turn n****** limitless. Designer clothes, these hoes losing innocence. The book of blow, just know I’m the Genesis.”

While Push says that elusive Clipse reunion is ultimately up to his brother No Malice, Pusha T continues to be an undeniable singular force.

Watch Pusha T perform “Just So You Remember” on Late Night above.

I’ve always had to squint a bit to understand the appeal of the Halloween movies, and this latest one, Halloween Ends, playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock, is no different. Best I can come up with, Halloween taps into the fear of the unknowable, the idea that some Michael Myers character could make it his mission to kill you simply because he saw you standing by his house one day, like he did with Laurie Strode in the original.

Laurie, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is back for this presumably final installment of the David Gordon Green/Danny McBride trilogy they started in 2018 with Halloween. Laurie is a grandmother now, living with Allyson (Andi Matichak), her now-grown granddaughter whose mother Karen (Judy Greer) Michael Myers killed in the last installment, Halloween Kills. This still in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, where all the Halloween characters steadfastly refuse to move out of for some reason.

Allyson works as a nurse, and the Strodes are all kind of low-key town pariahs on account of being inexorably associated with the town’s most traumatic day. I’m not sure this really tracks, because if October 31st is Haddonfield’s 9/11, wouldn’t the Strodes be their pre-Trump Giuliani? Instead, they’re partly blamed for the trauma, for whatever reason. Anyway.

The town has another, even less low-key pariah in the form of Corey (Rohan Campbell), who accidentally killed a kid he was babysitting a few years back, which we saw in the film’s opening frame (its best scene). Even though this was all a terrible accident, no one really believes it, and Corey becomes an outcast.

One of the best, most “out there” plot conceits in Halloween Ends is that Corey’s chief bullies are a group of rich high school band nerds, led by a guido kid (Michael Barbieri) with a never-explained New Yawk accent, whose chief henchman has pale-dyed eyebrows, a truly disgusting mullet, and is played by (and this part I only just learned) a one-named singer/songwriter named Marteen. If horror movies are meant to tap into primal fears, you could do a lot worse than the fear of being menaced by local teens with inexplicable social mores and fashion. You can survive a knife attack but there’s no coming back from getting roasted by teens. Yikes!

Anyway, Laurie eventually notices that Allyson and Corey, these two sweet-faced 20-somethings alienated from their town, could both use a friend, and tries to play matchmaker. Which works… not so well at first, and then well, and then a little too well. To say victims make the best victimizers is true, but empathy isn’t a rewind button once the die is cast.

If Halloween was about the fear of the unknowable, externalized in the form of Michael Myers, Halloween Ends is about the unknowable evil that lurks within. It doesn’t feel like the most incisive commentary to point this out, seeing as how Laurie has a monologue in which she basically says this all outright. Halloween is also traditionally, intentionally un-“thinky,” to the point that it’s never going to belabor these themes. It’s always going to be more about the guy in the mask holding the knife. John Carpenter, who started the franchise, famously refuses to acknowledge that “elevated horror” is even a thing.

To the extent that even the schlockiest horror movie should have themes and allow the audience to assign their own metaphorical value the material, I understand what he’s saying. Yet it still feels to me (and has always felt) like Halloween falls in some awkward middle ground, eschewing the sometimes-didactic allegory of your A24 and Jordan Peele horror, but also lacking some of the schlocky panache of gorier 80s horror or something like Malignant.

Halloween Ends has some narrative grounding, and the theme of internalized evil in people that can’t quite be excised or negotiated with is a compelling riff on the themes of the original. Likewise, there are occasional scenes of gleeful gore and brutal kills to make you throw your popcorn in the air and/or chuckle stonededly. There’s a tasteful balance to all the things Halloween Ends is trying to be — a little thinky, a little schlocky, a little plotty.

But it also strikes me as a little too tasteful. This is a movie that’s just good enough at a handful of things without really being great at any one. The who’s-going-to-live, who’s-going-to-die of it is compelling enough, though never quite white knuckle intense. And while there is some thematic heft, it’s never explored quite deeply enough to leave you thinking about it after you leave the theater. The acting is solid from top to bottom, if never quite delicious.

In the end, we’re left with a(nother) Halloween movie that’s just watchable enough and mostly pretty fine. It’s perfectly of a piece with a franchise that seems to mean more to film history than it ever meant to me personally.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.