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One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the early days of the pandemic, Part 3 By Laurence Lerman I was looking up something about Atomic Blonde, the 2017 espionage thriller starring the always-game Charlize Theron, and learned along the way that it was primarily shot in Budapest, which stood in for Cold War-era Berlin. Clicking away to see what else had been recently shot in Budapest, I came upon a trailer for that same year’s Budapest Noir, a title that was too juicy—at that moment—to ignore… Written and directed by Hungarian-born Éva Gárdos, Budapest Noir offers all the stylistic flourishes that one expects from a noir—shadowy streets, smoky bars, slick back alleys, suspicious law enforcers and a hard-boiled reporter, here investigating the murder of a prostitute in 1936 Budapest where Fascism is slowly on the rise. The canted angles and evocative lighting are right on, but what’s missing in this one from Hungarian-born writer/director Éva Gárdos (a veteran editor whose directorial debut was 2001’s immigrant drama An American Rhapsody) is the cynical sense of fate that usually whirls around a noir protagonist as he tries to unravel the central mystery—or extricate himself from one. Still, Budapest Noir was a good-looking, engaging-enough “neo” descent into that ripest of cinematic genres. But I was now hungry for the genuine article… Pushover from 1954 was recommended by a friend, who described it as “Double Indemnity Lite, with Fred MacMurray playing the same kind of role and Kim Novak looking like Kim Novak.” He was right. In Pushover, MacMurray’s undercover cop falls for gangster’s moll Kim Novak, who he’s been assigned to shadow to track down a satchel of stolen bank money. Is it any surprise that she quickly convinces him that the two of them should make a grab for the stash? No, it’s not Double Indemnity—not even close—but Pushover is noteworthy for being Novak’s film debut and there’s no denying that she brings an overwhelming Fifties-flavored femininity to her role, an approach that’s less hard-edged than Barbara Stanwyck’s in DI, but no less seductive. Notably, journeyman director Richard Quine (whose wide-ranging filmography includes everything from 1951’s Sunny Side of the Street to 1979’s The Prisoner of Zenda) mounts MacMurray and Novak’s early peeping-tom stakeout scenes with both tension and relish. I ran aground from the flow of the stream when I learned of the sad death of the fine Indian actor Irrfan Khan at the age of 53 from a colon infection. A regular fixture in Hindi cinema (do I have to refer to it as “Bollywood?”) for more than 20 years, Khan became an increasingly visible presence on Hollywood screens over the past decade. I’d seen and admired Khan in Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and Mira Nair’s The Namesake (2006) and, later, in such notably bigger Hollywood movies as The Amazing Spider-Man (2012), Jurassic World (2015) and Inferno (2016), the terribly titled third entry in the Da Vinci Code series. I wasn’t up on any of the dozens of titles in Khan’s Hindi filmography; a little research informed me that 2017’s Hindi Medium would be a good place to start. A comedy-drama written and directed by Saket Chaudhary, Hindi Medium finds Irrfan Khan and rising Pakistani star Saba Qamar as middle-class parents trying to wangle an opportunity for their young daughter to be enrolled at a prestigious English middle school in Delhi. They relocate, they hire consultants, they fiddle with their societal standing—anything to get their little gal into the right school. The movie is a sweet one and Khan and Qamar’s performances are effortlessly charming. Angrezi Medium, a “spiritual sequel” to Hindi and also starring Khan, was released right before Khan passed and may make a future stream. Right around then I decided that the striking 2012 Life of Pi, Ang Lee’s gorgeous and rewarding adventure tale that co-starred Irrfan Khan, deserved a second viewing (particularly as I had first seen it in its 3-D incarnation in the front row of a packed theater, and my senses were still reeling from the technological whirl of sound and vision). I stopped before I started, reconsidered the works of director Lee, and instead opted for his 1997 suburban drama The Ice Storm. Its fantastic depiction of upscale, early Seventies suburbia aside (in this case, 1973 New Canaan, Connecticut), The Ice Storm puts together one of the finest ensemble casts of this decade, from seasoned performers Kevin Kline, Joan Allen and Sigourney Weaver to the fresh faces of Tobey Maguire, David Krumholtz, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes and “veteran” child actress Christina Ricci. And then there’s the delight of those vintage steel ice cube trays, suburban key parties (my mother denies things like that ever happening in Central Jersey…) and a Richard Nixon latex mask used as a sexual prop. The Ice Storm prompted an even deeper dive into Connecticut suburbia with The Swimmer, the strange 1968 drama based on John Cheever’s short story and starring Burt Lancaster, whose affluent middle-aged man dons a bathing suit and “swims his way home” through a bunch of backyard swimming pools. Directed and written by the husband and wife team of Frank and Eleanor Perry, The Swimmer still clicks—a tale of a man who’s dissatisfied with his life as he steamrolls through middle age abetted by a whole bunch of cocktails, superficiality and self-delusion. Lancaster was in his mid-50s when he made The Swimmer, and if I looked as good as he did in his swimsuit at that age, I can tell you I wouldn’t have been that angst-ridden. But he does have his problems, as we later learn…or maybe they’re all just a dream? Oy. Submerging for a refreshing dip takes a nastier turn in Swimming with Sharks, the 1994 Hollywood take-down starring Kevin Spacey and Frank Whaley concerning a brutal studio producer and his new young assistant. “You are nothing! If you were in my toilet, I wouldn't bother flushing it. My bathmat means more to me than you!” Spacey roars at Whaley at one point, foreshadowing Hollywood’s current feelings about two-time Oscar winner Spacey (he won his second for 1999’s American Beauty, a direct, gay-infused descendant of The Swimmer). Benicio del Toro’s supporting bit as Spacey’s hardened, outgoing assistant in Swimming is funny and memorable, so I don’t know why I keep forgetting he’s in it. Until his breakthrough the following year in The Usual Suspects, Benicio’s distinctive presence has made an impression as Duke the Dog-Faced Boy in Big Top Pee-wee (1988) and, better, as cocaine kingpin Robert Davi’s henchman in 1989’s License to Kill, one of two James Bond movies starring Timothy Dalton. License to Kill is the best Bond film of the Eighties (the decade that gave us the tepid For Your Eyes Only and A View to a Kill), with Dalton’s Bond going rogue and looking for payback from Davi for throwing Bond’s C.I.A. pal Felix Leiter to the sharks after killing his new bride. When Bond has his license revoked by MI6 while in Key West’s Hemingway House and he’s forced to surrender his Walther PPK handgun to the brass, Dalton sires forth all his RADA training to proclaim that “It’s a farewell to arms,” before bopping his way out of the tourist trap to take down the real bad guys. Any post-Connery Bond inevitably sparks an interest to return to the Sixties, when the Cold War was at full chill and the Bond imitators were a dime a dozen. Matt Helm, Derek Flint, Bulldog Drummond, Tony Randall—Tony Randall?!? Yeah, if you can believe it. While I preparing to cue up You Only Live Twice, I bumped into Our Man in Marrakesh, a 1966 British spy caper with a lighter touch starring Randall as an oil exec who gets into a North by Northwest-ish situation while traveling to Morocco, forcing him to James Bond through a handful of car chases, pistols, fist fights and intimate scenes with Euro starlet Senta Berger (who previously fleshed out the 1964 Man from U.N.C.L.E. adventure The Spy with My Face and later shook it up with Matt Helm in 1967’s The Ambushers). Our Man in Marrakesh was produced and co-written by Britain’s Harry Alan Towers, who was prolific force behind a wave of moderately budgeted “exotic” genre flicks in the Sixties and Seventies back in the day. This one didn’t quite click, though the site of Felix Unger getting chased through a Moroccan street market made the stream worth it. It also demanded respect be paid to the indefatigable Felix Unger himself with a couple of episodes from TV’s The Odd Couple, featuring Randall and the great Jack Klugman—which, I swear, gets better with each passing year (unlike the Lemmon/Matthau film, which retains the purity of its simple premise but remains firmly entrenched in 1968). It’s never a chore to return to one of my Seventies television staples—it’s more a question of which of the series’ 114 episodes I should watch. I went to the top this time out: Season Four’s “The Flying Felix” (“I-much-fear-there’s-trouble-in-the-fuselage-Frederick.”) and Season Three’s “Password” (“Aristophanes!”) If you’re baffled by the quotes, well, then I guess you weren’t aware of the known fact that Lincoln loved mayonnaise. Don’t listen to me. Just watch both of them. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about.

