Dr. Shellie

I know a guy who is interested in, let’s say, lizards. He has been fascinated by lizards ever since he was in high school. And so he became a famous scientist, absolutely #1 in the lizard field, author of several books, etc, etc. And now he is 41, a big-shot tenured professor with his own Lizard Center, and he is quitting it all to act in regional theater and write fiction. Why? Well, here are the reasons he gives:

• Science and technology are progressing towards a horrifying future in which we will all be half-robotic, cybernetic creatures living in a networked world devoid of any vestiges of privacy and civil liberties (note– not that lizard research has even a hope of contributing to said future, even if one wanted to) and he is sick of hanging out with scientists who have no interest in analyzing the consequences of their own endeavors.
• He is no longer interested in lizards.

Well, I can’t argue with the last one. That’s the trouble with basic research. Your research does not serve any particular, immediate good. So if you lose interest in it… that’s it then, isn’t it? This reminds me of something my sister once said about squirrels.

"I don’t know how you study that science stuff, Shellie," she said. "I mean how do you know what to think about and what not to? I mean, if it were me, I might just go crazy. Like, I’d start thinking about squirrels, and then I’d just think MORE and MORE, and then I’d never know when to stop!!! How do you avoid THAT?"

And I suppose she has a point there, since the other day I saw a special on PBS about how a Berkeley researcher is, in fact, doing psychology experiments on the squirrels native to the Berkeley campus.

A long plane trip last week gave me the chance to sample the recent cinematic masterpiece, "Last Holiday", starring Queen Latifah. In brief: hard-working cookware saleswoman Georgia Byrd (Latifah) leads a life of unfulfilled possibilities. Passionate about cooking, she painstakingly recreates the dishes on Emeril’s TV show but lets herself eat only Lean Cuisine dinners. In her spare time, she pastes magazine clippings into her "Book of Possibilities"– photos of the refined French Chef Didier, luxurious European hotels, and wedding pictures with her face glued on the bride and an attractive co-worker’s on the groom.

Then everything changes. An MRI scan shows that she has a rare form of viral-induced brain cancer and has only three weeks to live. Suddenly, Georgia sees her life of delayed gratification for the folly it was and decides to blow her entire savings before dying. Living life to the fullest, she stays in a $3000/night hotel suite in the remote, snow-covered European hotel of her dreams, gets hot-rock massages all day, and eats ALL of the dishes on Chef Didier’s menu by night. After an all-out clothes-shopping spree, she trades in her saleswoman’s suits for the wardrobe of a rich woman, bungee jumps off a dam, and much more. Along the way, she charms the hotel staff by standing up for the rights of working people everywhere against the rich snobs who tend to stay in luxury hotels, charms the rich snobs themselves by coming off as richer than they are, wins $100,000 at a casino, and team cooks a New Year’s feast with Didier, her new best friend.

Now, I will say one good thing about this movie. Queen Latifah’s character comes across as genuinely likeable. As she catapults to fame and fortune, she remains very good-natured and goes out of her way to help everyone around her. But come on. Really this movie is an all-out endorsement of money. It’s a simple formula: saving money = unfulfilled possibilities, terrible mistake. Spending money = living life to the fullest, right decision, wins friends and influences people, leads to true love.

Another very odd thing about this movie is that in the face of imminent death, Georgia (as I said, a kind, generous, and spirited woman) has absolutely no one she feels like hanging out with (no friends, no family), except for the crush/co-worker who she has barely ever talked to and has never even gone on a date with, but very luckily and coincidentally wants to marry her. Lucky her. Rent it tonight and see how it all turns out.