Archive for June, 2007
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
Aside from smiling, this was about his only expression.
Robby was always Robby. I don’t think anyone ever called him Robert as long as I knew him. He was someone that joined the fencing club after I did but seemed like he’d always been there. He fenced right handed until he spontaneously injured his hand, after which he switched to left-handed fencing. His major was in English and he did stuff in music as well. Marching band and such. I never actually saw him play his instrument because I attended neither football games or university concerts.
I don’t remember much of what he ever said, though we talked a lot. Rather, when I think of Robby I recall a plethora of his subtle idle movements. He had a deepish voice but a high-pitched laugh. When he laughed a lot he lowered his head and pressed his thumb and middle finger against his eyes. When he wanted to emphasize something that he was talking about he would hold out his hands palm-down and shake them at the important part.
He didn’t have a lot of facial expressions. Most of his reactions were based on changes in the volume of his voice. He somehow looked angry when he ate food. He had a long tuft of hair growing beneath his lower lip, which he would stick in his mouth to kind of chew on when he was listening, resting, or otherwise not speaking.
He lived in Lake Jackson. He explained that the actual lake was private property, and I told him that we should rally a liberation force to free Lake Jackson. After he graduated his phone answering message said something along the lines of, “Hi, this is Robert Metettal. Please hire me.” I probably spelled his last name wrong, but that’s how it was pronounced. I don’t know if anyone ever hired him.
Category: People I Know
Friday, June 29th, 2007
[Note: Have somewhere to be tonight so not much time for posting. Here is a...slightly exaggerated entry for Clint that I made last weekend. I'll probably revise it later.]
Clint dressed up as Popeye during A-kon 14. Funny story, actually.
Clint pouts when he doesn’t get what he wants. And he wants everything, so he pouts all the time. Sometimes he feels sorry for me and lets me hang out with him, but he frequently looks at the clock and sighs deeply the entire time.
He once won my dignity from me during a game of Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. He said he made it put on a dress and cook him breakfast every day. I finally managed to get it back from him over a game of Lumines some time later. That day was the most angry I’ve ever seen him. He even hit himself.
When we were roommates he worked in an ice cream shop. When I’d ask for him to bring me home ice cream he’d just spit in my face and stomp off. The only nice thing he’s ever said to me was, “I’d pick you in a fighting game.” I offended him once and my punishment was having to play through the entirety of Trio the Punch.
I try to stay in touch with him but he prefers his Executive friends over me. Despite that I kind of look up to him because he writes well and is good at fighting games.
Category: People I Know
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
Yet he’s about as Mexican as Colonel Sanders.
The other members of The Hub knew Gabe as well. Gabe had problems. The first little scheme of his that I learned about involved his creating a counterfeit UH parking decal. He was busted fairly quickly, receiving a ticket for his troubles. We imagined him rubbing his fingers together, sprinkling glitter over a crude cutout in order to simulate the real parking decal sheen. Rubbing one’s fingers together became a reference to Gabe and he acquired the nickname Glitterboy.
Poor workmanship was his staple. He was a Graphics major, and everything he turned in was at least a week late and looked as though it had been thrown together a few minutes before class. In some cases it actually had. He repeatedly tried to get into Graphics Block, the upper-level courses that required portfolio submission. He might have some kind of record for consecutive failures.
He ruined the driveway of The Hub by spray painting one of his cutouts and forgetting to put something under it. He stole an entire shelf from the Psychology building once. Not limited to big things, he also filched smaller objects, like trays from Burger King. I don’t even know why. Just to.
I went to work in the printmaking lab one night and found him and a few others there. I knew it was trouble because the front door was propped open with a case of beer. By the time I left he had constructed a beer can bong and was using the lab’s ventilation fan to hide the odor. That was about the last time I saw him, fortunately.
Category: People I Know
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
She worked a lot, unfortunately.
One day I was out with some photo majors doing gallery hopping and we ended up at a Diedrich’s Coffee. The girl behind the counter had a black baseball cap with a piece of black fabric safety pinned to the front. I asked about the patch and she moved it aside to reveal that the cap actually read “#1 DAD.” “It was the only black cap I could find,” she explained. “But I’m not a dad,” she said, then covered her face. “And I’m not #1.” My first thought was I have to know this person!
