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Even with the Omicron variant, social life hasn’t again ground to a halt. People are still flocking to the movies (or at least one of them). Concerts are still going, albeit with mandates, which have earned the ire of certain performers. But some are hesitant to go out amidst a high number of cases (which, for the most part, are going down again). One West Coast bar tried to combat this with a bizarre campaign that only wound up backfiring.

As per The Everett Herald (as caught by The Daily Beast), Vessel Taphouse, a pirate-themed bar in Seattle, shocked patrons and even scheduled bands with a message on Facebook advertising an upcoming show.

“Come see the show, maybe catch the virus or just stay home and whine,” the message read. “Tickets 10 bucks or 6 with proof of Omicron positive test!!”

After the post, which prompted inevitable furor, four employees at the Vessel Taphouse quit in protest. Three bands scheduled to play there pulled out, including local headliner Atrocity Girl.

Bar owner Steve Hartley told the Herald that the post was “an ill-advised attempt at humor,” and that the person who posted the message, whose identity was being protected, had been fired.

One bartender who’d left the bar told the Herald that she and her fellow staffers followed public health guidelines. “I, and most of my friends, will not be back,” she said. “That bridge is burned.”

So please, stay safe and don’t piss off Howard Stern.

(Via The Everett Herald and The Daily Beast)

Earlier this week, a petition appeared on Change.org demanding Travis Scott perform at Coachella 2023. The petition’s creator felt it was unfair that the rapper was dropped from this year’s festival — which he was initially set to headline — as a result of November’s tragedy at his Astroworld Festival. “We all know Astroworld tragedy wasn’t Travis fault,” read the petition. “Let him get back to performing on the biggest stages!” It took off, receiving upwards of 70,000 signatures — or so it seemed.

But now the petition has been removed from the website, as per NME, after it was discovered many of the 70,000 signatures were fake. When the impostor signatures had been removed, only 5,000 signatures were left. However, after further investigation, it was decided that more would need to be done.

“This petition was removed from Change.org due to violations of our Community Guidelines,” Change.org wrote in their statement. “The petition was found to contain fraudulent signatures, which were removed. After further investigation, our team discovered that the petition had produced several fraudulent attempts, which forced a complete removal of the petition.” The company added that they have a “range of automated systems and teams dedicated to blocking and removing double or fake signatures and detect other fraudulent activity.”

Dr. Oz isn’t the only Oprah-launched celebrity who’s unaccountably reinvented himself as a rightwing politician. Last year J.D. Vance, whose debut memoir Hillbilly Elegy was turned into a star-studded Ron Howard movie, up and decided to run for an Ohio senate seat as a Republican. His campaign has struggled to gain traction, despite him saying offensive things and courting all the right far right stars. Now it looks like one of the latter may have lost him a venue for an upcoming rally.

As per Cincinnati Examiner (as caught by Raw Story), the Landing Event Center in Loveland had agreed to play host to a Vance rally this weekend. Then they discovered he had a guest they didn’t know about: Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial Georgia representative who keep blowing her congressional salary on mask fines. As the Examiner reports, venue brass had no idea:

“The management at the Landing Event Center in Loveland didn’t know much about the event that was scheduled for Sunday, the general manager told The Enquirer. Just that a client asked to rent the space for an event that involved ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ author and Senate candidate J.D. Vance,” adding “Then on Thursday, General Manager Jodi Taylor logged on to her computer. A flood of messages on social media and emails greeted her from people angry about the event. And calls started coming in.”

To make matters worse, management hadn’t even been told it was a public event. After discussing the matter, the agreed they were not “in a position to hold the event.” Suddenly they had been unwittingly thrown into a political hot powder keg. “It doesn’t matter what we do. We have both sides upset.” The event has since been moved to a local Marriott.

So if you’re planning to hold a public event featuring the politician who had to go to a museum to learn not to trivialize the Holocaust in her late 40s, make sure you make those who run the venue aware of those things, lest you make their lives preventably hellish.

(Via Cincinnati Examiner and Raw Story)

The greatest quarterback in NFL history is on the verge of retirement, as Tom Brady has decided to call it a career. The news of Brady’s retirement was originally reported by Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports on Friday, who said that Brady was in the midst of telling people close to him he was preparing to announce his decision, and was confirmed by Adam Schefter and Jeff Darlington of ESPN on Saturday.

Brady has hinted that he could be leaning towards retirement following the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 30-27 loss to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Divisional Round. During an episode of his “Let’s Go!” podcast, the 44-year-old Brady said, “I think as I’ve gotten older, I think the best part is, is football is extremely important in my life, and it means a lot to me, and I care a lot about what we’re trying to accomplish as a team and I care a lot about my teammates. The biggest difference now that I’m older is I have kids now, too, you know, and I care about them a lot as well. They’ve been my biggest supporters. My wife is my biggest supporter. It pains her to see me get hit out there. And she deserves what she needs from me as a husband, and my kids deserve what they need from me as a dad.”

