day in the pants

a day in his pants: the posh deluxe interview with brian behm

ladies and gentlemen, today i present to you someone that i’ve never actually met! no really!

this is brian. doesn’t he look like he’s ready to be interviewed?!

brian started commenting on le blog a while back, when the alamo blog linked to my write-up of the bbq tour. and he is one of the reasons that i originally decided to conduct these interviews, cos people were like, “who the heck is brian?” and, likewise, he didn’t know who any of you guys were, either!

and now you’re about to learn a whole lot more about him! and i am too! which is why this introduction is now ending, cos i don’t know any more than you do!

ok, brian, let’s start at the beginning, since this is where i always start, cos i’m not v. original. tell me about where you’re from, yr family, any siblings, etc.

I grew up in the suburbs of St. Paul, MN in a little town called Little Canada. Apparently at one point in the late 1800s it had a church steeple that was higher than anything in St. Paul but that’s about the only thing the town is known for. My parents were both teachers though my mom stayed home just after I was born. I thought it was annoying at the time but it was really great having them around during the summers. We’d end up taking long road trips and hang out swimming in the pool and watching videos. I’ve got two sisters that are each just a bit younger than I am.

My dad has been recycling cans well before it was ever cool to recycle. He might be (no, he IS) the only person I’ve ever known who paid for their master’s degree using recycled cans. One of my first jobs was going out with him after the softball games picking up beer cans at the local park. We’d take them home and crush them, counting out the number of cans it takes to get a pound (if you’re curious, it’s around 26). Then, he’d make a hash mark on a set of index cards he’d been keeping since he started out. A couple of years ago he recycled his one millionth can. He still cans and uses the money to golf with his teacher buddies but we used to use the money on baseball cards. To this day I still can’t walk past an empty can in a parking lot without looking at it and feeling the urge to pick it up. It’s kind of a curse.

I was really into building things. Legos, Construx (they were these girder like plastic pieces that connected to little plastic connector things which I thought were MUCH cooler then legos at one point in elementary school), wood. It didn’t really matter. I was mesmerized by my Grandpa’s jigsaw. It was the one thing I REALLY wanted when he and my grandma moved into a nursing home. I was also pretty into video games. We eventually got a NES but my dad had decided to invest during the Atari days in this system Sears was pushing called The Intellivision (it was the intelligent television!) and he had seven or eight of these machines stockpiled along with all sorts of games. (if there were going to be a video game apocalypse we were going to be prepared!). Anyway, a group of kids from school would get together almost every Friday night at one of our houses and we’d all bring our various systems. We’d play all night, eat pizza and goof off.

it’s obvious that brian had high hair standards when it came to picking out friends.

As for the Twins, you can’t NOT be a Twins/Vikings/North Stars/Gophers fan (pick one based on whoever happens to be doing the best at the time) (may they rest in peace and may Norm Green be punished eternally
for moving them to Dallas) if you live in the Twin Cities. I grew up in a baseball family though so the Twins never got given up on no matter how poorly they were playing. I don’t remember how it started but my dad and I used to go hang out next to the players entrance outside the Metrodome in the afternoons before games and if someone really famous was in town after the game where the other teams bus would park in the loading dock. We got the chance to meet all sorts of people that way, Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey Jr, Nolan Ryan, David Justice and all of the various Twins players. Once time when the Oakland A’s were in town Jose Canseco and his brother Ozzie showed up at the stadium wearing matching white leather jackets. My friend asked for their autograph and I don’t remember exactly how it happened but the next thing we knew there was accidentally blue sharpie on both of their leather jackets and they were PISSED. Not a lot you can do to a 12 year old kid though.

I was a geek. Not only was I a geek, I was a geek that didn’t fit in with the geeks. I had friends that were in a bunch of the different social circles but I didn’t totally fit in with any one group. The high school I went to was one of a few schools in the Twin Cities Metro area that had a fencing program. There was only one other club that was at a public high school (Minneapolis North). All of the others were private schools and fencing clubs. We started in junior high but the private schools and fencing clubs started when they were in elementary school. I started bowling in elementary school, I could compete with them in that but in Fencing we were the Bad News Bears.

