A Journal of the Pandemic #7

Well, the toilet paper apocalypse, at the very least, is subsiding.

It’s not true everywhere, of course. There’s still places I go where the shelves are empty, but not everywhere. It’s becoming routine to find toilet paper again. Yay humanity! The greater problems are still out there. The pandemic, for instance. We’re at the point where some people desperately want things to return to normal(ish), and there are people who respond, “No way, idiots!” So civil discourse is about the same as it’s always been. Comforting? I guess?

I‘ve backed off Facebook. I was checking it obsessively. For a while, kept trying to come up with funny things to say. People in general are going back to normal there. Again, this does not mean normal is returning or will return anytime soon, but it’s good to see.

After admitting last week that I stopped eating breakfast, I of course started eating breakfast again. Found another new peanut butter cereal, so of course am having that now.

I was pretty productive last week. I edited or looked at some projects I’d been working on previously. Squire’s History of Oz looks good. Found I had actually pretty much finished Modern Woe, the latest collection of poems (if by “latest” you allow me to mean material written literally a decade ago). That’s a project that was kind of disrupted before the pandemic, thank you. I’ve had an interesting past six months. I’ve had an interesting last year, and I’m coming ever closer to a year without my niece, and am still trying to make sense of that.

I started outlines for two last Space Corps books. Space Corps is the largest project I have ever worked on, and the thing I still hope to hang my legacy on (but who can control these things?), and I’ve spent years developing these outlines. These last two, I’ve been slow to work on them, but again, a lot has changed over the years, and I work at a different pace. But it finally seemed like the right thing, to use this time to work on them. I mean, I personally would consider myself an idiot if I didn’t.

The family continues to merrily converge for a video-chat game night on weekends, and even though I’m still not playing along, I’m glad it’s happening. This is how COVID-19 will be remembered, in the grand scheme. I have nothing but deep sympathies for those who have suffered, but for a lot of us it’s a moment that’s giving us a huge opportunity, and it’s good to see it being embraced, however it may look.

I mentioned, I think, the Colorado friend with the anthology he wants to do, and it occurred to me that the story I’m working on now (Pat is being driven crazy by its inability to stay on track with the vampire thing) will be as appropriate as anything to give him for it. I’m really proud of this one.

Now, if I could just get some reassurance that I won’t have to wear a mask when I go back to work...

A Journal of the Pandemic #6

Finished writing “Falling Toward Oz” last week. It happened on another day when I thought I was again going to not work on it at all, stuck in a pandemic rut, and then that evening just went to work on it and buckled down. It ended up clocking in at 8,000 words, exactly, which had become my target, but it felt weird, typing the last few and seeing the total. I reached the climax and thought maybe I’d rushed toward it too quickly, but kept on writing and, I think, ended up with something better than I had previously been thinking. Anyway, it’s always a nice feeling, as a writer, to finish something and feel pleasantly surprised at the results. I posted about it on Facebook. Some people were like, Oh, you’re still writing? This, despite the fact that I’ve literally linked four flash fictions I’ve done this year alone. Well, what can you say? My Colorado writing buddy was among them, and suggested we collaborate on one last anthology. I told him I’d think about it. Thinking, at the moment, the results of the serialized story I’m currently blogging (the one about the pandemic), which doesn’t currently have enough vampire for Pat (hi, Pat!) but will circle back to them in a few days.

Still at home. Starting to feel weird. Again, I’ve spent long periods of time more or less in this mode before, but never with so few options outside the home. As noted above, began to feel stuck in a rut, but then began to challenge that. Late last week I finally went out and sat in a park (my oldest sister has been sending pictures of her family at a lake they just discovered in their backyard) to do some reading. The book I’m reading now, it had a bad start (more common than you’d think) so I was concerned it was actually a bad read overall, but the park proved otherwise, so I’ll be diving back in eagerly after I finish up blogging this morning. Anyone who knows me knows I read a lot, and probably most people just assume I’ve been doing a lot of reading during this time, but they’d be slightly less right than they’d guess.

