• On July 23, 1994, a ninja infiltrated the White House, evading detection by the Secret Service for ten hours before scaling the outside of the building and escaping. What, like you can prove me wrong?

• On July 24, 1910, Reginald “Pants” Dixon began a new exercise regimen, wearing ice skates whenever he wasn’t at the ballpark. The move was supposedly to improve his “balance, agileness, and other such machinations,” and Dixon reaped immediate benefits, winning his next 3 starts while giving up only 4 runs over 22 innings. He abandoned the ice skate routine after accidentally beheading his cat, Chumpers. He sank immediately into a slump, losing his next 7 starts.

Last Friday, a friend of mine asked me to explain how scorekeeping works in baseball. It was one in the morning, and there were four of us left of the twenty or so who had taken over the top floor of the bar earlier that evening. The last few innings of a ballgame were playing out on TV, a Yankees loss at the hands of their inexplicable nemeses, the thrice-renamed California Angels.* He wanted to know how to decipher the letter/number diagrams that are shown when a batter comes to the plate. So I walked him through how the positions are numbered, and how the letters correspond with each type of out. Even after half a dozen beers, I could rattle them off no problem — and even after something like seventeen martinis, he picked it up right away. It’s baseball. The numbers just work.

Numbers in baseball are like the stilts holding up Venice. Without them, the whole thing would sink off the map once and for all. Yeah yeah, there’s a great deal about the game that can’t be quantified, but I’m a nerd and the bandbox poets can pipe down for a second. Baseball is built on numbers, period. With 30 rosters of 25 men playing 162 games per year, that’s an awful damn lot of numbers. If you think there’s a limit to how many ways they can be chewed up and swallowed, there’s a thousand pound page book on my coffee table that says otherwise.

Sadly, there are only so many things for scorekeepers to observe. This creates a problem, because in order for the repertoire of stats to expand, we need a way to count things that cannot be counted. Not to worry, however. This is a problem that can be solved using science.

A bunch of weapons-grade dorks have developed a way to track every single thing happening on the field. Cameras mounted on the light towers isolate the players and the ball, recording their precise movements. The system’s software then analyzes the images and spits out a mountain of information on speed, location, reaction time, fielding range — a wish list of stats that would have been unimaginable as recently as last week. Though still under testing, the system will reportedly generate two million data points per game. That sound you just heard was every fantasy baseball player in America clapping their hands like an eight-year-old girl who just woke up to find a pony sleeping at the foot of her bed.

The aforementioned bunch of dorks work at a company called Sportvision. This happens to be the company that developed the yellow first-down marker for football broadcasts, the third best thing to come out of the 1990s, trailing only Napster and Alyson Hannigan. Goodness only knows how they manage to produce such works, but I’m guessing it involves the use of “space-age polymers.”

Now then. Let’s get a look at some of the stats we can expect from this thing.

• OPBS: On-base plus bat speed.
• OPHF: On-base plus helmet flips.
• OPC: On-base plus coughing.
• OPSPTSPDFS: On-base plus slugging plus throwing speed plus distance from Stonehenge.
• BRT: Bullpen run time, how long it takes a reliever to reach the mound.
• DTMA: Distance traveled for manager argument, the total amount of ground covered from the moment the manager steps out of the dugout to the moment he stomps back.
• VORMPL: Value over regulated median player latitude. No idea what it would mean, but I like saying the acronym. (”He doesn’t hit for power, but he’s a VORMPL guy.”)
• Trajectory calculation for the broken bat shards that will absolutely, definitely impale someone in the near future.
• A breakdown of which peanut vendors have the best arms, based on velocity, distance, and accuracy. The best would be flown in to work the All-Star Game.
• God willing and the creek don’t rise, they’ll be able to link the system with machine gun turrets, to deal with fans who wave at the camera while on their cell phones.

*Los Angeles Angels –> California Angels –> Anaheim Angels –> Los Angeles Angles of Anaheim. Four names without once having so much as changed a street address since they got their own park in 1966. That’s some sort of record, right? Not even fugitives change their name that much.

For anyone who might be in a statistically-inclined mood, listen to ESPN’s Bill Simmons talk to Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey about how stats are evolving in basketball, or check out Radiolab’s examination of random chance, which includes the Sixers and Joe DiMaggio as examples. (But also listen to the follow-up where they correct some of their logic.)