In band, I played tenor sax. I guess I thought I was a much bigger deal than I probably actually was. I played in the jazz band and would get solos during most of the jazz concerts (where I would proceed to play basically the same improvised solo I had played at every other jazz concert) and I’d feel the scorn from a couple of the rocker/art kids in the back. I actually found one of them on facebook recently and tried to befriend her as a bit of a social experiment. I wanted to see if SHE’D changed and I wanted to do some research for a screenplay I’ve been tossing around. I sent her an e-mail basically asking “what the deal was?”

and the response…

Hey Brian–

As far as your question goes, you’re not a horrible person at all. I think that’s great that we share many things in common. I think the biggest problem in high school was attitude.

You seemed to carry yourself with an unusual confidence that made an easy target for teasing. You wore jester hats, did the splits during a Jazz Band concert, told people you were “going to go grunge”. A line
in your senior summary was “see you when I’m famous”. Confidence is great and important to have, but it’s just downright embarrassing when someone puts on a veil of confidence and puts themselves out there
without a whole lot to back it up. In high school especially, it’s kind of asking for it (“it” being criticism and ridicule).

I guess in my mind you kept putting on a persona that was completely forced. The thing that really sticks out in my mind was Jazz Band. The picture in the yearbook with your sunglasses pushed down and the
“cool” look on your face. The “attitude” during the solos. Attempting the splits when it looked like you almost broke your leg doing it. I’m sure you liked jazz but it just seemed so awkward that it was embarrassing. I always wanted to know why you tried to do the splits, by the way.

yeah, i can see what she’s talking about… er…

So to make a long story even longer, it wasn’t animosity towards you per se, but the attitude you projected.

* * *

bottom line? Still an asshole. Anyway, that was high school.

uh, dude. that is AMAZING, not only that you sent that email but that she was so honest in her response! i am totally doing this!! hello new blog series!! it’s like, high fidelity, but on an even bigger scale. seriously, wow.

how did you get into graphic design?

The high school I went to had a photography instructor who had a long family history in the printing business. Because of that, since he’d been there, he’d been building up a pretty large press shop and that
expanded to a t-shirt press as well. He ran a company called Raider Graphics that printed all of the t-shirts for the various sports teams in the high school (we REALLY wanted him to let the fencing team print our unofficial slogan on a t-shirt “Beat Thrust and Lunge with our Long Hard Rods” but he’d never budge) and did most of the school districts various print runs. You couldn’t get paid to work for the company but you could get school credit. It was basically an apprenticeship as one of your class periods. It was there that I first started getting into graphic design.

The other thing I was pretty involved with in high school was public access television. I mentioned above that I liked to build things, well, most of the things that I ended up building became space vehicles and stations and what do kids who’ve been exposed to too many Star Wars and Star Trek movies do? They want to make their own. I started shooting my masterpiece using my dads camcorder but I didn’t have any way to edit it. I remembered that we had visited the local public access station once when they were having an open house and that they offered classes in video production and editing. I took that first class and started hanging out at the station more and more. The people at the station mentioned that the school district needed volunteers to help shoot concerts and sporting events and I started spending a lot of time with that group. Now it was much, MUCH cooler to be in the production truck than it was to be on the camera. My friend Ryan though was getting ready to graduate and he was the guy who ran the character generator that put up the scores of the game. I thought that was kind of cool and started trying to learn what I could from him. Somewhere in the middle of those two things I got interested in graphic design but not before I decided that I was going to not go to a four year school and go to two year Radio Broadcasting program instead…

note the AV sign. awesome.

tell me about meeting yr wife, angela. i’ve heard it involved a silver metallic shirt.

Angela was actually still in high school when she first saw me. I was working on shooting a promotional video for a motivational speaker friend and the night that I taped this drug and alcohol lecture, Ang was in the audience. Anyway, that guy also happened to be the college youth director at the church I grew up at and he convinced both of us that we needed to check out the young adult group. We both started going but never really ran into each other. Someone in the group made up a list that had everyone’s instant messanger handle on it and we both added everyone to our buddy list.

