Category Archives: My Life
The 6 Geekiest Things I Own
This may not come as a big surprise to some people, but I am a huge dork. The condition was really bad in high school, seemed to mellow slightly in college and has now settled into a nice, acceptable level of being a geek. And I’m happy with that. I’ve made my peace with my awkward, dorky state of mind, and an adulthood that’s heavily influenced by video games and Spider-Man. This life clearly doesn’t appeal to everybody, but damned if I’m not loving it. So this list will be a celebration of my geekitude.
And you will never find a more wretched hive of nerd and geekery than my apartment.
No, it's not that bad, and has less Chewbacca
That is to say, my apartment in Rome, New York is filled with all manner of geeky artifacts and memorabilia. Some of it has been collected over the years, and some items were spontaneous purchases that I couldn’t pass up. I’ve got a lot of the items on display just for the sheer geeky thrill of it. I love every scrap of nerdy crap and I thought it would be funny to share The 6 Geekiest Things I Own with everybody.
And yes, I don’t get many female visitors to my apartment. The place could probably use a woman’s touch.
My Favorite Song, and Other Really Awesome Tunes
Most people will tell you that they don’t have only one favorite song. They will name off artists, albums, genres or maybe their favorite song right now. Not me though. I have one favorite song, and I’ve had this favorite song since it debuted in high school in 1999. It will probably always be my favorite song. I love the tune, I love the chorus, I love the lyrics; it’s a song that really speaks to me and defines my mindset. Or maybe it’s just a really catchy song. That’s the thing about me, I don’t know that much about music.
My favorite song is ‘The Great Beyond’ by R.E.M.
Great song, right?
I am geeky about a great many things. I love comic books and video games. I’m a huge fan of TV, movies and books. But the one medium I’ve never really been geeky about is music. I never wanted to be a rockstar when I grew up. I don’t know anything about the history of music. I can’t speak intelligently about the great movements or artists. I’ve heard of Elvis, The Beatles and Frank Sinatra, but I could barely tell you anything about them. I’d only heard of contemporary artists like Lady Gaga or Amy Winehouse when they started making news about their weird behavior.
I don’t know music, but I know what I like.
Click the jump to see some other songs I like and learn a bit more about my tastes in music.
Falmouth University
Welcome to the 100th post at Henchman-4-Hire! It’s only been a few months, but I’m loving this blog. It’s been so much fun sharing all my geeky opinions with everyone. I’m getting fans from all over the Internet, and viewership keeps going up. Tell your friends. Share my entries on Facebook or Twitter. I’d love to see more comments after the posts. Let’s get some discussion going. What are your opinions about the geeky things I write about? It would be really fun if this blog became something of a community for people to talk about geeky topics. And if you have any geeky topics you’d like me to write about, don’t hesitate to e-mail me.
For the 100th post, we’re taking a trip down memory lane to introduce my readers to Falmouth University, the comic strip I wrote and drew for my college newspaper.
I was an amateur cartoonist – emphasis on ‘amateur’ – during my college years at Syracuse University in upstate New York. For all four years, I wrote and drew my own comic strip for the school’s newspaper, The Daily Orange. It was called Falmouth University, and it was about a group of college friends having geeky and silly adventures on the fictional campus. I based the characters on myself and my friends, naming them Jack, Zips, Studhammer and a revolving door of female characters – of which there was a Female Character Curse! I did my best to shy away from obvious jokes about bad cafeteria food and other college cliches, instead going for zany humor. Sometimes I got political, sometimes I teased other comic strips and sometimes I got overly sentimental. Sometimes they were just dumb. I wrote all the jokes myself and hand-drew every strip. By my senior year, it was running every day in the school newspaper, and I know I had fans because I bumped into a few of them around campus.
Falmouth University was likely my greatest achievement in college.
The art was terrible, the jokes were mundane; but darn it, Falmouth University was legit! I loved that little strip and I thought I’d share some of my favorite comics as well as the story of how I dabbled in cartoonery.
