EPISODE 520: NOT PENNY'S BOAT
I don't know what else to say.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
One of the promises I’ve tried to keep with this newsletter is to not make it about politics or despair (which fun future fact appear as synonyms in 2030’s Oxford English Dictionary, fun!).
In the current moment of virusi (after three months living in my room I’ve decided I can make my own decisions as to how represent the plural of different nouns, thanks very much), I’m not sure how well I’ve accomplished that. Some of you have gone out of your way to say you’ve appreciated what I’ve been writing of late, which is kind of you, and I want you to know I am including with this newsletter a friendly ghost who will remind you of all the good things about you while you sleep (just don’t call him/her/them an angel, because apparently angels are actually straight up INSERT WORD PRIEST SHOULD NOT SAY HERE, but also p.r. geniuses and have convinced everyone they are the ones who do all the good things in the world and ghosts are scary monsters when the opposite is true).
(Friendly ghosts are responsible for all your out of the blue good ideas, songs about space travel and Hermione Granger. Meanwhile angels have given George R.R. Martin crippling writers’ block just to watch people go crazy checking each week to see if there are updates about Winds of Winter.
Seriously, angels are straight up NOPE CAN’T PRINT THAT.)
(Btw, no new news on Winds of Winter.)
But in general I tend to think most of us have been plenty overwhelmed by I’ll Take Current Events as a Horror Movie for 400 for the last 4 years and so we don’t need to read it here, too.
Having said that – a phrase that usually means “And now I will do what you don’t want anyway and you should let me because I first acknowledged it wasn’t what I promised”– like all of you this week I have many feelings. Most of which will only feel right to express if I can be swearing like a drunken sailor and punching multiple other drunken sailors in the face while doing so. Which I would very much like to do, and also to be good at. In another life maybe I will be a 1950s-era cinema stunt man. (Who says reincarnation has to go chronologically forward?)
But in this life I am a lot closer to Homer Simpson than a stunt man, just with touch-wood-and-hope-for-the-best healthier organs. (Everyone thinks that show is hilarious; wait until the end where we discover they’ve all been struggling with radiation-based liver failure the whole time.)
(On the upside I’m told the Simpsons finale will also include the reveal of who was on Lost’s outrigger canoe, so you know, something for everyone.)
(Lost’s finale happened ten years ago last week. I watched it on the night it aired in an empty house on the Jersey shore all by myself so that I could sob without shame, and so I did. A lot.
Bare not thine teeth at me, Lost haters. That ending was beautiful. Please live your life knowing I am eventually going to rewatch that whole series just to make you mad.)
So yes, many feelings. A lot of anger, a lot of sadness, and also just a sense of not knowing how I can be of help, or even what to say. (Hence no doubt my immense and continuity-shattering number of parentheticals.)
But that is good, actually. It is always good when life makes you shut up. Because then maybe you will stop with your Burt Reynolds Has It All Figured Out routine and just BLEEPITY BLORP BLEEP watch and listen and try to change.
So that’s the goal. To try and shut up and listen more and ask for help. The world right now is a WHOA NELLY and I would like to THE LORD BLUSHES the HEY NOW out of those GEE WHIZ MA and also HONK HONK the HAMBURGLAR.
But me saying that is really not much of anything, is it.
On Facebook I stumbled across a link to the composer of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” singing it as an old man to a crowd. And it’s maybe the most genuinely helpful thing I’ve come across all weekend.
I also came across this thread from a comic book writer I love in the Twin Cities, talking about their experiences cleaning up after the previous night’s riots.
And here’s a similar story.
(The Spider-Man photo at the top? That’s the guy.)
Point being, there are a a lot of good people out there helping each other both in the protests and even when some of them go bad.
Do you love Catherine O’Hara, of Schitt’s Creek, Christopher Guest movies and so many other very funny things? Vanity O’Fair (whoa, just made Vanity Fair Irish on accident, but apparently I have my own nation now and so I am keeping it) just did a profile of her. It will make your life better.
