Long-time friend of the site Ginger Mayerson passed away recently. Ginger was one of my oldest fans, and I’m sorry she will not be around to see the end of some of the projects she helped keep going. Sparkle on, you crazy zirconium.

My COVID Year

Sooooooo, I just got my second jab, and am now officially immune to COVID-19 and all its strains and mutations from now until the end of time. Thank you, Big Pharma!

I thought I would use this opportunity to share with you my favorite memory of our past surreal year. Actually…two memories!

My second favorite memory was my first shopping excursion following the declaration of the Apocalypse that was Trump’s coronavirus address from the White House. There I was in Wegmans, wearing the first of my many masks and learning first hand that, yes, people had indeed cleared the shelves of toilet paper. Some 80s pop song was playing on the PA (as there would be on any normal day, of course), and the mundanity of the music set against the creepiness of trying to decide which canned goods I should purchase in case this was the last shopping I would be able to do before the Emergency Broadcast Signal went off gave me the distinct impression of being a character in a Stephen King novel. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life, topped only by the day I stood mute with a small crowd of onlookers in NYC following 9/11, watching construction vehicles tear down the last erect portions of the Twin Towers.

But my favorite memory of this bizarre moment in world history came right at the beginning, at the moment that real concern over this disease had finally erupted across America (this is always my favorite part of the zombie movie, BTW.) I was alone in my house, a little high, and my roommate and his girlfriend were out of town on a vacation. I started to recall a recent pre-COVID conversation we all had had with a mutual friend about how this man had an escape route to his uncle’s cabin-in-the-woods already planned out in case of emergency. And I remember thinking:

That’s where they really are. My closest friends have seen the writing on the wall and they have headed for the hills without me. I will soon receive a letter in the mail explaining how sorry they are, but that hard decisions had to be made, and that I was simply going to be dead weight in this new world.

And you know what? I agreed with them.

Well, that was then. Now, a year later, I have been inoculated and am feeling fine! As for my friends, I cooked and ate them as soon as they came back from Toronto. (Should have gone with your gut, guys!)

I hope you all are doing well.