image 109 The header to my
own personal website from late 1999.
I didn’t move out at eighteen obviously, I had a lot of
friends that did, but I wasn’t so quick to jump ship. Actually, in retrospect
some of my friends that moved out seemed to only do so for the sake of doing
so. I guess when eighteen and some have the ability to move out on Mom and Dad’s
dime they just do it. Even if in some cases it’s not that far from Mom and Dad.
It bares extra freedoms, I guess. But as I said going into senior year I knew
the plan after high school, or I knew what the initial plan was, and knew it
just made sense to not move out.
So those next, what was meant
to be two years, that turned into three, I stayed at the L street house. And
you know what 97, 98, and 99 were pretty good fun, sure I quit school for that
wacky internet ad revenue train, but I didn’t really miss out on the experience.
Humorously if I felt the need to damage myself, like many do, that first year
of college I could literally do down the street and do it at someone else’s
place and leave my day to day life out of it.
And who knows if May of 99 didn’t go the way it did maybe
I stay as I continue to grow what I was working on, and maybe I could have
managed some weird life that way. But I met a girl that May and so I decided
life was worth deviating from its present course, and to make a long story
short a major part of that was getting to San Diego as much as and as often as possible.
Now I have already covered some of this ground, early on
I managed a couple trips down south, one that involved a slurry of Star Wars
nerds and some touristy silliness, which Jen was a part of. The second time I
sold some MTG cards and spent a pretty sizeable chunk of time with her and thus
the real plot to be in San Diego 100 percent of the time started. I’m older
now, and I also have the benefit of hindsight, so the truth is, or better put,
the better plan would have been to get her up in north. At the time with her
relationship at home, that would have seemed impossible, and maybe with our
baby twenty-year-old brains that’s the truth. Either way that’s not the path we
decided to take, instead I need to go south.
That path we took is so complicated it’s hard to remember
the fine details. Once January of 2000 rolled in the long-distance calling,
that was a joke four months prior, had become a normal thing and it became
obvious that we just needed to be closer, for the sake of the phone bill. Somehow,
we managed to use a series of Star Wars nerds trips to use as ways up
and down the state. Without filling out the finer details at the moment it,
broke down sort of like this. In March there was some kind of Star Wars
nerd get together. Jen flew up early to Davis and stayed up here, then I went
down south with her for whatever we were doing with the Star Wars folks.
Then I just didn’t come back up.
Right before that though
there was an unfortunate event not relating to the San Diego syndrome. About a
week before I went down to stay for a month with Jen, George started acting
weird. My mother called me over to look at him. He was just standing in the
hallway looking straight ahead and swaying. Our little protector who usually
would be looking at us for some sort of positive reinforcement was just staring
and swaying. It was obvious something was wrong.
Somehow, he got outside as the morning grew on, possibly
we let him out to try and go to the bathroom, since he would only go in one
spot out back. While mom called the vet to find a time we could bring him in.
Luckily there is a vet about half a block from the L street house, so any time
was workable for us. Once that go arranged, I had to go get him when it was
time to go. Mom had a student, so I was going to have to walk him down the
street to see the vet.
When the time came to get him though I couldn’t find him.
It had also started raining quite heavily. I was calling him, nothing, he was very
obedient so when he just wasn’t coming it was very worrisome. I searched the
backyard and eventually found him hidden way back in the dark, underneath the
pool deck. I told him to get up and come, but he wouldn’t. I finally had to
pick him up and carry him out, he still refused to go, just sat there breathing
heavily. So, I had to carry him out the side gate and down the street to the
vet in the pouring rain.
I got him there and I had to help him up on the
examination table, then things just got worse. The vet wasn’t saying words that
I wanted to hear. Internal bleeding was mentioned, Kidney issues, then the worst
one, a money total I knew wasn’t going to make Mother happy. So, I had to leave
him there and go deliver the information home. Mom got on the phone with the vet,
but I knew what the answer was going to be, I walked back down the street and
vandalized some things behind the Long’s Drug Store next to the vet office in
defiance of nature. In a way I still stand in defiance of nature and how that
poor little dog got played dirty on his final day, pave the thing it didn’t
save George.
To this day George’s choice
of time to depart us sticks with me. It’s like he knew I was about to move away
and decided it was time to leave the house to Mom and Dad. The suddenness of
what happened to him always puzzles me too, I still wonder if he caught a
poisoned animal that night and accidentally did himself in. It’s also a sad
thing how much they would charge to try and help him and force us to choose
between trying to save a dog at great expense and letting it die.
Distraught that evening I believe it was Dad and I went
to Fry’s Electronics in Sacramento. There to consul myself I will pick up Wil
Wright’s latest simulation game, The Sims. Looked like a cute little
game that I had heard some noise about before it came out, might be a nice
distraction from the depressing day I had putting the best friend to sleep.
More on The Sims later.
George, the master of his domain (1/14/1999), a brief video on the baby panda at the San Diego Zoo, and a looks a what a 5000 count box of trading cards looks like, sice i dont think i have any pictuers of the original MTG box of cards i sold.
There is now a confusing number of trips back and forth
between San Diego and Davis. The first trip will be conducted at the end of February as a reaction to a January where Jen and I would not stop talking on the phone, long distance, at great cost. It was this post-Christmas socializing that introduce Jen and Jim. Unlike with Marty who sort of missed that I was spending a lot of time talking to this new girl back in 99, Jim, who would come over from his prep chef job he had at the time, would get into commenting on our long ass phone conversations as he played whatever game he was fancying at the time, or sometimes actually working on that Silvara website that started his trips to the house the year prior.
His joking personality helped start to endear my friends to Jen as well. So after the sadness of George’s passing, our birthday’s at the end of January and the start of February, we decided we needed a get together without anyone else coming to some “Event”.
Now I was making some money through the websites still, although admittedly I was getting a bit behind since I was focusing a lot of time on Jen during what used to be my work time. And unlike the pattern I had fallen in with Marty forever or working during the week and having the weekends off, Jim would come over any night of the week, and some times all the nights of the week and we would stay up late. Etc, etc, and my ad revenue in quarter one of 2000 wasn’t as good as it had been years prior.
But here I was planning a trip to San Diego to sure up a sure thing with a girl I had been working on figuring out how to get together with now for months. I needed a quick influx of money. Roll back the clock now too 1995.
Five years ago, back when Jake lived in what was now Dad’s office, the Dungeon Master had lobbied to get into a new trading card game called Magic The Gathering. Jake, fancying himself a master manipulator had started on his road towards being a deckmaster by getting our friend Chris K. to bring over this enormous box of “cards he didn’t care about” to learn the game with.
There were some adventures back then, but then Jake left, I never got into the game, and somewhere along the story arc of Chris K.’s life he forgot about the cards. In fact I remember like a year later when Chris K. was deep into his scamming storyline that was causing friction with him and a lot of our friends, I brought up that his Magic cards were still at my house. He oddly denied their existence to me, so with no real understanding of what was gong on with him at the time I packed them away.
And so throughout the late 90s as the world wide web became my work, and collecting Star Wars figures my hobby these cards sat in a high count box in a closet doing nothing. Fast forward to February of 2000 and a tightly wound couple separated by a few hundred miles and no automobile want to have a time together.
Our hero, me. Dusts off this old box of cards. Now thanks to the time I’ve been spending with Dad since the Episode One midnight madness sales, I have spent a lot of time figuring out how Ebay works for him to help him sell all manner of items he thought he could turn a quick profit on from our morning shopping adventures. So I had a thought, people were still playing Magic, I had like 5,000 of these things that the owner of denied being his. I bet I could raise some money to help with this plan Jen and I had.
