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If people can learn one thing from Bill Phillips’ story, he hopes it’s this: Get f*cking vaccinated! Even if you’ve already had COVID. The Colorado fitness coach is set to be discharged from St. Anthony Hospital in Lakewood, Colorado, where he has spent the past two months fighting for his life during his second battle with COVID. Phillips and his wife Maria sat down with local NBC affiliate 9NEWS to share their story with the hope that others can learn from his mistake.

“It didn’t help that I could bench press 300 pounds or run a mile straight up a hill,” the once-strapping Phillips said of his decision to not get a COVID vaccine. “I made a mistake. I thought that since I had COVID in January of 2020, that I was immune to it.” When a test showed that Phillips had COVID antibodies, he decided not to get vaccinated, figuring it was unnecessary. In June of this year, he learned just how mistaken he was when he caught the virus for a second time; while he initially dismissed it as a sinus infection, he later had to be rushed to ER, and has remained in the hospital ever since.

“If we had waited even an hour longer, Bill might have just taken a nap and not woken up,” Maria said of just how close her husband came to losing his life. Phillips was intubated for 47 days and didn’t wake up for another 18 days afterward.

While Phillips is scheduled to return home today, it will hardly be a return to normalcy. “Bill was so strong and independent and worked out and did all these things,” Maria said. “Now he’s in a wheelchair. He can’t walk. He can’t exercise. He’s on oxygen.”

But Bill is looking at what he has gained. “I’ve been in a lot of pain and I have lost a lot, but I have gained a new outlook on life that is for sure,” Phillips said. And his advice for anyone who has yet to be vaccinated: “Get the shot. Get the vaccine. Get on with your life. Don’t take chances.”

You can watch the Phillips’ full interview above.

(Via Raw Story)

In an episode of the bad movie podcast How Did This Get Made?, guest Andrea Savage told a story about the 2006 holiday film Deck the Halls. Her friend, Gillian Vigman, was on the set of the box office dud and she witnessed star Matthew Broderick looking forlorn and muttering to himself, “I’ve hit rock bottom.” This was a man who was involved in a car crash that killed two people, but Deck the Halls was his “rock bottom.”

I thought about that anecdote after seeing this:

Rudy Giuliani keeps finding new rock bottoms.

The man once known as “America’s Mayor” was filmed shaving in public in New York City’s JFK Airport by Nick Weiss, who also spotted the disgraced attorney struggling to slurp soup. “It took him 15 minutes to have one bowl of soup because every time he’d bring the spoon up to his mouth, half would fall back into the soup. It was disgusting,” he told the Daily Mail. We’ve all seen truly vile things at the airport, but nothing on the level of Rudy Giuliani sanding away his facial hair in public after eating lobster bisque.

After he finished his soup, a woman served Giuliani a plate of brownies. That’s when he pulled out his razor, and used a tablet camera in selfie mode to shave, Weiss said. The most bizarre part, Weiss added, was that there was a “really nice bathroom” just paces away equipped with sinks, large mirrors, and showers.

Maybe he wasn’t shaving — maybe he was removing the black ooze streaking down his face again. Yeah, that’s probably it. At least it’s on brand for Rudy.

(Via the Daily Mail)

Now that Jennifer Carpenter’s Dexter return is official, the actress has opened up what convinced her to return for the Showtime revival, which pretty much everyone agrees was a hot mess by the time it dropped its infamous ending. As fans of the serial killer series know, there’s only one logical way to bring Carpenter’s Debra Morgan back, and that’s as Dexter’s new conscience. In a new interview with Variety, showrunner Clyde Phillips essentially confirms that Deb will be living in Dexter’s mind just like his father did, and that approach was enough for Carpenter to sign on:

“I didn’t really feel like I wanted to go back and fix a broken score,” Carpenter said. “I feel like Deb had a different ending than the show. So, I decided that my work was to go to the bottom of the ocean and collect her and see if she wanted to be a witness to watch an unmedicated, decoded, unpunished, unchecked serial killer experience himself.”

“I wanted to massage her scar tissue,” she continued, noting that she found it “cosmically profound” to return to the character in such a way.

According to Carpenter, she was attracted to the notion of being “an echo or and inconvenient truth for Dexter,” and that’s what drew her to the revival series that will see Dexter attempt to start a new life in New England while bumping up against a new villain played by Clancy Brown.

The Dexter revival premieres November 7 on Showtime.

(Via Variety)

(SPOILERS for What If…? will obviously be found below.)

Disney+’s What If…? has a grand time putting MCU characters into alternate storylines with varying results so far. Peggy Carter taking the super-soldier serum made for a righteous episode, as did T’Challa becoming Star-Lord, which allowed for the revamping of a big baddie and confirmation that Peter Quill truly is the worst hero in the MCU. This week, things get bizarre because a Marvel show gets a little bit procedural.

