June 19, 2006
I was going to write about this a week ago, but I got distracted by the Steelers quarterback trying to Darwinize himself. Then I got lazy. I'm sure you know how it goes.
About a week ago, there was a Something Positive reader gathering in Richmond. I drove down and got there about an hour after it started. Randy Milholland (the author) was shooting the breeze with his fans and giving away sketches of characters. Most people ask for Choo-Choo Bear, Davan's hairless, boneless cat. I asked for Piro.
That's right, I went to an S*P reader gathering and asked for a Megatokyo character. A couple years ago, MT had a "linkup" box where the people who run the site could put links to stuff they thought was cool. They've since gotten rid of it, probably because they can issue a pretty good approximation of a Slashdotting by linking to someone. But anyway, I first started reading S*P because of an MT linkup. Since Randy has such a different drawing style compared to Fred Gallagher (MT's artist) I figured it'd be fun to see them draw each other's characters.
I haven't met Fred yet, but Randy had no problem giving me his take on Piro:
Very different from Fred's style, but very recognizable as Piro. (Actually he kinda looks like Davan with PeeJee's bangs, but Piro has a kind of girly hairstyle anyway. It works.)
Later in the evening as things were starting to wind down a bit, the girl sitting at my table* asked to "steal" the ketchup from Randy's table. For some reason I decided to be silly and asked in a kind of retarded surfer voice, "duude, can you, like, draw Choo-Choo in ketchup?"
He thought about it for a couple seconds, then provided the following:
That amused me muchly. I think the muffled "murrrr?" is what did it. All in all I had a good time, even though I did my typical anti-social dork thing. Pity this'll probably be the only one of its kind.
* Seating was limited at Carytown Burgers and Fries (the gathering location) so people were sharing tables. The girl who wound up sitting with me was fairly cute. She was also 20, a student at Slippery Rock in western Pennsylvania, and had a boyfriend. As I've said before, the more willing a woman is to talk to me, the more likely it is that she's involved.
