This seems to be 'guilty pleasure' week in the blog world of me. We'll see what other such pleasures I can admit to over the course of the week. About a year or so ago my mom and I watched a movie called The King of Kong. This movie rules! Anyone who hasn't seen it should run right out to your local video store and pick it up. It's a documentary about these guys who are really good at Donkey Kong and compete in a Donkey Kong competition. It's a pretty incredible movie, mostly because these guys are such uber dorky, stereotypical computer game nerds that you watch the movie thinking it must be fake - like those Christopher Guest movies (best in show, spinal tap). But it's not fake. This is the real deal. The movie is actually directed by the son of a friend of my moms (making it even cooler). But I digress.....
So after I watched The King of Kong I was overcome by this urge to play a video game. I have always sucked at video games, they make me a bit nervous. My dad used to feed me the occasional quarter just so he and my brother could be entertained by my playing. But after the movie I was on a quest. Fortunately, it was a short quest. At the time I had just gotten a Blackberry and what do you know, the Blackberry comes complete with it's own 'video' game, brick breaker.
Now, I am sure this will come as a surprise, but Brick Breaker isn't an intellectual endeavor. In fact, it's quite likely that it kills brain cells. Essentially there are bricks in various patterns and you have a paddle and a little ball flies around. You hit the ball with the paddle and knock the bricks down. Sometimes little bullets come flying down that give you special powers or more lives or some such thing. If you catch one of these you get extra points too! The best one is the gun, because you get more points when you knock the bricks down with the gun. Though I usually get so excited when I get the gun that I lose the ball, a life and all the bullets to my gun. I'm not very good. My high score is just over 10,000. I think there are people who score over 1,000,000 (yeesh).
If I ever get good, I'll get to date this man. So, when I first started playing I was completely addicted. It was bad. The first night I couldn't get myself to stop. I kept saying this is my LAST game and then I'd need to play one more and one more and one more. I took to spending all my free time playing brick breaker. I would even occasionally sneak a couple rounds sitting at my desk at work. I was starting to carpel breaker syndrome. I was a bit worried both by my obsession and my ability to fall into such an obsession. I didn't know I had it in me.
Fortunately, as suddenly as it hit, my need dissipated (thank the lord). And suddenly I was free to enjoy brick breaker occasionally in moments of boredom. It is actually soporific. I most commonly play it on week end afternoons when I decide to take a nap. One game of brick breaker and I drift off to sleep like a little baby!
It's good to have some guilty pleasures.
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