Someone is killing off Avengers, and Black Widow’s on the case, and several Avengers bite the dust, and narratively speaking, it’s kind-of a mess. I maybe spotted Crossbones, and thank goodness Nick Fury has the right voice coming out of his head (you know that Samuel L. Jackson couldn’t pass this up), and we see (Bad) Thor and Loki and Hawkeye and Agent Coulson with Captain Marvel ending the episode with an inquiry of who’s butt she can kick. Before that happened, Black Widow was not voiced by Scarlett Johansson, which was discombobulating, even though Lake Bell gave it her all here. Oh, and perhaps most importantly to a lot of Marvel fans, we got to see Iron Man, alive and well again, although he’s voiced not by Robert Downey Jr. but by Mick Wingert.

No matter the voice, people were very happy to see Tony Stark again, donuts and all.

And then this happened. Yes, they killed Iron Man again (those bastards). Let’s just say that the emotions continued… in the other direction. You’re breaking our hearts, Marvel!

Disney+’s ‘What If…?’ streams new episodes on Wednesdays.

Tom Cruise is to the United Kingdom as pigeons are to New York City: he’s everywhere.

The actor, who’s currently filming the seventh Mission: Impossible movie in Europe, posed for a photo with the employees of Indian restaurant Asha’s after eating not one but two dishes of chicken tikka masala. I have never related to Tom Cruise more. He also landed his helicopter in a family’s garden because the nearby airport was closed:

Tom Cruise landed by helicopter in Alison Webb’s Warwickshire garden. The family had only been told an unnamed VIP needed somewhere to land as the nearby airport was shut. Cruise posed for pictures and gave a free helicopter ride to Ms. Webb’s children and her partner’s children.

James Corden can relate. “This summer, me and Tom Cruise were texting about meeting up in London,” The Late Late Show host said during Tuesday’s episode (he prefaced the story with a self-aware warning that “there’s no way to say this without sounding like a prick”). “He sent me a text saying, ‘Whereabouts are you staying?’ And I said, ‘I’m staying in St. Johns Wood,’ which is pretty central in London… He said, ‘Cool, can I land my helicopter there?’ And I just presumed he was joking.” Tom Cruise does not joke.

Here’s the evidence of their text conversation:

I have spent the last 10 minutes wondering if the “T” in that one text means “thanks” or if it stands for “Tom,” like how Tom Hanks ends his tweets with “Hanx” (what is it with Toms?). Also, it’s almost too perfect that Cruise responds to the crying emojis with “does this mean no?” Being text friends with Tom Cruise seems like a lot of responsiblity.

You can watch The Late Late Show clip above.

All three of Nirvana’s albums — Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero — are beloved by fans decades later, but of those, there’s one that Dave Grohl says he doesn’t like listening to nowadays: In Utero.

An updated version of Paul Brannigan’s 2011 biography This Is A Call: The Life And Times Of Dave Grohl is on the way, and in an excerpt shared by Louder (as NME notes), Grohl says that In Utero “makes [his] skin crawl.” He noted:

“That album captured a moment in time for the band, and it’s definitely an accurate representation of the time… which was dark. It’s a f*cking dark album. I don’t like listening to that record. It’s a weird one for me. I hear songs on the radio every once in a while, and I like the sonic difference of hearing ‘All Apologies’ or ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ come on in the middle of a bunch of compressed, Pro-Tooled modern rock radio music, because it stands out, but lyrically and conceptually it’s not something that I like to revisit too often. But maybe what I love the most about that album is the sound of urgency, and the sound of the three of us in a room playing.”

He went on to speak about how In Utero was a response to the hugely successful Nevermind, saying:

“Nevermind and In Utero are two totally different albums. Nevermind was intentional, as much as any revisionists might say it was a contrived version of Nirvana, it wasn’t: we went down there to make that record, we rehearsed hours and hours and hours, day after day, to get to Nevermind. But In Utero was so different. There was no labored process, it was just… bleurgh… it just came out, like a purge, and it was so pure and natural.

And both of those things I’m very proud of, the structured exercise of making an album like Nevermind versus the reckless purge of making an album like In Utero. If you can make one of those albums in your lifetime, you’re lucky: we got two in a row, and that’s awesome.

Obviously In Utero was a direct response to the success and sound of Nevermind. We just pushed ourselves in the other direction, like, ‘Oh really, that’s what you like? Well, here’s what we’re going to f*cking do now!’ But it is a hard album for me to listen to from front to back. Because it’s so real, and because it’s such an accurate representation of the band at the time, it brings back other memories, it kinda makes my skin crawl.

It’s funny: I spend a lot of my time planning things to come, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking back on things I’ve done. But In Utero, man, what a trip.”

