Things To Do While Under Quarantine!

And here we all are, living in our quarantined lives as if we are ramping up toward a Post-Historic Cave People Society. This is just the beginning of what could be a lengthy period of voluntary and even involuntary self-seclusion. Some epic and profound shifts in our societies and Collective Consciousness are underway.

In the meantime, we could all benefit from some diversions or variety of stimuli while being confined. Towards this end, allow me to present The Daily Kibitz List Of Socially Distancing Entertainments!

Let's start with our Daily Kibitz Film Critic's Top Ten List of Favorite Movie Comedies. We can all use the laughs. These are all available on various online and cable platforms:

Duck Soup
Dr. Strangelove
Groundhog Day
Animal House
Airplane!
The Naked Gun
Monty Python & The Holy Grail
Young Frankenstein
Bringing Up Baby
The Big Lebowski

Yes! That's quite a collection of yuks and should keep you in stitches for some time. Maybe you want to intersperse these Hall of Fame Humor Films with something else to watch. Well, here is the next Daily Kibitz suggestion: our Top Ten List of Favorite Binge TV Shows. These all have been previewed by our Daily Kibitz media critic and get the big thumbs up! And they are all available on Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu:

Breaking Bad   Simply the best dramatic series ever made.
Parks and Recreation   Simply the best comedy series ever made.
Orphan Black   Simply the best acting performance ever; Tatiana Maslany rules.
Justified  Highly entertaining crime series located in eastern Kentucky.
Better Call Saul  Different cadence of story-telling, but the uber-high Breaking Bad quality remains.
Treme  The story starts three months after Katrina in New Orleans. Completely immersive.
Mad Men  Even if you loathe Don Draper, he represents America's values from 1960 to 1970.
The People vs. O.J. Simpson  Getting through this explains so much about our fractured society.
Friday Night Lights  Based on the movie, based on the book. "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!"
The Prisoner  From 1967 BBC, if George Orwell had taken psychedelics. It's more relevant today.

Is that a song in your heart I hear? Music surely helps during times like these. So here is our Daily Kibitz Music Critic's Top Ten Quarantine Songs. They're all songs about conditions that, though differing, still have the same impact as what we're experiencing today:

"Waiting For The End Of The World"  Elvis Costello
"Life In The Food Chain"  Tonio K.
"Bad Moon Rising"  Creedence Clearwater Revival
"London Calling"  The Clash
"Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment"  The Ramones
"Ball Of Confusion"  The Temptations
"Ship Of Fools"  World Party
"1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)  Jimi Hendrix
"Everything Must Go"  Steely Dan
"Red"  King Crimson

Yes, that is a great list! In fact, I've compiled it into a Spotify Playlist and you can listen to it all right here. Just give it a click:

TOP TEN QUARANTINE SONGS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Alright, moving on, we consulted with our Daily Kibitz Social Media Critic for the low-down on which Twitter accounts should be followed. The recommendations are a blend of goofy and brilliant, highly informative and utterly sophomoric sites. It's a good Top Ten Twitter Accounts To Follow while sheltering from the storm:

https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast  Snarky supremo and hugely humanist. Funny, fair and spot on.
https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson  Author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies" is hilarious.
https://twitter.com/GiantCat9  Giant cats with military hardware. Sublimely silly.
https://twitter.cm/TomTomorrow  Cartoon humorist and his friends with wicked takes on the world.
https://twitter.com/AngrierWHStaff  The ongoing perspective from a former White House staffer!!
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy  The editor of Media Matters. She's super smart and is great fun.
https://twitter.com/Popehat  The twitterverse Legal Eagle and his funny lawyer friends.
https://twitter.com/PaulNoth  One of the best New Yorker cartoonists.
https://twitter.com/JoeDator  Another of the best New Yorker cartoonists.
https://mobile.twitter.com/chunkled  Chock full of nifty relevant memes and gifs!

Oh, those will keep you busy! But what if you have sworn to never venture into the evil, wicked Land of Twitter? Well, OK. Our Daily Kibitz Social Media Critic has also drawn up a Top Ten Websites To Make You Laugh. And here they are:

https://www.theonion.com  The fabled Onion. Still the best, even though the world is now weirder.
https://www.wonkette.com  Another great one, where contributors and commenters don't hold back.
http://www.picturesofwalls.com/gallery.asp  Some world-class examples of trenchant graffiti.
https://awkwardfamilyphotos.com  Think your family is weird?
http://www.oldjewstellingjokes.com/jokes/  This site will keep you going for days, all for the better.
https://theoatmeal.com  Cartoon instructional site with a definite edge to its humor.
https://www.funnyordie.com  A little too Pop Culture for me but what the hell, maybe you'll like it.
https://9gag.com  Quite an aggregation of videos, memes, gifs and comments about, well, lots.
https://thenib.com  A collection of the top "alternative" cartoon artists and their ongoing work.
http://www.artbanksy.com  Banksy! His life, his loves, his recipes, his plan for world peace.

All of these are fine, but what if you don't give a dang about Internet content? Aside from reading this fine blog, you'd prefer to be retro and read a book? Fantastic! Let's let our Daily Kibitz Literary Critic weigh in on the Top Ten Books To Read During A Pandemic. Some of these titles are available to read online. Some are probably lurking on a dusty bookshelf in your home. All are still in print.

"One Hundred Years Of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Puts "magic realism" to amazing use.
"The Tragedy of Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe. All he ever wanted was everything.
"The Tempest" by William Shakespeare. About a family trying to be socially distant.
"The Hero With A Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. Players change but the story's the same.
"Catch-22" by Joseph Heller. The idiocy exemplified here tragically remains with us in 2020.
"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut. Easy to see why Kurt V. and Joseph H. were best friends.
"Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville. Why do we follow leaders who chase The White Whale?
"A Confederacy Of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. The funniest novel ever written.
"William Blake: Selected Poems" The genius. No poet will be greater. Remarkable artistic ambition.
"The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain. We are all on that raft.

And that will have to do! Now to help a little bit more, here are The Human Beinz singing their 1968 hit, "Nobody But Me" with attendant dance moves. Click, enjoy and let's get through this together!!