[Mary Magdalene after spin class]

This is a complex weekend. Passover for some, Easter for others. Good Friday was a holiday and yet plenty are working and many are taking Monday off. Accountants are working straight through. For an expatriate under-employed lapsed Catholic, however, this weekend is not much different than all others. Nothing applies, as Joan Didion would say.

Noon spin class on Friday was filled with the usual array of bored-looking ectomorphs and chiseled men prepping for summer at Fire Island. The instructor surprised us with a special Good Friday edition of Studio Cycling™ (all the classes here are trademarked)—the Jesus Christ Super Spin. Yeah! I never imagined a dance version of Mary Magdalene’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”, but it makes so much sense. Okay, so we didn’t make it to the obligatory three hour mass this afternoon, but the body is a temple, no?

Formerly known as “the gym”, the membership-only unemployment drop-in centre is full all day, every day. This should come as little surprise, with 663,000 more jobs lost last month here in the US and unemployment spiking at 8.5 per cent—the highest level since 1983. Frankly, I think it’s great to see so many people revving up their dopamine levels and getting buff while they linger in the bread lines.

For others, a more classic tool of escapism and procrastination prevails. Online video gaming is up 27 per cent versus a year ago, with visitors spending an average 42 per cent more time on the sites. A new game called “Layoff” gives players the chance to rightsize their own workforce, hitting the bank bailout option to start over.

Nevertheless, there is a certain coolness in numbers. At a park in the Lower East side, the Unemployed Olympics provided a recent afternoon of frivolity. The purpose was “just to get unemployed people psyched that they’re unemployed.” As one participant put it: “all the cool people in New York are unemployed right now.”

These days are a blessing and a curse. More time to go to the gym, spend with your kids, read books. No income to pay the membership fees, send those kids to private school or enroll in that creative writing symposium at, ahem, Columbia in June, for example. Aye, there’s the rub. Only the lucky few ever have both time and money simultaneously.

Meanwhile chocolate bunnies are on the market, which is reason enough to get psyched… happy Easter, happy Passover and a big Obama-style shout out to the atheists this weekend.