sleepnever.com

Some thoughts on “Einstein,” the History Channel’s flashy, awesome Einstein documentary that aired last night.

Einstein was a loser, an embarrassment to his father, but by the end of the two hours… SPOILER ALERT!

Einstein turns out to be FUCKING EINSTEIN!

Not a bad turn of events for a one-time career Swiss patent clerk, who, when not wooing the ladies with his violin and wild hair, spent much of his time gazing out his office window at clocks and imaginary people and scratching away at a few letters nobody gave a shit about at the time, but that would one day change the face of modern science.

Sure I’ve read the books, but the books don’t have crazy war and space footage and the type of dope score that’s usually wasted on something like the final “get on the scale” scene of “The Biggest Loser.”

I cheered when they introduced “Special Theory of Relativity,” but by the time they reached his general theory, I was rocking on the edge of my seat. Failure, deception, incest, tales of thieves in the night… Einstein’s life played more like an E! True Hollywood story than a typical history documentary. Awesome.

A couple of fun facts:

Einstein tried to dump his first wife Mileva and when she wouldn’t leave, he bought her off at the price of a Nobel Prize in Physics knowing he would eventually win.

Einstein married his fat cousin Elsa and Mileva bought a couple of apartment buildings with the Nobel Prize money Einstein eventually won.

In order for Einstein to prove his General Theory of Relativity, he needed to get a snapshot of a solar eclipse and show that the positions of stars appeared to change as their light warped around the obscured sun. Sounds simple enough, but the shit took years, and was interrupted by the first world war, the falling of empires, shitty photographers, clouds, and one astrologer/shooter being held as a POW by the Russians.

But by the time Einstein proved his General Relativity Jam, he was an international superstar. Maybe not as famous as let’s say “”Twilight”/trampling at the mall” famous, but big for way back then.

When I was in high school I couldn’t give a shit less about making it through a moment let alone studying history, but now I spend my life savings to go visit Roman ruins and ancient Hittite cave cities. And sure I’m getting older and closer to being, in a sense, history myself, but I’m going to say it was due, at least in part, to my many afternoons spent high and hung over watching cable.

Fuck the old man with the mothball-scented sweater and the comb-over banging on the broken slide projector while he tells us how important everything is that we’re about to see.

The kids want blood, romance, discovery, fucking and death, and right now History Channel’s got it all.