Monday, July 12th, 2004 | LiveJournal Archives

So corwin75 beat me to the punch on recounting our adventure last night, but I’m still going to post it for the benefit of those people that don’t have him as a friend, but also to put my own spin on it. We are, after all, different people with different views.

He’s right in one thing though, it was definitely surreal, and the only way it could have been more so, would be for Marina Satiris to show up topless, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Warning: this is a long one, it may rival a bugtilaheh entry before it’s done.

So weeks ago, we (corwin75Steve, zero_interruptNick and I) heard that Tycho and Gabe were coming to Texas, so we decided we’d take the 30 minutes to drive down to Gameworks and see if we could see them and maybe talk to them a little. When I told oros (Craig) and aramance (Laura) about it, I commented that I didn’t know really what I’d say to them. I mean they’re just two guys who happen to draw a fantastically popular comic that I read every M/W/F. What am I gonna do walk up and say “Hi, uh, I like your comic.” and then run away like a 13 year old boy trying to get his first date? Laura immediately piped up with “I have legs. I like Bread…” which were apparently from a stand up comic who was commenting on what 13 year old boys say to girls. So I joked again and again that I was going to walk up to Mike and Jerry (Gabe and Tycho respectively) and say “Hi, I like your comic. I have legs. I like bread. Your comic says fuck. fuck fuck fuck.” and then smile like a retard while Steve offers to hold me down while they punch me in the face and stomach. As interesting as that would be, it didn’t go that way. So when we got down there, after cruisin’ the parking lot for a bit, we finally got inside and noticed Mike (Gabe) standing there signing autographs with a decent crowd of fanboys around him. To not look like dweebs the instant we walked in, we instead hung back and just watched the madness, all the while kind of wondering where Jerry (Tycho) was. These two guys with friggin carpet roll cores walked in to get them signed and that’s when we were really glad we weren’t standing in that crowd.

So while we’re standing there watching, all of a sudden we notice the crowd has thinned out, Mike notices this too and makes a run for it. We assumed he needed to pee actually. And as he runs off, we notice that the cartoon and real life giant, Scott Kurtz had walked in the door, just as Mike slipped away, so we walk up to him, ask him how he’s doing and comment on how we were wondering if he was going to show up or not. He says he didn’t go to the Guildhall thing, but wanted to sit and chat with Gabe and Tycho since they rarely get to see eachother in person. We informed him that Mike had just run off like a Shirt Ninja and that we hadn’t seen Jerry (Tycho) at all. We got a picture, shook hands and wandered off. In our meandering looking for where Mike had darted off to, Scott walkd up behind us and asks us what’s up, have we seen them, etc. I look over at Nick as if to say “why the fuck is Scott Kurtz walking up to us and asking us what the deal is?” Nick shrugs back as if to say “I don’t fuckin’ know, but it’s pretty cool.” We say we still haven’t seen them, and the four of us start walking around like we came there together. We finally notice and interesting crowd over by the firefighter game and wander over that way to find that Jerry’s signing stuff, so the four of us hang out at the two story hellicopter assault game and just watch the crowd a bit. We still didn’t have anything really to say (I like Bread) or sign, so we just hang out to see if the crowd’s gonna thin out some. So Scott, realizing that he’s just hanging out with us three, starts chatting more openly than I think any of the three of us expected. He tells us about his day at the SciFi Con and how he was hanging out with Marina Satiris and Erin Gray when he was asked to watch someone’s photo table and one of the Lone Gunmen from X-Files spilled coke all over the photos and when Marina said she sensed he did it on purpose, things got really wierd. Also, he all of a sudden mentioned how the shirt she [Marina] was wearing was see through and pulled out his camera to show us. He also mentioned that he had eaten Mongolian BBQ that day and it was tearing him up inside. He was doing this awkward little waddle dance the whole time and sweating like, well, a guy who sweats a lot because pigs don’t sweat. Anyway, Scott starts telling us how if he announced that he’d be at Gameworks in Grapevine, the only people who would show up are the three of us. He’d have contacted Gameworks and organized for like fifty pizzas to be available and when they brought them out, we’d eat, flip the table over as a distraction and run out of there like the wind. Things got even wierder when Scott finally realized we were from UNT, his alma matter. We started talking about all kinds of stuff about UNT, SoVA, Denton, etc. We really hit it off with Scott pretty quickly. He commented that us UNT guys have a kind of sympathetic draw to eachother. Eventually some wierd creepy guy walks up and is ranting and raving about how he got his GBA-SP signed and I’m like “Hey, I have my GBA-SP in my pocket!” So Steve and I head over to talk with Jerry and get his signature on my SP, leaving Nick to chat with Scott for a bit.