The irony of it is, I’m actually an excellent driver. Never got into an accident, never got pulled over for speeding. Never received so much as a parking ticket that wasn’t issued by campus security, and that one was bullshit. (Well excuse me for parking in the faculty lot ten minutes before 6:00 PM. Go ahead, withhold my transcripts, you philistines. See if I care.)

Hell, I even took a defensive driving class once, so that I could drive a state vehicle during summer theater tours. If you haven’t had the pleasure, here’s everything I learned in those three hours: “Every traffic accident is not only preventable, but specifically your fault.” The workbook posed a series of increasingly ridiculous scenarios, then asked, “Was this incident preventable?” As if you’re going to answer, “Nope. Damn, nothing you could do there. It was just their time, poor souls. The road is a harsh mistress.”

Q: Two vehicles approach an intersection. One is veering erratically. When the vehicles reach the intersection, both are crushed the Almighty Hand of God. Was this incident preventable?
A: Yes. The drivers should not have led lives of sin.

So not only had I never hit another car, I had a special certificate in not hitting other cars. It had calligraphy and everything.

However, as I’ve mentioned before, my need for a car evaporated when I moved to New York. At the time, my New Hampshire-issued driver’s license was set to expire in eighteen months. That’s a year and a half window to transfer an out-of-state license — an eternity, even for a champion procrastinator like myself. In all fairness, I think I can be forgiven for putting it off. I mean come on, if the average suburban DMV is a nightmare, then what kind of Byzantine hellscape awaited me in the catacombs of Manhattan?

That wasn’t the real reason, though. Somehow I got it into my head that transferring one’s license meant taking the road test, and that just wasn’t going to happen. Like, at all. I had never sat behind the wheel of a motor vehicle in New York, and was in no hurry to do so. Judging by the traffic patterns I witnessed in those first few months, it’s technically legal here to murder someone by ramming their car and pushing it into the Hudson.

I let the issue slide. And slide. And ultimately, I did the thing that you should never, ever, ever do.

I let the license expire.

If my life were “The Shawshank Redemption,” right now is when Red would say, “I look back on myself the way I was, stupid kid who did that terrible crime. Wish I could talk sense to him. Tell him how things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone, this old man is all that’s left, and I have to live with that.”

Not having a license was fine for a few years. I kept the expired one in my wallet for those increasingly rare occasions when bouncers carded me, and though they might have squinted at it with their flashlight, they always let me in. For anything official, I used my passport. But those were my mid-20s, when it seemed perfectly reasonable not to have things like a valid I.D., or health insurance. Eventually common sense started to take over. I couldn’t avoid driving a car forever — eventually I’d need to rent one, if nothing else. Besides, driving (on normal roads, where sane people are) is good for the soul, and I didn’t like the idea of giving it up.

One slow afternoon at work, I decided to take a look at the DMV website. A quick peek. Just to see what I was up against. It was in that moment that I caught my first glimpse of how far away Mount Doom really was.

The vicious truth is that if your license has expired, you have to start from scratch. Any previous experience is wiped clean. You begin the process as if you are gazing upon an automobile for the very first time, emerging from a two hundred year slumber to gape at the wondrous machines of the future. Sitting there in my drab little cubicle, the extent of my error dawned on me with a slow and terrible fire. I would have to take the road test. I would have to take the written test. I would have to take driver’s ed. I would have to get a learner’s permit. A goddamn learner’s permit! Apparently I would also have to do trig homework, go to an Honor Society meeting, and find a date for the Junior Prom. (Theme: “A Time To Remember”)

My heart was taking on water, but it sank once and for all when I read the last tidbit. Had I simply brought my old license to the DMV, they would have given me a new one. No questions asked. No road test required.

UP TO A YEAR AFTER ITS EXPIRATION.

No use crying over spilled milk, right? Even in a case like this, where it’s as if the milk adopted me from an orphanage and taught me everything I know about life, love, and happiness. It was time to suck it up, and deal.

The weather must have gone to the DMV that morning too, because it was complete shit outside. It was a Wednesday. I rolled out of bed and grabbed a hoodie, skipping the shower/shave routine in favor of getting this the hell over with. The Q Train rumbled into Atlantic Center, and I made my way up the escalators past Guitar Center, Victoria’s Secret, and Payless. Whatever hopes I had for a targeted, Navy SEAL-like strike were dashed the moment I opened the DMV door. How could so many people have motor vehicle issues? On a Wednesday? On this Wednesday? I glanced around for a sign that said, “If this is all just a misunderstanding, press button to dispense new license.” There was no button. But there were forms to fill out, and hey, forms are fun.

