Thursday, September 15, 2011

8 Years In Myachi

by MMFL

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 marked my 8-year anniversary in the Myachi Movement. My collection has reached over 100 sacks. In a little over 5 years on the Myachi Forums, I’ve amassed almost 8,000 posts.
For a while now, I’ve realized this day was coming, and I thought it’d be fun to write a guest blog for the occasion. I didn’t want to sit here and write about everything I’ve done or anything that’d sound egotistical, but the best idea I had was to create a top-8 of events.  Let me explain, though, that these will be events related to my time in the Movement. Some people may not agree with them, and some people may not even know about them, but these are just a few of the things I’ve experienced in my time.
Anyways, here are what I feel are the top 8 events in my 8 years in Myachi:

8. Fire Island Yellow      
Starting things off is a single sack in my collection, the Fire Island Yellow. It’s not the fact that it’s a great jammer or a Pakisack, but the story behind it and the meaning of the sack. A few years ago, I asked Pinky if she could get me all of the Masters’ autographs on something, even if it was just a plain piece of paper. Being the awesome friend that we all know Pinky is, she not only got a Myachi autographed for me, but she hooked me up with a free Fire Island Yellow, had all of the Masters jam it out, AND had them all autograph it. I’m also very lucky that so many of the Masters happened to be in the same place at the same time. Myachi Man, Kid Myach, Crazy Ivan, Pinky, Animal, Maverick, and Chunk the Monk all autographed this Fire Island. I’ve never met any of the Masters yet, but I do have autographs from some of them. Part of collecting is the story that comes with each sack, and this Fire Island definitely has a good story.


7. Jammer of the Year Awards     
In at number 7 is the annual award ceremony of the Myachi Forums, the Jammer of the Year Awards. When the JOTYA’s began, in 2007 believe, I was voted by my peers as the winner of the first (and thus-far only) Myachi Lifetime Achievement Award. This was important to me not only as a win in the JOTYAs, but because it showed that I had earned the respect of my fellow Maniax on the Forums. Later, for 2008, I was co-winner of the Forum Award with Downtown Myachi. Winning these awards showed me that my hard work had not gone unnoticed.

6. Profiles in Mania     
Early this year, perhaps in February, I got a message on Facebook from Crazy Ivan. Basically, he outlined an idea he had to profile some Maniax on the blog, and he chose me as the first to receive this honor. He asked a couple questions and put it all together into an awesome blog entry on the Myachi Blog, published on March 9th. It outlined my time in the Movement, the things I had done, and what I was known for in the Myachiverse. Since I’m from Ohio, many people in the Myachi Movement may not even know about me if they’re not active on the Forums, but being profiled on the Myachi Blog may have helped get my name out there a bit. The second Maniac to be profiled was none other than Downtown Myachi, which means I’m in good company, if you ask me. The biggest thing about it for me, though, was receiving recognition from one of my favorite Myachi Masters and, once again, seeing that I had earned the respect of others.

5. Toys ‘R Us in Parma, OH     
On the morning of October 20th, 2009, I went on the Myachi Forums and saw a topic posted by Animal, titled “Dear MMFL.” He explained how Myachi (series 4.3, to be exact) was about to be carried in over 100 Toys ‘R Us stores across the country, including, as he put it, “one very important TRU – Parma, OH.” This marked the first time in my Myachi Mania that a Cleveland-area store carried Myachi (as far as I know). After all the time I spent pointlessly and selfishly telling the Masters to come to Cleveland, finally I could walk into a store and buy a sack in person. When I finally made my way there, I picked up a Straight Jacket and a Perfect Storm. The Perfect Storm remains in its blister. The only time I’ve been to that TRU since was to pick up some baby stuff for my sister’s baby shower. I took a look around and didn’t notice Myachi anywhere. But even if only for a short period of time, Myachi had finally found its way into my area.

4. Myachi Leader     
I don’t even remember offhand when this took place. Long story short, on the Forum a while back, I received a promotion to the moderator position of Myachi Leader. Along with the other newly-appointed Leaders, it became our responsibility to keep the Forums clean, enforce the rules, and watch out for spamming. This showed me that the Masters not only respected me, but trusted me in a position of power. There have been times when I’ve gotten problematic or abusive of my power, but over time I slowly began to develop and try to become a better Leader. I enjoy being one of the guys to keep an eye on the place and take care of things, and I’m honored to have this opportunity.

3. Downtown Myachi     
One of my fellow Leaders is none other than Downtown Myachi. Hailing from Sarcoxie, Missouri, DTM is a respected guy who’s liked by everybody. Somehow, we began talking and became friends. Although we’ve never met in person, he’s one of my best friends and we know each other really well. We’ve been there for each other through tough times and we talk pretty often. If not for Myachi and the Myachi Forums, we’d never have even met.

2. The New Myachi Forums      
I began Myachi in 2003. At the time on the old Forums, not much was going on. Aside from a friend I had in middle school who had gotten into Myachi but soon lost interest, I didn’t really have anyone to talk Myachi with. Honestly, I had started to lose interest in Myachi in general. It had been a while since I’d really jammed, or even checked the website. This all changed in 2006 with the creation of the new Myachi Forums. At some point I had signed up for the Myachi e-mail list, and as fate would have it, they sent out a mass e-mail announcing the creation of the new Forums. I joined up on July 11th, 2006, and have now been an active member for over 5 years. Not only have the Forums given me a chance to be included in the Movement, but they’ve also introduced me to some of my friends.

1. 2003 Gravity Games in Cleveland, Ohio     
This is it. THE event. I talked my mom into taking me to the Gravity Games when they were here in Cleveland back in 2003. We made our way downtown and on down to Voinovich Park at North Coast Harbor. Oh, man, was it crazy. Booths lining up and down the way, a giant halfpipe, a skate/bike park… it was like heaven. Sadly, I don’t remember how everything went, but we made our way through most of the booths getting free posters, stickers, anything they were giving out. At one booth, I even got an autograph from Doug Brown, a local professional skateboarder. I actually used to skate with him at Rollerworld here back before he really made it big.
Anyways, at the SoBe booth, which was pretty packed, people were tossing things on the backs of their hands. It was simple – if you caught one, you could keep it. I made my way through the crowd and put my hand up, and one of the guys hit me with a toss. I managed to catch it, and took a look at it. I read through the flipbook, and learned about Myachi.
Honestly, at first I wasn’t really interested in it. I figured it was just another free thing I got that’d end up in the bag with everything else. But later on, we sat down for a moment and I took it back out and gave it another thought. It seemed like a cool idea, having this toy that you could take with you anywhere to play with. I started getting into it, checking out the website, and so on. The sack I got, a SoBe 2003 “Sobe Yourself,” is probably the worst-looking sack in my collection. It’s been broken open and sewed shut, half of the SoBe tats have fallen off (but I’ve managed to save most of them in a plastic bag), and it’s so dirty it’s almost a dark gray color. To anyone else, it’s probably junk, but to me, it is THE most important sack in my entire collection.

Plenty of people have made offers for my Glow in the Dark or Red Swirl, and I’ve got plenty of rare and collectible sacks, but nothing will EVER mean more than this SoBe 2003. It was the beginning, it was the first, it was the original, it was what introduced me. Without it, I wouldn’t know about Myachi and life could be totally different for me.
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So there you have it. These 8 events/items are, in my opinion, the top events that I’ve experienced or witnessed in my time in the Myachi Movement. They’ve shaped my opinions, introduced me to friends, and built my skills. These are just a handful of the things I’ve been through, and I’m sure there’s plenty more awesome memories yet to come.

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