Category: Connections

You want to know about Ben McBrayer?

December 10, 2003 /

I’ll tell you about Ben McBrayer.

When I was a pre-preschool-age kid in Georgetown, a bunch of moms (mine included) somehow ended up putting their children in a play group together. It would later turn out that (me excepted) the group was composed entirely of future geniuses, but that’s an entry for another time. One of the kids in that group was Ben McBrayer, and so we were friends from literally before I can remember.

The McBrayers moved to Hawaii for a while, then back to Kentucky–to Richmond, by strange coincidence, where the Adkinses had moved in the meantime. We went to middle school together, hung out less in high school, lost track except for holiday stuff in college, and then after a long time I saw him again at my mother’s wedding. He’s also in grad school, it turns out, pursuing a MFA-or-maybe-PhD in music history at Cincinnati.

The thing about Ben McBrayer is that he tends to like the same things that I like, only he likes them ten years before I do. I feel like I’m constantly growing up to be Ben McBrayer, and by the time I do, he’s already an even more advanced scholar / critic / artisan. If I’m ever cool enough to be a rock star, Ben McBrayer will be so cool he’ll be dead.

This is the perfect example: Ben McBrayer and I used to draw comic books together in Georgetown. Our chief focus was on a group called The Challengers, with a roster that included Cat-Man, Slasher and The Pilot (Cat-Man is still probably my favorite superhero). It was fun, standard kid stuff.

When Ben McBrayer moved back from Hawaii, we were in sixth grade, and I was pretty excited about getting to draw The Challengers with him again. When I broached the subject, Ben McBrayer got a sage and faraway look in his eyes, and said “Oh, yeah, that? Sure, we could draw that again. As kind of a satire.”

And that’s what it is about Ben McBrayer.

December 7, 2003 /
  • context: I am an experienced console and PC gamer with many hours of practice under my belt
  • found Liero via game god Kevan
  • liked it immediately
  • played a quick few rounds with Maria
  • hate Maria
  • taking my toys, going home

December 5, 2003 /

Do you, like any right-minded American, often find yourself daydreaming of the near-erotic qualities of homemade confectionery? Do you loathe the undead? In an attack simulation, would you be one of the fork-wielding souls who turned to spit your fury full in the gibbering face of the forces of Baron Samedi?

Hi, I’m Brendan Adkins. You may remember me from such films as Mission: Implausible and Pirate Isle 4: Rhinobreath’s Revenge. I’m here today to let you in on an exclusive opportunity, available for a limited time only: the chance to join your kindred spirits, the righteous and the hungry, in Zomziepie.

The benefits of the community are many. You’ll be able to pool your own zombie-combat wisdom with that of other experienced veterans, and you’ll have the privilege of sneak peeks at new and adventurous pie recipes. You’ll gain access to our 24-hour-a-day global database of undead activity, which you can conveniently check from the comfort of your pastry kitchen. In addition, with your membership dues, you’ll receive

  • nothing

And much more. The choice is clear: Zomziepie is the interweb’s hot spot for these rapidly converging fields. Get in on the ground floor–call today!

I’m Brendan Adkins.

December 1, 2003 /

What’s cool is Penny Arcade. I don’t know, maybe you’re a webcomic vet and they’re so four years ago, but you can’t deny that they are Penny Arcade, and they’ve never dropped the ball on that.

What’s even cooler, though, is their new and brilliant use of their (mind-boggling) power for good: Child’s Play, an open question to 150,000 people as to whether they can step up and buy toys for sick kids. The answer is, apparently, a resounding yes.

I read an interview with Marc Andreessen, a few years ago, in which he was asked what he (as a dotcom millionaire) was planning on giving back, charitywise. His slightly annoyed response was that philanthropy was generally the province of older, more powerful investors–that the young millionaire was a new breed, and that it’d be better to wait until he had retired and “could really do some good.”

