Zombies, Comicon, and tasty drinks
Living Dead Weekend
It's Living Dead Weekend at the Monroeville Mall.
Horror fans from around the world will flock to the site where Dawn of the Dead was filmed to celebrate all things zombie and filmmaker George Romero.
You'll be able to hear stories, get autographs, and snap photos with the cast and crew from Romero's movies.
It starts today and goes through Sunday.
You can get the details on the Living Dead Weekend website right here.
Three Rivers Comicon
The Three Rivers Comicon is back at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, and there will be cosplay contests, vendors, exhibits, and panels with some of the best in the business.
It lasts two days and starts tomorrow at 10 a.m. and goes until 7 p.m., then again on Sunday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m.
Kids 8 and under get in free, tickets for kids ages 9-14 are $5, and adult tickets start at $13.
Get your tickets and a full rundown of events on their website at this link.
Beers of the Burgh Festival
Beer lovers, this one is for you!
The Beers of the Burgh Festival is back at the Carrie Blast Furnaces in Swissvale on Saturday.
More than 40 local breweries are taking part, and there will be live music, craft vendors, and food to go along with the brilliant brews.
It goes from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m.
Check out more here.
Fayette County Fiber Festival
The Fayette County Fairgrounds are playing host to the third-annual Fiber Festival.
It focuses on all things yarn and fiber. There will be live demonstrations, vendors, and of course, food!
It goes from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. on Saturday, and it's free.
See who will be there on their website!
Anything On Wheels
The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum hosts the always-popular Anything on Wheels car and truck show.
The show will feature antique trolleys, classic cars, and as the name implies, anything else on wheels.
It takes place on Saturday and Sunday - get the details at this link.
Bellevue Un-Wined
Sip, savor, and stroll your way through Bellevue like you never have before with "Bellevue Un-Wined."
You can sip your way through 14 stops along Lincoln Avenue, featuring several different wines, a street market with artists, craft vendors, and more.
The sips get started on Saturday at 5 p.m. and they go until 9 p.m.
Bonafide Bellevue has all the information you need.
Mister Rogers Family Day
In Latrobe, the annual Mister Rogers Family Day wraps up on Saturday with a big downtown festival.
It goes from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.
You'll be able to visit Daniel Tiger, O the Owl, and meet Mister McFeely. There will be pony rides, barrel train rides, an obstacle course, a climbing wall, and a scavenger hunt.
It's all free, and you can see the full schedule right here.
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Vox
24-07-2025
- Vox
The taboo that Americans just can't seem to break
is a lesbian journalist and author based in New York City. Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, Cosmopolitan, the New York Times, and many others. When Alana Romero was a child, they'd leave their bed in the middle of the night, sneak through her family's darkened home in South Florida, and slip into her sisters' bedrooms. But they didn't want to play, gossip, or otherwise annoy her siblings — she wanted to make sure they hadn't died in their sleep. 'I would wake up, crawl to my sister's room, just put my hand under her nose and make sure she was still breathing,' Romero, now 26, recalls. 'If she was snoring, that was a good sign.' Romero would then check on her little sister one room over. Is she breathing? Yes. Reassured for the moment, Romero would return to their own bed. Romero didn't know exactly why she was making these anxious nighttime visits at the time — she kept them to herself. What they did know was that in their Catholic, Latino family, death wasn't something that was acknowledged, much less discussed. 'It's like, don't talk about death, don't do the taboo things, maybe don't even prepare for [death] because if you just don't talk about it, don't prepare for it, maybe it won't happen,' Romero says. Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. When a loved one did pass, the circumstances of their death, and the events of their lives, weren't brought up again, at least not with Romero. It felt like once a family member was gone, they were gone for good. So, like many other children with questions but no answers, Romero carried on as best as they could. She worried, she wondered, she woke up in the middle of the night. In the US, we've long approached death with secrecy and silence. Despite the fact that, according to one survey, nearly half of Americans think about death at least once a month — and a quarter of them think about it every day — many keep these thoughts to themselves. When asked to rank their willingness to talk about various taboos, from money to sex to religion, respondents ranked death dead last, at 32 percent. Furthermore, a 2018 survey conducted by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement found that while 92 percent of Americans agreed that discussing their end-of-life preferences was important, only 32 percent actually followed through. In other words, people struggle to bridge the gap between an internal awareness of death, and the actual external preparation for it. 