Political campaigns have finally come to a much-needed end; and yet, no politician ever promised to rid this country of one of its most pressing nightmares: celebrities on social media announcing how they are dealing with the pandemic.
Since lockdown began, our Instagram, Twitter and TikTok feeds have been glutted with movie star A or sitcom actress B doling out quarantine coping advice as they sit in their mansions nestled in the Hollywood Hills and pretend they are suffering too.
“Hello, everyone. Are you feeling blue? So am I. But here’s what helps me. I like to go to a quiet room in my house and just … reflect. I suggest the solarium or the wine cellar. As you can see, that’s where I am now. And this is a bottle of Chianti that I picked up when I was on location in Tuscany. That helps too. We’ll get through this together.”
The celebrity coping mechanism reached its apex this past week when Kim Kardashian West, no stranger to hardship as evidenced by having to briefly evacuate one of her homes during the 2018 California wildfires, revealed the now infamous “private island” solution.
“After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time,” Kardashian West wrote on Twitter.
A Kardashian private island birthday bash
In her defense, the trip coincided with her 40th birthday so I can sort of relate. For my 50th, my wife rented a private room at a Chicago tavern, a great idea until we realized our room also included the establishment’s only bathroom. Plenty of inebriated, anxious strangers wished me a happy birthday that evening.
In the understatement of the Common Era, Kardashian West did admit, via social media of course, that not everyone can quarantine in such fashion.
“I realize that for most people, this is something that is so far out of reach right now, so in moments like these, I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is,” she wrote, after sharing photos of all the activities the island had to offer. Anyone else swim near whales since March?
If you’ve never been to a private island, pre- or mid-quarantine, no worries. I spent a day on one while aboard a seven-day Caribbean cruise. If you define “privacy” as standing in a buffet line with 2,500 sunburned tourists awaiting barbecue chicken and ribs, then you might enjoy it. The passengers who elected to stay aboard the ship had all the privacy they could handle that day.
Kim, come live with me
But if Kardashian West simply seeks “normalcy” and “privacy” as the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine, she should look no further than my house. Other than coat hooks by the door that now contain face masks, I think the Schwems have remained surprisingly normal during this period of self-isolation and sanitizing. And we can give her all the privacy she wants. For example:
—If she needs to make a Zoom call, she can use the hastily converted coat closet that has now become Ground Zero for all virtual communication
—We have a spare bedroom, with cable and internet access, that she is welcome to use. OK, the spare closet is loaded with toilet paper we were fortunate to grab at the start of the pandemic; she’ll have to move things around a bit.
—She is welcome to binge-watch TV with me. Since we rarely leave our house now, we’ve added Showtime, HBO and Amazon Prime to our cable subscriptions. I’m currently binge watching Billions, a show she can most certainly relate to.
Kim, just ask and I will text you my address. Drop by anytime.
Just let me know if you’ll be arriving in your normal private jet.
