Enough about me... lets talk about me. 

 

( Just make sure you sign the guestbook before you leave, okay? It's only proper!)

 

It all started in 1976 way too early in the morning on August 21st.
Elvis was still alive, John Lennon was writing beautiful music and people were wearing bell-bottoms, dancing in disco clubs.  Okay, so I guess it wasn't all good. But damnit, I was born so there was something good going on.
We lived in Livonia, near five mile, but then we sold that house to my aunt when I was four.
It was then we moved to Farmington Hills. I met Heather, Mike and Ashlee. Long story short, I only see Mike and Heather recently. Heather lived next door to me until she got married on my birthday one year.

I looked a bit like this around age 8:

I annoyed my brother throughout elementary school. Near the end of my elementary existence I tried playing the coronet in band. Low and behold that didn't work out like the musical instructor had planned. However, I did figure out how to shoot the 3rd valve slide across the room. They love it when you do that, projectile brass.

Around this time, classmates and I were coming up with creative ways to sing lyrics for songs.

The troublemakers in the class made a variation of "Feeling Groovy" as such:

Slow down, you're smokin too fast.
Gotta make the doobage last.
Just kickin' down the angel dust.
Looking for fun and smokin doobie!

What did YOU do in middle school?

I met Mike Martin and worked on being weird. The only reason Mike and I bonded was because we both collect comic books. We were sitting on those rowing machines they have in gym class and one of us [we don't remember who] turned to the other one and said "This feels like an Avengers quinjet."
Now you have to understand that maybe 6 people in that entire school would even know what an Avengers Quinjet was. Anyone else would have nodded their head and not understood. But Mike and I had a connection from the very beginning. The future would hold many adventures for us. We made it our mission to annoy those around us with our astounding wit and intellect.
I think Mike filled his locker with Whatchamacalit wrappers he used on a daily basis. You haven't lived until you've seen a solid 2 x 2 foot space full of candy wrappers.

In 1987, I installed a 1200 baud modem (1.2k in terms of your 57.6k modem) I met freaky people over the computer who turned out to be my bestest friends. When I say over the computer, that doesn't mean over the InterNet. BEFORE the internet, you had to call house to house with your modem and a terminal program. I ran a Bulletin Board System (BBS) called Strawberry Fields, you could leave messages or files for people, like a digital cork-board. Unless multiple phone lines were involved, you couldn't chat with anyone besides the person on the remote computer.

Talking on the computer was more social back then. Most of the people you talked to were down the block in your neighborhood or cross-town attending your rival high school. We'd get together for monthly BBSing bowling parties and meet the faces of the text on your screen after school gets out. I know the sole reason I type at the rate I do is because I would keep the lights off in the basement while chatting online with the people calling into the Strawberry Fields BBS. With the lights off, my mother would think I was asleep in my room. For the early days I was getting online, I had a bedtime of 9:00 p.m.

Eventually, multiple phone line systems became popular and the chat room was invented. But if you were talking with someone from FAR away it meant that they weren't in bike riding distance. MetroDetroit was all 313 area code at that point in time, but I still made many toll phone calls, addicted to chatting with people outside my area. With the help of my g33k friends, we invented message distribution networks to ease the cost of talking with people far away. We named them ShadowNet, Fl00gieNet, SpamNet and we went international once.

High school consisted of: I grew my hair out. Suddenly now I'm Dan With The Hair. I still did the BBSing thing, got involve with the visual arts when I joined TV10, dig some newspaper designing (I was DESIGN EDITOR), refined my ability at being a social butterfly (Mark calls me Table Slut when we're in a restaurant and I move around chatting.) We practically lived at Denny's in Farmington, Leaving to "looking" Mike Swelstad's car and my non-school, non Denny's hours consisted of many fun times with Mike Murphy, Julie Gandolfo, Brenda Meinzinger, Pat Murphy, Mark Samp, Darlene Bos, Julie Hermann, Gordon Pon, Mike Martin and Jason Parzuchowski.