That New Years Eve, the young adults had a dinner and dance. It was a costume party and while fellow M.C. and brother-in-law was wearing an Austin Power’s costume, I was wearing a silver lame short sleeved shirt, afro wig and plastic “2000″ sunglasses with lenses between the 2 and the last 0 that had a 1 taped over the end so that I could reuse them. Anyway, afterwards I heard her talking to some friends about some artist whose name I knew but whose music I hadn’t ever listened to and decided to impress her with the fact that I knew who she was talking about. We spent some time talking and realized that the other person was the person we saw online ALL THE TIME.  She’d leave her laptop logged on in her dorm room and I’d be logged in to my editing computer at work. We didn’t know each other at the time but like I said, we’d see each other online ALL THE TIME. That broke the ice and we started talking online almost every night.

Soon after we started hanging out, I sent this in an email to a friend:

“Angela’s really amazing. She’s smart and musical, and she’s got these eyes that you could get swallowed up by. She’s younger than I am (she’s 19, I’m 23) but we click really well. I’m not totally sure where we stand, I’m really cool with friendship, but I’m starting to feel more towards her. I guess we’ll see how it develops. She’s got a senior portrait up on her website, though I don’t think the backlighting on it does her justice…

so there you go, that’s what I haven’t had time to post about. She puts this grin on my face that I can’t get rid of, and I guess that’s a good thing…”

Anyway, we’ve been married for five years now. She still puts the grin on my face and I still guess that that’s a good thing.

awww, squee!

ang and brian after an impromptu parking lot dance party, circa 2001.

yeah, it’s our bad habit. Right now we keep our DVDs in the living room. They kind of wrap around all of the walls. We long ago ran out of space for normal cases so this is where the obsessive compulsive part of me comes in, I’ve downloaded the artwork, adjusted in photoshop and printed out a new cover that fits in a thin case for almost every movie we own. It took a few covers at a time over the period of a couple of years but I eventually made it through converting almost everything. We do watch movies more than once but not often. There’s always something new that we have to see! A lot of times though we’ll watch something again just so that we can introduce someone else to it. We’re not particularly picky about what we watch. I think that there’s something good that can be taken out of almost any movie. There are films that are just plain stupid but for the most part, I think that holds true… and yes, we do check out movies. No due date stamps but we’ve got everything inside this DVD database program and when we’re on top of it, we can check things out through that. If we had it set up right it would even send you an e-mail when it’s due.

whoah. that response exceeded my expectations.

you GUYS. these were brian and angela’s WEDDING INVITATIONS. OMGGGGGG. YOU’VE GOT MARRIAGE!!!!! obviously, we were destined to be friends.

Ang and I were really excited a few years ago when we found out that Tim and Karrie were taking the Roadshow around the west and that they were coming to this little town called Canon City outside of Colorado Springs to show Jane Fonda’s Cat Ballou. Being that the movie was showing on a Sunday night forty miles from any population center there weren’t many people there. So we had the chance to sit and watch the
movie in this cool old western town that the film had been shot at with maybe a dozen to two dozen other people? It was pretty amazing.

The next year we dragged three more people with us up to Estes Park and back the same night (100 miles each way) to see The Shining at the Stanley Hotel (They didn’t shoot the movie there but Stephen King had written the book while he was staying there). I think the best part of the night was watching Lisa Loeb trying to stammer her way through an introduction for the movie. I love you Netflix but I can think of much cooler and more appropriate people than Lisa Loeb to send out as a host/hostess.

I think the coolest Roadshow even though was seeing North by Northwest at Mt. Rushmore. For whatever reason, after the evening ceremony was over most of the people there for the lowering of the flag took off. So, a few dozen of us sat under the stars, staring up at Mt Rushmore in between starting at the screen. At one point the automatic timers that keep the lights pointed at Mt Rushmore on turned off and you heard the ranger rummaging around in the back room trying to turn the lights back on. It really felt like you were sitting in somebody’s gigantic backyard watching an outdoor movie.