Eventually they corralled me into a room with other new licensees, to await the written exam. Buzzing fluorescents gave the scene a Kafka-like feeling, while the desks looked as though they had been used on the set of “Welcome Back, Kotter.” After sitting there long enough to wonder if I had gotten in the wrong line and was about to be deported, we received our test booklets and were given instructions. The instructions were basically, “Take this test.”

This was one of the questions:

What does this sign mean?

That is not a joke, may the Furies strike me down if I am lying. Christ, it was even multiple choice.

From there, they funneled us into a line for the vision test, just to make sure no one had managed to pass the written test while also being legally blind. Then came a wholly unexpected wrinkle. They pointed to yet another line and said, “Wait there to have your photo taken.” Hang on a second — photo? For a learner’s permit? Isn’t a learner’s permit just a flimsy little piece of cardboard?

“This will also be the photo on your final driver’s license.”

If you’ve ever wondered whether it’s a good idea to have your picture taken after waiting on cramped lines for two hours without having showered, shaved, or dressed like a grown-up with a job, the answer is no, not really. The result really should have landed me on the do-not-fly list, and the fact that I’m still able to travel on commercial airlines makes me worry that the Department of Homeland Security is dangerously understaffed. Go ahead, gawk if you must.

Continued on page 2

“It is wholly fitting that we should celebrate July 4th, 1776. It is the day when the rest of the world’s nations dropped their playthings and said, ‘Uh-oh, Dad’s home.’”
-George S. Patton, 1943

“America is a train. A train that steams mightily along its tracks, picking up passengers from all the cities and towns on its route. There’s room for everyone, and the destination is a better tomorrow. But what is the biggest threat to a train? Indians. I think you can see where I’m going with this.”
-Andrew Jackson, 1835

“The Ancient Greeks invented democracy, but it was the Americans who figured out how to fill it with melted cheese.”
-Julia Child, 1972

“America. America, America. Strange that they named it after Amerigo Vespucci’s first name. A little informal, don’t you find? I should think they would have called it Vespuca. How about that, hm? The United States of Vespuca?”
-Winston Churchill, age 82, on the phone with John F. Kennedy, October 1962

“Yeah, that’s uh … gosh, we’re kind of busy here Winston, can I call you back?”
-John F. Kennedy, October 1962, who was dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis at the time

“People talk about this country as if it’s carved in stone. It’s not, man. It changes. It’s like a beautiful butterfly that transforms into a swan and flies away into the sky! And then the sky transforms into a thousand rainbows, whose colors sound like different notes on a xylophone. Then the rainbows shift, and become every person in this room, only our hands are rakes, and each time we touch someone we can see their bones. I think I need to lie down.”
-Timothy Leary, 1966

“A great day.”
-Abraham Lincoln, July 4, 1863 (entire text of speech, and the only thing he said all week)

“Always Vigilant, From Sea To Shining [REDACTED]”
-Department of Homeland Security, official seal

“Serving in the United States Army has been the greatest honor of my life, and I hope that the nation will continue to stand strong in the face of hey quick can you help me untie this?”
-Colonel Thaddeus McKitrick, 1829, during his retirement ceremony (he had somehow gotten his foot tangled in his horse’s bridle, and the horse had begun to walk away)

“Freedom is free, though they really screw you on the shipping & handling.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt, 1954

The aforementioned replacement arrived last Saturday. Without getting into too much detail, I will say that it is a phone that is full of fance and also indexes high on the schmance scale. It is an integrated device, the pinnacle of modern convergence. The instant I got home, the phone demanded I make it pancakes. It also shoots lasers — ptew ptew!

Anyway, the jump from Phone of Tinyness to Phone of Fance & Schmance meant that I couldn’t just port over my SIM card. (In case you’ve never dealt with one, the SIM card is the half-inch piece of plastic under your cell phone’s battery that contains your phone number and broadcasts your thoughts to the NSA.) I had to browse through the old phone and type all of my contact numbers into the new one. While doing so, I noticed three things.

First of all, if you gave me your number within the last five years, I have no idea what it is. Numbers go into the phone and that’s that. Second of all, I apparently befriended someone named “Laura” at some point. And third is the reason I brought this whole thing up.