The comic is mostly based on people I knew freshmen year. Jack was a slimmer version of me, also without the glasses. (Though in hindsight, I probably should just go with one friend’s suggestion that Jack was more like Graham Mason, a friend who lived a few doors down from me freshman year. The backwards baseball cap and the love of video games definitely fit with Graham.) Zips was based on my freshman roommate Adam Raymer, in that both ran track. And Studhammer was based on two guys I knew, GM Hakim and Dan Levy.
There’s a fun pre-college story where I got to meet these guys and several other people from my floor prior to actually arriving on campus. So we were pals. GM’s freshman nickname was ‘Studwrench’ and I don’t remember where that came from…so I just took it and switched it to ‘Studhammer’ for the comic. The characters are only really loosely based on my friends, though Stuhammer looks sort of like GM, at least.
The name ‘Falmouth University’ comes from my roommate Adam. He once told me an story about his high school track team from Falmouth, Massachusetts. They once went to a college tournament, and in order to get in, they made up the name ‘Falmouth University’ instead of Falmouth High School. The track team then spent the day calling themselves ‘FU’. I decided that was funny enough to make a good comic strip title.
I had several different female characters to round out the quartet, as well as a Residential Assistant and several minor supporting characters. There was the grouchy boss, the professor, the hot co-worker, the dork and Carl. The faceless RA was based on my friend Christy Pachucki, an actual RA in my building who I knew through some other friends.
The Female Character Curse was basically the idea that whenever I picked a female friend to be a character, that girl didn’t stick around either on campus or in life.
The first female character was Heather, based on a girl I knew named Kate Kelly. I had a little crush on her, but I don’t think she ever knew or even knew the character was supposed to be based on her. I don’t even know if she read the comic. We traveled in different circles, so that friendship basically just drifted apart.
Dresses are easier to draw than legs
The second female character was Cait and her pet penguin, based on my friends Caitlin Byrne and Ashley. Caitlin was one of my closer friends freshman and sophomore year, and she really loved Disney, hence the Mickey Mouse ears. She was a member of a sorority, and I used to draw the sorority letters on her sweatshirt, until her sorority sisters got sort of freaked out that Caitlin was a character in a DO comic strip. So she asked me to change the letters. Caitlin was super smart and she graduated after only two years at Syracuse, so her character didn’t stick around either.
You can really see how Jack changed as I drew more and more
The third female character for my Junior year was Bobi, based on Becky Waterman. I’ve known Becky since I was a little kid, and she was a close friend of mine in high school. She was a grade behind me and also went to Syracuse University…for only a year or two. I forget why Becky left, but she did, and so the curse claimed another friend.
I think Bobi has a neat look
The fourth female character was ‘Lyssa, based on my girlfriend and friend-of-the-site Alyssa, whom I met back in college. ‘Lyssa the character also had a bit of Saandra Waterman thrown in; Becky’s older sister who transferred to Syracuse, and who I hung out with Junior and Senior years. Saandra eventually spent a semester abroad (if my memory serves) and Alyssa suffered a tragedy midway through Senior year that took her away. But I kept ‘Lyssa around for the rest of the year as a tribute.
Overalls and glasses are always cute
So that was my cast. I came up with a wide variety of different adventures and gags for them, some taking place on campus, usually in the dorms, and some that were just weird for the fun of it. Most famously, at least as far as I’m concerned, was that I changed the title in the spring of 2003 to Falmouth University at War. That’s when we invaded Iraq, so I had my characters get drafted and sent to the front lines for some war humor. Then the whole ‘Mission Accomplished’ thing happened and I switched back to normal, thinking the war was over. Boy was that premature.
I’d like to think I established different personalities for the character, but probably not. They were a fun little group, and I had a lot of fun making the strip. But they wouldn’t have become anything if it wasn’t for the awesomeness of the student newspaper.
The great thing about The Daily Orange – or ‘The DO’ as it was commonly known – was that it looked and felt like a legitimate newspaper. It was student-owned and student-produced, completely independent from Syracuse University. They used real newsprint, it was folded like a newspaper, had the masthead on top and had real articles about real news by real student reporters. I wrote for The DO for several years, leading to my current career as a professional newspaper reporter. Everybody’s favorite section of The DO, it’s crowning achievement, was the crossword puzzle. Everybody loved doing the puzzle in class!
