EPISODE 620: NOW. HERE. THIS. (AGAIN.)
They should sell women’s hands at Home Depot.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Am I am in New York? Am I in Los Angeles? Am I still flying somewhere in between? Am I alive in the box or dead? It’s been three weeks since my move, and I have no idea. On one level I’m very much here – two weeks of work under my belt, most everything unpacked and moved, seen some friends (and family!—my nephew and his girlfriend just moved here and will very soon be running the city).
But as I was sitting in Central Park today, just watching people bike and jog by along a nearby bridge, I realized it’s really the first time that I’ve actually stopped to do something like that in these three weeks, or maybe at all.
It’s a funny-wonderful-dangerous thing about New York. There’s always something going on. Which means you always feel like there’s something out there you could be out there doing. Sitting in your room, reading? Or watching TV? What are you, 400?
They call it the city that never sleeps. It seems like a nice turn of phrase, but it’s also kind of a description of what it’s like to live here. You’re basically living on a live wire. Try to sleep through that.
So how about that Covid, huh? You were all so sure that we had this thing more or less on the ropes. Well Covid has news for you, my darlings.
Just in the three weeks that I’ve been in New York, things have changed. On Monday of my second week here, the America offices opened for the first time in a year and a half. It was a big deal and there was a lot of joy in the office.
Then on Thursday we were all told you don’t have to come in if you don’t want to, after the stories of the mass-covid cases among the vaccinated in Provincetown matched with the delta surge to create a deepening anxiety about everyone’s safety. Unlike Los Angeles, New York City has yet to require masks—and honestly, I’m relieved about that. I wear a mask any time I go in any place to shop, but if you tell me I have to wear a mask in a coffee shop, bar or on the street, I’m just going to stay home.
What New York has done is announce that by sometime in September, you’ll need to prove vaccination to go to restaurants, gyms and I suspect other places. I know bars that are already requiring that, as well as temperature checks. It’s not 100% effective, as the Provincetown story makes clear. But it’s certainly a huge positive.
It’s hard to know where it’s all headed, isn’t it? Cases and deaths are rising. Again. ERs are full. Again. But this time mostly for completely avoidable reasons.
And every person that says I’m not getting vaccinated and then gets seriously ill is another bed that can’t be used, another set of staff hours and resources spent and another whole group of people wrecked by the experience – friends, family, medical staff, the other sick people for whom there is now no room in case of an emergency, the parents of small children who have to be extra-careful about everything to do with their kids because the sheer number of unvaccinated has kept the world still so dangerous for them.
It is awful and infuriating on every level. And I say this as someone who has reported on vaccine hesitancy among people of color, and has sympathy for their reasons. Honestly I’m much angrier at people doing this for some political reason, but it’s also true that most people have had at least three if not four or five months to get used to the idea of the vaccine, and had the chance to see that it works and that it’s a good thing. And most places that I read about are really bending over backwards to try to reach everyone who is hesitant, too, and to try and figure out ways to reassure and be a resource.
(Steve Lopez at the L.A. Times had a great piece about people in L.A. doing this over the weekend. Not everyone can do what these people are doing, but they certainly give you ideas.)
It’s a real mess, and an outrage.
Which is why in my first week at America I suggested, you know, somebody should write about this. In particular what can we say to those who are vaccinated and are angry?
So of course, they asked me to write it. I’m not quite sure whether I stuck the landing, but it did give me the opportunity to cite Emperor Palpatine as a wisdom figure, and that is always, always, always a good day.
Btw, Have you seen this:
I have no idea what to make of the possibility that Luke is actually going to become some small part of the ongoing story of Mandalorian, let alone that he and Baby Yoda are going to do light saber lessons. Seriously, without even seeing it my mind is already blown.
I’ve actually gotten to do a couple fun things since I came back to the America staff. Over the weekend I wrote a piece to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Melissa McCarthy, Queen of Comedy and My Heart about a new mentoring initiative that the Duchess has announced—and within it found a way to talk about my grandmother’s marshmallow-covered sweet potatoes, which are the only way to do sweet potatoes, don’t make me come over there.
And I got to riff on a great piece written by someone else about evaluating your use of technology.
