Month: January 2021

The world stopped for a moment on Thursday when two Congressional foes — Democratic firebrand Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and GOP Always-Trumper Ted Cruz — agreed for the first time on a subject. The latter had cosigned the former’s tweet that a hearing should be held over Robinhood’s role in blocking investors from purchasing Gamestop, AMC, and other Redditor-fueled stocks while hedge funders could continue to do whatever they pleased. This was “unacceptable,” stated AOC, to which Cruz surprisingly co-signed, “Fully agree.”

Granted, Robinhood’s position in this current stock market chaos is one that even Fyre Festival co-founder Ja Rule felt outraged to witness, so I guess almost everyone (except for the hedge funders) don’t know why Robinhood pulled this move after TD Americatrade felt the backlash and apologized while reversing course after temporarily restricting trading on both GameStop and AMC.

Let’s just say, however, that AOC is not amenable to working with Cruz at all. In fact, she’s being very vocal about it. “I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out,” AOC fired back at Cruz. “Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”

AOC, of course, is referencing the failed MAGA coup, which ended with five deaths (including two Capitol Hill cops). Cruz helped to incite that insurrection by persistently pushing lies about election fraud, and one MAGA rioter wanted to add another death to the list because he intended to assassinate AOC. Well, the congresswoman who represents New York’s 14th district is justifiably not amused, and she’s not onboard with letting Cruz climb onboard to “work with” her.

Naturally, Cruz is acting like he simply doesn’t understand what’s happening. According to Roll Coll reporter Chris Cloff, Cruz responded, “You know, there’s a lot of partisan anger and rage on the Democratic side. It’s, it’s not healthy for our country, it’s certainly not conducive of healing or unity, but everyone has to decide how they want to interact with others.”

And AOC wasn’t buying Cruz’s act and mocked him. “Oh, there’s anger?” she sarcastically tweeted. “Now why would there be anger that Cruz amplified known lies about our election that fueled an insurrection that cost ppl’s lives? What does he think the logical response to his lies should be? A hug? Maybe there’s anger bc his actions deserve accountability.”

You heard her. No one wants to hug Ted Cruz.

Perhaps more than anybody in indie rock, Jeff Rosenstock is doing it for the kids. He’s the composer for the Cartoon Network show Craig Of The Creek, and now he has put out a new children’s song alongside Mike Park and AJJ’s Sean Bonnette, titled “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.”

The ska-punk song runs for about two minutes, and as the title suggests, it’s a bit of an updated take on “The Alphabet Song.” The song begins, “Tell me what you learned at school today / Can you make the hook on a capital J? / Can you walk just like the letter K? / Can you build a roof on top of your A?” The chorus, as expected, is a singing of the alphabet, and elsewhere during the track, there are more similar observations about letters.

Sharing the song, Rosenstock wrote on Twitter, “HEY!! THIS POWERFUL SONG WITH @mikeparkmusic & @BonnSeanette & @mikehuguenor & kevin who doesn’t have twitter HAS BEEN EIGHT YEARS IN THE MAKING! AND IT’S FINALLY HERE!! AND ILLUSTRATED BY @antireason! WOW!!! DON’T CLOSE THOSE GRAMMY NOMS YET!!!” Park also tweeted, “Whasssuuup! Feeling like poop? I feel ya…Well…along with my besties @jeffrosenstock and @BonnSeanette we bring you a song that will change the music industry forever. Groundbreaking!!!!”

Listen to “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ” above.

No dogs were harmed in the making of the hilarious video for 2 Chainz’s So Help Me God single “Grey Area.” However, the video does imagine what the trap king’s dog Trappy S. Goyard would hallucinate on a mushroom trip and it’s … well… just hit “play” above and find out. Among other things, Trappy imagines trading heads with his owner, multiplying into an entire litter of rapper-headed French bulldogs, and getting belly rubs from an angel. Sounds like the good life for the Instagram star, whose own page has over 83,000 followers.