Meanwhile, Nevermind is currently at the center of a lawsuit levied by the guy who appeared on the cover as a baby.

Call it a case of premature administration. Remember when, just a few short days, OnlyFans caved to pressure from bankers and announced that it would be banning any sexually explicit content from its site beginning in October? Yeah, well, you can forget all about that. OnlyFans porn is back (for now, anyway).

Less than a week ago, OnlyFans executives shocked lovers of adult content and the hard-working sex workers who provide it by announcing that the site — which had become somewhat of a safe haven (and savior) for sex workers to continue to earn money during the COVID pandemic — would follow the path of Tumblr a few years back and no longer allow its users to post sexually explicit content. The reason? “To comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers,” the company told Variety.

Clearly, someone must have informed those banking partners and payout providers that there would be far less money to count if the platform pivoted to PG-only content, as the reversal on this decision came pretty quickly (pun only mildly intended).

As Variety reports, the company confirmed that it had “secured [the] assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community.” In other words: Sex sells. OnlyFans executives were understandably thrilled that its lewd-lovin’ members spoke up when the threat of turning the site into something out of an old-school Disney cartoon seemed imminent. On Wednesday morning, the company tweeted:

“Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard. We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change. OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.”

Naturally, people have thoughts, mainly marveling over the power of protest while also slamming OnlyFans as shady and untrustworthy…

(Via Variety)

Olivia Rodrigo’s album Sour has actually changed a lot since its release… in terms of its credits, anyway. Last month, Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and St. Vincent were given songwriting credits on “Deja Vu,” as the track is strongly influenced by Swift’s “Cruel Summer.” Now, the list of credited Sour songwriters has grown even larger, as Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Josh Farro are now credited as writers on “Good 4 U.”

As NME notes, the two were not originally credited on the song when its full credits were revealed in May. No official reason has been given for Williams and Farro’s new credits, but some have noted similarities between the song and Paramore’s hit “Misery Business,” so much so that a mash-up of the two tracks has gained popularity on social media.

Williams reacted to the news, taking to her Instagram Story to share a post from Warner Chappell Music that highlights her and Farro’s credit. Williams added, “our publisher is wildin rn.”

Aside from the aforementioned credits, Swift and Antonoff are also credited on “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back,” which interpolates Swift’s “New Year’s Day.”

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

HBO is jumping off Betty. Yes, that’s a skateboarding pun—which you’d know if you’d been watching Betty. As Variety reports, HBO issued a statement on Thursday announcing that they are cancelling the Crystal Moselle-created series, which is based on her 2018 film Skate Kitchen, after just two seasons.

“We will not be moving forward with a third season of Betty,” the network wrote in a statement. “We are very grateful for the collaboration with Crystal and our incredible cast—their fearless exploration of the world of New York City’s skate culture will remain a beautiful emblem of friendship and community.”

The LGBT-themed comedy series (which our Brian Grubb once dubbed “the coolest show on television”) about a group of young women navigating the male-dominated world of New York City’s skateboarding culture, received nearly unanimous praise from critics when it first debuted in May 2020. Though at its height it was only being watched by about 200,000 people, the critical consensus was strong enough that HBO had the good sense to greenlight it for a second season, which currently holds a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes (while season 1 is holding steady at 97 percent).

While the series has been praised for its fresh approach and cinema verité-like style—especially as it entered its second season and tackled such urgent topics as the COVID pandemic and Black Lives Matter—not even near-universal praise could save the series. Meaning that its second season finale—which The Hollywood Reporter wryly notes was “unfortunately titled ‘The Let Down’”—will now serve as its series finale.

(Via Variety)

New footage from The Batman — the movie that dares to ask, what if a man… was a bat? — debuted at CinemaCon on Tuesday, but it hasn’t been released to the public yet. Instead, Entertainment Weekly has a write-up about what was screened, including Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne looking emo-broody and beating people up in the streets of Gotham. It’s your typical Dark Knight fare, but in a behind-the-scenes featurette, director Matt Reeves explained why The Batman isn’t your typical origin story.

“I felt that we’ve seen lots of origin stories. It seems things go further and further into fantasy, and I thought, well, one place we haven’t been is grounding it in the way that Year One does, to come right in to a young Batman, not being an origin tale, but referring to his origins and shaking him to his core,” he said, referring to Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s influential Batman: Year One comics. “You can have it be very practical, but I also thought it could be the most emotional Batman movie ever made.”

Pattinson added that “from the first conversation I had with Matt… I just knew that there was something radically different.” He also called Batman “one of the major characters of the 20th century, and so many people connect with it on such a deep level for so many different reasons.” I feel the same way, but about his character from The Lighthouse.

The Batman opens on March 4, 2022.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)