Have we outgrown the area code?

Among my contacts, I counted nearly a dozen people who had moved to another city, but kept their cell phone number. That used to bug the crap out of me back when I was on a landline, and paying to call San Francisco every time I needed to ask my roommate why the cat was in the freezer again. (That’s right Bob, you monster, I’m talking to you.) But I ditched my landline the instant I got a cell phone, and haven’t cared since. About the long distance charges, not the cat. The cat’s fine. (No thanks to Bob.)

The thing is, when you’re on a cell phone, the area code is just three more numbers to dial. You don’t give them a moment’s thought. They’re no different from the “exchange,” the three-digit prefix. You just dial them and move on. Hell, a number’s exchange is also based on location, but who even knows that anymore? People are cutting their landlines by the million, and every curly cord lost is another area code set free to wander the land. They dot faraway cities like out-of-town baseball caps. That may well be the area code’s final legacy, to serve as a badge for the transplant’s displaced sense of local pride. “512? I didn’t know you were from Austin. Ever eat at Kerbey Lane?”

The area code’s fade to black, of course, will not happen overnight. It will be as long and lingering a death as anything we have seen in a made-for-Lifetime movie. More and more will drift out of their orbits, until eventually it will seem as though someone shook a snowglobe. They won’t be area codes anymore. They’ll just be codes.

But I’ll say this much, I intend to keep mine as long as I can. Decades from now, when I’ve made my fortune and retired to the countryside, I’ll fill out my phone number on some form, and the clerk will think to himself — Hey look, 718. But hang on, did he live in Brooklyn or Queens … ?

For a larger image, click here.

ENERGY

The world ran on fossil fuels for centuries, but now looks elsewhere to shoulder the load. Renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydro, temperate fusion, and chaos-fire now make up half of all energy consumption. Most remaining fossil fuels are comprised of “überdiesel,” an amalgam of traditional diesel, natural gas, and hydrogenated corn syrup. Majestic expanses of solar arrays and windmill forests are a common sight. The 300-meter Arecibo Radio Telescope now stands atop the Chrysler Building to act as a solar reflector, the telescope itself having been replaced by a two-inch plate of selenium with eight times the dish’s radio capacity. Japan generates most of its electricity from volcanoes, which turns out to be even more bad-ass than it sounds. Natural lighting is more prevalent than ever with the development of building materials that behave like Transitions® Lenses. Flexible solar panels can be found on on hats, backpacks, strollers, pet clothing etc., with USB adapters to charge electronic devices on the go. Not all parts of the world are as ready to embrace renewable energy sources — China has built four coal plants, each the size of Toronto.

TRANSPORTATION

Automobiles are alive and well, though most are more modestly sized than some of their 20th century ancestors. Motorists in dense metropolitan areas favor smaller two- and three-person cars, which can be linked together for more efficient propulsion. A new breed of carpooling emerges as neighbors join four and five cars at a time on their way to work. Calling “shotgun” now means being the lead car — an archaic term, as shotguns were long ago replaced by arc-plasma repeaters. The greatest advancement in transport has come from matter teleportation. The technology still has a ways to go, and can only be used safely on inanimate solids. No liquids or gases, and certainly no organisms. However, international shipping has undergone a revolution. Cargo vessels returned to port by the dozen, trucks came off the road by the hundred. Thousands of truck drivers lost their jobs, but were re-tasked either to operate transporter units, or to clean stray animals out of the solar arrays and windmill forests. They still wear leg-mounted devices to urinate freely.

A vocal minority among our “tank of thinkers” feel that we are morally (perhaps even legally) obligated to mention jet packs. There are none. Get over it.

COMMUNICATIONS

The airwaves crackle with cellular frequencies, joining distant corners of the Earth in conversation. They literally crackle, many people have been needlessly killed. Communicator devices are no thicker than a few sticks of gum and weigh only a few ounces, yet each has the processing capability of five Cray supercomputers. Location- and activity-aware applications keep all of your friends and family up to date with a real-time feed of your status, whether they want to know or not. Tiny microchips embedded in contact lenses let you control your communicator via eye movements. Everyone you meet can be added or blocked on your list of social contacts by blinking one or both eyes, giving rise to such lingo as, “I thought she was into me, but she gave me the full blink.” Nerds are used to the full blink, jocks not so much. Each household is networked from top to bottom. Homeowners have 24-hour access from anywhere in the world, and can start the laundry, get a pot of coffee going, check what’s in the fridge, or activate their workerbot. Workerbots hardly ever go on murderous rampages anymore.

