The Fifth Beatle

Memory's an odd thing. Sometimes, I feel like I have a far better memory than most people. For example, I can recall entire scenes from Mel Brooks' sci-fi parody classic Spaceballs verbatim, and I haven't even seen that movie in years. (Also, This is Spinal Tap and The Big Lebowski and, yes, Three Amigos). Also, I'm really good at trivia, because if I hear a small insiginificant factoid, like for example the year in which the Defenstration of Prague occured (1618), I can recall it later.

(NOTE: I did once appear on a trivia game show. "Win Ben Stein's Money." I lost in the second round to a middle-aged female private detective after failing to recall the common protein occuring in apple skins, which I will now always know is "pectin.")

But at other times, I feel like years of pot smoking and mental inactivity has turned my once sponge-like brain into mush. I forget names and faces CONSTANTLY. A month or so ago, I found myself at a party in Redondo Beach where a significantly attractive girl remembered not only having met me at a previous party, but several details about my life (my name, where I worked, where I went to school, people I knew...) I not only had forgotten her name, but had absolutely no idea I had ever previously encountered this woman in my life.

And that's a good-looking girl! You'd think I'd remember that, cause I don't get to talk to them very often.

I'm bringing this up today because I had a weird memory thing happen to me at work today. I happened upon the DVD box for a movie called Backbeat. And all of the sudden, a huge wave of memories came flooding into my head.

You see, I saw this movie Backbeat when it played theatrically, way back in 1994. Man, that's insane...11 years ago...Anyway, I was in Sacramento, competing in the state championships of team debate along with my partner, Ariel. The two of us had somehow managed to compete at the State level, despite having no idea what in the world we were doing. Seriously. Our coach was utterly clueless about high school debating at that level. We were prepared not in the least. The proposal we intended to argue in front of the judges was cribbed largely from a Playboy article my partner had read.

But anyway, while in Sacramento, our entire team decided to go see a movie in a suburban Sacramento neighborhood. Maybe we should have been getting our rest or something for the big tournament, I have no idea, but we went to go see Backbeat, mainly because our couch was a Beatles fan.

Backbeat, you see, is the true story of Stu Sutcliffe, an artist friend of John Lennon who joined the band during their tumultuous days as a bar band in Hamburg, Germany. He barely played an instrument, and wound up leaving the band somewhat acrimoniously, before dying young from a brain tumor.

But the movie is absolutely terrible. It's deathly dull, and takes its subject matter deathly seriously. I mean, we're talking about the early days of the Beatles here. It should be a fun, lively enterprise, but instead it feels slower than "Revolution #9" playing at 33 rpm. (For you kids too young to even recall record players, a 45 of "Revolution #9" on The White Album would sound very slow if played on at 33...oh never mind...)

So my entire speech and debate team, while sitting in this otherwise-empty movie theater watching this stupid movie about The Beatles, an otherwise terrific band I'd like to say, did what anyone would do...we made fun of the movie.

I mean, we really ripped it to shreds, all of us. Just yelled and made a scene. It was great. At the time, I would have sworn that I had never laughed so consistantly. I mean, it was a hugely fun weekend overall, one of the first times I was ever away from home for a sustained period of time in the company of friends and peers. But that movie was the highlight.

And it was an incident that I had completely forgotten about. I'm serious. It had been years since the thought of Backbeat or the circumstances of my seeing it had even occured to me. Is that strange? I suppose not...I guess it's just the nature of memory. As we age, more stuff just gets crammed up in there, and you can't reminisce or even remember all that you would have when you were younger.

So I was just mulling that over all day, and since I haven't blogged in about 48 hours, I figured I'd share.