Chainz, meanwhile, also seems to be having a ball in the video despite his usual stoic expression, rapping in the studio with Trappy, enjoying a delicious-looking smoothie, and advocating for the use of psilocybin mushrooms in depression therapy. It’s weird to think about 2 Chainz having depression, but with a worldwide pandemic keeping everyone more or less confined indoors, we’re all subject to the effects of the isolation in some way or another.

In 2 Chainz’s previous videos from the new album, he has compared himself to Jay-Z, hosted a gold-plated pillow fight, channeled Andre 3000 as a 1980s funk band, and thrown a quarantine-friendly sleepover in a number of entertaining clips that show the Atlanta native has one heck of a sense of humor.

Watch 2 Chainz’s oddball “Grey Area” video above.

Lil Nas X has racked up so many awards in the span of a short period of time that he recently joked about moving his Grammy Awards to the basement. But for someone who has been in the music industry for decades and holds countless awards, it can genuinely be hard to stash all of them. That’s part of the reason why Beastie Boys‘ Mike D has decided to officially part ways with some of his trophies — all in the name of charity.

Sharing the news to social media, Mike D revealed that he’s putting his 1999 MTV VMA Moonman up for auction. He’s also planning on selling a few of his Grand Royal Platinum certification plaques, which he was awarded for Beastie Boys’ 1994 album Ill Communication and 1989 LP Paul’s Boutique. All the money Mike D gets from the auction will be donated to Good Eats For Life, a non-profit organization which gives backpacks full of food to children in need.

Mike D explained his reasoning for the auction in a sincere post, writing:

“What’s up? This feels a bit weird to post, but at the same time it would feel wrong not giving y’all a heads up. I was never comfortable holding onto or looking at these awards/accolades that we got through the years. Don’t get me wrong – I’m appreciative of them, it’s just not something I need to look at. Anyway, I would give them to my mom whenever they came in and she was really happy to have them. Sadly, she died this last year. She was an amazing woman, but that’s a whole other story. Sooooo we are selling some of the stuff that she had (link in bio). I know the shit is pricey and maybe you have none or very little interest. And that’s fine. But all the $ goes to @goodeatsorg – an awesome charity getting food to kids in need in NYC and beyond. Thanks, MD”

Check out Mike D’s full note below.

The thought of losing a child is too much for most parents to think about. The thought of watching your child being killed on camera is unfathomable.

Linda Beigel Schulman and her husband Michael watched security camera footage of the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. They witnessed their 35-year-old son Scott Beigel, a teacher at the school, usher students into a classroom, away from the gunman. Then they saw the gunman fire at their son six times, saw the blood, saw him collapse to the ground.

Two other teachers and 14 students were shot and killed by the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, that day. Scores of students and teachers survived the terror and horror of fleeing for their lives and watching their friends and colleagues get murdered in front of them. The trauma for survivors and their loved ones was—and is—real.

So what kind of person would spread lies about what happened, criticize survivors for their response, pour salt in those wounds?

Apparently, a sitting member of Congress.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman GOP representative from Georgia, has a history of touting conspiracy theories, especially surrounding mass shootings. She’s on video suggesting that the Las Vegas shooting was a planned event to strip Second Amendment rights:

And Media Matters for America has reported on since-deleted Facebook posts that show Greene supporting the conspiracy theory that Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were “false flags”—a term conspiracy theorists use when they think the government or some other powerful group stages an event like a mass shooting with crisis actors as means of control.

The Schulmans have something to say about that. Speaking to Olivia Nuzzi at New York magazine, Linda Schulman said:

“Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the shooting where my son was murdered protecting his students was not a ‘false flag.’ It was not staged. It really happened. Do not trivialize my son Scott’s sacrifice to save his students for your own political gain. As Joseph Welch said to Sen. Joseph McCarthy Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1954: ‘Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Have you no sense of decency?’ Congresswoman Greene, I ask you the same question. Are you that cruel? HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY??”

