A Shot of Orange Juice (the Blog)

I have a bit of a tradition in attempting to watch Bill Murray’s genius “Groundhog Day” on February 2nd. I don’t know if the film is in my top 10 of films, but I always enjoy it when I watch. I have it on DVD, but didn’t feel like digging through my stuff to find it, but luckily Netflix also has it on Instant Watch. This makes watching movies like this great. I can do my normal routine and have it on right in the corner of my vision, listening to all the witty banter.

Anyways, the interesting part of the film is that you can’t take anything tangible with you to start the next day. Anything that’s in your head (and in your muscle memory) stays, but nothing else. So while that would allow me to say: learn every programming language that exists. I couldn’t really write a program that would take longer than 24 hours. Since a board game wouldn’t need a compiler, I could memorize all the rules and pieces and the like. Fashion up a copy in a few hours and find playtesters. Hell, these would be the perfect playtesters, because they would always be experiencing the same game as a clean slate. I’m sure there would be some of “oh it would be cool if you could do this” and then the next day, you make that tweak and then they suggest not doing that because it didn’t work.

I think one of the best parts about Groundhog Day is that even though it was filmed before the Internet and cell phones were abundant, the movie wouldn’t really change all that much with current technology added in. Certain movies/tv shows play off the fact that these objects don’t exist to improve the scene. The first example I thought of was the Seinfeld episode I saw the other day where Jerry is trying to call Elaine from a pay phone. With cell phones, you can just send a text and Elaine can get it when she’s available and get Jerry’s spare key for him. Instead, we have half an episode about George feeling weird letting Jerry into other people’s apartments.

What would you do if you were doing the same thing every day? How would you improve yourself in hopes to break out of the loop? Who is Ned Ryerson?

Posted on February 2nd, 2010 by tehdiplomat
Filed under: blog, film, life