But I Am Not Amused By Tobye S. Stein For me, the coronavirus is a constant roller-coaster ride. I should mention that I’m not a fan of roller coasters. I’ve been on enough of them to make an informed decision and I don’t like them. It’s the going up and up and up and not knowing when I will fall. The thrill for me is always getting off the ride. I have my good days and my less good days, and dare I say, a few bad days. I’m sheltering in place with my husband, Neal, and our dog Buddy. We have enough food to eat: although our furnace broke during the last cold spell and we had no heat for two days, we survived. Now we have heat for these remaining cold days, and there is plenty to do around the house. Those things make up good days. We walk Buddy and get to interact with neighbors at a distance on a regular basis. I’m doing my best to do those things the mental health experts keep telling us to do for stress: taking showers, not watching too much news (they never say stop reading the news), getting some exercise, and so on I am introvert, so staying home isn’t an issue for me. As a licensed counselor, I’m certified to give and interpret the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), so I can confirm my status as an extreme introvert. Yes, extreme, the total opposite of the most common type of personality. By the way, there are no good or bad types and one can learn to behave as other types do to make communication more effective with loved ones and co-workers. It’s why I often hear, “No way, you’re not an introvert!” Yes, deep down I am. I like my own company and can be left by myself quietly for hours or days. Unlike most people, these days I’m watching less TV unless music or comedy is involved. I’m not that interested in watching horror series or anything that requires deep thought. I usually enjoy reading, but until this past week, I’ve had trouble picking up a book for more than a few minutes because it’s hard to concentrate. I am reading, but much of it is about the coronavirus and the mishandling of the coronavirus. So, the major downside of the roller coaster is knowing that we never had to be in this predicament. Donald Trump had information about the coronavirus months ago, but decided it didn’t fit his agenda. He’s still fighting and losing a trade war (“they’re so easy to win”) with China. He didn’t want to upset China’s president, so although he’s blaming the virus on China, he’s not blaming its president. It’s Trumpian logic. Trump wanted everyone to believe this “virus thing” was a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats. He’s still saying his impeachment took his attention away from the virus. Moscow Mitch has said this as well. Trump’s impeachment by the House was guaranteed not to get a fair hearing in the Senate so I’m guessing that Trump had a few bad rounds of golf and that diverted his attention from the virus. His updates are aggravating at best and full of lies and intentional misinformation; at worst, he fails to provide helpful scientific evidence about the coronavirus or empathy for those who have lost family members. But enough about the Trumpster. Trust me, I could go on, but I suspect I’m preaching to the choir. The hardest part about the coronavirus era is my lack of sleep, but I know I’m not alone. At times, I go days with no more than three or four hours of sleep. There are a number of things that keep me up at night in addition to Trump’s presidency, and the awful way he ignored and continues to ignore this pandemic and the lives of those lost. Early on, the pandemic itself kept me up, knowing that there was no way to protect oneself. As people were dying in Washington State and New York City, I had a dream that I had the virus. I was in Beaumont Hospital here in Michigan. I was in semi-private room. My bed was close to the door rather than the window. The curtain between the beds was pulled forward so I could not see out of the window. I knew I was going to die but what was going to kill me in addition to the virus was loneliness. Knowing I would never see Neal or Buddy again was what was killing me. One would think that alone would keep me awake for hours. It did. Later that night, I dreamed my mother was dying from coronavirus. Mom’s been dead nearly 35 years, and she died from another epidemic. She became infected with AIDS through a blood transfusion the day of her massive heart attack. She survived the heart attack but was doomed by the epidemic. I guess the epidemic and the pandemic have a lot in common: a lot of people end up dead unnecessarily because those in charge ignore the problem and delay finding solutions. For the next several days sleep was absent. Who wants to sleep with dreams like that? Another thing was keeping me awake: For weeks, I obsessed about food. We have enough, and we do go grocery shopping, but I became worried about what to make next. I’m a decent cook and baker, nothing fancy but well beyond just edible. My concern was that with cooking so many meals at home, I would run out of ideas of what to make so we’d be eating the same things over and over again. It’s something under normal circumstances would never have crossed my mind; I often make dinner on the fly, so why worry? I’m over that now. Neal and I usually get takeout once per week to break up all the cooking, and we’re supporting local mom and pop places. We’ve come to know several of the moms and pops, and we’re hoping they’ll be around when we’re ready to go out to eat. I have no idea when that will be, but I now have one less thing to keep me up at night. I also worry about what would I do if Neal caught the virus and.… He is my husband but also my best friend. To please me, he’s being careful about going out, but he has shpilkes (Yiddish for ants in your pants). Still, we’ve come to an agreement about keeping safe or as safe as possible. But I still worry. When the shelter-in-place order is lifted and restaurants and movie theaters open, we’ll have different points of view. Worry is what therapists call a useless or unnecessary emotion. I learned that when I earned my MA in counseling. I’ve counseled other people about the uselessness of worry. Under normal circumstances, I suggest keeping a pad of paper next to your bed and writing down what’s keeping you up or any great ideas you have about solving the world’s problems. Until recently, I rarely kept a pad of paper on my nightstand, but I have one now. I use it sometimes. In case you’re wondering, I haven’t solved the world’s problems yet. But every once in a while, it helps the roller coaster come to a full and complete stop. It’s the best part of the ride. Tobye S. Stein retired as Chief Human Resources Officer from a California-based financial services organization. She once landed a job by replying to the age old question, “Why should I hire you instead of the other two candidates” by simply stating “I’m funnier than most people.” It worked.

