Robo-origins revealed!

April 7, 2006 14 Comments read Costumes, Travel

I decided that today would be an opportune day to tell all of you how the robot came to be. As I’ve said before, the very first robot (may it rest in peace) was made by derrickito, here in Seattle. Derrick is int0rwebnet famous for his shenanigans in addition to the robot–dressing up as a ninja (with Scotty) and terrorizing neighborhood bars and grocery stores, biking in drag, and his most famous experiment: Homeless Week, also with Scotty.

The premise is that they went homeless for a week to make an ‘internet documentary’ of sorts to raise awareness of the homeless situation in Seattle. For this, they were ripped apart by multiple newspapers.

But back to the robots: Derrick built the first one, and had been using it to wander around town. How and where did I gain possession of it? It all started in Chicago.

Everyone mentioned in this post are members of a web forum for graphic designers, where we spend copious amounts of time talking about dead hookers and gas masks (with the exception of the editorial writer, with his delicate sensibilities, he’d be offended and driven out within minutes).

In April of 2003, the year I turned 21, many of us decided to converge upon Chicago and spend a weekend of boozification. Derrick packed up his robot costume, and he, Scotty, Dana, and Tim all flew from Seattle. Ian came from Toronto. Jeff and Michelle came from Madison. Mitch, Amye, and Jeremy came from Ohio. Audrey and Mr. Audrey came from Detroit. Chelle came from Baltimore. Dustin and Sheri came from Milwaukee. I came from California. And, God help him, Felix hosted all of us at his place.

Scotty, Ian, and I at the first bar of the evening, already showing boozy-pink cheeks.

Derrick brought out the costume at Club Foot. He’d checked it as baggage, and consequently, he marked the box as being ‘fragile’, as boxes covered in duct tape often are just that.

Derrick peeks out of the costume.

And then proceeds to make suggestive hand gestures toward the package, lest we forget that robots can love. You know, fully functional and anatomically correct?

After a while, Derrick tired of the costume and started passing it around. First Felix tried it on, as is well and proper for our host.

Look how he mesmerizes and hypnotizes in that sheath of duct tape!

After that, Felix passed the head onto me–I couldn’t wear the body if I still wanted to sit in the booth, and with as much as I’d been drinking, I *definitely* wanted to sit right then. Also, if you’ll notice: Throwing up the horns the first time you put on the costume is instinctual. Because it ROCKS SO HARD, you can’t do otherwise.

Once I had the costume on completely, I was UNSTOPPABLE. Also, more horns.

I believe Ian was trying to mind-meld with me. That, or simply make eye-contact, which is remarkably difficult to do while wearing that costume!

Ian, teaching all of us to dance.

The robot can’t take a bad picture!

So at about this point, Ian spied a bike chained up on the street, and attempted to free it, the better to ride around. Note the robot peeking out behind the crowd.

Mitch wasn’t going to take any sass from a CANADIAN, so he preceded to show Ian what happens when you try to steal bikes in ‘merica. Scotty points out the action. We were all incredibly drunk at this point, if you couldn’t already tell.

This picture was taken in the second-to-last bar. The place was packed, yet people seemed remarkably nonplussed that brought a robot into the place.

Look to the far left of the picture. That guy whose face you can half-see? Yeah, he was hitting on me. IN THE ROBOT COSTUME. I’m as shocked as you are.

I did start it, though. Drunk and confident, I walked up to him and said “Would you care to buy a strange robot a drink?” I’ve since discovered that line ALWAYS works. It should be used sparingly, as with great power comes alcoholic blindness and irreparable liver damage, yadda yadda.

Now you know the picture my icon came from. At this point, it was getting HOT inside that costume. Not only from the booze–cardboard is a far better insulator than I ever would have guessed. I stood out on the street to get some air, and found myself heckling passersby, asking them if they thought they were TOO GOOD to wave to a robot when they walked right by me. It’s really amazing no one kicked my ass that night.

With the exception of Dustin. He felt that things were ‘too boring’ in the bar, so he started a fight with me to liven things up. Clash of the titans! He broke the antenna off of the head, and stabbed it into one of the eyes. In a matter of minutes, both eyes were missing, and the antenna was hucked across the bar. For some reason, after that point, the costume still stayed on.

Around this time, Scotty and Rob got into some sort of SPANKING CONTEST. These guys were absolutely wailing on each other, full force, roundhouse blows. I’m not quite sure what this was supposed to prove…

All I knew was that I wanted in. Rob explained to me that I was not allowed to hold back, that I simply must hit Scotty as hard as possible. Ok, I think I can do that!

It’s much harder than you might think to spank someone around a cardboard box. After that, everyone started getting in on the action. I’m still not sure what it was supposed to prove.

The robot was dead at this point. We brought it into the fourth and final bar, but the bartender flipped out and wouldn’t allow us to stay if we kept the costume. It was abandoned outside in an alleyway, and we stumbled back to Felix’s place in search of aspirin, water, and Chicago style hot-dogs.

From that day forward, I carried on the robo-torch, bringing love and cardboard together with copious amounts of duct tape and booze.

I uploaded a crapton more pictures from that weekend (186 altogether, to be specific), so if you’re interested in some more of the crazy things that went on (Derrick almost going home with a transvestite, trashcan diving, pole dancing, Felix taking potentially deadly dares for $2, and our afterhours trip through IBM), check out the gallery.

Taiwan Part Twelve: Action, Adventure, Amnesia

March 27, 2006 6 Comments read Attractions, Taiwan, Travel

In December, Beth and I went to some sort of Science Fun Fair Mystery Spot Park Thing. I *think* we went with her host family, or someone in her Rotary, because I really don’t recognize any of the people besides us in the picture. Regardless, it was a day of adventure, danger, and fun.