So I took what I thought were some neat cards from the box, scanned them off, took pictures of how large the box was, and then said all shipping costs went with the buyer. I figured I would get a couple bucks to help out with a flight on southwest airlines. I put the box up at what I thought was a fair asking price of around fifty bucks I think and let it go for a week.
Well my knowledge of Magic wasn’t that extensive at the time, and the auction started gaining some traction over time. And then at the end it seemed to have a few bidders trying to swoop in and claim the box, which made this one auction I setup to help with funding the trip instead become the auction that funded the entire trip for us. I think I ended up with like a 600 dollar of more profit off the sale. It was far beyond what I expected.
At that time a flight to San Diego from Sacramento was like 45 dollars or something insanely cheap, which left a lot of money for two 22 year olds to spend in San Diego for a week. Now I will take a pause on the main narrative. That Magic card box, did I ever regret that sale? No, as we will come to see that trip was pretty important to the next few years of my life. But that’s not the only way one can regret something.
So, the longer answer. I never felt bad for Chris K. in the situation, I understood that I just sold something that technically didn’t belong to me, but Chris K. for whatever reason didn’t accept their validity of existence from me when I tried to get them out of my life. So even though it sucks to have something of yours disappear he had a chance to take them back, on more than one occasion and instead did the exact opposite.
Then of course the only reason I would think it a big deal is that I would get into Magic cards eventually, but not until years later after Dad passed away. When I did get into them, I realized why even in 2000 that box sold as well as it did. Chris had started collecting the cards right at the beginning of game, so even his junk were many other players treasure. And some of the cards I remember from the box are now probably worth as much as the box sold for back then.
To that, I know I have things I have lost and wished I still had around, I don’t know what Chris’s life developed into but I do hope he doesn’t wonder what happened to all his cards when he gets nostalgic about the whole thing. Although I could be wrong, there might be some strange reason as to why he denied they were his when I brought them up, maybe making them disappear was relevant to his future, I don’t really know, because Chris K. falls into this weird category of childhood friends we all have as we get older whose stories are a mystery. All our players in this current story, Jen, I still know kind of what is going on with her, Jim, who I have known since I was five, I have recently talked to and now he is a functioning human. Chris K. though could have passed for all I know in 2023. I haven’t seen of heard from him since like the 10s, and that was just Facebook stuff anyway.
True there is a story here I probably will write up in the 90s when Chris K. came at odds with a lot of shared friends, so by now some of the estrangement may make sense, but it’s a weird side note on this story. That being said, maybe there is some way to find the archive of the sale, because that would be crazy. Because whoever bought those cards helped start a crazy part of my life.
Thanks to the patronage of Nicol Bolas now, was able to get some plane tickets and the end of February because the first trip, kind of move of the year. The last week of February was going to be spent in San Diego.
Look this trip was good. But a lot of it is personal and I won’t get into. I think the only major “vacation” style thing we did was take the bus down to Balboa Park and go to the San Diego Zoo. Which was just an extra selling point on the trip. No joke, it happened at this time that the zoo had a baby panda in their Panda enclosure which was a major draw at the time.
Jen and I had to stand in line for quiet a while to get into see the little tike it was so popular in fact. Then in a slow moving fashion we had to move through the exhibit hoping to see the pandas do more than sleep in a corner and be anti-social. Luckily this was the trip of trips so when we got in the little guy had decided to try and climb and play for everyone. So a win there.
Also my second grade-self got to see young koala’s as they got out in the light for the first time this visit as well. Miniature koala’s being goofy on little branches in the animal nursery, these were the guys that Zoobooks played up so well back then, now real and in front of me.
I had never been to the San Diego Zoo before this time, I would come back again, because it is as neat a place as the “world famous” tag line tried to sell. A lot of the rest of the trip was going out to eat places and some shopping, since this was also a time that Star Wars toys were running on clearance and we both had an ich for toys.
Jen would steal a spoon from a Vietnamese restaurant. We would explore downtown San Diego and Jen would get so drunk at a Mountain Mike’s pizza that she wedge herself into a soccer teams end the season celebration. It’s a thing that happened.
Upon the trip ending Jen and I had a hard time separating and new plans were going to have to be hatched, because 520 miles was too much. So with not too much turn around we got another plan in place.
March 26th, 2000, to
be precise, was Jen’s first trip up north, luckily this date coincides with the
Oscars that aired that night on television so I can always lookup when this
happened. I had gone south with the Star Wars nerd get-togethers and on my
own already, So ths was to be her first trip up my way, to the L street house. She
flew into the airport, and I along with my parents picked her up and brought her home to a Sunday night family
meal. Which was an interesting way to say hello I guess, but my parents invited
over my brother and his kids, and we had a Sunday night dinner. It was rather
eventless even though it sounds like something that could be stressful, the
only thing that makes it memorable was Jen wanting to see the bottle of hot
sauce Jim and I had been using to build up our love of spicy foods.
Oh yeah, Jim and I had been going on a multi-month adventure at this point in hot sauces. This adventure I could have posted a step back in 1999, or maybe I even did at this point, organizing this thing is a bear. Anyway, even though this story would probably start in late 1999, the origins are even older.
Spicy food. Guys tend to have some sort of mid teen life crisis where they have to prove dominance over others by showing tolerance to a variety of things. Hot sauce is one of these rites of passage. But our story isn’t about a couple guys sitting in a room trying out sauce to see who keels over. No that was a tale for cap guns instead. This one is actually a more sophisticated tale.
As mom’s Kindermusik program grew through the 1990s, her conferences didn’t always coincide well with family vacations like the trip to rocky mountain national park in 1990. So, while rarely about once a year it feels like, mom would be gone for a few days in a week.
I think the first time this happened was in 1993 and Dad went with her and this lead to the time Marty ordered the Spice channel on Mom and Dad’s cable bill. But the second or third time, Mom went by herself and left Dad and I to fend for ourselves.
See back when both left, Jake and I, or Chris and I, would be left some money to order pizza’s and the like to cover feeding us while we were gone. When just Mom went, she figured Dad would be able to find a way to feed himself and the children. Interesting assumption.
Turns out I think Dad skipped any culinary arts training in his youth, instead just marrying young and getting a job that got him home in time for dinner. That first night without Mom, Dad got home, looked at us boys, went in the kitchen, but about three hotdogs in a zip lock bag, threw that bag in the microwave for a minute, and.. well done.
Chris M. and I were actually mortified by the prospect now of Dad defining chow time, so we began digging through the refrigerator. Now it’s not like Chris and I are experts in any regards, so what we did was find some ground beef and the fixings for tacos, or burritos depending on how you define them. And went about how to logically through all these items together.
Since this wasn’t a planned meal we didn’t have any taco seasoning, so we just did what we could, some chili powder and crystal sauce that was in the fridge later and we made some decent enough tacos. Decent enough that when Mom got back, we continued having one night a week be taco night, and it would be prepared by Me, or me and some of the other boys as well. Mom’s night off as it were. To go with 29 cent hamburger days as well I guess, well another night off.
As this trend grew, our fascination with making spicier tacos would grow. By the late 90s, the ground beef would be cooked with a fair amount of tabasco sauce and chili powder among other items we had. The spice was enough that one time one of my mother’s students’ parents said she could smell the heat from the studio.
We had become quite proud of our tacos, and started growing fond of the spice. Tabasco then started to become a shopping staple during that time. From 96 though 99, it went on almost all meals. Pizza, sauce it up, soup, pour in the bottle. At one point our house had to be supporting the brand better than most local restaurants.
In comes Jim. Jim never one to back down from a challenge found this hot sauce thing amusing, but then called it weak. So then Jim and I explored what might be out in the world that had a little bit more kick than Tabasco.
