In the middle of a Zoom table read of Sex And The City, season 2 episode 1 “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” (I played Samantha’s boyfriend whose penis was too small) my laptop screen flickered, and then went black. It has not turned on since. Not ideal in the best of circumstances, but definitely not during a pandemic! It’s now in the capable hands of the Fishtown iGeeks store, my new best friends while the Apple Stores are closed.
“Ah, yes, like from Harry Potter,” the technician said after I was forced to admit the password I had created in high school. Anyways!
WRITING
Speaking of books that everyone’s read, the TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People dropped on Hulu on Wednesday. I wrote about the book last spring as well as Conversations With Friends, Rooney’s first (and in my opinion, better!) book, when they were becoming an accessory for Instagram cool girls, despite the fact that they’re about, like, marxism.
When I started watching the screeners of Normal People, I thought the inner turmoil of the characters didn’t translate from page to screen and that it was just scene after scene of pale white people staring sadly at each other. Turns out, everyone freaking loves it. Mostly, it’s being praised for its portrayal of young adult sex, which is one of the things I’ll cede it does very well, so I interviewed the actors about it. However, I did also ask them about one of my biggest pain points with the first few episodes of the series, which is that Marianne is a conventionally pretty brunette but her schoolmates treat her like someone who just walked into the room and farted.
PODCAST
My episode with Sesali Bowen dropped on Monday! Recording this back in the winter was a nice excuse just to see Sesali again, who used to work right next to me. We are both Capricorns who share a mutual love of Fiona The Hippo (an Aquarius). One time in the office I was talking about how I felt someone had treated me disrespectfully during a project, and she marched me right over to them to set things straight. We probably talked for an hour before we were finally ready to record, and it’s such a fun conversation about a whole part of the internet — sex, nudes, phone chatrooms — I was woefully unfamiliar with.
Listen to the episode here!
QUARANTINE
So much about the first few months of this virus falls under the umbrella of “unexpected bad news.” Every day, there was new thing I had no idea could even go wrong. It’s nice to be reminded that’s the case for good things, too. Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Oxford University not only has a potential vaccine that’s already safe for humans and effective in monkeys (the real MVPs), but it could be ready by September. In the meantime, Dr. Fauci (tied for MVP with those monkeys) also announced possibly the first effective coronavirus treatment: the drug remdesivir.
"The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant positive effect in diminishing the time to recover," Fauci said, according to Politico.
When I’m not reading the news, which is most of the time, I’ve gotten into making cocktails. Or at least, this cocktail:
It’s a Classic Gin Fizz and you can get the recipe here.