Archive for June, 2007
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 Epee 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
