The Slice: Looking to youth for answers

I’m planning to head up to the North Side and visit some third-graders later this week.

What should I ask them while I’m in their classroom?

I was thinking of “Is there any way the future can be avoided?”

But perhaps you have some better ideas. Let me hear from you ASAP.

Slice answer: The question dealt with how much brutal predatory reality TV viewers want to see in nature shows.

“When I read your Slice question for (Thursday) I was pretty sure you were referring to the new ‘Planet Earth’ series,” wrote Vicki Heitman. “I was excited to see that another ‘Planet Earth’ series had been produced but after watching it I decided it had way too much violence in it for me. I still have nightmares about baby iguanas being chased by hordes of snakes while they are running to the safety of the ocean. I should have quit watching at that point because every segment was just as violent. No more ‘Planet Earth II’ for me.”

Just wondering: Ever heard two guys in a bar discuss which state bird would defeat another state’s state bird in a fight?

A Slice rant from 1997: This has long been my liturgical calendar pet peeve.

“The idea of celebrating Mardi Gras, of course, is to whoop in up before Ash Wednesday and the start of the period of self-examination and repentance known as Lent. But here’s the thing. From what I’ve observed, the people who jubilate hardest on Fat Tuesday do not tend to go through an agonizing period of spiritual introspection once Lent begins.”

Too bad this isn’t on YouTube: Rick Thain’s one appearance on TV came about after his wife entered him in a Merv Griffin look-alike contest in 1976. Though Rick insists he did not actually resemble the late talk show host, he and a few others wound up on a noon program hosted by KHQ’s Ed Sharman.

He was awarded a camera.

Rural life is different: “The best thing around here is the mud is frozen, for now anyway,” noted a friend up in Stevens County in an email sent the other day.

Slice answer: “If my street name was my last name … people would still not pronounce it correctly.” – Dennis DeMattia (D-ma-T-a, not D-mat-i-a)

Today’s Slice question (for transplants): In what ways has moving to Spokane changed you?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Please name a classic movie featuring a death at Loon Lake and a celebrated 1960s TV show that had an episode set in a place called Peaceful Valley.