My Father and Star Trek's Scotty: Together Again—This Time in Orbit

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So, my father was blast into space Tuesday. This is funny to me for a number of reasons that I will now discuss:

  • Two, my father was suspicious of the space program, and now he’s on board a rocket with a Mercury astronaut and James Doohan, the U.S.S. Enterprise’s esteemed chief engineer. (To be fair, my father was suspicious of everything and everyone, including former CNN anchor Bobbie Batista, whose gaze he claimed was designed to distract viewers from the “real news”—the “real news” meaning items about the space program, natch, of which he is now a full-fledged member, natch.)
  • Three, I had no idea my father was blast into space until hours after he had been blast into space. This, too, is funny to me, and that’s because:
  • Four, there is something wrong with me.
  • Five, prior to Tuesday, my father had been blast into space with Mr. Cooper and Mr. Doohan a million times, not including some bonus airplane flights here and there, since my family signed him up, or rather, signed his remains up several years ago for a space flight courtesy the aerospace company Celestis: I had simply stopped paying attention to what he, or, rather what his remains were doing. (See above for further explanation.)
  • Six, prior to Tuesday, I did not know my father (and Mr. Cooper and Mr. Doohan) hadn’t really been blast into space on all those other occasions; my father had merely been part of failed attempts to be blast into space. I did not know this because I evidently wasn’t paying attention even when I thought I was paying attention (which was sometime back in 2008.)
  • Seven, in emails, my mother referred to Celestis as “the space people,” á la, “The space people just sent me an email again…,” and I found that phrase, “the space people,” so entertaining that I never bothered with the rest of the emails, plural.

So, yes, my father was blast into space Tuesday, and this is still funny to me because I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be funny to him. Especially the part about “the space people.”

All About About Pages

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So, I have revised the bio on my About page.

What happened was my husband expressed the opinion that the previous bio on my About was too self-deprecating. This troubled me because I had not intended the previous bio on my About page to be self-deprecating. Not at all. But he thought it was, and there you have it: The audience is never wrong.

For what it’s worth, the previous bio on my About page was intended to be a thing of truth. When I wrote that as a writer I was not terribly accomplished, I meant it. A writer who is terribly accomplished does not need an About page. Philip Roth does not need an About page; I need an About page.

The nicest thing, I think, about not needing an About page is that besides being terribly accomplished, you likely have an assistant at your disposal should you decide on a whim that, yes, you would like an About page (even if, no, you don’t need one). I imagine Philip Roth sitting in his well-appointed office-slash-library, and calling out to his Ivy League-educated Andrew or Julia, “An About page…! Make me one of those, won’t you?”

The worst thing, I think, about needing an About page is that besides being terribly unaccomplished, you have no Andrew or Julia at your disposal. If you want an About page, you have to write it yourself. Not only do you have to write it yourself, you have to pretend you are not writing it yourself. While first-person bios have been done, third-person bios sound more authoritative. And so you write one. You. Just you. (Or should you say, “Just her?”)

The new bio on my About page, as you’ll see, is non-self-deprecating, but brief. It’s so brief, in fact, one might think that I think that I need no introduction. But that is clearly not what I think. I cannot say what Philip Roth thinks. My guess is that he does not think about me, not even one little bit. Lot of good my About page has done me.