Over at Jerry’s mob, people are waiting patiently to get him to so I snap a really bad, dark picture before management tells him he has to move to a more secluded area where he’s not blocking the games. He starts walking and like bees around a hive, the swarm goes with him. Nick informed me that he and Scott were laughing at this fact. Anyway, we do get to slightly better lit area where I finally get to talk to Jerry and get him to sign my GBA. Steve snaps a shitty picture of Jerry and I, and I snap a much better picture of Jerry and Steve (thanks for nothing Steve). Shortly after, Mike shows back up and I get him to also sign the GBA and snap a much better picture of the two of them. We let Mike and Jerry know that Scott’s standing over to the side, waiting for them to catch a break so they can chat, and we slip out of the crowd. When we get back, Scott’s not looking much better and he asks if there’s anywhere to sit down around here. We let him know there’s a bar and restraunt upstairs and he says when Mike and Jerry are finally free, we should head up there. Soon, Scott takes a turn for the worst and says he’s gotta hit the restroom or it’s gonna be hell (he had apparenlty informed Nick earlier, that if he Hurled on him, he was sorry). Ironically enough, almost as soon as Scott makes a run for the toilet, Mike and Jerry come walking over. Mike singles us out (which is about the time we realized that we were the emisarries between our favorite online comic artists) and gives us a “where the fuck is Scott” look, as if we were lying to him. We tell him he’s gone to the restroom, Mongolian BBQ. Mike says he’s gonna play some Tekken and asks if theres a place to sit down, we told him Scott was interested in sitting in the bar upstairs and that we’ll all meet up there. Eventually, Nick, Scott, Steve and I all meet back up and we head up the bar. We run into Mike on the way and go hang out in an out of the way space upstairs.

Upstairs, around a small section of bar, we pull up some stools and for a while, it’s just Mike, Scott, Steve, Nick and I, chatting away. Really, Scott and Mike did the chatting, Steve, Nick and I didn’t have a lot ot add to the conversation, not being artists and not having been screwed by plagurists or publishers. I got a taste of how overwhelmed and possibly tired Mike was when I asked if Scott could borrow his Sharpie to sign my GBA and he started to sign it a second time. Eventually, people did realize that this is where Mike had gone to hide and the crowds started up again, only this time no requests for autographs were made or anything. Jerry did catch up with us after hanging out in the restraunt for a while and cleared the room by announcing that someone in the restraunt was buying pizza for everyone who was here to see the P.A. guys. Wow that room cleared out. After a little more chatting, Scott and Mike started to head in. Mike, of course, got held up by more people wanting their cardboard tubes signed. So at the free pizza table, I comment on how there’s no space for anyone to sit and Scott says, well, lets just sit over at that big table over there, nowhere near the free pizza. We sit and save a couple seats for Mike and Jerry who have, again, become innundated with the hordes. I, ever the artist emmisary, stick my head into the crowd and let Mike know we’ve got a table when he gets free. Jerry’s too far away to talk to, but I assume Mike will pass the word. So yeah, Mike shows up at the table and Jerry misses us completely and heads over to the big table, which is nice though, because the guy buying the pizza was doing so for his son’s 16th birthday. So it ended up being Scott, Nick, Steve, Mike and these two creepy guys hanging out eating pizza. Eventually we added the guy who co-ordinated the Gameworks meeting (ElderCat) and Rob, the PA business manager, who was exceedingly cool in his own right. We all hung out, chatted about random shit, this time it was stuff we could actually add to (wives, games, other comics, etc.) so it was like a realy gathering of friends. Scott once again mentioned that if he had done this, it’d be him, and the three of us trying to eat 50 pizzas and running out the door.

