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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.

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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.

With QAnon Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene dominating headlines thanks to her questionable social media history of calling for Democrats to be executed and harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg, fellow Republican Meghan McCain found herself forced to denounce Greene on The View, which she did. Kinda. To McCain’s credit, she opened her remarks by fully agreeing her co-hosts that Greene is a major problem for the party. “She’s a nightmare for Republicans,” McCain said. “I mean, she’s a total whack job conspiracy theorist. Everyone is right, I can’t defend any of the things she’s done or said.”

However, things took a turn when it came to talk to removing Greene from office. While McCain conceded that Greene is a “different” situation because of her social media posts that incited violence against Nancy Pelosi (and also called for FBI agents to be executed), the conservative View host feels that removing Greene will become a “slippery slope.” McCain then drew a false equivalency between Greene and Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell. Via The Daily Beast:

“I think we should be analyzing congresspeople who are on committees,” McCain said. “Eric Swalwell is accused of sleeping with a Chinese spy and being targeted and he’s on the House intelligence committee and that’s something Nancy Pelosi has refused to deal with. I don’t think someone who has been compromised by a Chinese spy should have access to our intelligence.”

For the record, McCain is incorrectly citing an Axios report about suspected Chinese spy Fang Fang who targeted Swalwell and other California politicians. When Swalwell was alerted of Fang’s alleged spying, he immediately severed all ties with her and fully cooperated with the FBI. He is not accused of wrongdoing and did not have sexual relations with Fang.

(Via The View on Twitter)

After receiving co-signs from the likes of Billie Eilish and Phoebe Bridgers, Arlo Parks is just a day away from releasing her anticipated debut album, Collapsed In Sunbeams. To drum up excitement surround the release, Parks shared some of her music on SiriusXMU’s airwaves, including a delicate cover of Clairo’s Immunity hit “Bags.”

Taking on the cover with a piano and a subdued drum beat, Parks delivered Clairo’s lovelorn lyrics. While Parks gave her rendition of Clairo’s original track, the two young musicians had actually previously worked together on music. Clairo lent a hand on Parks’ single “Green Eyes,” which is about the pains of falling in love with a woman whose family is at odds with their queer identity.

On Parks’ upcoming album, she pens heartfelt lyrics about coping with mental health, as heard on her recent single “Hope.” It’s also a theme that Clairo touches on frequently in her music. Just a few days ago, Clairo shared a lo-fi song about her own struggles with mental health which she recorded on her phone. Posting the acoustic track on Instagram, Clairo wrote, “not sure about you, but my mental health has taken a major dip since quarantine started- at times I feel like i’ve never felt worse. new medication, hotlines, and one scheduled appointment with a psychiatrist later and i’m feeling more like myself again. I wrote this last night and i feel there’s no real reason I should hold onto it.”

Collapsed In Sunbeams is out 1/29 via Transgressive. Pre-order it here.

Always looking for an opportunity to fluff up Zach LaVine’s credentials, the Chicago Bulls this morning swung in to use the stock market memes of the day while also advocating for LaVine’s All-Star bid. As Robinhood paused trading on GameStop, AMC, and other stocks, the Bulls put together a graphic showing LaVine’s stock shooting through the roof, with the caption “ZACH LAVINE TO THE MOON.”

The funnier part might be that Benny the Bull, the team’s inanimate mascot, got in on the skyrocketing LaVine stock and started doling out market advice to fans in the Bulls’ mentions.

LaVine is averaging a career-high 27 points per game in his seventh season and shooting better than 50 percent from the field, finally putting together the type of consistent and efficient season we’ve been waiting for. Maybe on a losing team that’s still not enough for voters to put him in the All-Star game — Chicago has struggled this year despite LaVine’s gaudy scoring numbers, although at 7-10 they find themselves in the morass of teams jockeying for position in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament picture — but you best bet the Bulls’ social media team will work night and day to keep LaVine stock prices high and get more and more people buying high on their scoring star.

Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman is finally getting its due, decades later, beyond the printed confines of the sprawling comic book series, and it’s doing so in a dual way. In 2020, the epic dark fantasy landed on Audible (with James McAvoy as Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, Kat Dennings as Death, and Michael Sheen as Lucifer) with the first three graphic novels coming to life in The Sandman: Act I, and hopefully soon, Netflix’s live-action series will roll film. To that end, the streaming service has released the first casting announcements, and there’s a surprise or two on hand.