'Death is the ultimate loss of control. It's the ultimate uncertainty.' There are any number of reasons why people avoid these conversations. You may not know where to begin. You may not want to upset others. You may not know how to answer your child's questions. You may be afraid of aging, illness, the callous indifference of insurance companies, and the creeping of medical debt. You may be superstitious. You may feel too young or too old to worry about it. Or you may hate to confront, once and for all, that you are afraid of what you can't prevent, contain, or wish away. 'Death is the ultimate loss of control. It's the ultimate uncertainty,' says Claire Bidwell Smith, therapist, grief counselor and author of Conscious Grieving: A Transformative Approach to Healing From Loss. 'We can really get very clear and focused and organized about so many aspects of our lives, yet death is the one that we cannot. We can't predict it, we can't control it.' This studious avoidance of death has real consequences: Less than half of US adults have a will, which dictates financial and estate preferences after death. Likewise, only about 45 percent of adults have a living will, which dictates wishes around medical care. These numbers may be surprising given the Covid-19 pandemic, which exposed a generation of Americans to the existential dread, systemic failures, and grief of a global death event. But after a brief uptick in estate planning during the pandemic, interest waned. These cultural seeds have long been sown by organizers, spiritual leaders, academics, medical and funeral professionals — and much of this work pre-dates the pandemic. The contemporary death positive movement, which advocates for a transparent, unabashed approach to death and death care, began in earnest in the early 2010s when author and mortician Caitlin Doughty founded the advocacy group The Order of the Good Death. This movement has deep roots in the hospice care, green burial, and home funeral movements. Still, despite the pandemic's fresh lessons — and the ancient knowledge that death comes for us all — many of us still cannot bear to talk about death. Even when we know it's important. Even though we may want to. So why not? And what would we stand to gain if, instead, we learned to speak about dying more openly? How death became laden down with euphemism American attitudes around death and dying are fairly modern creations, taking root in the 19th century. Until then, most people died at home. Rites were carried out by community members, bodies were washed and displayed in the home for mourners, and funerals were cheap, intimate and hands-on affairs. That is, until the Civil War. In the early 1860s, people were, for the first time, dying away from their homes en masse. To address this, embalming — the process of slowing down decomposition by replacing the body's blood with chemicals — was used to preserve bodies long enough to transport them back to those families who could afford it. Sarah Chavez, a writer, historian, and activist who is the executive director of Order of the Good Death and founding member of the death scholarship organization The Collective for Radical Death Studies, says embalming didn't truly captivate the American imagination until the death of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. 'When [Lincoln] died, he was embalmed and went on a multicity tour, like he was a music artist,' Chavez says. 'People came out in droves to see the funeral train and his body. That really kind of cemented embalming as this new, American thing.' Embalming became more widely popular and laid the foundations for a new paradigm: dead bodies cared for outside the home by a buttoned-up, for-profit class of embalmers. Over the next few decades, embalmers and funeral workers, who Chavez says signaled wealth and elegance by setting up shop in Victorian-style homes, slowly gained a foothold in the United States. At the same time, during the turn of the 20th century, medical care was also leaving the home and entering more firmly into the purview of trained doctors, nurses, and hospital systems. 'The funeral industry and the medical industry rose up together and kind of partnered to position themselves as these guardians of health and safety,' Chavez says. (Seeking trained medical professionals has obvious benefits for the living, but keep in mind that dead bodies aren't dangerous, and embalming services aren't necessary for health or safety.) By the 1930s, the modern funeral industry had taken off and sold a new, 'dignified' version of death — one that rapidly isolated the living from their own dead. 'Their definition of what a [dignified death] was, is expensive, away from the home amongst professionals, devoid of signs of death through embalming,' Chavez says. 