April 5, Day 27 of house arrest: It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, won’t you be my neighbor?
Getting the F#@& Out of Dodge: As the sun began to break through the miserable cloud cover yesterday, Barb insisted we go for a drive. After stops at CVS (no, there was no toilet paper, not even tissues) and the liquor store (yes, there was wine, beer, gin, vodka and whiskey), we ventured up to Plymouth, via back roads, Manomet and Whitehorse Beach. Apparently a lot of people had the same idea, as the roads were very busy and there were tons of people out walking in the cool but welcomed sunshiny day. It was what I would think the swallows returning to Capistrano would be like (or more grimly, what cockroaches do as soon as you leave the house). Manomet Point was particularly beautiful.
Zoom Zoom Cocktails at 7:00: In the upper right hand side of the page, we had Sharon and John, on the bottom, Carol and Steven, with Barb and me in the upper left. Another Brady Bunch cocktail hour with Zoom, dissing Orange Baby, toasting Jeremy Mudd (and the always helping-Mudd family), laughing at a lot of stupid s#@& and generally getting just a little inebriated. I had read an article earlier in the day about how to make your Zoom picture look good (camera at least face level, a light behind and to the side of the camera for good shadows, a white table cloth on the surface in front of you to reflect light upward). To paraphrase Orange Baby again, I think I get an A+ for set design. Clearly we won the night, as half of Steven’s face was missing most of the time. Oh well…
The Nightly Snooze: OB seems pretty happy with his new-found role playing Reality-Star President each night around 6pm. His production staff keeps things humming with his regular cast of people who actually care, guest starring roles for CEOs of companies that over-promise and under-deliver, and military people who wear different colored uniforms with lots of medals who have absolutely nothing to do with anything that the show is supposed to be about. Word has it that future shows will include creepy clowns who will share their stories of surviving the virus, funny clowns who will talk about potential cures for the virus (mixing bleach and ammonia?), and real clowns from Republican leadership who will explain… well… I don’t know really, but they do have a lot of explaining to do.
Speaking of OB, What About That Bump? OB’s supreme happiness (which is often misunderstood as seething rage or heartless shaming) comes from understanding just how popular he really is. It is so “nice” that he is #1 on Facebook, that his ratings are better than the Bachelor, that he gets a 10 out of 10 for doing his job (oh, wait, that’s the score he gave to himself), and is rising in the polls. Just like all leaders in a time of crisis, he’s more popular that ever!!! Yikes! But, as Seth Meyers world say, it’s time for a closer look: Sure, he got an approval bump, all the way up from 43 to 47% (on average, with a high of 49%). So, let’s go to the leader board and do some comparing: Angela Meekel: 72%, Justin Trudeau: 64%, Giuseppe Conte of Italy (where everyone is nearly dead!) is at 73%. Even Boris f-ing Johnson is at 70%. Oh, and that guy in New York, the guy whose brother is a fake-news anchor, Cuomo, well, he’s at 87% (including 70% of republicans). And other American presidents at times of crisis? Bush during 9/11: 90%, HW Bush during Desert Storm: 87%, even Jimmy Carter during the Iran Embassy catastrophe got all the way to 56%.
So… congratulations OB for the absolute worst “crisis bump” the world has ever seen. Nice job!
Semi-Thoughtful Musings 