Jake Rossen, Mental Floss:

“Nickelodeon kind of made a mistake,” Russell says. “I don’t want to call it a mistake, or if it was not a wise piece of instruction that they told me, because they told me the items don’t have to necessarily get into the cart. They just have to touch the cart and it’s yours. It didn’t have to stay in the cart, either.”

“So then my dad was like, ‘You heard what they said, right? That means all you got to do is take your hands and put it to the very back of the peg that they would store games or anything on. Pull them all off with the cart near you and just have them be knocking the cart so they don’t have to even get in there.’ ”

It was good advice. On the day of the spree, Russell was given the go-ahead. He darted through aisles, adhering to the strategy. Entire pegs of games were swatted to the ground, collapsing in a cacophony of plastic and cardboard. Russell acted like a human tornado, following the rules and having stuff bounce off his cart.

“I basically cleared out the entire game section of the store in about two minutes,” he says. “The whole thing was gone. And then, I took out the action figure aisles, and this was when the first wave of X-Men figures were out. I was literally just reaching to the back of the peg line and just taking the entire row of action figures.”

Just in time for a season where kids would be excited to see their hauls from Santa, an incredible, in-depth look at the ins and outs of what it was to win Nickelodeon’s Super Toy Run. Including the strife that met the kids at the schoolyard later.

Two stories broke today, which, for whatever reason were the straws that broke me.

Variety: Jeremy Allen White Joins ‘Star Wars’ Film ‘The Mandalorian & Grogu’ as Jabba the Hutt’s Son

Jeremy Allen White has joined the “Star Wars” film “The Mandalorian & Grogu” as the voice of Jabba the Hutt’s son, Rotta the Hutt, Variety has confirmed. The project marks the first major franchise for the actor following his Emmy-winning breakout role on the FX series “The Bear.”

The Wrap: Chris Evans Sets Marvel Return in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ | Exclusive

Chris Evans is returning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of the cast for “Avengers: Doomsday,” the highly anticipated sequel that will also star Robert Downey Jr. as Doctor Doom, The Wrap has learned exclusively. Evans will be involved in some capacity, but the extent and exact nature of his role is unknown.

I grew up as a latchkey kid. Single mom, only child, you get a lot of time to yourself. And I threw myself into the worlds of comics and movies. They showed me the powers of creativity, the magic of filmmaking, the intricacies of line art, taught me lessons about color and light.

I’d devour any of it. Watching movies on cable lead to renting movies from Blockbuster. Renting movies led to buying movies. Buying movies lead to buying more movies (I had roughly 1000 Blu-Rays + DVDs at a point). Reading comics lead to reading Wizard Magazine. Reading Wizard lead to learning about all the amazing and creative things being done at all the comic companies. Just like with directors, I learned to follow writers and artists to their next thing.

I don’t say this to be dramatic or a bummer, but they were my world. A child of divorce, who struggled to socialize, I lost myself in the 4-color worlds of Marvel, DC and Image, and the big screen adventures that hit every weekend.

Then I found my people, fellow nerds who knew more movie quotes than extended family members names, who loved to rank and talk and share and recommend and debate all of this.

Somewhere in here, the comics started hitting theaters again. Tim Burton’s Batman was a near religious experience for me as an 5 year old, but that seemed the exception to the rule. Until X-Men hit. Until Blade hit. Until Spider-Man hit.

My loves were colliding. And what’s that, more Star Wars too? Sure, the prequels were flawed, but they were more of something I loved. Giving me something new from a world that had more or less helped to define my love of movies.

Iron Man hits. Robert freakin’ Downey Jr. as Iron Man? No way. Wait, what’s this about an Avengers project? It ties into that new Hulk movie? No way they got Chris Evans to be a superhero again, I loved that dude in Scott Pilgrim. Paul Rudd(!!!) as Ant-Man with Edgar Wright behind the lens? Holy shit.

And now Disney owns them. And they’re gonna own Lucasfilm too? Wait…more new Star Wars? And they’re gonna try to make up where the Prequels failed. Interesting. Can they? Wow, Force Awakens was a lot of fun. Rogue One, what a flick.

And the saturation came. I didn’t need to special order comic book shirts from Diamond Distributors by way of my local comic store, I didn’t need to go to comic cons, I could just go and buy representations of these things which were the fabric of me at my local goddamned Target? How cool. Phases? TV Shows? Streaming? More? More? MORE? MORE??

…and…I think they’ve gone too far. And I can’t help but feel like I’m a bit at fault.