That’s what makes Catherine O’Hara special, actually. She’s cast in so many satirical roles, and yet rather than producing the hollow, self-satisfied laughs typical of that there’s something about her that always makes the world seem genuinely funnier and better.
Here is a thing that Ann Friedman wrote last week that I am relating to.
Is it ok to take my mask off for awhile when I'm out walking, as long as I put it back on as soon as I see someone else approaching? (I do this, and it reminds me of dimming my brights when I see an oncoming car.) Is it ok to sit 6 feet from my friend in the park and catch up with her in person? Is my online shopping helping to keep small businesses afloat or endangering delivery workers? Is it stupid and dangerous to pop by the store just to get a bag of tortilla chips—just this once? Should I really be using terms like "quarantine" and "lockdown" and "isolation" interchangeably?
My versions: Should I be walking through my house which is not like a house for a family but a 30 person group home for retirees wearing a mask, even if no one else seems to be and I think maybe some are looking at me like I am crazy?
Can I actually have dinner with a friend if we sit outside wearing masks ten feet apart? Or is that just what we’re telling people because we’re tired?
Also, why don’t I know what to say when I see someone (Coming Soon, my new book, Why When I See You Do I Want to Run Away, and Is that Going to Change)?
And is it okay to describe our current living situation with just the word “shelter”? Because isn’t quarantine where you go when you’re already exposed to something bad, and lockdown what happens to buildings in movies where Tom Cruise doesn’t get there in time or Chris Evans is trying to escape, and isolation just the normal state of my sad sad life?
This week’s words from Warren Ellis, my life coach.
I would like to use my remaining time in the world to tell stories and live with art and drink wine. And whisky.
I haven’t had a drink in three months. And it’s fine. I’m FINE. NO YOU ARE.
Here’s a question for your think box: have you had the experience where you’re watching a TV commercial in the last few months that references the current global situation, and the longer it goes on the more you want to leap up, dive into the television and drench your hands in the lifeblood of anyone who shows a positive attitude (just hypothetically, I have not thought about this at all)?
If so, according to this article you are not alone, and the problem is not that you are a bloodthirsty monster after all, see I told you nothing was wrong with me grandma.
This is a video of a guy doing a Sudoku.
So if you ever wondered, But is there Twitch for Sudoku, the answer is yes.
And no, I don’t know why this video is a thing, but almost 1 million people who could be doing anything have watched it and I am told that if you watch it you will actually find it strangely wonderful.
Lastly, for Christmas my nephew and nieces gave me the new Star Wars game Jedi: Fallen Order. And having heard that video game playing while sheltering is very good for you both psychologically and for your immune system (no it is tho) I felt that it was my responsibility to play it.
The game is about Cal Kestis, a former Jedi Padawan who somehow escaped the mass murder of Jedi at the end of Revenge of the Sith and is now just trying to survive without being discovered, who of course gets discovered, and then finds out there is a whole list of children who could become Jedi out there and gets convinced to go find them.
It is a gorgeous, fun game, with fantastic characters, a fabulous ship and a companion droid that I grew to love so much.
BD-1, You are my Electronic Soul Mate.
And icing on the cake the hero was one of the ginger people, just like gift givers Jack and Meggan.
So Jack, Meggan and Ally, thank you! I finished the game last week, and I loved it so much.
While trying to finish Fallen I came across this video of someone trying to defeat one of the bad guys. The user is way better at the game than me, and when he comes into trouble he is also much funnier.
Okay I’ve been playing the Sudoku video in the background and when the numbers start to fall it does become weirdly compelling.
Did we do it? I think we did.
Oh wait there is one other thing. There’s a new movie on Amazon, The Vast of Night. It’s a scifi movie set in a small town in the 1950s, and it’s short, just 90 minutes. It’s the kind of movie you watch that makes you love movies and helps you believe you too could make them.
Take it gently, my friends. Look out for yourself and those around you. Allow yourself the space and the things you need to see clearly, listen well and live.
Right here with you. See you next week.