Jim was aware of a brand called “Dave’s Insanity Sauce” and so we started hunting for places that might sell such an item. We found a sauce called Hot Sauce from Hell with a little devil on it. It brough some heat, but still Jim through there must be bigger out there.
So it was during these escapades that by chance we stopped by a fruit stand off the freeway and found they had an extensive artisan hot sauce section. After some hunting through the shelves Jim was convinced we needed to try this little vial of sauce he found called “Da’ Bomb, Beyond Insanity”. This little bottle had a warning sticker on it you had to break to open it, and a disclaimer that it was meant as a food additive, which Jim chuckled at.
We took this sauce back with us and stopped off at a local Taqueria, Jim put the smallest amount, since the bottle said to use one drop at a time sparingly, in his burrito and gave it a try. He played it cool, but did make some interesting sounds. I however thought he was putting on a show. He got real excited though when it was my turn to try it. He said to just put the smallest amount on a chip before I tried it in force on my burrito. I scoffed at this, but he insisted, so I poured what I thought was a small dab on a corn tortilla chip.
Jim’s eyes swelled and he laughed at it. Then told me I should take some of it off. I looking at this small amount that just poured at now really scoffed at him and put the chip in my mouth. Now for the uninitiated, some of these truly hot sauces like Da Bomb, don’t hit instantly like people who fear spicy food think. So I was able to eat my chip and kind of stare Jim down and act as though it were no big deal.
He kept laughing. Anyway, so initially a lot of these spicier guys don’t give up how big of a punch they have, nope its not until you start swallowing and it gets everywhere that the heat starts to build. And well my “dab” was probably several drops all at once. It was hot. We found something that actually caused a bit of trauma and it was amazing.
No one else would try the sauce after the first tiny drop on a toothpick after that besides Jim and I. in a short time the legend of this little bottle of hot sauce grew throughout our immediate contacts. Karl, well he just thought it was a bad idea. Brendan I think said it made no sense when he accidentally had some once.
And this brings us back to March 26th, 2000, and Jen has just touched this sacred bottle of hot sauce, not to try, but to just bask in the stories this little glass receptacle has created. Jen after touching the bottle didn’t wash her hands, and
there was enough of the residue on the bottle that when she rubbed her eye
later at dinner it caused involuntary tears and she had to take out her contacts
and put on her glasses for the rest of the night, another victim of “Da Bomb”.
There was more to the night, after getting the parade of family members for
dinner. Jim and Brendan came over, up to this point they were just voices in
the background doing dumb things. Now all parties could phase into being real people. This was also that period of time when
retailers were dumping all their old Star Wars ships at extreme
discount, so we all visited on the couch in the front room and put together
starships that Jen and I had been procuring recently. The highlight being the Falcon.
The main event of the evening though was still to come. Not only
was everyone meeting Jen tonight, but Karl was about to parade out the girl he
was now dating, Leah. Before Karl and Leah made their way over Jen asked what
to expect from Karl. Jim, being one not to pass up an easy joke pointed at a
picture of Jesus my parents had hanging in the front room over the bookshelf.
He said, “see that? That’s Karl”. A little while later Karl showed up with his
new female friend. They both sat in these gray chairs we had in the front room
that happened to be placed right in front of the bookshelves at the time. It
made for an interesting situation. By this time Brendan and Jim had met Jen and
everyone was comfortable on the couch putting together children’s toys. The
couch in the front room was a gray sectional that formed the shape of a U and
oddly made for a sort of mini amphitheater seating for anyone sitting in the
other chairs to visit with, visit or interrogate!
image
110 Jen's
view of Karl under the picture of Jesus during the introduction of Leah to the
friend group. and Da Bomb.
So, we all sat there and met this new gal pal of Karl’s.
Karl as he is to do, sat there mainly stoic while Leah just chattered on to a
point where I wondered if she knew we had stopped caring about whatever it was
she was going on about. I know at one point Jim, and I gave each other a
knowing look that someway she had just interacted with Karl was odd. They
eventually left that night and once they were gone the deconstruction session
began. But what was memorable about that was Jen, when asked what she thought
of the spectacle we just witnessed. She said she had had a hard time focusing
on any of that because Karl from her vantage point had just sat down right in
front of the picture of Jesus on the wall and she spent most of the time
bewildered in how much they looked alike.
March 26th, 2000. Maybe March 27th.
This night ties back to September 9th of 1999. Here is where the
story of Final Fantasy VIII continues. That night after we bid farewell to the
Karls and Jims and Brendans of the world, Jen and I retired to my bedroom. That
night, Jen wanted a hands on look at the game. She wanted to know why I was
willing to forgo ICQ for a video game.
Half and hour later and she was through her SEED test and
tamed the Guardian Force Ifirit. We turned the game off at that point. This was
a busy trip and we had some morning plans that needed to get rested up for,
possibly going to San Jose to start the trip with Junby and everyone back down
to southern California, I don’t remember every detail of the trip anymore. I
just know we stopped there that night.
But the game wasn’t forgotten. I packed the PlayStation on
the game and once all the trips and travel were over Jen and I had a month or
so there in San Diego of lazy April days. So, Jen picked the game back up, and
played. And then played some more. And then like I would find out she could do
she played the life out of the game.
Now she too was saving the world from the Sorceress and
loving it. Then in June I had to go back up to Davis when one of her roommates
decided she didn’t like a big sexy man around. Well I am not a gentlemen and brought
my stuff back up with me. And here is where in the span of what seven months? That
FFVIII got someone to buy a new PlayStation. Okay maybe it was 8 months, since
the PSX she bought was the PS One, which was a slim and smaller version of the
regular and dual shock systems, which came out on July 7th, 2000.
So maybe I was more of a gentlemen than I thought and let
her use mine for our first time apart during the weird year that was 2000.
Meaning it was the second time I went back up that she needed the game so bad
she bought a system and another copy and peeled her save game to it. Over this
time Jen would grind out over 100 hours on the game. Destroying my time in a
single save. She developed a problem, but a good one.
When I was back in northern California for my times, we
would use Windows98 built in video conferencing software, Microsoft NetMeeting:
Imagine the above picture, except two 22 year-olds. I also
believe our chat configuration was more focused on the video part and less the
list of people on the chat. But me with Dad’s broken camcorder plugged into my
video capture device and Jen with a cute webcam with feet that we bought her,
would wake up in the morning. Get online, setup a video conference then I would
do whatever and she would play FFVIII on her green bean bag chair while we
talked about whatever for hours.
Her fandom became larger than mine even. Maybe. This would
spill over big time once Comic-Con would roll around later in July. Because of
the way I have things sectioned off right now, some of this will get run over
again.
With Comic Con 2000 being the first one since the US release
of the game there were a lot of new FFVIII toys and merchandise available at
the con this year. Jen and I being impetuous decided on Sunday when prices at
the con dropped to start buying Guardian Forces figures.
These large scale figures of the Key summon spells that you
use to raise your characters stats in the game were also some of the more
impressive looking creatures in the game and then of course in plastic form.
Those three above, Diablos, Translucent Odin, and Tiamat were some of the
figures we bought. If we hadn’t been rushing to find all of the main large
sized GFs it would have been smart to get a picture of me lugging these things
around the convention dealer room floor.
But we didn’t, so when I feel trying to keep up with Jen as
she went from vendor to vendor all I have to remember that by is how scuffed my
shoe was.
Then there was the other big CC2000 FFVIII incident.
Saturday night with the Star Wars nerds. The day before our big money dump on
toys at the con we ended a day hanging out with our Star Wars friends. At the
end of the day somehow the idea for everyone to come back to the Apartment was
hatched.
Now more than likely the idea of getting some food was involved.