But The DO also had its own comics page, with more than a dozen comics written and drawn by students. A lot of them were well-drawn, many were more avant garde than actually humorous, and most of them were just weird. One of the actually famous comics from The DO is The Perry Bible Fellowship by Nicholas Gurewitch. Perhaps you’ve seen it online? Hilarious comic. Well PBF debuted in The Daily Orange all those years ago, often running alongside Falmouth University. I was nowhere near as funny as PBF, but I tried, dammit! PBF went on to be published in real newspapers across the Northeast, and Gurewitch hsa become so famous that he’s done strips for Marvel Comics.
Check it out, an actually funny comic strip!
I went back to campus a year or two after graduation and discovered that The DO had changed its style and had become more of a pamphlet than a true newspaper. It was folded differently and had a whole new style to it. There were only two or three comics crammed onto a smaller page too. Very disappointing. But at least for my four years, The DO was a newspaper to be proud of!
Anyway, the story of Falmouth University began the second semester of my freshman year. I’d become a huge fan of The DO and it’s comics, and even knew a guy, Tom, who made one of the comics. Tom hung out in my group of freshmen friends. I forget the name of his comic, and I’m not sure what ever happened to Tom. I think he transferred away after freshman year. I wanted to do a comic too, but there was one problem – I can’t draw. As you’ve seen in the sample strips, the best I can do is doodle. I’ve never taken any drawing classes, so maybe that’s the problem. I just can’t get on the page what I can picture in my mind.
Second semester freshman year, I decided to just go for it. The DO had been running ads that they needed more comics. So I started coming up with ideas. I don’t remember any of my other ideas, but I settled on Falmouth University and the group of friends. Before I could begin drawing them, however, The DO’s ad changed to say they needed only square, one-panel comics. Like the Family Circus. The way the comics page was set up, they had the normal 3-panel strips down the left side of the page, and then a few one-panel square comics crammed underneath the crossword puzzle. So at the last minute, I changed all my gags to fit one-panel humor, drew them up and walked them across camps to The DO office.
They appeared within a week, and soon a very slight phenomenon was born!
The very first Falmouth University
Since I was brand new, my comics didn’t appear all that often. I had maybe one or two a week in the paper. The same comics didn’t run every day anyway, since there were so many submissions. But since I was one of the few square comics, I got featured a lot more often. I kept churning out new comics and walking them over to The DO across campus. I used to type up the captions and print them out, then cut and paste them into the hand-drawn comic. Then I would Xerox the comic and hand-in the copies, while I kept the originals. I’m pretty sure I have the originals stored somewhere at my parents’ house…at least I hope I do.
By Junior year, I’d gotten to know the paper’s Art Director pretty well, and I was starting to get run every day. I also got a scanner for my computer and was able to start using MSPaint to help put the comics together, as well as e-mail them into The DO. I also started my own website: http://www.falmouthuniversity.com. It was a Geocities site, but has since been erased because Geocities closed down.
Now you can find almost all of my Falmouth University comics in an album on my personal Facebook page. Though I think I’m missing at least one whole semester from my Junior year because the way I was storing the computer files ended up erasing them. I think/hope my parents still have the actual physical copies of the newspapers, and someday I’ll try to scan them in for posterity.
Definitely by Senior year I was in the paper every day. I loved writing and drawing that comic. I can remember sitting around and coming up with ideas. I remember discovering new ways to draw and ink the comics. Once I was interviewed on the student television network, though the host was far more interested in my hat hair for some reason. I remember the little mini-feud I had with the Penguins Without Pants sketch comedy team after I lovingly mocked them in one comic. Writing Falmouth University was my favorite part of college. In fact, my greatest regret from college is not that I didn’t party enough, it was that I never pushed my minor celebrity as much as I could. I wish I’d bragged a bit more.
Maybe used the comic to pick up some chicks…
The very last Falmouth University
Where I Was on Sept. 11
I remember exactly where I was when the Twin Towers were hit on Sept. 11, 2001. I remember how I found out. I still remember the crappy joke I made about it, not yet knowing the full context of what was happening. Some parts of the day are hazy. But I remember some details. I don’t have any really good way to honor the troops or the sacrifices that have been made since Sept. 11. So I thought I’d share this little tidbit with you.