GAH! i need to stow away in the rolling roadshow truck next summer!

The company I was working for at the time decided to relocate here in order to better pursue some business interests that never came to fruition. Before I moved here, my image of Colorado Springs was that of some town nestled in the mountains. A quaint precious downtown with old stone buildings and lots of snow. I didn’t realize that it was a really hilly piece of plains nestled NEXT to the mountains.  I think Colorado Springs gets a bad rap and I’ve tried to do what little I can in the five years I’ve lived here to try and dispel some of the notions. While there ARE a lot of Christian organizations based here (Focus on the Family, the Navigators, International Bible Society, Young Life, Compassion International, yadda yadda yadda) the town is just as influenced by the military (Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, Peterson Air Force Base, NORAD) and even more than that, influenced by western “leave me alone” individualism.

angela and brian, dressed up as “mystery men” for halloween, i.e. making their own culture in colorado springs.

There’s not a LOT of culture and there could certainly be better barbecue, but if you’re ready to settle down and raise kids it’s a pretty nice, gigantic ’suburb’ to raise your family in. That’s probably the key part of it. Colorado Springs is like a giant suburb. It’s close enough to Denver that it’s a bedroom community for a lot of people and because a lot of the larger employers are on the outskirts of town there’s not a lot of city center. If you really want to understand more about Colorado Springs read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. A good chunk of the research that he did was in Colorado Springs. If there weren’t things that we felt we needed to do that we CAN’T do in Colorado Springs, I’d imagine we’d stay. I tell people that if I could move Austin to here I’d never leave. It’s beautiful here. Every morning as I’m driving to work I can look up at Pike’s Peak. I’m always excited when the end of summer comes and the Peak gets it’s snow pack back. But I can’t bring Austin here (at least not yet. If I had the money I could fly in the culture) so we need to go to where we can do the things we want to do.

you mentioned that you guys are planning to move to austin and get involved with film. tell me more about yr plans!

we’re moving. we don’t have a firm date yet but we’ve decided that when the lease is up on the condo at the end of January we’re not getting another place here. We’ve been talking for a long time about wanting to get involved in film work and if we’re ever going to do it, we need to start making moves that will put us in position to actually be around it. If we wanted to stay here and move to Denver we could probably have more opportunities to get involved in various film related things but there’s still not a lot of production going on.
While a lot of the production has moved away from Austin (for the moment) because of tax incentives in Louisiana and New Mexico, there’s still more independent production going on than Colorado Springs,
Denver or Boulder combined. Plus, come on? We have the Telluride film fest (if we wanted to drive to the other side of the state and spend several hundred dollars) and the good but not particularly prestigious Denver International Film Festival but that doesn’t compare to SxSw, Austin Film Festival or Fantastic Fest, not to mention all of the various Alamo things and at UT.

dude, you guys look like you live in austin already! (photo taken circa 2002).

the name of yr blog is “confessions of a flabby ironman.” please explain.

I’ve always been a cyclist in some capacity. When I got out of high school I started doing century (100 mile) rides, mostly to see if I could do it. The first one was such a thrill that I decided to do a double century called the “Paul Bunyan”. I basically spent 14 hours on a bike (and about three hours of resting) biking north out of the Twin Cities and up and around this lake that’s so big you can’t see the other side of it. Finishing 204 miles was such a thrill that I wanted to do another century. I was at work one day and saw that they were going to be creating a new Ironman triathlon even in Madison, Wisconsin. For some strange reason something in the back of my head thought that it would be a fun thing to try. I remember telling my parents that I was going to do it. My dad (ever the supporter), looked at me and said “You’re going to drown!” about a year of training later, I was registered as a collegiate entrant to the inaugural Ironman Wisconsin. “Flabby Ironman” comes from the fact that I never really lost any weight amidst all the training. I was still over 200lbs when I finished that night. There are all sorts of stories about the race but I’m already being really long winded.

flabby ironman, in the flesh. dude, where are yr rocket boots?

My ability to be long winded. Umm, no, I think my superpower would have to be the fact that I’m interested in all sorts of things and at least do a decent job at the things that I try. .