'They come in and they whisk away your person and they return them to you as if they look alive, as if they're sleeping.' If you've ever said 'passed away' instead of died, 'loved one' rather than dead body, or 'memorial park' rather than cemetery, you'll begin to see how thoroughly death has been obscured. There are, of course, vibrant counterexamples of this attitude across American culture. For marginalized communities in particular, elaborate, public displays of death and grieving offer the dead a dignity and power society never offered them in life. Homegoing rituals in Black communities, which often blend African and Christian practices, and political funerals and 'ash actions' during the AIDS crisis both come to mind. Still, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, death became laden down with euphemism for large swaths of society. This was often encouraged by the funerary industry, whose professionals developed language to avoid talking about death while, paradoxically, talking about death. If you've ever said 'passed away' instead of died, 'loved one' rather than dead body, or 'memorial park' rather than cemetery, you'll begin to see how thoroughly death has been obscured from the common lexicon. This language, or lack thereof, can make every aspect of death more secretive and more confusing, from the actual physiological process of dying itself all the way down to funeral prices. These factors — embalming practices, the expansion of a for-profit funeral industry, and a developing taste for euphemism — gave birth to the modern American death taboo. The cost of silence When we avoid talking about death, we risk living and dying in ways that don't align with our values and needs. If you don't discuss end-of-life medical treatment, for example, you may receive invasive and expensive care you never wanted. Or as a caregiver, you may be forced to make quality of life, death care, and estate-related decisions based on your best guess rather than falling back on the information and documentation needed to confidently honor someone else's wishes. ' Many of us know so many people who've died and didn't have a plan,' says Darnell Lamont Walker, death doula and author of the Notes From a Death Doula Substack. 'And so when they die, the family is falling apart and everyone is thinking, Oh well this is what I think they would have wanted.' In that situation, it's easy for conflict to break out among even the most well-meaning family members. Talking about the logistic aspects of death ahead of time — including your legal and medical rights during and after dying — can help you, your loved ones, and your community act with clarity and conviction. But for some, talking about the logistics of death is the easier part — there are steps to follow, forms to fill out, bills to pay. Instead, it's the emotional consequences that are far more difficult to grapple with. This was the case for Kayla Evans, whose dad died in 2013. Growing up, her family didn't talk about death unless it was about practical matters. 'There was a very utilitarian response,' Evans recalls. 'Like, it's sad, but we have to move on.' From her mother, there was an unspoken message that 'people who were very sentimental about death were silly.' 'Nobody taught me how to deal with grief and nobody taught me how to deal with death.' Then, when she was 18, during her second week as a college freshman, Evan's father died unexpectedly. 'Nobody saw it coming,' Evans, now 30, says. 'As he was dying, my mom was like, We need to transfer your name over to these financial documents … the administrative tasks that follow death, things like that, were very well taken care of. I don't think any of us together processed the emotional side of it. That was something I had to do on my own.' Without anyone to talk to, Evans turned to 'extreme productivity' as a coping mechanism in the months after, piling on projects and jobs and schoolwork — a strategy that came at the expense of her relationships and emotional wellbeing. ' I would like to say I grew from [my father's death] or something, but honestly it was just really fucking hard,' Evans says. 'Nobody taught me how to deal with grief and nobody taught me how to deal with death.' Twelve years later, 'I feel it still trails [my mother] especially, and it trails me, too,' Evans says. Talk about death is, weirdly, life-affirming It's not always easy to have conversations about death. But, clearly, it's not easy to avoid them, either. If you want to start grappling with the reality of death, the first step is to ask yourself questions about the end of your own life, though it can feel scary. What does a life well-lived look like for you? How do you want to die? How do you want to be remembered? Taking the time to reflect on your own can help you clarify what you want and better prepare you to tell others what you need. When approaching loved ones about end of life wishes — either your own or theirs — Kathryn Mannix, physician, palliative care specialist, and author of With the End in Mind recommends breaking down the conversation into two parts: the invitation to talk and the conversation itself. For example, you may say something like, Dad, I want to be able to step up and care for you when the time comes. Do you think we could talk about the care you do and do not want towards the end of your life? Could we talk sometime over the next few weeks? 'Talking about our wishes at the end of life is a gift to our future self and to the people who love us.' Alternatively, if you'd like to start the conversation about your own wishes, Mannix suggests something like: Kids, I'm not getting any younger and there are things I'd like to talk about to put my mind at ease. When can we talk? This approach matters because it allows the conversation to happen when all parties have had time to think and prepare. 