In late February and early March a new topic began to creep in to daily conversation, some virus spreading quickly in China and Italy. Never the less, it did not appear to be affecting those of us in the U.S. There had been a few isolated cases but they were limited to people who had traveled abroad.
On March 7th I went out to the Rex Theater enjoy the quirky jams of Dopapod. I had been listening to them a bit and was interested to see what kind of live show they put on. It wasn’t a bad show, I enjoyed it but I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to see them again. No knock to them as musicians; they are great musicians. Something in their music just didn’t really click with me. The real surprise from this show was the opening act: Paris Monster. What an utterly bizarre and amazing sound. I had never seen, or even imagined, that one person could play drums with one hand, play a synthesizer with the other hand, and sing. And be able to do it all very well. The other half of the duo was playing bass and constantly fiddling with another weird synthesizer machine. I don’t have any way of adequately describing their music, you just have to listen to them. Or better yet, see them live - someday.
March 16th is the day that pandemic pandemonium hit my city and state and, I think, most of the country. The entire state of Pennsylvania, with the exception of grocery/essential stores, nearly every business was ordered to close for 2 weeks to “bend the curve.” This time period also coincided with me being sick, which hasn’t happened for quite some time. I never really experienced any coughing or congestion and my temperature never exceeded 100.4⁰ F. I was experiencing some fatigue, aches and chills that would come and go. I would wake up in the morning feeling ok and then I would crash by lunch time. I experienced some shortness of breath but never to the point that I wasn’t able to breathe and I never had any trouble sleeping because I could not breathe. I never got tested for COVID and don’t know if what I had was purely anxiety driven or some sort of combination of a cold and anxiety, or even part seasonal allergies. I do know that my wife, who has asthma and allergies and exhibits the majority of COVID symptoms on a daily basis, never got sick. In fact, she hasn’t been sick all year, which is as atypical as me getting sick.
So as March came crawling to an end, my wife and I, like so many humans on this planet, sat in our house and watched videos of bodies being stored in refrigerated trailers, people falling over dead in the street in China, overflowing hospital wards in Italy, and reading countless news reports about this novel virus taking the planet by storm.
On September 22, after 11 years, Rex Theater announced that it would be closing its doors permanently.