The No. 199 pick in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots, Brady will go down as the greatest winner in the history of the league. No player (or, for that matter, franchise) has lifted the Lombardi Trophy more than Brady — six times with the Patriots, one time with the Buccaneers — with a record five Super Bowl MVP awards. His list of accomplishments beyond that include the NFL records for passing attempts, completions, yards, and touchdowns, along with a trio of MVP awards and 15 Pro Bowl selections.

In what would be his final season, Brady led the NFL with 5,316 passing yards and 43 touchdowns in Tampa Bay during the 2021 campaign.

Ever since the start of the pandemic, Kid Rock has long been against COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates. Back in 2020, the singer ignored Nashville mayor John Cooper’s mandate, which ordered bars in the city’s downtown area to shut down. Kid Rock decided that his restaurant, the Big Ass Honky Tonk & Steakhouse, would remain open. Two years later, Rock is once again battling these mandates after he made a bold declaration ahead of his upcoming 26-show tour set to kick off in April.

In a new video he shared on Instagram, Rock declared that he will cancel shows at venues that enforce COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates. “There’s been a lot of talk about vaccine mandates and venues. People saying, ‘I’m not going to that venue because of the vaccine mandate’ and this, that and the other,” he said. “Trust me, we’ve done all our research on this and the consensus says that all this is going to be done, if there are any at these venues, I’m not aware of any, but if there are any, they’re going to be gone by the time we get to your city.”

He continued, “Trust me, you don’t have to worry. You’ll be getting your money back because I won’t be showing up either.” Rock also revealed that he’s already canceled dates in three cities because of their COVID mandates.

“It’s actually kind of unfortunate,” he said. “We actually scratched Buffalo, New York off the list because of that, and Toronto, Canada, and several other cities we were looking at, cause, ya know, I’m not one way or the other, but I don’t want to deal with that shit either and I know that you don’t.”

Meanwhile, COVID cases, while down overall, are still high. COVID-related fatalities, however, are rising, with over 2,500 deaths reported on Jan. 28 alone. The vast majority of those hospitalized and dying are the unvaccinated.

You can hear Rock’s message in the post above.

(Plentiful spoilers from Netflix’s Ozark Season 3 will be found below.)

Netflix’s Ozark set up the final batch of episodes for a major showdown from Julia Garner’s Ruth Langmore. Where’s Javi Elizondro’s place in all this?

Javi isn’t dead yet (unlike Darlene Snell and Wyatt Langmore), but he’s as good as dead. And the final season will likely end (and we’ve guessed when that will happen) with plenty more bloodshed, hopefully with Marty among the pile and Ruth (who now owns the show) shouting victoriously from the top.

Let’s talk about what Javi did to set up his likely fate:

Here’s Marty telling Ruth not to go after Javi. She will go after Javi after he killed Darlene and her brother, Wyatt, who Javi did not even recognize, while half-heartedly apologizing for him being caught in the metaphorical crossfire. Dumb, silly Marty thinks that he can talk Ruth down from making sure justice is served upon the person who took her last connection to the human world (well, maybe other than baby Zeke) away from her.

Double-murderer Javi (and surely, these aren’t his first kills) is the nephew/successor of Omar Navarro, who’s now in federal custody. Javi would like to prove his might, but his (wildly unpredictable) interference (in general) has already placed the FBI deal in a precarious place, and an angry Ruth isn’t likely to help the Navarro cause. Ruth’s undoubtedly hell-bent upon finding and killing Javi (after Jonah revealed his identity), and that’s a good guess at where the final chunk of episodes will begin.

Actor Alfonso Herrera spoke with E! Online about how Javi views Omar as a “father figure, but at the same time, Javi doesn’t feel that protected.” Herrera adds that Javi feels like a “bastard” son to Omar, so he’s attempting to prove a lot, and it could cost him his life. And on an unusual final note, Herrera revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he gave a big hug to actors Lisa Emery and Charlie Tahan before killing their characters. Yet will Garner hug Herrera before Ruth takes out Javi? Only time will tell.

‘Ozark’ is currently streaming (Season 4, Part 1) on Netflix.

Florence Pugh is more than a beloved young actress who does movies about destructive wrath. She’s also a famous amateur cook. (Oh, and she’s also Paddington’s best friend.) The Black Widow costar moonlights as an Instagram Stories star, dropping videos that find her preparing meals. Unlike most of us, she’s not constantly kicking herself for screwing up difficult recipes. She’s cucumber cool, chill, relentlessly chipper, and therefore calming to watch. And on Friday night, as per Vulture, she was back in the kitchen.