I kind of agreed with that, when I read it, and when everybody crashed a year or so later, his caution made sense (it’d have been kind of harsh to give a charity instant-worthless stock). Child’s Play is kind of a boot to the head, though: these two guys aren’t even thirty, and they’re not millionaires, but they’re turning interweb popularity into a distinct and tangible force for social good.

November 30, 2003 /

I experienced a surreal and Sumanaesque moment upon the sudden realization, tonight, that I have a LiveJournal! No, wait. I knew that. Stephen gave it to me. What was surreal was planning to set up another account, with the aim of syndicating NFD, and then discovering that a certain kind somebody had already done so!

LiveJournal: A neverending font of generosity. If you’re Brendan.

November 30, 2003 /

I really hate remedy medicine. I actually don’t like taking drugs at all, though I make mild use of caffeine and will choke down / vaporize / intravene something if, you know, I’ll die otherwise. But decongestants, antihystamines, painkillers, soporifics… bleagh. I don’t like to think about treating symptoms instead of causes. I can live with symptoms! Fix the root problem!

Nevertheless, living with an iron-willed roommate who happens to be a med student will eventually weaken you on the placebo-effect front. I’ve been taking Robitussin for about 24 hours now, which is why I was functional enough to sit in a VERY COLD ticket booth and run sound for PI Sketch with only one slip-up. It was a good show. The crowd liked it. I touched Yale inappropriately and got to meet Allilea, who differs from most other celebrities in that she’s taller in real life.

Tomorrow I crash hard, and try to get ready for my last homework and last exam on Tuesday. Then Thursday, then finals, and then the semester will be over. This is very weird. Who the hell gets out for finals on December 4th? U of L, that’s who.

Yea, I go to bed to rest my fevered brow, and to cough until the Robitussin kicks in. It’s not like this is unusual, I get sick about once every winter, but I start to worry about my brain health when I notice that I’m subtracting 230 from 1830 and coming up with 1400.

November 29, 2003 /

Incidentally, the reason I’m posting at 0230 hrs on a morning when I have no business being up is because I just got back from teching the Project Improv (scripted) show, PI Sketch, available for your viewing ONE NIGHT ONLY in about fourteen hours. Anybody who doesn’t mind a little raunch with their humor should get there between 1830 and 2000 hrs and stay until 2200, as there will be a carnival with a duck pond, and also rock songs and jokes. I’m running sound.

Unrelatedly, I’m sick. And use too many adverbs.

November 14, 2003 /

Work has been a tomb this afternoon–those of the developers who aren’t out with new babies are out watching Master and Commander or just avoiding the gloomy weather. I, as one of those unfortunates who’s still paid by the hour, don’t get to sneak out early, and I can’t do anything else on my project right now until somebody who’s gone gets back to me.

I’m kind of stuck for content on here lately, because it’s a strongly routined November so far–time passes quickly, but there’s not a lot of excitement or danger to be had. At work I run queries, wait on those queries, try to fix those queries so they won’t fail again, and repeat; at school I learn useful things, but they’re about as enthralling as you’d expect from a graduate comp sci schedule that’s heavy on algorithms. (Well, I had fun with string search, but I’m not going to write an entry about it.) And on Wednesdays I play Grand Theft Auto.

When I’m twiddling my thumbs waiting for mean ol’ queries to yell at me, though, I keep finding myself at William Wu’s Riddles (via vitanuova). A lot of the riddles there are the kinds of problems I was given as “fun” challenges at Gifted Student stuff when I was younger, and at which I was completely horrible. I find that now, at 22 (and without a competitive atmosphere), I actually consider them fun and worthwhile. I still expend lots of time and effort on solving even the stuff in the easy section, but it’s a great payoff when I get one. The only letdown is that I immediately want to show this off to somebody, but a) that’s lame, they’re easy and b) that kind of defeats the point of a riddle site.

If I get a little more motivation under me, though, I hopefully will be able to reuse some of this knowledge in the next six weeks, as I insanely try to design an RPG system. Those of you nerds who read this but not Crummy: want in?