Then came CMU. Ok only one semester there,that was fast, I'm moving back home! At least I met Bryan Collins, Stacey Samhat-Walker, Melissa Baxter, "Woody" Eric Wood and Connie Ziebarth while I was there for those few months. After CMU, I began impersonating Elvis while working at Taco Bell and McDonalds drive-thrus which motivated me to get a 2 year associates degree from OCC in a year and a half. That will never be as cool as Michael Cyrulnik graduating from MIT in 3 years. I took a digital photography course under the guidance of Nick Valenti at Oakland Community College which inspired me to study film/video animation.

In 1997, I left for Grand Rapids to attend GVSU. At the end of 1999 I finished GVSU's film/video animation program and now I'm living at home in Farmington Hills again, working in the commercial film industry in metro-Detroit. I am a Digital Guru which means I do almost anything from logging tapes animators/editors use, digitizing film transfers, creating/manipulating/importing graphics to be used or even typing all that text the lawyers write into commercials that none of you bother reading. Some restrictions may apply.

I used to follow Phish around when possible. They took me to many landscapes of the USA. I would watch my rearview mirror as I trut around this great land. Finding characters and stories along the way. Now I travel for other reasons but I love to call Detroit home. I am looking to expand my skills and focus on finding new creative outlets. There's no mass transit in the Motor City so I ditched that old Sunbird for The Focii, but I think I need a new one now.

You see, from age 17 to 24 I drove a 1988 Sunbird.

In 2000 I bought this: We call it the Focii. .

The fool on the web...
some photographs for your liking.

Phish Tour 2003 Pics are Here

Me and Sean Ryan at Universal Images, July 2003.
We had drawn tattoos on our bodies with sharpie markers proclaiming our love for Melissa Reeck.

Me in Grand Rapids,MI in April of 2001 (Photo by Marguerite Willemstyn)

Summer 1996, Ann Arbor, MI (photo by Katrina Ham)

Rosanna and I on Labor Day Weekend, Boston, MA (photo by Chrissy Boujoulian)

 

1999 Grand Rapids Hillmount Apt. Birthplace of WarFaces. SHOW ME YOUR WARFACE!   This is a very old shot from the now defunct Farmington Denny's. I think this was about 1995. Judging by my hair, it look slike about 6 months after I shaved a mohawk, as it is now grown in partially at this point.   Here's a shot from Rich Anderson's Spiral Bound film. I played God... pretty cool. "THIS IS THE BOX OF EVIL... IT WILL DESTROY YOU." Definately a memorable part of that film. Another shot from Spiral Bound, Summer 2000. That's a flower on my head.   |Here's Katie and I with all of our Phish tickets for summer 2000. Now I am sad thinking about how I can't see Phish again for a while. <sigh> This is Darlene and I during the filming of Two Chez in 1998 Here's Jeff Mandez givin' a sly look as we take care o' some business. This is Rita and I at her little Swirl Dance thing in Grand Rapids like Janurary 2000 or so.. Rita and I again in 2001... (I think it was April 20th) I really miss this Superman shirt. The girl kissing me is Katrina, but it's NOT the Katrina that stole the Superman shirt. These are my two favorite Toddlers, Ryan on the left and Kaitlyn on the right. Ryan's all pimpin' on Kaitlyn in this photo. This is my beautiful body. This body was almost destroyed at the fishbone concert where I received this wonderful footprint shaped bruise in the mosh pit. Fun, I know. Katie and Me. We're so cute at the Phish show at Deer Creek in 1999. Now, of course, it's called Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre..  .     . This is REALLY old, like 1996 or so. It's hard to see, but the button I am wearing says: CLOWN: Plain Clothes Division Above, I'm on my computer, like usual. Below, I'm giving a Woo Up gang sign representing the Woo Gang from FHS/NFHS 1994/1995 \ Below I am trying to act afraid for Mike who told me to. Mike took this one of me the same night in December 2000. Mike told me to act like I was eating his foot. I don't know why, but here's the pic. Mike wanted me to pose so this is all I could think of. Me in Grand Rapids in April of 2001 My nephew and I in downtown Farmington, April of 2001 Want more? You know it. [Blog][Yahoo Briefcase Photos][What's New] [Main] [Danisms] Getting ahold of Dan: E-Mail: contact ICQ info, ICQ Page Express My ICQ# is 3788654, AOL Instant Messager name is Dan Four20 If you're looking to find folks from Farmington, check this out, or go to classmates.com

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