the seventh inning stretch, or, all the non-baseball stuff getting me through social distancing.

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My friend Phil made a 7th inning stretch reference when I mentioned being two thirds done with this series. I immediately realized it made a great excuse to take a day off.

Obviously, a man cannot live on baseball films alone. I’d originally planned on publishing all sorts of non-baseball related posts about the things helping me get through isolation. But, it turns out that writing 30 posts in 30 days is a lot when you’re entirely out of shape in terms of consistent writing.

But now I have a day off!

So, here’s the rest of the stuff helping me survive:

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Movies: Obviously, most of my movie time has been taken up by baseball movies. Still, I rewatched Knives Out, which is just as brilliant the second time. I saw Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, which is fucking amazing. Antonio Banderas is remarkable in it. And Emily and I are working our way through the MCU movies again.

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Shows: Like everyone else in the world, I watched Tiger King. I also watched The Outsider, Last Week Tonight, lots of Seth Meyers and Colbert segments, Cowboy Bebop, and the final season of Schitt’s Creek. There’s a bunch of shows still on my quarantine list, including Tales from the Loop and The Midnight Gospel.

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Books: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino, Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, and Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb. All highly recommended. If you haven’t read Hobb before, she’s great. I’d start with Assassin’s Apprentice.

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Comics/Graphic Novels: The Weatherman by Jody Leheup-Nathan Fox-Dave Stewart, The Backstagers by James Tynion IV, Head Lopper by Andrew MacLean, The Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman. You should read all of them!

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Video Games: I’m working my way through Spider-Man for PS4 — thumbs up — but Emily has been playing the ever-loving shit out of Stardew Valley. Emily spending all of her time playing a video game is definitely the most surprising development from this whole thing.

I also have a huge backlog of games to get to, but I’m assuming I’ll still use this as an excuse to buy either Final Fantasy VII Remake or Divinity: Original Sin 2. Or both.

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Puzzles: I bought Emily a puzzle for Christmas. Neither of us had done a puzzle in years, and I thought it would be fun. I had no idea it would become a way of life — and that was before this all went down! Fortunately, our new puzzle obsession meant we were well stocked to be trapped in our apartment for two months.

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Music: A new Childish Gambino album in March, and a new Orville Peck song released just in time for my birthday.

I wholeheartedly recommend adding them to your survival kit.

[I also didn’t know until yesterday that Frank Ocean released new music this month, so I’ll checking that out right now.]

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Thoughts?