Schulman asked Nuzzi, “What do we need to do? Show her the video? Do I need to take her over to Scott’s mausoleum? Does she need to see how he was shot six times from three feet away?”

Another Parkland parent, Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the shooting, told Politico, “She is going to confront her lies. She is a fraud. She has no place being the halls of Congress. I do intend to bring her evidence of my daughter’s murder.” Guttenberg has called for Greene’s removal from Congress.

Greene is also shown in newly resurfaced video harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg, who has been a vocal activist for gun reform since the shooting and is a co-founder of March for our Lives. This is a grown woman following a teenager who had survived a school shooting, telling him she carries a firearm, peppering him with questions and comments that could easily trigger trauma, and then calling him a coward who is being paid off. Absolutely ridiculous.

Yet another video has surfaced of Greene doing the same thing another time to another group of young gun sense advocates, also including David Hogg, who end up chanting “Enough is enough” to drown out her incessant yammering.

What’s perhaps most chilling about these videos is that she appears to have zero empathy and zero acknowledgment of what these kids went through. It’s all about the guns. Debating gun laws with people who haven’t been through the trauma of a mass shooting is one thing, but following and harassing kids who watched or heard their friends and teachers get shot in front of them at school? That’s some next-level inhumanity on display.

Speaking of which, Greene has also indicated support for executing prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Presidet Obama, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on social media. So that’s neat.

How has Greene responded to all of this? A combo of silence and with claiming that the media is out to get her. She explained away the Facebook posts by saying that she’s had lots of different people run her social media accounts, which frankly is a cop-out. She did not offer comment on New York magazine piece. At a town hall in her district this week, she refused to hear questions from the press, and in fact, had reporters escorted from the meeting by the sheriff simply for trying to ask a question about it. (She had told the press ahead of time that they were not allowed to ask questions or talk to anyone at the town hall, which is, of course, not how any of this works. It’s called the First Amendment.)

And what of the response in Congress? One member, Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) has introduced a resolution to have her removed, as she poses “a clear and present danger to Congress and our democray.”

Meanwhile, the GOP has seated her on the House Education and Labor Committee.

Our country has a decision to make. Are we going to accept conspiracy theorists who harass traumatized teens and families and advocate killing other members of our government in the halls of Congress? Is there really no line that can’t be crossed by people we put in power?

Every dose of the coronavirus vaccine has the ability to save a life. So it’s incredibly important not to waste one drop. Especially at a time where there aren’t enough doses of it to innoculate the entire country.

A group of Josephine County Public Health employees in Oregon is getting a lot of attention for its dedication to administering every last dose of the vaccine.

On Tuesday, the group of 20 healthcare workers got stuck in a snowstorm on their way from a COVID-19 vaccination event in rural Cave Junction en route to Grants Pass about 30 miles away.

The journey usually takes about 45 minutes but a jackknifed tractor-trailer on the road ahead meant that they were going to be stuck for hours. This meant that the remaining six doses of the COVID-19 vaccine they were carrying would probably expire by the time they’d reach Grants Pass.

via Josephine County Public Health / Facebook

Once a vial of the vaccine is thawed from the deep freeze the clock starts ticking on whether it can be administered. But after the vial is punctured is must be used within six hours or it has to be thrown out.

So the team decided to start knocking on the windows of the other stranded peoples’ cars to see if they wanted the vaccine.

“We had one individual who was so happy, he took his shirt off and jumped out of the car,” said Michael Weber, the public health director in Josephine County.

The team also administered a shot to a Josephine County Sheriff’s Office employee who had arrived too late to the Cave Junction vaccination event was was on their way home.

via Josephine County Public Health / Facebook

While the efforts of the healthcare team should be applauded they knew they were in a pretty odd situation. “It was a strange conversation,” Weber said. “Imagine yourself stranded on the side of the road in a snowstorm and having someone walk up and say: ‘Hey. Would you like a shot in the arm?'”

The workers were able to administer all six doses of the vaccine before it expired.

