Music can heal the soul at any time of hardship, temporarily or permanently. Frank Turner brings me joy and uplifts me. At this point in history, we’re confused about what is going on during this COVID-19 Pandemic. “Be More Kind,” Frank’s seventh studio album, assuages the feelings that we are going through during this exact moment in history. Every lyric that is sang through this album is refreshingly honest, delivering timeless messages with passionate hooks. What more could you want from a collection of songs?

In a writer’s words, I wanted to take a crack at summarizing the meaning of the whole album. If you even look at the tracklisting titles of the songs, you already have a sense of how “Be More Kind” relates to our current situation.

We shouldn’t worry if we don’t know what to do because it is like 1933 out there, a year that will live in infamy. During that year, the Nazi Party started its rise, and Adolph Hitler began his terror upon the world. This year is the new 1933 but worse, because of its effect on everything, and the horror of fighting an invisible enemy. We now have begun to fight each other versus the main enemy as we did back then when we became one as a nation in a collective effort to defeat the Nazis. Frank wants us to stop pointing fingers at each other by reminding us to make little changes, such as being more kind. If we can’t make changes, then we can’t make “America Great Again.” He gives a more liberal approach and a positive spin on what that political statement with his signature punk rock twisting hooks. The fundamental message of the album is to be more kind. Simple, but effective, because if we don’t do that, then we will be going nowhere; America will be going nowhere. This is how it feels right now, not only in America but for the whole world. During this time of absolute chaos, we need to put on our brave faces, make sacrifices to help others, and he reminds us that the only way to do this is to be courageous in times of uncertainty.

We can get through this no matter what happens, so why not do it smiling? Do not forget to smile during the small victories of everyday miracles. Right now, the world is singing the survival blues. It feels like the world is going to have a power outage blackout, and the only way for the world to light up is for everyone to find our common ground. But for now, it feels like we are all drowning and barely holding on together on a lifeboat. We need to be reminded during this time to hold on together.

Once we learn how to make little changes with a brave face being kinder, we can someday get it right.

I discovered Frank at my first show at First Ave Main Room in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in December of 2011. Frank Turner opened for the Dropkick Murphy’s. I caught his last two songs, and those songs changed my life. He is now my favorite musician, and I’ve traveled many times to see him. I’ll never miss an opening act again because you’ll never know who you’ll discover.

Please check out “Be More Kind,” as it is the most relatable album to our current day struggle.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

During the world shut down due to the COVID-19 Crisis, there are no sports to distract us from the ugliness of the world. But, never say never. It’s crazy that there is only one major sports league in the world that is still performing. Despite not being the best Association Football in the world, we have this to pay attention just in case we are deprived and desperate for sports. In Belarus, the King or President (Leader) doesn’t care about sheltering in place. He thinks vodka is the best way to deal with what is going on (seriously). Therefore, the Belarusian Soccer league is one of the few sports leagues running in the world, playing in empty stadiums. Whoever is starting to miss sports, I’d encourage you to support the association by spreading the word.

Here is something fun that I did with the AAF and XFL.
1. Pick a random team to support and stick with them.
2. Before picking a team, do not look at their record.
3. Pick depend on colors, mascot, uniform, or city.

Here is a link to the list of teams in the Belarusian soccer league:

https://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/association=blr/domesticleague/clubs/index.html

If you click on the tabs it will show the information from the tables to matches, but before you do that, pick a team based on your favorite color, favorite sounding name, favorite city… whatever you have a hunch on. Don’t look at any of the stats or players because that isn’t any fun.

For example, I will pick Zvezda because it has “da” for David and “Z” for Zosel.

I’m looking forward to hearing what team you will choose.

Now, you can live stream the games on here: https://www.youtube.com/user/abffvideo

For more information the league website is:
https://abff.by/en/

Let me know who you root for.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

When you can’t leave the house, you have to get creative when it comes to cooking. There is a trend of people continually leaving the house to get specific ingredients to make certain meals as an excuse. If you’re out of marinara, use ketchup. Now, this is quite extreme, but we need to figure out substitutions to stay in the house. I have always been good at cooking by looking at what I have in my fridge. It is as if I am a DJ in a nightclub called “My Kitchen.” But, most of us don’t know how to improvise. Here are some ways to think about how to maximize your food.

