Day Tripper.

I Did a Bad Thing. Not A Good Time To Break An Ankle.

Day Tripper.

This was my outfit when Top Cat and I walked to Whole Foods on Wednesday:

There was a line of about 20 people to get in, everyone keeping at least 10 feet from each other. When one shopper came out, the doorman allowed a shopper on line to go in. We got on line at 2:25 and Top Cat got in the store at 3:00. I didn’t go in because Top Cat likesshopping and I don’t, and we were only picking up a few essential items, and I didn’t want to clutter the store with my useless presence. Top Cat was running low on coffee and I wanted vanilla cream cookies. I know, I know. We are trivial people. Top Cat was out of the store at 3:18. He said the store enforced social distancing on the inside, too.

The truth is, we were OK waiting in line for half an hour because WE HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO. And yet, the days go quickly, and they merge into one another, but the time goes so slowly. Life is very different from what it used to be.

For instance, I’m still raving about The Untamed , a 50-episode Chinese historical drama that I am addicted to, but guys! I watched the whole thing and it was awesome and now I’m watching it again because now that I know how everything turns out, the first six or seven confusing episodes make a whole lot more sense and . . .

The Light Bearing Lord, Lan Zahn, with his killer zither.

. . . Guys! GUYS! They have magical powers and clans at war and monsters and they kill people by playing musical instruments!!

This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen on TV and it seems just so very right for these weird times.

The Light Bearing Lord, Lan Zahn, also kills people with his sword.

This stuff is the television equivalent of LSD and I will always remember my COVID lockdown as the time I tripped on Chinese acid, which I call Lan Zahn in the Sky With Diamonds, for, like, 140 hours. Hey, I’ve done worse things with my finite and precious time on Earth.

The Light Bearing Lord, Lan Zahn, really likes rabbits. He has a lot of white rabbits. They hop all over his domain, the Cloud Reserve. Even if you buy into all the other aspects of this world, the rabbits are still weird.

And the two main characters are gay.

That’s The Light Bearing Lord with The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation. Guess which one’s wearing black.

I’ve promised myself that I will read a book after this is all over, like a vitamin pill for my brain, and I WILL BE SMART ONCE MORE but not now. I’m on lockdown, dammit. I have excuses that I don’t want to squander by doing something productive.

8th Ave, looking downtown. That’s Madison Square Garden on the left.

When Top Cat went into work on Tuesday, two NYC cops dropped by and drilled him on why he was open for business. TC explained that his company prints product info for prescription drugs, and he showed the cops the work that was in-house. The cops were nice and they didn’t write him a fine, but they said the company needs to get paperwork from the state to show that they have an Essential Business permit. Go figure.

So Top Cat has been home these days, on the phone almost constantly. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to get paperwork from the state even on a good day and these are notgood days. I used to think TC was exaggerating the importance of his being at work in person, but I’ve read some blogs by people who can’t get their usual prescription medicine and how they are suffering, so now I’m grudgingly accepting that Top Cat might have to keep going into Manhattan once in a while. The drugs can’t be distributed without the Product Info, (gummint rules) even though it’s that piece of paper that no-one reads. So, Yay for Top Cat.

The Amtrak gates at Penn Station in midtown Manhattan. I’ve NEVER seen the place like this.

Top Cat and I are coping with non-stop togetherness quite well, not to brag. We are very good at ignoring each other for hours and hours. We get it from our cats:

It’s as if we are living the caption to my favorite Gary Larsen Far Side cartoon.

Same Planet. Different Worlds.

At the end of each day, we do assemble for a civilizing ritual at end of the day, which I call Cocktail Hour and Top Cat calls Really? Are You Drinking on a Week Night? Again?

Last Friday was a rare occasion when, after Cocktail Hour, we found a movie we both agreed was watchable, and we saw Pitch Perfect. Together. At the same time.

You probably know that the movie is about a college acapella group. One of the girls is a painfully awkward and shy Asian (played by Korean American actress Hana Mae Lee) who whispers to a guy at a frat party: “I set fires to feel joy.”

The guy looks at her and says, “That’s adorable.”

And then the camera cuts away to college kids whooping it up.

I wish I could write dialogue like this. Seriously. I could never come up with such a line.

And that’s the latest from Seclusion Manor here on the North Shore of Long Island.

And, oh yeah: Fuck Trump and his Republican shitwads.

About the religious who are going to crowd into church this Sunday (it appears to be some kind of holiday on April 12): I was reading Twitter the other day and I read about a conservative TV person who tweeted that it’s proof of how much left-wing perversion is out there that Republicans have to clean up when, during a pandemic, it’s OK to get and abortion but not OK to go to church.

She got this response, explaining it to her: Well, one is a time-sensitive medical procedure, and the other is a book club.

It took me a minute to get it, but it’s brilliant. It’s changed the way I think of churches.

Thank you, Tiwtter.