MEDICINE

Physicians now diagnose diseases prior to their contraction by a statistical algorithm that factors vital signs, environmental factors, and genetic predisposition. Patients learn of their impending illness by teleported mail, then receive medicine and lollipops. Freed from 99% of patient contact, doctors seldom wear pants. For limb and organ replacement, there are two options. Fully organic limbs are grown in “arm farms,” made possible by synthetic stem cells. Meanwhile, cybernetic implants offer a more stylish, high-end alternative. The cyberlimbs come with special features and abilities, such as mood alteration fields, a place to put your keys, or a GAU-8 Avenger. The result is that the affluent and trendy have brand name cybernetics, while low- and middle-class workers — many of whom lost their limbs operating matter teleporters — have generic cell-grown replacements that don’t always resemble the recipient. Wearing the latest in cybernetics is known as “dropping tech.” Still no cure for the common cold, though.

ENTERTAINMENT

With the television broadcast system taken completely offline to free up frequencies for controlling the swarm of giant weaponized bees (a division of the Coast Guard), all entertainment is delivered through the Internet. The only thing distinguishing TV shows from movies or webisodes is length. Many popular programs are less than three seconds long. Full-experience 3D technology allows anyone to experience any performance live. Artists from around the world reach audiences in the tens of thousands, who are represented at the physical venue by holograms resembling the crowds in “Guitar Hero.” Sports teams enjoy the same exposure, with the intriguing side-effect of allegiances that are no longer strictly tied to geography. A random sports fan from Anytown USA might follow the Houston Rockets for basketball, the Chunichi Dragons for baseball, the Miami Dolphins for American football, FC Barcelona for world football, and Dynamo Moscow for hockey. Anytown USA, of course, being the state-less district established to house irradiated “sorrowgazers” from the Uranium Wars of the ’30s. Advertising is delivered in pill form. Reality programming remains staggeringly popular, especially shows about antiquing.

SPACE

Tourists regularly make trips to the International Space Station Mark II. ISS Mark II, funded by a global tax on heroin, has a hotel and casino, featuring new zero-gravity betting games like Dual-Axis Craps and Endless Twirling. There is a mining settlement on the Moon with a population of around thirty. All United Nations members take turns sending their best and brightest for 18-month shifts. This is seen as a privilege or a sentence, depending on the country. A coalition of the US, South Korea, and the EU-5 maintain an outpost on Mars operated by robots. The robots perform the exact same tasks as the astronauts on the Moon, though they send messages to the lunar colony along the lines of “Hey, can you build us some more robots? There’s some really cool shit going on out here and we could use an extra pair of hands” and “Good morning! We’re on Mars and you’re not.”

LIFE IN GENERAL

Global warming has slowed but not yet abated, save for the Ice Age of 2028 that meteorologists agree was just a statistical anomaly. Military conflicts became more and more urban, culminating in a mid-scale war that was fought entirely indoors. A sentient computer made tabloid headlines by giving birth to quintuplets. Paper money still exists, but changes value depending on how much available funds you have in your account. Children are paired with a genetically engineered companion animal, which protects them and serves as a tutor. Venice has been rescued from its slow descent into the sea and sits upon a new system of stilts, putting it at the same altitude as Denver. Parts of California fall into the Pacific Ocean once per year, as decided by popular vote among the other 49 states. There have probably been no alien attacks, but don’t hold us to that.

• On June 11, 1952, Raytheon announced the development of a weaponized turkey sandwich. The prototype, GX-113, was the result of a decade’s worth of research, beating the Soviets’ sandwich program by nearly two years. The GX-113 featured aggressive levels of toasting and deli-style mustard, as well as a lettuce crispness factor (LCF) of 11.5 — unheard of at the time. The sandwich had a blast radius of 10 meters, with an 95% kill rate within 25 meters. Turkey was the first luncheon meat to be effectively weaponized. The British had promising results with a hot open-faced sandwich as early as 1945, but its limited range ultimately shelved the device.

• On June 13, 1903, Reginald “Pants” Dixon faced Julian “Shrap” McGuiness in both ends of a double-header, and one of baseball’s great rivalries was born. Both pitchers went the distance in each game, with McGuiness giving up a total of 3 runs, and Dixon 47.

