Once upon a time, Cowboy R didn't date a woman who was an editor for a couple of major Science Fiction publishers over the years. She maintained that serious science fiction enthusiasts didn't say (or write, I suppose) SciFi, but rather, SF.

I think she was full of hot air on that one, but be that as it may, last night I went over to T&T's house and watched the season premere of Stargate SG-1.

I rather like the SciFi channel, but at least around here, they're only on digital cable, and that's pretty well expensive. Given that I currently don't even have an income....

Anyway, while I was watching the SG-1 season premere, I noticed that two things were getting pushed mighty hard... Hulk and Battlestar Galactica.

The problem is that BSG isn't on 'til December, and I probably still won't have the SciFi channel.

Oh, well. At least I've had a couple of people volunteer to tape it for me.

Elle McPhereson was the first supermodel I was aware of by name. I once bought an issue of Celebrity Skin or something like it, because they had some out-takes from the Sports Illustrated photoshoot from that year, with her topless.

I watched If Lucy Fell because Elle was in it.

The other day, I stumbled across an archive of pictures of her, and downloaded them all.

I think I'm what you'd call a fan. If I had less of a grip, I might be a stalker.

---

I got spam this morning, offering me a chance to take my lovemaking to a whole new level. Amused, I actually read the first paragraph before hitting the delete key.

It claimed that most people spent more time getting ready to go to work than getting ready to have sex.

I find this both believable, and subtly depressing.

---

I went out to the store the other night for milk and bread. It reminded me of the Great Blizzard of '95, in Raleigh, when Trish, Cynthia, Buster and I walked out of our snowbound house, down to the Harris Teeter, only to find that all the milk and bread were sold out.

Anyway, it was fairly late in the evening, and I'd already dressed for bed... sweat pants with 'Arizona' up one leg, and 'Wildcats' on the other. (Amusingly, I have no NC State sweats, and I went there far longer than I've attended the U of A). Oh, yeah, and a ratty red t-shirt.

As I was looking at frozen food, the most beautiful woman stopped at the freezer next to me. She was wearing a black cardigan, with a long skirt, and she had soft-looking carmel-colored hair piled in a loose bun on top of her head. She was wearing little round glasses, and she smiled at me.

I couldn't think of anything to say. I could, I suppose, have emulated Kirk from Gilmore Girls, and said something along the lines of, "I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen... outside of, um, some really filthy magazines."

But how much of a compliment would that be? Fat slob telling you how pretty you are? Isn't that kind of like having a bum panhandle you because you look like you have a lot of money?

---

One day, walking down a street in New York City with Amy, I said, "Most women seem to want Joe Clean-Cut, which leaves me right out."

"Yeah," she said, and laughed. "You do have sort of a street-artist sensiblity to you."

Later, she said that I was a sort of romantic figure in her mind. Not like you'd see in a Meg Ryan film, though, more like the kind you'd see in an Art House.

"The kind where the protagonists tear each other to bleeding emotional shreds, and at the end, everyone's unhappy?" I asked.

"Yeah... like that."

---

"I want to go with you," he said.

"In this life," I responded, "You often don't get what you want."

As I drove away, I thought about it. What an aweful thing to say to a child. What a way to warp his hopes and dreams, right from the start. When did I become so bitter and cynical?

On the other hand, I'm not an Astronaut. I'm not living on the moon. And I'm not married to Elle McPhereson.

As I drove to work this morning, I was thinking about Jana. I think about her on and off, because I like to understand things, and at the moment, I'm not completely clear on the whole issue of the abortive relationship with Jana.

I realized that I'm not terribly upset about losing her as my girlfriend, though of course, I'm not best pleased about once again being in a not-dating situation.

I realized that Jana was never my friend, never my peer. One of the things I want in a partner is that she be my friend and my peer. Amy, the last best friend I had, was both of those things, though we never became romantically involved... she was looking for a nice, Jewish boy, and since I'm neither....

Anyway, the point is that, while Jana was (is) intellegent, she's also very self-abnegating. She never believes in her own intellegence, her own ability to do things and figure things out for herself. She doesn't seem to question life, the universe, and everything in quite the same way I do.

While we might have been companions, I don't think we would ever have been peers.

So I guess that's all right, then.

I have two clear memories of my young childhood. I couldnt have been more than six. (As I write this line, more come rushing back, so that my opening is already a lie, but having commenced in this vein, let me not backtrack).

Both concern television. And, though they are of exceptional events, I must presume that they are, that they were, part of a patern. The first concerns the old show Batman. Adam West played the Batman; Burt Ward played his ward (which I always thought hilarious... Ward played the ward), Robin. Now, I watch reruns, and I cringe, wondering how I could ever have loved something so campy, so lacking in plot, so... insipid.

Then, evidently, I loved it this side of idolotry. I remember a day waiting on the front porch of our house for my mother to come home; angry that she was not already home; angry that I was missing Batman.

I find this interesting for a variety of reasons... for most of my life, my mother was a single mother, who worked. I was a latchkey kid before that fashionable term was coined. And yet, I remember being disturbed on this occasion that my mother was not at home, that I was missing a show I normally watched.

The second incident was in the same house. I was watching Star Trek with my mother. She was sitting on the sofa, and I was sitting at the end of the piano, an old upright that was later sold to pay bills. She couldnt see me.

I idolized Spock. I wanted to be Spock. On this particular night, I drew Vulcan eyebrows on my face with a pencil.

My mother scolded me for having something sharp that close to my eye.

I did idolize Spock, and somehow, though we had a black and white television set in those days, I knew his shirt was blue. I wonder if I really knew that, or if I, the adult me, having
seen the show miriad times since, in color, have filled in that detail; supplied knowledge to the earlier me, sitting at the end of the piano, granting him knowledge he didnt actually possess.

I am reading Prousts Rememberance of Things Past, which has put me in this reflective mood. Proust has the power to look back on things, and turn them into incidents more significant than they could have been, in the real world.

I read Proust, and I find myself looking back on Amy; on going to the cinema with her, and walking home afterward; our discussion about how she didnt really love me, and you couldnt build a relationship out of wanting to love someone, because they were a decent person.

We went to see Dogma. People are missing the point of this movie, Amy said. The real point of this movie is that Kevin Smith wanted to play a hero.

Today, I went to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, which is extreemly funny, but also very self-referential. If you havent seen Clerks; Mall Rats; Chasing Amy; and Dogma, you won't catch the majority of the jokes.

There is a certain amout of irony, I think, in being the guy in the audience who was reading Proust while waiting to watch Jay and Silent Bob. There is even more irony in being able to draw parallels between them, to say, This movie is about recapturing past glory, and to be able to say, Thats very Proust.

Not that there was anyone to say it to. Amy, of course, is gone. I heard she was dating a lawyer. Mr. Smith has taken a vacation, gone to Mexico to lie in the sun, smoke Mexican grass, and perhaps find a willing flaminco dancer... or dancer of some sort, at any rate.

And Cowboy R is sitting in Taco Bell, after the movie, thinking about Proust, and Kevin Smith, and the women who have walked in and out of his life, and about irony.

The sun also sets.