Friend Showcase–Robert the Grump

I like being around creative people and Robert is second to nobody when it comes to easily creating art with words.  He is a gifted writer even though I suspect he doesn’t aspire to write at all. 

Years ago he was reading some smutty fiction on the Internet and he said that most of it was below any acceptable standard and that he could do far better.  In a matter of a few hours he had crafted this well-written and completely disgusting novelette.  On a complete whim he created art that was better and more satisfying than that of a bunch of jokers who took themselves and their writing too seriously.  It’s a complete mockery to everyone who enjoys writing for one person to hold this much talent and not even care about it. 

For work Robert and I have travelled throughout the United States hitting a large number of great, and not so great, cities.  In each city we would see all the normal sites to be seen but would also include areas of historical or architectural note.  His love for history is apparent in that he may be the only person I currently know that I can have a thoroughly geeked out conversation about multiple eras of world history. 

Robert was a podcasting pioneer.  In the 90’s there was an internet radio network called TalkSpot dot com.  It was an early effort, run by some bigtime radio insiders (including the talented James Golden aka Bo Snerdley of the Rush Limbaugh Show) to bring radio to the internet.  Robert did a show called the Game Dive which focused on PC gaming.   The show had a huge national and international following and stretched the available bandwidth of the upstart company regularly crashing servers.

Robert is also a story teller.  He recounts the characters that have come and gone through his life and has a brain that files away the interesting parts about each.  If you have spent any time in Robert’s life, there is probably a folder in the hard drive of his mind with your name on it.

We both grew up in in poor families and he was the first person who ever really stated his feelings on it in a way that reflected my own sensibilities on the subject.

“There’s no virtue in being rich or poor, it’s only important to learn the right lessons from it.” – Robert the Grump

Robert’s friendship to me and my family has, in the last ten years or so, has been a constant through the highs and lows of life…and to be sure in the last ten years there has been some awful lows for both of us.  I’m hoping for a better upcoming ten years filled with more hilarious stories.