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The air is crisp and cool; Christmas music blares throughout the entire free world  and even France. These are the signals that a favorite time of the year is upon us, once again: PBS Pledge Week.

Every year, I can hardly wait to see what new scheme the PBS people will try to guilt us into coughing up unholy amounts of cash so they can sponsor even more Doo-Wop Reunions and also televise stuff like the Bowel Cleansing Yoga-Diet Dance Method over and over again.

A few years ago, during Pledge Week, PBS went about shaking us down by digging up the bodies of a bunch of old Rock ‘n’ Roll stars and forcing them onstage to give one last performance. More recently, they used blackmail and got Ken Burns to tell anybody who’d listen, how everybody in the country managed to get all liquored up during the period called Prohibition[1]. Essentially, through the Freedom of Information Act, Ken obtained never before shown secret government film footage of our parents and grandparents being boozers, flappers and dancing the Black Bottom. (My Great Aunt, Baptista Cantrell,  a woman who thought it sinful to even think about having fun, would not be amused with Ken. If she were alive today, I can visualize her ‘having a talk’ with Ken  about how it’s not nice to air dirty laundry in public[2].  Or she would be asking him for equal time in order to tell her side of the story.)

As a result of his Prohibition program –and Ken very likely being put on punishment by his parents– PBS resorted to  the science angle for this year’s  Pledge Week.

The Fabric of the Cosmos  may be the most intriguing PBS Pledge Week program ever.

Get this: according to Brian Greene, a Professor of Physics at Columbia University and the host of the series, there is a better than even money chance that we live, not in a universe, but rather, in a ‘multiverse’. There is more than one universe, Greene and his scientist buddies say–one that you can see and other that you can’t see even if you have the visual acuity of Superman or the eyesight of a health department inspector looking for germs in a greasy spoon.

According to Greene, who for all the world appears to be sober, there may be interstellar portals, roughly akin to porta-potties that the inhabitants of the various individual universes within the multiverse use to go back and forth. In other words, we are living in something like an interstellar multiplex cinema   where the theaters are all connected by a giant lobby portal. The interstellar lobby allows you to sneak into the X-rated universe when the usher’s back is turned  after stopping by the interstellar concession counter to buy some overpriced interstellar Milk Duds.

What’s more, Brian says there’s very likely a parallel universe in which there is someone who looks and acts more or less like each and every one of us except for the fact that they wear goatees or have big hair. So somewhere else in the multiverse there is say, a goateed Ken Burns with an even worse haircut, a goateed bunch of Republican Presidential candidates debating ad nauseaum; another bunch of goateed, big hair Kardashians running amuck, and even worse, a goateed, big haired Gloria Allred.

Good grief!

None of this multiverse stuff has been scientifically proven yet because proving it involves some really god-awful long equations involving higher mathematics such as long division, Algebra I, and even worse, fractions. But Greene and his buddies say they are working on it, though it will take another hundred years to actually prove their point.  (A hundred years!? Sounds like a great job creation scam in a bad economy, if there ever was one.)

Of course, there other scientists, likely all working for TV networks other than PBS, who don’t believe a word of any of it. They call all of this “one big day dream”, faulty physics  and essentially say that Greene and his crowd are just seeing multiple universes  as a result of too much to drink at the PBS company picnic.

**********

Call me a ‘Daydream Believer’, but I believe what Brian Greene and his buddies say. Every word of it. In fact, I’ve believed it since I was a child.

The multiverse-identical twin–interstellar porta-potty stuff explains crop circles and the Bermuda Triangle as well as the loss of a lot of my stuff over the years: car keys, cell phones, golf clubs, coats, hats, etc.  Specifically, I’ve always figured that ‘Alternative Will’ in one of those parallel universes is a notorious prankster, who regularly saunters over  into our universe and hides things from me when the interstellar multiverse movie usher has his back turned.

I’m just sorry Mr. Brian Greene didn’t come up with the multiverse stuff years ago. It could have kept me out of a lot of hot water when I was growing up. These include the matter of my neighbor’s broken window or  the time  when I was nine and our telephone somehow ended up in a million pieces.

Another reason that I am a believer is that multiverse concept also helps tremendously with the concept of ‘Plausible Deniability’, an excellent thing to have when one does not live alone. (Plausible Deniability is the reason that kids really want dogs for god sakes!):

“Will, who ate up all the pickles in the middle of the night?  There was a whole jar of gherkins in the refrigerator last night. I just bought it new on yesterday?”

“Well, Mom, it wasn’t me!!!!! You know, you’re always blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong around here.”

“Who was it then, mister? We are the only ones living here and I didn’t eat ‘em. And don’t you dare blame it on the dog this time, young man.  I know for a fact that Alibi doesn’t even like pickles…pickles make him itch.”

“Mom, I’m innocent. It was that Alternative Will… from the parallel universe…the Will  with the goatee. I’ m pretty sure that  our refrigerator doubles as one of those interstellar po…po…po…portals.”

The parallel universe excuse is an excellent replacement for the ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse or the neoclassic “I’ve got a bad back and can’t help you move to your new apartment’ excuse.

Just think of the possibilities.

********

In using the new multiverse genre of excuses to get out of stuff, I’d better hurry though. Scientists, even the ones at PBS, are always changing their minds about one thing or another. One minute spinach is good for you, the next minute it’s the worse stuff ever invented. One minute we live in a multiverse, the next minute, you never even existed.

Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t get rid of my dog just yet, either. Even now, at my age, there’s still stuff that I get blamed for by ‘the management’.

In the meantime, I’ll wait to see what PBS will come up with for Pledge Week next year.

Maybe Ken Burns will  be off punishment by then.

Will Cantrell

Will Cantrell (a pseudonym) is a humorist, author, and speechwriter.  He is a graduate of Georgia Tech and a former banker. The legend is that at an early age he wandered South, got lost and, like most males, was loathe to ask anyone for directions. He was recently sighted somewhere close to I-285, still lost and saying that he was trying to “...write his way home.” Of course, there are a lot of people who suspect that “Cantrell ain't wrapped too tight” but hope that he keeps writing about his experiences as he finds his way back to the main highway.

Will has recently completed a first book entitled "The Color Fuqua — a mostly true collection of modern tall tales." He is currently involved in writing a second book, "Nouns and Other Issues."

Below, is what one recent editor said about him:

Will Cantrell has issues...and ideas... and questions---big ones---- and they often keep him up at night. Cell phones, fast food restaurants, intrepid weathermen, egg yolks, volcanoes, color blindness, election polls, ketchup and “…the hell why doesn't Martha Stewart teach people something useful like how to make their own gasoline instead of how to make lemonade.”  These are just a few of the things that trouble him. He's also puzzled about why people talking loudly on cell phones ALWAYS manage to sit next to him on the bus … as well as everywhere else. Will’s got a host of other issues, too numerous to list here. And while all of this is unlucky for him, it’s fortunate for us because he writes about them all in that hilarious way that is only Cantrell’s.

Lucky for us, Will's issues are the same ones that vex the rest of us too. And Cantrell “comes with solutions.” Be warned though, Will Cantrell does not think like you and me.  Through Will's quirky way of viewing the world, and everything in it, he's come up with different kinds of solutions for life's issues and problems. Or, as Cantrell says, he has  “…different problems for life's solutions.”

Now that you've been warned, be prepared to be delighted as you follow Will Cantrell's romp through life and his search for answers to the questions that baffle, befuddle and puzzle us all.

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