No, this is not a quiz question. This is actually pretty embarrassing, but I am kind of in need of some pop culture help here.
So there was this Scandinavian film that I saw a few years ago. I say ‘Scandinavian’ because, among other things, I do not remember which language it was. What I remember is the storyline – ‘normal’ girl has issues, her boyfriend gets arrested, and she needs to find a job. She gets one at the local comic-book shop, and meets a quirky bunch of people there. The rest of the story follows a somewhat-predictable pattern, where she slowly becomes friends with her weird, RPG-loving co-workers. She hangs out with them, and role-plays with them in the evenings – and this is the cool part, the in-game story (where everyone is a stock RPG character, a warrior, a thief and so on) and the actual, real-world story kind of happen in parallel. It gets more interesting when the girl’s asshole boyfriend escapes from prison and comes to find her.
I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Sure, it was cheesy at times and the fantasy sequences were not multi-million SFX events, but it was fun and made me laugh, and hey, it was set in a comicbook store. What’s not to like?
Now the embarrassing part – this is a movie I’ve recommended to other people before, and when I was trying to recollect the name recently, my mind went completely, totally blank. I know that the name of the film was the name of the comic-book shop, but no, the actual name eludes me. It drove me completely nuts last week. And the worst thing is, forgetting the name of this movie is only a small fragment in the grand scheme of things. I have this sneaking suspicion that I am beginning to lose my memory, slowly. Like my neurons are beginning to realize that they cannot spark and retrieve information when I need them to. It shows in the oddest of instances – like when my boss was talking about River Tam from Serenity, and forgot the name of the actress, and I realized I had too. I knew that she had acted in Dollhouse and The Big Bang Theory, hell, I even knew which episode of TBBT she appeared in, but I. Could. Not. Remember. Her. Name. (Summer Glau. It came to me a few hours later) Then the other day, I could not remember the Cornelia Funke book that I hated, about the father and daughter who bring stories to life. I remembered the Funke book that was not part of this series (The Thief Lord) and I even remembered the other Funke book that I had not read (Dragon Rider), and probably never will because I did not like her writing anyway. I had to Google for the answer, which was Inkheart.
There are three conclusions I draw from this:
- I am getting old. My brain cells realize this and are slowly committing harakiri. I like that mental image, actually. Billions and billions of microscopic katana in my head slicing through axons (axii?) in I-am-too-old-for-this-shit bursts.
- I think I am all set to become an unreliable narrator. I have a valid excuse.
- This space intentionally left blank. I forgot what I had to say. (See? SEE?)