Complete and abridged only by dirty words note, written by Reppie.

 The best Christmas I ever had didn’t involve any sort of homecoming- we all lived up on the same

mountain, it was like Coal Miner’s Daughter if you’ve seen that movie. No, the best Christmas I ever

had was 1975, when Santa brought me an Atari. At the time, it was just Pong, but if you are too

young to remember, darlings it was the best thing in the whole world. You could just look at it, with

all its black wires strung around the back of the TV, and know that it was the start of something big -

something magic and wonderful. We were very reverent about our Atari, and in fact, it was somewhat

of an oracle on the top of the TV.

 My very first foray into wiring things was when I learned to wire the Atari to the back of the TV. I was

so proud of myself. And what’s more, it taught me eye/hand coordination like no sport ever could. In

3-D sports, as in life, there are too many variables to get really good at it. Pong was the first game I

could actually predict and control, not to mention how I was beginning to learn the subtle personalities

of electronic games that I still use to this day.

 After a crappy day at school, I would come home and play Pong into the wee hours, enjoying the logic

of it, and the control I had. I knew I was in some club now, something was just around the corner, and

even though I was a girl, I knew I could still be included. It didn’t matter what I looked like, it didn’t

matter who was yelling at me, flirting with me, or trying to get me to take off my clothes, or who was

telling me I was stupid, Pong taught me there was such a place in the world where logic and control

and self control mattered. I longed to just be able to talk to people that invented such things, I knew if

I could just somehow, somehow stand near them and breathe the same oxygen, I would get as smart

as they were, and I could change my life. I thought I could translate Pong into my 3-D life and

perhaps begin solving my problems - it really was that powerful to me.

 During the Pong Christmas, there was already talk of a new movie in the works. I would read about it

in my music magazines, of all places. Kids out in California talked about it, between ranting about

skateboarding and surfing- it was a movie about space. It was going to be different than other space

movies, was what the cool people said. To me, this movie was coming from the same place Pong

came from in the universe - it was that very cool, mind-opening, innovative, life changing,

save-the-white-trash-children-of-the-earth-with-hope-for-the-future place that delivered me Pong on

Christmas. I was so excited about this movie, I begged my mother to get me every magazine I could

find that even mentioned it. I scoured everything I could find to see what the people in Californialand

were telling me about the movie, how it was doing, if it was done filming, who was fighting on the set,

how much they were getting paid, etc. I went to sleep with sparkly dreams about one day in the

future when I might have a house on the moon.

 We went on the first payday after the movie came out- my mom, my brother and I. I bought a program

(which I still have) with my $5 allowance and we sat in the theater and actually cried during the movie.

It is the only movie my mom, brother and I ever saw together in our whole lives. When we left the

theater, we didn’t even know how to talk about the movie, other than to say how we loved it. There

weren’t any words for Star Wars when it first came out- no real words. When we asked our friends at

school, “Have you seen it?” what we really were asking was, “Did you feel it?” and there was lots of

nodding and smiling going on. We knew what was coming, it was huge and we didn’t understand it,

but we could feel it.

 With that in mind, I want to say: Milosovic darling, as you close your eyes for the last time, maybe

tonight, maybe tomorrow, but definitely someday soon, say a big thank you to Californialand, Star

Wars, and especially Pong, the beginning of the end of you.