One major thing you can do is to evaluate the bases of your meals such as rice, noodles, potatoes, bread, and tortillas. Did you know if you have a hunk of cheese and a stale loaf of bread, you can make soup? All you have to do is to boil ripped up bread in hot water for a while then add cheese. The point being is that you can make any meal using these bases from sandwiches, soups, stir-fries, tacos, etc. Say if you have grilled chicken, butter and noodles, then this makes a meal. Or, if you have ingredients such as chicken, spinach, and bread, you can make a sandwich.

Then you have your spices and condiments. Add any of these to the bases of the meal to enhance flavor. If you want to make pad thai sauce, use peanut butter, bbq sauce, lime juice, and regular hot sauce to create a great stir fry sauce. It doesn’t need to be exactly like what you get on the streets of Thailand, but it makes for a good time. Frying rice in soy sauce make fried rice. A cup of milk, a few eggs, cinnamon, and sugar can make French toast. You can even use ramen noodles and marinara to make a poor man’s spaghetti.

Once, a recipe called for ginger, and I didn’t have any. So, cinnamon was my next best option, and I discovered that it was still enjoyable. I’ve used almond milk for pancakes on many occasions as a substitute, and it still tastes great. Once, I took parmesan cheese and mixed it with half and half, garlic, and mozzarella to make a pasta sauce.

If your spinach and fruits are going bad, then blend it all up into a smoothie. Or, you can pickle a lot of your vegetables before they expire, making them last longer. Everyone should have a gallon of vinegar below their sink, and now under lockdown, we have an excuse to use it.

Deglazing is one of my favorite methods of cooking meat. If you have a low cut piece of meat, take some chicken stock and pour it all over the meat before it is done cooking. This method will enhance flavor to the point where you can take a five-dollar steak and make it taste as if you got it from a steakhouse.

I can survive off of many combinations of protein, rice, and pickles. I’ve used sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, and anything pickled to make simple meals. If I want to get fancy, then I will add a fried egg on top.

Use your spices and sauces and marinate your meats in any creative fashion. Brown sugar, hot chilis, and soy sauce can make a very delicious marinade for your pork.

If you have a can of coconut milk, you can make coconut rices. Then stir fry vegetables and toss some spicy meat on there. Add a fried egg to be fancy. Everything is better with a fried egg.

In college, I was out of marinara, so I boiled some tomatoes that were going bad, smashed them up, added herbs and spices, and a little chicken broth, and then I had a substitute for marinara.

Just be creative.

I made hamburgers using English muffins, and it was unbelievable. It is simple as using olive oil, salt, and pepper to add to mixed greens to make a salad. Add lemon to be fancy. Got raisins too? Throw that in there.

This lockdown is a time to get creative with our cooking. There is no need to go to the grocery store until we are 100% out of food. Be a DJ cook and make stuff up by mixing and matching ingredients through using some improvisation.  All you need to remember is to use a base, meat, and a vegetable to create any weird combination of a meal.

Use all of your supplies and stay home. There is no need to make cupcakes. Stay safe, everyone.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

As we know, television has always predicted the future. “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is yet another prime example through their satirical social commentary displayed years ago on how the present world is reflected in this very moment in history. The COVID-19 quarantine shows five excellent examples of how people are reacting and dealing with the chaos that is ensuing in society.

You can watch this episode if you’d like. For the one or two people reading this, it is on season nine, episode seven.

In their predicament during the episode, they touch on many issues such as isolation, stocking supplies, social distancing, quarantining, alcoholism, and how being around the same people can create madness. Each of the five characters represents how different people are handling a pandemic.

Paranoia and control are what Frank represents. He goes to extreme measures to boss everyone around by creating rules. Frank is obsessed with disinfecting everything and staying as careful as possible. Frank spends his time worrying, going into survival mode, only thinking of his safety, and regularly paying attention to the news. To make matters more extreme, he tries to get everyone in the same mindset as him driving everyone insane.

For example, he quarantines the quarantine once Dennis is infected, and so on.

Dennis represents someone who ignores the outside world by putting all of his energy into one activity, which would be perfecting an acapella cover of Boyz II Men. He dictates the situation by being the orchestrator of one of their songs for the gang to win a contest. His fascist ways, once again, drive people insane. People do this to make the time go by faster. It is productive and fulfilling, but it can lead to insanity as well, and watching Dennis go through this is quite entertaining.

