Tag Archives: coronavirus

09.21.20
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The Pand-Emmys

What’s more meaningless and wasteful and escapist than watching an awards show during a pandemic several days after human rights icon and US Supreme Court Justice extraordinaire Ruth Bader Ginsberg died?

Not much.  Especially since at least 12 different people have assured me in the last 24 hours that the world as I know it will soon end.

As if it already hasn’t.

Welp

Anyway, this is one of many reasons why I decided to tune in to the mostly virtual 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards Sunday night.

What could be better than escaping into a sea of pop culture calamity?

My hope was for a night of diversion and bitchy commented asides that would allow for the venting of so many things that, okay, I haven’t exactly been holding down.

At all.  And not towards anyone.

If you’ve been reading here lately, or ever, you know.

And we still love you completely

Still, my husband and I are suckers for free Hollywood crack so gathering ourselves and our guacamole and chips around the TV at 5:00 PST to not exactly hate watch, more like love-hate divert, seemed like the best idea in at least five minutes.

Plus – we don’t have to social distance, wear a mask or even think about that sh-t – I mean, patriotic duty and kindness towards our fellow citizens – which we do happily since it’s no big deal and, truly, why would anyone in their right mind be complaining about it at this point?

Wear the damn mask

Like your past, who you are and what you are thinking follows you around like the plague and can rear it’s ugly head at any inopportune moment.  Which is why it’s best to show that unsavory, albeit snidely fun side of you only around people who get you’re not the total a-hole you seem to be, people like your significant other, best friend or even pooch…..during a Hollywood awards show…when you can talk back or even catcall to the screen at people in fancy clothes and over-privilege who can take it.

Even virtually.

WWJRD (What would Joan Rivers Do?)

This, of course, was not to be on Sunday night.

None of it.

This, in fact, was the opposite of what we hoped.  Overly polite people trying their best to gingerly entertain in a responsible way while consistently making the point that there was nothing really important going on this evening on this show except, well, group human hugs in a particularly difficult time of what could be our soon-ending civilization.

Ugh.  How disappointed were WE at my house?   (Note: Okay, mostly I).

Fortune 500!

But, I mean, what did we think?  That host Jimmy Kimmel wouldn’t wear rubber gloves to hand the winner’s envelope to in studio presenter Jennifer Aniston?

Or that we wouldn’t soon see that despite the early canned laughs and celebrity shots the massive Microsoft Theatre really had no audience at all and Kimmel was  really speaking to a sea of appropriately empty seats?

Or that instead of buying seats and ads and throwing lavish after parties the studios and TV Academy would pool their money and combined raise $2.8 million during the broadcast to feed hungry kids? (Note: nokidhungry.org).

Really channeling my inner Larry David

Or that many of the award categories, nominees and winners would be read by COVID-19 first responders like nurses, doctors, farmers and truck drivers?

The people putting their lives on the line to keep society going?  People taking time out of their day to appear on a silly awards show to amuse the likes of me?

These were people I bet were even expecting half of us watching at home would make fun of their hair, how they spoke or at least whom they were wearing.  That’s how cool they were.

Alas, we couldn’t do any of those things.  Nor, I suspect, could much of anyone else.

This but there’s nothing else on

Because despite how much we might very, very, VERY much want it, there is no true escape from the reality of these days.

I mean, if an award show can’t even deliver that, we truly have no choice but to face facts and become the actual heroes and heroines on our favorite TV shows in real life.

At least partly.

So yeah, it’s great that Schitt’s Creek set a new record for a TV comedy and swept in every major category – series, directing, writing, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress.  And that an out and proud gay guy, showrunner Dan Levy, took home four awards in one night.

Melting my cold dead heart

It’s also great that Succession, a show that takes on the unfeeling, corporate rich, won best drama series, best directing, best writing and best actor.

For this scene alone, Jeremy Strong earned it

Not to mention it’s great Watchmen was awarded best limited series, writing, actress and supporting actor for its original genre bending depiction of the destruction of Black Wall Street and the justice that, in turn, could have wrought.

I mean, is anyone better than Regina??

Kudos to all of them.  And many, many more not mentioned.

In fact, here is the complete list.

But what this year’s Emmys will best be remembered for, if it is at all, was for being the first major televised awards show up that best encapsulated the strangeness of our times.  (Note: Feel free to substitute strange with the angriest, or bitchiest, word of your choice).

This works too

As much as it did its job I’m hoping next year the 73rd go-round are A LOT worse, and, in turn, bring out the worst in those of us at home.

Because that will mean all of us, on the whole, are doing a hell of a lot better.

Emily Hampshire – “Maybe This Time” (from Schitt’s Creek)

08.02.20
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We’re Number One!

To mask or not to mask, that is NOT the question.

It’s not up for debate.  You go outside, you wear the f-n mask.  If you don’t you get fined $10,000 the first time.  The second time you go to jail.

