willhines.net

This is a horrible photo of myself and James Williamson. I know James better as “Brutal” which is the handle he used on the message board of my old webzine Spite Magazine. He’s a smart funny guy and was one of the few we’d let write articles for us. Actually, for a thrown-together, infrequently-updated, vaguely-defined humor magazine, Spite had a fervent message board community. I was part of it from roughly 1997 through 2001, then had to detach myself because I’d feel too guilty about not having updated Spite. Much of that community still converses online, which is cool.

Brutal first started working for his current company Lodestone in something like 1999. He phoned me at that time — since as someone who had started a webzine I was a web expert — to ask if I thought it was a good idea to join a small start-up with little security but big upside. I told him yes, definitely! That’s what I was doing at that time — and it was great! My company went out of business in a few years. But today’s James’ company has offices in Charlotte, Cleveland, Houston, Boston and now NYC. He did better.

James met Dyna and I for dinner, after Dyna and I had completed our fourth and most challenging yoga session. We ate at the Thai place across from UCBT because I know only the UCBT and nothing else in this city. It was fun, though. Odd, of course, to have a conversation with someone in which I was asking about people by the names of smoo, AndyD, JD, KillerQueen, seedorf, dante, LittlePie etc. But there you have it.

It’s hard for me to even look at Spite — I was really into it at the time but now I can see mostly its flaws. But I was glad to be reminded of how big a part of my life it once was. He showed me pictures of his kids and I walked outside and pointed at the awning of the theatre which currently takes up most of my time. Fun. Thank you for looking me up, James.

| Tags: brutal, dyna, nyc, spitemag