Also back in 1999 when we did the Myth trip we also ended the night at the
apartment so somehow everyone meeting up there didn’t seem like a weird cramped
idea. What the weird idea ended up being was Jen’s.
She so loved her FFVIII game that she wanted to show our
friends, without the 20 hours of story reference that comes before, the games
final battle and ending. So for the next thirty minutes or so everyone sat in
various places in the bedroom while she defeated Ultimecia and then while
Squall had to return from Time Compression. Not the most well-received activity
of the day. Although in her defense Rick getting lost earlier in the day
probably lost us more time than watching the game.
But that was the power of FFVIII, in a time when Star Wars
was fresh and exciting again, with us two devoted nerds of it, we spent a share
of time on this game instead of tunnel visioning the new Phantom Menace stuff
that was out in the world.
As time would go on sure, the time either of us invested
into the game would wane. The soundtrack would stick with us even past our
relationship. The soundtrack after all was another item I used to endear myself
to Jen back in the 90s when I gave her the piano MP3s of some of the songs to
help her sleep. And maybe give her nightmares. So even past the fever play, we
might jokingly sing some of the stuff from the game to each other while walking
the streets of Mira Mesa.
But then 2000 will end, and by then somehow new stuff has phased
in a bit. The lingering items in the coming years I will have with Jen is her
collection of monster plushies from the game. In late 2000 Final Fantasy IX was
rushed out for the people that didn’t want another FF VIII. We had pre ordered
it from the local GameStop and I turned my attention to playing that game.
While I didn’t like it as much as VIII or VII in all honesty,
I was still playing it. The problem was by the time it came out, both of us
worked so free time was at a premium, and I never got to the end of the game
while we lived together, so I don’t know how much she paid attention to the new
title. Jen at the time had some adventure games to get through. I think she was
trudging through the Gabriel Knight titles when IX came out.
So into 2001 I was now moved too IX and then of course the PlayStation
2 games I would get for the new system. I don’t know Jen’s part of the story
during that time either, but this is where the ravenous phase of the game seems
to have died down. Now don’t get me wrong, I still love the game, but there is
this weird phase in franchise fandom where new titles come and go and the old
loved ones instead of being distinct anymore are all part of the classic fare.
So now Squall and Cloud are the same. Old whiney boys with big swords.
Fan art, cosplay and the like will always be enjoyed, and
Jen’s tie to the alien PuPu wont ever be forgotten… Wait.. Final Fantasy eight…
cosplay, 2000, embarrassing, Jen… wait I left a story out.
No, Jen didn’t do a bad Pupu cosplay. But the time is Anime
expo at the beginning of July in 2000. We all just met a corucascantcity.net
poster nicknamed Anthy Rose who flew out from some other part of the country to
be at the Anime expo. She was a fair skinned girl and I think a couple of the
other nerds we were with fancied her at the time.
Jen and I were of course using this time to hang out. So it
was up in the Disneyland hotel where the event was being hosted at we all
spotted a group of FFVIII cosplayers. The girls were cute, and somehow this
group became the talk for a while. And eventually everyone moved on, or did it?
Well Jen investigated after the con was over and somehow
figured out who some of these cosplayers where. In fact:
I still have some of the pictures she found. I think it
turned out, my facts might be wrong here, that somehow Jen was like one degree
of separation from them, and so Jen and I kept up with them for months, maybe
it was longer, our weird online stalking is one of those embarrassing memories
you kind of squish down once you get older and try and forget.
But Anime Expo is in July, we need to roll back to April for a second. After a few days in Davis
bumming around Jen and I had plans to get in a car with Junby, one of the Star
Wars nerds, as we liked to call them, and travel down south to go on a
Disneyland trip.
image 111 Me throttling Jen
properly while waiting in line at Disneyland to get tickets for entry to the
park, and on a ride in the park. Jen and I at the Warner Brothers lot.(2000)
We drove down to Glendale
and stayed with Junby and his cousin in what could be called a motel, I guess.
We did a tour of Warner Brothers studios, well by tour one of our friends,
Rick, worked there and he drove us around in a golf cart and we played on all
the sets. Then finally on that next day we did the Disneyland part of the trip.
For anyone that hasn’t been
Disneyland is like going somewhere that is slightly hotter than you want, paying a
bundle of money to then stand in line most of the time, and then when you walk
between the "line rides" you get hit by strollers. You know, the happiest place on earth.
My happiness on the trip degenerated a little bit and really, I got a lot of
enjoyment out of convincing Jen to steal sodas while we walked from line to
line. Happiness is making your girlfriend become a thief at a children’s
amusement park.
Humorously the Disneyland adventure started off with us loading up in one of their trollies. See the parking is so fast for the park, if you have never been, that they have to have their own park transportation network to get you from the parking lot to the front gates. Anyway, we happened to be on before than could fit, so we not so covertly stashed Jen across our laps to hide her person from the prying eyes of big mouse.
The day before at Warner Brothers had just been Jen, myself, Junby and his cousin along with Rick and Ruth, who I know were at these events but stayed off camera so much I don’t know when I am assuming they were there and when they weren’t. but this second trip introduced us to the “wonder twins”. They were not really twins, just two sisters that lived in the area, did a lot of Role Play posting on coruscantcity.net and had a unnatural love for Disneyland.
They would also become the more time flakey parts of these California “brat” pack get togethers. That was another name for them, coined by the group. I though got to used to Jim and others call it the Star Wars nerds for that not to be where my mind wanders too. They though became the ones that would run late and so on and drive some of the others in the group nuts when we had plans to go places. I also think they were the major catalysts for always doing things in southern California, which for Junby and I always meant a half day or more trip just to get there, so the tardiness was always interesting after a several hour drive.
Other than the two big tours, we did a lot of food consumption and invaded the Glendale Galleria. The Galleria was a large mall in Glendale, that Jen and Rick felt a kinship too. This however in 2000 was the era that all malls were getting rebranded as Westfield Shopping centers. Which was this interesting thing that was going on at the time. The malls were all becoming one. Of course, this was an interesting time in general for that to be happening.
Because 2000 is also the start of a shift towards people using things like Amazon.com instead of just getting everything at a shopping mall. So, while Westfield was building this monster to control all consumers, the marketplace was starting to shift underneath them. But it didn’t matter at the time, instead we all joked about the Big Brother aspect of all the malls being bought up by a single entity.
Jen also marveled us on this trip with her irrational love of eating sauce packets. I had known about her need to take straight shots of half and half when we would go places. But during one lunch she started devouring relish packets at the booth. This along with her giant pickle were some of the food highlights of the trip sadly. I guess aged cucumber above all else.
Me assualting Junby at FAO shwartz in the Glendale Galleria, and more "brat pack" times at Disneylad.(2000)
Then starts a period of up and down I-5. Firstly, was the plan post Disneyland trip. I had travelled down of course back at the end of February and parting was not something we liked. So, the new idea was that after Disneyland Jen and I would just get on the train back to San Diego, Min-Ru would pick us up and then I would just stay in her room, pretty much as long as we could get away with it.
This sneaky plan worked for a while. But it was sneaky so there were some issues. One, I didn’t have all my stuff, I think I brough the PlayStation and some clothing, but the most important thing, the PC, well Blueberry was still hooked up in Davis. In fact it being up there allowed Jim, to still come over to the L street house and work on his Silvara assignments.
He would lovingly message us when he was on my computer and it was sometimes amusing. The downside of this, well, all my work was on a PC hundreds of miles away, and as March turned to April turned to May, I wasn’t really doing much of anything with my websites and thus wasn’t seeing much in the way of income.