This is more or less the point I’m starting to wonder how little others think about me. I’ve had to initiate every communication during the lockdown (except this one lady who periodically contacts me so she can vent about personal problems, though I think perhaps I may have put a dent in that last week talking about pandemic things). I know I’m ordinarily a fairly private person anyway, an introvert who spends his free time alone by choice anyway, never developed routine relationships with regular conversation, but...Am I really so disposable? Does everyone really just assume I will happily continue like this? I realize I began my pandemic journals lamenting about family, but it’s...not even just that. It’s everyone. If I’m rattled by anything in this whole thing, it’s that. And yeah, it increasingly sucks that everyone else, in just family terms, has other people living with them, and so when they want to, for instance, initiate a family game night over the internet, they have that instant leverage. I usually do best in those circumstances playing off of someone else. Well, I don’t have someone else, and so I can’t participate. This is partially a complaint of my own making, I understand. But it also emphasizes what I lost last year above and beyond my niece...

Of course I used up a little more of my financial wiggle room last week, and panicked a little, because again, I’m also increasingly worried about what follows this lockdown, if I’m setting myself up for another financial hole, which I’m lucky enough to not be experiencing now, but many others are, and it’s still weird to think, that for many people the pandemic isn’t minor complaints but real ones, and I have no practical experience with that side of it, and that’s a large part of why it doesn’t seem real to me, despite the pandemic being a worldwide experience. Knowing, and even having a small fraction of the impact on my life, that this is happening, it’s tough to reconcile. It feels very much like the kinds of privileges and disparities I didn’t previously apply to my life, and that’s kind of inexplicable and humbling at the same time.

We’re at the point where arguments are being made to lift restrictions, but realizing that even when we reach that point things will still be different. The workplace sent a memo detailing what that might look like there, and it actually feels more intimidating in that sense than it did when we were merely consolidating for lack of children. Then, at least, it was still business as usual if limited and altered by scope. Now there looks to be entire procedures, and perhaps even those mandated masks people keep arguing over, which are increasingly common as I poke my head out every now and again...

To top it off, there was a network TV special on the weekend. Lady Gaga, at least, seemed to have totally forgotten the recent context of the song “Smile” (as employed by the film Joker). Maybe she’s right. Maybe this is all a hard reboot. If so, I hope we use it wisely.

Oh, and hey! Here’s some fun trivia for you! I have always, always eaten breakfast. For the first time in nearly forty years, lockdown life had changed that. For at least the past week (see? I can’t even remember when it started now) I have been skipping it, and just headed straight through the morning to a noon lunch. I know this’ll revert back once I’m working again, but it’s tangible proof that I have fundamentally altered at least one aspect of my ordinary life because of the pandemic. No breakfast! Not even brunch! Madness.

A Journal of the Pandemic #5

Last week, no work at all. Finally, at the end, we got word that yes, we’re still being paid, and yes, we’re going to have to do some things. I know a lot of people have been working from home (never mind the people working every day in the ongoing essential services), and a lot of them with kids at home, and those kids being expected to do various permutations of schoolwork, and some of those people are going crazy...For me last week was a really long week, not even like a vacation (I’ve done that, “staycation”), but the longer it went the more I had to remind myself, this was only the first week of this for me! And some people have been doing this far longer. And a lot of them have been a far better job of actually staying inside all day every day...

I went out on shopping errands far more often than it might have seemed. Once was to get another bookcase, even though I started out spending far less time reading than I might have previously thought, or done. But I’ve been getting better at that. I’ve also been getting far better at being productive, writing. Like I’ve been doing for a decade, I decided to tackle the A to Z Challenge again, but unofficially, unlisted on the official site, but at this point I wonder how much that matters. The whole month has gotten progressively less social over the years. Anyway, talking about movies again, at the movie blog. Got some fun subjects lined up for some of the trickier letters. Pat (hi, Pat!) wasn’t amused that on the first day I used “A” for movies that literally began with “A” like A Christmas Carol (though none of the dozens of takes on it were in my selections), because that’s how I categorize my movies, and there are lots of movies with titles like that...

Anyway, tackled a serialized pandemic story, don’t know how long it’ll be. Most chapters are turning out bite-sized, which is about what you’d expect from something being written on a phone. Wrote a few other things. Worked on Falling Toward Oz, and hopefully will finish that this week (though, again, doesn’t seem terribly pressing; work says we won’t reopen for about another month at least).

I kept waffling on doing a pandemic story, but a few days into A to Z it just seemed like a natural blogging companion project. That’s the only reason it happened, plus of course having the time, having time to come up with an idea, having time to get started right away with little excuses in the way, and actually coming up with an idea, although the early material makes it seem like a thinly-veiled pandemic journal (other than this one) (which of course it is).

