Sun No More, Mon Amour

As science enthusiasts rush to the upcoming solar eclipse’s zone of totality (the area from which it will be fully visible), one group warns that an eclipse on this particular day means more than a cosmic phenomenon and retinal damage.

Meet Chuck Deane, a member of a religious sect known as The Church of Manning, or Manninites, to whom the date April 8th holds a special significance.

“What if I were to say to you,” says Deane, “that you mustn’t dwell. No, not today. Not on Rex Manning Day!”

For those of you whose knees and back don’t currently ache, Rex Manning Day is from the 1995 movie Empire Records in which a record store (back then you had to buy physical copies of music at an actual store) hosts an autograph event for washed-up 80s pop star Rex Manning as portrayed by actor Maxwell Caufield. As it turns out, in the decades since (holy shit, has it really been decades?) the movie came out, an entire religion based around the character has sprung up. As you can probably imagine, Rex Manning Day is a very important day for them.

“Oh, we have several holy days of observance based around Rex Manning and related storylines from Empire Records,” says Deane. “On the winter solstice we welcome the cold, dark winter with The Rejection of Corey, based on the scene where Liv Tyler’s character brings Rex his lunch, symbolizing the stocking up of food for winter, and offers her body to him only to run off, leaving Rex cold and alone. Then on the spring equinox we have The Feast of Gina, which is of course centered around the scene where Gina, played by Rene Zellweger, actually does do it with Rex, symbolizing the return of long, fruitful days as well as nature's mating season.”

Of course, there is no day holier on the Manninite calendar than April 8th, Rex Manning Day.

“Coming at the end of The Sitting of Lucas,” explains Deane, “which is a week-long period of relaxation where practitioners are encouraged to spend as much time as possible on their couch, Rex Manning Day is a massive celebration. It's like our version of Christmas. People decorate their homes by putting flowers in gin bottles and gluing quarters to the floor, eat pot brownies while watching Gwar videos, and burn CDs with cigarette lighters.”

But this year's Rex Manning day is anything but ordinary. And I mean ordinary in comparison to other Manninite Rex Manning Days, not regular ordinary. No, this year Rex Manning will have to share his day with a total solar eclipse, visible from Texas to Maine, a rare cosmic occurrence.

Like a character in a poorly written movie that confuses happenstance with plot, The Church of Manning doesn't believe in coincidence.

“No, there can't be anything coincidental about it,” says Deane. “To lose our sun and our light on the very day that Rex Manning walked into and was summarily cast out of Empire Records? No, this is providence, this is preordained, and it can only mean one thing.”

And what one thing does it mean?

“The lining up of Rex Manning day and a solar eclipse must mean the end of the world is upon us,” warns Deane, “there's no other explanation.”

“There are plenty of other explanations,” says Andrew Kohara, a NASA scientist who agreed to speak to us for some reason. “Solar eclipses can be fairly predictable, so it's possible the filmmakers purposely intended for the film to take place on a day that shared a date with an eclipse. Or it's just a coincidence. Actually, you know what, that's all it is. Don't call me again.”

We also contacted the film's director Alan Moyle who claims the date was picked as a tribute to Kurt Cobain who was found dead on April 8th, 1994 while Empire Records was in pre-production, but that frankly seems like a load of nonsense and this publication will give no credence to such a claim. Also I just found out that the stoner kid in the movie is played by Ethan Embrey and I never realized that.

So what does Chuck Deane of The Church of Manning have to say to such naysayers?

“To them we say, ‘say no more, mon amour’.”

Admittedly that response was easier to predict than Doomsday.

“You can't explain it away,” continues Deane. “We Manninites believe that this is exactly what Rex meant when, after being thoroughly beaten, mocked, and rejected by the Empire Records staff, he said ‘why don't you all just fade away’. Wouldn't a solar eclipse on the Day of Manning be a perfect time for humanity to just, as Rex said, fade away?”

Oh my Rex, is it crazy that this is starting to make sense to me?

Only time will tell us for certain if the Rex Manning/solar eclipse doomsday prophecy is real or just a coincidence, but we mustn't dwell, not today, not on Rex Manning day.

So check out the eclipse if you're in the right area, maybe listen to the music of your youth or watch a favorite movie. Our advice for how to handle things this Rex Manning day is to not take advice from fools and just figure everything is cool until you hear it from a more reliable source.

Actor Maxwell Caufield declined to give a comment for this story and only asked us to remind The Church of Manning that “the restraining order still stands”.

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