2005-08-27 � Frozen on 41

Stuck in the Middle With You

Fifteen days. Holy moly, it's a new record. Fifteen straight days without a post. Wow. So ... um... while I would be more than happy to let you lounge in the deep seated belief that the past fifteen days have been devoted to the careful development and massaging of melaniefordwilson.com, the truth is a very different animal.**

The truth is I've been devoting the past fifteen days to things which are vastly more important. The truth is I've spent the last fifteen days probing the deepest mysteries known to humankind. Mysteries which mainly center on this woman:

I don't know her name. I suspect it is Linda. Or maybe Shirley. Or, alternately, Griselda. Let's face it, it could be anything. Thing is, I don't know anything about her. Nothing at all. Except that she has been frozen indefinitely, mysteriously on channel 41 for days if not weeks and has become a kind of shared household obsession. (that and she has really scary eyebrows).

It all started a couple of nights ago, whilst (whilst!) The Handsome Guy and I were in bed and attempting to shuffle Finny from one side of the bed to the other so that we both might gain some leg room. Johnny Lunchbox ... um...that would be the Handsome Guy. Okay, the cat is out of the bag now... Jack's real name is John. I know, I know. What an exciting name! Really unique. You can see why I've been reluctant to reveal it here, thereby eliminating any possible pretense to anonymity he might have had. You can also see why I feel compelled to tack inventive last names onto the end of it, so as to fancy it up a bit..... where was I? Oh yeah. Okay, so Johnnny Pinecone has this amazing ability to channel surf whilst (whilst!) engaged in almost any other activity you can name, including, but not limited to: dog shuffling, vacumn cleaning, reading, race car driving, scaling large buildings and other monuments of grand stature, lawn mowing and sumo wrestling. As Futurama was at that moment in commercial, he was fully engaged in channel shuttling mode. Well, not fully � at least part of his attention was diverted toward scooching the pooch just three more inches over to my side of the bed.

ANYWAY.... he stopped on channel 41. And remained stopped. For like five minutes.

After a prolonged silence in which we contemplated the Frozen Lady, I ventured:

"um... uh, why are we staring at this lady? Did you break the tv?"

"Nope. I'm just watching the lady on 41," he responded casually.

"uh...(long pause)... why? Why are we watching the lady on 41?"

"Because she is frozen."

"Yes, that would seem to sum it up. She is indeed frozen. She's not moving one single bit. Not one bit. Nope," I agreed without the least hint of sarcasm in my tone.

More silent contemplation of the frozen woman.

"Um, Honey? How long is the Frozen Lady going to be frozen?"

"I dunno," Johnny Erstwhile responds. "She's been frozen for at least a week now."

"A week?!! are you serious? She's been frozen up there for at least a week? On this frame? On this single frame? Really? Really really?!!"

"Yeah. I noticed it last week while I was at work" (Johnny Hollywood works in the television industry and so has a teevee in his office, obstensibly so he can track the network, but given his profound channel shuttling skill... well, let's say he's pretty conversant with what is on every other channel at any time of day) "It's been stuck on this image all week."

"Holy cow! That's just... that's just kinda creepy. She's kind of creepy. What's the deal? Why this picture? What is this channel?"

"I think it's one of those infomercial channels."

"Is it off the air? Don't they have one of those "We are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by" slates? How hard would it be to slap one of those up?"

"I dunno. But I find it kind of reassurring. Look at her. I mean she could be anyone. She's not really young, she's not really old. She's not really attractive, she's not really hideous. She's just there. Frozen."

More contemplation. We are now approaching fifteen solid minutes of staring at the frozen lady.

"I think she looks tense. Look at her, she's all tense. Look at her mouth. Look at her neck muscles. Look at her weird eyebrows. She looks tense. And she looks pissed off. And creepy. This is insane! I keep waiting for her eyes to start shuttling around like one of those haunted paintings with the peepholes."

"hmmm," Johnny Rocket says thoughtfully and then (thankfully) flips over to Jon Stewart.

But first thing the next morning, I had to see if the frozen lady was still there (she was) and for the past couple of days I've been checking on the status of the Frozen Lady, contemplating her rigid countenance. She kinda looks like Melanie Griffith after too many bad facelifts or something, don't you think? She looks kinda unimpressed. She looks like she's smelling something bad. She looks vaguely annoyed. Or maybe seriously annoyed. I mean think about it... how annoyed would you be if you were forced to stand there frozen for all time.

Conversations in the House of Wee keep coming back to her. We have both suddenly become deeply invested in the mystery of the Frozen Lady. We worry about her, we're a bit afraid she's going to suddenly disappear. We're convinced that long term, this prolonged rigour cannot be good for her. We've actually had telephone conversations centering on this very worry.

So imagine my alarm this morning when I went to take a photo of her to post here and she was gone... disappear-ED.. replaced with moving visuals of bulky people on stationary bicycles swilling some kind of protein shake or something.

"Johnny!" I screeched."She's gone, she's gone, the Frozen Lady is gone."

Johnny Wisdom seemed completely unphased. "don't worry, She'll be back."

'Are you sure? Are you really, really sure? I need to get a picture of her! She can't disappear forever until i get a picture of her!"

"I've noticed she seems to go away for awhile, but she always comes back. Trust me."

So, reluctantly, I trusted him. And tripped off to the bathroom to shower. And sure enough... the Frozen Lady came back, at least long enough for Johnny Serene to snap these photos. As I type this, there's some kind of 'mercial for some kind of juicing device on. leading me to conclude that the Frozen Lady gets the weekends off. But I remain ever hopeful that come Monday, she'll be back and steadfast. I'll keep you posted.

** the real, real truth on that front, the design of melaniefordwilson.com, is that although I provided the graphics, someone much smarter, much more web-savvy and much more wonderful than me has been entrusted with the actual design and coding and stuff of that site. And trust me on this, I will soon be posting a lengthy and glowing tribute to her for she is truly one of the most generous and most remarkable people I have ever had the pleasure to "meet" on the Net and I can only hope you too have met people of her incredible caliber in your travels.


Click here to add your comment [ 22 comments so far ]


last | next