My Obsessive Nerdery

I've been thinking a lot about old video games recently. Yesterday I watched my friend Patrick breeze through Super Mario Brothers like he had just beaten it yesterday. He knew every secret, every warp, every hidden block—like it was encoded into his genes. Nathan fared almost as well. They trash talked while they played. Patrick, from Alabama, would stand up and yell “BOOM!” every time he pulled off a difficult maneuver.

Nothing makes me feel more at home than playing a Mario game with somebody. This is what I'm into right now: how junk entertainment like NES games from the 80s can worm its way into our brains and hearts, into our art and music. They can become something bigger than computer code on a dusty gray chipboard. If I were still taking theory classes at WWU, I would be preparing to write a paper on how vintage video games affect discourse and aesthetics. Since I'm in an MFA, I'm brainstorming ways to slip this stuff into fiction without it coming off as indulgent, nerd-elitist, or overly referential. It's hard, but, to me at least, it's important.

So it turns out Ashley and I are both dripping with Nostalgia. In that spirit, here's the transcript from one of my favorite scenes in Mad Men, when Don Draper sells the idea of the slide carousel to Kodak.

Nostalgia.
It’s delicate, but potent…
Teddy told me that in Greek, nostalgia literally means the pain from an old wound.
It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.
This device… isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine.
It goes backwards, forwards.
It takes us to a place where we ache to go again.
It’s not called the Wheel.
It’s called the Carousel.
It lets us travel the way a child travels.
Around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.

Bring on the emo comments, Chelsea!