My Lunch with Cyber

One of the advantages of living in the Dallas area is that I am in close proximity to Cyber D. As many of you know, Cyber D, Gyuss Baltaar, and I all went to college together until one fateful night when I left that institute of higher learning, slunk off into the shadows, and began to pursue my sacred destiny of heavy drinking.

Thanks to the power of the internet (specifically Facebook), Cyber D found me and wrote a really nice blog entry about me. A blog entry to which I responded in kind.

Every since these fateful blog entries, we have been talking on and off about meeting for lunch, and after a series of almost-connects, we finally met last week. I showed up early because I told Cyber "look for the man dressed up as a Viking" and I wanted to make sure no other Vikings showed up and forced me to wait outside. (For those of you unaware of this, Dallas has a very strict "one guy dressed up as a Viking per restaurant" city ordinance after it was determined that two or more Vikings eventually led to berserker rages, pillaging, and streets that run red with blood and grog. While cities like Seattle were having a grand ol' time in the 90s with their grunge movement and their flannel, Dallas lived in fear of wild packs of Nordic invaders wielding battle axes. Anyway, I love to dress up as a Viking and listen to Pearl Jam sometimes, just for nostalgia's sake.)

We picked a nice little Mexican restaurant known for its great food and family of vampire-slaying waitresses - a nice quiet place for two guys to reminisce and talk. I looked around, wondering what Cyber now looked like. Maybe he had turned evil and grown a goatee? Maybe he joined the hair club for men and now wore a patch of carpet on the top of his head. Or worse! A patch of carpet with the price tag still attached! The mind reeled.

But then I saw the shiny silver dome of his space helmet and knew within seconds that it was the same ol' Cyber. We embraced in that manly way only a Viking and a man in a silver space outfit can and then sat down to our hearty meal of jalapenos and dipping sauce.

"So, how have you been these past... eight, nine, ten... DARN! I will have to take off my shoes to go any higher, so let's just say TEN years."

"I've been great. I started blogging with a group called 'The Quad'. There are four of us." (At this point, Cyber D did a great thing and held up the appropriate number of fingers so I wouldn't get confused. What a helpful guy, that Cyber D.)

"Wow. Four whole people. That must have been your secret to getting smokin' hot women to read and comment on your blogs all the time. I only started blogging with one person." (I held up a single finger so he would know the number.)

"Was that one person you?"

"You are smart as well as good looking! That is why I've always liked you, Cyber D! Yes it was just me, and now I see how I went wrong. I should have started writing the blog with FOUR people at the beginning, and then the smokin' hot women would have started reading. As it stands now, I have had to graciously accept all of the smokin' hot women from your blog traffic."

"I am sure smokin' hot women read your blog before I linked to you and send over some of my spare Quadness."

"Yes, there were a few, but I am related to all of them. I am automatically disqualified from calling women relatives smokin' hot. If I do that too much, I'll get deported to one of those unmentionable states like Alabama, West Virginia, or Louisiana."

"Yes. I suppose that might cause problems."

"But now that we've reconnected, it is all better." I reached across the table and clasped his hand in a rough, manly, Viking way. Maybe I held it a little too long, because he eventually wrested it away, explaining that he needed it for the dipping sauce.

We talked for a long time, sharing stories that were both epic and exciting. He focused on his space and time adventures while I talked mostly about how the people of Dallas kept mistaking me for a mere barbarian when I was obviously a Viking.

We talked about our blogs and who our secret blog crushes are, but the whole purpose of writing blog entries is to keep things short, so I shall end it here. I am sure Cyber D has his own version of our lunch that he might be willing to share on his blog sometime soon.

Old Friends Made New

One of my many creative side projects is a short film screenplay called "Redux." The film is about a guy who dies and gets reincarnated as himself. And by "reincarnated as himself" I mean he wakes up as a baby in 1930s and gets to live his entire life all over again with full knowledge of how it is going to end up.

Of course, what he sets out to do with his new lease on life is to correct all of his mistakes. So instead of being the eight-year-old lunkhead who jumps off the roof with a cape made out of towel and subsequently breaking his leg, the guy instead convinces his younger brother to jump off the roof, because, dude, that cape made out of towel is really magic.

The idea is similar to the one behind Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - the way to deal with your mistakes is to erase them. Or, in this case, to do them over. (This is also the secret philosophy behind Super Mario Bros.)

I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, and many of them involve losing contact with perfectly decent people.

Perfectly decent? I'm being too polite.

Totally awesome, kick-ass people who totally rock everything and who were once in my life but are no longer there.

Correction. WERE no longer there.

Thanks to the power of Facebook, I have reacquainted myself with Cyber D and Gyuss Baaltar, two great friends I fondly remember from my good ol' college days.

Here's how it happened:

I got this little note on Facebook that went something like, "Hey! It is Cyber D. Remember me? I was that devastatingly handsome guy in your dorm. I was the guy who the women all loved and the men all envied. But those the men couldn't envy me enough to hate me because I was so darn likable, and, to top it off, I loved Dr. Who." (And we all know that Dr. Who fans cannot truly be hated. It is one of the cornerstones of Newtonian Physics right up there with "Polkas are an acquired taste.")

And I responded with a polite little, "Of course I remember you! You drew that awesome picture of Gyuss Baaltar with his head stuck up his own butt." And then I clicked Send.

And then I had a little panic attack.

When we were young, we had to behave like juveniles thanks to Federal Mandate E.B.0/1144-07c, or, as we like to call it, the "Kids These Days" Act of 1954. But that doesn't mean I should treat this one juvenile act like it some sort of defining characteristic. It would be too much like a mean ol' high school bully going, "Dude, remember that time in second grade when you accidentally farted in the reading circle? And then we called you Farty Fart Farts until you graduated? Well the taunting won't stop now that you're a grown up! FARTY FART FARTS! FARTY FART FARTS! AH-HAAAAAAAA!!!"

So I sat in a big pile of fear, waiting in front of my computer for the response, fully expecting a cutting retort along the lines of, "Geez! Immature much? That was, like, over ten years ago! I'm a respectable member of society now."

Instead, the response went something like, "Yes! That was the best thing I ever drew."

And then I remembered not only why I liked Cyber D, but exactly how much I liked Cyber D.

And THEN, just to prove what an awesome, kick-ass guy he is, Cyber D wrote a totally awesome, kick-ass blog entry about me where he compared me to a girl next door who grew up to be an exotic dancer. (Which is an ironic choice of words, because in high school I was voted "Most Likely to Get Beaten Up by an Exotic Dancer's Thug Boyfriend.")

Anyway, the past few days have been a whirlwind of fond memories and wild blog entries. Because when Cyber D writes a blog entry about you, thousands of people from his blog comment on your blog. And you comment on the comments. And the comments get commented on. And that gives you an idea for a new blog entry.

It is good to reconnect. It is good to find old friends and let them know that I am ok and to see that they are ok, too.

The only drawback is that I wish Guyuss Baltaar included a recent photo so I could see if he still spends 45 minutes each morning perfecting his sleek pompadour and two-pronged goatee before throwing a feather boa around his neck and heading for class.

After all, we went to a Liberal Arts College. Such attire was encouraged.