Grounded! Betcha can't not touch your face...

Hallie Ephron: It’s been a rough few weeks and no end in sight.... The cancellation of Left Coast Crime at the last minute left so many in our community stranded. Our vehement get-well wishes go out to anyone who’s got COVID-19 or thinks they do. Since it’s been nearly impossible to get tested unless you’re Tom Hanks and working in Australia.

Yes, things have changed. Our local schools are closing for at least six weeks. So scary. Let’s not talk about how many times a day I check the stock market. Or how many times each minute I try to stop myself from touching my face. 

I always work at home, often in my PJs, so that’s not new. But now, going to the supermarket, first thing I do is grab a wipe and use it to wipe down my shopping cart. Head straight to the produce department where I grab two plastic bags to wear over my hands before I touch a single honey crisp apple or baby tangerine. One minute, the end cap at my local Stop ‘n’ Shop is chockablock with antibacterial products; a few hours later they’ve sold out.

Since I’ve stopped going to my fitness center, I’m giving my exercise bike (for so long it’s been a coat rack but fortunately my husband wouldn’t let me give it away) a workout and sadly I’m running out of The Great British Baking Show episodes to watch while I pedal. Spring has come early, so I’m out raking. 

Online shopping is still a GO, and I’m thinking about buying these. Exercise, clean, and try not to go stir crazy.

What are you up to... or not?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I just got back from Palm Beach where I did a wonderful book event--but let me tell you, I was happy to be on that plane heading home. And no more trips for me anytime soon. The airport was WEIRD, although the plane was full. And everyone with wipes. And so strange--at some point, I realized that no one was laughing. In the airport, on the plane, nothing. Once you notice it, it’s so disconcerting.

I feel so awful for all the convention planners--they have spent so much time and brainpower only to be hit by this. It’s so unsettling and scary. I said to Jonathan last night--I fear the locusts are next. And then--in the paper this morning--I read that deadly locusts in Africa are threatening to wipe out the crops.

Also, I am putting a limit (Jonathan doesn't know this yet) on CNN-watching. 

But I can make you laugh.

In the Uber on the way to the Palm Beach event: 
My young Uber driver says: “How about that corona?”

Me: “Yeah.”

Driver: “I’m not worried too much about myself, but I do worry about elderly people like you.”

RHYS BOWEN:  I was so sad to cancel Left Coast Crime but I’ve had sniffly stuffy allergies and thought I’d be more vulnerable to what was out there, also John is high risk. I was so relieved when the state made the convention cancel as they would not now lose their shirts. I’m about to cancel an upcoming cruise and doing a lot of wiping and washing 

But how can anyone actually keep safe? The mailman coughs on my letter. The waitress touches my plate? The man handing out communion in church uses hand sanitizer then holds the handrail down from the altar!

I am in Arizona with very few cases. How about banning travel of more than 20 miles? 

Stay safe everyone and order books online from your favorite bookstore!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We are in for at least a week of rain and thunderstorms here, and while the unappealing weather may help keep people home, it does nothing for the general state of gloom! I’m trying to bring back my winter hygge in full force--hot tea, puzzles, a fire, and lots of uninterrupted time to work.

While NOT touching my face! The more I think about it, the more my nose itches!

In the meantime, I’m lucky enough to have a netgalley of Lucy’s THE KEY LIME CRIME, and am very grateful for a dose of Key West and fabulous food.

Rhys, I am washing my hands thoroughly after opening the mail and throwing away the outer envelopes. There is so much to be mindful about.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I hadn’t thought about the mail! Holy cow, it just goes to show how hard it is to keep track of everything someone might have touched. 

I’m prepping this week to move the last seven weeks of my community college course online. Since I can barely use the online gradebooks, I’m going to be relying heavily on the tech helpers to walk me through it. The final project divides students into small groups to research and write a recommendation paper. That part will be easy to transfer online, but I’m at a loss how they’re going to do the oral presentation to the class that caps the semester! Any suggestions are welcome.