But Jen and I were in a honeymoon state I guess. We just did things, went places, bought toys, ate food, played Monopoly, watched Jen repeatedly defat the final boss of Final Fantasy. Cares in the world, none. With Min-Ru and my friend from my websites RipBob living down there we had rides places, and when we didn’t we bussed or walked places and just lived over a month in a bubble.
Then sometime in May tragedy would strike. One of her roommates commented on how long I had been staying there, so early in June or late May I drove back up to Davis, or more accurately I believe Mom and Dad came and visited us for a couple days and then I returned with them.
Well, this was awkward. After some time being an everyday couple, going back to long distance was hard. This was when we started those Microsoft NetMeetings. Because now phones were no good, we needed visual time, even if we were proxying being in the same room with the internet. Like I said sometimes Jen would just get in the call, then go sit and play FF8, we had moved beyond wanting to always talk and were now into dangerous codependence.
Then Mid-June Mom and Dad had their own vacation plans. Perfect now Jen could come up to Davis and stay while they were off galivanting, probably in Utah as Mormon parents are to do. So Jen and I galivanted through Davis, and severely young adults were to do when given their own house for a week or so. The nice thing about being in Davis too was although smaller, I knew where everything was, and Jen even though she didn’t have a car had a valid license at the time, and well I didn’t have a license but had a car.
We could go places, do things, rent movies, go downtown, visit JF. All things we did, and then at the end get Mom and Dad and then see off Jen back to San Diego. Where now another separation was starting to wreak havoc on the codependency issue.
This brings us to Anime Expo. A couple weeks later there was another southern California Star Wars nerds get together centered around AnimeExpo which was happening at Disneyland, oh joy. Or I guess more accurately at the Disney land hotel convention center. So, I packed up and traveled down south for that.
This was more of an odd duck of a trip for some reason to me. This was the first time the Star Wars nerds were getting together with no intention of doing anything Star Wars related. Even the Disneyland trip a couple months prior also included a Star Wars fashion exhibit we all visited. This trip was for Anime Expo, and event I kind of remember not everyone being totally into.
Nope talking more codependency I think this was more of a thing were one coruscantcity.net person was traveling to an event in southern California. Anthy, and so somehow everyone got worked into thinking this should be another mass trip to an event. Now, memories fade, and this isn’t fact, but I have a nagging suspicion that the powers that be me and Jen, might have also really help rally this idea. Because then Junby could give me a ride to the convention. Which is how things worked out.
AnimeExpo was an interesting
event. It wasn’t very big, but it put a lot of high energy nerds in a place
with very few windows. Prior to going to AnimeExpo
I didn’t ever go to conventions, sort of. Back in the late 80s Dad and I hit up
some Baseball card conventions, which were just hotel convention rooms with
tables laid out everywhere for card shops to peddle their wares. Which to an
extent AnimeExpo was, the dealer room for nerd conventions is the exact same
thing, but what the anime kids did that the old men collecting baseball cards
didn’t do was dress up as their favorite cartoon characters from Japan.
And so we watched cosplay go, and I have admitted where that went now. I also was a belligerent little fool then so when we registered for the event, I registered as Edward Jones. Edward Jones was at the time an insurance company that was around the corner from the L street house. But for that day I was good old Ed.
Beyond ogling cosplay Edea with Jen, I honestly felt like we could have been anywhere else and it would have been just as exciting. I was just trying to use the time I had with Jen effectively before I had to figure out a way home. Since so close to the last exodus from San Diego I wasn’t welcome back to the apartment for another stay so soon.
But then late into the trip everyone that cared had us go sit and wait in line. Tnen this thing that happened at AnimeExpo
that I wont forget. We got into see Princess Mononoke. The
movie had been buried by Disney during it’s release the year prior. So, this
was as close to a premiere that some of us would get for this film. An institution
in Japan, Studio Ghibli’s animated epic was promptly ignored by Disney’s U.S. distribution
network to drive out competition for animated features.
I think Jen referred to it
as a perfect film once we were done watching. Me, or should I saw Edward Jones
as my name tag stated, was rather impressed and thus began Jen and I working our
way through Ghibli films once we had access to a DVD player, which is coming
later. Hilariously enough, by the next big Ghibli film, Spirited Away,
Disney had blundered their own projects so much the touted the release of that
film, for more on that search the film. And of course this was all occuring in Disneyland's hotel.
AnimeExpo ended on the fourth
of July. I came slowly back up the state on the Amtrack that day and became
resolved to make the next move down south more permanent. If you follow though
it makes sense, we have pretty much just gone 2 weeks up, 1 apart, 2 weeks
down, 1 apart, repeat now for several months, with some longer stays mixed in. The roommate that had aired
having any issue with me there moved out during the summer anyway and so when I
came back down for the San Diego Comic Con mid-July the plan was to never come
back. And thus started the stint were I really felt like I lived in San Diego,
even though at this point I spent more than half the year there already,
logistics, meh.
It’s important though to note here that the plan was
permanent. I packed up all my stuff at home in boxes when i got back from Anime Expo. Brought my essentials
with me and turned my room at the L street house into a storage unit with a
computer setup on the computer desk for use by Jim as needed. As Jim and
Karl would sometimes still have to use my computer that I left behind to make
updates to their band website. So while i packed Blueberry, I kept my older P3 setup i called Nat for their usage.
I wasn’t coming back though.
Mom and Dad even made a big fuss about having the last kid move out of the
house. It was kind of a pivotal moment for them, after decades of children
barging in and out of the L street house, save for when Jim needed to use the
internet, the house was going to be devoid of offspring. Dad had decided to
take a slightly early retirement from his job and was going to drive rental
cars part time. Everyone’s life was about to change, and it was a happy change.
image 112 In line at Comic-Con
2000.
This would also be the first San Diego Comic Con I would
attend starting a trend that would go on for the next seven years. Jen and I
attended Comic Con 2000 with our Star Wars friends, one of Jen’s real-life
friends, Min-Ru, and a friend of mine I had made through my web sites empire
that lived in the area who we called RipBob. Jen and I attended multiple days
of the event. Neither of us had a car, so I think we just mooched rides of whoever
we knew to be attending that day.
Comic con at this point in time was big, not near as big
though as it was about to grow to though over the following couple years. But
it was big enough to have items at it you couldn’t always find in the outside
world. And as luck would have it, Jen’s life expenses were mainly covered by her
mother and I still at this point had some play money. So, we went buck wild.
Not at first though. At first, we just shuffled around with everyone.
Saturday was going to be the big day there. Jen and I had
gone and waited in line early Friday morning with Min-Ru and had a light day at
the convention. But Saturday was the say all the nerds hit town, so I can
remember that we didn’t buy too much at that point. The second day was
memorable because we lost one friend, Rick, in the crowds on the massive dealer
room floor. That would be the major catalyst for everyone to realize the
importance of having cell phones, which had recently become easily affordable
and at the next Comic Con would be required to function.
That night after the dealer room shut down Jen wanted to
bring everyone back to the apartment to show off FF8. At this point the game
was still thriving in our community of two people. She then bored our guests to
tear by beating the game while trying to share the context of what it was and
why it was so cool to her, but sadly not reading her audience, thus missing the
mark.
It was then Sunday that I remember for going on a
shopping spree. I know Sunday we had RipBob take us to the convention since he
was going anyway. Sunday at Comic Con is a short day, and once you become a
veteran is the day you likely use to have big lunches and see other sites
around town with your friends. But this was our first year and we found out
Sunday was also the day the vendors would mark stuff down to make sure they
made enough money.
