I ask fwooshmembers questions.
They answer them.
Moldie13 " That’s how I like to imagine ’em"
Where are you from?
Born in Denver, Colorado, raised in a suburb to the north of there.
Who is in your family?
I have divorced parents, both of whom have remarried happily and a brother with a wife and two kids. but my family consists of my wife and a cat named mouse. I had a cat pass away recently due to complications of diabetes. three weeks ago as of this writing. I miss him very much.
What instruments do you play?
I play anything I feel can contribute to the overall depth of the stuff I’m composing. I’ve never taken any lessons, so I don’t feel comfortable saying "oh, I play the guitar", because I don’t. not the way most people do anyway… if I had to really narrow it down, I think I’d consider myself a "composer", though I can’t even read music…
How long have you been musical?
Well, it’s odd, because I think of my "musical" world completely separately from almost everything else. I don’t consider myself particularly musical anyway, though I’m proud of the music I’ve put together. I’ve been doing "musical" crap since I was little. I’d take two tape recorders and dub back and forth over and over and over. I’d make a beat with something, bang on something, and then I’d take this crappy little guitar my mom bought me from Target, it had a built in amp in the body and which wasn’t tuned in any real way, except maybe to a specific set of notes I thought sounded good when I plucked them in whatever sequence. I’d hammer out some little tune to the beat I’d just made while playing the beat and recording everything all together. I’d do that sort of thing over and over until I had something I either liked or was completely bored with, sometimes I’d do some vocals, usually ended up sounding like some weird chant, all the more creepy since I was just a little nine year old kid or whatever. The sound quality was complete crap, but that’s part of what I liked about it.
What music do you enjoy?
Well, I like a lot of stuff. but I don’t know much new music. I value Tom Waits’ absurd tunes much more than his ballads. I admire the compositions and convictions of Trent Reznor , the song he did for the hurricane Katrina benefit is one of the only things that can bring moisture to my eyes. I dig the suave brilliance of older Beck music. I grew up on the Residents. Mindless self indulgence encourages me to DRIVE FASTER. It’s a broad scope of things that I primarily use to enhance my moods, I rcon.
Could you pimp out a way to access your music?
I could shoot you to my myspace site. http://www.myspace.com/mxiii
What do you do when you go out into the desert for days at a time?
Does everyone know this crap about me? Where do you get this stuff?
I go out to the desert to drive. To drive and be alone. I’ll pore over google earth and find something interesting near me, research it online a little (or a lot, depending) and then plot my course. I love it, really. It’s almost to the point where I constantly crave some absurd driving experience.
I take pictures too. I’m always thinking I want "band photos", but I want to take all my pictures myself. Not because I enjoy photographing myself, but because I never want to impose on other people to come along on my weird "adventures" because of the way I do it. And because I want to challenge myself in taking better and better pictures. I have enough patience to deal with myself as a photographer.
This desert topic… this is the nerve, man. The places I go, and the mindset I’m in, there’s almost nothing better to me. I’ll rent a car and blast down fifty miles of desert dirt road going seventy miles an hour, drifting around corners and bottoming out in silt and washes with the windows down and the stereo blaring. The heat of the desert’s like a blast furnace sometimes, but I hate having the windows up when I’m out there, it feels like cheating.
what do I do in the desert? Man there’s so much. I haven’t even touched on the places I go.
What was your favorite trip?
All the trips I take alone are extremely valuable to me. Every time I come home from one, I almost immediately wish I could just go right back out. The most recent one was on my way to the San Diego comicon. Instead of taking the highway (interstate 
fifteen) all the way down, I checked google earth and plotted remote point to remote point so that I only occasionally wound up on an interstate. I left immediately from work at half past midnight on friday morning and drove through the middle of the Mojave desert down to the Salton sea following the backside border of Joshua Tree. These are two lane roads that nobody but test site employees would normally have any real reason to travel. It was amazing. You don’t see things like what I saw from the highway. It passes by too fast, and you’ve gotta focus too much on traffic. Hell, I could drive down the opposite side of the road for miles and nobody’d be there to care. Actually, I didn’t pre-register for the Con either and so when I got there around one thirty friday afternoon and asked one of the volunteers where the registration line was, I was met with: "they’re sold out"… I called in a favor from a pal of mine, but I should have taken it as an omen and just headed back out to the desert. The comicon was worthless and infuriating to me this year.
But other trips have had an impact. The one before this last one, I was in my bug out about thirteen miles away from the highway on a dirt trail in the mountain range north of Las Vegas and my left axle busted off of my transmission. I had to lay down in the middle of this dirt road, jack that bastard up and see what I could do. I’d stayed up the entire night beforehand too, I went out on a complete whim, just gently waking my wife saying, "I’m gonna go out on that trail I told you about, I think, I’ll call you if something happens…" and out the door. The axel was just the beginning of my
problems that day, but I made it out unscathed and with a smile on my face, another challenge bested. I can no longer imagine life without that sort of power, you know?
Another time I went in search of the former location of the legendary "Mojave desert phone booth" in a rental Honda Accord with great success. Honda Accords can drift, man… you’d never know…
What about deserts located in other countries?