My own college kid is NOT coming home - she has an “operations-necessary” work-study job they want her to keep doing, so she’s taking over a cheap apartment from a friend. Since her courses will also move online, she’ll be able to triple her weekly work hours, so she may come out well ahead in this crisis! Of course, it helps to be 19 and healthy as a horse…

JENN McKINLAY: I was at Left Coast Crime, drinking a coco pina margarita, when the convention was canceled. While it wasn’t completely unexpected, it was still weird to be at an event and have the plug pulled right as it got underway. The rain was also relentless, which added to the feeling of

doom.

I am now back home in the frat house and the hooligans are off from school for the next two weeks while I am on deadline, so this should be fun. Also, I am not a hoarder and go to the grocery store every day because I never know what I want for dinner until that day, so we have no food and only four rolls of toilet paper. Save me!

LUCY BURDETTE: It’s such a bizarre time isn’t it? And cancelling all events is going to make us feel even more isolated and worried, even though it’s the right thing to do. FINALLY, the city of Key West has banned cruise ships landing in our port for the next 30 days. It’s our busy season so we often have 2 or 3 a day--all those people pouring off ships...scary!

I’ve checked my freezer. Here’s what was on one shelf! 

We were expecting two different groups of visitors (both cancelled), so I’d stocked up. I hope to make one more run to the grocery store tomorrow morning. I’ve got meat and pasta and sauce and rice and beans, but I’m very low on vegetables and fruit.

HALLIE: So are you all ‘sheltering in place’ and staying hydrated? 

Here’s a final word from Sergeant Esterhaus in Hill Street Blues.

Twas the Best of Movies, Twas the Worst of Movies

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I love disaster movies. If there's a flick that has meteors hurtling to the earth, tidal waves that topple New York, people getting flash-frozen in the midwest or Los Angeles getting smoked in an earthquake/volcano/alien invasion, I'm there. Which is to say why the Smithie, her girlfriend and I were recently in the audience for GEOSTORM, despite its abysmal rating of 11% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The terrible reviews are well deserved. This movie didn't just ignore actual science (which, frankly, is to be expected in this genre. There's zero explanation, for instance, of why the planet starts cracking like a hardboiled egg in 2012. The Mayans said it would, that's good enough for us.) GEOSTORM also ignored human nature, political reality, basic engineering standards, OSHA, the passage of time and the fact that a deputy undersecretary at the US State Department wouldn't show up for work with shaggy hair and a three-day SexyStubble(TM).

Nonetheless, we had a GREAT time watching it. We snorted at the ridiculous plot twists, whispered, "Wait, didn't he say earlier..." to each other, and every time a character said, "There's going to be a GEOSTORM!" (which happened, I'm happy to say, frequently) we would make faces like the Screamer in Edvard Munch's painting. The movie lasted an hour and three quarters, and we spent at least twice that long afterwards tearing it apart. It was that rare bird; a deeply enjoyable, thoroughly Bad Movie.

Reds, do you have any cinematic stinkers you love?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I burst out laughing, picturing you two. SO many great bad movies. And they are definitely a different animal than just a bad movie. Take, for example POINT BREAK. So ridiculous, with Patrick Swayze as an enlightened surfer who moonlights with the presidential mask-wearing surfing colleagues as bank robbers. So, of course, FBI agent Keanu Reaves learns to surf so he can infiltrate the gang. I forget the rest. but it is wonderfully bad. Especially the "ending."

BEETLEJUICE, but wait, that's actually good, right? And SPEED, again, sorry, Keanu Reeves as a state cop who has to keep driving the bus at 50 miles per hour so the speed-detonated bomb on it doesn't go off.  Or wait, does Sandra Bullock drive the bus? Anyway, fabulous.  CONTAGION, with Dustin Hoffman, I think, trying to stop the world from dying of plague or something.

