Cape Girardeau schools superintendent goes on adventure to create newest snow day video

The 2023 version of Cape Girardeau School District's snow day video debuted Wednesday, Jan. 25, and this iteration departs from previous videos.

Superintendent Neil Glass, who announced his retirement Monday, Jan. 23, stars in the much-anticipated annual production, and he has some help in this year's installment.

This is the sixth year of Glass's production in collaboration with Career and Technology Center's Randy McWilson and McWilson's digital media classes.

McWilson said Glass came to digital media classes talk about the newest video, and he wanted students' ideas to make it different from recent years.

Starting in October, with two days of shooting and hundreds of hours of editing, the video was ready only a day before the snow began Tuesday, Jan. 24.

This year, Glass parodied popular movies and TV shows, including "Spider-Man: No Way Home", "Stranger Things", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "The Avengers" — with the idea the video would resonate with students and their parents.

The video posted early Wednesday morning, Jan. 25, and had gathered 6,500 views as of Wednesday night.

The video features Jimmy Wilferth of Saint Francis Healthcare as Doctor Strange.

Glass starts out by traveling to meet with Doctor Strange to ask for everyone to forget his past snow day videos, except him. Strange does not agree, saying he did the same for Peter Parker, whoever that is.

Strange tells him to ask for something else and Glass says he wants to control the weather to stop it from snowing, saying it is "for the kids".

Strange agrees and tells him he can help with being able to control the weather but Glass has to bring back the Tesseract from 2012, then starts a spell to send him there, which Glass interrupts and looks to the camera saying "I've certainly done 'stranger things'."

Glass is transported to The Upside Down from the "Stranger Things" Netflix series wearing a hospital gown and sporting a new tattoo that reads "063". He goes into the Byers' home and uses the Christmas lights Joyce Byers left up, to learn how to leave with the portal.

The superintendent escapes The Upside Down and ends up in Cameron Frye's garage from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Glass takes the coveted 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California despite Frye objecting.

"The Star Wars" main theme plays as Glass comes into the frame "flying" in the Ferrari to enter the time portal to travel in time to the SHIELD headquarters from "The Avengers" to grab the Tesseract from underneath Loki's guard.

Glass goes back once more to the present day and meets with Strange, only for Strange to use the Tesseract to control the weather and summon the snow storm Glass said he wanted to prevent.

Strange looks to the camera and says "Come on Doc, its for the kids".

The video ends with the words announcing that there is a "Snow Day Today" in the "Stranger Things" font.

Glass may be retiring from teaching, but could be picking up a role in Hollywood, McWilson said.

The video may be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iS8u8fyP4k.