Team Esteve

So I have my 20th High School Reunion coming up and it got me to wondering why people go to those things. For the record I missed my 10th because I was in a college friend’s wedding. I do want to go, but I probably won’t. Long story, issues with communication with the organizers, blah blah. Given my choice, I would go though, but I don’t know why. With the Facebook, the Twitter, the MySpace, etc, it’s easy to find and contact people you used to know so it’s not the “I want to get in contact with old friends” reason. That may be a nice excuse, but I think at the end of the day, people really want to see if they were right.

Right about everything, right about anything. Right about what they thought they were going to be in life, right about where they thought everyone else would end up. Right that they were too good for that two bit town, right that they are so much better off having stayed put. Right that they picked the right college, the right job, the right wife, the right husband, had the right number of kids, right that they didn’t bring kids into this crazy mixed-up world.

But why is bring right so important to us? At the end of the day what does it benefit us to be right? How long does that smug sense of satisfaction last? Even if it lasts for 10 years until the next class reunion then what? You go back for the next one and re-validate yourself? Will that re-validation last 10 years the next time? How satisfying is it to prove yourself to yourself for a second time?

Personally, I’d like to go back to prove to myself how wrong I was. I’d have a safe bet that I didn’t end up the most successful person from my class or the most traveled or the coolest or the sexiest (trust me, I’m sure on that one) or the most talented or the most anything except maybe the most upper middle classiest, and maybe even the best karaoke singer, but who wants to brag about those things? I’d love to show up and help everyone else feel better about themselves. If everyone else is showing up to be right, then there has to be that guy that people can point at and say “I may not be the best but at least I’m better than THAT GUY!” I can be that guy. I WANT to be that guy. If I can make someone feel better for, maybe 10 years, then so what if someone else thinks they’re a better karaoke singer than me, or is cooler than me or better looking?

We know the truth, right? And at the end of the day that’s the important thing.

Right?

Gasucawa,
Jason

If you have Netflix, then you can watch the documentary “King of Kong” instantly right now on your computer (if you have that Netflix option). If you’re a child of the 80s like I am, and you spent way too much time in arcades like I did (I was a local Crazy Climber champ at the arcade within biking distance of my house. Sad but true.), then I highly recommend going and seeing it right now. Go ahead. I’ll wait…..

For those of you who don’t have quick access to it, I’ll quote the IMDB synopsis:

In the early 1980s, legendary Billy Mitchell set a Donkey Kong record that stood for almost 25 years. This documentary follows the assault on the record by Steve Wiebe, an earnest teacher from Washington who took up the game while unemployed. The top scores are monitored by a cadre of players and fans associated with Walter Day, an Iowan who runs Funspot, an annual tournament. Wiebe breaks Mitchell’s record in public at Funspot, and Mitchell promptly mails a video tape of himself setting a new record. So Wiebe travels to Florida hoping Mitchell will face him for the 2007 Guinness World Records. Will the mind-game-playing Mitchell engage; who will end up holding the record?

Right after watching the movie, I was like most people I guess, thinking “Billy’s a punk” (punk wasn’t the word I was thinking, but this is a family site). I also came away thinking Walter Day (who is more noteworthy in the movie for running the Twin Galaxies website and not the Funspot like the synopsis says) and his group were Billy Mitchell sycophants, and that’s what the directors want you to think. The film has a hero and a villain and the fact that it’s a documentary makes the movie even more intriguing. The problem, though, is that I’m too smart for my own good.

Wanna be smart to? Follow me below the fold.

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If you’ve invited me to Facebook or MySpace or LiveJournal or whateverthat’professional’versionoffacebookis and I didn’t reply, no hard feelings, but NO. It’s not that I’m not social. I am generally a social creature (demented and sad, but social, if you’re a Breakfast Club fan). I just have trouble living up to expectations. If I don’t post a blog entry here for months (or even years) on end, very few people know and/or care. If my loving wife, who is a Facebooker (or whatever you kids are calling it), doesn’t log in for 12 hours, she apparently gets ‘kidnapped’ by someone and ‘poked’ 14 times by people she met once in middle school. Also, she has nasty things written on her ‘wall.’


By definition, I’m a ‘pleaser.’ I have issues and don’t sleep well at night if I think I’m not being all things to all people. Why put myself through the torture of the expectations of people that I haven’t seen face-to-face since I was 14? You want to complain that I haven’t talked enough about Easy-Bake Ovens? Leave a comment in a post or a page, but don’t feel bad if I delete the comment without giving a shiny rat’s behind. There are expectations with Facebook. Mercifully, there are no such expectations with MY website. You don’t like what I’m saying? Fine. Go back to engaging in some fake interaction with someone who is a friend of a friend who happened to be on the same social networking site that you are on. I’m not saying it’s one step away from e-harmony, but c’mon.


Nothing against those sorts of sites, but I know I can’t meet your ‘collecective’ expectations. Those of you who can? WOW! Much love to ya. Like so many other things in life, this one is subject to personal opinion, but next time you wonder why I’m not doing the Facebook, cut me some slack. I’d be fun for a while, then eventually disappoint you and make you resent me. Do either of us really want that? I didn’t think so.


Gasucawa,
Jason