Friday, September 2, 2011

Play it again, Sam - how many times have I already asked you that?

"Casablanca" was on TCM again and when I asked Mom if she wanted to watch it, she gave me that little look of hers which means "are you kidding me".

"How many TIMES have you seen that movie, Susan?"

You know, I honestly could not say.  Ten times?  No, surely at least twenty times; possibly forty-six times.  I know how it turns out and I know every little scene yet I just love to watch that movie repeatedly.  To me, "Casablanca" is a perfect movie and why would watching a movie dozens of times be any worse than gazing upon a beloved painting?   Perhaps a study could be done - or perhaps someone has already done this - as to whether watching a favorite movie releases endorphins.

I must say, though, the thing about how many times I have watched "Casablanca" kind of bothered me; WHY can't I remember exactly how many times I have seen it?  If I did something constructive while watching "Casablanca" like knitting scarves I could then count how many scarves I had (believe me, I would still have all of them, nobody ever seems to need any).

Is there an untapped part of the brain which DOES keep track of all this?  Could neuroscientists some day devise a microchip for our brains, sort of like a flight data recorder or "black box" which would keep track of such things.  We could download the data and print it out, if we want to do so, to read when the wireless is down.

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