By Tony Spokojny The year: 4 B.C. (Before Children). I was single, a little irresponsible and yet, professionally employed. No, I wasn’t much of a lawbreaker – a healthy disrespect spillover from the anti-war rallies; more of a scofflaw for laws that didn’t make a lot of sense. The law for (or rather, against) the possession of marijuana was one such law. We saw Reefer Madness for what it was, an anti-drug scare flick produced to convince a naïve audience, that smoking weed would turn docile youth into crazed rapists. It became a cult film, its ironic and hysterical lesson more enjoyable to absorb when imbibing the subject of the film. I wasn’t a pothead, but every once in a while I enjoyed the feeling of putting my senses in a different gear. I was traveling back and forth from my office in Detroit to Lansing regularly to meet with a client. I knew every nook and cranny on the Interstate, I-96, that connected the two setting settings. It was a boring, 80-mile straight line dotted with farms, little towns and industrial sites and billboards popping up on the green landscape. On July 3rd, there was work to do until late afternoon. I decided to stay overnight to attend a party with a friend. But I wanted to get back in time for an all Fourth of July party thrown annually by Doug and Kathy, the sister and brother-in-law of a close friend from my first year of college, John. John was a social magnet – people of diverse backgrounds would flock to him. For several years during and after college, there was a biweekly gathering arranged by John at Lum’s, part of a chain of restaurants that served cheap food and $2.50 pitchers of beer. People from all over the city would come to drink beer and scream jokes up and down a long row of tables placed side by side to accommodate us. The party at Doug and Kathy’s was the Lum’s crowd. I say my goodbyes to my friends in Lansing and jump into my little lime-green Mazda for the ride back toward the city. About 20 miles and several farms into my trip my eyes are drawn to my ashtray. A two-thirds consumed joint, a little bigger than a roach, is sitting there carefully balanced as if to say, “you put me here for a reason.” No, it wasn’t talking to me. But, I start to feel the attraction of eliminating boredom from my drive. OK, it’s time to light up to Déjà Vu. I push in the cassette. I sing. And I’m not subtle about it. Someone will pull up to me and stare. I’ll stop. Once, I was driving along the freeway in a traffic jam heading downtown and I’m listening to Three Dog Night on the radio. “One is the loneliest number, one is the loneliest number …” I’m wailing. Right next to me there was a woman singing to the same tune. We looked at each other for a long second and broke out in laughter. So, as I’m driving along, singing, an 18-wheeler pulls up next to me. From his high perch, he’s able to see into the cabin of my car. He stares down at the doob pulling my hand to my lips, stays with me for about 15 seconds or an hour and then suspiciously pulls back. Now he’s riding right behind me, talking away on his CB radio, gesturing energetically. Now he can be talking to someone across the road or across the county. Or he could be talking to the …. Now, the other heightened feeling while under the influence of a buzz creeps in. Paranoia! “Like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car,” Neil Young is singing. I sit up straight so that I can get a better look. Can’t read his lips – and I’m not one to stereotype – he looks like one of the silent majority types; probably listening to “Okie from Muskogee.” My own brain is singing made up words from “Convoy”. “I’m in a little Convoy. He’s talking to the police.” But, I’m aware of overreacting, so I slowly pull over to the right, turn signal flashing, law abiding citizen that I am, to let him pass. And he pulls over to the right and settles in behind me. I can outrun him, “But I’m not giving in an inch to fear,” Neil Young instructs. I can pull over to the shoulder or I can continue on my journey and try to ignore him while staring at my mirrors. Besides, he’s already reported my fluorescent car and its license number. I look around, craning my neck to see behind me, expecting to see flashing red lights approaching me from a distance. A speeding car pulls into side in my rearview mirror. No lights. It finally passes. “Was that a siren?” I turn off the music, hold my breath to listen carefully. No, again. Apart from my heart, now beating loudly in my ears, it’s just my tires whining on the pavement. I change lanes, again, just to see if my new companion mirrors my move. He mimics my maneuver. He even followed me onto Southbound I-275 as I continued toward Doug and Kathy’s home in Dearborn Heights. The inside of my car isn’t the most pristine environment. An extra t-shirt, a couple of old meal wrappers. You know. I was single. Things accumulated. But, I don’t smoke cigarettes and I don’t get high often enough to collect roaches. It should be pretty easy to hunt for visible seeds. Assuring myself that, aside from a stray ash, there are no remnants of my having strayed over the line, I begin to relax as my 18-wheeled companion turned off towards Detroit. Michigan Avenue, my exit. I head south. Oh, shit! I can’t go to the party empty-handed. I need to find a place to buy beer. But, it’s July 4th. Who’s going to be open? I spot a liquor store on a solitary corner. It’s an old, stand-alone store, brown brick with windows on both street sides covered with beer sale posters, a neon Budweiser sign. Miller, Bud, Pabst 6-packs, cases. This place will do nicely. I pull to the right, signal light on, of course. Parking is literally on the wide gravel shoulder of the road. I pull up just past it, just in front of a used car lot sharing the shoulder and start to get out of my car. Suddenly two cop cars come speeding up, lights blaring, no sirens. One screeches to a halt a few car lengths behind my car, one directly in front. The cop behind me quickly exits his vehicle running towards me. “Put your hands in the air!” he yells in a commanding voice. It’s all happening so fast. I have no time to react in any way but to obey. Up go my hands as the cop runs to me, left hand reaching for his holstered pistol. “FOR A JOINT?” my mind is shouting. The cop is two feet away. I’m prepared to be taken down and I defensively brace for impact. He continues past me on my right to the front of my car and quickly turns right and running into the used car lot where the other cop was already standing, gun drawn over an apparent hubcap snatcher. I’m still standing still at the side of my car with my useless arms raised feeling my pulse in my armpits, as gravity slowly causes my arms to float toward the ground. Reality is momentarily suspended as I mindlessly walk into the liquor store to complete my side errand. I don’t remember going in, but I arrive at Doug and Kathy’s with a case of Stroh’s Signature. The party is lively as I walk in the crowded, but tidy back yard. Conversations strain to be heard over “Shake Your Booty”. Doug approaches me, greets me. The frozen look on my face is telling part of the story. Doug is laughing at it, knowing there’s a story behind it. “What happened?" Tony Spokojny has been practicing law in Michigan for over 40 years.

Dear Editor, Yesterday, I experienced my first “Zoom bombing.” For those of you who don’t know, “Zoom bombing” has become an Internet phenomenon since Zoom, the video conference app, has risen to prominence in the age of remote learning. Now don’t get me wrong, Zoom is wonderful in that it provides a vehicle to talk and connect with students. It is the next best alternative to meeting in person. Zooming (yes, that is a new verb) certainly beats communicating via the bland back-and-forth of email exchanges. Nevertheless, the app should come with a USERS BEWARE warning. I was midway through a remote lesson with the seniors in my English class at my public charter school in Brooklyn, NY, when a “Jadon” requested to enter the session. (Zoom comes with a “waiting room” safety feature in which the person who initiated the session must admit those who request entry.) I have two students named Jaden, and so I figured he was probably one of them and he had misspelled his name. Boy was I wrong. The mysterious Jadon was silent for the first few minutes. He did not turn his camera on so he remained anonymous. Then out of nowhere we heard him scream “F*** YOUR MOTHER!” He exited the chat and I, open-mouthed and red-faced, stuttered some sort of apology and attempted to crack a joke about experiencing my first Zoom bomb. As a teacher, I have experienced upset students who have cursed and stormed out of the classroom. But there are established protocols that follow this sort of behavior. I know how to respond. But in a Zoom session? What was to be done? How could I effectively manage the situation? These are questions to which I still don’t have the answers. My students definitely got a kick out of it. And after my brief moment of sheer panic, I resumed the lesson. I am almost positive it was another student of mine playing a prank. I'll probably never know. In the end, humor prevails and it certainly made for a memorable lesson and story. Happy Mother’s Day? I suppose I have officially joined the ranks of other teachers who have been “Zoom bombed.” Ahh, the era of pandemic teaching! Best wishes, Madeline Barry

