I've had a more or less wretched day--or, as Anne would call it, a Jonah Day. However, rather than a string of unlucky experiences, there were just two: first, that I'm coming down with something that includes a painful sore throat, and second, that I accidentally booked the plane tickets for my spring break trip in February instead of March. (Yeah, remember that whole thing about February having exactly 28 days, which means that March's dates correspond to the exact same days of the week as February's? Makes little mix-ups like this common.) I only discovered it because Expedia sends you like fifty email confirmations of your flight, and I happened to notice on one subject line that it said "2/20." *sigh* And of course, it had to be non-refundable, which means it cost me a bunch of money to rebook PLUS flights are more expensive now so my new flight cost more and is less convenient. And all this on a day when I already wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed with a lozenge. Boo.

But, I did get it rebooked. And then I went home and crawled into my papasan chair with a blanket and watched episodes of Psych, which if you're unfamiliar is a detective show featuring a guy--Shawn Spencer--who pretends to be psychic, but is actually just really observant and deductive. Anyway, there was this scene where Shawn is following the path of the killer's gunshot trying to find the bullet, and he thinks it has gotten lodged in a nearby tree. And his partner, Gus, says, "You're looking in the wrong place, Shawn. The murder was ten years ago. Trees grow. You need to look UP." And sure enough, they climb about ten feet up the tree and there's the bullet, and then the bad guys come and start shooting at them, etc, etc.

But my little fact siren started going off about this time because... I read Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. A lot of Encyclopedia Brown, as a matter of fact. Once, I even dressed up as his sidekick, Sally Kimball, for Dress Like a Book Character Day at school. (If only I had read Nancy Drew back then, my outfit would have been a lot cooler.) And there's this one great EB story where Bugs Meany (Encyclopedia's nemesis) tries to perpetrate one of his many neighborhood frauds by carving something high, high up in a tree and claiming it happened fifty years ago. (Remember that one?) And Encyclopedia, being the brilliant youth that he is, solves the case by pointing out that trees grow from the top, not the bottom, so anything done to the trunk will pretty much stay at the same height throughout the tree's lifetime. Including, presumably, bullet holes.

How can this be, Psych writers? Are there no trees in Los Angeles or New York or wherever you are writing? The Internet (including OSU Forestry Dept) plus my own common sense as a nursery owner's daughter stand firmly behind Encyclopedia on this one. And what's more, how can you be a detective story screenwriter without being thoroughly well read in classics such as Encyclopedia Brown? It's just not right. Listen, if you ever need help figuring out which direction stuff in a car goes when you slam on the breaks, or whether you can lift a gold brick with one hand, or how people refered to World War I before there was a World War II, come talk to me. I'll direct you to my friend, Encyclopedia.

Labels: books, TV

2 comments

You are such a nerd! I love it!!!! :D I loved E.B. too!! Except I was a huge Nancy Drew fan first, I think. I hadn't heard of E.B. until I came to ELCA.

By  cmb, at 10:28 PM  

What a bummer about the trip. That is exactly the kind of thing I would do too.

Also, I loved Encyclopedia Brown. I loved Nancy Drew too, but EB was cooler. He didn't have a rich lawyer father or a blue roadster. Just his own smarts.

By  Jen Rouse, at 9:52 AM  

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