I’ve been simultaneously listening and watching the movie Ready Player One a lot in the last month. A lot of fans of the book hated the movie, because they are wildly different. I was lucky enough to have seen the movie first and the read the book, so the movie didn’t taint my feelings of the book. I usually make it a policy to see the movie first, then read the book, because you get the best of both worlds. With Ready Player One, I got Spielberg’s vision of the story, and then Ernest Cline’s much longer, way more detailed original version and vision of the story.

I’ve written earlier in my blog career about a bad experience I had reading the book before the movie came out. It was the original Batman movie that came out in 1989, starring Micheal Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as the Joker. It was a phenomenal movie at the time…for everyone else. For me, it was terrible, because I read the novelized version of the book right before the movie came out. Worst book reading decision I’ve ever made before. It ruined the movie for me, because I knew everything that was happening before it happened. Everyone else in the theater was pinterested to their seats, while my eyes were faded to Batman black.

Ready Player One is the story of a kid named Wade Watts that is so disillusioned about the world that he spends a majority of his time in the Oasis, as a completely different character. I want to be a completely different character too, whenever my life gets bitter, so I get why it’s so enticing. By the end of the movie/book, he learns the lesson that Halliday is trying to tell him. That he should spend more time in the real world, interacting with others and spending more time outside. I was practically screaming at him to ignore that advice. I’ve spent time in the real world, and outside. Being in the virtual world is much better.

I’m a GenXer’s who grew up without the internet, smart phones, Ipad’s, streaming services and jobs that were done all on computers. My formative years (that’s what I call the ages of 8-18) were spent on the means streets of Sioux Falls, SD (South Dakota, not San Diego), where my parents were perfectly happy to for me to be gone from the time school started until dinner or when it got dark. I remember some summers when I would take off on my bike and wander the town for hours without even mentioning that I was leaving. And when I got back, my mom wasn’t worried where I was or even really acknowledge that I was gone. Apparently the parents of my generation wanted us to be abducted.

So yeah, I lived part of my life disconnected from the Oasis and that part of my life sucked, because I had to be myself and use my own imagination. Technology has progressed to the point where I can be online and be anyone I want. I can be a mage, or a knight or even better, an interesting person. Who wants to live a real life when you could have an interesting life?

In order to make my life interesting, I play different characters. At home, I pretend to be Clark Kent, the bumbling husband and father, wearer of glasses, and teller of bad dad jokes. When I come to work, I become a different character, Loki. I shapeshift myself into a competent, valuable, and absolutely critical member of the team. The real me comes out when I collect a paycheck and I laugh for them getting suckered into paying me.

Then at the gym, I play become Paul Blart, Mall Cop, the guy that struggles to even be able to walk/run on a treadmill for an hour, and just wants my Segway, so I can get places. In reality, the only segway I have is the one that helps me move from one sentence to another smoothly (unlike the local newscasters, who always point out how smooth their segways are by pointing out that they just used a segway).

My favorite character to play Leslie Neilson in the Naked Gun movies in my family group texts. I’m blissfully unaware of explosions going on behind me, while occasionally dropping an accidental bomb to disrupt the group. Okay, I’m blissfully aware, but I like to pretend that I’m not and when they bring it up, I’ll be like, “What are you talking about?” Besides, it’s their fault for including me in the group text. They’ve known me for at least 40 years now. They should know by now that they can’t just leave explosives laying around and expect me not to use them.

I played a new character this week at my son’s football game. You might remember him from the worst movie in the Batlibrary, Batman and Robin. The bad guy played by Ahnold Swhwarternegburr, Mr. Freeze. His character was pretty cold hearted. See what I did there? If you think that joke was worse than a dad joke, then you would have hated Batman & Robin, because he used cold puns throughout the movie. Look it up on YouTube. You will learn the new meaning of cringe. My favorite is one I can still hear in my head, because I want to say it every time I go to a party. He breaks into a place that seems fun, and he says, “Cool pahty!” The point is, my toes was froze at the game and I felt like I was living in a bad Batman Movie. I could have used any number of the dozens of puns he used in that movie, but I couldn’t because my mouth was frozen shut. If they hadn’t blown out the other team, I might have turned into the Heat Miser and burned the field to the ground just to speed up the game.

Every week around this time, I turn into a type of cold, that no one likes. The Bitter Cold, and I pound out a Bitter Post and some funny gifs as a distraction so you can avoid the words and look at some gifs that are only slightly funnier than Aahold’s Mr. Freeze puns. Let’s get to it shall we? Don’t freeeeze….

That’s what I would…

Because we’re alll….

After growing up with a Batman…

You can imagine…

Unfortunately, when you read the novelization before the movie…

As a teen without technology…

If only I could have been logged in all the time…

I wouldn’t have had to be logged in…

At the gym…

Me on my family group chats…

And then just for fun…

ARRGGGHHHHH

Bitter Logging in as a New Character Ben