By Madeline Barry Live music lovers, rejoice! You can still get your groove on via the virtual stage. All you need is an Instagram or Facebook account. Check out the listings below for some streaming recommendations. For those who want to rock and roll: The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York has hosted some of the biggest names in rock and roll (Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, the Roots, Elvis Costello, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones, to name just a few). So it is fitting that the famed venue continues to share music with fans, even though crowds can’t converge to listen as one. Click “like” on the Capitol Theatre’s Facebook page to receive information about all sorts of music streams. Some performances take place in real time, such as a live Q & A on May 6 with the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh. Other acts are footage from older concerts, for example shows from the annual Lockn’ music festival which takes place in the summer. The Capitol Theatre Facebook page Additionally, in the lobby of the Capitol Theatre is a separate area with a smaller stage and bar. This is Garcia’s (named after the one and only Jerry). The Garcia’s Facebook page is also streaming plenty of live music from all kinds of rock and roll, folk, and reggae musicians. If you want to show the music community some love, drop a few dollars in the “Virtual Tip Jar.” Garcia's Facebook Page Got kids or grandkids who need to boogie? Kid Friendly Alert! Check out The Rock and Roll Playhouse’s “Live From The Playroom” shows. The Rock and Roll Playhouse advertises itself as “a weekly family concert series providing kids and parents a place to inspire creativity through music across the country.” Formerly held at small venues throughout the United States (Garcia’s being one), these days the weekly concerts take place in your home. The interactive concert experiences are twenty-minutes long and daily. They even offer children’s yoga! The Rock and Roll Playhouse Facebook page Neil Young’s third “Fireside Sessions” is available on his website, Neil Young Archives. The sessions (three in total, but only the third is available in the archives for now) are filmed by Young’s wife, Daryl Hannah. In the third 30-minute production, Young and Hannah’s dogs are the real stars of the show. In between Young’s acoustic sets, Hannah films the pups frolicking through the melting snow of the couple’s scenic Telluride, CO. property. The setlist from the third Fireside Session includes: New Mama See the Sky About to Rain I Am a Child Throw Your Hatred Down World On a String Helpless Already One Neil Young Archives On Tuesday nights, jam rockers Phish stream their weekly “Dinner and a Movie” series from their Facebook page. Each installment features a different show from the extensive Phish archives. Feeling charitable? Donate to The WaterWheel Foundation, the charity that Phish founded in 1997 to give back to the communities they visit on their extensive tours. According to Phish’s website, the WaterWheel Foundation “chooses non-profits from a large sphere of needs including social services, primarily those benefitting women and children; environmental, with a focus on clean water and land conservation with public access; as well as food banks, urban gardening and the like.” Phish Facebook page For those who are Broadway bound: On Friday nights, the YouTube page “The Shows Must Go On” streams Andrew Lloyd Webber shows. The YouTube channel features full length performances whose times are posted on the YouTube page, and are available for viewing for the following two days. Shows that have already aired include The Phantom of the Opera, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Proceeds from these shows have gone to organizations like Broadway Cares and The Actors Fund. Webber has also been very active on his Instagram page. He has shared isolation playlists and hosted singalongs, including a cover of “Hosanna” from Jesus Christ Superstar with a guest appearance by John Legend. The Shows Must Go On For the distaff side of the audience: Singer-songwriter H.E.R, aka Gabriella Wilson, hosts a weekly “Girls With Guitars” live stream on her Instagram page featuring a variety of female musicians. Following the pattern of generosity exhibited by many of these musicians, H.E.R. partners with a different company each week to raise money for specific pandemic-related causes. Lyft partnered with H.E.R.’s April 29 show featuring Sheryl Crow, in order to provide complimentary rides to medical staff. H.E.R.’s May 7 show includes a partnership with Revolve, which will be donating $5,000 worth of masks to hospitals in H.E.R.’s hometown of Vallejo, CA.. H.E.R. Instagram The folk-rock music group Indigo Girls will be live streaming Thursdays in May at 7 PM EST via Instagram Live and Facebook Live. The duo will host both a concert and a Q & A series. Their new album Look Long is going to be released on May 22. Indigo Girls Facebook page Indigo Girls Instagram For all sheltering-in-place music lovers: B.P (Before Pandemic), did you used to frequent a local live music venue or bar that regularly featured live music? See if your favorite spot has a social media account and if they are streaming any local musicians. You might just get lucky! Madeline Barry is a high school English teacher at Northside Charter High School in North Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She teaches three sections of senior English and two introductory Latin classes.  Figuring out virtual learning, listening to music, and writing for The Insider has kept her semi-sane during the quarantine.

By Andy Borowitz May 8, 2020 WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Despite an increasingly grim employment picture, an unskilled American man remains gainfully employed, labor experts confirmed. With millions applying for unemployment benefits each week, experts expressed bafflement and outright astonishment that a man with no identifiable skills, talents, or competence appears to be secure in his job. “This unskilled individual’s continued employment defies any kind of economic logic,” Davis Logsdon, who studies employment trends at the University of Minnesota, said. “Of the 33.5 million Americans who have applied for unemployment benefits over the past seven weeks, approximately 33.5 million are more qualified than he is.” Even more perplexing, experts said, is the unskilled man’s persistent employment after failing at a series of other jobs during the past three years. “The only explanation that makes sense, and I’ll admit it’s far-fetched, is that whoever hired him is equally unskilled,” Logsdon said. Despite the man’s puzzlingly long record of employment, Logsdon said that ferocious economic headwinds could bring it to an abrupt halt, as early as November. Andy Borowitz is a Times best-selling author and a comedian who has written for The New Yorker since 1998. He writes The Borowitz Report, a satirical column on the news.

By Merrill Hansen The coronavirus and Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at home-order have presented challenges for many of us Michiganders. But computer skills and technological knowledge have made life much simpler during the pandemic for the people who possess them. By shopping online, they can avoid three-hour waits in social-distancing lines, and even buy cars without going to dealerships. Alas, I'm not one of those people. I confess: I am technologically challenged, and barely computer literate. I have a smart (ass) phone that I am so dependent on, it would need to be surgically removed. But, I don't know how to correct the auto-incorrect feature that changed my group text message from "I'm having trouble finding the address with google,” to "I'm having trouble finding the address with gonorrhea.”) Basically, I can navigate online via email, word processing, and a modicum of Internet and text messaging, as long as there are no pop-ups that ask me questions. While I know other people say they, too, are challenged, they are lying, because in the next breath they tell me about a TV and toilet paper they just ordered from Amazon. I haven't the vaguest notion how to buy either one online, and can't imagine that they both could be ordered from the same store. It wasn’t long into the pandemic before I realized I was in trouble. True, the first four days of the governor's stay-at-home order weren't difficult for me. I was able to read online. and use the types of social networking I enjoy, like Facebook and Twitter, which only require basic computer skills. But on Day Five, I woke up with a 101.8° fever. Having been exposed to a friend who had just been diagnosed with coronavirus, I knew instantly what the problem was. I was able to get hold of my doctor's office, and the physician's assistant said the doctor was going to want to see me in about an hour. When I explained that I was too sick to drive to the office, she explained that the appointment would be online. "Online?” I said in a panic. “What does that mean? Can't we talk on the phone?” "No,” said the assistant, as if she were talking to a five-year-old. “The doctor will want to see you. She’ll have a face appointment with you” (or whatever it is that she called it). “Didn't you get the email we sent out to all of the patients?" "I may have,” I replied, “but I didn't read it carefully because I wasn't sick then." Clearly, I was going to die if the only way I could get medical attention involved a computer program. Over an hour later, three phone calls back and forth and searching through a month of emails, I was able to "see" the doctor and schedule another appointment for two days later. Passover presented another challenge. I was invited to a Zoom Seder, and even though I was sick, I wanted very much to share that holiday via social distancing with the friends and family I love. My friend Leah, who together with her husband were hosting the Seder, called to see if I was coming via Zoom. When I told her, “I'd love to, but I don’t know how,” she asked me with a faint hint of disapproval, "Didn't you get my email? There's a link and you just follow the directions." ((Uh-oh... another email link and follow-the-directions challenge.) She added the ever familiar "it's easy," (it never is), and then, the game changer, "We'll all be able to see and hear each other.” "SEE EACH OTHER??? I LOOK LIKE I COULD BE THE ELEVENTH PASSOVER PLAGUE!!!" My friend immediately put me at ease and said I could do it by audio only. It sounded easy, so I followed her instructions. Voila! But when I “arrived,” nobody heard me screaming, “I'm here!" I could hear everybody talking, but nobody could hear me. I waited and waited and listened to everyone talking. Finally, I heard someone say, "Where's Merrill?" I called one of the guests on her cellphone and could hear everyone laughing when she told them I'd been waiting for half an hour. It took the hostess less than a minute to solve the problem. A few days later, when I was still licking my Passover wounds, I received a call from Steve, a friend who didn't know I was sick. During our conversation, he told me about a project he was working on regarding the virus, which he thought I might be interested in. Here we go again! My friend, who knows more about computers, phones, and every possible way to communicate using technology, than anyone I know, immediately wanted me to go to my phone's App Store, find the app he was using, and install it. "Whoa, did you forget you are talking to me, Merrill? I've never installed anything on my phone." Over the next two days, my friend had me try at least three different apps; the last I heard from him, he said with exasperation that there were no problems with the apps and they work fine for everyone else he knows (and he knows the immediate world). I haven’t heard from him since. I’ve decided to conquer my computer phobia head-on, and am going to stop asking my son and daughter to order things for me online. Eventually. In the meantime, I'm typing this on my cell phone. My laptop battery needs to be replaced, and I don't know how to order a new one online. Merrill Hansen is a legal assistant, living in West Bloomfield, Michigan. She describes herself as a frustrated writer, who wishes she could be Nora Ephron (when she was alive), if only for a day. She is a news-, political- and FB-junkie, a combination that requires a constant reminder that she needs to take deep cleansing breaths when responding to people who don't agree with her.

