“Still waters run deep” and ”You can’t judge a book by its cover” are two phrases that best describe me. Believe it or not, sometimes when I go out, I have a tendency of scaring people. Not intentionally mind you. But little old ladies get on the verge of a panic attack if I get too close to them, and children either think I’m going to eat them or that I’m Santa Claus. If only they knew that every day when I come home, I get down on my hands and knees and do baby talk to my cat as I rub her belly. That just goes to show that they don’t know the real me. Never judge a book by its cover
I have been doing the Renaissance faire for 17 years now, all with Blackshire’s Company of the Sword (visit
www.blackshires.org for some more info). Our focus is education through historical reenactment, and we mainly focus on portraying “Stoddard’s Company of Foot”. An English Military Unit of Pikes, Stoddard’s was an actual “London Trained Band” (the English Renaissance equivalent of the U.S. National Guard) that existed in the 1590’s.
Needless to say, that after doing something for 17 years, it rather dominates your life. Most of my free time is spent either doing a faire or getting ready for a faire. And yes, they’re faires all over the place, Irwindale, San Diego, San Louis Obispo, Riverside, Las Vegas, etc.
What free time is not eaten up by faire, I watch a LOT of TV, movies and cartoons. I watch Cartoon network, Boomerang Channel, Sci-fi and food network, usually in that order. On occasion I’ll watch some network TV, or the odd program here or there.
I also play Warhammer. Warhammer Fantasy (
www.us.games-workshop.com) is a tabletop strategy game played with game pieces that I assemble and paint. So it’s a hobby as well as a game. Yea, big geek game! Loosely based off of D&D, it has a spread of races/armies to play: orks, goblins, humans, dwarfs, vampires, etc. The 2 main armies that I play are Dwarfs and Ogres.
(And now for the self-promotion part) By-and-By I am a friendly sort of guy. Sometimes slow to warm up to, but can be a bit of a chatterbox once I get going. I can have a real passion for many things but this is often belittled by my calm demeanor. People often have a hard time getting a read on me, or think that I really don’t care about anything. Which means that I can, and often do, surprise them. Even to this day, I can stop my mom in her tracks when I do/say something unexpected, and she’ll mutter “Just when you think you know someone.”
Ask any of my friends and they will all tell you the same thing. “He’s a nice guy” and “He’s always willing to help out.” Some may consider this a bad thing, but I don’t. I think the world has made being a nice person a bad thing, and so no one tries anymore to do the right thing. I think this explains a lot about the state of the world today. One man can change the world, a little at a time. I just do what I can.
Thanks for reading my “about me”, want to know more? Just drop me a line and ask. I promise to keep the sarcastic remarks down to a minimum. Mostly.
