Bill Paxton is trying very hard to be a serious actor.

In what is presumably an effort to make major nautical disasters more interactive, my local museum now hands out a card to everyone who goes through the Titanic exhibit. This card contains details of a person (helpfully separated by sex), such as name, age, class, and a short backstory. You go through the exhibit, get suitably depressed by the strains of "Never an Absolution" (Oh yes, they use the movie music at the beginning. I'm guessing My Heart Will Go On was too expensive.), and then at the end you get to find your person on a list and discover whether you lived or died.

Good times for the whole family!

I was a 22-year-old woman in first class, so I immediately cast myself as Kate Winslet. I was on a two-year honeymoon that was concluding with this voyage, and then my presumably wealthier-than-God husband and I would go back to being wealthy and not talking to each other. Ah, the kind of marriage I aspire to.

And I lived! I mean, I kind of suspected that as a young woman in first class, because my husband Carlos or whatever his name was (it was long and Spanish- whatever) would have, no doubt, forced me into a lifeboat because he loved me so much that he could not rest until he knew I was safe and told me not to worry, he would be along soon- we'll meet again by morning.

And...then he probably died of hypothermia in the North Atlantic.

But then I get to be a tragic widow who doesn't actually have to have any human contact but no one looks down upon for being alone. Like Not-So-Poor Madeline Astor, the actual 18-year-old who got knocked up by John Jacob and then got out of the whole thing with a baby and no husband. And THE ASTOR MONEY. Gah. Hate.

Anyway, fantastic exhibit. And a very good IMAX, which involved Bill Paxton trying desperately to make us forget about the Spy Kids movies. Oh, it was a good time.