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Cynthia Gorney and Stephen Harrigan

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from: Stephen Harrigan

Mooning Over the Moon Shot

Posted Tuesday, July 20, 1999, at 11:28 AM ET

Dear Cynthia,

No, no, no, no. I didn't see American Pie with my daughters. How could you even think such a thing of me? Or, being the mother of a 13-year-old yourself, how could you imagine for one moment that any teen-ager would willingly accompany her parent out in public at all? But my wife and I did go to the movie out of prurient parental duty, as a way of gauging the current level of cultural swill through which our kids so cheerfully wade. And, to answer your question, we were the oldest people there. I'd say everyone else was 25 or younger, most of them couples, and after the movie was over they walked sweetly hand-in-hand out of the theater as if they'd just seen You've Got Mail. Can you imagine going to this movie on a first date? What could you possibly say to each other afterwards? "Wasn't it hilarious when that guy prematurely ejaculated in his shorts? What about the scene where he had explosive diarrhea in the girls' restroom? Hey, want to grab some coffee?"

Are you susceptible to moon-landing nostalgia? I am. It's fascinating to me that humankind's most futuristic moment now seems like a quaint enthusiasm of our past. My mother lives just across the street from the Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake City (a few miles south of Houston) and whenever I go to visit her I drive past the Saturn V rocket lying on its side out in front. This rocket, which took us to the moon, has every bit of the historical significance and even some of the grandeur of, say, the pyramids, but to most of the drivers zooming by on NASA Road One it might as well be an old water heater. There was a small little story in the science section of the New York Times today about a lunar geologist named Eugene M. Shoemaker who died in 1997 and is being honored by having a portion of his ashes put aboard a spacecraft that is designed to crash-land into the moon's surface. It's kind of emblematic that 30 years after we first made our way gently onto the moon with a live human crew, we are now crashing into it and burying one of the people who helped get us there.

Anyway, it's time for me to boldly go.

Steve

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Stephen Harrigan

Mooning Over the Moon Shot

Posted Tuesday, July 20, 1999, at 11:28 AM ET
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Cynthia Gorney, a reporter for the Washington Post from 1975 to 1991, will join the faculty at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism this fall. She is the author of Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars (click here to buy the book). Stephen Harrigan is an occasional columnist for Slate, as well as a screenwriter and novelist. His recent books include Water and Light: A Diver's Journey to a Coral Reef (click here to buy the book).
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