TomMannino.com

So Saturday night, I had a really awesome evening, for many, many reasons. It really shook me to the bone. I wanted to tell this story both to document it and to share it with you all. This story is about people, connections, synchronicity and serendipity.

So since the story is about the people, it’s important that I introduce the cast of characters involved.

Andrew was my roommate for quite a few years. We met freshman year in College, and then when we both moved out here we decided to live together for at least three or four years. We saw each other go through a lot together, in careers, love and life. He now works as one of the main talent coordinators for G4.

Alicyn was also a friend I made freshman year in College. She was short and cute as a button, totally full of energy and constantly happy. As a result I gave her the nickname ‘Sparky,’ and it’s turned out that that’s what she calls me now too. She was a raver chick too. Needless to say I had a huge, huge crush on her, haha. She’s gone on to become a voice and screen actress. If you play WoW, you’ll know her as the voice of the female blood elf.

The three of us lived on what is/was called the Digital Culture floor of Emerson. Basically they had a few theme-floors that you could apply to be on. The application was very simple, and it was mainly to put like-minded people together. It was really cool, there were musicians, hackers, gamers, all kinds of people to relate to. This was literally ten years ago, in 1998.

Matt is a friend of mine that I made a while back as a result of being a Cosplay groupie. I’ve known Matt for about four years now, He was big into the scene, made some awesome costumes, but also was huge person in that social circle. Matt is now writing movies and doing professional voice acting. He’s had some great successes recently so I’ve been very happy for him.

So the back story to this specific incident is important to know:

One day, for whatever reason, I randomly checked up on Alicyn’s work blog and found out, long story short, that she did the voice for the Blood Elf. So I freaked out. I’m huge into WoW so knowing that I’ve heard her voice for months and months and realizing it was someone I knew personally, It excites me greatly and I tend to brag about it.

So I happened to brag one day, randomly, to my buddy Matt, who is a voice actor also. He also played WoW so it was a matter of geekitutde as well. This also somewhat had to do with the fact that my company was looking around to see if anyone had any connections with voice actors. I of course knew Matt and Alicyn, so I forwarded their resumes along to my bosses for prospective stuff.

A few weeks ago, Matt had contacted me saying he was working on a project and one of the female voice actresses didn’t work out for whatever reason. He remembered me telling him about Alicyn, and wanted her info. So I passed it along.

A few days later, Alicyn emailed me, thanking me profusely and saying she ended up getting the part. She was really happy, it was cool. It wasn’t really a big deal, just passing along an email, but I’ve learned that really sometimes, that’s all that it takes.

She said she wanted to get together for drinks and catch up, and asked if I was going to Comic-con and I said of course. I had a lot of crazy plans so I didn’t want to set anything in stone, but I’d call her when I got there and we’d figure something out. She mentioned she was going to be on a huge voice acting panel, so I was excited for her.

So now we’re at Saturday night!

We were at a bar in a hotel lobby waiting to meet up with friends, and I get a call, completely randomly, from Andrew, my old roommate. I laugh at my phone because just the week or two prior I realize I hadn’t spoken with him since the GDC, and I was going to look him up on AIM. I hadn’t seen him on AIM so I figured he was busy with something.

When he called me at the GDC, it was randomly to ask me how you actually pronounce the race in WoW, ‘Draenei’. They were doing a skit about it and he wanted to make sure he was saying it correctly, and he knew I was a big wow-head so he rang me up.

So I answer the phone, and was totally surprised. He laughed, I immediately realized G4 was at comiccon and he was probably here, but before I could ask, my phone beeped, with a number that wasn’t in my phone. I don’t recognize the number, but I gave my number to a few friends to call me, without getting theirs in exchange. I tell him to hang on a second, and he says sure.

So I click over, and it’s Alicyn. She’s excited to talk to me, and asks me to guess who she’s standing next to. I took a second and it dawned on me, so I say “ANDREW??” and she says “YES!”. Those assholes ran into each other and they were like LET’S CALL TOM. So I laughed my ass off, and my head exploded into a thousand pieces. I could barely wrap my head around it.

Thinking about it, I knew these two people ten years prior. I went a bit numb realizing what kind of history that represents, thoughts started racing, realizign how much we’ve all changed, what we were up to now. I’ve been thinking a lot, frequently, about how if you were to go back to 1998, sit me down and tell me what I was going to be doing in ten years, I’d laugh in your face.

So I explain to her and Andrew that I was heading out to dinner but that I’d give them a call after to tell them where we were, so we could all get together for drinks.

So we go to dinner, have a great ‘work’ dinner, talk about all kinds of stuff, have lots of wine. My meal came out late so they comp’d it, woo! We also saw the dude who does the Warhammer video blogs.

After dinner, we head to this place Joltin’ Joe’s, a pool hall. We get settled and I make some quick calls to Matt, and then Andrew and Alicyn.

So rather quickly after I called him, Matt shows up to the bar. I laugh, and tell him this funny story, because he obviously now knows Alicyn.

He looks me in the eyes and goes “HOLY SHIT. I just MET ANDREW like two hours ago!” He explains to me how I guess he ran into Alicyn here, but he also went out to lunch with her recently and made friends. Alicyn had run into Andrew and Matt and they all introduced each other. Of course he had no idea that he was my roommate, but I sure knew Matt while I was still living with Andrew.

Now it’s worth mentioning that Matt is was in town to promote his LAN Party Massacre project. Matt wanted to get an interview with G4 and they were pushing hard for it but it didn’t work out. So he was interested in keeping in touch with Andrew of obvious reasons. It dawned on him at this point that he remembered me talking about him, we even went so far as to try to make a connection in the past but it never worked out.

So a while later, Andrew and Alicyn show up. Lots of hugs and connecting, but we were all in the same place now and it was freaking crazy as hell.

I looked around at my friends, and all I could see was the social connections. It really sent me for a loop. I could go into details but I’d never stop writing this. Everyone at that moment crossed paths in some way, shape or form. Even one of my guildies from WoW who I met through playing showed up for a few drinks. Old bosses, new friends, old friends, it was this really really bizzare mesh of people. On top of all of this, I had some other shit going on that my friends were consoling me about so it just made for a really deep, interesting evening.

So as an aside, I may as well emphasize this at this point, but if you’ve never been to Comic-con, you can’t really appreciate the sheer volume of people that go to this thing. Obviously when they give out attendance numbers, they don’t say ALL OF THEM are at the place at the same time. The numbers being thrown around this year were to the tune of 125,000 people. It’s a LOT of people. So needless to say, my mind boggles out of my head when I personally run into people I know wandering around there. Just looking at the sheer numbers involved, the odds aren’t worth betting on. That being said, shit like this happens and it really, really screws me up.

All of this took place at a bar we were at four years prior, at the first comic con we were all going to together.

But yeah, this is my life right now. These kinds of things are happening more often then not. Obviously the more people you know, the more opportunities for paths to cross, especially if you’re in related fields or have common interests. I tend to believe strongly in the saying, “Everything happens for a reason.” I think this stuff exemplifies that saying. I’m just waiting to see the reasons. =P