Larry the NASA Guy



Rockets and Sputnik on display at
Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum
Dayton, Ohio


Have you ever watched the NASA Channel on TV? No? We did. We turned to that channel and happened to catch a woman walking into a formal reception. It was like home movies on TV. We watched her sign in. There were several military officers standing around. People were milling and mingling. It was as though a video camera were candidly recording an event. Then they all walked outside into the bitter cold. A few of the men wore Russian hats. The dignitaries stood in a line and dozens of camera flashes went off as they stood still, their breath steaming in the chilly nighttime air. After the picture-taking they boarded a bus with what looked like Russian letters on the side.

Then the cameras took us to a NASA control room. Again, nothing but still shots, really, though this was video footage. After that, the programming switched to a woman telling us about carbon-based organisms and a discovery they'd made in a California lake that arsenic was turning to phosphorous, or something like that. It was an exciting discovery about arsenic and how it relates to determining life on a planet. Then they showed the DNA double-helix. And then...

A Larry the Cable Guy commercial came on. Larry stepped out of a NASA mobile RV and said that he learned everything he knew by watching the NASA Channel. "Git 'er done! Watch the NASA Channel."

Then the broadcast turned to another professorial-looking woman talking about arsenic and phosphorous again. My husband and I, now afraid that we'd just been lumped in with Larry the Cable Guy, turned the channel.