Write Who You Know

Those of you who know me well know that, if you know me, your name ends up in something I'm writing. This is partly because I love, respect, and want to memorialize you, and partly because I'm really bad at making up names.

Usually I just choose a name out of the address book at random (or from handy online lists, thank you facebook), but once in a blue moon I pick one because of some resemblance of the person to the character, or vice versa. This has happened a couple of major times -- most recently, in the upcoming show World Of Heroes, which was actually inspired by real life events incited by a friend of mine named Bill. World Of Heroes is a light-hearted take on Heart of Darkness, in which a young man (yes, Bill) gets lost in the world of an MMORPG, and his family and friends have to enter the world of the game to find him. (Yes, it has been brought to my attention that South Park has an Emmy-Award winning episode about Warcraft and I have this to say: their's came out on October 4th, 2006, and Mike and I have emails about World Of Heroes dating back to July of 2006. Thank you, Gmail. :) )

But back to the matter at hand - naming conventions. I'm currently creating the character of Romi Littrel in Second Life so we can film more songs, and as I've mentioned before, Romi Littrel is named after real life Romie Littrell, the only mad scientist I know. But here's the blog-worthy point -- interestingly, everyone who's played Romi looks quite a bit like Romie. Observe:


(from top: Romie Littrell, Justin Daniel, Maxwell Jenkins, Romi Litrel)

What a set of leading men! (Another strange coincidence: at one point in time Romie Littrell owned a shirt with a Panda on it. One day at rehearsal Justin walked into rehearsal wearing the same shirt. These guys have never met each other.)

This is just a first draft of our animated Romi, so Romie, Justin, Max, or any Rom-ophiles or Rom-ologists out there, feel free to give me hints on how to best capture the Romi Look.