By DANNY GALLAGHER

Genetic scientists who have spent more time behind a microscope than they have talking to women in bars have speculated that heredity can play a big role in determining a person's taste, especially when it comes to movies.

Some of you are probably dropping to your knees and praying to the god of your choice that this isn't the case since our loved ones usually have better taste in funeral clothes than they do about movies. Of course, not everyone over the age of 40 is the same, but generally parents and kids have a hard time agreeing on what to rent for a Saturday night.

Just go to your nearby Blockbuster and listen for the barrage of fights between parents and kids over something as simple as choosing a movie. They make the Israelis and the Palestinians look like the Three Stooges.

MOTHER: "I said we're going to rent this movie and that's final!"

SON: "But Mom, I wanna watch this movie!"

MOTHER: "NO! That's the eighteenth time we've watched that movie and I'm not watching it anymore!"

SON: "If you don't rent this, I'll tell Dad about you, the mailman and the guy wearing the Batman costume."

MOTHER: "Oh...well, 'Space Jam' it is then...again."

I realized this sad fact of life while staying at my parent's house over the weekend. My brother and sister still live with them as anyone can tell by the messy rooms they keep, the clothes that get left in the living room and the collection of medieval weaponry Mom keeps in the living room to get them to clean up after themselves.

I was sitting at the computer checking my e-mail hoping that full proof cure for bigger breasts would come through when I found it sitting on the entertainment center right next to the DVD player - an empty case for "Mystery, Alaska."

There was no need to watch the movie. It was bad when my eyes first tried to look away from it in the theaters, and it couldn't have improved in the crystal, clear quality of a DVD player. It takes place in a small Alaskan burg where the only thing the townspeople have to look forward to, other than the day they move to a place where special body parts don't freeze to the doorknob, is the weekend hockey game at the local pond. Through a simple twist of fate, they eventually get to test their blades against a professional hockey team.

The film shows us how giving all we can to overcome the odds will eventually help us rise above our obstacles. But they end up getting creamed like a third grader with asthma facing the Incredible Hulk in a street fight, so the message gets as lost as a needle in a hay bailing factory.

It's billed as a comedy, but the jokes are colder than a dog's nose at the middle of the North Pole. I remember taking my younger brother to see it in the theater since he was a budding hockey fan. We both walked out of the theater two hours later trying to find a pay phone to call an eyes, ears, nose and throat doctor since we were considering donating our eyes to science. He wouldn't take them unless we were dead. We wrestled with that decision for about four hours.

So you can understand my shock when years later, my wandering eyes found the movie sitting in his house. I didn't have to ask him about it. I knew it was his. Mom wouldn't watch because it doesn't make you cry other than the realization you blew $14 to buy it. My sister wouldn't watch it because she'd have to shower for twenty hours straight just to get the stench of rottenness off of her and she spends enough time in their every morning anyway. My Dad wouldn't watch it because his brain works.

No offense, but my brother had to be the buyer. Still, it was not a pleasant thing to find. I rather would have come across a copy of "Grannies Gone Wild" sitting in his DVD collection than this movie.

To be honest, I didn't want to confront him with it because it's hard to fault him for buying it. His love for hockey runs deep. It's like telling a painter to throw his favorite brushes or a boxer to throw out his first pair of gloves or Orson Welles to throw out the chocolate coated turkey leg.

I put the empty case back on the DVD holder, walked out of the room and I never brought it up in front of him just out of simple respect. After all, it's not like I found some illegal substance or one of the "Faces of Death" films hiding from plain sight - it was just a movie.

But the very next day, I had my genes replaced by a surgeon.

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©2004 by Danny Gallagher