Premiere

In early June, I made the decision to skip a trip to Los Angeles to attend the opening of the documentary that was made about me and a group of bloggers discovered by a computer scientist. It turned out to be a bigger deal than I had expected it to be, to me anyway. The idea that there was a movie someplace being projected that included me and my musings felt like some sort of bizarre extension of what happens here on this blog once a day. Why wouldn't I want to go see it. Well, as it often turns out, I had my reasons. None of them were particularly good, and the best thing that came of it was my good friend and confidante in Southern California did attend and she told me how wonderful I looked and how inspiring everything I had to say sounded.
It made me wish that I had been there.
Since then, I have been trying to figure out a way to see the whole thing, not just the promotional trailer or the purloined bits of footage my friend captured from her seat way down front. That was the stuff that just made me even more curious about how I might appear. Would I be like those people who show up on the Daily Show to be interviewed without a sense of just how ridiculous their own words make them appear. Would I come off as some sort of obsessive compulsive freak. Am I some sort of obsessive compulsive freak? Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that obsessive compulsive freaks obsess on compulsively?
As it turns out, I do not have the answer to that question, but I was finally given the opportunity to take in the film, in all its glory thanks to a link sent to me by the computer scientist who started this whole line of questioning. It just so happens that I was on a trip to the bottom of our state when the email came, and when I found myself in the living room of a friend with a big screen TV that could take downloaded video and show it larger than life, I sat back on the couch with my family and friends and let it play.
I was struck by how much I anticipated the scenes in which I appeared. It's not a movie about me alone. It's about a group of people who write about themselves with impressive, or is that alarming, frequency. I am one of those. When I did show up, I found it hard to listen to what I had to say. Instead I focused on the way the vein on the left side of my head seemed to be pulsing as I rambled on about this or that. I was also acutely aware of the fact that I had chosen not to wear shoes that day. I was glad that I picked a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt to wear, but was it the right Bruce shirt to show my fanatical devotion?
And then it was over. We had learned all there was to know about megabloggers, or at least as much as could fit in the twenty-or-so minutes of the documentary. It didn't tell my whole story. That's still going on. Right here where I can ramble on day after day, barefooted, Springsteen-shirted, vein throbbing away on the side of my head. I just don't have to look at it.
And as uncomfortable as it sounds that I was, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. That makes me a narcissistic obsessive compulsive, right?