I normally don’t blog on weekends, outside a possible small update from my Crackberry, but I find myself oddly healthy today.
I had really expected to be comatose and near-crippled today, after covering the city’s 4th of July parade, which held last night. But after two days of heavy rain – by my highly scientific trashcan-without-a-lid method, seven inches – the field we would have set up in was soaked, and would have proved hazardous to run power across to the equipment. And there would have been well over a million dollars worth of equipment (and I’m being conservative) put at risk in a still-unstable weather picture.
So it was decided to pitch the six-camera setup and go with a much smaller production, one that could be more easily hustled to cover should the weather demand it. This was the proper decision, as it rained twice more between our 11am crew call and the parade’s eventual go-time of 7pm. I lost out on a fair chunk of overtime, but my body’s happier for it. Also, we would have been breaking down equipment and packing it away after sundown, and I was eyeballing the fresh new fire ant mounds in that field, thinking how nice it would be to blunder into them in the dark.
The only real downside… okay the financial downside is terribly real also, but you know what I mean… is that the parade coverage was the only reason I didn’t accompany my wife and son to West Texas for the weekend, and Monday and Tuesday at San Antonio’s River Walk. So waaah and boo hoo. I’m making some brave attempts at organization, but (as usual) this means having a couple of boxes I do not possess. So I can either drag my ponderous ass out into the humidity to get them, or I can sit here and type at you.
On the subject of patriotism: when I look at this a year from now, this is going to be a quite obvious molehill, but most people are probably aware that DC announced i nthe last week that Wonder Woman was going through a revamp, with a new costume. There was the usual firestorm of geek boy and girl mouth-running at this, and I think DC must be fairly tummeling at the response, since the mainstream media has picked it up and run with it, probably farther than they would have if DC had, as the practice has become, killed her and then brought her back in a year. (which has become such standard operating procedure that it really isn’t news anymore).
The most remarkable thing about this is – and smarter, better writers than myself have already said this – is:
- If all these people had just bought Wonder Woman comics these last few years, DC wouldn’t have felt a need to stir things up in hopes of boosting circulation;
- The astounding quantity of people decrying it as an anti-patriotic move miss the fact that Wonder Woman is not an American. In fact, if she were truly patriotic, she would have come in on the Amazon’s side when they attacked DC a few years ago. (Now that I think on it, that’s a statement that works on many levels)
- It was apparently a slow news weeks if pundits are reduced to foaming over a comic book. Or you can interpret that as, Look How Far Comics Have Come.
- …Naaaaaaaaah.
I don’t think it will last. The story arc will play out, we’ll eventually see a return to the status quo, and Diana will once again be kicking evil’s ass in a one-piece bathing suit. Which, when you think about it, has to be about the most demoralizing thing possible for a thug. “You got your butt handed to you by a chick in a swimsuit? Dude. You suck.”
Enough on that. I could go on, but there’s so much digital ink being sprayed over the subject, why add more? I’ll just leave you with a lot more stuff you’re seeing elsewhere:
Nick’s Fireworks Emporium does not allow embedding, so Communism must be afoot.
drfreex.com 