Interruption of service announcement redux.

I'm starting to think the interruption in the blogging may be permanent -- another unfinished Robotech-related project on my part, like the various comic synopsis/blogging projects I've been playing with for the past decade-plus. Here's the situation as it stands.

Three days after I got back from RT 25: THE CELEBRATION, I lost my fifth manager in not quite two years. The district manager tapped me to serve as interim manager until he can find a replacement, although it seems what he really wants is for me to step up and say I'll take the job on a permanent basis. I'd rather not do that, but I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude on it -- I'm waiting to see what my first paycheck as interim manager looks like, and what my workload is like once the nearest hiring manager sends me some additional staff. Right now our store is terribly understaffed, and even on my days off I find I'm stopping by and calling in to make sure things are proceeding apace. I come home exhausted, and have no energy to spend three or four hours analyzing a Robotech episode or comic book or whatever. At most, when I come home I throw in a DVD and lean back and try to relax -- and then feel guilty about it, because in the back of my head I'm thinking, "I should be writing a blog post, or drawing something, or doing SOMETHING constructive."

Unfortunately for all of you who were following my latest laughable attempt to maintain daily blogging activities, that "something constructive" won't be the Roboblog for the foreseeable future. This isn't a big dramatic "I'M LEAVING ROBOTECH FOREVER" shutdown like last time; this is totally about me and my own energy level and my work schedule, not about negative energy floating around in the community and associating Robotech with a fractured fandom or whatever the heck was going on in my head last year. I'm reserving the right to come back to the blog later if and when I step back from my current position, or find another job elsewhere, or get myself fired -- basically anything that lands me a great heaping pile of free time to return to gazing deeply into the depths of the Robotech TV series and its twenty tons of printed spin-off material.

I still will need a creative outlet, something that allows me to express myself in a positive way that makes me feel like I'm not just a zombie-like retail monkey, and I do have an idea what that might be. If and when something comes of this idea, I'll let you all know. It's not SCWONKEY DOG this time -- no, that's on hold just like the blog, because that requires even MORE energy and effort than the blog; that requires me to dig into the depths of my being and tear out bits of my soul, silly as that may sound, especially given that on the surface it just looks like a twisted psuedo-mature Saturday morning space opera action cartoon. But at its core, SCWONKEY is a project of self-examination; what I need to do right now is something a little lighter. If this does go forward, it's going to be another webcomic project. A friend of mine's been bugging me to collaborate on something with him for months now, and I'm thinking I might go ahead and do it. I'm shooting off that e-mail sometime in the morning.

So, until I've got time to come back here and start hammering out the Robotech thoughts again, this is Captain JLS, signing off.

See you on the next go-around.

The Shadows Can Wait, Apparently.

Robotech.com forum member Xenophon dropped some news from this past weekend's Project A-Kon in Dallas, TX at the forums. Let's see what he had to say:

Yesterday Kevin Mckeever spoke at A-Kon in Dallas. I was there in the room and he stated that at this point, absolutely nothing has happened with the movie other than that WB and Tobey Macguire's production company have acquired the rights. All that means is that they they now have the option of making the movie. To quote him "There is no script. There is no director. There are no actor. There is no budget" etc. There is no movie whatsoever as of this time. That does not mean that some guy in WB somewhere is not doing something to make these things happen, but I'd guess you'd have to get some sources over at WB to find that out. I asked him what rights they'd gotten and he basically said everything. They can make a film set in any time period about any subject whatsoever. He said "They can make a film about the Dana Barbie dolls if they want" by way of example. So this film we're talking about could be just about anything. Furthermore, it sounds like it's pretty flexible as to how WB "interprets" the canon.

McKeever also said that the next animated film is "on hiatus" because WB doesn't want what HG is making to get in the way of the live-action. So the live-action has to come first before we see The Shadow Rising film. Suck. However, he did say production had started, but then he said how far it had gotten was classified. The movie definitely will happen (provided WB doesn't just keep stalling for 10 years or something).

(See it at the forums here. Link via RobotechX.com; thanks to my pal Evan Cass for pointing it out to me.)

It's not just Robotech that gets the delays.

Roger Harkavy writes in to let us know that according to Yaco, Aoshima's upcoming 1/48 Legioss fighters -- you know, the ones that are retooled Toynami Masterpiece Alpha Fighters -- have been delayed a couple of months. Originally intended for release in July, they're now slated for the magical month of September.

Don't Worry, Be Happy.

I don't think I'm the only person who noticed the above at Amazon.com -- for instance, Rosic mentioned it on the comments thread on the previous post. Clearly it appears that a variety of on-line retailers have become convinced that Stonebridge Press's The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles has been delayed until the end of August. Yikes!

However, at the official thread on the Robotech.com forums, Kevin McKeever insists everything is on track for the advertised release date of ... oh, look, tomorrow! His last post on the topic reads:

Today I talked with Peter Goodman, the CEO of Stonebridge Press, about these notice of delays you are recieiving from certian retailers. He has informed me that everything is on schedule, the books are leaving the printer and the retailers should start receiving them any day now.

As with so many things, we'll see for sure what's up when the book is actually in peoples' hands ... but clearly as far as Banky McKevinpants knows, the book is en route to the shops and the on-line retailers are clearly confused. Maybe they just got the tentative release date for the RPG book from Palladium and all assumed they were the same book? Who knows ...