EPISODE 530: BIOLUMINESCENT SCONES
Unlike most scones, they're actually super light.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Edith Zimmerman talks about this dream she has of going into an underwater layer with a half snake half woman creature and at one point this happens:
But I read “bioluminescent scones” and now all day I have been wondering why I can’t have food that glows in the dark.
So hey, I guess this pandemic thing is going to be around a while? I mean, I don’t want to sound hysterical, but it has been five months now. Other countries, the ones we were watching in February and worrying for – Italy, China – have stabilized. Meanwhile major parts of the US, including Los Angeles, are sort of like this:
The LA Times was reporting yesterday that things are looking up, hospital beds are freeing up. I was getting really excited!
Then I looked to see how many new cases were there yesterday: 2500.
The fact that we’ve come back around to the point where school is about to start again somehow makes everything seem more permanent and surreal in a new way. It’s like waking up to realize, Oh you know that point a way back where the sky got really dark and then things were fine except the stars seem to be gone now?
Yeah, well, that’s because we actually got swallowed by a whale back then and its belly is our home now. Surprise! Congratulations, My Whalies!
It’s hard to face that greater sort of permanence, I think. It begs a lot of questions about how to proceed for the longer term. I know I’m wondering, how much longer can I just spend all my time in my room? This weekend I tried to take a drive for the first time in about 3 months. My car at this point looks like a prop from The Walking Dead; and it turns out that’s really all that it’s good for, because of course the battery is dead. I may need to set it on fire and then chase people around while yelling “Brains”, just to finish out the picture.
One of the things I’m thinking about a lot is communal mask etiquette. When you live with 35 people, when should you be wearing a mask? In the first couple months, I never worried about it. I thought of home in probably the same way as you do – that’s the one place you don’t have to wear a mask, unless that’s just your signature thing, George is the Neighbor Who Likes To Wear Masks. Good for George.
But at some point my attitude flipped. Because any time I leave my room, I’m in space that is public. It’s not Walking on the Beach public, but it’s not I’m in My Home and Sometimes Wearing my Jeff Goldblum Mask Because He is a G-D- National Treasure, either. The kitchen, the laundry room, the hallways -- 35 other guys are using all of those spaces, and so do a couple staff – who are all asked to wear masks. So shouldn’t we?
Jeff Goldblum Concedes Your Point But Would Also Like You To Think About His Amazing Sweater
It’s something I’ve thought about bringing to the community… I don’t think it’d go over well. Imagine if one of the people you’re living with announced they thought you should all wear masks, how weird that might seem. That’s how it would seem to the guys here too. Like, Easy George. We tolerate your constant Jeff Goldblum homily references and how you answer most questions with quotes from Jurassic Park and The Fly, but don’t tell us how to live our best pandemic lives. No one is sick, therefore we’re all doing fine.
Jeff Goldblum is Taking Your Interpretation of Events Seriously
Meanwhile the more I run into guys not wearing masks, the more I find I just can’t be around. Truly, if I see someone coming I immediately turn and go the other way. Sometimes I try to play it cool I give that look like, Oh wait, I forgot something. Maybe I even pat my pocket, because that is a Classic Move.
But if it’s more like a Turn the Corner and There They Are Surprising Me there is just no artifice in me, I turn around and try not to run but kind of do.
It’s crazy, I know. But also, maybe kind of hilarious? I’m basically the Hunchback hiding in my belfry, except wearing an Ian Malcolm mask and living in a two-story housing complex for priests which looks out on the Pacific Ocean. At some point it will definitely make good material for either a sitcom or my first sets in group therapy at the mental institution I’m sent to.
So yeah… 2020, Huzzah! Whalies Forever!
Jeff Goldblum Blesses You Always
Random Aside 1: I would really really like to see a pandemic-inspired episode of Seinfeld. I feel like they would absolutely nail every aspect of this.
Random Aside 2: Does anyone remember the Joker’s origin story? Because if there’s any wiggle room I’d like to propose that he lived for a time with a large group of people who wouldn’t wear masks. I mean, his go-to move was GAS, for God’s sake. Clearly he was responding to something.
Random Aside 3: The Jeff Goldblum Covid-Mask Action is actually pretty tight, don’t you think?
Speaking of 2020 weird, have you been wondering if Christopher Nolan will ever just chill about releasing Tenet? It’s definitely coming, Christopher. You know we’ll all be there. Just, you know, when it’s actually safe.
Vulture recently did this hilarious (if dark) piece about going to Christopher Nolan movies in a time of pandemic. It has some very funny takes on his films and a passion for Alfred/Michael Caine that I deeply share.
Meanwhile, here’s the present future of cinema:
When I have not been thinking about masks, I have been watching Ozark. I am late to that party, but I have brought beer, if you guys are thirsty?
For those of you who are fans, does everyone compare it to Breaking Bad? To me it seems very similar, a “normal guy” (aka white privileged straight dude) breaks bad with drug dealers and it is shockingly harder for him to keep up and survive. But in this case his family is in on it.
The thing that’s really surprised me is how much harder a watch I find it than Breaking Bad. I absolutely can’t binge it. It’s just too dark.
In fact watching it has helped me appreciate the clever ways BB used humor to keep us engaged and off balance. You never really know what’s going to happen on BB, but you can pretty much guarantee than in addition to grabbing you by the throat and making you sit there in horror it was at some point going to make you howl. Meanwhile Ozark is relentlessly awful.
The other thing is – and again, I haven’t seen season three yet, so maybe this is out of date – so much of what happens in Ozark comes from crazy: crazy FBI agent, crazy drug dealer’s wife, crazy daddy. Or from people temporarily crazy on account of grief or rage.
I’m not a fan of that. As a writer you always want your character to be the one causing themselves the most trouble. The problems they face should come from their own choices.
It’s not that crazy can’t be a good catalyst here and there. But when almost every new obstacle comes from yet another crazy person being crazy, for me it all blurs together. And suddenly it’s them against the world, when the interesting thing about Ozark is actually that they are themselves the bad guys making terrible choices.
(I do love the kids though. Jonah, Charlotte, Ruth and Wyatt are all tremendous characters. If Season 3 does not give Charlotte more to do we riot.)
I came across this yesterday –it’s the view outside someone else’s window.
You can contribute your own. I kind of love it. In the midst of the many challenges of all this, for me one of the little blessings has been the opportunity to connect with total strangers in unexpected ways. If you had asked me in 2019, how would you like to spend ten minutes looking out someone else’s window, I would have said Scram Kid, Must Go Faster.
But in 2020, our needs are different. Mostly it seems like we need each other. And in the midst of everything, as crazy as it all is, as that one guy in that movie said, life finds a way.
Have a great week. Make sure you take some time to take care of yourself. A little TLC is good for the soul!