I went back later solely to talk to her and did end up becoming acquainted with her. She got the job at Diedrich’s because she once went in to nurse a hangover and was told by the manager, “you’re a lot of fun; you should work here!” She was very busy in a not-good way. The first voicemail she left for me summed it up fairly: “I’m at work. This is Ruth. All I do is work. Working is my life. Computers. Bye!” She was fun to be around but an exceedingly difficult person to locate at any given time.
She “inherited” some fencing stuff from an ENRON exec who lived across the street and gave her all his gear when his wife left him. She used it to terrorize the cat. Her family’s cat was named Axis. “As in Axis of Evil,” she said. They once set up one of those barrel-topped cat food dispensers. The cat went to the device and started eating. And ate and ate. Then it threw up and fell asleep. Some time later it woke up, ate its vomit, and started eating food again. The family realized quickly that the cat just wasn’t ready for modern technology.
Before heading out of state a couple of years ago I told her I’d call when I got back into Texas. I forgot. A year later I decided to try. We missed each other and only managed to leave a voice message. This May I decided to try again on the two year mark. I’ve talked to her no more than a few minutes at a time, which has been just enough to learn that she’s somehow more busy working than before. Last week her phone said it was disconnected. I hope she’s OK.
Category: People I Know
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
I always feel as though I forgot something important.
I’ve known at least four Matts in the past six or so years. I knew Matt Broussard through Percy. He was a painting major, who once painted the critique room a bright color as a class project. Painting majors could do just about anything, from sewing to sculpting. Some of them actually painted. He spent a fair amount of time woodworking, and often spoke of wanting to become a crafter of fine guitars.
Matt really liked guitars and the music they produced. He had a wide range of knowledge about rockers both English and Japanese, and devoted plenty of effort to perfecting the art of rocking. While almost anyone could learn how to play the guitar, it takes a special type to really know how to rock. He was the lead guitarist of a small unnamed garage-based band. His brother took up bass.
He grew up playing games and that was our primary common ground. He was the first person I met that pronounced SNES as one word. He seemed mildly excited about almost everything, and he spoke with enthusiasm on things that he knew about. He was quieter when unfamiliar with something, but he was willing to listen to just about anything. Despite that, things that were lent to him as a suggestion or recommendation typically went untouched.
Matt went to Dallas to get married but did not come back. His wife was largely uninterested in his guitar playing and at times discouraged it. As a result it’s hard to guess at the fate of his talents since moving away. Maybe I’ll hear him jam again some day. The soul of a real rocker never really fades; it just patiently takes a nap in the back seat when the road hits a long straightaway.
Category: People I Know
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Dressed up as Ness at a Con. He had a hard time finding that hat.
His actual name is Chuck, though I already knew a Chuck. I met him through an odd set of circumstances. For a while I was drawing a webcomic based on Earthbound. As an A-kon approached I made an announcement on the comic site that I would be attending. I had one person ask if he could meet me there at some point. Chuck. I asked how I would find him, and he said he’d be dressed like Crono from Chrono Trigger. He was.
I ended up meeting a number of people from around Houston through Chuck, even though he was from San Antonio. He attended a lot of anime conventions, and as a result he was dragged into the hackneyed, made-up drama that lingers over the typical anime crowd. He and his small immediate circle of friends were the only people that solely referred to me by my online alias, “Paper.” That was weird.
The only thing I heard that he did in San Antonio was street racing, of all things. Modding and racing cars. He’s the only street racer I know. I think that he’s put some distance between himself and that old convention crowd, as the last time I talked with him he didn’t even know how to get a hold of any of them. I don’t, either. We all came together and, within a few moments, were scattered again to our distant corners.
Category: People I Know
Sunday, June 24th, 2007
I sure know a lot of people with glasses.
Richard Lutz was in fencing before I joined the club. He was and always will be an épée fencer, a weapon characterized by slow, cautious movements. Basically the opposite of saber, the weapon I used. He was Jewish, practiced other martial arts and took Japanese classes, earning him the nickname “The Jewish Ninja.” One way to irritate him was to ask, “So, does a Jewish ninja use a throwing star of David?”