“Not giving a shit” is what Dee does in this scenario. She doesn’t care about the quarantine, ordering pizza and hiding it from the gang.
People in today’s situation continue to order takeout, sneak over to Game Stop or the liquor store, and find ways to leave the house to do things like purchase frosting for cupcakes, just like Dee.

Multidimensionally, Mac and Charlie are intertwined with different representations of our situation: consumeristic hoarding panic, social distancing (wearing hazmat suits), deceitfulness, not following the rules, and alcoholism. You can split up their representations in either way depending on how you view their character motifs in this episode.

What we are all going through can be found in these characters. There is nothing wrong with any of these ways to cope, but we cannot be extreme. “The Gang Gets Quarantined” is one of the most accurate satirical representations of how we, as a society, are handling our government lockdown.

It is essential to watch this episode at some point because it is a reflection of who we are as a human race right now. I can understand and empathize with the way we are acting. Most importantly, I realized that life could only be learned by moving backward to move forward, as I saw their characters mirror what our world is going through. As I’ve written many times before, life is always two steps back and one step ahead. But, we are still moving forward.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

Joe Exotic ain’t shit. Anyone can raise tigers in captivity and breed them. Since this whole “Tiger King” Netflix special is taking over our lives during this COVID-19 quarantine, I’d like to enlighten you a little about the irony of our situation. Tigers are a rare breed of beasts that are endangered in this world, so scarce that its beauty is a spectacle. Capturing footage of wild tigers is very difficult due to their rarity. Historically, most video you see from tigers in the wild has been recorded by Sooyong Park, a Korean Naturalist who goes to the extreme to provide us with such beauty. Like Joe Exotic, he has spent his whole life devoted to tigers, but with wild ones. Here is the reality of Sooyong Park:

If this man can sit in a bunker in Siberia, in frigid sub-zero temperatures, for 6-8 months at a time without leaving, then why is it so damn hard for us to stay in our homes? I can’t believe that people are so bad at social distancing.

When I was on a walk the other day, I saw a group of teenagers walking right next to each other. None of them had dogs, and they didn’t look they were family members. Are these teenagers practicing social distancing? Probably not. I can write another five paragraphs on instances like this that do not equate to correct social distancing. The only reason to leave the house is when you run out of food, and if you need to walk your dog. Stay inside! What is so hard about that?

People are finding any excuse to leave the house to go to the grocery store. Is your pantry empty? Is your freezer empty? Is your fridge empty? Is your second refridgerator empty? I highly doubt it. Do not leave the house until everything is gone.

And… I mean everything.

All you need is a 10-pound bag of rice, pickles, and some preserved meat like SPAM to survive.

Do you need to go to the store to get frosting for cupcakes that you are baking? No. This is not a time to live in gluttonous luxury, eating all the junk food in the world. It is survival time. We need to stay inside and eat what we have.

If we eat a big breakfast and a big dinner, then we do not need to leave the house if we have strategically stocked up. Every meal should be properly proportioned. For instance, if you use ketchup, you should only use the serving size on the bottle. How hard is that?

And for all of you toilet paper hoarders, you didn’t need to buy that much. All you need to do is hold it all day, and go once a day using only one sheet. Okay, just kidding.

COVID-19 is spreading like wildfire in the US because we Americans are not disciplined. If we all practiced with the intensity that I have already expressed, then our numbers could be a lot lower.

Most of us already have luxuries such as laptops, tablets, and phones to keep us busy. I have sat at my computer, writing books, blog posts, and I started an online clothing business (TeamSixFeetUSA.com) to help raise money for the WHO. It’s easy, find something to immerse yourself into that will consume 8-12 hours of your day.

We have phones to call and talk to each other. It is so much easier to see your friends over Facetime because you don’t have to walk to your car and drive to see them. Plus, it is less expensive.

I have saved so much money during this quarantine by merely not doing excessive everyday things. I know people who are just buying random stuff on Amazon that they don’t need because purchasing items online makes them feel better. Don’t you get it? Buying that stupid Xbox headset or whatever is so unnecessary, and it is just clogging up shipping orders to be delayed even further.

Why are parents who are working from home putting their kids in daycare? Do you think those daycare providers are keeping kids six feet away from each other? Are these kids educated on what is going on in the world? I saw an old lady run up and hug a kid the other day, and the kid didn’t stop her, and neither did his mom. Are you kidding me? All joking aside, I’m not telling anyone how to raise their kids. But, if you want to shelter them then that is fine with me.

