In May of 2007, Paris Hilton was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating the conditions of her probation. She’d been arrested for drinking and driving earlier in the year, and was subsequently caught driving on a suspended license. Word at the time was that Paris’ spokespeople, her lawyer, and her mother all sought to keep her out of jail, and that Paris was distraught when those efforts failed. I, on the other hand was jealous.

Unlike Paris, for whom confinement represented a depressing cessation of activity, I mused—aloud to my husband, as well as in a column—about everything I could accomplish with forty-five days in seclusion. It included things like marathon-watching cocker spaniel grooming videos, demystifying the terms of my credit card, and returning the calls of people I’d been avoiding since high school. Thirteen years later, I have my wish. Thanks to the coronavirus, I’ve been on lockdown at home since early March, only venturing out for the essentials: caramel macchiato ice cream, and a trip to Rome, Georgia to take possession of a rescue dog named Teddy.

There are so many elements of my personality that were made for a moment like this. An introvert by nature, I am most comfortable at home alone or, if he absolutely must join me, with my husband. A writer by trade, I’m content passing long hours in my tiny office in front of my computer writing—or, as author Lydia Davis calls it, “agonizing.” And I’m rarely happier than when I’m cursing children, like the noisy ones on the street below my office who have only just discovered the out-of-doors. I am, as they say, in the zone.

Poor Paris Hilton though. She missed her friends. She missed her social media. She missed her fame. Here is what she didn’t miss, though: cooking. I know this because, on the recommendation of an artist friend with a quirky sense of humor, my husband and I watched an episode of her recently debuted Youtube cooking show, “Cooking with Paris.”

First off, “cooking” is a bit of a misnomer. In the episode we watched, Paris mainly swishes around a large kitchen island searching for various cooking implements with which to yield her “famous lasagna.” Her hair hangs long and loose, she is wearing some sort of nonsensical hand covering that looks like the one Judd Nelson wore in The Breakfast Club, her voice barely rises above a self-conscious mutter, and at one point she stops everything to pick up her dog. It reminds me of every single thing I did in my childhood that made my mother yell at me.

After the dog cameo, Paris resumes her search for items needed to create her lasagna. You might think someone preparing to film a cooking show would have laid out the necessary spatula, pan, and ingredients, but no. When Paris finally locates the utensil she’s been seeking—something that resembles a potato masher—she begins to pummel a heaping mound of ground beef the way an amateur assassin might whack away with a blunt instrument at an already deceased body.

Once the meat is beaten into submission, Paris upturns a jar of store-bought marinara over it, which falls into the pan with a disturbing glurp. Copious amounts of cheese are then distributed over the top of this grotesque gestalt of indelicately assembled grocery items, and the pan is shoved into the oven the way a soiled baby might be handed off to a nanny.

Time passes. As it does, we the viewers are treated to a close-up of oversized dishtowels with trite sayings on them and more inane, sub-guttural small talk from Paris. At last the moment we’ve all been watching for arrives: Paris removes the forty-pound lasagna from the oven and sets it on the counter. The camera moves in for a close-up, and Paris peels back the foil tantalizingly. Just as we’re about to get a good look at the body, the show ends and the credits roll. In yet another page ripped from my personal, make-my-mother-crazy playbook, Paris does not taste even a teaspoon of her concoction, presumably because it contains an entire day’s worth of calories in every bite.

I don’t recommend watching “Cooking with Paris” if you want to learn to cook while in quarantine. If you want to learn how not to cook, however, this is the show for you. I must admit, I thoroughly enjoyed the episode we watched, and not only because Paris moves around a kitchen the way most people move around an auto parts store: perplexed, and without any idea where the brakes are kept. I enjoyed it because I realized Paris hasn’t changed in the years since her jail time, and that it’s me, even on lockdown, who actually has a life.