One film journalist’s stream-of-consciousness cinematic journey through the early days of the pandemic, Part 2 By Laurence Lerman Okay, so my streaming excursions haven’t all been stream-of-consciousness. New York’s COVID-19 quarantine began right around the time HBO premiered The Plot Against America, the cable giant’s ambitious adaptation of Philip Roth’s 2004 novel. In it, Roth proposed an alternate history to the mid-20th century America wherein FDR is defeated in the 1940 presidential election by national hero Charles Lindbergh. The story is seen through the eyes of the middle-class Roth family of Newark (renamed Levin in the HBO incarnation) as the country moves toward a fascist government and engenders a growing persecution of Jewish-American families. With The Plot Against America, creators David Simon and Ed Burns (the televisions mainstays of The Wire and The Deuce fame) mount a startling and increasingly tense period drama played out as a six-part miniseries. The adaptation was aired over a half-dozen consecutive weeks through mid-April, associating it forever with the COVID-19 lockdown and, madly enough, our own current chief executive. Following the first installment of Plot, I changed channels to another cable station and immediately bumped into 1994’s The Getaway, featuring the then-married Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s original 1972 heist flick starring Steve McQueen and his soon-to-be-wife Ali McGraw. I’d seen the original a zillion times (I love when McQueen walks into a Texas sporting goods store and buys a 12-gauge pump shotgun to use on the cops out on the sidewalk!), so I fed my McQueen jones with Bullitt, the classic 1968 policier that I hadn’t seen in a while. The streaming begins… The whole of Bullitt—much wordier and more needlessly complicated than I remembered—doesn’t quite equal the sum of its strongest parts: McQueen, of course, always the coolest; Lalo Schifrin’s sly score; the outstanding use of San Francisco and its landmarks (Grace Cathedral, the Mark Hopkins Hotels, the Coffee Cantata café) and the very streets themselves as featured in the film’s landmark car chase, featuring the star (who did a lot of his own driving) in a ’68 Ford Mustang GT. The story back then was that super-duper star McQueen wanted to hire British filmmaker Peter Yates to helm Bullitt after he saw Yates’ 1967 film Robbery, which featured an extended car chase during its opening heist. McQueen (whose Solar Productions was behind Bullitt) had never heard of Yates, but he obviously liked what he saw in Robbery, a film with which I was not familiar. Hell, if it was good enough to prompt Steverino to give Yates his first Hollywood gig, it would probably be good enough for me… Robbery tells a straightforward crime story of a plot to hit England’s Royal Mail train as its coming South from Glasgow. A bunch of familiar British actors form the gang, including Stanley Baker, James Booth and Barry Foster, who had previously made his mark on me as the necktie strangler in Hitchcock’s 1972 return-to-form thriller Frenzy. A fictionalized version of England’s real-life “Great Train Robbery” of 1963, Robbery’s highlight is the extended robbery sequence itself, not surprisingly, as well as that opening car chase, which is constructed for speed rather than stunts. Robbery isn’t really considered a major entry in the formidable British crime canon like such stalwarts as Brighton Rock (1947), Get Carter (1971) and The Long Good Friday (1980). Another almost-ran I’d heard about was 1960’s Never Let Go, featuring a youngish Peter Sellers in one of his rare dramatic roles as a London garage owner who deals in stolen cars. Sellers’ dealings lead to all manner of nefarious and increasingly ugly goings-on involving his mistress (Carol White), a car thief (Adam Faith) and an increasingly obsessed salesman whose car has been stolen (Richard Todd). Directed by John Guillerman and clocking in at a tight 90 minutes, Never Let Go is a mixed bag, led by Sellers’ uniquely non-comic performance and some good period London location work. But if you’re not a Sellers completist, it’s not a must-stream. British filmmaking veteran Guillerman worked in England for nearly two decades before making it to Hollywood, where he helmed a number of undistinguished action-adventure films, but none bigger than the 1974 smash The Towering Inferno, a production so sprawling it needed two studios to produce it. A bit less rousing than I’d remembered when I first saw it one hot Saturday night with my family while we were visiting my grandparents in Miami way back when, Towering’s inferno of stars remains its strongest element (Oscar-winning pyrotechnics, aside). Paul Newman, McQueen and Faye Dunaway (reuniting for the first time since 1968s’ The Thomas Crown Affair, though only sharing a scene or two), William Holden, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain, Roberts Vaughn and Wagner, Richard Chamberlain and Fred Astaire are all set to light it up and play the beloved Seventies disaster movie game of “Which Star is Going To Make It?” That Astaire received his sole Academy Award nomination for his supporting turn is as terrible as the titular fire itself. (And frankly, that Astaire wasn’t recognized for 1953’s The Band Wagon is also a crime.) I texted a friend just as Jennifer Jones was plunging to her doom from the dangling scenic elevator, and commented that I wasn’t all that up on Ms. Jones’ filmography save for 1944’s Song of Bernadette (for which she won her Oscar) and the inevitable Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1954) opposite her Towering co-star William Holden. My friend mentioned I should take a look at the Southern-fried 1952 melodrama Ruby Gentry, in which JJ portrays a backwoods temptress who tries to sink her hooks into a former high school flame. “It’s like Tennessee Williams lite and it also stars Charlton Heston, a disaster movie mainstay.” (He starred in 1972’s ridiculous Skyjacked, also directed by Guillerman.) “And that would connect to Towering Inferno for your whole streaming thing,” he reasoned. I decided to pass on Ruby—for now—but I’ve long enjoyed Charlton’s trilogy of end-of-the-world opuses, Planet of the Apes (1968) and Soylent Green (1973) and The Ωmega Man (1971), all of which seemed appropriate right around now. I opted for The Ωmega Man and popped it in (yes, I own it on DVD). Helmed by TV veteran Boris Sagal, Ωmega’s striking images of pandemic survivor Heston gunning down hordes of albino mutants in hooded robes and sunglasses in downtown L.A. and getting down with spunky Seventies mainstay Rosalind Cash went down well. It’s all set to a memorably dramatic, Baroque-styled orchestral score by Ron Grainer. The Ωmega Man is based on the great Richard Matheson’s 1954 sci-fi classic I Am Legend, which also spawned the same-titled Will Smith-starring remake in 2007 and 1964’s The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price. Matheson was all over the place from the late Fifties through the Seventies, penning hundreds of novels, short stories, essays, screenplays and teleplays. Among a slew of noteworthy tales, he wrote one of the greatest Twilight Zone episodes ever (he authored more than a dozen of them): the Season Five entry “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which is always worth revisiting. Starring William Shatner as a man flying home from a mental ward following a nervous breakdown who’s convinced he sees a furry man-sized gremlin on the plane, “Nightmare” was directed by soon-to-be-big-time movie director Richard Donner (Superman, Lethal Weapon and Scrooged, anyone?) and holds up marvelously well. And for all the guff he receives, Shatner does a bang-up job playing a troubled man in a situation far beyond your normal fear-of-flying scenario. Shatner’s appearances on The Twilight Zone (he also starred in the episode “Nick of Time,” another classic) demand that respect be paid to him on Star Trek, so I