Cosplay BFG’s

It was July 1994, and I was just a 21-year old impressionable young man whose prefrontal cortex hadn’t fully developed. I just got home from a 2-year full time mission for my church, so I hadn’t fully integrated into the world yet. A week later, I was bitterly hate watching the NBA Finals, because the Spurs missed it that year, when breaking news came on. Some news people were freaking out because the police were in a slow speed police chase with a white Bronco. I was trying to get them to hurry along so I could get back to hate watching the game, but they said that the driver of the white Bronco was a former football player. I wondered why that mattered since football ended months ago, so why would they interrupt the NBA Finals?

I went back to ignoring the news like I had for the previous two years. I came to find months later that the guy in the white Bronco was that really good running back, OJ Simpson. I remembered him fondly for the Naked Gun movies too. Apparently he was on trial for something, but I didn’t really pay attention, because the news barely covered it. Anyways, back the year glorious year of 1994, where something much bigger was happening. An emerging star named Jim Carrey was having a huge year in the movies. He had not one, not two, but three hugely successful movies come out that year. I became a huge fan.

The cool thing about Jimothy is that he had this really great story. He grew up really poor in Canada, and was homeless for a little while when his father lost his job. James decided that he wanted to help his poor father, by becoming rich. He pursued stand up comedy, so he could get famous. Before he became famous, he wrote out a check to himself for $10 million dollars for being an actor and post dated it until late 1995. It was in late 1994, a few months after his dad died, that got paid $10 million dollars to play Lloyd Christmas in Dumb and Dumber, and Jimmy symbolically placed the check his father’s casket.

James is famous for two big reasons. His highly contortable face, and his jokes. Recently, he gained the spotlight once again for his face becoming the joke.

You see, he recently attended an awards show and people noticed that his face looked decidedly different. When famous people’s appearances change, reporters and fans notice. Only for some weird reason, reporters and fans, and commentators started wildly speculating that Jim looked so different that he was replaced by a body double. The funniest one I heard was that he was a lizard person all along, which was why he was so easily able to manipulate his face. Then there were the normal people like me that just think that he’s an aging Hollywood actor and decided to get some botched plastic surgery so he could fit in with the older Hollywood crowd.

That’s what I thought at first. But then I remembered some of the things that he started saying recently in interviews. On Jimmy Kimmel’s show, he flashing a triangle sign and accused Jimmy and other Hollywood people of being part of the Illuminati. Another time he was interviewed at an awards show, and claimed that he didn’t exist, that he was just a field of energy, and that we are just a bunch of clusters and tetrahedrons moving around together. He’s right about that, of course, but his heavily intense roles seemed to be getting to him. On other occasions, he talked about all the characters he played, like Joel Barrish, Lloyd Christmas, the Grinch and his biggest role. Jim Carrey, which he was glad that he got the part.

I imagine that most actors that play a lot of roles really do start to feel bipolar, considering they that their job is literally full time cosplayer. When you start to inhabit so many different personalities, it probably becomes hard to separate Jim Carrey from Lloyd Christmas, Grinch, Ace Ventura, or Truman Burbank. After a while, I imagine that he has to do research to play the role of Jim Carrey, the one he plays between jobs.

That’s not to say I don’t also do cosplay in my role as Bitter Ben. Although for my role, I don’t have to be dressed by a costume designer, be directed by a director, or make it to the set on time. I don’t even have act much differently. I just have remember all the things that make me bitter and narrow down which one I want to talk about. I don’t even have to remember any of my lines. I make them up as I g

The biggest struggle I have in my role as Bitter Ben is to forget the few moments in a day when I feel hope. If I ever have to play Really Fun Ben, I struggle in that role. I really have to stretch my acting abilities then, because I have to pretend I’m someone who is happy. If you don’t believe me, look at my blog reallyfunben.wordpress.com. That blog has zero posts, because it is so much work to come up with any moments, let alone write 500 words about it. I guess I could just post a bunch of happy Giftures, but I like to include context before posting Giftures.

So while I don’t have the talent of Jim Carrey to play more than two characters, I thrive in my role as Bitter Ben. He’s an easy role. I just show up on set, improvise and then go home. I only have to find a way to narrow down one of the millions of things I’m bitter about and write 500 words about it. and expand upon it. To paraphrase the Army, “Be all you can Bitter Be.”

Now, do as you are told and laugh heartily at these Bitter Friday Giftures…

It was the year 1994, and I was just a 21-year old…