The other day I watched Total Recall - as you do – and I came away from it with at least three thoughts, particularly about the actors, that I’ll carry with me:

1) That actor playing that guy chasing Schwarzenegger, that’s Michael Ironside (hell of a name). I really know him from other things: I know his voice from Splinter Cell, that marvelous game that ate up the small number of senior year afternoons not otherwise claimed by drinking, eating or that little bit of creative writing. And he was in The Machinist, playing Miller, the poor bastard whose arm gets mangled in a machine. In that movie, Ironside was bearded/goateed and seemed to be about six and half feet tall and 300 pounds, the impression achieved by his hidden/missing arm and by Christian Bale’s skin and bones. With this watching of Total Recall, it was odd but refreshing to hear that old, familiar voice projected from an actor many years younger.

2) The billions of years of evolution it took to produce Sharon Stone were well worth it. Holy crap. That woman is carved out of plaster, and that’s no comment on her acting. If my life were narrated like a 1940s newsreel, here the announcer would say, “This gentleman prefers dirty blondes.” Huge wink, iris-in, cut to the cartoon.

3) I still can’t believe Schwarzenegger was the governor of California. For eight years! During each of my two recent trips out there, I was trolling around on a patch of earth governed by the guy who freed Mars. My reaction to his election has never been, “Why him?” but rather, “Why not him?” Living in New York, I didn’t hear much about California politics, nor did I seek much of that news out. Swaddled in that ignorance, I was free to think, “That’s a cool thing to have had happen,” no matter how effective or godawful he and his policies ended up being.

I got to thinking about what it would take to be a governor, certainly not because I want to run for anything, only in the ways in which it’s different from being a mayor, or a comptroller, or any of those other supervisory positions. I’m sure I could look it up, but I wanted to ask myself rhetorically, wistfully, whether these positions are in fact quite different in matters other than scale. I lamented the knowledge and intimacy, really, that is sacrified by a governor that a mayor seems fortunate enough to retain.

I quickly worked my way over to an unnerving but practical reality: There exist towns that your Governor has never heard of. You might live in one. Big states, hundreds or thousands of towns, no real way for any one person to recognize them all. It’s strange but understandable. I imagined someone saying to Arnold during his time in office:

“Hi, I’m Peter, big fan. I’m glad I caught you. I’m from Llano, and I have to say that I disagree with that recently implemented policy of yours because of how it affects me personally. It’s excessive and hugely detrimental to my well-being and our whole area’s well-being and quite simply, I don’t want to follow it. All the executives under you say their hands are tied. Since you are the Governor and you govern this state and I live in this state and you govern me, could we figure out a way for you to cut me some slack on this?”

They smile and shake hands. Schwarzenegger goes to leave. Peter sees the paper: “Yanno.”

Do you think he ever governed while wearing a whistle like in Kindergarten Cop?