COLUMN: Is once enough?
The main thought I had while watching this year’s best movie of the year, Million Dollar Baby, was “Oh please, oh please don’t make a sequel of this.” If you have seen the movie or heard about the plot you’ll note that at lease one of the characters can’t come back. However, never underestimate greed and elaborate plot devises that could overcome even this.
What’s wrong with being great just once? What’s with our powerful urge for the encore? We deride one-hit wonder bands and authors that can only produce one good book. Athletes that only have one great season are flops. “Beginner’s luck” is the insult we throw at anyone who can’t keep coming up with bigger and better whatever.
Like the fall of the Berlin Wall and prostitution, the driving principle can be answered with economic theory. The law of diminishing returns is an overriding ballad of the universe and economics. The simplified version is something like this: The first donut is great, the second one is pretty great, the third is merely good and each succeeding donut levels off into some moderate amount of satisfaction. Sometimes we try other donuts; sometimes we put jelly in the donuts or sprinkles on the donuts to enhance the experience but in reality we can never re-attain that first Krispy Kreme moment.
It is sort of the opposite of reincarnation, which presupposes that your life force starts off weak and ineffectual and you keep coming back till you get it right. So to become the producer of “Million Dollar Baby” you must have been making porno movies and beer commercials in a former life. Interesting metaphysically, but does anyone get it right the first time?
The other economic principle at play is scarcity. One Krispy Kreme in town was great. When they started selling them at every gas station and grocery store in town, they became not so great.
Similarly, most research on drugs concludes that the addicted person spends the rest of his or her addicted life trying to recapture that initial feeling of bliss. For me, I think it was that first cup of truly strong, truly fresh roasted coffee at the Salt Lake Roasting Company in 1985 that headed me on the downward spiral of caffeine addiction. There have been many other cups since then but none that truly compare. My quest has included at least 10 different coffee brewing contraptions and visits to every seedy java hut in the Intermountain West and beyond. I still love the smell, the feel, insolent service and poetry readings that go with the whole coffee experience but you can only have one first love.
You may want to keep the answers to yourself but you can apply the donut rule to just about everything from your spouse to reruns of “Friends.” Have a cup of coffee and think about it.
Dennis Hinkamp is unaware of any previous lives and the jury is still out on the current one.