I was in the basement of the Physics Building at Syracuse University waiting with several other students for our Astronomy lab to begin.
Google + 'patriotic' = this picture
It was my freshman year of college. I’d been on campus for a few weeks by then, since college starts in late August. I’d made several friends, gotten used to my class schedule had had turned 18-years-old the week before. I very much enjoyed Astronomy class, but the lab on the side was something less than fun. It started at 8:30 a.m., we were in the basement and our Teaching Assistant had already developed a reputation for being pathetic. And late.
Only later would I understand that Teaching Assistants in those types of classes are actually graduate students working to get their degree. All I knew then was that we had some Russian guy who was always late and spoke only broken English. He was a bit of a nutter, too.
So there we were, a mix of freshmen and upperclassmen, hanging out in the hallway outside the lab room waiting for our TA. I’d made a few friends in the lab, people I’d often partner with, but all of us were kind of chatting and joking around. We often tried to quote that unwritten rule (or was it written?) that if a TA is 10 minutes late then you’re free to go. I believe professors get 15 minutes before class is simply considered null and void.
Some girl got a call or a text or something on her cell phone about the Towers. That’s how I found out.
I didn’t have my own phone back then. And I think cell phones were still something of a new thing. But some girl found out that a plane had crashed into the Twin Towers and she told everybody. But we were in the basement of the Physics Building with no TV and no way to know or find out what was really going on.
I joked something like, “There are planes flying into the Twin Towers but we’re still waiting for this TA to show up?” I’m paraphrasing.
Anyway, none of us left, or few of us did, if any. The TA eventually showed up and we held our lab. I don’t remember what the lab was about, and I don’t remember what new information came in about the Towers while we were in class. I believe that’s when they fell, sometime while we were busing doing Astronomy stuff. I don’t remember much of what came next. I vaguely remember walking back to my dorm and standing in the lounge on Brew 5 watching the news. I remember visiting a few of my friends in the dorm to see if they were OK. I didn’t know anybody in the towers or anybody in New York City, so I was not personally effected.
I remember going with everybody else to the mass at the chapel on the Quad, but I don’t remember anything about that. I think I found a friend of mine sitting on a bench, and I went and sat with her. I had to ask her for a pencil.
Because weirdest of all, we still had an Astronomy test that day. I know a few of my classmates had decided to skip it, but I was torn by my scholarly honor. I borrowed the girl’s pencil and went and took my best.
I think I got a B.
Anyway, I just thought I’d share. Much love and respect to everyone who died on that day, and everyone who has died since. And especially to those who are still fighting.
My Favorite Birthday
On this, my 28th birthday, I thought I’d take a trip down memory lane to recall some of my favorite birthdays of the past. Let me first say that I have a terrible memory, especially when it comes to recalling anecdotes of the past. A lot of stuff has just gone fuzzy. So I’ve utterly forgotten some birthdays. There’s also the fact that birthdays have just never been a big deal for me. I’ve never had huge parties. But there are some fun ones that stick in my memory and I thought I’d share.
My favorite birthday party actually didn’t happen on my birthday. It was a Halloween party that I threw to celebrate my birthday, despite the two days being nearly two months apart.
I rarely had friends over to my house when I was a kid. I think I was embarrassed because my house was always really cluttered with junk. I don’t think my parents are hoarders, and it wasn’t garbage or dirty food or anything like that around the house. We just owned stuff and that stuff tended to get piled around the living room, and there was always a lot of paperwork piled up on our dining room table. We weren’t living in filth, we were just living in stuff. Anyone who has ever been to my parents’ house when it was like that knows what I’m talking about.
Anyway, for special occasions we cleaned the living room. So it was cool to have people over. On this particular year, and I don’t remember what age I was turning, my parents agreed to throw me a Halloween party for my birthday. I had to have been at least older than 10, but maybe not yet in high school. Or maybe I was a freshman in high school. Again, I have no idea. Though it was after Beavis and Butthead Do America came out on home video, since we rented that to watch during the party. That feels really teenagery of me.
