Queerios!

When did you first see Rocky Horror?
In the Fall of 1991 during my freshman year at Texas A&M University, the science fiction club ("Cepheid Variable") put on a couple of showings outdoors at the Grove. There was no performing cast of any kind, just a whole bunch of drunk Aggies with Super Soakers, toilet paper, and other props (no rice though... birdseed instead). There were a few people that knew some call lines. It was pandemonium and I went again the very next night... as well as two more times during AggieCon in the spring semester.

When did you join the cast?
In 1993 I saw Rocky Horror with a performing cast at the (now demolished) Central Park Fox theatre in San Antonio. I went regularly but kept to myself for the most part. It was several months before anyone on the cast even knew my name. At some point, someone stuck a flashlight in my hand and asked me to do lighting. Next thing I knew, someone else was saying "Hey you look like Riff Raff" and dragging me onstage to perform. I didn't really join the cast... I was just assimilated. After about a year the San Antonio cast disintegrated completely. Just before this happened though, the Austin cast at Northcross made a road trip to San Antonio to perform at our anniversary show. I visited a few of their shows and was soon joining the Austin cast instead, making the hour and a half drive up from San Antonio every weekend. My first performance in Austin as Riff Raff was on December 2nd, 1994.

What do you do on cast?
I performed primarily as Riff Raff for a full decade. I've been Cast Director before and done Special Shows a few times. All the cast props live in my garage, so I tend to be involved in getting them to the show most every week. Since we moved to the Alamo Drafthouse Village, I haven't really performed very much... mostly low-maintenance roles like Eddie. Pre-show is one of my main things though and I also enjoy photography, as well as just being in the audience watching the show. I maintain the cast web site, so the vast majority of photos you see here are mine (and conversely, I'm in hardly any of the photos). Towards the end of 2005, I grew sick and tired of all the untrustworthy people we'd elected Treasurer who had lost or just plain stolen our cast funds. I've been elected Treasurer each term since then, and will continue to run as long as I'm able to actually keep the cast funds safe.

Who's sexier, Columbia or Magenta?
Magenta! DUH! It's a well known fact that for most guys who play Riff Raff, a woman wearing a Magenta costume immediately becomes twice as beautiful.

How has Rocky Horror affected your life?
I first moved to Austin because I'd been commuting from San Antonio to Austin Rocky Horror for two and a half years, and had decided that Austin was the city for me. I met both my wife and my ex-wife at Rocky. I lost my virginity to a girl I met at Rocky in San Antonio. Essentially all of my friends are from Rocky. When I first started going to Rocky, I was a shell of a person who could barely interact with people at all. Rocky made me self-confident and assured in more social situations, up to and including doing pre-show in front of a packed house of over five hundred people in Waco. A significant number of vacations I've taken have involved attending Rocky Horror conventions and other functions. I learned to program Java by working on a web site for the Rocky Horror newsgroup - a skill that directly translated into getting me a job with an online poker company for over seven years. Rocky Horror has permeated all facets of my life for over a decade and a half now, really.

Do you have a love/love or a love/hate relationship with Rocky?
It's all about the love.

What do you think of Shock Treatment?
It has significantly better music than Rocky Horror. I didn't care much for it at first, but it grew on me a lot over time. It was way ahead of its time regarding the blurring of boundaries between real life and television.

What do you do when you're not at Rocky?
I'm a programmer, currently working with Java and Perl based web applications for an Internet banking company. Apart from that, I spend most of my spare time on my many many obsessions...

Besides Rocky, what are your obsessions?
There are so many, I have to choose a couple at a time to concentrate on. My web sites (both AustinRocky.org and RockyMusic.org currently) are constant works in progress. I enjoy digging up new Rocky Horror cast albums, cover songs, and other such for my collection. Photography is certainly a passion, and I've been very lucky to have money I could spend on pursuing it. I've been enthralled by online gaming for years at a time, in Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes, and Lord of the Rings Online. I greatly enjoy the game of Go (a.k.a. Baduk or Weiqi) and study it often. I love the outdoors and go hiking whenever I can, frequently with my lesbian life partner Miss Tre. I enjoy singing, and am active in the Chancel Choir at a United Methodist church (assuming I'm able to get up in time for it the morning after Rocky of course!). I also like yoga (Iyengar style primarily), martial arts, and am about to give pilates a try.

What are a few of your favorite things?
Computers, programming, Diet Coke, Raini, Miss Tre, meat, bread, my house, minivans, cats, reptiles, Corgis, mathematics, drag queens, Tolkien, Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Dan Simmons, Luc Besson, Flash Gordon, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

What is your dream job?
I've always wanted to be a programmer, so I'm already doing it. Generally I just want to be involved in interesting programming projects that are useful to people. After having several periods of time when I was being paid to do almost nothing for extended periods of time, I've found that I really feel much happier when I'm actually doing productive work.

What's your favorite kind of pie?
Chocolate.

Anything else random to share?
I'm not wearing any underwear.