Tom Sturridge is picking up the role of Morpheus/Dream, but what really sticks out will probably be of more interest to Brienne of Tarth and Game of Thrones fans.

Gwendoline Christie will take on the Lucifer role, so yep, we’ve got an actress picking up that challenge (and we will have dueling Lucifers for awhile, given that Sheen’s version of the character reappears in the final two graphic novels, which will be covered in the third Audible installment). Christie’s not the only Thrones actor on board, either. Charles Dance (who portrayed Tywin Lannister) will appears as blackmailer/magician Roderick Burgess, and the rest of the cast (so far) includes Boyd Holbrook, Asim Chaudhry, Vivienne Acheampong, and Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Along with Netflix’s announcement, Gaiman tweeted the news with a promise of much more to come: “Seven down, hundreds to go.”

Of course, I’m on the edge of my seat to hear who shall portray Death in the live-action series. When we spoke with Gaiman about the Audible series, he spoke highly of Kat Dennings while expressing that he was excited to see her move far beyond what he saw with 2 Broke Girls. “One of the things that I love about her performance as Death is that, with Kat, we get her cheerful side, her funny side, to land a gag,” Gaiman said at the time. “But we also get her deep, we get her angry, we get her very, very real… it’s funny but absolutely heartbreaking… It’s kind-of magical.”

After having listened to Kat as Death in the Audible version of this story, I’m putting it out there: She belongs in this live-action series, too. She’s got the spirit of the character down, and Dennings can definitely pull off the look as well.

Netflix describes the series as fans would expect, writing, “The Sandman follows the people and places affected by Morpheus, the Dream King, as he mends the cosmic — and human — mistakes he’s made during his vast existence.” And at around the same time, an Audible press release announced that The Sandman: Act II and The Sandman: Act III are coming. In the release, Gaiman declared, “It was thrilling to be a part of the fastest-selling Audible fiction title and to watch it break records. I’m excited to discover what other surprises the genius Dirk Maggs has up his sleeve in the next volumes of Audible’s The Sandman.” The comic-book legend added, “It’s like making movies for the ear that go straight to the brain. And soon it will be time to meet the whole family, then to go back to Hell once more, as Morpheus confronts Lucifer in Season of Mists.”

Texas trio Khruangbin are known for their heady and oftentimes instrumental music, as heard on their recently released third album Mordechai. Following the album’s 2020 release, Khruangbin have now shared a visual to their “Dearest Alfred” track along with a remix of the song by acclaimed producer Knxwledge.

Both of the “Dearest Alfred” visuals were created by The Kennedys, a tutored internship program at the creative agency Wieden+Kennedy London. They feature a dizzying montage of various pen pals and include both animated and claymation scenes.

In a statement alongside his remix, Knxwledge praised Khruangbin’s music, saying, “I’m just a fan like everyone else. They are so unique; the sound they have just resonates with the sounds I grew up loving and most influenced by. Beautiful progressions with perfect minimal, yet so powerful, lyrics. What more can you ask for?”

Speaking about the making of the two visuals, Khruangbin’s Laura Laura Lee Ochoa said they wanted the highlight the importance of sending physical mail:

“In a year where communication has a new spin of importance and focus has been put on the postal service, we wanted to make a video highlighting that sentiment for a song based on letters my grandfather sent to his brother. Working with The Kennedys, we were able to highlight these feelings from a variety of perspectives and through a variety of mediums–which felt important to the project. I’ve been a big fan of The Kennedys since working at W+K, as it gives creatives that lack work experience a chance to gain some amidst the beautiful chaos of real agency life, and feel extremely proud for the opportunity to work with them on such a meaningful project. Our Zoom call with them presenting us their ideas for the video was one of my favorite moments of quarantine–I felt incredibly inspired and humbled. This project ended up being two-fold: the original video for ‘Dearest Alfred’ and a remixed video for the remix of ‘Dearest Alfred’ by Knowledge. I love what we made together.”

Check out Khruangbin’s “Dearest Alfred” video and the Knxwledge remix video above.

Mordechai is out now via Dead Oceans. Get it here.