I confess

The following was written in real time, as it happened:

Today I'm going to admit something to you. Please don't think less of me for this -- accept me or reject me, there is no try, but here it is: I have never, never ever seen The Kentucky Fried Movie until tonight [ed. note, last night]. There it is.

I pride myself on my knowledge of trivia and cultural knowledge having consumed all and drunk from the fountains of communicative expression in all forms. I thought I'd seen it all and I acted like it. And I have seen a lot so I guess I somehow faked it and people just thought I had seen TKFM. But damn it, I'm watching it now [ed. note, then] and it is incredible! [ed. note -- I'd like to think that this is because of the movie, not because of any other variables which might have affected my mood at the time].

But if I haven't seen it, and I'm pretty sure I haven't, why do I feel such a crazy and constant sense of de ja vu as I watch? The scenes (the visual aesthetic and the familiar nostalgia), the plots, the actors...I somehow HAVE seen it but I have no ACTUAL memory of it, just the suggestion of memories.

I have to to have seen it. But I know I haven't. Or at least, I don't know that I have.

I feel guilty about this, having passed myself off as this flavor of fraud. I'm not sure that that's the wording I mean, but I'm trying to explain that I let and even led people to believe my encyclopedic knowledge of cultural touchstones and references (covering a particular range of years) and here it is, this perfect source code for 90% of modern day life on comedic earth and I have no conscious memory of ever having seen it. But it is triggering in my head a 24 frame per second set of technicolor de ja views and chains of thought that make simple memory look like a figment filmed in sepia tones.

I'm angry now -- at me and at the rest of the world. How did I miss this? How did the world let me miss this? I made it through all the banter and nodded sagely when the topic arose, and assumed that because wasn't called out for NOT recognizing all the bits and pieces, there was nothing so essential in the movie that I missed. I got everything the equivalent from somewhere else. I got by without it and nobody said a word so I couldn't have missed much. How unique and distinct could it possibly be?

I was a fool, a goddamn fool. I know that now and I'm not sure what to do with this new, little piece of self-knowledge. What else is the universe holding back or hiding from me, or me from myself. And why?

But maybe, somehow, in some alternate way, I DID see it, hear it and not just of it. Clips? Copies? I just don't know, but that film was a revelation.

There was no specific moment, no formal exam ever administered, nor any oath of loyalty required so no one knew that I hadn't seen it, but no one directly asked me and everyone just thought that, as it is a cultural imperative, I must have seen it and the world rolled on.