I also—what is this, toot my own horn day?--had a piece come out in the comic journal SKTCHD.com. It’s an oral history of the 5 Years Later run of Legion of Super Heroes, which was a run that was really important to me growing up. It’s been almost a year since I first pitched the idea to David Harper over at SKTCHD. I ended up doing maybe 16 hours of interviews and a bunch of email threads too. It was really something; the creators involved were super generous and also VERY honest.
If you’re at all interested in insane behind the scene comic book politics, or learning about a book that was all about trying to tell a story of hope in hard times, check this out. It is a project I am really proud to have worked on. (It may have a pay wall that pops up after you’ve read a couple sections. But hopefully you’ll like what you’ve read enough to toss a few shekels and read some more.)
I also turned in a new pilot to my manager, something that kind of just showed up in my imagination and I just had to write, as well as what I hope is close to the final draft for now of a biopic that I have been working on for the last two years. I haven’t spoken of it here in a long time, and whether anything will come of it, who knows.
But there are so many great stories that I found along the way, not only about the people involved in this particular thing but about 1980s pop culture. With every draft it’s become more of a delight just to add some of that color.
So yeah. Like I said, lots going on.
Speaking of biopics, Variety had a great piece about this new Matt Damon film STILLWATER. It’s an interview with Amanda Knox, whose life was clearly the basis for the story, though the filmmakers never bothered to speak to her. She’s got really interesting things to say about drawing stories from other people’s lives.
THREE TWEETS
This is such a powerful two minutes.
This is such a crazy two minutes.
And this is such a brilliant 60 seconds.
I watched Suicide Squad last night. It’s pretty good. Unexpectedly...heartwarming. Truly. Underneath all the blood and insanity, it’s got a pretty tender center. (Also, it has THINGS to say about American actions in other countries. Wowsers.)
Once you’ve seen the film, I highly recommend this interview with writer/director James Gunn. He has a comment in there about how he pitched the film to the execs that’s just so smart for writers. (Put simply: he took them on the very same ride he took the audience. This will all make sense after you watch the film.)
Also—the Harley Quinn material is just outstanding. She is by far the best and most consistently written DC character going right now. It’s kind of astonishing.
This yellow pages list of LA bars, which I add to my scrapbook love affair with Los Angeles, comes from author Joanne O’Neill’s wonderful newsletter All My Stars.
If you are Gen X or Millennial you absolutely owe it to yourself to pick up her book Lurking, which is a sort of history of/meditation on online communities. I’ve been reading it off and on for a while now and it is wonderful.
She also recently wrote this piece in defense of/reflection on email that is next on my To Read list, because she is just that good.
And speaking of tech, the New York Times did a thing on the Tapback feature on iPhones – that ability we now have to respond to texts with little images like “Ha Ha” or exclamation points. It’s the first piece that actually makes sense of it for me.
When will it be time to do things again?
There was a moment early in the summer where I drove cross country and got slowly less and less scared about being around other humans (within reason – I am still not doing hundreds or thousands of people together, thanks). It was generally a nice, slow reentry. Over those three weeks my own internal comfort with life really did grow.
Then after leaving LMU I took a cross country flight (wow!) and arrived in a city that seemed to be up and dancing its way into the future. I’d seen the same start to happen in LA before I left, though in a less palpable way because LA is always happening everywhere and nowhere at the same time. There is no LA. We are all LA.
One sure sign of the changing times, though, was looking for a new carry-on luggage bag and finding the shelves of multiple stories as totally wiped out as toilet paper shelves in March 2020. Angelenos were GETTING OUTTA DODGE, y’all.
Now, though, we’re back in strange times and I see people wondering when will we actually be able to do anything? Like, how are we to live in the midst of such ongoing instability?
I have no answers. I do take a little comfort in some of the Psalms which are content to see the act of asking real, hard questions of God as itself the act of prayer.
The one thing I’m trying to remember is this little mantra: Now. Here. This. As in, I am here, in this moment, right now.
Sometimes if I say that to myself, it’s like I look up from my thoughts and see the world in front of me again. And somehow things seem lighter and also clearer.
We’re still here. We’re doing our best. It isn’t pretty, not any of it. But there is still beauty around us. And love.