You MUST put all recyclables into the appropriately marked bins. The GREEN BINS are for paper and cardboard. The BLUE BINS are for glass and metals. The RED BINS are for plastic, not including plastic bags, which go in the YELLOW BINS. The ORANGE BINS are for anything corrugated, regardless of the material. Everything else goes in the BROWN BINS. The GRAY BINS are to remain empty at all times. The city requires all recyclables to be disposed in sealed bags that are clear or tinted to match the corresponding bin. If you think the Department of Sanitation does not notice, YOU HAVE ANOTHER THING COMING. They will fine Mrs. Stavropoulos, and then Mrs. Stavropoulos will make an angry phone call to me. And then I will knock on your door.

Hibachis are NOT ALLOWED on the fire escapes. Also, please do not hold barbeques, cookouts, spit-roasts, kelp-bakes, or ANY FORM of open-fire cooking event in the lobby. We have an ample backyard area. Use it. There is a sign-up sheet by the mailboxes, please request blocks of time in 15-minute increments. And clean up your ashes afterward, it’s starting to look like the Sea of Tranquility back there.

The laundry machines are ONLY for the washing of clothes and other common household textiles (curtains, blankets, etc). For every item you plan to wash, ask yourself three questions. A) Is it jagged, heavy, or making a sound? B) Is it alive? C) If someone were to ask what it is, would I avoid the question? If the answer is yes, DO NOT put it in the washing machine. Non-residents are not allowed to use the laundry room under any circumstances. Your buddies down the street don’t pay for the electricity and hot water, Mrs. Stavropoulos does. It’s not her fault the Sparkle Plenty laundromat closed down.

Mailbox etiquette is important. When checking your mail, please do so swiftly. DO NOT loiter by the mailboxes. DO NOT glance at other residents’ mail. DO NOT attempt to open a mailbox that is not yours. DO NOT ask the mail carrier cryptic questions about another resident’s mail. DO NOT pose as another resident and try to trick the mail carrier to give you their mail. If a package is too large to fit in your mailbox, I am happy to sign for it if I am available. If not, you’re just going to have to bring the little slip to the post office. Sulking will not help.

For the last time: Yes, I am aware of the crocodile on the 6th floor.

Rent must be paid ON THE FIRST OF EVERY MONTH. Send payments to Mrs. Stavropoulos at the address on your lease. DO NOT give checks to me, or slide them under my door. I cannot accept bartering arrangements, merchandise, services, favors, special considerations, low-interest financing offers, etc in lieu of rent. Rent is rent. And it goes to Mrs. Stavropoulos.

PLEASE be considerate of your neighbors when it comes to the noise level in the building. You may love music, and I may love music, but the music that you love may not be the music that I love, and I may not be in the mood to hear it, and it may be later in the day than you think, and plus I might have a migraine. The same goes for parties or ALL social gatherings. Inviting your neighbors does not somehow make you immune to noise complaints, especially when you only ask to be polite and know damn well they won’t show up.

No one is allowed on the roof after 9:00 PM — and whoever keeps bringing kerosene up there to make burning pentragrams, kindly knock it off.

There has been some confusion as to which issues are handled by me, and which are handled by Carlos. Hopefully this will clear it up:

Please DO NOT trouble Carlos with items that are not in his jurisdiction — he is very old and gets tired easily.

Finally, on those rare occasions when Mrs. Stavropoulos is on the premises, avoid speaking to her. If you have any questions about the building or your lease, direct them to me, NOT HER. Small-talk will not be reciprocated. DO NOT MAKE DIRECT EYE CONTACT.

Thank you for your cooperation, and have a pleasant day.

-The Super (Apt. 7F)

The page-turner, the blockbuster, the serial drama that sends us diving for the DVR — they sink their hooks into our fleshiest bits, and keep piercing until they hit daylight on the other side. Having witnessed my Dad get a fishing lure caught in his hand once, I can say with authority that those hooks don’t come out easily, no sir.

What is it about pop-fiction that draws us in? Clearly there’s no proven formula, given how much utter crap litters the landscape. However, one particular tactic that seems to help is the “Wait, is that real?” factor. If the audience thinks there might be a sprinkling of truth in the premise, the hooks will often sink just a little bit deeper. Nobody did this better than Michael Crichton — I didn’t actually realize “The Andromeda Strain” was a novel until about a quarter of the way through. “The Blair Witch Project” pulled millions into the theater by passing itself off as real. Sprinkle in just enough facts, and you’ve got ‘em. It’s a trick that’s earned Dan Brown more money than General Motors.

