ATG Syndrome

It started a long time ago ( so long ago I can’t even narrow it down to a year ) my family developed a game we call the Alzheimers Trivia Game. It’s an addictive little game that can get on your nerves, yet compels you to play nonetheless. It’s quite simple. Whenever we’re watching a tv show, or a movie, we’ll see an actor that we know we’ve seen before. It’s a rarity that we can remember the actual actors name. So we start off with “I know that guy…” and begin recalling what show they’d been on. “He was one of the bad guys on RoboCop…and he played Red on that 70’s Show….” If you could name off at least three things they played in, that pretty much counted as if you’d actually remembered the actors name. After all, who’s going to remember Kurtwood Smith’s actual name?

You’ve got to understand, this was back in the days of Blockbuster Video and desk top computers with AOL dial up. Today, we just pull out our phone (if you don’t already have it in your hand, like usual) and google the dude. You have the internet, and a universe of knowledge at your fingertips right there to tell you every little bit part the guy ever played in, his recent roles, his early life, who his kids are, and every piece of hollywood gossip about him, right there in seconds. I still feel defeated when I have to google the answer. It’s cheating.

When my kids were little, we watched a lot of movies. Renting a movie for the weekend was our big thing. Popcorn and a new movie, everyone together in the living room, laughing and crying together. I miss those days sometimes. Sure, you can get a wider range of stuff on Netflicks than Blockbuster has, but it’s different. We’d all head to town to go to the video store. The kid’s would wander around, looking for a cartoon, and we parents would look for something we wanted to watch. It combined the joys of going to the movie theater with the convenience and affordability of just watching television.  And when you rented a movie for two days you felt the need to watch it at least twice. Gotta get your money’s worth. So, we watched a lot of movies.

When you watch a lot of movies, you tend to recognize familiar faces. TV actors that make the break into “cinema” and movie actors that do voice characterizations for film length cartoons are all fair game for Alzeimers Trivia. In fact, any character seen on the little, or big, screen is subject to a “Hey, I know that guy, he’s off of that show…..”  It sounds simple, and it is. It also trains your brain to do it unconsciously. You can’t help it. It’s almost painful if you don’t point out the connection. Ask my wife. She knows how it hurts my head when I don’t do it when the urge arises. After six plus years of marraige, I take great satisfaction when she blurts out, in the middle of a program “that guy was on ER. He was Izzy’s husband that had the brain tumor, then he died. That’s him on The Walking Dead!” Yes, baby. That’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Now you’re playing the game too. I love you so much right now.

It’s like a Stephen King story. It’s a completely innocent kind of game, but it makes watching a show or movie into this erie compulsive thing that you…just…can’t…stop doing. It’s even harder to not do when you actually go to the theater and watch something on the big screen. Try recognizing someone up there on the screen and wondering “do THEY know that’s the guy that played Erin Brokovich’s boss in that Julia Roberts movie? Are THEY aware that he also played the bald dude ( Daddy Warbucks)  in “Annie” in 1982? THAT dude playing LeMarc in Ocean’s Twelve….yeah THAT dude! It’s Albert Finney!” Try whispering that in your spouses ear in the movie theater while she’s trying to watch a movie we paid to get into….. it doesn’t end well.  It’s addictive. And you just…..can’t….stop.

Play on, Dear Reader.

K.S.