Welcome back to another edition of Heroes of the Quarantine. Behold some stories of admirable folks using creativity and innovation to help fight the spread of the virus, or at least make our collective isolation a little more enjoyable. Raise a glass.
Life imitates art
As it turns out, creativity doesn’t die in captivity. In some places, thanks to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, it’s flourishing. The Getty challenged its Twitter audience to recreate scenes from famous works using only objects and people (or animals) from their homes. It encouraged participants to access the museum’s online archives for inspiration. Quarantiners dove into their wardrobes, enlisted their children, volunteered their pets, and gave it their best shot. Here are some favorites:
We challenge you to recreate a work of art with objects (and people) in your home.
— Getty (@GettyMuseum) March 25, 2020
🥇 Choose your favorite artwork
🥈 Find three things lying around your house⠀
🥉 Recreate the artwork with those items
And share with us. pic.twitter.com/9BNq35HY2V
Madonna and child.https://t.co/ZbnVeToUPE pic.twitter.com/7Vkl91CF6D
— Getty (@GettyMuseum) March 25, 2020
Cover up the COVID
Feeling overloaded by virus-related headlines? Like every news story you see is even more grim than the previous one? Block out the negativity with this new Chrome extension. COVIDPause, created by Kyle McDonald, removes content from websites that contain the following keywords: “COVID,” “corona” or “virus,” “quarantine” or “lockdown,” and “pandemic.” Now you can browse the internet in peace.
Quarantine game night
Hey Robot is a tabletop game in development from Everybody House Games. The object of the game is to get a household smart speaker, like an Alexa or Google Home, to say a given word from a card without any of the human players saying the word themselves. The first edition won’t ship until June, but Hey Robot’s creators jumped at the opportunity to give quarantined Americans a community game night without leaving home.
They hastily created a Zoom-friendly version of the game that allows players to participate from a virtual chat room. If you need a new Friday night activity, this one is worth trying out.
Unlimited comics and graphic novels
Eyes glazed over after another evening of Netflix-watching? Give the TV a rest. When was the last time you opened up a comic book? Amazon’s digital service for comics and graphic novels, ComiXology Unlimited, is offering a 60-day free trial for readers during the quarantine. It usually comes at a cost of $5.99 per month and includes over 25,000 different titles.
Here’s to the bullies
No group of people feels more alone at this moment than sports fans. As we were just approaching the best sports time of the year—March Madness under a week away, NHL and NBA seasons heating up, MLB opening day on the horizon—the rug was ripped out from under our feet. The sports community needs something, anything, to feel whole again. So they bullied ESPN into fast-tracking its 10-part 30 For 30 mega-series on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Instead of its planned June release, ESPN announced on Tuesday that the network would begin airing the documentary two months ahead of schedule, in mid-April.
Filled with over 500 hours of never-before-seen footage of the Bulls’ 1997-98 championship season, The Last Dance will feature interviews from over 100 people, from every prominent member of the organization to celebrities like Barack Obama and Justin Timberlake.
TV time
Staying inside and watching TV just got a lot easier. For the month of April, HBO is dropping the subscription paywall on some of its most popular shows—making nine full series, 10 documentaries, and 20 movies totally free. That list includes smash hits like The Sopranos, Veep, Succession, Silicon Valley, and more. So now you really have no excuse to leave the house for the next month.
