“Hi, Danny?” I called from the car.

“Where you at foo?” the voice on the other end of the phone answered.

“… What?”

“Where you at foo?” he said again.

“Oh … about a half hour away. I’ll call you when I’m at your hotel.”

He actually talks the way he writes? Weird.

I’ve never met Danny in person before but I’ve known him online since 1997 from an email list called diary-L (the L stood for list, it took me a few years to figure that one out), run by the ubiquitous Ryan Ozawa. The list was a rogues gallery of some of the earliest journalers back then. My initial impression of Danny was of a smart-ass opinionated troll who called himself “Rice Pixels.”

“What’s that even mean?” I asked him that decade-old question just then.

“Real pixels are square, but rice pixels would be round, which is impossible. No one ever got that,” he answered with his familiar fuzzy logic.

Over the years, the diary-l list became less active, for the usual reasons: flame wars and trolls, rivalries and cliques, new interests, plus email lists are so 20th century. I, like many others, left that dysfunctional internet family for newer dysfunctional internet families. I brought Danny (who chose the modest name of Mighty Asian Thunder for himself) over to the Rice Bowl forums where Cyn and I helped Carlos with the administrative tasks, much of which was keeping Danny under control or counting votes to keep or kick him off the forums. I liked having Danny around because he would say the things that people were afraid to say. Plus, he was such an ass sometimes, it was fun to throw the occasional barb his way (I was so mean he used to call me BCE - Big Corean Evil). He was the Abel to my Cain.

I was still talking to Danny on my cellphone, when I realized he was directly ahead in the lobby.

I’ve seen pictures of Danny before - more than I’ve wanted to see - but I wasn’t quite expecting him to look as “normal” as he did. Unlike most internet pictures, he didn’t try to make himself look younger or thinner. In fact, most of his pics revel in that “fuck you, I’m fat and gross” attitude. But in person, he’s actually presentable.

He was a little taller than me. But with tiny thin arms. Like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

He’s also a talker. Like the blocks of poorly-punctuated and colorfully-crass text he would post online, he’s pretty much like that in person.

In the car, I asked how things were going with this divorce situation in his latest journal entry.

“… You know, I just don’t get mad anymore about things,” he smiled, “There’s no point in fighting it. I just laugh and accept it.”

“Are those directions back to your house?” he laughed some more.

“Yeah, we’re 35 minutes away,” I justified.

“Who needs directions BACK to their house?”

“My brother got the directional sense genes. I got the artsy genes. I think I just passed our exit.”

I’ve played in massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) with Danny over the years. For a while it was Star Wars Galaxies. He was a wookiee named Bukkake Jones. Then I grouped with him in City of Heroes; he was George W Shrub. He got banned from both games for brief periods, I think. As well as a couple of internet forums, both public and private. His super powers are consistency and ban-magnetism.

“Are you still playing City of Heroes?” I asked.

“I’ve got four toons at max level, hahaha,

“It’s sad. It tells you exactly how many hours you’ve spent in the game - 500 hours on some toons. Like I couldn’t have used that time for something else,” he said pondering the essential gamer question - to play or not to play.

“Working minimum wage at McDonald’s … that’d be a few thousand bucks,” I liberally added salt to the wound, for old forum’s sake.

My mom was visiting at my house.

“Oh hi. So how do you know Scott?” my mom enquired because enquiring minds have to know.

“We met in college,” I lied quickly.

“…”

“Oh, so you went to U of M. Are you a doctor too?” my mom asked Danny who was in rare form - speechless.

“…”

“… Uh no, I’m defininitely not a doctor,” Danny coughed, still a little confused about his new academic history.

“He majored in computers,” I think I said, or was it business. Anyways, my mom did her conversation-by-contrariness thing for a bit and wandered off to annoy Amy.

“I didn’t know I went to U of M,” Danny chuckled, “You could have warned me ahead of time.”

“You had at least two seconds for it to settle in there,” I rolled my eyes.

Telling my mom I’m meeting a stranger off the internet just wouldn’t fly with her. Trust me. The internet’s full of pedophiles and identity thieves; she saw it on the news.

We took Danny to a Corean restaurant.

“Do you understand Corean?” Amy asked.

“Only when I’m being yelled at,” Danny replied.

The kids were a little shy.

“Molly is the same way,” Danny spoke of his daughter.

Amy asked if he or his wife were shy.

“We’re shy in different ways. I’m shy in that I draw attention to myself. Jocelyn is shy in that she will avoid people.”

Shy by drawing attention to oneself? Is that some deep shit or just more bullshit? You never know with him.

“You still sky dive?” I asked.

“Yeah, once a year mostly. I have to get tubes put into my ear drums each time. You should try it,” he suggested.

“No thanks,” I replied thinking of how awful it would be for my kids if I died doing something for “fun” like that. Not that getting your ear drums punctured yearly isn’t a bonus.

“Do you get a big adrenaline rush when you’re falling?” I prefer the first person view, like in my racing games and shooters.

“Yeah … and the wind is so loud, you can’t even hear yourself scream,” he explained, “Two hours later, I have to take a nap though, because I’m so worn out.”

In free fall, no one can hear your repressed anguish.

After dinner, my cousin Kevin came over and the three of us went out to the sports bar. I was running out of things to say. What do you say to someone you’ve been reading for the past ten years: “You should spellcheck more?”

Danny got a little loud at the bar, and he wasn’t even drinking. As the night went on, I was getting concerned about the amount of sleep I needed for the next day and the amount I wasn’t going to get.

“We better go now, or Scotty’s gonna cry,” Danny joked with Kevin. More like Scotty’s gonna put someone in a sleeper hold and leave them in a public bathroom.

“It’s not like I have lives to save in the morning,” I replied like the dour puss I am when duty calls. I guess everyone has to have one friend that annoys them sometimes. My collection is now complete.

On the drive back, Danny teased, “I should move out here for three months a year.”

“You can stay in our basement where we used to keep the cat,” I replied. The cat urine smell is much fainter now.

“Scotty would just die if I was here for three months straight,” Danny went on.

“No. You. Would die,” I replied with a tone that made Kevin laugh.

On the way back to Danny’s hotel, his wife called.

“Hey Joc, we’re heading back,” Danny informed her, “Say hi to Scotty, you’re on speaker.”

“Hi Jocelyn!” I said.

“See, I told you Scotty has a high-pitched nasally voice. What? No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“You do sound pretty DRUNK, Danny!” I said in retaliation, despite the fact that he didn’t drink all night.

I dropped him off at the hotel and made my way back home without a map this time. It’s hard to believe I’ve known this guy for eleven years and have just met him for the first time. Such is the era of the internet. Sometimes you really can’t pick your friends. You just meet them after eleven years and you’re stuck.

We’ve been through this much, why stop now?

Number of links in this entry: 27 or so (Sorry if I missed people. It doesn’t mean I like you any less. Some of these people I don’t even know and some favorite people don’t have sites anymore.)

 Danny’s version is here.  I forgot about the full-contact booty dance he gave Kevin, but I am sure Kevin will never forget.