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”

SCRATCH! THAT! ITCH!

It’s amazing how much I want to touch my face.  Like, all the time and everywhere.

Most especially, I want to rub my eyes.  But REALLY rub them good and hard so they will never itch again.

Though while we’re on the subject, I really, REALLY want to spend a good hour scratching my nose.  I don’t have a particular spot because the tingling shifts all the time. First it’s on the outside, then on the inside and then on the top and the bottom of every side.

Cue Macaulay Culkin scream

Which is to say nothing of my mouth and my ears.  If I weren’t eating everything in sight (Note: Not that there’s very much) or spending so many hours listening for updates and warnings on cable news, they’d bother me even more.  That said, when those orifii (Note: Alternate plural for orifices) are not engaged it’s pure hell to resist the urge to, well, manhandle them in some every way.

In the age of COVID-19 self-quarantine/social distancing/pandemic land we’re not supposed to do a lot.  But touching your face is among those at the top of the list of the WORST things to do.

It’s easy to understand why.  The virus’ entry point is through any open membrane into your body exposed in everyday life.  If you don’t live in a nudist colony, your face is Iwo Jima.

https://twitter.com/wesisrad/status/1233447465942052865

Or, if you don’t like war metaphors, you can think of it as a potentially fatal petri dish.

This is how I used to think about my acne-ridden face all through adolescence so for me that’s not a far reach.  It’s more like a golden oldie.

Unless, of course, there is another way to think about this.

When I stop to ponder what I’ve just written only one word comes to my mind – insanity.  It’s that kind of neuroticism I spent most of my adult life trying to undo through every means possible.

Totally normal now

In particular, many years and tens of thousands of dollars of therapy come to mind. Let’s not even get into all the bad relationship choices, inappropriate acting out by any means necessary or the sheer abject solitary terror and loneliness.

So I’ll be damned if I’m going to let Covi drag me back now.  Nor do I want you going down your own personal rabbit hole, however more creative yours might be. (Note: though I doubt it).

Take those personal victories where you can get them

The crazy part of this face stuff is not the admonition to keep our hands and everything else away from that particular part of our person.  Instead, it’s the absolutism with which we tell it to ourselves and shout it out to the world.

It’s true, you don’t want to be in an office, a public space or anywhere else and put your fingers where they shouldn’t be (Note:  Good advice, even without a plague).

But if you’re at home alone and you’ve just washed your hands for 20 seconds with soap and warm water, well —

HAVE AT IT!!!

Me, right now

Truly.  If you’re healthy nothing will happen to you.  How could it?  You’ve just disinfected (aka killed the virus) the means by which your death sentence will mutate.

Yes, I’ve exaggerated for dramatic effect.  COVID-19 is not a death sentence for most.  But for many, it’s not fun.  And for many more other than yourself, it could be if you pass it on.

But you want to be mindful.  And you want to be rational or you will kill the very reason you want to stay alive to begin with.

And when in doubt, I just remember Jon Hamm is OK

TODAY.

Fine, today’s not so great, even if you do like your house.  Nevertheless it’s all we’ve got for now.  In actuality, it’s all we’ve ever had.  It’s just, well, it didn’t always seem that way, did it?

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to f-ck up today for myself more than outside circumstances already have.

This occurred to me this morning after I came back from a lovely morning walk with my dog, Rosie, took off her collar and leash, gave her a treat, took off my jacket and put it in the laundry room, scrubbed my hands thoroughly and then nearly slapped myself silly for having the urge to….itch the outside of my nostril with my bare finger.

Do I want to die, I thought for a split second.

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!

And then I sneezed, confirming pretty soon I would die.  In fact, it was imminent.  Never mind that it’s the height of allergy season and I haven’t had my bi-weekly allergy shot in weeks.   And that Rosie had decided this a.m. to sniff every tree, shrub, flower (Note: But no people, NEVER people) in sight.

Then suddenly I stopped.  Maybe it was all that therapy or perhaps it was Rosie’s look at the crazy person in her kitchen.

But something in that moment made me ponder my runaway train thought processes, wash my hands one more time for good measure (Note: You never can be too careful), and then SCRATCH AWAY.

NEED MORE HANDS!

EVERYWHERE.

And I do mean everywhere.

(Note: Use your imagination).

What have I done?

In closing, all I’m saying is this:

You don’t have to scratch every itch you have but there is no point to any of this if you simply exist in a scratch free prison of your own making.

DO NOT take this as in invitation to party in the South Beach of your choice with your favorite teen or twentysomething.

But DO find a way to party on your own….with clean hands.

Bee Gees – “Stayin Alive”