I bought more things last week because I have financial wiggle room. Part of me has started worrying that what’s wiggle room now will be desperation, should this thing continue to draw out. Definitely. But at the same time, with so few options out there, and so much uncertainty, and no idea how much the world is going to change because of this, I keep thinking of it as bulwark for the world I hope to find on the other side.

Helped suggest another family chat for Easter yesterday, and by this point I’ve gotten over being the grump of a month back, upset at the budding disruptions, and was able to enjoy it. Starting to notice how it’s affecting other members of the family, in the opposite direction, which is unsettling. But realistically, this thing is having and is going to have a massive psychological toll, and that’s going to be something we as a global society will be dealing with for years to come. For every introvert like me, there are extroverts who were not at all prepared for a disaster party. (“Disaster Party” by Magic Giant is one of my pandemic songs, having been coincidentally performed on one of the morning shows a month or so back. “Crazy Train” is another; it’s the song the crazy kid was singing on a loop via karaoke when the cruise ships were being quarantined and I was talking with a coworker about that back in January).

So, yeah. To quote my sister-in-law on Facebook the other day, quoting Dumbledore: “Alas, earwax.”

A Journal of the Pandemic #4

Well, it finally happened. I went into de facto quarantine.

Last week was the first full week of alternating work schedule, and it gave me two three-day weekends in the process. We have three buildings in the child development center system on base, and last week also saw all three combined. The best thing about all this was the chance to see some kids who had shuffled to other buildings over the past year or so. On Thursday I got to see one I had been particularly missing, an adorably sassy little girl. (But they’re all adorable, of course!) Then Friday evening we received notice that one of our staff had tested positive for COVID-19, and Saturday evening were informed that the program had been put on hold until further notice.

So here I am at home, like so many others, waiting for things to change for the better.

Last week also gave me a clear example of how irrationally some of this is unfolding when the apartment complex made it clear it had locked up the laundry room. There was a true April Fool somewhere when the sign posted indicating it would reopen on the 1st turned out to be a nasty lie. Management had previously sworn there would be no interruption of laundry service. I called on Friday to find out what was happening, and the receptionist unlucky enough to be manning the desk at this time had only vague answers, and asked if I wanted my information passed on? Well, it’s kind of beside the point now, isn’t it? I hauled my extra load of laundry to a local facility, and of course paid more, but at least it was finally done. Then of course I found out I wouldn’t be going back to work soon.

The numbers have started to pile up. Testing is still less than comprehensive, but the response remains level, at least officially. We still believe our drastic measures are completely justified, even while petty bickering suggests not enough was done soon enough, which is still completely insane. This is a completely unprecedented event. Literally everything we’ve done is already far more than has ever been done.

We’re stuck in a holding pattern. I have plenty of experience with free or merely extra time on my hands. I have no commitments outside of work, no family living with me, or living with family (which itself is anomalous in the general outline of my life; literally everything about it seems to have aligned precisely to make this entire experience as easy as possible). I’m not worried about how I will pass the day or the week or however long this lasts.

I didn’t write last week. I really should have, right? I worked two days. But I guess I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Now I have no restraints on my time at all. I can write to my heart’s content, which is every writer’s dream, and perhaps nightmare. Anyone who’s read this blog previously knows I tend to accumulate projects. I’ve got the one I’m actively working on, more I want to tackle, and of course last week I had a breakthrough on another...

Heck, I didn’t even read much last week! But over the weekend I started to rally in that regard. I watched a lot of stuff. Story of a generation. And now I’m going to do other stuff. I ordered literally tons of comics on Friday, will hopefully get that by the end of the week. I have, at the moment, financial wiggle room, and I want to spend it where it will help, where it will foster the kind of world I hope is still around in a few months.

Hopefully when I do another of these, I will be able to say I wrote a good amount of material, and maybe even share some good news about the pandemic. Stranger things have been happening...

2019 Box Office Top Ten

With movie theaters closed, now’s a great time to continue my tradition of chatting about the biggest hits of a particular year, which in this case is last year. I usually give at least a month into the new year to help late releases finish up their runs (last year I blogged about it here for the first time, apparently as late as July!), which if this whole thing had played out a little differently (we heard about COVID-19 as early as January, remember) might have produced different results. Anyway, like last year I will list domestic and international results, with numbers rounded out from Box Office Mojo. As with last year, I’m talking about this here on my author’s blog both in an effort to incorporate my personal interests and as a reflection of popular tastes, which between books and movies, is far easier to do so with movies, which more people are liable to have seen than readers are to have experienced the same books. (Believe me: as a regular participant of Goodreads.com, overlap is rare, and critical response tends to be fairly worthless.)

