FanGirl. SuperHero.: I love space. And Neil deGrasse Tyson, too.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

I love space. And Neil deGrasse Tyson, too.

"We all shine on. Like the moons and the stars and the sun"

- John Lennon

My first love, before The Monkees or The Beatles or Johnny Depp or Kirk Cameron before he went all Jesus was space. I think space is totally the most.

Besides "Rockstar" my other wannabe profession is "Astrophysicist". No effin' jokes about it.

When my sister was busy playing with Jem dolls and burning her Barbie's hair with a light bulb, I was geeking out over a picture book of the planets. I brought it to Show And Tell with me and everything. And then there was the little red telescope I got for Christmas. I would look at the moon with my dad and ask him questions like how long it would take a flashlight to light up the moon. (I didn't understand the whole dispersion of light business then)

When I was 10 (Don't dare do the math on this) a little movie called Space Camp came out.

Best movie!!! See it if you haven't. It's about a bunch of kids that went to a space camp and got launched into space!!! I used to pretend I was Lea Thompson and hang upside down off the edge of the couch to make my hair "float up" so it was like I was in space too! Whatevs. I was 10. I also used to pretend I was Debbie Gibson and Madonna and Paula Abdul. That's just what you do when you're a 10 year old girl. Besides, Lea Thompson was the coolest! Space Camp? Back To The Future? Howard The Duck?!

I was also that annoying kid in your 5th grade class that could name all 9 planets. And quickly! "Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto!" I'd yell all proud of my geekness as the other kids would sigh. Then I would go around and tell all the kids what planet they came from. (I was from Venus, FYI).

Not only did I think I was "Venus", I also thought I was Albert Einstein reincarnated. I was a strange kid, okay? I thought he had curly, unruly hair and I have curly, unruly hair, so it must be true. The only hole in this theory... I ain't no genius. But this fascination with Einstein led me to a movie which led me to a crush on Yahoo Serious. And I am.

So yeah, I like thinking about space and String Theory and Black Holes and gravity and the Curvature of Space and Space Time Continuum and I don't pretend to know anything about any of it, but I wish I did. If I did, I'd be an astrophysicist!

Well, now here we are, like 20 some years later and I am not any closer to being an astrophysicist than I was when I was hanging off the couch at 10 and to top it all off, we totally lost a planet. Which brings me to Neil deGrasse Tyson. The Yoko Ono of our galaxy. The guy that took away Pluto.

I LOVE HIM! Did you know he was named Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive by People Magazine in 2000? That's hilarious!