Books I've Never Read & Movies I've Never Seen

There's a super-sweet boss battle in the PSOne action-stealth game METAL GEAR SOLID where this crazy ninja starts tell you what games you like to play.

He's not talking to Solid Snake (the character you play), he speaks directly to "you" (the player). This freaked a lot of people out back in 1998 but it wasn't a Jedi mind-trick--the game simply read your memory card for saved game files.

And do you know what? I've never played METAL GEAR SOLID.

So how do I know about this? Well, as it turns out--your old pal Jason is chock full of such "information." Somehow (read: through a sad, wasted life) I have accumulated a vast memory bank plot details, character names, song titles, and game levels FOR books/movies/albums/games that I have never read/seen/heard/played.

When I meet people, the subject of books or music will come up in the natural course of conversation. Invariably this thing happens where I say "Have you heard of ____?" and whomever will say "Yeah, have you heard of _______?"

And 99.999% I will lie and say "Hell yeah I've heard of _________!!!" And then I will con this person with my amazing memory bank of useless information. I will con them into believing that I have: 1. read the book they are talking about, 2. Seen the film they are referencing, 3. Heard the band/song they're asking me about, or 4. Played (and finished) the game we're chatting about.

I am a liar. I am a conman.

There's no reason to lie, I'm not gaining anything from saying things like "JASON TAKES MANHATTAN is a terrible horror movie...for crying out loud--it take him 2/3 of the film to GET TO MANHATTAN."

I mean, it is true...JASON TAKES MANHATTAN is a terrible entry in a beloved horror franchise AND it DOES take the titular masked killer over an hour to get to the city.

But you know what? I've never seen a single FRIDAY THE 13th movie. I'm not a fan of really gory movies and growing up people gave me shit about my name because of those damn movies. But somewhere along the line I picked up that little tidbit about JASON TAKES MANHATTAN. And you know what? In casual conversation most people would buy that I've seen, if not all, but most of the films in that series. I can talk about the "surprise" shock-ending of the first FRIDAY THE 13th movie (spoiler-alert: stay the hell outta the lake) or the fact that Jason wasn't the real killer until FRIDAY THE 13th PART II.

But it's not just crappy slasher films. I once talked to a guy for several hours about BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL (a game I never played). I DID however read a somewhat lengthy article about the game's development (and of course I read IGN's review (9.0 out of 10)).

And that, I think, is why I "know" so much (and so little). These days, there are millions of articles, review, previews, blogs, production notes, fan-sites, "Top 10" lists that do nothing but expound about "things" (media, like books and video games) while offering no original content. In a way, this is all scholarly work, like literary criticism. Except it's about the 8-bit TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES Arcade games instead of FINNEGANS WAKE, which is a fantastic novel (just kidding, I've never read it).

I feel like a Jeopardy! contestant every waking second of my life. I have crappy trivia dripping out of my ears, and it worries me. I mean, if the human brain is anything like the hard drive of a computer (which is how I like to think of it) then my hard drive must be dangerously full--but full of nothing worthwhile.