Background Character Energy BFG’s

I’ve never been good at remembering words in a sequence. When it comes to singing along to a song, I can belt out a chorus, but as soon as the lyrics come, I’m mumbling some new words that never existed. When I was in 3rd grade, I was forced to have a part in a play and I spent a week trying to memorize my line, “The guy is over there,” and I still needed the drama teacher to tell me my lines.

In 10th grade English, I had to memorize a section of Macbeth, and I was assigned the part that started, “Out out brief candle, blah blah,” and it took me several weeks to do that. I ended up knowing “Out out brief candle” really well, but I’m still working on the rest, that I promised my teacher I would memorize. Memorization is not my gift. Mandatorily forcing me to memorize something is akin to telling me to go to Disneyland for five straight days and only ride “It’s a Small World” ride the whole time.

The whole memorization thing makes me wonder if my daughter really is mine, because she was granted the gift of memorization. She’s been in dozens of plays and has had quite a few parts and she just knows how to memorize things. Maybe it was the time that I dropped her on her head that gave her the superpower of memorization.

I have been granted the gift of paraphrasal though. I might be A.I., because I can take a 1,500 page bill that Congress wrote up and summarize that in a sentence. “They are going to waste all our taxpayer money.” Here’s another example of me summarizing the movie Die Hard: “Best Christmas movie ever.” I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t been hired by Netflix to do their movie descriptions. Maybe because I haven’t applied, but honestly, Netflix should have an algorithm that scrapes the internet for the best people out there to do movie descriptions. How about a blogger who breaks down how the bitter the world is and how it works once a week in 500 word chunks? There is no one in that world better than me at doing that.

Speaking of Netflix, here is how you explain them in one sentence. It is an app that stores millions of short summaries of a lifetime of different worlds and situations. Once they find that sentence, I expect a they won’t be able to offer me a job offer fast enough.

An even shorter summary of Netflix: It is a storytelling hub. As a storytelling society, we all know that every story has a main character. That guy, gal, or robot that leads the story. The person whose eyes we use to see their world.

In the Office, Michael was the main character until he decided to leave Dunder Mifflin. In Parks and Rec, it was Leslie, until the cast developed. In the original Star Wars trilogy, it was Luke Skywalker, in the prequels it was Anakin and Obi Wan Kinobi…you know this is starting to get complicated. Maybe each story has a main character that you follow and then it switches to a gang. I don’t know…I do know for a fact that Harry Potter was the main character in Harry Potter.

The reason why we like particular stories is because we can see ourselves in the main character. We identify with their flaws, we can see their motivations, we like how they react to things. Or we want to live on the edge like they do.

Every story has a supporting cast as well. These characters can be a huge part of the story, like a best friend, a bitter rival, or a mentor. They often exist right alongside the main character without swallowing up the main character’s story.

In recent years there has been this phenomenon of people claiming that they have main character energy, because they like to think of themselves as the main character in their own lives. The problem with having “main character energy” is that delusional people see themselves as the character at the beginning of a Hallmark movie, where they are prance into work and everyone around them is giving them all this attention. We all know that when we walk into work, people generally ignore us.

Another problem with main character energy is that in a movie, we can only have one main character. lf everyone was the main character in movies, there would be nothing but chaos. When everyone wants to be the main character in life, no one is secondary, or tertiary or even background, and it’s just a bunch of people recording things on their phones and no one actually watching what other people record.

Luckily, there are people me who don’t have main character energy. Mostly because I’m old and have no energy. I don’t have secondary character energy or even have tertiary character energy. I have extra energy. And by extra energy, I don’t mean I have additional energy. I mean like extra as in the guy that walks behind the main character in a movie scene that says no words.

Honestly, I don’t know how most people have the energy for being a main character. energy in their lives. It seems like it would be exhausting having to always be in the spotlight. As they main character, you are expected to be the life of the party, always knowing or be working on your lines, and having to be in every scene. You’d never have time to yourself. You are always the one facing challenges, etc. As a background character in your life, you should just be able to show up a few minutes before filming, eat some donuts and then walk onto set with no lines to worry about.

With the main character energy, the pressure is eventually going to make you to say the wrong thing. It’s going to turn you into a selfish, narcissistic, arrogant prick that will make everyone hate you. You’re going to have to stay late, you’re going to have to work much harder than everyone else, and if you don’t get your lines right, you’re going to have to do them over again and again until it is perfect.

As a background character, you can show up late, shmooze with the director, put in 10% and you’re still going to get paid at the end of the day. You even have the option of being a disruptor, by talking to loudly, spilling soda on your shirt, or just making a weird face when the camera pans by you. Any behavior that distracts the main character can screw up a whole scene. It is especially satisfying when the main character is doing a really emotional scene and you burp or do something else disgusting.

There are way too many people seeking main character energy status, when there should be more people seeking background energy status. As Michael Scott said in The Office Season 5 Episode 22 to Pam, “My mom always used to say that average people are the most special people in the world. And that’s why God made so many…”

There are always going to be main character energy people that want the spotlight, the accolades, the money, and the accomplishments. I don’t want any of those. I just want the background, and the money.

While you are busy drinking all those energy drinks, so you can obtain your Main character energy, I’ll be busy displaying some Bitter Friday Giftures in the background…

I’ve never been good at putting words…