Ah, that's funny…seriously, give me back my books

When I was in high school, there were these dorky commercials for a Time Life series of books: "A woman burns her hand on a stove -- two hundred miles away, her sister feel a burning sensation in her right hand. Coincidence? Read Time Life's Mysteries of the Unknown to find out…"

My friend, Geoff, convinced his mother to buy him these books. Without reading them (because the thrill was really just to Call Right Now) he loaned them to me.

Of course, with all my school work (and obsessing about what boys I thought were cute, obsessing about if my friends thought those same boys were cute, whether those boys thought I was cute, whether those boys thought my friends were cute, etc.) I never got around to actually reading them. Geoff and I used to joke that I would give them to him as a high school graduation present -- because that was Like, So Far In the Future It Would Never Occur. And now, twelve years after graduating from high school, those books are rotting somewhere in my parents' house -- unread.

Why do I bring this up now? Because Geoff loaned me another book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was my first introduction to British humor -- unless you count that time I watched "The Holy Grail" when I was fifteen -- and I totally don't because I was too busy trying to look cool around the guys I was watching it with to understand British humor. And tonight, as I'm sure you know, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is being released in movie-form and I hope it is, if not fantastically wonderful, at least not crappy enough to upset me.

Wish me luck (and please go see the movie so the numbers won't be too low and the reviews will call it The Biggest Flop in the Galaxy -- or something equally mean-spirited-and-uncreative-attempting-to-be-hipper-than-thou-and-I-told-you-so-ish).