Yuko and I just spent 5 days in Prague kicking down the
cobblestones and skipping the
light fandango with an old friend I haven't seen in at least 15 years and maybe even as long as 25. And I've got Facebook to thank for it. If not for this magical matchmaker of the ethersphere I wouldn't have met up with Steve, his Czech partner, Tslata, and their beautiful baby boy, Elvis.
Since Yuko and I finished traveling across Russia about 2 weeks ago, we've been making it up as we go along. "Finland? Sure! Lithuania? Of course!" When we found ourselves in Kraków in southern Poland, we decided to head west. Neither of us had ever been to Prague and I thought it would be a cool place to spend my birthday and hey! - maybe I could meet up with Steve. We reconnected just last winter and have kept in touch via FB ever since. It was weird enough experiencing a cyber-reunion, but were we ready to take the next step - full, frontal, face-to-face communication?! What would I wear? One problem - due to our whimsical travel schedule, I literally gave Steve a day's notice. It turned out to be good timing - he passed on his contact info and we were ready to rock!
We've all been there before - the dreaded reunions with people we haven't seen in ages...I mean, we were basically children the last time we "knew" each other and who's to say what might transpire? It turned out to be a blast. Steve is an excellent guy, a geniune gent. He's been living in Prague for a few years now, painting these beautiful canvasses, falling in love and...oh yeah, having a baby. If not for him, I never would have played the ultra-cool Red Room ("Wild Mountain Thyme", "Men Who Drank Canada Dry", "All Day Eggs"), seen the sun set from Letna Park, met Ilan or got an insider's perspective on life in one of the world's most remarkable cities. So here's to Steve, Zlata, Elvis and Ilan...long may you run.
So that's it? According to The Social Network a vindictive wannabe started it all. Facebook is the revenge of a nerd - a cyber-Attila - and we have his ex to thank for it cuz behind every billionaire you know there's some biotch who dumped him. I think I liked the fashion best - call it "pajama-chic" or "slacker-prep"...
I did enjoy the film, but was disappointed there weren't fewer high-school hi-jinx and more juice about the wider Internet context that spawned Facebook. I mean, we were there too, if not at Harvard at least hanging out at BBSes, in chatrooms or clustering around "likes" whether they were your favourite band's website or a particular type of software. It seems that all along we were just hungering for the type of juvenilia that Facebook delivers - the "status", the "friending" and the endless digital flâneurism of surfing other people's profiles that can be so addicting. Don't we know better or is there something about being alone behind a screen that inflames those desires? 
I thought Jesse Eisenberg was great in Adventureland, but he was even better this time - something about the "berg" must have given him some voodoo insight. His Mark Zuckerberg was as anti-social as he was awkwardly brilliant. The thing about "the smartest guy in the room," is he knows it and it drives him crazy because with that impatient arrogance comes the gnawing feeling of what he lacks - humility. And without that you have a jerk-off, a smart one, but one who's a mess of insecurities in desperate need of self-awareness, the kind that's able to reject egoism and the vapors that inflate it. Or to put it another way - those little red bubbles at the top of the page.
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