Colin Fischer by Zack Stentz, Ashley Edward Miller Page B
Authors: Zack Stentz, Ashley Edward Miller
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suddenly remembering countless fairy tales featuring children, strange forests, and doors that should never be opened.
Colin knocked anyway.
11 The oft-told story is that a frog tossed into a pot of boiling water will leap out immediately, while a frog in a pot of water where the temperature is turned up slowly will not notice the change and sit contentedly until it dies. This is not actually true. Frogs are actually quite sensitive to changes in temperature and will hop out of a pot the moment it becomes uncomfortably warm. Colin once got in an argument with a middle school science teacher over this very fact and offered to prove his point with a large flask, a Bunsen burner, and a live frog. Instead, his teacher consulted Wikipedia before grudgingly accepting Colin’s assertion.
12 It was a long-held belief that the ancient Anasazi people of the American Southwest were peace-loving farmers. That belief had to be reassessed when archaeological digs around Anasazi population centers unearthed clear evidence of cannibalism. In fact, the word
anasazii
itself is a Navajo term, translating roughly to “ancient enemy.” The Navajo and other neighboring tribes considered the Anasazi dangerous sorcerers and shapeshifters, as well as taking issue with their rather particular culinary habits. Colin found the whole idea of cannibalism distasteful—it was hard enough just to kiss his grandmother.
13 Or, as was once noted in the 1985 science-fiction film
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension
, “The reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once.” Colin liked this movie a great deal, mainly because his father took such enjoyment out of it. Even so, he quibbled with the realism of a hero who was a quantum physicist, a rock star, a surgeon, and a ninja all at once. Surely, no human being could know so much about so many different things.
14 Understandable, since Caltech is widely regarded as the worst athletic school in NCAA Division III, a fact Colin’s father pretended not to care about.
15
The Thirty-Nine Steps
was adapted into a movie in 1935 by Alfred Hitchcock. The film took several liberties with the book, including substituting the character of Annabelle for a man named Franklin Scudder. Colin’s father surmised this was most likely to add “romantic tension” for the female audience. However, he could not explain why Hitchcock thought women wouldn’t appreciate a perfectly good story just as it was.
16 “Pressure points” were often used for control moves in some forms of
ju-jitsu
, a martial art that enjoyed wide popularity among the boys of the San Fernando Valley. This was in part because of its use in mixed martial arts, but even more for its romanticized association with ninjas, mysterious Japanese assassins renowned for their ability to strike quickly and melt back into the shadows. Colin thought it would be cool to become a ninja, except for all the touching.
17 Roman numerals (I, V, X, L, C, M) are sometimes used to designate the year, seen most often at the end of movie credits. They also often appear in the titles of major sporting events, notably the Super Bowl. For a short period during the 1980s it was even fashionable for movie sequels to use Roman numerals; e.g.,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
and
Superman II
. The practice fell out of favor soon after the release of
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
and
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
, which may or may not have been related to their box office results, although Colin had his suspicions.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
DUPIN’S DETACHMENT
Most casual readers think the first modern fictional detective was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. This is not the case.
The origins of the modern detective story actually date half a century earlier to Edgar Allan Poe and his fictional French detective C. Auguste Dupin. In three stories—“The Purloined Letter,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
Colin knocked anyway.
11 The oft-told story is that a frog tossed into a pot of boiling water will leap out immediately, while a frog in a pot of water where the temperature is turned up slowly will not notice the change and sit contentedly until it dies. This is not actually true. Frogs are actually quite sensitive to changes in temperature and will hop out of a pot the moment it becomes uncomfortably warm. Colin once got in an argument with a middle school science teacher over this very fact and offered to prove his point with a large flask, a Bunsen burner, and a live frog. Instead, his teacher consulted Wikipedia before grudgingly accepting Colin’s assertion.
12 It was a long-held belief that the ancient Anasazi people of the American Southwest were peace-loving farmers. That belief had to be reassessed when archaeological digs around Anasazi population centers unearthed clear evidence of cannibalism. In fact, the word
anasazii
itself is a Navajo term, translating roughly to “ancient enemy.” The Navajo and other neighboring tribes considered the Anasazi dangerous sorcerers and shapeshifters, as well as taking issue with their rather particular culinary habits. Colin found the whole idea of cannibalism distasteful—it was hard enough just to kiss his grandmother.
13 Or, as was once noted in the 1985 science-fiction film
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the Eighth Dimension
, “The reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen at once.” Colin liked this movie a great deal, mainly because his father took such enjoyment out of it. Even so, he quibbled with the realism of a hero who was a quantum physicist, a rock star, a surgeon, and a ninja all at once. Surely, no human being could know so much about so many different things.
14 Understandable, since Caltech is widely regarded as the worst athletic school in NCAA Division III, a fact Colin’s father pretended not to care about.
15
The Thirty-Nine Steps
was adapted into a movie in 1935 by Alfred Hitchcock. The film took several liberties with the book, including substituting the character of Annabelle for a man named Franklin Scudder. Colin’s father surmised this was most likely to add “romantic tension” for the female audience. However, he could not explain why Hitchcock thought women wouldn’t appreciate a perfectly good story just as it was.
16 “Pressure points” were often used for control moves in some forms of
ju-jitsu
, a martial art that enjoyed wide popularity among the boys of the San Fernando Valley. This was in part because of its use in mixed martial arts, but even more for its romanticized association with ninjas, mysterious Japanese assassins renowned for their ability to strike quickly and melt back into the shadows. Colin thought it would be cool to become a ninja, except for all the touching.
17 Roman numerals (I, V, X, L, C, M) are sometimes used to designate the year, seen most often at the end of movie credits. They also often appear in the titles of major sporting events, notably the Super Bowl. For a short period during the 1980s it was even fashionable for movie sequels to use Roman numerals; e.g.,
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
and
Superman II
. The practice fell out of favor soon after the release of
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
and
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
, which may or may not have been related to their box office results, although Colin had his suspicions.
CHAPTER EIGHT:
DUPIN’S DETACHMENT
Most casual readers think the first modern fictional detective was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. This is not the case.
The origins of the modern detective story actually date half a century earlier to Edgar Allan Poe and his fictional French detective C. Auguste Dupin. In three stories—“The Purloined Letter,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,”
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