People were lurking around the table, but no one wanted to be the first one to break the wa by asking for a signature, but finally there was enough of a lull that someone snuck in a request for a drawing, handing Mike a sheet of paper. Scott gets this excited look on his face and says “this is where it gets cool.” and watches as amazed as the rest of us and Mike rips through a sketch of Fruit Fucker 2000. And that’s when the line formed, and I swear it was 30+ people instantly. All the while, the guy next to me, the one who set up the meetup at Gameworks, hasn’t figure out who Scott Kurtz is, and he finally asks. Scott looks him dead in the face, and without missing a beat, tells him that he’s Piro, he draws MegaTokyo. I comment that he doesn’t look sad enough to be Piro, so Scott goes into this whole sad thing, where he gets a depressed look on his face, does the “tear” motion, dragging his finger down his face, and the proceedes to pantomime nailing himself to a cross. I wish I’d gotten a picture of that I tell ya. So yeah, soon enough, people realize that Scott it also sitting there and he starts drawing as well and it becomes the table of drawing for about the next half hour. People were scrounging paper from anywhere they could. Mike, in all honesty, asked Scott if he ever signed people’s skin for tattoos, and they both agreed that they wouldn’t do that, because they’re hardly ever pleased with the quality of the art they do at signings. Mike also commented that he’s looked at his stuff from five years ago, and even he wouldn’t want that shit on his flesh and would be ashamed if someone else had it on theirs. Which was even funnier when someone walked up with a piece of paper and asked if Mike would draw something on it so he could make it into a tattoo. I suspect the guy had overheard the earlier conversation as was just being funny, but you never know. I have to say, though, the best art to come out of that session was when this guy walked up with a relatively large piece of card stock and asked if the two of them would work together and draw Cardboard Tube Samurai fighting Skull. It was awesome and Mike going first, Scott encouraged him to have CTS win, because there’s no way Skull would even come close.

Steve, Nick and I, did get a little fanboy and get our drawings as well, and shortly after, Rob came over and informed Mike that they were going to have to leave soon. After three attempts to leave the table, they finally made it out of the building. Strangely enough, almost immediately after they were gone, it was just the four of us again (Scott, Nick, Steve and I), plus a couple guys I didn’t know. We were amazed, Scott called Mike and Jerry rockstars of the web comic world. Some guy showed up with his black Gamecube and asked if Mike had left alread. He’d gotten it signed, but hadn’t gotten any art on it. As kind of a second prize, he asked if Scott would draw on it. After drawing Francis on the side, he realized how totally awesome the silver art looked on the black GC and continued to draw on all sides, though he asked every time and grinned like Skull every time he finished a drawing and was given permission to continue. Like the guy’s gonna say no! I have to say though, that was one BAD ASS GameCube when he was done. Phooo!

So yeah, around 10:30, the four of us finally packed it up and headed out, chatting as we crossed the parking lot, talking about how Scott should come up and do a signing in Denton (his idea, actually) and I made the suggestion that he do it at Talon, so that may happen. He told us to email him whenever, just remind him that we’re from the UNT Triumverate at Gameworks. Fuck that was a cool night. I mean , Marina Satiris didn’t show up topless, but still. As Dave Attell says, “The night may be over, but I still have my pictures.”



Scott Kurtz and some creepy guy

Jerry Holkins (Tycho) Signing

Tycho and Me

Tycho and Steve, check the overall sheen!

Tycho and Gabe>

My GBA-SP after Tycho and Gabe were done with it

Gabe and Scott Chatting about comic woes

My GBA-SP after Scott was done with it

Clockwise from top, Scott Kurtz, creepy guy 1, creepy guy 2, Steve, my empty chair, Mike (Gabe), Nick, and some other guy standing.

Tags: , ,

36 Comments to

frankenroc
July 12, 2004

Holy crap, was your GBA SP the one that kinda looked like an old NES controller?

mandroid
July 12, 2004

Jeez, that was long and I read the whole thing and have no idea who you’re talking about…

aiethne
July 12, 2004

You suck!
No, I mean…,like, damn.
I mean…woah.

You’re a fuckin’ lucky bastard. 🙂 I love Gabe…
Glad you had such a memorable evening!
(I kinda miss GW, but not the prices…)

kacey3
July 12, 2004

I’m sorry I suck… I don’t mean to. We did have an awesome time and we had no idea it was going to turn out that way when we decided to do this in the first place.

The coolest part was it just turned into a night that felt like we were hanging out with friends, friends we happened to have just met and who also happened to be fantastically successful web artists.

And we didn’t play any games, and our food was free, so it was a very cheap night too.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

hahah… I was wondering if you had any idea who these minor celebrities were.

Have to admit though, I felt the same when you talked more about bands, back in the day. I hope you were at least entertained.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

no, but if I replace this one, I very well may buy the Classic style. Mine’s just the basic silver. I do, however, want to find clear vinyl to protect it, much like the vinyl decals you can put on GBAs anyway, only I don’t want anything on it, it’s pretty enough on its own now. 😉

mandroid
July 12, 2004

Very much so. And had no clue whatsoever…

frankenroc
July 12, 2004

Ah, allright. I saw someone getting their Classic style GBA SP being signed.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

I guess that says something about my writing at least. Lets just say that if you didn’t get the impression from the entry, it was a very special and memorable night for us.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

nope, but that may have been the guy who inspired me to get mine signed.

