Brain Games

On Sunday I was flipping through the channels and landed upon a movie already underway that, for some reason, prompted me to hit the “Info” button on the remote to pull up the detailed information about when it was made and who was in it.
After doing so, I saw the name of the lead actor and found that it seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.  I watched a few minutes of the movie after that, but seeing the name that went with the face didn’t spark any additional recognition.
I wasn’t interested enough to give it much more thought, or to look the actor up on IMDb, and after watching those few minutes I turned the TV off and got back to engaging in the marathon session of doing nothing in particular that had been taking place all weekend.
When I say that I wasn’t interested enough to give it much more thought, I, apparently, mean conscious thought, given that sometime Thursday morning, as I paused between sets of leg extensions, I discovered that my brain had, in the background, been mulling over the problem.

Brain:  Watchmen.
Me:  What?
Brain:  That guy.  In that movie the other day.  Matthew Goode.
Me:  I don’t…what?
Brain:  That guy, Matthew Goode.  You recognized his name.  He played Ozymandias in Watchmen.
Me:  Oh, right.
Brain:  So now you know.
Me;  I guess so.
Brain:  Well?
Me:  Well what?
Brain:  Aren’t you, you know, going to praise me or whatever?  For figuring it out?
Me:  Umm…well, good job, I guess, but honestly, I didn’t really care that much to begin with.
Brain:  (Petulantly)  But I figured it out.
Me:  So you did.  Nicely done.
Brain:  Thank you.
(Pause)
Me:  Wait…what movie did I just see him in?
Brain:  …
Me:  Oh, well that’s just great.  Good fucking job, Einstein.  Now you’ll be churning away trying to figure that out, and then by the time you finally do remember the movie, I’ll have forgotten that the guy who played Ozymandias was in it and why I was thinking about it in the first place and we’ll start this whole fucking thing all over again, won’t we?

Forestalling the inevitable waste of background processing resources, I opted to look it up on IMDb.  It was the 2008 version of Brideshead Revisited.  The reason I had watched any of it at all was that I had tuned in during a scene in which actress Hayley Atwell – Agent Carter from Captain America:  The First Avenger – was wearing a dress that obviously wasn’t going to be worn for much longer.  That was enough to keep me around for a little while, even if it was on broadcast TV, which meant that I wouldn’t see much of her post-dress appearance.

****

When I told Scott about the above, I got “Cool story, bro” in response.

****

I was talking to Scott about the time I spent in the Upward Bound program as a high school student and recent high school graduate.  Specifically, I was talking about one of the awards banquets held at the end of one of the summer sessions in which one of the instructors in naming that year’s “top student” for the class actually stressed how well the honoree had performed by saying, “She even managed to beat Jon Maki.”

Scott:  Heh.  You were the bar.
Me:  Yeah.
Scott:  So what happened to you?
Me:  The bar.

****

Boss:  Yeah, you’re probably right.
Me:  Of course I am.  I told you:  Biggest brain is BEST brain.