I bring this up because nature just bounced Hollywood an easy layup. The deepest lake in the world has sprouted mysterious ice circles, that no one noticed until the International Space Station flew overhead. The lake in question is Lake Baikal, and its resume is tailor-made for the setting of pop-fiction’s next blockbuster.

• It’s the deepest lake in the world, reaching more than a mile into the Earth.
• It’s also the largest freshwater lake by volume.
• It’s in Siberia, a foreboding and distant land.
• It’s near Irkutsk, which is one of the regions on a “Risk” game board, so hey, bonus there.
• To top it off, it’s among the oldest lakes anywhere, with waters that have been churning for 25 million years.

Into this setting comes a pair of unexplained circles melting through the lake’s surface. Oh sure, there’s more than likely a logical, fascinating explanation for the phenomena. But until geologists figure it out, this is prime real estate. Hollywood, I’ll give you five ways to use it. Let me know where to pick up my check.

One) The circles are the final warning of an invasion. Aliens have been hiding in Lake Baikal ever since the Tunguska event of 1908, a massive meteoric explosion that occurred not far to the north. A cagey scientist who’s separated from his wife is the first to figure it out, and has to argue his way up the chain of command. No one in the military believes him except a reckless fighter pilot and a sexy cryptographer/hacker. Together they discover the aliens’ master plot, but not before the aliens burst from below the ice and begin the invasion. The cagey scientist reconciles with his estranged wife before sacrificing himself to save the day. The pilot and the hacker, presumed dead, ride a snowmobile off into the sunset, to start a new life together.

Two) The circles are a sign that something has gone terribly wrong within the Earth’s core. The military’s top unit investigates the lake, only to be wiped out by a torrent of lava. To get the job done, they need the best of the best. They seek out a cagey scientist who’s separated from his wife, and tell him to put together a team of misfits to travel through the lake’s floor and save the planet. The team includes an awkward nerd, a crazy Australian, a grizzled old drunk, a brunette bombshell who can fix any engine, a zen-like martial arts master, a Hispanic demolitions expert from the Bronx, his younger brother, and the cagey scientist’s dog. The Australian banters with the martial-arts guy, the drunk kicks booze, the nerd gets the brunette, one of the brothers dies, the scientist reconciles with his estranged wife before sacrificing himself to save the day. Not so much as a hair on the dog’s head is harmed.

Three) The circles are a nexus of paranormal activity. At the intersection of coincidence and fate, a group of strangers with diverse backgrounds encounter one another on the shores of the lake. They must rely on one another to survive, but don’t know who to trust. Alliances form and are shattered. Each week, another piece of the puzzle falls into place … what are the circles? Who is controlling them? Why can they hear the thoughts of an expedition that perished there in the 1850s? And above all, who is “The Czarina?” The more we learn of these characters, the more they become blurry shades of gray on the black and white scale of morality. Also, one of them stutters.

Four) The circles are hidden by a secret order of knights. A young girl from a broken home discovers that she is one of them, and must leave her life behind to train in their mystic ways. The circles must be protected from the evil intentions of the Red Mark, a faction of deadly assassins that splintered off from the knights hundreds of years ago. The girl is gifted, but repeatedly defies the elders by using modern technology to help solve mysteries. Each book takes her to a different locale, where other ice circles are forming. Africa, South America, London, Berlin, Tokyo — she travels the world, but inside she is still the girl from the broken home. The series is pre-planned at eight books; the sixth one turns out way too long.

Five) The circles are opposite ends of a powerful battle ground. Their appearance heralds the emergence of an ancient race of super-beings. Robots, or sentient dinosaurs, or maybe animal-people that ride futuristic airbikes. Something collectible, which may or may not be tied to an established franchise cherished by Gen Xers in their youth. The super-beings have good guys and bad guys, who must fight. The bad guys seek only chaos and destruction, while the good guys have the help of four ethnically mixed children who are best friends. The military is powerless to intervene. One of the friends betrays them because the bad guys have promised him glory, but in the end he does the right thing. For some reason the lake is in America and everyone involved is American, even though the fate of the entire world is in the balance.