“Honestly, once we knew we weren’t going to be back in town in time to use the vaccine, it was just the obvious choice,” Webber said. “Our number one rule right now is nothing gets wasted.”

According to Josephine Public Health’s Facebook page, Webber says the impromptu roadside vaccination clinic was “one of the coolest operations he’d been a part of.”

Oregon currently ranks 24th among states in vaccinations administered per capita. The state has vaccinated 325,000 of its 4.2 million residents.

In the end, one question remains: Will the people who were vaccinated on the road have the opportunity to get their second booster shot in a month? Or will they have to wait their turn?

It’s a big week here at Uproxx Studios. Trippie Redd, the Atlanta-based Ohio rapper known for combining scenester sensibilities with a hardcore hip-hop edge, stopped by to perform his Pegasus song “V12” for UPROXX Sessions. He coolly swings through the emotive single, decked out with gothic chains and a Hot Topic-inspired look as he performs the song for the first time. It’s an impressive showing, although I must admit, that spiked ball pendant gives me major anxiety.

Trippie is three months removed from the release of his latest album, Pegasus, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The album, which featured appearances from Busta Rhymes, Future, Lil Wayne, PartyNextDoor, Quavo, Young Thug, and more, sold 60,000 album-equivalent units, giving him his fifth US top-five debut on the chart. He also recently appeared on Rico Nasty’s Nightmare Vacation.

Trippie’s appearance on UPROXX Sessions follows his appearance on Uproxx’s latest episode React Like You Know, in which he gave his impressions on Mark Morrison’s “Return Of The Mack.”

Watch Trippie Redd debut “V12” for UPROXX Sessions above.

‘UPROXX Sessions’ is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, ‘UPROXX Sessions’ is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Woo, it’s been a doozy of a week in life as in basketball, but at least in basketball I’m here with another round of N(ot) B(ad) A(dvice) to try and help out.

This week, letters from fans torn between their love of the All-Star Game and the trappings of the entire weekend that hosts it and the absurd notion that it will be going ahead this year, marking almost a year of the same pandemic at-large, plus, which NBA player would I want as an older brother. Then, what turned into a very soul-searching look at a show immune to that kind of thing, Inside The NBA. Enjoy!

If you have NBA questions you want answered in the future, email them to [email protected].

Dear Ann Landry,

There was an ESPN report Monday that the NBA is considering holding some form of All-Star Game in Atlanta this year, and the leak offered up the hook of being done to support HBCUs as part of the weekend. I love All-Star, and especially the dunk and 3-point contest. But come the heck on. It feels like the league is now using supporting a cause as labor leverage, which continues a slippery trend of transactional service of late. I guess I don’t really have a question other than are we seriously doing this?

Signed,

Adam Silver And Cold

I got the press release your namesake sent, Adam Silver And Cold, so my best guess is that yes, they are seriously doing this. The press release in question hangs out in the middle of a tightrope strung precariously between Barrelling Ahead and We’re Following The Science, which is also the same fantasy land the NBA has been hanging out in since the bubble ended.

The release begins, triumphantly, letting the world know All-Star voting will start January 28th! If, reading this, you were like me, reading that, and found your brow all the way bunched up before you even got to the end of the first sentence because wait a second, All-Star Game? Since when? This next bit was there to sombrely greet you, “Discussions surrounding a potential NBA All-Star Game are ongoing.”

Existing in that middle space frees the league up to push at the bounds of what is acceptable given the optics at that given moment. Even as Covid-19 cases ramp up within the league, as Karl-Anthony Towns, one of their most promising young stars who has felt an unimaginable weight of tragedy and loss firsthand from the virus, tested positive himself, the NBA is able to shift its attention politely away from a state of outright emergency and continue “as normal” because it exists in a country doing the same.

The framing around normality has been warping every single day for going on a year now, there is exhaustion in keeping up and an understandable turning away by the population at large. Nobody is built for this much prolonged alarm. But like something reptilian slipping into murky waters, the NBA, like many other big corporations and every pro-sports league that already tried this, is using emotional fatigue as cover, trauma as obscurification.