It’s not really a show; it’s just her plopping her smartphone on some surface and then doing her stuff, usually with music in the background and a glass of wine at hand. And it’s not preserved for posterity; she drops them on Instagram Stories, where they’re broken up into chunks and disappear into the ether after 24 hours. “I don’t do Instagram Live,” she said, confessing that her attempts to use it in the past have been “s*it.” Besides, she says, Stories is “way more chaotic in a very entertaining way.”

Pugh’s “show” does have a name, though: Cooking with Flo, and on its return installment, Pugh prepared some courgetti, or as we know it on this side of the pond, zucchini. Purgh told viewers she was making it with some “spicy fresh vegetable-y tomato-y sauce.” At one point she screwed up, forgetting to add salami. But that didn’t trip her up.

“That’s the best thing about one-pot cooking,” Pugh said, sliding into some general life advice. “Sometimes you have to use two pots. Sometimes you f*ck up, and then you just have to fix it. And it’s all good, and it’s all easy.”

When Cooking with Flo returned for a new year, people on social media were stoked.

(Via Vulture)

Last week, Britney Spears filed a cease and desist letter against her sister Jamie Lynn and her now-released memoir Things I Should Have Said. The book is at the center of a public back-and-forth between the siblings, and now that it’s become a best-seller, Britney hopped on Instagram to once again slam it and its author.

“National best seller ???? DUH,” Britney wrote with an eye-roll emoji under clips of conversations about the book that took place on two TV shows: The Real and The Talk. “The timing of your book was unbelievable Jamie Lynn … especially knowing the whole world had no clue what was really done to me !!!! My whole family including you is saying YOU DIDN’T KNOW …. Bullsh*t !!!” She added, “But what these women are saying here is pretty clear !!!! I’m just kinda shocked that more people like these real soul sisters aren’t telling it like it is !!! Congrats best seller … I’m not surprised at all.”

“The nerve of you to sell a book now and talk sh*t but your f*cking lying just like you lied about Alexa Nikolas,” Britney continued, referencing Jamie’s claim in the book that Nikolas, who starred on Zoey 101 with her shared harmful rumors about her on the set of the show. “I wish you would take a lie detector test so all these masses of people see you’re lying through your teeth about me !!!!”

The singer concluded her message by writing, “I wish the almighty, Lord would could come down and show this whole world that you’re lying and making money off of me !!!! You are scum, Jamie Lynn.”

During an interview on BBC Radio 2’s The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show late last year, Coldplay’s Chris Martin revealed that the band will retire in 2025. He said they’ll continue to tour, saying, “Maybe we’ll do some collaborative things but the Coldplay catalog, as it were, finishes then.” Martin elaborated during a recent interview with NME, revealing what their fans can expect from them going forward.

“We’re going to make 12 albums,” Martin said some three months after releasing their ninth album Music Of The Spheres. “Because it’s a lot to pour everything into making them. I love it and it’s amazing, but it’s very intense too. I feel like because I know that challenge is finite, making this music doesn’t feel difficult, it feels like, ‘This is what we’re supposed to be doing.’”

Martin’s comments come after he reflected on Coldplay and BTS’ collaboration “My Universe,” from last fall. “For something that could have seemed so artificial, it turned out being one of the most real feelings and I genuinely love those people,” he said during a recent interview on Ellen.

You can read Martin’s full interview with NME here.

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

New York City has been through a lot the last two years. It was once the epicenter of the pandemic. It’s seen violent police pushback against protesters. It’s seen businesses close left and right. Right now it’s buried in snow. And then on top of that it has Sarah Palin scampering about town with COVID. The half-term governor and failed vice presidential candidate is awaiting a trial that had to be postponed because she tested positive for a highly transmissible virus she’s already contracted before. Despite this, she’s still been going out to restaurants, to the horror of everyone, including City Hall.

But there’s one person who thinks possibly infecting people with a disease that’s killed nearly 100,000 Americans alone is…good, actually? That person is Michele Bachmann, former Republican representative, Tea Party star, noted anti-twerker and one of the first far right loonies to invade Congress, paving the way for the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz. (You can thank her for giving Stephen Miller his first big D.C. job.)

Bachmann went on Jesse Watters’ new Fox News show, where they discussed how the media has dared to paint Palin as a public health menace. And she had a take.

“Honestly, Sarah Palin is to be commended,” Bachmann told Watters, “because she’s trying to act like a normal human being in the greatest city of America, New York City.”

Palin has repeatedly gone to Elio’s, an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, both before she tested positive and a couple days afterwards. The CDC advises anyone who tests positive to quarantine for at least five days so as not to get other people sick. But Palin evidently doesn’t care. Neither does Bachmann. Palin is proudly unvaccinated, having flip-flopped from a position she held early last year. Meanwhile, hospitalizations and deaths overwhelmingly affect the unvaxxed over the vaxxed, so perhaps the message Palin is sending isn’t so positive after all.

(Via The Daily Beast)