Today's news is both long-overdue and strangely linked to my distant past. The Chicago Tribune reports that Midway Games, makers of Mortal Kombat, filed for bankruptcy today.
Why does this matter to a clerk?
Well I'll tell you why.
Midway, best known for the Mortal Kombat series of games, had signaled in early December that it was likely to run into debt repayment problems, as former majority shareholder Sumner Redstone's sale of his 87 percent stake in the company triggered provisions in two series of Midway bonds that allowed creditors to ask for full repayment. The company secured extensions from its bondholders on those payments but ultimately decided to file for bankruptcy protection.
In late November, Redstone sold his 87 percent stake to Mark Thomas, a private investor, for $100,000 plus $70 million in debt.
That's right. Sumner Redstone, majority owner of Viacom and thus former boss-of-bosses of Blockbuster (back when it was owned by Paramount, which is owned by Viacom), just delivered an uppercut to the company which he once owned nearly 90motherfucking% of.
At one point, Redstone's lame-ass biography graced the shelves at Blockbusters. It was actually there in the months preceding 9/11, since that was when I worked there for the year that I did. “The Chairman,” the bad guy of this series whose name shall soon be spoken, is based off of Redstone.
It's reassuring to know that the economic horror I envisioned as a 17-year-old at the beginning of the Bush administration has finally come full-circle, just like I always told all my Republican-voting friends that it would.
Oh well.
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