Have a peaceful indoor Memorial Day from The A.V. Club
Today is Memorial Day, the day when Americans get the day off of work so they can spend some time solemnly honoring people in the military who have died. Generally, this is accomplished by barely acknowledging the military at all and instead having barbecues with family and enjoying some warm weather, but this year is going to be a little different—assuming people continue to observe social distancing guidelines, which ha ha ha, of course they’re not going to do. See, this is our first big outdoor-centric holiday of the coronavirus pandemic, and with states beginning to reopen and ease up on restrictions designed to slow the spread of the virus, a lot of people are going to decide that they’re special and that they should get to go out and see their family or hang out at a public place.
Here at The A.V. Club, before we take our own Memorial Day break and shut things down until Tuesday, we have a message for everybody: Don’t be stupid. There’s a thin line separating the people with automatic rifles protesting for their right to get haircuts and the people who convince themselves that it’s okay for them go relax at a crowded beach. John Oliver might not make fun of the latter as much on HBO, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also dangerous and selfish. Instead, we’d like to suggest some alternative activities that you can do without breaking social distancing, like reading about the merits of FX’s Dave, checking out the new Carly Rae Jepsen, exploring the storied history of ‘80s cult classic Rad, following the reviews of season two of Homecoming, or trying to guess what the heck is going on in Tenet.
All of those can be done without leaving this very website (convenient!), but if you’d like to do something “offline,” maybe spend some time celebrating the birthdays of Sir Ian McKellen, Frank Oz, and Octavia Spencer. What if the three of them did a movie together? Wouldn’t it be more fun to spend the day thinking about that than potentially infecting yourself or others with the virus? Anyway, The A.V. Club will be back to normal tomorrow, possibly with news of some kind of hilarious new buddy comedy about Yoda and his two best friends.