The shirt I’m wearing is the t-shirt of my class. It also may be indicative of my mental age; at any given moment, I’m likely to act like a two-year old.

Beth, posing with the Science Fun Fair Mystery Spot Park Thing’s mascot.

This thing almost killed me. Don’t laugh. Seriously. So it’s a wheel that you run on, to what purpose I could not say. What I did not realize is that the faster I ran on it, the more it tried to suck me underneath and into the swampy bogwater. Such shrieks as I uttered have likely ne’er been equaled at that park before or since.

Here’s Beth’s head on a plate–but where’s her body? It’s a Science Fun Fair Mystery Spot Park Thing SECRET. In the middle of this park, they had what appeared to be a playground, with large plastic dinosaurs posing in happy cartoon stances. It was like an educational museum for kids who would be too frightened by menacing dinosaur skeletons, with little informational plaques in front of each one. As there really wasn’t anyone else there, we decided it would be a shame if we did NOT take advantage of the moment and ride the dinosaurs. Could you NOT have done it? I didn’t think so. Don’t judge. I hear you judging!

It took me about six tries to get up on this thing. It was far too tall and too slippery for me to pull myself up on the side, so I had to literally run up the tail to scramble aboard. I felt like a much fatter, much clumsier Fred Flintstone, but I did it, dammit. Emboldened by our mastery over the Reptile Gods, we continued to explore the park, when lo, out of the brush came that thing which man fears most: a dino wearing a bow tie! The horror! The horror!

There was no way I could escape this beast by the power of my own two legs–I would need a powerful steed, swifter than the wind, and more furious than a hungry wildebeest. Luckily, there was an electric dog nearby!

My life will never be the same, after witnessing the majesty of the Taiwan Science Fun Fair Mystery Spot Park Thing. Don’t your lives also feel enriched as well, now that you’ve shared in the experience?

Taiwan Part Eleven: Upheaval

March 24, 2006 6 Comments read Taiwan, Travel

Around December, it was time to change host families. I was a little apprehensive about this as I’d met the family before, and although warm, they spoke no English. I knew immediately that either my Chinese would improve rapidly over the next few months, or my ability to play charades would be unparalleled worldwide. Quite honestly, I would have been happy to have stayed with Tracy Ah-e and Huang SuSu for the entire year. But other people in the Rotary wanted me, and they would have lost face if I didn’t go stay with them, so there was nothing to be done about it. I was quite lucky in that respect compared to other students. I only had three different families throughout the course of my stay, as opposed to some who were changing homes on a basis of every three or four weeks. Can you imagine packing and moving and getting used to a new area of a completely unfamiliar city every three or four weeks? The Lin family’s daughter, Vivian, had gone to Brazil the year before. She loved it there and often expressed an intense desire to return as soon as possible. With as much as she had to study every day in Taiwan, I don’t particularly blame her. Brazil must have been very freeing. Studies have shown that students from the US who go abroad tend to be MORE studious when they return. I would imagine the reverse is true when students from Taiwan and Japan go overseas and experience not having to spend 16 hours of every day in a classroom setting. Vivian and Li-Wen. Li-Wen was a PISTOL. She was anxious to show off at any opportunity, and would routinely do just about anything for attention.

Li-Wen, getting ready to throw down in some sort of ruler-based war. You know how schoolkids here (at least in my experience) pull on their eyelids to chants of “Chinese, Japanese, American Knees”? Yeah, they do the same thing in Taiwan. But in reverse. THIS IS WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE, ROUND EYES!

My second host father. He was an art teacher at a local art school, which is the same one that Vivian attended. He taught mostly chinese calligraphy, and it was something he was apparently quite well known for. He tried to teach me some, but the language barrier was impossible to overcome, especially when I was taking classes with a different calligraphy teacher who taught me things a completely different way. We ended up getting frustrated with one another after about an hour, and never made another attempt. He’d just watch and ‘tut’ at me when I was doing my calligraphy homework.

My second host mother, eating dinner. This was the first host family I had that attempted to feed me until I exploded. They were both very insistent that I call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’, which was hard for me, especially due to the time of year. The Rotary has charted the way student’s years typically go, and it follows a pattern–a very good first 3-4 months, and then around December and especially the holidays, the honeymoon vacation period ends and students become incredibly homesick and depressed. If a student is going to go home early, it’s usually during that period of time; the depression cycle lasts around two months. Of course I went into things thinking “I’ll be different”, but I couldn’t fight it. I missed home, and I even missed the things that had become familiar to me over the previous four months. It was very hard to call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ at a time when I was acutely aware that my mom and dad were across the Pacific.

This was the bathroom in my second host family’s apartment. This was the thing that MAJORLY skeezed me out about this particular living situation. Notice the green bucket? That’s covering their shower drain. I believe this is the first time I’d ever seen a shower where there was no tub or any enclosure whatsoever. Consequently, water was EVERYWHERE. The floor & toilet seat were constantly soaking wet. I’d do a mental facepalm every time I stepped into the bathroom in stocking feet, directly into a puddle. SQUISH. My socks and the hem of my pants were always wet over the entire course of time that I lived there. Christmas is an interesting holiday in Taiwan, if only because the majority do not hold christian beliefs and therefore they have all the trees in public and the santa mythos without any of the semantics arguments.

A giant tree in front of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, constructed out of glass bottles. If Fight Club took place in Taiwan, this is one piece of corporate art that I guarantee would be shards in so many people’s eyes in a matter of seconds. A bunch of exchange students got all gussied up and went to a christmas dance party; it didn’t matter that we went out in public looking like that, because EVERYONE went out in public looking like that. It was an uncertain time of year for a lot of us, if not all of us, but we made our way through it the best we could, and ultimately, I believe we all became stronger people because of it.