If so, that would have been while we were hanging out with Kurtz.

aiethne
July 12, 2004

Ok…in the worrisome light of losing yet another friend for a lingual foobar on my part…
When I say “you suck”…Im reverting to my childish jealousy 🙂
I know you dont REALLY suck…:P~~
/end

Hehehe…funny story. I made a *complete* ass outta myself the other day.
I was at the Alamo to check out a movie…and saw a guy down about 6 or 7 rows in front of me with what looked like the UX50 that I wanted…so I headed down to ask him how he liked it.
When I noticed that it wasnt the clie, and before I could stop my question and turn back, he looked up and saw me gawking at him. What is worse…he was really cute geeky boy. We had a few chuckles about bringing electronics into theaters, how he had been stopped because the projectionsist wanted to turn him in for recording a prior movie on his GBA (apparently they get a reward if they catch pirates).
Heh, but apparently I was the first girl that it had drawn in with it’s flame…needless to say, I havent felt such awkwardness since I got married.
Ok. Im done 😛

mandroid
July 12, 2004

I did get that impression, and your writing was great, take out the comic related things and transpose them with things others are passionate about and it could fit great with anyone’s hobbies, likes and/or passions.

frankenroc
July 12, 2004

You know, I think I saw that same creepy guy (the guy in the red shirt, right?)… he was there when we were.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

I didn’t take the “You Suck” personally or seriously…

and I’ve been stopped at theatres because I carry a leather “Man Bag” that kind of looks like a camera bag before.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

heck, we were probably there when you were there… Wish I’d known you were going to be there and what you looked like.

I was wearing my home made Cowboy Bebop shirt.

aiethne
July 12, 2004

lol

frankenroc
July 12, 2004

I don’t seem to recall a Cowboy Bebop shirt… when I post my pics after I get them developed we’ll see if you recognize either me or my buddies.

Though if you saw a really thick cardboard tube about 2 feet long that could have been Mike, and John and I were around him.

invisibelle
July 12, 2004

Damn it. I wanted to go but didn’t have anyone to go with. 🙁

Believe it or not, despite working at a video game company, I don’t really know that many people who like Penny Arcade.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

well, shit. If I’d have known, I’d have offered to at least let you come with us… You’d have gotten to hang with the cool crowd, too.

kacey3
July 12, 2004

oh, and BTW, nice Cardboard Tubes.

:p

corwin75
July 12, 2004

But Kacey, you DO suck 😛

kacey3
July 12, 2004

yeah… but I don’t take it seriously.

meatcurtains
July 12, 2004

Damn, now I wish I’d have gone. I mulled it over, and chose sleep over the trip tp Grapevine. That, and since I used to work there, they may have Wanted posters out for me.

kacey3
July 13, 2004

I didin’t see any wanted posters, and I’m sure if you had gone, you would have thrown off the power of the UNT Triumverate to instantly win over the Kurtz, which in turn, was the key to the city with Gabe.

But yeah, you should have come anyway.

meatcurtains
July 13, 2004

Oh well, next time…if there is one. It just wasn’t my time.

bugtilaheh
July 13, 2004

Sometimes I wonder how good he would be at sucking *ahem*… that is, IF he were gay. Oh, well. *starts laughing*

bugtilaheh
July 13, 2004

a messenger bag, but married? boy, something’s wrong with you… haha.

bugtilaheh
July 13, 2004

Warning: this is a long one, it may rival a entry before it’s done.

Pfft, whatever. I’ve written so much once that LJ refused to post it because it was beyond the character limit. Let me know when you reach that (the limit is: 65,535 bytes or characters). 😛

kacey3
July 13, 2004

I said rival, not beat. and you’ve been lazy lately

kacey3
July 15, 2004

it’s not even a messenger bag… it’s a leather satchel, more like a map bag. I use it to carry all my “portable” electronic devices that have piled up and become slightly less portable.

Oh, that and DVDs.

bugtilaheh
July 15, 2004

Nice. I want! Gimme! 😛

norelen
July 17, 2004

I’m with you. I was slightly annoyed I missed it. I was sitting at home bored and almost called them earlier in the day so see about getting together and might have found out about it. I don’t care that much about Penny Arcade, it doesn’t really do it for me, but I love Kurtz’ work.

invisibelle
July 17, 2004

I was actually already in Grapevine! Sad.

But I don’t really know who Kurtz is. When I see the name “Kurtz,” I just think of Heart of Darkness.

kacey3
July 17, 2004

Booya, Heart of Darkness!

invisibelle
July 17, 2004

yes, booya indeed!

(?)

kacey3
July 19, 2004

I fuckin’ loved that book, and I actually read it before ever seeing Apocalypse Now.

Leave a comment

Social Slider

BoardGameGeek

Calendar

July 2004
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031