Folding support of HBCUs into what is essentially an act of testing the waters for an All-Star Game does feel an awful lot like a cover as much as it does a preemptive distraction. That any criticism of the game going ahead, if it does, can be stifled with what a potential financial loss it would be to the colleges in Atlanta currently being considered as far as hosting, or the donation the NBA might go on to make. Support like that shouldn’t come with caveats, let alone reckless and dangerous ones, it should come on its own and in earnest.

Hi Katie – long time listener first time caller, which NBA player would you want to be your older brother?

Thanks. I’ll hang up and listen,

100% THAT Bitch

I had a couple options in my head for this, 100%TB, based on the kind of older brothers out there. There are shrewd older brothers who are more stern, responsible, give good financial advice. There are older brothers who can tell you what’s wrong with your car, older brothers who can fix your computer, older brothers who have done the hard stuff in life before you so you don’t have to, or so you can but get less parental flack for it.

But I think the best older brother is one who doesn’t fit in one specific type so much as wants to be there to help you out but has the understanding that to succeed there has to be some necessary distance for you to fall flat on your face. Also someone who is fun, preferably with friends who aren’t going to make you feel like a loser or a tagalong, who is sorta tough but not mean or unkind, will pet sit, and also worry about your parents getting older with you.

So for all those reasons I’d pick Klay Thompson.

Actually, you know what? Scrap all that, I want an older sister and I want Diana Taurasi. Sorry for the curveball, but the heart wants the no bullshit, loyal, tough as nails but probably would hug you if you needed one, Argentinian-Italian-American powerhouse that it wants.

Chuck, Ernie, Shaq, and Kenny are routinely dragged online for their, shall we say, lackadaisical approach to learning who players are, which team they play for, what a basketball is, where they are in the known universe, etc. I personally think it’s a weird move to have your prime time NBA halftime show staffed with a crew of guys that all seem to absolutely despise the modern game of basketball, but I guess that’s why I’m not running a major network broadcast.

My question is this: If you were given the reins this stagecoach, how would you rebrand it and who would you choose to host the segment?

Thanks,
Stan Van 3000

My favorite part of Inside the NBA is when Kenny Smith runs across the studio to get ready to go “into” a replay. Did the show do this as a bit with a literal play on its name? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so, because the show lacks the kind of self-awareness needed to offer up a joke of itself, let alone let that joke live inside of it.

Even though the blurb that pops up when you Google the show purports it to be “a mix of highlights, interviews and hijinks” it is not, really, any one of those things. What it is is a strange fishbowl of criticism, self-aggrandizing, self-loathing, and endlessly cyclical conversation that never begins, ends, or even really arrives, but just keeps chuggin’ along. Sort of like its hosts.

Shaq’s recent half-asleep live criticism of Donovan Mitchell felt a little like drinking too much cough syrup when you’re sick and just want to sleep through the night, but then you wake up halfway through it wide awake and half-hallucinating, but unable to really move your body in tandem with the speed of your brain. An out-of-body delirium you are forced to bear witness to. There was no conviction in his meanness, no real point to his villainy. He just sort of said, “I don’t really like you, what do you think?” It made me wonder if maybe a producer didn’t tell him that he had to say it to whoever they secured for their next live post-game and it just ended up being Mitchell, smiling, still a bit breathless, standing there to take the directionless hit.

There is an out of touch quality to the show that weirdly is what keeps it going. A sense of as soon as the words leave the respective mouths of the hosts, they’ve already forgotten what it was they said. Which doesn’t excuse their being rude, out of touch, ill-prepared and obviously biased, but does make them perfectly unbeholden.