And yes, I’m a liberal.

I will get the hose!

Jail is the last place you want to be in a national pandemic but jail is where you will go for not adhering to the #1 medically approved way you can best protect yourself and others from contracting and spreading COVID-19. If you’ve ever watched any of the Law and Order shows (Note: And at this point in our lives, who hasn’t?) you’ve doubtless seen the one about the person who knowingly spreads some very contagious, possibly lethal disease and is charged for assault or even murder in court for callously using their bodily fluids as their weapon of choice.

So, life imitates art, right?  And we haven’t even started on death.

Then why don’t we?

You tell ’em, Olivia!

I live in California and we now have the dubious distinction of being #1 in the country for COVID-19 infections.  More than half a million and counting.  We were doing okay for a while but since businesses reopened in the last couple of months we’ve seen a sharp surge or spike or whatever you want to call it in cases.  

Our death rate (Note: Almost 9224 people so far) is not quite commensurate with other hot spots but health care in California is a bit better than it is in other states.  Still, we’re catching up (Note: 219 dead in the last 24 hours) and if this continues, well, watch your back, America!  We’re gonna contribute mightily to the almost 160,000 and counting Americans who have already perished, with no end in sight.

(Note: FYI, that is more Americans killed than in the Vietnam, War, Gulf War, Afghanistan War, Iraq War AND Korean War combined).

Get a nice haircut for your open casket

California has for decades been known as the place that nationwide trends originate.  This has been both good and bad.  Sadly, we gave you the Valley Girl but on the good side Silicon Valley did revolutionize the world.

On second thought, perhaps that wasn’t as good as we figured.

Never a good sign when Zuckerberg is looking more and more like a Batman villian

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 40 years and have heard all the jokes, the jealousies and the jerk-offs who put us down but secretly long to be or at least borrow from us.  They haven’t really bothered me because even though I’m a New Yorker through and through California won me over long ago.

It had a freedom, an openness and a sea of possibilities that I was never able to find or be comfortable with on the east coast or in my wonderful New York City.  To this day I love the east coast, New York especially, but it simply isn’t California.

Forget the beach, I’m talking Laurel Canyon, Joni, Carole, Tapestry on repeat

And yet these days that’s the last thing New York, or any state should try to be.

As my husband travelled in the car this Los Angeles afternoon, he drove through the somewhat busy streets of West Hollywood and spotted packed tables of people seated in sidewalk cafes, browsing store windows or simply walking and jogging all up and down the streets without masks.

At his count at least 50% of the people he saw had ZERO face coverings.

WHAT THE F-CK!!!!????

I don’t get why this is so hard.

But please, scream FREEDOM and wave your flag

I do get that this mask thing has become somewhat political and that many members of the Republican Party are choosing to go mask-less as a political statement against Democratic liberals.  Even the recent death of 2016 Republican presidential aspirant Herman Cain from COVID, which was diagnosed right after he attended that huge Trump rally mask-less in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hasn’t stopped them.

But West Hollywood ain’t Tulsa, you’ll just have to trust me on that.  You have as much chance of attending a Trump rally here as you do of buying a ticket to an AOC fundraiser in Tulsa’s BOK Center, the downtown stadium where Mr. Cain and thousands of others exchanged air, spittle and who knows what other types of bodily fluids back in June to kick off Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.

So again, let’s pose the open question – WHAT. THE.  F-K.  GIVES?????

WHAT. IS. LOGIC

I say this pretty much sequestered in my house – high-risk group member that I am, and a very vocal one – and at the end of my rope.  I mean, I love my house, don’t get me wrong, and I know I’m A LOT more fortunate than most.  But even I don’t want to be here for the rest of my life.

However, I will be if the alternative means taking my life (and yours) in my hands because my fellow citizens are too dumb, selfish and/or vain to mask up.

My bet is that it could take the hot spot illnesses and underestimated deaths nationwide of thousands of teenagers once school begins to get people motivated.  But then again, the slaughter of an entire classroom of  6 and 7 year olds by a lone gunman with an assault weapon didn’t foster much of a change almost a decade ago to our nation’s gun laws, so perhaps I’m mistaken.

The Chair does not sugarcoat things!

We Americans are a really, really, really strange breed.  We elect our first African American president and then eight years later turn around and put a White Supremacist racist (Note: Can you be one without the other?) in the White House.

We could easily do a similar reverse turnaround on masks and COVID-19.  Or we could just let the virus spread further, mutate and mow a good 25-50% of our population down (Note: FYI, that’s 80-160 million people sick and/or dead) and make the decision for us.

Who knew SNL could predict the future? #idid

Count on me to be at home, watching it unfold from my safe house in California.  If you happen to pass by I’ll be the one screaming obscenities at the window at you if you’re showing too much nose, mouth or skin as I wonder who the f-ck we are and what the f-ck we have all become.

The Eagles – “Hotel California”