I’ve hardly ever been out of the country. Mexico, Canada, and Jamaica. Hawaii doesn’t count, it’s still America. There are a lot of places I’d love to see. I might have a job opportunity in Dubai in the next few years… if I don’t get killed, it might be a fun adventure.
Do you ever spend time near water? Do you like water?
I lived in San Diego for almost nine years. I like the water, I always have. I’d probably have some different adventures if I had a boat. I’d like a boat, actually. Some little sh*tty outboard thing I could explore Lake Mead. That’d be perfect.
Was it predominately mountain ranges in Colorado?
I mean, is there some psychology of starting out in a mountain
range and then ending up in the desert?
I grew up in Colorado, but none of my "adventures" really started in Colorado. One of the first relevant solitary trips I took was a trip to a memorial/family reunion for my grandpa who’d passed away six moths earlier. I’d been on a road trip with my wife all week and returned home to San Diego for an afternoon, I slept four hours and went to pick up my rental car and drove to Colorado, taking my time so I wouldn’t arrive when anyone was still awake. I showed up at four thirty in the morning. I’d been stopping in every Wal Mart on the western slope of Colorado to kill time. I arrived, got four more hours of sleep, went on a steep mountain hike with what amounted to a group of strangers, got four more hours of sleep and left about thirty two hours after I’d arrived. Intent on going past Hunter S. Thompson’s former house to pay my respects (he’d killed himself about six months earlier). And then I drove back to San Diego.
What are you working on right now?
I’m a theatrical technician. I have been since I was eighteen or nineteen. I’m a carpenter/rigger for a Cirque du Soleil show here in Las Vegas.
Could you describe your work what gets done and
some of the people you work with please. Those athletic
acrobats too… are they egomaniacs? Promiscuous?
Are there a lot of colorful characters at work?
Generally I hook scenery and artists into cables to make them fly. It’s a bit of responsibility, but it helps keep the job interesting, keeps me focused, otherwise the job can get redundant really fast. I also just shove big scenic pieces onto lifts which then get raised up to stage level for the performers to interact with. A lot of the performers are pretty into themselves, but a lot of them are pretty nice. They’re just like any other cross section of people; only every one of them is in better shape than ninety-three percent of the rest of the world. They know it, but not all of them maintain it as some status. Some of ’em do, but that’s just like anywhere… you go to a gym, you expect to see some %@#! people.
What are you working on right now ?
I’m always looking at maps, thinking about the next place I want to go and cataloging it in the back of my head. I also recently got a whole slew of new music programs for my computer and I can’t wait to try and get back into making more music.
I’m also studying for my very last final to acquire my e.m.t. basic license.
EMT as a new vocation? Do you visualize it as a replacement
to your current job or a supplement?
-nah, Cirque du Soleil offered to pay any of their employees to take this e.m.t class and they’d foot the bill. when I graduated high school I was originally gonna apply to be a firefighter, but at that age kinda realized I wouldn’t be able to take seeing people really hurt. I honestly felt it would be a lot easier to throw myself up flights of burning stairs, but the second I ever stumbled across an asphyxiated infant: I’d lose it. This was an opportunity for me to challenge myself, and see what I’m really capable of. e.m.t.’s don’t make crap for a wage, I don’t see how they can get by, so I can’t really justify swapping careers, but I am happy to know that I can contribute to my community if needed. That’s kinda important to me.
…even though I don’t even really know my neighbors… or ever really talk to people… hmmm…
Do you have any physical disabilities?
-both my big toes are extremely arthritic.
What figures are in your collection?
Well, I have almost every marvel legend, with the exception of a small few that I’m not too inclined to hunt down (dark phoenix, stealth iron man, toad…) but I also dig alternators and the masterpiece takara transformers. That stuff is engineering godliness. It’s amazing to me. I’d have refused to age if I had those as a kid.
The twenty-fifth anniversary g.i.joes are pretty cool, too. not as poseable as I’d hoped, but well compensated in the nostalgia category.
Do you customize? 
-no. but I did make a stikfas version of myself. two of them in fact, as identical as I could. I sent one to a really, really good friend overseas and kept the other one for myself.
Are the pawnshops in Las Vegas loaded down with stuff from
people losing everything to gambling?
That’s how I like to imagine ’em, yeah… but I’ve never been into one.
Do you like saying consonants or vowels?
-I prefer consonants. vowels are far too passive.
What are your future plans?
I wanna get a stronger motor for my Volkswagen bug so I can take it to some of the places I wanna go. that’s on a not-too-distant-future schedule.
How did you find the fwoosh? Where else do you hang out?
I stalk various sites for toy info, but I don’t really hang out anywhere anymore. I found fwoosh from hearing it mentioned constantly over at action-figure.com where I used to hang out constantly. I still consider myself to have had more amazing exchanges there than any other forum I’ve ever been to. At the point in time, I was posting there regularly, the off topic threads weren’t just places to talk about non-toy topics, but they were story threads where people creatively fed back and forth and building these massive concepts and absurd tales. The conversations there were so much more friendly and engaging than anywhere I’ve found, but that all died a couple years back, now, and I can’t bring myself to really commit to any forum anymore.
Discuss: http://www.thefwoosh.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38391&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=210
Thanks Moldie!