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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (April 16, 2004)
april 16.2004 ». HUM OR Being Marc Acito S o here’s what it’s like to be inside my head: “ Do you like me? Do you like me? Do you like me? I want ice cream. Do you like me?” Like many neurotics, much of my day is spent calculating chess-like moves in my brain, anticipating the reaction of someone— say, my partner or my parents or the U PS man— then recalibrating my action to get the desired result. O f course, this all occurs before I’ve actually taken the action in question, which is how I can spend half an hour staring at a blinking cursor before I finally do something as simple as respond to an e-mail. It’s exhausting. W hat I’ve been obsessing about lately is the new Charlie Kaufman movie Eter nal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I haven’t seen, although that’s never stopped me before from forming an opinion. In it, Jim by Marc Acito Carrey goes to a doc tor to erase his memory, perhaps just to for get The Majestic. But that’s not the part I’m thinking about. What I’ve been thinking about is how Charlie Kaufman, screenwriter of Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, is getting rich writing about the short circuits in the brain’s cerebral cortex, even though Adaptation was really just a movie about a writer who couldn’t write a movie so he wrote a movie about it. Since I’m having a particularly hard time The Gospel According to M arc What, me w orry? coming up with a col umn for this edition I thought I, too, would take you on a journey through the short cir cuits in my cerebral cor tex and then perhaps you’ll think I’m clever like Charlie Kaufman, and I’ll get rich. t all started when a reader wrote to say he thought a recent column wasn’t funny. He didn’t mean that he was offended, the way some overly sensi tive, politically correct types will snipe “T h at’s not funny” when you poke fun at someone for their disability like being fashion-impaired o . _____b N o, he simply thought I sucked. For somebody who spends his days calibrat ing other people’s reactions (“Do you like me? Do you like me? Do you like me.7” ), this is a total buzz kill. So then I got all paranoid I’m not funny. (“T h at’s it, the secret is out. I’m a fraud. It’s over. I’ll never write anything funny again. I I’m going to have to change careers and spend the rest of my days working at a job wearing a paper hat.” ) I figured my only hope was to mine my personal dysfunction in the hope that you’ll find my innermost demons amusing and commend me for my naked honesty. Hey, it’s worked before. More than once (OK, it was just twice, but that’s more than once) a reader has told me that something I wrote made them laugh so hard they nearly wet their pants. Now, while I consider forcing ..... ......._ ......... _ „gainst their will high praise, indeed, in both cases the thing that made them laugh so hard was the serious part. As Mel Brooks said: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” Put another way, comedy is laughing at someone else’s pain, although I’m hesitant to reveal that trade secret because now all of you will go out and write 'íffitl& fy f funny things while I remain here unfunny and unloved in my paper hat. All this contemplation has made me worry that perhaps I’m suffering from obsessive- compulsive disorder, so I’ve taken advantage of my inertia to visit several Web sites on the subject. Then I bookmarked them so I could check them several times a day. I even took a test to see if I had O CD and discovered I don’t because I don’t wash my hands until they’re raw or worry that I might have accidentally run over someone when I back out of my driveway (although given the way I drive, perhaps I should). No, it seems I’m just your average neurotic. Now I’m pissed I’m average. See how I suf fer for my art? I did find one Web site, however, that offered both an “American description" and a “European description” of OCD. I wasn’t aware there was any difference (except maybe that obsessive Europeans worry about leaving the iron on at 230 volts and obsessive Ameri cans at 120); in fact, upon reading the descrip tions (both in English), I found that the Euro pean version simply used much longer and more complicated words. I’m ashamed to admit I couldn’t understand the European version. But my shame is your gain, and it makes me happy to know you’re probably laughing at my ineptitude, even though it means I am not only averagely neurotic but vocabularily impaired. And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc. J H M arc A cito ’ s first novel, How I Paid for College, comes out in September. Write him at wwvo.marcacito.com. Ti/e ' v e yot to yet to % j f f î Opening Ceremonies April 17th at Panorama 7 to 9 pm If ilPKWjgp; Ti/e'te ¿till toûûcHÿ fan new filcufen¿. Swupute Opening Day April 18th Gordon Faber Recreation Complex in Hillsboro Games start at 11:00 am (A cueicotnef for more Information, you can And us at www.rosecltysoftball.org or call 503-552-4769
