KEN: Are you in "Unforgettable" - the Brad William

[rockgolf]

So I'm "Stumble"ing thru the 'net, and come across the site http://www.unforgettabledoc.com/ for a documentary on some guy named Brad Williams who apparently can remember every day of his life.

And who shows up in the preview clip at about 1:50, but Ken Jennings!!

Any stories on meeting this guy, Ken?

[rockgolf]

<bump>

Does anyone else have extraordinary mental abilities? Like remembering the weather for every day of their life, identifying dates of relatively obscure events, determining the day of the week for any date?

[pikeprof]

I guess Marilu Henner (of Taxi fame) can-Bob Costas was quizzing her about dates in her past and gave her the date of the first moon landing-turns out she was busy losing her virginity that day-she got all flustered-so, I think it was for realsies.

[jzerocsk]

This past weekend I was referred to as "The rainman of Dance Dance Revolution." I have no idea what to make of this.

I do have a pretty uncanny knack for being able to quickly memorize large amounts of text verbatim; a handy trick for the stage especially helpful in getting "guerilla casting" as in "Sure, I can step in as your male lead and I'll even memorize the entire part by next week." Of course most decent actors can do this in some regard but I like to think I can do it more quickly than most and more accurately than most.

Ironic sidebar: My wife who of course is also stuck being my cue reader when I'm learning a part is aware of my desire to get every single word the author wrote, as written, no paraphrasing. If I say "5 o'clock" instead of "5PM" stop me.

One day we did a speed-thru reading of a show I was working on and the director's sole note to me was that I was doing entirely too much paraphrasing and not using the verbatim text. I was seething mad! This is the one time in my life that a director's suggestion - even if it was based in truth (I do not think it was, personally) - actually got me mad!

To add insult to...insult, a few days later after a run of the show the director commented offhand that he was impressed and a little bit disturbed to notice during one of the scenes that I even had the "Ums" "Ers" and "Ohs" down exactly as written in the text.

Argh.

[pikeprof]

I have a pretty predigious memory which helps me out in the academic realm.


I can't explain how I can memorize stuff-but I can.

And, of course, makes me somewhat of a trivia whiz!

As for doing something like days of the week for any given date. I'm afraid I would have to develop some sort of Ogi Ogas

brand Heuristics (r)

[Muskrat]

I have days when, if I close my eyes, I can't remember what color shirt I'm wearing.

[Ken Jennings]

The guy making that "Unforgettable" documentary, Brad's brother, actually told me he wanted to interview Marilu Henner, because of that very clip. I wonder if she'd turn out to have the same gift.

I wanted to meet Brad and Eric because I was interested at the time in writing a book about memory. (Someone else got a million-dollar advance to write a very similar book, and I shelved my idea.) Unlike the other person who's been diagnosed with this ability, Brad seems laid-back, almost blase, about his gift. I certainly didn't get the sense that it had shaped his world view in any major way. He seemed like a regular guy...with one extraordinary parlor-trick of a gift that might teach us a lot about how the brain works.

[gsplit]

<bump>

Does anyone else have extraordinary mental abilities? Like remembering the weather for every day of their life, identifying dates of relatively obscure events, determining the day of the week for any date?

I can do the "day of the week" thing. It started off as a simple "party trick" that my dad used to trot me out for when I was a very small child--mostly just the "If I was born in 1944, how old will I be in 1997?" variety--something six year-olds aren't supposed to do pretty easily, but I could. It eventually branched into days of the week, based on no mathematical model for me, but simply by knowing through history the days of the week that certain key events occurred, such as Pearl Harbor, the Moon Landing, Kennedy's assassination, my birthday, etc. But once Y2K occurred and I heard the potential VCR fix involving setting the year on the clock to 1972, from there I got quicker and better at it.

But hardly a "real ability" that can bring fame and fortune. I guess just because I can do it reasonably quickly that qualifies me as a "Rain Man" in the eyes of my parents, my wife, and my in-laws.

[Brad Williams]

Well, I'm the guy in the documentary, which is still being filmed. I also consider Ken to be a regular guy who's fun to be around.
My brother first approached him for the movie, and did an interview. Then, a few weeks later, we arranged to meet Ken in Seattle, and he consented to a one-on-one Buzztime bar trivia face-off with me, so I could demonstrate my memory skills. Highlights of that contest probably will be in the movie.
And my brother and I returned the favor by being fact-checkers for the Trivia Almanac.

[vivosergirl]

Oh wow... my memory is so bad that once, I forgot my brother's name for a second and called him a similar name instead...
I do end up recalling odd and useless information, however. Which is why I got in to trivia! Too bad this doesn't really help me...

[Sequin]

Oh wow... my memory is so bad that once, I forgot my brother's name for a second and called him a similar name instead...
I do end up recalling odd and useless information, however. Which is why I got in to trivia! Too bad this doesn't really help me...

Not as bad as an ex-colleague of mine - he forgot his brother's birthday - his TWIN brother!

[PamelaJaye]

Oh wow... my memory is so bad that once, I forgot my brother's name for a second and called him a similar name instead...

that's truly bad. generally I get annoyed at a certain person for a period of time, and then whenever someone *else* annoys me, I call them by annoyance person's name.

[PamelaJaye]

I figured out why I was looking so hard for this thread:

Why can I remember this number and not the dozen subsequent lock combinations I’ve learned?

One day, I reached in my brain for my bank account number. And I got one. Unfortunately it was not current.
It was for an account I closed n 1987.

[PamelaJaye]

Not as bad as an ex-colleague of mine - he forgot his brother's birthday - his TWIN brother!

my friend lost his nametag at church. someone returned it to him.
he wondered how they knew it was his.

we won't discuss the time my brother couldn't leave his house casuse he could not find his phone, as he mentioned, at the moment, to his friend, with whom he was conversing....

I must be spoiled by Alan Sepinwall's "as soon as I" blog posts. I was surprised that neither of Ken's blog posts on this topic were titled with the intro line to a Beatles' song...