New pandemic music for you: “Where the Fuck did April Go” by The Streets. Mike Skinner (one man, plural streets), who rhythm-speaks through this spunky track, said, “I wrote this last week. It’s a weird time isn’t it.” It is. “We were looking forward to the summer just like everyone else,” he continued, “festivals and gigs all there, new music, new stage set — but this has taken the wind from everyone’s sails. And none of us know quite how to cope with it all. I just wrote a tune the same way other people might talk to a therapist!” Well, friends, you’re the therapists now. Listen here.
Festivals may be cancelled (we hope Mike makes it through), but a bunch of places are plotting their re-openings, and those plans come with questions about how to maintain distance between people. In the places doing test runs, an answer appears to be emerging: mannequins. In South Korea, sports teams are playing to stadiums of cardboard fans; a show in France airs to a studio audience of people-shaped balloons; and in DC, one restaurant is filling 50% of its dining room with mannequins dressed in old-timey garb, with the intention, mind you, of making diners more comfortable in a creepily desolate environment. As if we didn’t already live in an apocalyptic hellscape, now you can interact with silent, dead-eyed fake humans wherever you go to have fun. And you thought things couldn’t get any weirder.
To be fair, we sentient humans are plastering cloth patches over our faces, so what’s the difference, really. On that note, the mask has quickly evolved from medical handout to personal billboard space, a new tiny tee shirt ready to advertise a statement right from your face. There’s a right-wing option whereby MAGA wanders down from the forehead; if your color is blue, you can call for Medicare For All, à la AOC. If you’re less “activist” and more merely “active,” you may wear the words “Outdoor Voices” right on your jaw. Further into the brandsphere, Disney will sell you a mask with Mickey dancing around it, and at Old Navy, you can find a mask in any of the preppy prints you’d previously seen on boxers. Thanks to a Michigan entrepreneur named Trevor, there’s already a monthly mask subscription service called “Mask Club” peddling all sorts of different designs, which feels like the embodiment of all things bad about capitalism. Print that on your mask.