There was recently a movie that I almost made Jonathan go to that was supposed to be so bad that it was famous for being terrible. Anyone know what that was? And forgive me, but I thought WONDER WOMAN, though fun to watch, was absolutely ridiculous. Made NO sense whatsoever. I KNOW it's fantasy. But fantasy still has to make sense. Don't get me started on what didn't make sense, because the list is too long.

I can't wait to hear what movies you all pick. And the old horror movies don't count. The Incredible Shrinking Man. That was great.


JENN McKINLAY: I saw SPEED eight times. In the theater. I am not kidding. It is bad and my girlfriend and I loved it so hard. Still do.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Hank, you can't diss SPEED! I love SPEED! Who cares if Sandra Bullock could really drive the bus? But, seriously, the first thing that comes to my mind is THE LAST STARFIGHTER. In case anyone has missed this gem, it came out in 1984 and starred Lance Guest (did he ever make another movie?) and Robert Preston. Yes, THE MUSIC MAN. It's about a poor boy from a trailer park in New Mexico who is a whiz at video games, so aliens recruit him to fly a spaceship and SAVE THE UNIVERSE!!!! There is a car that takes off, and Robert Preston pulls off his human face to reveal his alien face! The space battle scenes look like they were done in somebody's garage with Star Wars toys. The dialogue is dreadful. But, still, there's something so charming about the trailer park that I'd watch it just for those parts. And, no big spoiler, Alex (Lance Guest) really does save the universe.

HANK: I LOVE The Last Starfighter. Brilliant. Genius.  What a great plot, right?  And Robert Preston, perfection.

HALLIE EPHRON: My vote goes to STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE. I'm afraid Jar Jar Binks hammered the nail in that coffin for me. But I've heard the SWs movies have gotten better since. In that one, it was like they fired all the writers and the actors ad libbed. Dreadful, except for special effects.

My daughter and I just disagreed on LA LA LAND. I loved it. She HATED it. Unbelievable, she said. Well duh, I said.

JULIA: Hallie, I just pretend the prequel trilogy never happened.

RHYS BOWEN: I am so picky about movies that I rarely see stinkers. I don't like disaster movies. I would have had to be dragged to Sharknado which my daughter in LA thought was screamingly funny. I enjoyed the first three Star Wars but my interested quickly waned from then on. I actually quite liked WonderWoman, but then I did watch it on a plane, snuggled in my pod with a glass of wine, with nothing else to do and nowhere else to be! Loved LA LA LAND. I've seen it since twice on planes (I seem to do much of my movie watching on long flights). I really hated THE HOBBIT--so different in tone from the book that they missed the point of it. But since most of the movies I go to seem to star Judi Dench or Maggie Smith or Kate Winslett or all three, nobody ever has to save the world from sharks or aliens!

HANK: Rhys, you had me at snuggling in a pod with wine.

JENN: Hank, you aren't alone with POINT BREAK. Hub loves that movie while admitting it's ridiculous. TREMORS with Kevin Bacon, we both adore. I mean, giant worms in the desert, come on, what is not to love? And, Julia, I hear you on disaster films. My favorite disaster type movie is Twister. Helen Hunt chasing tornadoes with Bill Paxton. Cows fly by. This is great stuff! Am I right?

JULIA: Oh, yes.

INGRID THOFT: SPEED is not a bad movie!  SPEED is fabulous!  I think I saw it about five times in the theaters, Jenn, and I watched a year ago on a long plane flight.  It held up after all this time!  I also share Julia’s love of disaster films.  TOWERING INFERNO is a winner, as is THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.  I was so hopeful that the recent THE MOUNTAIN BETWEEN US starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba was going to be good, but it tanked on Rotten Tomatoes and in the theater.  Fingers crossed it’s the good kind of bad, and it will become a new favorite when I can watch it on demand.

JULIA: Let us know, Ingrid! How about you, dear readers? What are your favorite bad movies?