So, we bought and bought and
bought. Jen was going ham to be quite honest. I, I enjoyed the toys, however I,
I had become the pack mule. I was walking down the halls carrying boxes of
these Final Fantasy eidolon figures to the point of having to stare around the
stack of boxes to see my way through the maze of convention nerds. Jen was just
tooting along looking for more sales at lightspeed. Eventually the inevitable
happened and I tripped, fell, and had to clean up the disaster. Luckily Sunday
was a slower day at the con and this was before it because such a media event
that the sale floor was just a indistinguishable sea of humanity. So, clean up
wasn’t so bad, but falling down at comic con was pretty memorable and it left a
sizeable scuff on my shoes.
Post Comic Con, life settled into a pattern after that. A
little before the summer Hasbro started clearing all old Star Wars stock
everywhere. Everywhere being major retailers at the time. RipBob happened to
like that kind of stuff as did Jen and I, so a lot of time was spent just going
around to different toy stores and buying stuff, or just going out and eating
and having a merry old summer break.
image 113 The Millennium Falcon
from the clearance sales, the day it was opened (2000), then given away 15
years later to Justin's boys.
It was in here that the Monopoly sessions occurred, along
with my attempts to get some of my Hotrage.com money by sending out the goons.
While only a few months it felt a lot longer. Jen had another Star Wars
forum poster come visit from Canada. This is only memorable because Jen then
had classes to go to and I was stuck babysitting a very needy and rather vapid young
lady until I finally escaped by running of with Jason from the Hotrage.com site
who came to visit.
That was a weekend then spent
playing StarCraft in the basement of one of the Caltech computer labs. It also
helped keep Jason and I in contact while I was deciding what to do with all the
websites now that I was spending all this time away from the computer to hang
out with Jennifer.
We would hang out a lot.
Occasionally though with some direction, cue Wil Wright and The Sims.
Remember that game I bought when George passed away earlier in the year? It was
still installed on my computer and one night I gave Jen the old quick tutorial.
And then she started designing the house for her newly minted Sim. See The
Sims for those unfamiliar with it, is a life simulation game. You create
Sims, which are little polygonal computer people and then run their day to day
lives like some megalomaniac. Jen was designing a house though.
And she kept doing do and
doing so. Eventually it got late, I remember laying in bed talking to her and
fading in and out of consciousness. There she was designing away. Finally, at
something absurd like four in the morning I couldn’t hang and fell asleep. When
I woke up the next, “morning” there she was still going. School for her that
day was off the table, she had this house to put sims into and then make their
lives hell and by George (RIP) she was going to do it come hell or come high
water. Turns out The Sims was a very additive game and was going to be a
major title in the world for some time to come.
If I recall it wasn’t until
mid-august that the girls got their next surprise, maybe it was sooner. Anyway,
that roommate that left the apartment, well turns out she left for a reason.
Seemed that she was listed as the primary lease holder for the apartment and
was offered to extend the lease and told the main office, no thank you. Then she
just neglected to inform the other girls living there of that development. More
orange juice in the controller I guess, that was her as well.
The shock caused the girls to
have to mad scramble, or so I thought, to find a new location to live. In the meantime,
I decided we needed more money, reserves were running out and Jen and I were
still on sort of semi vacation mode. Things came to a head though later on when
the time to move out was almost upon us and the girls hadn’t picked a place to
move too. Turns out the pressure sort of rolled off them and suddenly it was
crunch time. With no plan of escape a lucky twist of fate occurred.
I was working at a local delicatessen. I didn’t work
there very long. But I did manage to answer the phone one of the days I was
there and get caught in a conversation with a man whose girlfriend just got
hired there. He was trying to get a hold of the manager to sales pitch getting
the delicatessen an online presence. Since up until about a week before that
was what I did for people sometimes and for money, we started going about what
they would need. Somehow that lead to him spilling the beans about needing, or
more wanting, some tenants in a house he owns in the area to help plaquette the
costs of setting up this internet business in said house.
That afternoon I went with
the girls to look at his place, and shortly thereafter the girls and I were
moving there. I think there was some worry about being so much further away
from the school which was UCSD (University of California at San Diego). His
house was the next “city” over as cities in a city go. But given the time left
to find a place and the amenities, which were bountiful, we all moved in.
I then got a job at a Sears, or during got the job at Sears
that I count as my first real job. Although to be fair a commission sale job
isn’t a real job, it’s a con for con. But the money was better than hourly if I
hit any goals. Then Jen decided to get a job at the candle store in the mall I
was working at. I think she was motivated to start weening off her parent’s
income at the time, but I don’t totally recall her motivation. However pretty
sure it was an independence thing.
But as fall of that year started,
I just worked, and she went to school along with the candle store. We bused
around a lot, I also started trying to find something better than Sears
slinging computers. But I honestly just remember this period more for the free
time we had, I had made a friend at sears that had a nice house that we would
go hang out and watch movies at. We had formed a pretty good bond with the
nearby GameStop employees. And we just sort of did our thing.
image 114 TPM VHS box set
contents and the OT DVD box set commemorative figure pack.
So, watching movie at our friends, let us detour though
and talk about one of our “things” we were doing, DVDs. We have Jen and Ryan,
the two knuckleheads go to what I remember being a Sam Goody I think at UTC
(the Mall we worked in, stands for University Town Center) to buy a fancy new
Star Wars: Episode One the Phantom Menace on VHS. Why is this important
beyond all the Star Wars history I have already babbled on about? This
marks the end of buying VHS tapes. VHS which had been the standard for renting
or buying in home movies since I could literally remember such a thing. Sure,
some other formats had come and gone, most notably Laser Disk, VHS was so
normal, that at this point in 2000 a lot of TVs came standard with VCR’s built
in. That changed.
I have chronicled the moves in San Diego, the last one,
to Mira Mesa, the next city to the city, presented a young couple with a new
toy. A movie room in the house. A front projection television that covered and
entire wall, surround sound and a newfangled DVD player. So logically these two
would start going to the store and getting DVD copies of old favorites, or as
the local Game Stop was in stock of, weird Anime’s that might be cool that
happen to be on DVD. And so began what felt like a lot shorter era in home
entertainment, but a rabid buying era, the DVD era.
I think it helped that when DVDs were at their prime, I
was in my own prime of my mid-20s. Thanks to Sears, when I moved home, spoiler
alert, I quickly built a home theater system with a nice flat screen tv. Which
then started making us all want to watch things on it. So, I would go on breaks
at Arden Mall and get DVDs. Neon Genesis Evangelion (NGE) being one of
the big releases early on in this cycle. I would also be buying things like, Star
Wars: Episode One the Phantom Menace, on DVD.
Which brings up an interesting question, Did I ever watch
TPM on VHS? Upon a modern investigation into the matter Jen claims she maybe
watched that VHS tape once, maybe twice at best. We did open the box the day we
bought it, it came with extra goodies, but when purchased we were still in the
initial apartment, and between there and the house in Mira Mesa, zero times put
in a VCR.
And there was a rhythm to it, it seemed most new DVD
releases system wide came out on Tuesdays. As the Star Wars movies came
out year to year or so I would gobble them up. When they did the Original Three
in a box set, I went to Fry’s on release day and got my commemorative figure
pack, with the emperor, Darth Vader and a stormtrooper. Christmases in the 00’s
became DVD watching nights, we did Pirates of the Caribbean and all the
super long Lord of the Rings extended cut DVDs. Intermittingly I or a
group of us would go to Fry’s and just get some movies, usually either older
films we hadn’t thought of, or anime which was fun since they were series based
most of the time and we didn’t have streaming services yet, we did have
Netflix, but it was different back then.
