3:09 p.m. EDT: Darkened skies during the window of totality here in Indy.
First things first: no, we didn’t catch any super awesome photos of the total eclipse itself looking like a cosmic coffee ring or the old Armageddon teaser poster. 600 million Instagram users got you covered. You did check with them first, right?
Wile E. Coyote on Friday getting the news from his agent.
All weekend long, rational onlookers with any shred of goodness in their hearts have been outraged at the news that Warner Bros. Pictures pulled the plug on what would’ve been a new Looney Tunes feature, Coyote vs. Acme. After spending five years and $70 million on the project — which combined animation and live-action, and would’ve starred Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, and John Cena — the company announced in an incoherent statement that they plan to concentrate on making films and this film didn’t qualify as a film. Or something. For want of a credible explanation, we’re 105% certain it’s another soulless tax write-off situation. Several folks involved in the production — including its director Dave Green, the editor, the composer, and the practical effects teams — have been sounding off about their collective heartbreak on social media and sharing tidbits from their work-spaces as evidence of What Might Have Been.
As usual, though, no one thinks of the billionaires. Sure, this act destroys WB’s integrity and signals to any and all actors and filmmakers that they have absolutely no reason to trust them as an employer ever again. Sure, audiences have no guarantee that they won’t give the same destructive treatment to other allegedly upcoming films like Dune: Part Two or the Joker sequel. Sure, this sends a heavy-handed message to James Gunn that they could do to Superman: Legacy what they did to Batgirl if he fails to satisfy their capricious whims. But wait! What if their boneheaded, pocket-lining, dismissive act of anti-art cruelty and complete waste of everyone’s creative efforts were remotely justifiable in any way to us, the non-lobotomized Viewers at Home? And what if they’re just too shy to be honest with us?
From the Home Office in Indianapolis, IN: Top 10 Reasons Why Warner Brothers Canceled “Coyote vs. Acme”:
Any resemblance between my Daredevil T-shirt and the Doomsday Clock, or any significance of placing my free “I Voted!” sticker at five minutes till, are largely incidental.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I do the democracy thing twice a year (yes, even primaries) because I believe I ought to and because they keep letting me. I don’t recall why I didn’t post about it last year. Maybe society was to blame? Or maybe the reason was so dumb that I was counting on my aging brain to forget the reason why, just so I couldn’t blame myself for not writing about it I can’t recall, so maybe Past-Me’s plan worked. Politicians prefer long-term memory loss in their constituents anyway, so really this is just my brain getting into the spirit of the occasion.
Lead photo by my wife Anne, who got wind of the event before I did.
I nearly called this “The Day They Nuked Walmart”, but that’s even less accurate and I’m told this isn’t a great moment in history to joke about nukes. One day nuke jokes shall make a comeback, possibly on my watch but not necessarily today.
What were we talking about? Oh, right, I didn’t mention it yet:
“…but we might have some toilet paper and Clorox wipes left, if you ask nicely.”
“COVID-19 VACCINE NOT YET AVAILABLE” read the dual MS Word signs that have been hanging on the doors of our local Walgreens for at least a week, possibly longer. I can only imagine the conversation that sparked them, probably held a thousand times daily:
Bobby Newport: the kind of simpleton America needs now more than ever. Or at least thinks it needs.
It’s that time again! Election Day is nigh, which might need to be mentioned to anyone outside America who was wondering why everything American and online intensified above and beyond our average 2020 levels of hysteria over the past few days. Whatever happens Tuesday and over the next several days as election staffers count ballots cast across a multitude of platforms and processes, America guarantees we won’t be dull to watch. Outsiders looking in may find themselves worn down by our emphatic, repetitive displays of all our worst concerns, fears, prejudices. and fiercest histrionics. If you stay tuned, we’ll have some cool toy commercials coming right up, we swear.
Me sporting a brand new Marvel Super-Heroes mask in a pandemic-era downtown parking garage as gray and uncaring as the year 2020 itself.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: it’s been over five months since I posted photos of my initial masking possibilities for navigating our broken pandemic world. At the time, masks weren’t yet mandated by state or city ordinances. They were simply among the best ideas for reducing your chances of catching The Virus, besides simply quarantining at home and bricking over all your doors and windows from the inside like a reverse “Cask of Amontillado”.
The makeshift memorial that rose up near the Grandstand box office in the days after the events of August 13, 2011.
Have you ever looked back on an occasion, really dug deeply into those tucked-away memories, only to have your rose-colored glasses slapped off when you’re suddenly reminded of a truly terrible part that you’d managed to forget?
Our niece made us masks! Very sweet of her.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, everything’s coming up COVID-19 worldwide:
…whenever we think we’ve settled down and the tension has eased as we’ve adapted to each change thrown at us, some knowledgeable authority or some know-nothing internet crank picks up a megaphone and bellows in our ears like William Dozier on ye olde Batman TV show, “THE WORST IS YET TO COME!”
The story is far from over — more so in other countries disproportionately hit by the Coronavirus disease. I’d rather not imagine what a “Chapter 2” for this post would look like. I have other things I’d much rather write about, but I’m skeptical as to whether anyone would take a break from refreshing their Coronavirus phone updates to glance at anything else. Frankly, I know the feeling.
We’ve been rolling with the changes. Anne is still working from our home library while I’m among the 3% of employees in my legally Essential company still driving to the office every day, handling critical in-person tasks so my coworkers can stay home. I’m weathering the indefinite suspension of the comic book direct market, which has given me an opportunity to dive into my gigantic backlog of unread books. To while away the hours between shifts we’ve doubled down on family game night, supported our local journalists and their greedy overlords, reminisced about restaurants, and discovered Zoom. We enjoyed a weekend of free HBO, found mixed results with a new streaming service, and, may the Lord have mercy upon us, withdrawn from Tiger King mania.
New releases on my pull list for the week of March 25, 2020, a date I can hopefully forget someday.
As dimwitted youngsters insist spring break simply must go on, as certain stubborn governors take turns doing their macho impression of the mayor from Jaws, and as other top-ranking officials demand we all agree to hurry up and pretend everything is basically fine ASAP…it’s painfully obvious Americans hate change, hate being told what to do, hate self-control and self-restraint, hate hate hate when someone tells us we have to be patient, and intensely, passionately despise when the solution to a problem is “do what other countries did”. Like an insufferable teen rebel, we think we know best and we want to do things our way because, like, freedom an’ fun an’ whatnot.
Thousands of people are hospitalized. More will need the same as Coronavirus/COVID-19 testing becomes less of a unicorn-level rarity. Sacrifices are being made on innumerable levels. Nevertheless, idiocy continues to run nearly as rampant as the virus itself because the ramifications aren’t being grasped, the horrors are being downplayed, and the fatalities aren’t occurring four inches away from those in denial. That senseless obliviousness can’t last. Sooner or later this catastrophe will get to someone or something they do care about.
It might be major upheaval. And it might be the small stuff.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 