10 MORE Things STILL Keeping Us Busy in Isolation

We miss restaurants. I think we're all getting antsy, and we had a trip planned for May 24 to see each other that will sadly not happen. If there was ever a time to not feel guilty about sitting on the couch 24/7, it's now. We all deserve it. Here are 10 things we've been doing since our last post to work through this terrible time.

I feel like the entire world is watching this docu-series, and if they aren't, then they should be ... I didn't start loving basketball until 2016 and have like 60 years of blind spots, but I find this story RIVETING. Most people watching are likely old enough to have memories of watching Michael Jordan play, but even if you're not (like me) you still saw Space Jam... 

The Last Dance is a 10-part documentary that comes out two episodes at a time on Netflix every Monday from now until May 18th. It covers the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls season. This series is also incredibly interesting from a production standpoint. They have had this "never before seen" footage for decades and finally got approval to use it. I honestly found myself mostly obsessed with this behind-the-scenes footage ... the crew had unlimited access so long as they promised it wouldn't see the light of day until there was an agreement on how it would be displayed. They finally agreed to something.

The footage feels intimate and promising, like you'll see the real Jordan everyone has stories about - gambling all night, punching teammates in the face, etc. If you want to get hyped for it I suggest you check out this amazing profile.

This also gives you something to look forward to as it is released each week!

Scott and I started this months ago at Meg's recommendation but the first two episodes were slow and we just didn't get into it. Meg was really disappointed we felt that way so I was keen to try again, and this time we really loved it. Just goes to show, sometimes the mood of the week really impacts your viewing experiences.

Anyways, this show is seriously good and funny. It's essentially about a super rich media-mogul and his kids as they run the business and navigate their own personal bullshit. Every character is SO well-written and perfect in their own way. There are two full seasons on Crave and really no noteworthy cast members besides Kieran Culkan, but all of the casting is perfect. We blew through the two seasons in no time given we have nothing else to do.

I plowed through this 8-part miniseries from Amazon Prime. I don't want to say this is "another cocaine show" because it definitely hits above most others. Essentially it tells the story of a cocaine deal from the perspective of the buyers, the sellers, and the brokers, and follows the deal from New Orleans to Italy - along with a few hiccups.

The cast is amazing, but the only one I recognized from the get-go was Dane Dehaan who plays the son of a broker (and who has Huntington's disease). I described this show to my old boss as this: if you love Italian gangsters, the Mexican drug cartel, and extreme violence, than this show is for you. However, while the show is pretty violent, I wouldn't say it lingers in gore, so you don't need to worry about it if you're super squeamish.

Scott and I have been playing lots of board games. I always search the game section at thrift stores for 2 player strategy games and thankfully we have a lot but recently we've been very into Risk. I think people are scared of this game because they think it takes hours on end but really, with two people, you play a game in an hour. I will say, I haven't won once. Not once. I also recently found out Scott played this game for hours a day in the fourth grade learning different strategies so, I'm definitely at a disadvantage, but I have been reading articles on how to win online everyday training for our next round. 

I think board games are totally jacked up price wise right now but I'm sure you could find Risk on a buy and sell (and I think they have fun themed versions like Game of Thrones, etc.).

The only thing keeping me sane during this pandemic is the media I will consume. I would recommend anyone who loves reading memoir check out famed-memoirist Mary Karr's "how-to" book The Art of Memoir. She is an amazing writer with a ton of wit and humour, as well as great advice. I obviously don't plan on writing a memoir, but I found this book to be incredibly interesting. The best part was that she references dozens of memoirs and what worked/didn't work with  them. As soon as I finished reading her book I placed an Indigo order for four more memoirs!

I have never been a crazy Justin Bieber fan but my friend Ally is obsessed with him and encouraged me to watch this short miniseries on YouTube, and now I kind of get the hype. This is a short, ten episode, ~ten minutes per episode series that anyone can easily blast through, and honestly a format I'd like to watch more things in. I feel like I haven't really paid attention to Bieber since he's been like, an adult, but he is very cool now and wow is his wife Hailey ever cool. I love them as a couple so much. The series takes you through some of the big events in his recent years: him cancelling his tour to take a mental break, being diagnosed with Lime Disease, getting married, and recording his most recent record. I found myself in tears at the wedding episode it was so beautiful. This whole thing is very cute and an easy and enjoyable way to kill 10 minutes of these endlessly long days at home.

One of my biggest blind spots of all time is HBO's The Wire. It's one of those shows I am often embarrassed to say I haven't seen yet. In February 2018 I tried to fix this and watched season one. The issue was that obviously I am more than a decade too late and had no one to talk to about it. I even got a massive spoiler from some stupid Variety article the DAY AFTER I finished the first season - though I guess I can't complain given how old the show is.

But now I can finally go through every season because The Ringer has launched a podcast giving The Wire the attention it deserves. "The Wire: Way Down In the Hole" is a podcast hosted by Jamele Hill and Van Lathan where they cover episode-by-episode and release two a week. Each episode also covers things like character deep dives and random The Wire facts like casting what-ifs, etc. I love having something to pair up with my binge watching, so this was the best news I heard in quarantine.

I got this book for Christmas and have been SO excited to read it. I love Spielberg's movie adaptation so so much and honestly only recently learned from a podcast that it's even based on a book. I decided after taking nearly a month to get through East of Eden that I wanted something short and fun to give myself a break and Jaws was just that. I will review it on here in a few weeks so I'll just leave it at this for now. Moral of the story is you don't need to read 500+ page literary fiction everyday just because its a pandemic.

If you are a sane person and are looking for something that will make you laugh and take your mind off COVID-19 then I would recommend you check out this comedy special. I came to it in a fairly round-about way ... I saw Marc Maron had Taylor Tomlinson on his podcast and I didn't immediately  recognize her name, but when I read the description box I saw she is dating Sam Morril (another comedian and also the host of one of my fav basketball podcasts).

Ben and I watched her hour-length special on Netflix and I laughed through it a ton. I especially loved an amazing joke she has about winning the affection of your boyfriend's mother even long after you have broken up. A true win.

I actually swapped this out at the last second because Scott and I just finished this this week (we actually it over only 3 nights). This is a Netflix miniseries reenacting the true events of 1993 when the ATF and FBI raided a religious compound they suspected of running guns. The first episode is really just setting some context and was pretty slow in my opinion but by the 3rd episode we were glued to the screen and could not believe what we were watching. We must have asked each other "are they allowed to do this?" 5x per episode. Normally I'd wonder how true these reenactments are but 3 people involved in the real events consulted on the project and it's based off 2 books: 1 written by a member of the Branch Davidians and one by the FBI negotiator. I've been thinking a lot about whether or not I'd like to read those having now watched the show.

Taylor Kitsch (the love of my life and top celebrity crush) plays David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidians, and Michael Shannon plays Gary the FBI negotiator. Funnily enough Rory Culkin is also in this, who would have thought I'd ever write about two Culkin brother shows in the same list?

The last episode is SO sad. We ended the series feeling how we felt when we ended When They See Us - emotional for the victims and fucking angry over the injustice. It's really short at only 6 episodes and I felt like they flew by. I don't know that I felt any of the actual performances super stood out but the whole thing was definitely well done and worth watching.