Muppet Holidays, 2020: The Year We Break Contact

Pals! If you're here on this defunct blog it's because I linked you to this page for the schedule of the 2020 Muppet Holiday Party. (Theme: "why are we doing this!!!") My email has most of the details (and the Zoom links) but the schedule of streaming is below, in case that dictates your plans for jumping online.

Maine, m'heart

Hey wow: I actually felt like editing some footage and so, a year after the fact, let's go back and check out what Maine was like in May of 2019!

Is there anything better than being near water? NOT MANY THINGS, ALTHOUGH SOME THINGS.

A month and change

It's been a bit over a month since the official stay-at-home order here in Illinois, and about a month and a half since I've been cooped up. (I wound down my own social outings at the same time that my work sent us the work-remote orders.) So I figure it's a good time to take a quick temp check on how the quarantine has been in my corner of the world since last we spoke.

Things I Have Done On Coronavirus Lockdown

Illinois' shelter-in-place order has only been in place for about a week, but ever since my office told us all to start working from home the week prior I've been adhering to the recommended social distancing/isolation guidelines, and believe you me: IT'S GREAT I LOVE IT I DO NOT RUN ON HUGS AND HUMAN INTERACTION!!! After the jump: ok so what have I been doing with my time?

Gloss Angeles

Without a commute every day (and with an abruptly curtailed social and collaborative schedule after working hours) I've finally had some time to tackle some long-delayed projects.Well, let me rephrase: I've tackled some long-delayed projects while being kind to myself. As some smart folk have pointed out, we've been habituated to believe that we must always be Making The Most Of Every Moment and Producing Content and Knocking Out Projects and Achieving Accomplishments, and that's always been a little bit bunk. So while I'm trying to use my former commuting time thoughtfully, I'm letting everything else be driven by what I feel and need in the moment. Sometimes that's reading a book, sometimes playin' games, and sometimes getting little creative projects done. Hopefully you're being kind to yourself too and letting it be okay if you don't, y'know, write King Lear while under quarantine. (That play is a drag, gang.)

As for me, when I feel the "make a thing" impulse, I've been sewing, writing, web-designing, and yes, taking the creaky trunk filled with video files out of the attic, wiping off the dust of the past year, and crowbarring it open to get at our 2019 footage. After the jump: let's talk about Los Angeles, and why I was there almost a year ago, and what I thought about it! What could be more essential and important in this historical moment

Travel in an age of pandemic

After the jump, some tales of this very unsettling moment! Just a handful of vignettes from me and the people closest to me. I don't think there's a larger point to this post! It's just what this moment looks like from my perch.

AirBnB Should Maybe Be Fined Out Of Existence?

Kiddooooos! After a month and change of lots of running, new-job acclimation, a runaway trip to visit a friend in Florida (sweet glorious sunshine! horrible Trumpian culture!) I'm very cautiously getting up to speed on some long-delayed projects, giving rise to the hope that I'll be posting some travel videos again under a year after the travels in question! Wow miracle times! Til then, let's tide ourselves over with... rambling about the craven and horrible world of late-stage capitalism: travel and housing edition! After the jump: weh.

2019 was a year in which various aspects of culture continued unabated!

Last year was a whopper of a year (I may post my gratitude/things-I-recall-with-fondness list from New Year's Eve at some point, or maybe it'll remain shrouded in mystery!!) but in the land of Pat, one major development was the glorious end of grad school. This came with a few perks (traveling to Japan without a laptop to inaugurate the era of "going somewhere without a looming sense of shirking responsibilities") but the one that rippled most thoroughly through the year was that I was finally able to start nibbling at the crumbs of culture again after about seven years of it being increasingly hard to set anxiety aside to, like, see a movie. Hooray for therapy and also materially changed circumstances!

After the jump, some movies (and maybe stray culture) I liked in 2019, a year that critics are calling "over"!