I could never really pin down what his major was, so I assumed that he was majoring in Everything. He was possibly the smartest person I’ve ever known, who knew something about everything and a whole lot about stuff I didn’t expect. As a result he had a somewhat skewed sense of humor, simply make bad puns most of the time. I had to keep on my toes to amuse him, and he was one of the few people that allowed me to utilize the full extent of my English wordplay. I could sometimes reference five or six completely different things in a sentence and he would be the only person in the room to laugh, such was the extent of his knowledge.
Most of his laughing was restrained to a short chuckle or snort and head shake if Rod said something. Occasionally he would simply break down, covering his mouth and laughing violently, unable to do anything else for several minutes. When someone induced such a thing it was said, “you broke Richard.” I keep handy a tiny notebook in which I write my most random thoughts, and every time I allowed him to peek inside I broke him.
He was a bit violent, usually choosing to strike out at someone that had irritated or offended him. He never learned how to drive and either walked or bussed to any place in the city he needed to go. For Houston, I think that’s kind of a big deal. Once he got his degree in Everything he flew off to Japan to participate in the JET program. Following that, who knows.
Category: People I Know
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
It’s hard to make hair look nappy using single pixels.
I never actually learned Joel’s last name or major, despite spending a lot of time around him. It didn’t ever seem that important. He was in the anime club the year I was Treasurer, and was about the only person I could really tolerate. Whereas most members were fat, loud, and poorly animated, Joel was skinny, bearded, soft-spoken and fond of hackysack. Joel was the third person around the day David and I came up with the nine-word language.
Both Joel and his evil twin, Robert, had beards, though Robert’s hair was darker brown. One of Joel’s recreational activities was burning kerosene in a field. I didn’t really understand how that was an event or hobby, but it was something they did. For fun. Often. He and Robert also made something they called the chain axe. It was heavy and dangerous. I think the name is about as much description as is necessary.
I spent an anime convention largely in his company, which I even wrote about afterwards. That’s kind of a long account. He attended another convention I was at later that Summer, opting not to get a hotel room. Instead he bought a half gallon jug of water, filled it with instant coffee mix, and took naps in the viewing rooms in order to make it the whole three days.
He played a lot of Go around the time I started to put as much distance between myself and the anime club as possible. He always had a long nappy ponytail and beard, but at some point he had a run-in with Homeland Security and decided to do some grooming in order to look good for his court date. Imagine that. He kept his hair short afterwards. I haven’t seen him in a long time.
Category: People I Know
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
Hooray, weekend! Here are a few links relevant to some of the People I’ve brought up in the past week or so.
- HOW to ART - Collection of some of David’s
work. Click on the different mice or anything on the page for various projects. The purple mouse project, “Dinosaur Derrek,” makes me really happy.
- Blackmoontides - Personal website of Percy. It hasn’t been updated in…a while, but I hear there’s a big revision coming soon.
- Jungle Workz - Julian, Chan, and a few other UH alumni have gathered together to try to make a collaborative graphics/art-related entity. Right now it’s sparse, as its content relies on Julian suddenly not being useless and Chan sticking to something.
Category: Links, Website
Friday, June 22nd, 2007
I can never do the hair right.
On the morning of September 9, 2001, I asked permission to peruse the sketchbook of someone I saw drawing outside of my Intro to Graphics class. I was allowed to browse and its owner and I had a brief conversation, during which she offered a URL to her website. We had more conversations in following classes.
She eventually introduced me to her partner and circle of friends, an easygoing bunch that played lots and lots of games. I wasn’t especially good at competitive games, so I tended to spend those early gatherings going through her copious collection of art books.
She’s one of my closest and most trusted friends, someone who’s managed to put up with me through my various highs and lows. Her and her partner were my roommates during one of the worst years of my life, and the fact that they’re still on amicable terms with me, I think, says a lot.
She recommends music that I’ll enjoy, artwork that I’ll appreciate, and movies that I’ll end up watching more than once. She can seem a bit hostile, but that’s only because she has no tolerance for nonsense. She is caring when it matters most, and has an innate sense of when someone needs a hug. Some of her gifts that have overjoyed me include a tiny sock, a kitten keychain, and a cooking apron.
She stays very very busy making a living doing what she likes to do. Despite that, we manage to talk or see one another at least once a month, which is more than I can say of the majority of people I know.
Category: People I Know