At LEAST boxers. It really depends on the weather though. Our current place doesn’t have any air conditioning so it’s been WAY too hot to wear pajama bottoms. I’m a big fan of the pajama bottom though. When I discovered old navy and their plethora of pajama patterns, I was a changed man.

probably deep dish pizza, chicago style. On another midwest regional fencing trip we went to Chicago and while there hit this pizza place that I’ve never been able to find again. The pizza had this amazing buttery/garlicy crust and there wasn’t just sausage on the pie, it was a WHEEL of sausage. It was one of the most amazing things that I’ve ever seen and sadly, have never seen again.

uh, i guarantee you at least half of pants world is drooling right now. ok, two-thirds.

Of the 7-8 times we’ve been to Austin, we’ve mostly been dragged around to the stand-bys. Chuy’s, The Salt Lick, etc. Ordering family style at the Salt Lick is a pretty amazing thing, but I’d have to say one of the best things I’ve had in Austin was this queso my friends swear by at Enchilada Y Mas. I wish I had some right now.

yep, brian. definitely a nerd in high school. but you know, it takes one to know one.

umm.. top area of expertise. Like I mentioned in my superpower, it’s that I kind of don’t have one.

The aforementioned Construx

Hopefully still cycling, still making movies, enjoying everything I can out of life, enjoying my grandkids.

Angela would be there with her massage therapist hands making sure that everybody was ready to go. My friend Nate would be there running the numbers. For technical support I’d bring in my brother-in-law
Paul. His wife and my sister Bobbi would be distracting people with her singing voice. My friend Terry would be a strategist and some brawn. Alison my coworker would be there with her roller-derby skates of doom and while there are other people who’d probably be able to help out, I think that’d the core of who I’d want around.

Not this past Christmas but the one before that, I discovered that I happen to be able to put on a pretty killer Meatloaf voice. I brought the house down at a karaoke party with a rendition of “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.

not really. More often, I’m telling someone they look like someone when I see something show up temporarily in a facial expression.

speaking of facial expressions… sorry, i just CAN’T GET ENOUGH of these high school pictures!!

tell me something scandalous!

While I was working on my still-on-hold double major I was working for two different production companies doing editing work. One of them was in a run down warehouse/office building on one of the main strips
connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul. It was a depressing place to work and the owner of the company didn’t help matters much (he’s also the only person I’ve ever met who’s wife was a mail-order-bride from Russia. Surprisingly they were seemingly madly in love.) Anyway, working for two places (and putting in a few hours at a third at some points)  while carrying a full load of both regular and honors classes gave me a bad case of burnout. The last project I worked on with this production company was a direct-mail video called “Woman to Woman, a guide to helping your man pick impotence treatment”. It was this fake talk show where these elderly women sat around talking about how their husbands couldn’t get it up anymore. Then, the host showed everyone (with real live surgical video of senior citizen genitalia being cut open) how various balloon devices could be inserted in so that their guy could achieve an erection. I couldn’t take working there anymore and quit.

[silence, i.e. i am speechless]

brian, this was so fun! i feel like i actually kind of know you now, even though we’ve never met in person! thanks for reading my blog and joining pants world in the first place. i hope you make it to austin!

and seriously, you have totally inspired a new blog series…

p.s. as mentioned above, brian’s got a blog that you can check out if you want to learn more about him and angela and their crazy dvd cataloging, colorado springs living, ironmaning ways!

LINKS

have you guys seen this video of a panda giving birth? it’s actually not gross at all, but it IS super weird! like, why can’t human labor be this easy? the baby just, like, jumps out!

apparently, david duchovny took his californication character a leeetle too seriously…

josh d. posed this link on FB today… watch the mythbusters guys make an instant mona lisa with a robot thing! i think it’s supposed to demonstrate some kind of processing unit but whatever, it just looks like a giant paint ball gun to me.

oh cake wrecks. i love you “in pink” (the high “hill” one is my favorite, btw).

OMG!! glass cupcakes! thanks, erin d., for the link… and for making me one in the future! i win!

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