went to the top of the list with “The City on the Edge of Forever,” which is generally regarded as the show’s finest hour. Penned by another great sci-fi author with a bulging portfolio, Harlan Ellison, the Season One installment finds Kirk and Spock time-traveling back to Depression era New York City to find a temporally displaced Dr. McCoy. The continuum ripples find Kirk unable to prevent—while being forced to witness—the death of the 20th century woman with whom he’s fallen deeply in love. And she’s portrayed by Joan Collins, who’s as appealing here as she’s ever been—albeit sans an ounce of the risqué attitude and salaciousness that were her trademark. Not long after I first saw her on Trek, I came face-to-face with Ms. Collins’ captivating charms again one afternoon on The 4:30 Movie, a weekday broadcast that aired on ABC-TV in New York in the Seventies and provided many a cinephile with their first-ever encounters with a host of films. Among them were Howard Hawks’ lavish 1955 production Land of the Pharaohs. A sprawling ancient world epic offering a very fictionalized tale of the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza, Pharaohs stars Jack Hawkins as the Pharaoh Khufu, who’s obsessed with making the grandest of tombs for his “second life,” and juicy Joanie as Princess Nellifer, a party girl from Cyprus who becomes the Pharaoh’s second wife and then plots to kill him and the whole mishpachah to seize the throne for herself. Hawks’ sole dip into the era’s popular brand of widescreen historical entertainment, and one of Warner’s biggest-ever productions (one scene includes nearly 10,000 extras) that counts William Faulkner (!) among its three screenwriters, Pharaoh’s spectacle isn’t nearly as memorable as the scheming Joan. Watching it for the first time since I was a young teenager, I now remember why I was uninterested in “ABC Afterschool Special”—not when The 4:30 Movie was serving up such delights as the slinkily clad Joan Collins in orange lipstick. Land of the Pharaohs tanked at the box office, but that wasn’t the biggest news around its opening: Though the majority of the film was shot on location in Egypt, the country banned the film from its shores on the grounds of “distortion of historical facts.” Distorting of the facts, huh? As the politics surrounding the COVID-19 virus continues to swirl, we’re all being reminded that the distortion of the truth isn’t just a Hollywood thing. Laurence Lerman is a film journalist, former editor of Video Business--Variety's DVD trade publication--and husband to The Insider's own Gwen Cooper. Over the course of his career he has conducted one-on-one interviews with just about every major director working today, including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Clint Eastwood, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Walter Hill, Spike Lee, and Werner Herzog, among numerous others. Once James Cameron specifically requested an interview with Laurence by name, which his wife still likes to brag about.

Opinion by Jeffrey D. Sachs May 2, 2020   |   CNN.com Editor's Note: Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author; view more opinion articles on CNN. (CNN) The number of Americans who have died from Covid-19 now significantly exceeds the total US troop fatalities during the Vietnam War. While the coronavirus continues to ravage the country, with confirmed cases exceeding 1 million and deaths rising by the day, some states are lifting stay at home orders in hopes of salvaging the economy. With so many lives at stake, it's time the United States looked to those countries in the Asia Pacific region that have successfully controlled the pandemic to figure out how to save ourselves and the economy. Several places in the Asia-Pacific, including Australia, China, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, have suppressed the estimated effective reproduction number -- the average number of people who will catch the disease from a single infected person -- to below 1, without the need for continued, widespread lockdowns. They are now rapidly and successfully suppressing outbreaks of the disease by isolating those who are infected and their contacts who are likely to be infected. It's as if there are two worlds. The United States has had more than 66,000 deaths, or about 20 deaths per 100,000 people. The number of deaths per 100,000 people reported in Western European countries is also very high: Belgium, 67; France, 37; Italy, 47; Germany, 8; Spain, 53; and Sweden, 26. Meanwhile, the reported rates in Asia and Oceania are considerably lower: Australia, 0.4; China, 0.3; New Zealand, 0.4; South Korea, 0.5; Taiwan, 0.03. Despite the stark disparities, America seems blind to the strategies other countries have used to control the virus. How is it that one part of the world is succeeding, while the other part refuses to learn the lessons of success? On Tuesday,The Wall Street Journal extolled the virtues of Germany's efforts in comparison with the United States, France, Italy, and Spain, without even a mention that Germany's mortality rate per million is itself more than 100 times higher than Taiwan and Hong Kong, and more than 10 times higher than in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. How have these countries succeeded to date? Many have adopted nationwide public-health standards, using mobile technologies, professionalism of government, widespread use of face masks and hand sanitizers, and intensive public health services to isolate infected individuals or those likely to be infected. Testing has played an important role, but has not been the be-all-and-end-all as is sometimes believed in the United States. Vietnam has succeeded, for example, with contact tracing and an aggressive quarantine regime. When one person is confirmed positive, many of his or her close contacts -- even those without symptoms -- are isolated. As a result, Vietnam tested only a moderate number of people as a share of the population because it managed to contain outbreaks so effectively. Vietnam, with about 95 million people, has not reported a single Covid-19 death so far. In New Zealand, the government is starting to ease lockdown restrictions as officials say they are now in a position to test and trace any new clusters of infection. Here are the careful and precise words of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. "There is no widespread undetected community transmission in New Zealand. We have won that battle. But we must remain vigilant if we are to keep it that way." There are similar success stories across much of the region. South Korea, which has dramatically broken the epidemic with aggressive testing, contact tracing and basic public health measures such as thermal monitoring, has also employed digital technology in the fight against Covid-19, according to a new report. South Korea uses a text alert system to keep the public informed, while various apps allow people to track new Covid-19 cases, make doctor's appointments or monitor hotspots to avoid. The government also uses apps to monitor people in quarantine, through self-reported symptoms and location tracking. Despite the fact that these apps may raise privacy issues in the United States, the upshot is an economy that is open, albeit cautiously so, together with a suppression of new infections. The US government has been utterly incapable of learning from these cases of success. President Donald Trump is incompetent and his appointees at Health and Human Services, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Transport Security Administration have failed to provide leadership. America First has put us first in deaths in the world, with tens of thousands of lives squandered as a result. We can save ourselves and our economy, if we look to and learn from the achievements of other nations. And if the federal government continues to fail, as seems likely, our governors and mayors must step forward to do the job.

