Buster may need some Visine…
It is not often enough that I create posts outside of my weekly features you’ve all grown to know and despise… and it would seem utterly indefensible if I didn’t do one of my fucked up write ups on what is apparently the biggest event in American history since the series premiere of Cop Rock. Tomorrow, a total solar eclipse will be visible in a narrow path extending from sea to shining sea for the first time since…… well, a long, long time ago. It will be the first total eclipse visible from anywhere in the continental United States since 1979…
Which was also a long, long time ago…
Since such total eclipses are pretty rare, and are naturally occurring spectacles that are quite a sight to behold (or so I am told), people everywhere are getting pretty geeked up for the event and are practically climbing over each other to get their very own spot in the path of totality… totality that even in the most prime location will last only two minutes and 40 seconds. Yes, millions of people will be braving traffic jams, huge crowds, surly rural red state folks who don’t take kindly to tourists, and hotel rooms costing upwards of several thousand dollars a night just to witness something that will last for an even shorter period of time than it would take to nuke a TV dinner.
Too late, Elvis. You just missed it…
And I only wish I were joking about that…. it’s gonna be nuts. One of my overnight managers already got summoned to a Mecca in the totality zone because they’re expecting to do a month’s worth of business in one weekend. And he has to commute 90 miles back and forth each day because there literally isn’t a hotel room for miles around this weekend. Having that many sun gawkers who are unfamiliar with each other packed into a 3,000 mile line from coast to coast is a bit unsettling… but at least Donald Trump will finally get his wall built. A wall made out of humans with sweaty armpits, bottled water and eclipse glasses…
Maybe it would be the right time to try Hands Across America again.
While this will be the best solar eclipse to pass through my neck of the woods, it certainly won’t be the first one. That would be the annular eclipse that cut through the Southeast part of the country on May 30, 1984. An eclipse I fondly remember because I was trapped like a prisoner in my third grade classroom by school teachers who did everything within their matronly powers to make sure we curious little hellions stayed the fuck away from the windows so we didn’t burn our little eight year old eyes out staring at the 80% partial eclipse.
You look into that sun again, little Billy, and I will poke your eyes out with this ruler!!!
Then there was the total eclipse that vayaed through Mexico back on July 11, 1991. While this was probably a pretty spectacular eclipse if you were living in beautiful downtown Oaxaca… many, many miles away in St. Louis we were only getting to see 40% of the sun obscured. But I still remember this one well since it was the first solar eclipse I actually got to see for myself… and I can thank my Dad for having four loose welder’s lenses lying around the house for some unknown reason. And since this happened during the middle of summer, no authoritarian teacher was there to warn me I would go blind if I looked at the sun through lenses coated with more tint than a mobster’s windshield. No, that was my mother’s job instead…
Sniff! I should’ve listened to Mama!
And most recently, there was the solar eclipse of May 10, 1994… which has forever caused me to curse the elliptical fates of apogee and perigee. This was/is the only solar eclipse in my lifetime where the central path passed directly through my hometown, and the skies were crystal clear that day! But because the moon was too damned far away from the earth at the time, it was only annular in nature and not total, so the sun just turned into an oversized Cheerio in the sky. But on the plus side, since I was in my freshman year of college at the time, I was not required by law to be sitting in a classroom listening to a boring lecture while a massive celestial body decided to block out a large portion of the sun…
Can’t watch it on your cellphones either, kids. This is 1994, after all…
After the eyes, the second most important thing that should never stare directly at the sun is your camera…. so the experts say. Well, fuck the experts with an eclipse projection device that doesn’t work. I got out those welder’s lenses again, dropped two, and then three of them on top of the camcorder lens, and took some video shots of that 1994 eclipse! Yes, that link leads to the video of it I recently uploaded to YouTube. Yes, you can hear my voice (and Dad’s) on it and I sound like I just stepped off the short bus. Yes, 90% of the video has weird, out of focus blobs that are supposed to be the sun being eclipsed…. but there are enough pretty clear looks at just about every phase of the eclipse to justify your trouble, and seasickness you might get from my shitty videography…
Like this one. An annular eclipse of the heart, everyone…
And now, here I am 23 years later staring down an eclipse I have known the date of since I was a kid. While I was unaware I would fall just a little north of the totality path, at about 99.5% at my location, this should still knock the penumbra off of what I got to see in 1994! Assuming I get to see it….
Dafuq!?!?
I’ve watched the weather forecast for the 21st slowly but surely deteriorate all week long…. from crystal clear a week ago to now “Mostly Cloudy.” The problem is that front that is supposed to come through Tuesday…. it’s gonna make for some beautiful August weather for the remainder of the week, but it’s also likely to fuck up the one day it absolutely needs NOT to! And since it’s been about a 50/50 coin flip this morning whether I see the sun shining or not when I’ve looked out the window… that “Partly Cloudy” for Sunday seems to be something of a joke as well. Who in the fuck is in charge of the weather around here!?!?
I should’ve known….
So maybe I’ll get to see an almost total solar eclipse, or maybe I’ll just get to see an even darker overcast day than usual. One thing’s for sure… the spoiled brats of today won’t have to put up with the torture I had to endure 33 years ago. After just starting the school year on Wednesday, they’re getting a three day weekend already! When I was their age, I had to walk to school in 10 feet of snow, both ways, just to get locked in an airtight room during an eclipse! They get the fucking day off….
Get off of my lawn…. and quit looking at that damned sun!