'Talking about our wishes at the end of life is a gift to our future self and to the people who love us,' Mannix wrote in an email. 'Talking about dying won't make it happen any sooner, but it can make it happen a great deal better.' But these conversations shouldn't just be about end-of-life care or medical decisions — it's also an opportunity to give and receive stories, explore your spiritual beliefs, get existential with your kids, and connect over grief, joys, and regrets. For example, you may approach an elder and ask: What are some of the defining moments of your life? You may ask a child, What do you think happens after we die? Or you may ask a friend, Have you ever navigated death and grieving? Finding your own way to incorporate death into your life can also serve as a corrective to a wider culture of silence. 'I'm currently getting more and more comfortable with death through spiritual practice and connecting to my family's roots of Santeria,' says Romero, who checked their sisters' breathing at night. She connected to Santeria, an Afro-Caribbean religion that originated in Cuba and blends traditional Yoruba practices and Catholicism, through her grandmother, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. 'I also find that I'm coping a hell of a lot better than other people in my family because I do have this comfort in knowing that … I will always have a relationship with her, even in the afterlife, through my spiritual practice.' Evans, whose father died when she was 18, decided to talk about death and grief during her wedding earlier this year. In her vows, she talked about the sensation of watching her husband sleep at night, and the 'creeping dread' of knowing he was going to die some day. ' I think that other people appreciate when you talk about things like that, even if it's hard to, and it was important for me,' Evans says. 'I did feel kind of empowered, or at the very least like I had confessed something, you know, it was a relief.' For Evans, talking about her preemptive grief wasn't morbid — it was a testament to her deep regard for her husband.
CNET
21-07-2025
- CNET
12 of the Best Horror Movies to Stream on HBO Max
George Romero's first horror film is an easy recommendation. A group of survivors take refuge in a house while members of the undead swarm outside. The influential flick is often regarded as the first modern zombie movie, and while it may not offer Freddy Krueger-level frights, you'll be drawn in by the characters at the center of its story. You're going to want to leave the door open for this one (but in the case of an actual apocalypse, keep it very, very shut).
Cosmopolitan
17-07-2025
- Cosmopolitan
Orris Root Perfumes Are the Next Big Perfume Trend of 2025
What do jasmine, rose, and oud have in common? They're some of the most expensive perfume ingredients in the world. Although pricey to produce and time-consuming to harvest, these notes aren't necessarily uncommon. You can find thousands of cheap perfumes made with these elegant olfactives, prices be damned. But have you ever sniffed—or heard of—orris? This rare material, which comes from the root of the iris flower, costs more per kilogram than all three of the ingredients mentioned above. Because of its price, orris isn't frequently used in mainstream perfumery. However, when a brand does decide to include the note, the result instantly captures the attention of die-hard fragrance fanatics. Take Commodity, for example: When the independent fragrance house brought back its cult-favorite Orris perfume for a limited run, people started to spiral—in a good way—and it sold out online in minutes. I consider myself a fragrance expert—I do write about perfume for a living, after all—but I hadn't paid much attention to orris until a recent trip to Paris. I sniffed my way through the city's niche perfume shops, and the only scents that completely blew my mind featured the same elusive note: Orris. Orris comes from the iris plant, particularly the root. "Iris is the plant—specifically iris pallida, iris germanica, or iris florentina—but the scent we associate with 'iris' in perfumery doesn't come from the flower," explains perfumer Gustavo Romero. "That striking bloom doesn't yield fragrant oil. The real magic comes from below the surface." The scented concentrate that ultimately gets blended into perfume is extracted from the iris plant's rhizomes, which are thick, root-like structures. "The rhizomes are dug up, peeled, dried, then aged and stored for three years—kind of like fine wine," explains Romero. "Only after this slow curing process do they develop irones—the aromatic molecules responsible for the creamy, powdery, suede-like orris scent that perfumers love," he explains. Iris plants can be found on every continent and are pretty easy to take care of. Heck, your mom or grandma maybe even grow irises in their gardens. Despite their prevalence, harvesting the roots for perfumery purposes is a lengthy, time-consuming process. "Orris demands a very labor-intensive extraction method that takes several years of drying and aging to develop its scent, which is why it's considered