And then with the rise of DVDs was also came the rise of
online shopping, which meant even more weird obscure things could get ordered
online and delivered to one’s front door. Causing a VHS collection, of mainly
LP or SP tapes from television airings of certain shows and events, into this
sort of vast multi-genre DVD collection. I once tried to get the 90s ROTK TV
show DVD box set of eBay, that is a sentence that exists now in the 00s, instead
they sent me a film called Happy Time, which was some weird Chinese film about
a girl living in a trailer if I recall. It got weird, and I never did get the
ROTK series I wanted. But it was in the collection.
For the foreseeable future DVDs were the future of home
media, and thus a hobby Jen and I would start in San Diego.
Jen for some time always had to go home on the weekends,
and I usually worked on the weekends, so even though two days out of the week
Jen wasn’t around it didn’t really feel like that. However, nothing
groundbreaking memorable really happened then either. I can tell you tons of
details about the place we lived at, but most of the day to day was so mundane
that it blends into one sort of blanker memory. The only breaks in the pattern
came for Halloween and Christmas.
Halloween that year, now that I had moved to southern
California mind you, the Star Wars nerds decided to do a get together in
Northern California to make up for all the travel the northerners had to make
in the past. Gee whiz. Jen and I seized this opportunity to go visit my friends
and parents at the same time. With no car we took the train up north.
Now let me tell you something about train travel in
California in 2000. Trains, which had been prominent in the state forever, and
Sacramento being sort of a hub of the transcontinental railroad, even housing
the old railroad museum. You’d think a trip up the state from one big city to
the capitol would be pretty straight forward. Nope. If you wish to travel by
train from San Diego to Davis, it requires a train to bus transfer in L.A.,
riding a bus to Bakersfield, then riding upstate to Sacramento and then a bus
for the last 10 miles from Sacramento to Davis. Why? Who knows, there are
plenty of tracks everywhere so why move us to buses all the time, only the gods
of Amtrack have that answer.
Because of this the travel days were long, and Jen would
just fall asleep. So, I got to listen to one of the few CD’s we brought over
and over while keeping an eye out for our transfers. Eventually we got to
Davis, picked up by my folks and were visited by friends.
The next day the Star Wars
nerds fell upon us. Jen and I got a ride from my dad out to some meeting
location, it was a Motel 6 I think somewhere in the bay area. The plan that day
was to take the southerners on a S.F. day trip and then a night tour through
the Winchester Mystery house. Nothing on this day went as planned though.
In S.F. we got robbed, it was raining
as well and one of our drivers almost had an issue going up the hills in S.F. and by the time all that had subsided, we weren’t able
to make the Winchester house. That day ended up with pizza delivery at the
motel. Although to be fair all the unplanned events probably make it the more
memorable Star Wars get together of all of them.
The trip back was far more
eventful. As one might wonder, yes, with all those transfers sometimes part of
the train line gets behind and the other does care. So, when traffic held up
our bus going back to Los Angeles, we had minutes to debus, get our bags and
get to, as fate would have it, the last dock at one of the largest train
stations in the country.
We came up with quite the
idea to try and make the train, Jen would run off with the tickets to tell them
we were coming on and I loaded up with all our luggage ran as fast as one could
carrying what amounted to another human’s worth of dead weight strapped to my
body. We luckily made it, but I spent a good run through L.A. and orange county
hoping I wasn’t going to need medical help.
The second big trip during this time was Christmas. To
this point in my life Christmas was always a big deal and I didn’t want to miss
it. Jen had plans with her family but I wanted to see mine. So, a couple days
prior to Christmas Jen and I exchanged gifts, which included me winning with a
copy of The Longest Journey. Then on Christmas Eve I boarded a plane,
spent a chaotically quick Christmas at home with everyone, then the day after
had to get back on a plane as to be present at Sears for its mandatory all hands-on
deck after Christmas event. Because what’s the holidays without sales floor
workers getting their time cut into for useless sales. Serving the higher power,
I guess.
Now don’t let my talk of
mundane day to days not being memorable downplay that living where we were
wasn’t rewarding. It’s just became normal. In some ways I quite liked the
coziness of the room we had there, barring Jen’s overabundant shoe collection,
everything kind of fit into place. We had space for both computers, we had used
modular shelving from Target to setup an interesting entertainment center and
things were generally comfy. Although we never did get rid of having a single sized
bed. Oddly though I got quite used to just smashing myself up against the wall
and having the covers stolen, and still sort of sleep that way to this very
day.
What felt like a traumatic event was going to come at the
end of January of 2001 and both our times in San Diego would come to an abrupt end
at that point. But for most of 2000 I fondly remember just chilling at home,
going out to the few malls on the bus line and generally just enjoying life.
Not having a car was really the biggest obstacle we had, and Jen loved the bus,
so we did a lot of bussing. We also had friends to move us around and then we
were young as well. I remember stupidly pushing grocery carts up the hill we lived
atop during the apartment stay, it wasn’t some silly idea, well it was, but it
just made sense, we bought food and then walked it home.
So, years later part of me always thinks maybe I should
have been smarter about the background drama’s that were going on back then,
sure Jen and I may have meet the same fate, but maybe the nice times in San
Diego could have lasted longer than the year and a half or more than it was.
Here I will end with the moving out of San Diego in early 2001. For separation
purposes this is the end of the 90s. As anything the story of the 90s in the L
street house for me begins a bit in 1989 and then falls into the new millennia,
but the post San Diego world will be a new one. I will be coming back to Davis
to live. I will have a job to start immediately. I’ll be a little confused and
the role that was mainly Marty’s the past few years of in-house guest will now
be filled my permanently Jim.
There is a lot going on in 2000 in my little story here. But
we must take a break and talk about television. I will be living in three
locations during this year. The Street house, the Genesee apartment and Mira
Mesa. It’s well established that at the L street house I had the TV in my room
with cable. Next, which is harder to establish is Jen’s television setup at the
Genesee apartment.
Early on, I think maybe the second time visiting, possibly
still in the 90’s, I brought the N64 with me so we could play some Goldeneye.
This is remembered not because of the incredible games we all played, but that
Jen’s roommate, Thuy, managed to spill soda all over the blue N64 controller
rendering it unusable until Jim and I opened it up and cleaned it out later
back at the L street house.
Thus, initially I don’t think Jen had the little TV that was
hooked up to the PS One. I am pretty sure one of us bought that little TV so
she could play FF8 on her own in her room. I think adding cable to that TV was
then as simple as hooking it into the coax connection on the wall. Luckily back
in the days of analog cable, if a TV was “cable ready” you could usually just
hook it up to the wall and get whatever cable channels were coming into the
house regardless of having a cable box. I think that is what we accomplished
there.
Then of course in Mira Mesa, Todd, our landlord who lived on
the property too just had us all hooked up to Dish and we had a million
channels. But the point of this is to establish that we had Cartoon Network,
USA and some other prominent cable networks at every location. Now into the
meat of the subject.
Serialized T.V. shows. We have a bit of history here with
this. First and foremost was the precedent set by the Transformers and G.I. Joe
specials in the 1980s, but most notably was the series Robotech, which is probably
the most influential idea of getting everyday serialized storylines from a TV
Show I have.
Since for the most part Sitcoms in the 80s and early 90s
were mostly self-contained plots and dominated evening TV there are not a lot
more early examples of this. When Karl and I started watching Ranma ½ there was
a storyline there, but even those episodes almost don’t get anywhere. There is
an over arching story for Ranma, yes, but Ranma and Akane just seem to never
push the narrative forward.
Even Star Trek the Next Generation which was popular among a
lot of friends, is still, for most of its sake self contained. Once out of High
School the landscape changed a little though. Chris M. and my discovery of
Beast Wars and Dragon Ball Z super early on Saturday mornings is one of those
examples. Dragon Ball especially has to be watched week to week to not miss the
ongoing story. This of course makes for addiction, something that has taken
over how television shows would work in the future.
