“Watch this series!” everyone advises on social media.
“Read these books!” others exhort.
As a工作从家里的妈妈whose preschooler’s远程学习计划from her Jewish school requires constant supervision — exactly why are they仍然teaching about Passover every day if we can barely have a seder?!— my main response to all these recommendations is,什么时候？When do people have time to commit to a series, a novel, an online language course?I may be home all the time now, but I feel like I’m busier than ever.
One night, after my daughter was asleep and I finished panic cooking, panic cleaning, and panic eating, I found that I actually had a moment to watch some TV.After doing my usual half-hour of preview watching onNetflix公司, I stumbled upon one title that was perfect for a pandemic.
结束时间乐趣,马克·马伦’s Netflix special, is so prescient and so timely, it’s amazing the comedian wrote it way before coronavirus began (like even before it began in China).
“I don’t know what’s happening, people, I don’t know, but it’s pretty clear the world is ending,” says Maron, who also hosts the super-popular podcastWTF与马克·马伦,in which he interviews everyone from from Jon Bon Jovi to Barack Obama, with more than six million downloads a month.“I don’t want to shock anybody.I thought we’d make it under the wire.I thought I would, you know I’m 56, I think we might see it.”
During this coronavirus lockdown and隔离, many people are watching panic films like传染性and暴发。Personally, I别want to see movies right now of people dying of a scary disease with the government unable to help — I can turn on the news for that, thank you.And while I like good escapism as much as the next person (实习医生格蕾, anyone?), I’m finding that people talking about what is going on right now in a humorous-but-panicked way is oddly comforting.(Sometimes, to decompress, I like to watch old clips of Lewis Black — another agitated犹太喜剧演员— rage against the machine.I wonder what he’d have to say now.)
With an不高兴普林just behind us and a孤独的逾越节looming on the horizon, Maron is a great salve for Jewish parents trying to do it all with our kids underfoot: working, cleaning, helping them home school or, conversely, stay off YouTube.Sometimes you just want a smart Jewish boy like Maron to put our chaotic feelings into words.
Sitting on a high stool, wearing a brown vest over a white button-down shirt and jeans, Maron starts off his set by taking on the抗vaxxers(“Jury’s out on vaccines?How many friends you have with polio, lot of polio people in the family with iron lungs?”), personal trainers (“The guy who wanted to do something else with his life”), and President Trump (“Trump is probably the most horrible human ever living in any capacity doing anything … like if he was working on a car lot, and you went onto that lot to buy a new car and he came walking towards you, innately you would be like, ‘Nah, not that guy, I don’t feel comfortable with that guy, there’s something off…’”)
The comedy special is also deeply Jewish, and he talks about his Jewish identity throughout the special.“Look, I’m a Jew, you know, for whatever that means…,” he says.“I don’t know if I was ever taught to use神, how to use God.We’re told he was there butmost of what you learn as a middle-class American Jew is that you’re better than other people, and you should say you’re a Jew out loud occasionally, sometimes out of context.Like, those are the basic rules.”
“And we are better than other people,” he adds.“I’m sorry, I know that’s why we’re so contemptible to some of you.But yeah, that’s true.”
Though he describes himself in the set as a “godless Jew,” Maron has made a pretty dramatic shift when it comes to embracing his Jewish identity in his comedy.On his 2016 two-hour podcast with fellow Jewish comedian萨沙·拜伦·科恩, Maron said,“曾经有一个时期，我自己分开从我的犹太人身份。我拒绝谈论舞台上的犹太人，因为你不一定会知道我马上是犹太人，而且我非常有犹太人的刻板印象有点烦了，我不想落到那个。现在我有点不太担心。就像如果我要成为某种一个老犹太人，我会接受它。”
在结束时间乐趣，马龙开玩笑说，在恐慌的时候，他有prophesize的倾向。这并不是说他预言这种特殊的流行病。“标题真的只是一个框架来我一直在做，在过去几年中的工作方式，”马龙说美国国家公共电台。“我充满恐惧和一定量的焦虑......当然周围的环境[和]政治的世界。”
在他的一套，他的结束时间的预测是一场环境灾难：“哦，我的上帝，那会是什么时间？可怕的事，”他说。“这就是带给人们在一起。没事找事......偶尔的户外演唱会......但从来没有真正去任何地方。”
After the apocalypse happens, he imagines the reactions from a host of people, including Sean Hannity’s followers (“Don’t believe the libtard spin on this…burning sky is good for America!”), complacent liberals (“It’s not on me, man.我把我的[自己]袋！”），和反犹主义（“犹太人设定天空上的火，是的，当然，他们做到了。我知道它会到达那个”）。
He says the reason he talks about being Jewish so much is that “I know that there’s few people in the room that no matter how progressive you may think you are, that are going, like, ‘We get it: you’re a Jew.’” He thinks that many people, “given the option,” are in fact,反犹主义。
“我不是说他们是走动称“F犹太人，他们是可怕的“，但它并不需要很多的引诱，”他解释说。“像“嗨你知道，像犹太人那种吸“，“是啊，你说得对，F-他们。“...我想我试图找到它在你，让你自己看看吧。”
当我坐在那里看结束时间乐趣, here in the outbreak’s epicenter in New York City, some of Maron’s concerns — about plastic straws, men in the #MeToo era, the California fires — seem a bit insignificant, and even make me feel positively nostalgic for those olden days a few weeks ago, when my biggest concerns were the upcoming election and什么逾越节做。
然而，如果这些都成为我的倒数第二个夜晚，我很高兴与马龙，这个苦笑，谁莫名其妙地预言，结束时间是来急，犹太小伙小彭他们。如果是这样，的确，最后，至少我会笑。
通过Netflix的图片