Which is ideal for a show that thrives in the just as cyclical world of online basketball, where the incredulity at pull-quotes, like when Barkley said rich people should get inoculations first because they pay more in taxes (which, buddy, who told you rich people pay taxes?) circulate wildly for about 24 hours and then vanish, replaced by the next thing. But that is kind of a chicken-egg situation, Inside the NBA didn’t invent that echo chamber.

The last time there was a real moment of conflict and reaction on the show was when Smith walked off set when players began striking in the Orlando bubble. The palpable awkwardness of his co-hosts, the clattering live audio of Smith removing his mic, unplugging himself, setting it on the desk, continuing to speak in the then pin-drop silent studio, and Barkley — in some phantom comfort movement of routine — raising his mug up for a drink as Smith walked away. It was such an unscripted shattering of a wall beyond the 4th, a crack in the show’s regular fishbowl, that it was genuinely disorienting to Smith’s cohosts, and a relief for anyone watching who was so desperate in that moment to see their shock, grief, rage, all of it feeling like a useless mess, reflected back to them.

Anyway, Stan Van 3k, to actually answer your question I’m not sure who I’d replace them with. If only because when it gets to that point, the show will be over. It can’t exist in the same way, shape or format with a stage-left yoinking of one or all of them. The whole thing collapses, the center of Shaq’s ego cannot hold.

But for a completely NEW show, I would love to, when she’s done her on-court broadcast career in the full-capacity she desires, see Doris Burke with that platform. Sue Bird? Yes please. Draymond Green, when he did his guest stint, was the kind of villain Shaq wants to be because he cares, deeply, about basketball. And Rasheed Wallace, why the hell not.

Emilia Clarke was nominated for four Emmys for her performance on Game of Thrones as Daenerys Targaryen, one of the most iconic characters in television history. But she wasn’t the first choice for the Mother of Dragons. Tamzin Merchant played Daenerys in the unaired pilot, which has charitably been referred to as a “piece of sh*t.” The actress, whose filmography includes roles in The Tudors, Salem, and Supergirl, had never publicly commented on the recasting until a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.

“Shooting that pilot was a really great lesson. It was an affirmation about listening to my instincts and following them, because I tried to back out of that situation and, during the contract process, I did back out. I was talked back into it by some persuasive people,” Merchant said. “Then I found myself naked and afraid in Morocco and riding a horse that was clearly much more excited to be there than I was.” (The horse was too happy.)

Merchant feels no resentment for Clarke, who she called “epic and excellent.”

“I didn’t have any training as an actor, I only have my instincts. And what excites me and what drives me is a compelling story and a compelling character. So for me, Game of Thrones was never that. I think it’s a testament to Emilia Clarke for making that role iconic – she was obviously excited to tell that story, and she was epic and excellent. But for me, it wasn’t in my heart to tell it”

Merchant currently stars on Amazon Prime Video’s Carnival Row and she also wrote her first book, The Hatmakers, an “enchanting fantasy adventure about the importance of bravery, resourcefulness, and following your heart.” You can order it here.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Much has been said about The Weeknd not earning a single Grammy nomination this year, as the voting members of the Recording Academy seem to be the only people who didn’t think he deserved at least one nod. The Weeknd has expressed his discontent with the situation on multiple occasions, but now it looks like he’s done caring about it.

He said as much during a recent Billboard profile of him and his fellow XO Records co-founders. Discussing the Recording Academy voters, Wassim “Sal” Slaiby, The Weeknd’s manager and founder/CEO of management company SALXCO, said, “What is that secret committee? What the f*ck? [They should] cancel the f–king secret committee and become full transparency. It’s a powerful, special award, but the leadership there has got to go. They’re weak.”

The piece then describes The Weeknd as “sounding 90% at peace and 10% like maybe he still cares a little bit” and quotes him as adding:

“Look, I personally don’t care anymore. I have three Grammys, which mean nothing to me now, obviously. It’s not like, ‘Oh, I want the Grammy!’ It’s just that this happened, and I’m down to get in front of the fire, as long as it never happens again. I suck at giving speeches anyways. Forget awards shows.”

Read the full feature here.