Back in the late 90s, with maybe some older shows being on
VHS for rental, when the serialized format started to eek into cartoons and
later TV shows, one had to get into the show enough to designate a block of
time each week to the endeavor, or have a programable VCR to tape the episodes
with. Which I did, although we were pretty good about staying up to watch our
shows.
Then as we transitioned from the BBS times to the internet
and web pages, we got Xena and Hercules and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These
were an interesting middle ground. They all had larger plots that simple
episodes helped pass the time through. Probably due to the fact that syndicated
and network shows back then ran like 20 plus episodes per season, so to only
focus on the main story line would be hard.
Of course Xena spawned my first successful webpage. Web pages
and forums helped people pass the time week to week between episodes and thus
serialized TV shows became a lot of fun to get into. They could be a hobby.
So fast forward to 2000, Shows like Buffy and its spinoff
Angel are still running, and thanks to cartoon network picking it up from
exile, Dragon Ball Z is airing again on television. Between this, the internet
helping feed these things, Star Wars re-exploding into popular culture, there
was this sort of acceptance that shows that had long stories to get involved
with were more fun than the old sitcom standard that was the norm.
Jen and I being of like mind, or having the same brain
malfunction that gets one into these shows then set off on some pretty religious
television watching, which is why making sure every location we would be at
that year had cable. And here is why, I would say there was six main shows, the
Buffy/Angel stuff on the WB, Sailor Moon/Gundam Wing and Dragon Ball Z on Toonami
(part of cartoon network) and then, the WWF.
Yes, the World Wide Wrestling Federation. So, if we recall
back to the old calendar page I found from 1997 there was a note about a WWF
Monday night Raw episode that taped at the Rec Hall at UC Davis which J.F. attended.
Although somewhat mocked, J.F. was into the sport, as it was called then.
Thanks to video games and J.F. wrestling although as I said mocked for its corniness
was at least around enough to be aware of.
Back in the sixth grade, Nate, who was a fan of the 1980s
brand of WWF with Hulk Hogan and the good guys versus the bad guys stuff,
helped shape our boxers comics. But it was that cheesiness that led to
wrestling being a joke through our teen years. The WWF was fake sports for
trailer trash basically. But as I said there were some games that were fun, the
SNES had a Royal Rumble game, and there was a title on the PSX that JF was into
that I can not remember the name of. And then listening to J.F. go on about the
storylines was a good place for mockery for me, Chris M and Marty.
As the 90s wind down though, I am working independently and
staying up late. Somehow, I started watching some of the recaps of the WWF television
shows that show up late at night on television. How that progressed into me
actually watching an episode is kind of a mystery. I just know somehow right
when the WWF was introducing Kurt Angle as a new wrestler, I started to get
sucked in.
Thanks to the internet I know I actually looked up whether this
Kurt Angle story line stuff was legit. The WWF was so phony for so long I just figured
the Olympic wrestler coming to fake wrestling storyline was all, well just fiction.
When I realized it wasn’t, I became curious how they were going to insert a
classical wrestler into the over the top stunt work that was the WWF.
Then what they did is have him be as corny as possible,
1980s style WWF style and people hated him. And I feel in love with the character
and would tune in to at least see what goofy stuff he was up too. And then just
got hooked to the soap opera that the WWF was.
This of course happened while Jen and I were happening, and I
managed, much like I did with Final Fantasy, to rope her into my degenerate obsession.
So it was that for the year of 2000, Jen and I religious kept up with the tale
of Kurt Angle, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon.
There is a lot of conversation online about this time during
the WWF, from 1997 through 2000. It is I guess considered one of the “golden”
ages of the format. While not as many care about the storyline of those three, it’s
still pretty well regarded oddly enough. But as I said Jen and I loved it.
We bought toys, we got Stephanie and Kurt action figures.
Kurt was my favorite and while not her absolute favorite Jen really enjoyed the
fictitious version of Stephanie on display during the shows. Jen though thought
Triple H was the best. While we didn’t invest in a figure of him, Jen did start
buying sweatpants that had the same style to the one’s he was wearing during casual
moments on of the show. We honestly called them her Triple H pants.
The Triple H thing was funny to me. Jen thought he was cool
and would tell me he looked like my friend Jim. Jim, who watched some of the
exploits of the WWF with me when I was at the L street house, on the other hand
kept telling me how ugly Triple H was. I never had the heart to tell him Jen
thought they looked the same.
The storyline between our three favorites hit such a fever
with Jen, that at one point while living in Mira Mesa she decided she needed to
write a fan letter. Well a fan, email letter. Interestingly enough this is
still transitional internet time. In 2000 almost everything had a webpage, but
some weren’t as good as other. Thusly the WWF’s official site had no contact us
option. I guess still assuming fans would prefer to write traditional letters
and mail them through the post office.
Jen did not. So with some whimsy I directed her to try just
emailing webmaster@wwf.com or whatever
the url for their domain was at the time, under the idea that most places setup
that email as sort of a site administrator account name. So, she did. What
followed was the most insane email I have ever watched a fan write. I have read
crazier, but this was the craziest I got to be a part of.
Jen wrote an extensive letter on how she loved the current
story line but desperately needed Kurt and Triple H to dump the love triangle
angle with Stephanie and instead declare their love for each other. She
colorfully wanted one of the two gentlemen, I don’t remember which, to go full
on Sailor Moon with his actions in accomplishing this goal. It was intense and
the email never bounced back, so who knows what eyes ever saw her fanaticism.
Or if those eyes knew what praying for a Pegasus chibi sailor style was then.
As if anyone knows what it is now. But Chibi, or Mini – moon
was one of the characters on our cartoon watching afternoon slate. The big one
for me then was being able to pick back up with Dragon Ball Z after it ended abruptly
when Chris M. and I were watching it. I guess for some reason or another that I
will look up in a second, the storyline Chris and I were watching Saturday mornings
just stops without warning and then started us over again at the beginning of
the series.
Okay so the little research I did says there was a change in
voice actors at that point, but why there was a three-year delay in the
episodes airing it doesn’t explain. Okay here we go. “This was due to Saban
scaling down its syndication operations, in order to focus on producing
original material for the Fox
Kids Network and its newly acquired Fox Family Channel.”
So yeah there was a big break so when I got to pick back up I
was pretty excited at the time. I had managed to watch the end of the story arc
that was on Saturday mornings, thanks to the International Channel running it
in Japanese. But with Jen I got to watch the English dub and into the new story
arc with the villain Cell.
Then of course we had Gundam Wing, which turned into a
legacy of model building at the time and to which its short 26 episode plot is mostly
forgotten to me today. Unlike other two shows, Gundam was a small story and didn’t
go on forever like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball, thus if not for the model kits I
might have forgotten it was part of this afternoon block.
Interestingly once the year fades out, I slowly ween of most
of these shows. Not the network ones, that being Buffy and Angel, but I never got
to the end of Dragon Ball even though it kept airing, same with Sailor Moon.
Wrestling of course will probably continue on forever, but through 2001 I stopped
watching it like I did with Jen, I would check in from time to time, but by
like 2003 pretty much let it go.
What is weird about that is that I do remember these
storylines and shows from that specific time rather fondly. Like, Dragon Ball Z
post the Cell storyline, meh, but I do think the stuff I watched with Chris and
Jen as pretty neat. And I find that any late 90’s through 2000 wrestling stories
tend to hit the nostalgia button too. I know a lot the stuff has been updated
in the animes, but I find the Serena version of Sailor Moon just fine. And all
these years later nothing I hear from the world of wrestling equals the dopey
Kurt Angle that couldn’t lose at first and everyone booed for being so vanilla.