Originally published April 4, 2024
Look, don’t take this as a knock on anyone in particular, particularly if you feel this is a knock on you, because it most certainly is not. It’s just how I feel and not how I feel about people who feel differently than how I feel. I simply don’t share your enthusiasm, and frankly, sometimes I’m a bit put out by your constant blathering on about it. The thing is, I don’t give a good goddamn what the funny little lights in the sky are doing.
You see, I don’t give a monkey-fuck what baboon moon is showing its ass or whether The Big Bopper is humping Uranus to the beat of Yankee Doodle Dandy on a fine spring day. Every few weeks, there is supposedly another moon I’ve never seen and that no one will ever see again, at least not on a Tuesday in a Presidential election year.
It’s a blue gibbon, a pink turtle, a white zombie, or some other such nonsense. You walk outside, and it’s the moon, unless it’s cloudy, and then it’s nothing. It’s the street light, the water tower, or your neighbor’s back porch light.
Sometimes, it’s two pinpricks that normally don’t appear that close together, only now they’re going to appear sort of close together, but only tonight, and not really all that close. So you go outside and try to figure out which are the two pricks you’re supposed to give a shit about and which are cell phone towers. They say stars don’t blink, they twinkle, or something like that, but honestly, who can tell?
Remember when the space station was supposedly passing overhead, and you went outside and watched a commuter plane fly over on its way to LaGuardia from Palm Beach? That was exciting.
Some months back, there was a meteor shower, so I walked outside and stood looking up in the dark and, sure enough, saw a “shooting” star. That was it. Lasted a second. Then my neck got sore, and I went back inside.
You have to realize we saw Star Wars in the ’70s when special effects pretty much sucked, and it was still way better than anything I’ve ever seen looking up at the night sky. I’m happy you’re outside and not killing anyone, so by all means, enjoy yourself. Good, clean, fun. But really, I’m not going outside to see that.
I heard Jerry Seinfeld talking about his lack of interest in going on a safari. His question being, aren’t these pretty much the same animals I’ve seen before? I know they’re in the wild and not in a zoo, but aren’t they exactly like all the other elephants and giraffes I’ve ever seen? What’s the point? Just how different could they be?
The last time we had a solar eclipse, that I remember anyway, was during the previous administration, and our Commander in Chief, braintrust that he is, walked outside and stared at the sun with no eye protection. He’s a genius, that one.
This time around, the eclipse will be streaking across the country from South to North, and people are flocking to see it in droves. I live about a mile and a half from where they do big fireworks celebrations in the summer, and that’s too much trouble for me to bother with. These people are driving across the country, camping out, and making a trip of it. I’m not about to shit outdoors for four days so I can see the moon pass in front of the sun.
What I especially like are all the people who will be posting their shitty iPhone pics of the eclipse on social media, as if we won’t have a better professional shot of it from a hundred different sources within a matter of minutes. No, but this is my image, see. It’s like the people who film Billy Joel playing Piano Man at Citi Field from the 700 level. Great. Thanks for that. I can’t hear or see anything, but nice job. Way to capture the moment. I supposed I should take your word for it. You probably have a ticket stub or something to prove you were there.
”You see, that little speck? That’s Billy Joel.”
“You don’t say.”
Have you seen what they can do with special effects in movies now? Have you seen the shit they claim are images from the James Webb telescope? They’re computer illustrations based on data, so they’re sort of real, but no optical image was ever captured. Still, they look insane. A solar eclipse might freak you out if you’re living in a jungle somewhere, untouched by modern civilization, but if you’re pointing a thousand-dollar smartphone at it to record the event, it can’t be that mind-melting.
If you tell me the moon is going to explode and it’s going to be better than any fireworks show I’ve ever seen, I’ll get out of my chair and go look at the sky with all the other idiots at three in the morning. But it had better be spectacular. Like Death-Star-exploding good. I want to feel a rumble in my chest and feel the fabric of time and space split apart. Something like that.
Short of that, I’m gonna have to take your word for it. I’ll be inside.