By David Salazar OperaWire “Opera in the Times of COVID” is an interview series in collaboration with photographer Frances Marshall of Marshall Light Studio. We talk to notable figures from around the opera world to get their perspective on how they feel these challenging times may change opera’s present and future. I think it’s hard to find someone who loves opera as much as Fred Plotkin. In my interactions over the years (though often limited), his passion for the artform comes through every time he brings up a recent performance or an interaction with a certain artist. If you get a chance to catch any of his “Adventures in Italian Opera” videos online (here is one with Sherrill Milnes), you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. This enthusiasm also extends to his passion for adventure and food, which he has also written extensively on. His love for the arts is everywhere in this interview, with Plotkin acknowledging how this very crisis and its emotional impact can be seen in many of the great operas of the past. OperaWire: What have you done during this time to keep yourself positive and productive? Fred Plotkin: I am not a singer or musician, yet my working life has a lot of similarities in that most of my income is derived from appearing in front of audiences in places of public assembly. People buy tickets to what I do so, of course, that means that all of my contracts have been canceled until November. That said, I have been self-employed since 1991 and, for better or worse, I have learned about self-discipline and time management in a way that enables me to ‘make hay when the sun shines’ but also know that so much is not within my control. That really is the key: manage what you can but don’t panic about that which you cannot control. There is nothing you can do about that. Yes, these are very scary times and I fully understand those friends, colleagues and other people who are depressed, angry or frightened. But I have had many fallow periods in the past and used them to plant metaphorical seeds and do some work every day even if no one is paying me to do that. In this tragedy, there is also a rare opportunity for people who make things or are performers who want to explore their artistry and interests. I always keep a file of creative ideas that I tell myself I would like one day to take on. Not all of them come to pass but, right now, I have chosen to undertake one of those because, like it or not, I have the time to do it. I have written nine books in my career and have at least a few more in me. One of them, that I drafted in 2017, is calling out to me now. Each day, for at least three hours, I sit down and write it. For the first time in my career, I am writing a book without a contract (and, therefore, no guaranteed income). But I find that focusing intently on this book, even if it never gets published (though I think it should be!), gives me a break from the stresses of the outside world. Needless to say, when I am writing I do not look at social media or listen to broadcasting of any kind, including music. It’s just me and the book. I have been through this before. In the months after 9/11, whose events took place in full view of where I live, I was completing my  “Classical Music 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Classical Music.” There was so much grief and struggle in the city and I devoted part of each day to helping in any way I could because I knew people who died and there was so much need. But I took four hours every day to write the classical music book. It made everything else possible. On April 24, I began hosting a weekly show for Idagio Live called “Fred Plotkin on Fridays.” I will be joined by musicians, by people in the music business, and others who feel music deeply. The organizing theme is inspiration and how we find it in music and elsewhere. My first guest was Thomas Hampson. On May 1 I have Christine Goerke, on May 8 is Ben Heppner and on May 15 will be Julia Bullock. And many excellent people are lined up after that. I think that inspiration is something we must connect with more than ever. OW: What do you feel will be the greatest impacts of COVID-19 on the opera world moving forward? What are some new developments that you feel are here to stay? FP: You know that I adore opera, not only as an entertainment but for the emotional specificity and its ability to go deeper into my soul than just about anything else. But it is inherently a live art form and only really works its magic in a theater with singers and instrumentalists performing in that moment while the audience—at least a good audience—gives back the energy and emotion that propels the singers forward. I fear that, until a vaccine is developed, all performing arts will struggle to return to a fully live, collective experience. This crisis is still all too new and I want to reflect on how the art form can work its special magic in the face of a new reality. When I have some ideas about this, I plan to write about them and perhaps help make them happen. OW: One of the major developments of this time are the emergence of streaming and connecting with fans and followers more directly via social media. How has this impacted your time in quarantine? FP: Streaming certainly existed before COVID-19 and it  had mixed success in financial terms for the companies and artists who made them. And it is well-known that in certain cases the presentation of HDs (as opposed to streaming) cannibalized the ticket sales of the companies that presented them. Many people in the metro area of those companies stopped buying tickets to live performances and chose to see the HD transmission. In terms of streaming to our homes, as often as not, there was a fee involved to view the video and, at times, to listen to the performance in audio form. If a company such as the Vienna State Opera did this, it was newly found income because that theater is almost always sold out. But the VSO has about half the capacity of the MET and strong government funding so streaming (which people all over the world signed up for at a not very steep price) represented an additional revenue source. OW: What is an outcome of it that you didn’t expect? FP: What is different now in these pandemic times is that opera companies in Europe and North America are opening their vaults to present existing recorded performances for free. This is a balm in difficult times and I respect their doing it. OW: What is something that makes you apprehensive about streaming’s sudden preponderance? How can opera companies and artists around the world learn from it moving forward and should it become a bigger part of the opera season experience moving forward? FP: I don’t know the details of all existing contracts and how they address whether performers will receive any compensation. A real crisis is happening this year in that almost every opera singer and instrumentalist has lost all of their work and, in way too may cases, has lost all of the pay that would go with it. This has a profound impact on their lives and they are justifiably despondent. Remember, most singers do not have endlessly long careers so that every year counts in terms of income not only to survive but to save for the future. OW: And in your view, is the idea of streaming as a major part of the industry even feasible for all parties (not only companies but artists) involved? FP: Beyond the financial implications of streaming, there is also the fact that a video transmission of an opera—no matter the size of the screen it is viewed on—is not an opera performance. It is a report from the stage of an opera house just as watching a sporting event on television is a report from the stadium. Someone (usually a director or editor) is deciding what you see and how you see it. And, in the case of opera, even the best audio system cannot replace the quality of sound in a theater. When viewing HDs in cinemas, at least there is the advantage of a communal audience sharing a moment. Seeing an opera in isolation is dispiriting in ways that listening (on recording, radio or other format) to that opera is not: when you just have audio, your imagination is summoned to picture the singers and performance and how the story is being told. OW: What are you most excited about doing once the quarantine officially comes to an end and we are allowed to resume a “normal” life? FP: Travel. It is just about my favorite thing to do because all the pleasures in life can be found when one sees new places, meets new people and experiences new cultures. When we travel the world, we learn more about ourselves.” OW: Who have been the people you have relied on most to help you through these challenging times? FP: Giuseppe Verdi, Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz. This is the music I am listening to in this period. OW: Most people in quarantine are actively engaging with the arts via either music, TV, film, reading, literature. Etc. What have you been watching or reading during this time? FP: I am spending this period in the home of an elderly loved one to take care of her. She reads and listens to music but watches too much news for her own good. To give her company and to get her away from incessant “breaking news” saying the same things, we make a daily movie date, watching a film on TCM. I try to make it one I have never seen. Recently, I saw a film called “People Will Talk” with Cary Grant and Jeanne Crain. It was made around 1950 but is modern and unconventional in its approach to medical ethics. On another day we watched the original “Godzilla” (1954), a film I had never seen! It was a fascinating exploration of fear and helplessness in the face of danger, but also of the sacrifices made by “average” citizens (who are anything but average) and the courage of scientists. OW: Speaking more globally about the pandemic, what can the world learn about this experience? What do you hope to see from our leaders (political or even industry) in order to build a better future that enables us to better manage any similar type of situation? FP: We need a new, more inclusive economic model that provides health care to all citizens. This will allow people who work in the arts to pursue their careers without having to worry before going to a doctor that they cannot pay their medical bills. It will also save lives and improve the quality of life for millions of people who are marginalized. This is a humane thing but also makes financial sense. Wellness means fewer expenses if conditions one can live with are caught earlier and it also means we will have more people who are productive, contributing citizens. We also need to turn to culture more assiduously to learn from history and about human nature. Through opera, but also literature, music and theater, we can learn about arrogance, hubris and derangement as well as love. Connection to culture gives us wisdom and tolerance as we juxtapose our current experiences with what is described in the art works from the past. Listening to and watching Violetta expire at the end of  “La Traviata” tells us with heart-rending emotion what it is like to die. When you look at “Manon Lescaut” die alone at the end of Puccini’s opera, you realize what it is like for all of the people now in hospitals to be dying alone because their loved ones cannot be near them. Reading Manzoni’s  “I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed)” helps us understand what happens when plague devastates Lombardy, something we are witnessing again now. It may sound sappy to say it but I think this collective COVID-19 experience is teaching us that time is so precious, life is fragile and that love and kindness really do contribute to the health and well-being of others and ourselves. I still hear certain public figures as well as read comments by grouchy people in social media who think that selfishness and heartlessness are acceptable. They are wrong! We just have to look at all the sacrifices so many first responders (including cultural first responders) are willingly making and the millions of more people who are victims of circumstance. In opera, we audiences as well as the performers are regularly asked to do the emotional hard work that we now see millions of people facing. But most opera characters are also quick (apart from “Turandot” and  Amelia in “Un Ballo in Maschera”) to tell others that they love them. Now is the time to connect, to show love and to find courage where we can. And get back to work, whether it is creativity or doing something that will make things better for others.

