Space Chimps

Although my paternal grandfather lived in central West Virginia during my pre-teen years, we weren't that close emotionally, and didn't see each other very often. He was an alright guy, I suppose, but didn't seem that interested in having a long-term relationship with my part of the family.

Distanced though we were, I really enjoyed visiting him at his home in Hico, West Virginia. It wasn't the family get-together that made me enjoy my visits. Nope, there were two other reasons. First, Grandpa had a stack of Playboys out in plain sight on a nightstand, and he never seemed to mind me sneaking a glance or two at the centerfolds. Even when I turned older, and those glances turned into stares, he never asked me to put them down and stop drooling. Secondly, my grandfather's cable system had channels that I didn't get with our basic antennae. It seemed like every Sunday we visited there was a Tarzan marathon on one of the stations. After checking out Miss July, I generally turned on the marathons and settled in.

Tarzan, Jane and Cheeta turned my average Sunday into the best day of the week!

That story, of course, has nothing to do with the movie Space Chimps, other than it was what I started thinking about when I quickly became bored with the really awful animated flick.