2019 Domestic Top Ten

1. Avengers: Endgame ($858 million) This one came as no surprise. The MCU was a whole phenomenon built in part on the gradual build toward, well, this moment, a direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War. This is a formula that will likely never be successfully duplicated.
2. The Lion King ($543 million) Disney’s extended family was responsible for the vast majority of major box office success throughout the year, and in the last few years as well. That success model will likely be winding down. The hype that led to Lion King’s success, for instance, didn’t really lead to the mind of widespread response the original animated version earned.
3. Toy Story 4 ($434 million) The third one was a cathartic moment for a lot of fans, culminating a central thesis that had been building since the first one, about the inevitability of leaving childhood behind. This one was more or less received as a victory lap.
4. Frozen II ($430 million) Another big success, but it’s impact is considerably muted compared to its predecessor (sensing a theme yet?).
5. Captain Marvel ($426 million) Aside from once again demolishing the notion that mass audiences won’t turn out for a blockbuster with a female lead, this one proved how invincible the MCU phenomenon had become at this point.
6. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker ($390 million) Was probably always going to lag behind the MCU climax in the popular imagination. But the thing is, the MCU won’t be producing something forty years from now like this. (Annoyingly, Box Office Mojo changed how it listed yearly totals. Including 2020 grosses, Rise of Skywalker made $515 million, and up to third place. The only other film in the top ten that has a similar adjustment is Frozen II, which bumps up to $477 million.)
7. Spider-Man: Far from Home ($390 million) Considering that 2002-2007 Spider-Man was a headlining blockbuster act, this can only be considered disappointing, but on the other hand, he has more sustained viability than probably anyone else will have in the MCU. 
8. Aladdin ($355 million) Will Smith cleverly used this as a launching pad to an eventual popular comeback. That’s where the real value is in these things. Even Toy Story 4 was, for some fans, merely another vehicle for Keanu Reeves’ popular resurgence.
9. Joker ($333 million) The closest this year came to a traditional blockbuster, a version of the classic Batman villain as seen through a Martin Scorsese type lens, fueled by a widely acclaimed lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix.
10. It Chapter Two ($211 million) The first one may have gotten all the acclaim and buzz, but the second one was still enough of a success to reach the top ten. 

2019 International Top Ten

1. Avengers: Endgame ($2,797 billion) Obviously still the top box office draw. 
2. The Lion King ($1,656 billion) Still no variation.
3. Frozen II ($1,450 billion) Here you can see wiggle room for a property of more recent relevance.
4. Spider-Man: Far from Home ($1,131 billion) Here you can see Spider-Man’s vast continuing appeal more clearly.
5. Captain Marvel ($1,128 billion) The MCU was an unstoppable juggernaut.
6. Joker ($1,074 billion) Here you can see how significant this one’s cultural impact really was.
7. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker ($1,074 billion) I think the popularly of Star Wars may have been more limited to Americans than it might have otherwise seemed, and the more the international perspective was taken into account, the more it affected perception, a phenomenon that has increased in recent years without anyone realizing it.
8. Toy Story 4 ($1,073 billion) Case in point: This is a franchise that began in the comparative distant past of 1995. 
9. Aladdin ($1,050 billion) On the one hand, it’s ridiculous to say a movie that made a billion dollars is somehow not wildly successful. But we’re literally at the point where it sounds like, “That’s all?” Coupled with the fact that Disney ploughed through its popular animated back catalog for these live action remakes, it suddenly doesn’t seem like the wisest course of action. It’s going to be very difficult for the umbrella studio to match this level of success again anytime soon.
10. Jumanji: The Next Level ($796 million) Back when the first one was released a few years ago, Dwayne Johnson also had a Fast & Furious movie out, and both came close to scoring a billion internationally. The same was true this year: the next movie on this particular list was Johnson’s Fast & Furious spin-off, Hobbs & Shaw. That’s the definition of modern movie star, folks. The twelfth and thirteenth biggest international releases were both Chinese (making the vast majority of their profit in China), including The Wandering Earth.