UNDER COVID, PT. 8: QUARANTINE FROM DUMMIES

"Chinese scammer calling guy with Jewish name
like throwing clock out window: waste of time."

Just as I started writing this, I received my very first COVID-related scam call. As usual with unfamiliar numbers (in this case, the area code of Atlanta), I hit "DECLINE" and waited for the voice message. 

It was one of those typical computerized "women" greeting me in English with the grammatically erroneous "Hello, this is the voice notification for the Chinese for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention", before switching to a real woman speaking Chinese.

Being monolingual, I can only guess what she was asking for, but I'm sure it was something involving my Social Security number, bank account, and whatever other money I have laying around. 

I continue to receive emails and texts from businesses advising me what they're doing to combat COVID-19 (mainly closing up). Chase Bank suggests that it would be safer if I download their app to take care of my banking needs. Sure, if my smartphone starts dispensing money.

Let's be sure to light a candle for David Geffen -- and his helicopter
pilot and private photographer who made this picture possible.

It ain't just us ordinary folks stuck at home. Celebrities across the entertainment spectrum have been showing us how they bravely battle through the quarantines in their mansions. 

Ellen DeGeneres lazing around on her couch phoning her B-list friends to tell them that she wishes she had kids because she's so bored. David Geffen reassuring us that he's safe and sound on his billion-dollar yacht. John Legend telling the newly unemployed to contribute to charity -- the same John Legend worth $45 million, and who just bought a second Manhattan penthouse. How can a professional singer be so tone-deaf? 

Sour milk cow blues.

Yup, if anything kills of celebrity culture, it will be COVID-19.  Especially when Madonna waxes philosophic at how the virus is "the great equalizer" -- while soaking in a milk bath, covered in rose petals, utterly oblivious not only to how out of touch with real life she is, but how hideous her plastic surgery-ravaged looks have become. You don't have to be a Trump voter to hate these people.

Instead of making Stringer appear well-read, it just looks
like he's living in a dorm room.

As I noted in an earlier piece, news reporters and talking heads usually on location or in the studio are broadcasting from their homes. Whether they live in country houses or city apartments, these people have one thing in common: they make sure to sit in front of a bookcase, the bigger the better. If that's not possible, some, like New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, just stack a random pile of books behind him like an intellectual version of Ker-Plunk. 

I wish I were one of these important people interviewed on Morning Joe (not that I have anything non-libelous to say). I'd make sure to place myself in front of one of my bookcase shelves, just to prove that, unlike those know-it-alls, I'm not out to show off the collected works of Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meachman, and David McCullough. 

And I bet that none of them have a creepy set of blue plastic eyes staring at the camera, either. 

Just a fraction of the literary gems in my collection.

That reminds me, I've got a little project  to kill time today: dusting the bookshelf! By the time I'm paroled from house arrest, we're going to have the cleanest, most anti-bacterial apartment in the Yorkville section of the Upper East Side. If I don't escape on my billion-dollar yacht first.

                                                ************************