"Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives:" Universes for everyone (now you're really living)

"Nova's" "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" follows Mark Oliver Everett - better known as E, the leader of the cult alternative rock band the Eels - as he rummages through the past of his late father Hugh, who was a withdrawn and uncommunicative man ignoring an overall unhappy family. But Hugh was also a brilliant quantum physicist whose game-changing theory of Parallel Universes is gaining respect a quarter of a century after his death.

The Parallel Universes theory is a mind-bender, wondering that since experiments have suggested that atoms can be in two different places at the same time, and since we're made of atoms, can we be in two places at the same time, too? Every time we make a decision to do one thing over another - for example, if you keep reading this blog rather than clicking to go on to another page - you've created another universe, one where you stay here and one where you click away. Same when you have a hamburger for lunch rather than crab cakes, whether you decide to kill your arch-nemesis or simply maim him, and so on. (The iPod's shuffle feature has no doubt resulted in an exponentially larger proliferation of parallel universes.)

So there are alternate versions of all of us out there somewhere in that vast ∞, and maybe one or two of those versions is actually happy and well-adjusted (hey, it could happen).

(Apparently, in every universe, E enjoys himself a stogie.)

Writer/producer Louise Lockwood has created a documentary that's fairly poignant and poetic for a film about quantum physics, and E himself - who self-deprecatingly notes that he was a lousy science and math student in school - serves as a droll, low-key host as he tries to make sense of his father's theory for us, and as he discovers a newfound respect for his dad, whose theory was rejected for most of his life. My one complaint is that they've slice-and-diced the Eels' music to shreds here, so viewers won't get a sense of just how good it really is.

In keeping with this notion of parallel universes, I've contacted other Mayors of Television to see how they covered this documentary.

Universe #37

In "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives," orgy enthusiast Mark Oliver Everett tests his father's theory that the world is divided into two groups of people - those you sleep with and those you don't - unless you sleep with everyone, at which point, there's only one universe.

Universe #26,457,395,598,707,095,001

Multiplatinum recording artist E, whose global hit "Who Let the Dogs Out" is the planet's most popular ditty, decides in "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" that he is just too successful and happy to consider other worlds in which he's less successful, so he just spends the hour rocking out.

Universe π

Bon vivant Mark Orville Redenbacher, creator of the microwavable-popcorn franchise, discovers in "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" a wormhole exists within each microwave oven and tries to send his dog to a parallel universe, but learns why you should never put your pet in a microwave.

Universe 8.73 X 10¢/628™

Acclaimed domestic terrorist E, in "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives," discovers that in other universes, he doesn't have such a frou-frou dog.

Universe £§¶•-•ß∂ƒ≈√∞¶¢-ˆ¨†

Hey, me from a parallel dimension - I got your note, and you betcha I'd help out, but I haven't seen the show you mention. President Palin has outlawed all programmin' that features book-learnin', by golly!

- "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives:" 8 p.m. Tuesday, PBS (KCET Channel 28).