My Dirty Little Secret

I bet the second you read that title you zoomed down to read this post with the lightning reflexes of a test pilot. We all love to read about someone else's weaknesses, right? It's so much more fun than dealing with our own.

So before I go airing my dirty laundry, I'll dish on a few other people first, just to gird up my loins, so to speak.

My daughter loves sports, as long as she doesn't have to run. That kinda knocks out...everything. Well, OK, there are a few things left, but not much. When she was five she showed an interest in soccer, so I found a kids' league and signed her up. She had fun at the first practice, mainly because no one knew what they were doing and she was firmly in the 100th percentile with that. It all fell apart on the second practice. Some morons on the team had...*snicker* PRACTICED in the week between meetings and scared the living daylights out of her. Much like how we played fetch with our dog, the coach kicked a soccer ball down the field, pointed at it, and yelled, "GO GET IT" to the team. They took off like the ball was coated in chocolate pop-tart crumbs. Sophie ran a few yards, and a dandelion caught her attention. So she stopped to pick it, blow the fuzz off, look up and admire the clouds in the pretty sky, and then looked around to see her team coming at her like a herd of elephants on the rampage. She dropped the flower and ran for her life (much like that scene from Bedknobs and Broomsticks). With every step I could hear money being ripped to shreds. Run [rip, there goes the registration fee], run [rip, there go the cleats], run [rip, soccer ball], run [rip, shin guards], and so forth. Ever since then she has shown a decided disinclination for running sports, because she was terrified by a team of kindergartners.

Sam doesn't have any dirty little secrets. He pretty much throws it all out there and laughs at himself. I suppose that means he has a healthy self-image. I think it's just because he's a boy. The closest I could get would be that he talks in his sleep, and that ought to provide good material for years. So far, though, the only thing I've gotten, besides singing, is him thrashing in his sleep and mumbling, "It wasn't me, I didn't do it" and "I don't wanna spanking." Figures, eh?

I've thought better of airing SM's dirty little secrets. I have to live with him, after all. And I'm sure he would be only too happy to return the favor.

OK, so here it is, my secret: *sigh* This is so humbling.

I love - LOVE, as in with a passion - B movie disaster flicks. I think they're some of the funniest things ever written. I don't mean the award-winning things, like Titanic or The Towering Inferno, and I don't mean horror movies. No, I mean movies like Dinocroc, Supergator, Dinocroc Meets Supergator, Asteroid, Atomic Tornadoes, and the like. I love these movies! First of all, they're so bad they're funny. Second, sometimes they have great special effects, and if not, well, then those are funny, too. Third, so many of the things that happen are so far out of the realm of possibility as to be absurd. They're just so bad. And pardon me, but that makes them funny. I have always appreciated the theraputic effects of enjoying the absurd.

So what are some of the elements you can expect to find in these truly awful sci fi bombs? I've listed some of them below.

1. It doesn't matter whether the villain is a guppy or a great white. It's amazing what a little nuclear pollution or genetic mutation will do for a creature. Anything has the power to destroy New York or Los Angeles, because I guarantee one of those two cities will be in danger of total annihilation. It will NEVER be El Paso or Indianapolis.

2. The human body will hold gallons more blood in these movies than in reality. Every time a four-story octopus rips off a person's arm, more blood will pour out than would fit in an SUV's gas tank. OK, so that's kinda nasty. Next!

3. If a pretty girl is running from the disaster, she will always be wearing a bikini and look hot doing so. Unless she is the pretty scientist saving the world, in which case she will always be wearing glasses and will usually be a brunette (but not always - case in point, Mega Shark).

4. People will die left and right with the regularity of a ticking clock. There is little mercy or sensitivity in these movies. Except in the case of...

5. ...a couple on the verge of fooling around, unfortunately a little too close to giant sea snakes snatched by the US military for a secret experiment gone horribly awry. The couple will usually die together, which is touching, in a sick kind of way.

6. There is always an out planned for a sequel. If it's an animal flick, then it laid eggs. Bet your bottom dollar, the gene pool has not dried up. If it's storms brought about by human greed and over-development, then there's always some dodo head who doesn't learn his lesson, and you just know he's going to make the same mistakes as in the past (and he will usually be Republican, pro-military, and have a crew cut - thanks a lot, Hollywood).

7. Usually some innocent animal will die, just to secure your sympathy and make you not channel-surf anymore. However, you will rarely, if ever, see a child die. Good to see they draw the line somewhere.

8. Trust the music. B sci flicks always toe the line and let you know when something really bad's about to happen. They probably got it from Jaws or Psycho.

9. An amazing number of people will have a direct line to the President of the United States. Some low-level geologist in Iceland will notice a disturbing blip on his computer screen, frown, and say, in all seriousness, "I'd better notify the President."

10. The animals that run amuck are usually a) locked in a block of ice in the Artic or b) buried in the sea floor. They will be let loose on humanity when a) a very young blond hot female scientist drives her submarine into the ice block [women drivers, right?] or b) an earthquake triggered by human greed and overdevelopment breaks up the sea floor. Sometimes the animals show up on asteroids falling to earth (killer bacteria); sometimes they've been there all along and were just tired of being left out of things. Sometimes human greed and overdevelopment create a disaster that turn a perfectly normal dog into a horribly misshapen poodle of terror with an appetite for human flesh. I mean, this stuff is great.

11. There will always, and I mean always, be a problem with human greed and overdevelopment.

12. The actors will be extraordinarily skilled at keeping straight faces when they deliver ridiculous lines. Likes when the planet's best and brightest minds just can't figure out how to catch that pesky 400-foot mutated killer whale that's messing with the shipping lanes, and Dr. Perky Breasts in all her 29-year-old glory steps forward with a solution that has a 3% chance of success, and these scientists look at her and say, "That just might work!" They take her seriously, of course, because she's wearing glasses. That makes all the difference, you know. Oh, and the heroine will be able to do anything. I mean anything. Does she need to pilot a helicopter to get off an erupting volcano? Done. She'll say that she learned it in the Peace Corps. Does she need to make a field dressing for someone whose arm is nearly amputated, or intubate someone who's stopped breathing? No prob. She learned it while on internship at Johns Hopkins, in the 10th grade, in between beauty pageants and SATs. Does she need to keep the International Space Station from crashing into Earth? Well, it's a darn good thing she went to Space Camp! And what's even crazier is that no one will think it's weird. They will accept it and be grateful that Barbie is in control.

13. Someone will be snatched from the brink of death. You'll think they're inches from death and they will miraculously up and recover, usually making a joke minutes later. Or proposing marriage. Something like that.

14. Something will blow up. Tornadoes will threaten a nuclear power plant. Sea snakes will bite everyone in sight, causing a submarine to go kaflooey. Dinocroc will knock over a gas station or cause a train to derail and blow up. You can count on it.

15. The entire movie will be conducted as seriously as a heart attack. It will be as though the director really thinks this is all entirely possible and should be taken as such, and the viewer would be a short-sighted ignorant fool not to do so. At no time do you get the impression that the crew is about to bust out laughing.

Right now I'm watching a movie about killer asteroids, and Sophie just walked in the room in time to see a huge fireball explosion as one of the rocks hit the earth. She studied the screen for a moment, and said, "Bombs?" and I said, "No, killer asteroids." She said, "Oh, hmm. Asteroids." It was just the way she said it. She knows my predilection for these disaster movies and has been desensitized to it. So, "Oh, hmmm. Asteroids." Total unconcern. Guess you had to be there. I laughed my behind off.

So that's my dirty little secret. I suppose it could be worse, but there's little self-respect in being such an afficionado that I have this little list in the first place. What's hiding in your closet?