Something I discovered recently about myself is that when I undertake a project of great importance, I produce a fantastic amount of excess nervous, destructive energy that must be dumped somewhere miles away from the project. I am putting on a show in June. This show has devoured (hopefully not needlessly) nearly every waking work hour in 2011. And like clockwork, it has churned up an overflow of what the Italians (on “The Sopranos”) call agita or what the Jews (on “Coffee Talk”) call tsuris.
Basically, it’s grief, and it makes me a touchy prick, and my mental health typically starts to manifest physically closer to show time. When my graduation from college loomed, I ran myself into the ground and fell ill with a bronchitis/pneumonia hybrid. At last year’s show, I came down with something that made me feel like I had fallen off a building into a plate of influenza. The second the show ended, the sickness evaporated.
I’ve come to think of my brain as an untrustworthy frenemy. A pet tiger. Powerful, but more likely to seriously maim me than impress my friends.
This year, it’s all hands on deck for “Let’s Dump Adam’s Excess Nervous Energy Down a Mineshaft.” That mineshaft? Video games. A perfect world of nostalgia, focus, skill, busy work, money collecting and caring about shit that doesn’t matter.
Never is this marriage more perfect than in the Zelda games. I fell headlong into a side game in “Ocarina of Time” that sums this up: Kakariko Village, one of your home bases throughout the game, has a family that has been cursed by Skulltulas (a very scary combo of skulls and tarantulas). There are 100 Gold Skulltulas throughout the game that you must kill to break the curse. They’re nigh impossible to find. Some are only found at night. Some are only found when you travel back in time. Some are camouflaged to look like the side of a mountain.
But I poured every ounce of my energy I had into finding these bastards. I became an assassin. The closer I got to 100, the more I started adapting my Skulltula-killing skills to getting my work done in real life. Everything in life becomes simpler when you make it a Hit List.
Then, my fantasies (delusions of grandeur?) had me seeing (the above) bushes on Marty’s walk as potential money bags. All I would need to do is pluck them out of the ground, maybe chuck ‘em at that car and reveal the treasures underneath. And then be dragged off screaming to the sanitarium, my dog’s head cocked curiously to the side as he watches them buckle the jacket on me.
This is why I never play video games. I fall quite expediently down the rabbit hole.
Thing is I suck at video games. I’m not good. I think I’m good until I play with someone who plays games more than once every ten years. See the picture above? The first guy “Link” is my roommate. “10″ is the number of times he’s died so far in the game. See how I’ve died 10 times too? See how many more hearts he has? See how he’s gotten the white suit, and I still have the basic green?
I love the games, but I’m unskilled. I’m your Dad who has been coerced into playing and can’t understand what the buttons do. I’m your Girlfriend who watches you play from the couch, wondering aloud what the attraction is, but secretly wanting to jump in there and go to town. Only when we do, we stink up the joint and make the gamers in the room politely agonize at how wrong we’re being.
But I regret nothing! My health is still in tip top shape, and I have had only a sparse few childish outbursts in rehearsals. You can all thank the Adam Sass’s finger-shaped stress dents in Paul’s Wii remote.