a luxury ingredient," explains Bella Varghese, fragrance development manager at dsm-firmenich. Not to mention, you need a ton (literally 2,000 pounds) of ground orris root to yield about 4.5 pounds of orris butter. Ben Krigler, a fifth-generation perfumer who runs Krigler, says that a tiny amount of orris butter can cost perfumers about $50,000. Orris' naturally powerful aroma also jacks up the price. "From an olfactive standpoint, the note depicts a luxurious effect because of the extreme richness of its profile," says Varghese. "Just a trace of it gives an amazingly intense impression." Sooooo, here's the interesting thing about orris. No one can pinpoint exactly what it smells like. Every perfumer will give you a different answer. Some say powdery and woody, while others will say sweet, yet slightly bitter. Orris is one of the most nuanced notes in perfumery—it completely transforms depending on what it's paired with, another aspect that makes it a highly-prized ingredient. "Orris is quiet, yet unforgettable," says Romero. "It's soft and textural, powdery without the fluff, and floral without being overly sweet. Imagine violet petals pressed into suede, dusty paper warmed by skin, or the inside of an old leather-bound book. It doesn't merely scent a perfume; it shapes its atmosphere." Sometimes orris is included in a fragrance not because of its unique aromatic profile, but rather because it acts as a booster to strengthen the overall fragrance. "Orris also works as a fixative—a material used to stabilize and prolong the scent of a perfume—which can help enhance all of the other notes," explains Varghese. "Interestingly, orris has a natural fixative property that slows down the evaporation of the top and middle notes, helping the fragrance last longer on skin and maintain its character over long periods of time." Truthfully, orris meshes well with virtually every note. "Orris is a natural harmonizer," says Romero. "It rounds out compositions and adds polish without overpowering the end result." When orris was first introduced in perfumery, Varghese says it was most often paired with "bold florals, like roses and a medley of musks." As fragrance houses have gotten more experimental, perfumers have pushed boundaries to meld orris with leather, vanilla, and raspberry—but that's just the tip of the iceberg. For example, The Maker Naked leverages orris' powdery facets by combining the note with violet, spicy pink pepper, and papyrus for a musky, bewitching skin scent. On the complete opposite side of the perfume spectrum, the addition of orris in Byredo Eyes Closed softens the spiciness of cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger so the scent lays like smooth velvet on skin. Due to the fact that orris is so damn expensive, the most prestige fragrance houses only have one or two perfumes that feature the note. Take Tom Ford—out of the 135 scents the brand has produced over the years, Fucking Fabulous is the only one to include orris. Valentino recently introduced orris to its perfume catalogue with the launch of its elevated Anatomy of Dreams line. Amouage, often touted as the most luxurious perfume house in the world, rarely includes orris in its scents. You can find it sprinkled into a few perfumes, including Lustre, from its newest collection. Krigler has one sole perfume in its permanent anthology that features orris—Palm Dream 219—but the prestige house can custom make an orris scent for you... it'll just cost tens of thousands of dollars. You don't have to go into debt to experience the magic of orris, though. (I promise!) Some perfume houses have begun incorporating the ambiguous note into their scents without reaching exorbitant prices. (I have no idea how, but I'm not complaining.) Phlur combines orris with lush fig and dewy jasmine in Father Figure, one of its bestselling creations. Snif continuously churns out budget-friendly perfumes that rival luxury houses, and they've thrown themselves into the orris ring with the mega-successful Me, a peachy, musky skin scent that achieves universal appeal thanks to—you guessed it—orris. The influencer-founded brand Ledda created one of the most stunning orris scents I've ever smelled. Orris 22 is nothing short of angelic, and it embodies a cozy rainy day spent wrapped in your lover's arms with orris, marshmallow, jasmine, and sandalwood. "If you want something that feels thoughtful, intimate, and subtly expensive—something that invites people to lean closer—orris is your note," says Romero. I'm a firm believer that no perfume collection is complete without a scent that contains orris. Since discovering—and falling in love with the ingredient—my fragrance library feels more elevated and distinguished. In the words of Krigler, "it's pure art." Mary Honkus is a beauty contributor for Cosmopolitan with over seven years of experience researching, writing, and editing beauty stories, including a deep dive on the strawberry perfume trend, finding the best wedding scents. She is an authority in all beauty categories, but has a sweet spot for fragrance with a collection of over 200 scents. After becoming completely captivated with orris perfumes, she began researching the rare note. For this story, she interviewed three fragrance experts to learn more about orris and what makes it so rare.
