W. Do you remember that show from the eighties about an alien girl who could freeze time by touching her fingertips together?
J. You mean Out of this World? Evie was only half-alien. Burt Reynolds was the voice of her father who spoke to her from another planet through a cube in her bedroom [starts singing the theme song].*
W. I always wished I had that power, to freeze the world by touching my fingertips together.
J. Didn't they make a movie about that a couple of years ago, where Jim Carrey or maybe that lovable fat guy from King of Queens had a remote control that could pause the universe?
W. It was Adam Sandler.
J. What would you do, if you could freeze the universe with your fingertips?
W. I think I would just take a nap. For three whole days. . .What about you?
J. I would probably try to get some work done on my screenplay about the two widowed fundamentalists with more than a dozen children each who fall in love and marry to form one of those blended Super Families.
W. Wasn't there a new blended Super Family movie only a couple years ago?
J. Yeah, but the one with Steve Martin only had twelve kids. And the one with Randy Quaid and Rene Russo was eighteen kids. Mine will have---get this---36 kids and hopefully star Kurt Russell and Queen Latifah.
W. Way better.
J. Yeah. We'll call it Home Schooled.
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*To pass time on long car trips, my sister and I used to try to stump each other by singing the theme songs to the various situation comedies we watched obsessively. I can vividly remember being an 11-year-old white boy singing the soulful 227 theme while crossing the Illinois/Wisconsin border.