People are dying, and we still want to go to Target to buy legos for our kids! Entertain your children on your own. Teach them how to do multiplication and division for entertainment.

Yes, I did get ridiculous for this post, but someone has to make a point. It is okay to go outside but stay with your family or loved ones. Don’t be around your friends or meet up with them. But, if you do, stay six feet apart. This COVID-19 scare is real, and it is killing people left and right. I don’t see very many people abiding by these guidelines.

Come on, people; we are all in this together. If a Korean wildlife tiger videographer can sit in a hole for six to eight months in sub-zero weather, then why can’t you stay at home? I’d rather be the man in the hole than that tiger catches COVID-19. It is so easy.

Stay home! Stay away from each other!

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

 

 

Everyone has been binge-watching shows during this COVID-19 lockdown. Some people want to watch things that distract them, and others want to watch relatable films for our current situation. For me, its the latter. Since it is the end of the world, supposedly, I am suggesting you watch “Snowpiercer.”

The beginning of the film asks a resonating question for me: “Do you remember what steak tastes like?”

What if five years from now, we have to explain to our children what restaurants were? Or maybe a concert? A movie in theatres? Wow.

“Snowpiercer,” like other apocalyptic films, has this theme of disappearance of societal norms that is similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the movie, people are rationing blood blocks to survive. The film portrays classicism, showing people in the back of the train having to fight to get to the front of the train to make a better life. Does this sound familiar to you?

It’s an exhilarating watch that will make you forget about life for a minute, putting you into a different reality to inspire you further this COVID-19 pandemic will come to an end soon.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

Digging deep down into my feelings during this lockdown, “American Idiot,” by Greenday reminded me of what was happening in the world back in the early 2000s. Fear, propaganda, corruption, and angry people. COVID-19 has caused us to act like idiots.

Look at every Target toilet paper aisle.

People care more about their stocks, businesses, incomes, and economies versus human life. We are all idiots. I’m not saying that I’m any smarter than you or anyone else, but when the coronavirus outbreak started in Wuhan back in early December 2019, I was warning people that this would be bad.

Yes, with extensive research and gleaming evidence, I feared something like this would happen. Therefore, I began stocking up on food a little by little each week, starting at the beginning of February. The only thing I knew was the fact that this virus was going to spread across the world, but I didn’t know how it would affect gas prices, the stocks, and everyone’s emotional state.

I began acting like an idiot talking about the paranoia before paranoia even became a thing.

From our government, and down the line, we are all idiots. Americans look at problems across the world, and we always think that this stuff will never happen to us. Well, now it is happening to us at one time—all of it. But it isn’t all of our faults because you can’t predict this stuff. You can only guess.

I can’t believe not very many people were taking this seriously back in December, and that includes our government. Even if the government knew that this was going to happen, they wouldn’t have been prepared for it dating back to the early 2000s when “American Idiot” came out.

Seriously, everything in the world is sold out, even bidets from Home Depot.

It’s okay; we will prevail one day. With the hysteria and frustration in this song, it relates to today’s reality, bringing back emotions that I had as a middle schooler.

Take a listen on Spotify or something.

 

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo. 

This crazy quarantine COVID-19 lockdown has affected us all, tapping into all sorts of emotional states that we can or cannot handle. Music connects us with our emotions on a deep level, altering our auras, and ultimately creating dissonance. Every day during this lockdown, I have come back into connection with a song that reminded me of an emotion I had relating to the present. Today it is “Here I go Again” by Whitesnake. This tune has reincarnated the feelings that I had while living in Colorado this past summer.

While living away from home doing an amazing internship at Crispin Porter and Bogusky, I felt quarantined due to my homesickness. I missed my dogs, cat, family, and my fiance very much. During this time, I got to watch “The Fighter,” a boxing movie that had this classic ’80s hair metal tune.

Seeing Mark Wahlberg walk down to the ring before his championship title fight pumped me up in a stoic fashion. This power ballad evokes the feeling of being alone, toeing the line, but having to fight to move forward and survive.

It’s a song that reminds us to hang in there during this long and winding war that we are in, because then surely one day we can fight to win and overcome.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

If you want to support my writing to create more content, you can make a donation to my Venmo.