LUGs.com

Back in third year, Jowen, Victor, Derek and I were out to dinner as we often were. We sat, we ate, we bickered, we did what we do. Derek and Victor talked about Jennifer Love Hewitt; I unloaded some of my relationship problems on the guys; Jowen was busily trying to formulate foolproof get-rich-quick schemes.

Then lightning struck: Derek (I think) mentioned that as roommates in the coming year, we could set up a computer in our living room and have a live webcast going all the time. Since we're such compelling fellas, we were bound to achieve All Your Base Are Belong To Us-level internet fame (or at least Mahir-level fame). We would be sort of like The Real Life, only on the internet, and more Chinese. With this fame, Jowen would become rich; Derek and Victor could one day be presenters on the MTV Movie Awards, and present one of those huge surfboards to Jennifer Love Hewitt; and I could do the same for Jodie Sweetin, thus ending my forthcoming loneliness. (Love ya, Jodie!)

We would have a few features. One, the Mailroom, would be a weekly opening of fan mail. We expected to get at least a few boxes of anthrax and dirty socks, but hey, that's good e-television! We'd also have a system where we'd all keep a blog but agree not to read each others' blogs, so that we could write things like "Man, I wish Jowen would shut the fuck up!". Any time a friend came over, we would advertise it specially. "Tonight: Risk! With special guest: Brad!"

The kicker was our feature "Will Ed Do It?", where we'd take suggestions from our readers for things for Ed to do. These things included streaking at Pit Night, yelling at pregnant women at bus stops, and telling off Triads. Then we'd film Ed actually doing it. Now that is good viewin'.

What would we call ourselves? We were pretty lonely: since it looked like my relationship was in some hot water, three of the four of us were projected to be single in the next week, and Derek will always be lonely regardless. We were pretty ugly: well, except Victor, he was the cute one. "What the hell are we going to call ourselves, anyway? We're just lonely, ugly guys," I said.

That was it! We were the LUGs. We would call our site www.lugs.com.

The cast of characters? I don't remember exactly all our roles, but Jowen was definitely the cheap one, and I was the voice of reason ("This is a bad idea, guys. And it will never happen."). Derek was probably the grumpy one and Victor was probably the cute one, but I don't really remember. We talked about it all summer. It was going to be great. I had a spare PC ready to go and everything.

You'll notice that the link above goes to a site that is NOT about us. That is because it never happened. Nothing we talk about doing ever happens.

Fast forward two and a bit years, and that brings us to a few weeks ago, when we realized that we could do it. More importantly, we could do it with very little effort. We can't do the webcam anymore, which is a good thing anyway since that's just creepy, but we are proud to present to you:

LUGs.com (dot blogspot dot com)
Inspired by Beta Flight National (if you're reading this, Mr. Lynn, don't worry, I'm not a weirdo or anything, I'm just a big big fan -- although I guess that's what weirdos say), LUGs.com allows us a way to keep on keeping on, from wherever we are. Will it lose steam within a month? Probably. But until then, we'll bring you some witty stories and banter, we'll announce LUGs parties, and we'll bring you at least a few "Will Ed Do It?"s, featuring our good friend Ed "Will He Do It?" Chung.

Even more importantly, we'll bicker and make fun of each other (and possibly you) and you probably won't understand a lot of it. But we don't care. That's the beauty of the LUGs: we don't have anyone but each other.

And we hate each other.

Current Music: Roy Orbison - Oh, Pretty Woman (in my head)

P.S.: Don't forget to read the Random Quote right below this. It's really a good one.
P.P.S.: The blog can be found at http://lugsdotcom.blogspot.com/.
P.P.P.S.: While you're there, leave a comment, dammit.