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Jim "Old Man" Crocker is probably my dearest friend in
Michigan, as evidenced that he was the only person who actually hauled his butt all the
way out there to be at my wedding. Jim is cranky, cynical, intolerant, and
continually acerbic — in other words, pretty much like me. He runs one of the
finest comic shops in the entire world — the Underworld — and one of the reasons we met
is that he was so good at merchandising his software section in Connecticut that Borders
moved him out to Ann Arbor. Here's Jim for you: I sent him an email with a
little newsfact about ebay: Someone on ebay had tried to auction off a kidney, and
actually had gotten offers of $5.5 million dollars before the authorities pointed out that
selling organs was illegal. Jim's response?
"Wow. $5.5 million. I'd give my left nut to get that kind of publicity
for my site!
"Saaay......!"
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Shannon (who did not dress like this at the wedding, but it was the only
picture I had that I could use) is Jim's girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife. Shannon is
known to my family as "The Russian Traveller", since she is going for her
doctorate in Russian and frequently goes to the Ukraine or those other nutty Russkie
places. We have a running battle between us because Jim says she's the smartest
person he knows — and I say that I am the smartest person he knows. He
doesn't believe me, so I keep up the pressure on her by spontaneously yelling, "I'M
SMARTER!". She seems to like the attention. Shan is also the most neurotic
person I know by a long shot, continually telling everyone who will listen — which
grows less with every year — that she's going to fail all of her classes, that she is
going to flunk out of school this time for sure... and then she gets a 4.0 GPA, every
single time. But that neuroticness also means that, of all my friends, we probably
understand each other on the most instinctual basis, since I'm only slightly better than
she is. Maybe. |
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Geoff Hunt is a living paradox; he's good-looking, horrendously erudite,
well-spoken, and a hopeless closet geek. He used to roleplay with us, which
surprised everyone, and he was very good at roleplaying. I was actually very
disappointed when he moved away to NYC to take a job with a snooty publisher, because
frankly I never knew what his characters were going to do next. Geoff is also known as
"Julie" — a Love Boat reference — because he was the guy who always
organized all the parties in Ann Arbor, and was the nexus of most social get-togethers.
Such get-togethers have really fallen off since he left, since I'm not invited to
them anymore. He really is amazing. |
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