Good thing, bad thing

One of my all-favorite television shows is Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was a rarity in the medium of television: smart, well-written, intelligent, it didn’t pander to get cheap laughs. The premise of the show is a guy is launched into space (first Joel, later Mike) who is stuck watching bad movies with his two robot companions and add their own comments/dialogue/jokes as the movie plays. At the end of the very early episodes of the show, Joel would make the robots mention one good thing and one bad thing about the movie they had just watched, rewarding them with a RAM chip for their efforts. Life of late has seemed to be a similar situation for me of late: one good thing, one not so good thing.

Good Thing: Last Friday evening my wife and I took our daughter to go swimming in the diving well at the physical activity center on campus. Once again we all had fun at the pool. Our daughter still enjoys jumping off the three meter diving board, and is getting braver on the one meter board, jumping off after getting a running start instead of just standing on the end and jumping. Admittedly I love diving off the boards as well, harkening back to my younger days and swimming in the pool at my grandparents’ apartment building.

Not So Good Thing: I got to go swimming again the next day, though I hadn’t planned on it. Late in the afternoon we headed to the store to pick up birthday presents for a party the child was invited to attend on Sunday plus a few groceries. We had been in the store for about forty-five minutes when we began to hear loud rumbles of thunder. The skylights in the ceiling were no longer bright with sunshine; rather they were dark, occasionally brightening up with flashes of lightning. The lights flickered as the storm outside got worse. I turned to my wife and advised that we should finish up and go, the sooner the better. I knew the store had only an half hour power backup for its registers (on the plus side, the security system also had thirty minutes of power backup, so after thirty-one minutes everything was FREE!). My worry was that if the power went out we’d be stuck in a long line of yahoos all also wanting to get out while the getting was good.

We beat most of the crowd, but not all of it. We were only second in line, but the lady ahead of us had her cart crammed full of stuff, enough to fill two carts actually. After about twelve minutes we had our turn at the register. As we headed out, the foyer at the front door was filled with people, none of whom wanted to leave and with good reason. Although it was only a few minutes past six in the afternoon, it was dark outside, quite dark. A strong wind was blowing, the rain was coming down in buckets. It was simply the strongest storm we’d had in these parts in quite some time. As my wife wondered aloud how long the storm would last, I was contemplating making a dash for the car.

The car wasn’t that far away, but in a driving rain it may as well have been parked a mile away. The number of people gathering by the front door was increasing exponentially, so my choice was clear—time to make a break for the car. Knowing I’d have to literally throw things in the back of my car, I handed my wife the bags containing eggs and bread and ran off into the rain. At first things went well; I can’t run as fast as I did when I was sixteen, but I can still make good time. Running up the lane in the parking lot, I rapidly closed in on my car. I hadn’t been struck by lightning yet, so that was a good sign. I was almost to my car when a car came down the lane towards me, plowing into a sizeable puddle of water, drenching my running shoes. Sonofabitch! No time to get angry or flip the driver off. The rain was still coming down pretty hard and the lightning seemed to be closing in on me. I get to my van, open the rear hatch, and throw in eight bags of stuff. I had spent a total of fifteen to twenty seconds outside but it looked like I had just jumped in the pool.

Good Thing: My daughter started first grade last week, and on Friday she had her first show and tell day. Whatever she brought in was supposed to fit into a small lunch sack the teacher had sent home and should be something that tells a little something about the child. She couldn’t decide what to bring, so I casually suggested bringing a Marx Brothers movie, specifically the movie Horse Feathers. I didn’t think she’d go for it, but she loved the idea. My DVD recorder had botched this particular disc and it wouldn’t play, so if the disc was lost it was no big deal. My daughter has been exposed to a number of older movies and comedy acts. She’s familiar with the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and for the past few weeks on “family night” she’s picked The Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, and Dracula as the movies we’ve watched. She knows Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert as those people from It Happened One Night. It’s nice to be able to watch old movies with my daughter and have her like them, though I know sometime in the future she’ll think poorly about these movies because her dad likes them and whatever dad likes is not cool.

Not So Good Thing: Last Saturday I was watching The Aviator with Leonardo DiCaprio when my daughter came wandering into the living room. I quickly pulled up the channel guide looking for something she could watch; I didn’t think she was ready for a movie about Howard Hughes and his substance abuse and mental health issues—not to mention I didn’t want her handing me some excuse one morning that she can’t go to school because there are GERMS EVERYWHERE.

I found the movie The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl on another channel, and tuned that in. Being a good dad, I sat with her and watched the last forty five minutes of the movie. I know the film’s target audience is children, but I’m just a big kid (ask my wife) so in theory I should have enjoyed the movie. Instead, it was like Hell on the t.v. screen. The film, about a boy’s dream about two characters he created in a notebook, was so astoundingly bad that I think anyone who watches it actually loses IQ points. Bad dialogue, bad hair, I think this piece of junk was made in 3-D, which is very scary. Who would want to see Sharkgirl and her overbite coming at them in 3-D? I certainly don’t want to have to deal with the nightmares of incisors chasing me down a dark street. But I was a dutiful dad and watched the movie with my daughter. She liked it, of course, and that’s what truly mattered. And after watching only half this movie, I’m hoping that my physical rehab and psychotherapy sessions will stop my slurred speech, annoying drooling problem, and get me back on the road to living life without wearing Depends.