A weekly roundup of fiction recommendations by Gwen Cooper Greetings, agoraphobes, and welcome back for the last of my three-part list of binge-worthy authors. As you may recall, we’re defining “binge-worthy” as meaning that the author in question has at least five novels or story collections independently worth reading, and we’re also avoiding the Austens and Roths who have undoubtedly been on your radar for years and years. Let’s get to it! Lorrie Moore: If I had never read Elena Ferrante, I would say that nobody creates vivid, “voice-y,” and thoroughly believable narrators like Lorrie Moore. That I put her in the running with Elena Ferrante—who I think does this better than any other living writer—should tell you just how high my opinion of her in this area is. To finish reading a Moore story, or her much-ballyhooed 2009 novel A Gate at the Stairs, is to feel that you’ve just spent a chunk of time having an actual conversation with a real person you know intimately. Her characters live, is what I’m saying—and the feeling that you’re always in company when you’re reading Moore makes her an ideal author and virtual companion for the age of involuntary social distancing. Start with: Birds of America—Moore’s 1988 collection of short stories is the first thing I ever read by her, and converted me thoroughly from reader to disciple. My favorite: A Gate at the Stairs—This was a tough call, but I’ll give it to Gate primarily because, while Moore doesn’t fully stick the landing in transitioning from short-form narrative to novel, it’s still well worth getting to read her at length. Leslie Marmon Silko: Technically, I’m fudging a bit by including Silko who—while having written a prolific body of poetry and non-fiction—only has three novels to her credit. Then again, she was a debut recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant in 1981, so who am I to quibble? Silko would be one of my very favorite writers even if she weren’t a unique voice among Native American novelists, of whom there are far too few. (I’m not overly fond of Louise Erdrich, which is limiting.) It’s almost a cliché to use words like “haunting” and “lyrical” to describe an author’s voice, but Silko is both of those things and far more. She also leans heavily on the po-mo device of non-linear narrative, but does so in a way that feels so intuitively logical that the reader never feels lost. She brings to brilliant life the Native American communities of the American Southwest—which, for this Jewish girl from Miami Beach, always feels very much like an adventure. Start with: Ceremony—A haunting (there’s that word again!) attempt to reconcile the WWII experience with that of Native Americans who saw, and were shattered by, combat. My favorite: The Almanac of the Dead—A sprawling, panoramic novel encompassing the history and present (at least, up until 1994) of Navajo and other Southwest tribes, along with the effects on their communities of urbanization and modernization. Tons of characters, tons of plot—a genuine epic. Angela Thirkell: If you read the earlier column where I wrote about my love of Anthony Trollope, you can perhaps imagine how I felt when I discovered a few years ago—quite by chance—that another British novelist, by the name of Angela Thirkell, had written some thirty-ish novels set in the Trollope “universe,” i.e. in Trollope’s fictional county of Barsetshire, from the years 1933 to 1961. There’s no overlap between Trollope’s characters and Thirkell’s, nor would I say that Thirkell quite measures up to Trollope’s shrewd character insights. Nevertheless, Thirkell has written an addictive series of light and witty comedies of manners that go down as easily as really good petit fours. Read her enough and you’ll feel like you just got back from vacationing in a British country house (delightful gossip and lovers’ quarrels de rigueur), which is undoubtedly a better place to spend your quarantine than a cramped New York City apartment. Start with: High Rising—The first of Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels, lighter than air, and yummy all the way down. My favorite: Same as above, which isn’t to say that her subsequent Barsetshire novels aren’t thoroughly enjoyable. Gloria Naylor: Naylor often cited Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston as two of her biggest influences, and the fingerprints of both those titans are evident on Naylor’s work—Morrison in Naylor’s glowing descriptive powers and dips into folklore and magical realism, and Hurston in Naylor’s mastery of vernacular and the extent to which her work (much like Hurston’s) is in constant conversation with Abolition-era slave narratives. And yet, Naylor is an entirely original voice and storyteller. I don’t know that any other author has ever made me laugh harder or broken my heart more thoroughly, all within the span of the same book. I sometimes think that Naylor doesn’t so much create characters as call forth the ghosts of actual people who will continue to live with you long after you’ve turned the last page. Start with: The Women of Brewster Place—You may remember Oprah Winfrey’s star turn in the late-80s TV adaptation. I’ve found that this one ages very, very well (the novel that is—I can’t speak for the movie). My favorite: Bailey’s Café—Read it and you’ll never look at sweet potato pie the same way again. Also, this observation will get big laughs from you. Gwen Cooper is the New York Times bestselling author of Homer's Odyssey and My Life in a Cat House, among numerous other titles. Her latest book, The Book of Pawsome: Head Bonks, Raspy Tongues, and 101 Reasons Why Cats Make Us So, So Happy, is now available for purchase on Amazon.com. Gwen will donate 50% of the first week's proceeds to Meals on Wheels.

By John Rolfe For those of you trapped at home with children and bravely trying to further their education while limiting the carnage they wreak, all I can do is quote Science Officer Ash from the sci-fi horror movie Alien: “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathy.” You see, I am an angel of mercy sidelined by the pandemic lockdown and sadly unable to save you. I drive a school bus — that sweet yellow chariot that cometh forth each morn to carry your urchins away and restore peace to your domicile. I'm also the father of three and stepfather of one, though my offspring are grown and on their own (save one), so a certain amount of amnesia has set in. My wife reminded me of what life could be like when she mused one recent morning, “I am soooo glad I don’t have school-age kids I’m stuck in the house with indefinitely … forever … trying to make them pay attention and do their homework and chores and clean up their messes. I remember those days of praying for the bus to arrive. This is one for the Gratitude Journal!” For sure. However, I must confess that I was usually ensconced in an office in Manhattan during those trying times, leaving my gallant, suffering spouse to deal with all the horror. Now that I’m piloting a 40-foot madhouse for a local school district, I am more keenly aware of what she was — and you are — up against. I can’t help noticing the look of gratitude in parents’ eyes whenever I arrive at their child’s stop. So what can you do, short of resorting to strong drink, to preserve your sanity until the lockdown ends? If you’re trying to teach kids yourself, received wisdom suggests making the first lesson of the day fun, so they have a reason involve themselves in activities they regard as a waste of their precious time. Schedule the most challenging material for about 10:30 a.m. when they are most engaged. As for their domestic duties, my wife suggests tying treasured possessions and privileges like video games, online time and cane sugar ingestion to the completion of assignments, chores, and cleanup. “Whenever they ask you for something, always be thinking, ‘What can I get out of this?’” she says. If that doesn’t help, you can try some of the containment methods I employ on my bus: Assign seats. Kids hate them, especially when they can’t sit with their friends or partners in crime. Separate troublemakers. The “Honored Student” seat on my bus is right behind me where I can better keep a jaundiced eye on those who chronically misbehave. They may not stop, but at least I have the satisfaction of highly annoying them. Read them The Riot Act. I have what I call my Roadside Lecture Series where I pull a particularly fractious bus over, turn off the engine, slowly rise as the roiling masses grow quiet, and deliver a thunderous address on why mixed martial arts matches in the aisle, doing headers over seatbacks, or distracting me with constant complaints and requests are not in their best interests ... or mine for that matter. Write them up. We drivers use a form that cites infractions such as fighting, pushing, tripping, littering, unacceptable language, destroying or defacing property, smoking, rudeness, excessive mischief, menacing, domestic terrorism, high treason, and violations of the Emoluments Clause. It is basically a ticket to the principal’s office for a stern reprimand. If you don’t have an office handy, a sizable closet can be a suitable site for a frank discussion. If all else fails, try shrieking. Then again, I suspect you are already doing plenty of that. Good luck and Godspeed! I hope to see you again soon, at which time I’m sure we shall share a tearful hug. John Rolfe is a former senior editor for Sports Illustrated for Kids, a longtime columnist for the Poughkeepsie Journal/USA Today Network, and author of The Goose in the Bathroom: Stirring Tales of Family Life. His school bus drivin’ blog “Hellions, Mayhem and Brake Failure” is parked on his website Celestialchuckle.com.