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 This, alas, must be short, because I have shirked my duty to you, the reader. It’s Three Column Monday, and how did I spend my time this evening between columns? Well, I have come into possession of a copy of “Monolith Monsters,” a creature-feature I saw when I was about 11 or so, camping out in a TV-equipped trailer with my childhood friend Peter on a summer night in Fargo. There are no monsters, just giant shards of rock that grow from smaller shards of rock, and turn people to rock with their horrible super-rock powers. Haven’t seen it since; never forgot it. Now I have it.
Gnat climbed up in my lap as it started. I explained this was scary. “That’s okay. I’ll cover my eyes. What’s it about?” I explained that it was about rocks that grew really, really big if they got wet. So they shouldn’t get wet.”
“Okay.”
We watched the county geologist – the redshirt in this film – pick up a shard of the meteor and take it to his office in a small town. All small towns have County Geologists with offices right off the square. Charming town, too. Wouldn’t you like to live in a nice little town like that? I asked Gnat.
"Yeah. And I would live in a little hotel all the time. Oh – don’t get the meteor stone wet!"
The geologist had placed it by the sink.
“Whew,” she said. “That was close.”
The geologist opened a window.
“No!” she said. “The wind could push the meteor stone into the sink!”
Am I just being a proud dad, or was that a pretty good example of a clever little mind at work? Don’t worry; I turned it off before it got the least bit scary. I don’t want her to think of someone turned to stone.
“Will a meteor ever destroy the earth?” she asked as she left the room.
“Nope.”
“Okay! See ya.”
Oh, to be four.
I’m saving my comments – no doubt so highly sought & anticipated by millions – on the Newsweek thing for my Newhouse column. Probably would have said something yesterday had it not been for the overlong geek piece. I wrote that Saturday night so I could have Sunday for the newspaper column. I’ve been doing more of this lately – the workweek now starts Saturday evening and goes straight through to Friday morning. Which is why Friday night is such a pleasure. I spent part of it in the downstairs family room with Gnat, finishing up the transfer of the DVDs from big clunky plastic boxes to sleeves in binders. (Yes, I saved all the inserts and artwork, because A) they might be of historical interest in 3942 years, and B) if I ever suffer complete total computer failure AND lose my backups, I’ll have to scan all the barcodes again for the library. And as I looked at the great pile of insert art, I realized that I would have to arrange them by year and genre. And that meant putting them in some sort of expandable binder. Of course I had already purchased the binder for just that purpose. And that is what it is like to be me. An Escher loop of anal-retentive organizational clusterfargs.)
“You have FOUR STAR WARS?” Gnat asked. “Wow.”
There are actually five – well, six. But I sold the first one.
“Why?”
“Because it was an embarrassing piece of tripe.”
“What’s tripe?”
“It’s a kind of fish.”
“Star Wars is about fish?”
“Uh – no. Well, it had fish. Frogs. But not a lot of them. Squid too, but talking ones with spaceships.”
“Wow.” Pause. Then, the moment you cannot predict or craft; it just has to happen. She laid down on the floor, put her chin in her hands, crossed her ankles, looked up at Wise Father and said:
“Daddy, tell me about Star Wars.”
Heh. “Well, once upon a time there was a little boy who was very bad, and selfish. He grew up to be very mean. And do you know who he turned into?”
“Dark Vader?”
“Yes.”
“I want a red lightsabre. Blue are for boys.”
“Not pink?”
“There aren’t any pink ones daddy.”
“There would be if My Little Ponys ran Star Wars.”
“Daddy.” The she lost interest, pushed all the empty DVD boxes into the middle of the room and built a Sphinx. Only one paw, and certainly no secret chambers underneath, but not bad.
Back to work; much more tomorrow, including a Diner. See you then.
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