Well, here we are. The coronavirus crisis is picking up speed at an alarming rate and people across the country are starting to self-isolate. There's a strong chance that this is the state of affairs for weeks to come. We are looking a lot of time indoors and there is a definite vibe that once cabin fever sets in it might be hard to shake.
As rewatchable as the first ten seasons of The Simpsons are, the trick to staying positive is going to be keeping things fresh. If you’ve found yourself suddenly locked up in the house and you’re a little worried that chasing moonbeams isn’t going to cut it, here are few pastimes to keep you busy doing nothing.
Easy listening
Music
A good place to start if you're looking to throw one-person lounge disco is with absolutely any Australian artist. Tour cancellations and venue shutdowns have the Aus music community hurting something fierce and it's going to get worse before it gets better. As the more lucrative revenue streams for artists run bone dry, a couple of spins while you potter around the house could be the lifeline somebody uses to drag themselves through the COVID-19 crisis.
The Music has put together a couple of Spotify playlists to that end - one full of Australian bands that have been forced to dump upcoming tours, and another that will keep a running tab on new local releases.
We can also highly recommend The Music's recent album of the week, Ocean Grove's Flip Phone Fantasy. Nu-metal is back, don't fight it.
A good chunk our local picks for 2020 have been dropping new music through the start of the year as well and you can't really miss with that lot.
Podcasts
The team at Reply All make "stories about how people shape the internet, and how the internet shapes people". If that sounds a little vague it’s probably just because it’s hard to pin down in an iTunes bio how strange, funny and movingly beautiful this show can be.
A personal favourite of ours is Shipped To Timbuktu, an episode that starts with a harmless prank concerning a misaddressed administrative email and some stale girl scout cookies. It’s a perfect Reply All set-up, a slightly dorky, seemingly inconsequential thread that, for whatever reason, hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman just cannot stop pulling at.
What unravels is a story about an indomitable group of children surviving in WWII concentration camps during the Japanese occupation of China. It genuinely made us well up on PT.
There’s a lot of it and they have their own pointers on where new listeners can jump in, but we recommend you start at the beginning and don’t stop until you’re stuck hitting refresh like the rest of us.
Extremely streamable
Series
The third season of Westworld season just dropped on Foxtel three days ago and if you’re already into Westworld this information probably doesn’t help you. If you haven’t gone in deep on the dystopian cowboy robot drama yet, then there’s a lot of content there waiting to suck up your days. You've even got the original ’73 film and its less memorable sequel Futureworld to get through before you go anywhere near the series. They’ve weathered a bit, but Yul Brynner is still a walking nightmare as The Gunslinger.
Film
You seen Westworld yet? Jks. A while back Stan quietly added several films from Seijun Suzuki, aka the dude Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch get a lot of their ideas from. He made a stack of extremely stylish B-movie yakuza thrillers in the ’50s and '60s and they’re well worth a watch.
In game
Online Dungeons & Dragons
When people say that youth is wasted on the young, they're talking about outdoorsy kids and D&D. So much free time, all of it spent skipping and skylarking or whatever when they could have been hunched over a table full of dice and sweating about the outcome of fantasy math.
The thing is, D&D is a massive time suck, and any adult knows that adulting is about two things - putting your back out in exciting new ways and being time-poor. But while usual outside commitments like the pub have been cancelled, we posit weekends and evenings are now for busting kobold heads and getting really hopped up on probability.
Self-isolating most definitely includes squeezing into someone's lounge room for eight hours of table-top RPGs and shared snacks, but there are plenty of places to play online as well. Roll20 takes about 20 seconds to sign up. You can start your own campaigns with friends there, or if you don't know any nerds you can join someone else's epic adventure (DM's may charge for their time). They've got a YouTube channel full of tips and streamed games if you want to get your head around things before jumping in too.
Homeschooling
AskReddit
One of the top trending questions on AskReddit as of writing is "Funeral home employees/owners of Reddit, what’s the most ridiculous outfit you’ve seen someone buried in?" There's almost 4,000 comments in there, most of them deeply wholesome ("My great aunt was buried in her “100 Jazzercize Classes Taken” T-shirt. She was super fucking proud of it, so it was fitting. Love that woman."). There are a substantial number of people buried in full clown regalia as well, which was unexpected.
If you can't lose a day in that you might be reading the wrong article.
Minute Physics
Ever wondered why the solar system if flat? Or why mirrors flip things on left to right but not vertically? On YouTube channel Minute Physics, Henry Reich gives you straight and simple answers to all your complicated questions about the universe, even the ones you didn't know you had. We know a three-minute clip doesn't sound like much of a distraction but then it's pretty hard to stop one.
For more information about how COVID-19 is impacting the music industry, follow the link here.
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