Not me specifically, but who I am. As has been said before, “The Nerds Won”. Nerdy things don’t make you outcasts, they make you accepted, as I longed to be and eventually was. And there’s always more.

But…it’s not the new. It’s not the different. It’s not the daring.

That Star Wars prequel? Outshined by The Matrix that year, a radically different, unique, original idea that inspired the next generation after me, in ways both in terms of filmmaking, and making people think differently about themselves and the discomfort they feel.

…is it any wonder they did two more? And a fourth, over a decade later?

We’re at a phase where these things I love are just being reheated and re-served to me. Look at the archives of this blog, I was excited about these things along the way. I’m still excited for some things (I really want to see a trailer of James Gunn’s Superman quite badly). But I can’t help but feel like the magic is going away.

The headlines above, while real, they feel like they were slapped together by AI. [ACTOR OF NOTE OR FORMER STAR OF FRANCHISE] Joins [INSERT FRANCHISE WHO NEEDS HELP] as [CHARACTER]. These aren’t the first, they won’t be the last. We’ve got Robert Downey Jr. returning as…Doctor Doom for some reason. Apparently we’re getting a whole slew of actors we know and love…to just do Harry Potter again, but longer. We’re getting more Lord of the Rings and they might just be making them up this time.

I’m 40 years old. Maybe I’m aging out. Or maybe Hollywood needs to realize…they can’t keep marketing to me.

I mentioned above how much comics have meant to me. They went to a fandom to a side hustle to a second career. And if you step in a comic store, you know what they’re doing now? Selling more variant covers of every issue to the same, older growing audience. And raising the price, to see what the ceiling can be. They’re marketing to me and people like me, again and again and again.

There are flashes of hope. Every so often there’s a Saga or a Walking Dead or a Dawnrunner or *Do a Powerboat!*that shake things up for comics and give us something new. Every so often there’s a movie out there which gives us a wholly unique experience and reminds us what we love about movies.

But they’re not coming everywhere. We’re afraid to take swings, we’re afraid to try and fail, we’re afraid of New. We’re afraid of Different. We’re afraid of the old tricks not working. And maybe, the real issue is: we’re afraid of becoming old.

Let the next generation take over and make new things. It’s how we got here in the first place. Whether it was Stan Lee and Jack Kirby using the social changes of the 60’s to create flawed comic book heroes, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird self publishing a Daredevil parody with turtles in the 1980s, George Lucas using the cache of the success of his 50’s greaser movie to cash in and make a new version of the sci-fi serials he loved, but for the modern day…these were risks. These were creatives. These were people who wanted to make something new, first for themselves, and then found how it reverberated with likeminded folks.

I don’t need to be blanketed in the safety of what was. I’m longing for the challenge.

This is rambling and turning into almost a “Comics and Genre Movies are Dead” version of the speech Jeff Daniels gives at the beginning of The Newsroom, so I’m going to tie this together. It doesn’t help that I’ve written all stream of consciousness, but, eh, we’ll deal.

Could these movies be good? Sure. Will I see them? Likely.

But will they inspire? Will they make people want to make their own films at home? Will they make someone say “I have a story and I need to tell it”?

I don’t know. Because right now, it all looks like just another gig for a paycheck. Another instance of confirming shareholder value and maximizing the use of legacy IP or whatever rambling shit the heads of these studios are going to tell people on investment calls. But it’s not adventurous. And we could all use an adventure right now.

Larry Fitzmaurice, Hearing Things:

The start of the 2010s saw a steady rise in visibility for indie musicians that encompassed high-profile TV performances and the occasional collision with real-deal pop superstars. (The “rock” part of “indie rock” was partly left behind along the way, for marketing purposes.) Regardless of whether the artists involved were turning a meaningful profit, the smell of success was in the air. Indie’s boom period was, as Kevin Krauter of current Indianapolis indie rockers Wishy describes it, “an era where a popular indie band looked like they had it fucking made.”

It didn’t last. Indie’s commercial decline began to sink in around the mid-2010s—a point when music publications’ collective influence was waning, and streaming services took over as passive tastemakers looking to cut corners on artist royalties, resulting in the decimation of the music industry’s middle class. Then came the pandemic and its ripple effects, including increased touring costs and the persistent threat of canceled shows due to COVID cases. It’s all led to an indie business landscape that’s particularly inhospitable to emerging artists looking to establish careers off their work.

A really in-depth and eye-opening article at the struggles the “middle class” of music are facing these days. Honestly, it’s hell for any sort of creator now. So many platforms, so many responsibilities, none of them related to Doing The Work.

I really can’t say I know the fix here. I sure hope we can find one.