Off the top of my head, I can remember inviting Shannon David, Marc Paczkowski, I think Timm Burns, Andy Greathouse, Pat Henderson…all my pals from back then who are Facebook friends now. I don’t think I invited any girls. It wasn’t that kind of party. I’m sure there were some other guys there, but I just can’t remember them right now. My brother was probably there.
What’s so memorable about this birthday is that once my friends started showing up, we all of a sudden decided to go trick-or-treating. We were all too old to go normally, and that hadn’t been part of the birthday plan, but we went anyway. It started with just walking to my next door neighbor’s house to get some free candy. Because everybody likes candy at a party.
Then once all my friends had arrived, we decided as a group to walk my entire neighborhood for more candy! We all grabbed whatever masks my family had lying around the house, some from previous Halloweens and some from toys or whatever. I remember Shannon wearing one of those dark, faceless hoods and therefore he was unable to see anything as we walked because it was the dead of night. I don’t remember what mask I wore. So my friends and I grabbed some bags and just went strolling around the neighborhood getting candy even though we were way too old to be out. We didn’t cause any mischief, but we just had a blast shooting the breeze and getting candy. Then we all came home, ate the giant piles of candy and watched Beavis and Butthead Do America.
When I was a kid, my family and I didn’t trick-or-treat in our neighborhood. Instead, my siblings and cousins would go to our grandparents’ house, and then we’d be driven through the countryside visiting people and families our family knew. So that party was also the first time I ever just randomly went door-to-door in my own neighborhood. So basically it was just a really fun night with my friends, with a spontaneous amount of trick-or-treating.
I think the year before that Halloween party was one of the only other times I had friends over to my house for my birthday. This party was on my actual birthday, but it wasn’t a party so much as a chance to have people over and to camp outside. My parents bought me this big tent, which was basically just a big outdoor room with mosquito netting for walls. I had a few people over, I remember Marc, Eli Whitcomb, Andy, Pat, and I think my cousin Tyson. And we just hung out in the tent for most of the night. I distinctly remember us talking about girls for awhile. I also remember the feeling of walking out into the middle of the road in the middle of the night. I’d never done it before, and it felt kind of cool. Eventually we all just went inside the house and slept.
The earliest birthday I can remember was probably kindergarten. Back when you had a party and invited everybody in your class. We held the party at Burger King on Grant Avenue. I remember it because we handed out little plastic lunch boxes as treats, and each box had a little Alvin and the Chipmunks figurine inside. Mine was Theodore dressed to go swimming, with an inner tube, a snorkel and big flippers.
I don’t remember any of my birthday parties in high school.
My birthdays in college were not the epic parties I was probably supposed to have, but they were fun. Since my birthday is clearly at the start of the school year, I remember using my birthday Freshman year as an ice-breaker. I remember buying some pizzas and inviting everybody I’d met so far to just come hang out in the lounge on Brew 5. The next year I was living alone in a different dorm from most of my friends, but I again bought some pizzas and invited all my friends to make the trek out to hang in my new dorm lounge. It was a good chance for people to see each other again early Sophomore year. That party ended with a bunch of us taking the pizzas to another dorm, the one we’d been hanging out in so far that year, and I think we played either Connect Four or Jenga. I have pictures somewhere.
By Junior year I had some new friends and I tagged along with them to some house party. A lot of people might remember that I wasn’t much for parties or drinking back in college, but I went out on occasion. It was a fun but unmemorable night. Senior year I turned 21, and I was rooming in a South Campus apartment with my friend Joe Maguire. If I recall correctly, I invited my old high school friend Heather Partzych over to our apartment for a quiet night. Heather attended college at a neighboring school in Syracuse, so we got together now and again during the four years of college. People might also remember that I don’t drink alcohol. I had my first drink on my 21st birthday with Heather and Joe at our apartment, just some coconut flavored rum that Joe had on hand. They made me a mixed drink. I didn’t like it but drank it for their benefit. I don’t remember what else we did that night. Hopefully something fun. Though definitely a low key celebration.
And I think those are the only birthdays I can remember…
Still, memory lane is a fun place to visit.
Henchman-4-Hire 