I was at a meditation retreat in remote Northern California when I got the news, and since I don't use Facebook I had to borrow someone else's phone to look for something I could post on HCC until I got home. (BTW, if any of you want to get me a belated Xmas gift, think about changing your name to something easier to search for than "Dan Green" before you leave the planet, thanks!) Since I didn't have access to WEIRD's Facebook page, I had to round my way obliquely through his various relatives' pages to confirm the news. Doing this, two things struck me. One was that his son-in-law referred to him as Pope WEIRD the 1st, which made me chuckle. The other was seeing how close he was to his granddaughter and being moved by her sense of loss.
There are several things I'll think of when I remember WEIRD. He was HCC's most dedicated capper, holding the site's undisputed triple crown for the most caps made, most clicks received and most clicks given in HCC's nearly 12-year history. Those numbers reflect both his dedication to capping and his generosity. I doubt that first record will ever be eclipsed, and we'll have to keep this ship going for a very long time for the other two to ever be in any danger. Also unlikely to be surpassed are the massive number of caps about WEIRD, an almost never work-safe tribute his place in our capping culture.
The other thing I'll remember (okay, aside from WEIRD hitting on anything that didn't obviously have a dong) was WEIRD's quick willingness to help other cappers whenever they needed it. Most of the emails I received from WEIRD over the years were him reaching out on behalf of some capper or another who had a problem.
I just looked at the Showcase page and smiled at the number of people who had placed WEIRD's caps there in his memory. Nice job, guys.
In the same spirit, I've set up a night of WEIRD_1 Memorial Capping for this coming Friday, January 11th. Hope to see you all there.
I think there are many cappers who knew WEIRD a lot better than I did, so I wanted to get this page up mostly to give everyone the opportunity to post their thoughts and memories of him in the comments below. Have at it, guys. We'll miss you WEIRD.
WEIRD_1 links:
weird-1.com
WEIRD's Caps
WEIRD's Capper Wiki Profile
Comments about WEIRD at Cappers A-Z
Comments WEIRD Left for Other Cappers
Caps About WEIRD
WEIRD on Captioneers Exposed
WEIRD_1: I Can't Believe You Missed Me
WEIRD's Facebook Page
WEIRD's Twitter
-Jazz
- JazzSoda: You have done our community's unofficial leader proud. I am immediately pleased that you created and posted this accolade to our late beloved Capper Pope.
ReplyDelete- I knew him well in recent years. He and I played a game that I invented in the HCC Chat, some evenings, or many evenings until his first heart attack, called 'How Much Did UpSky2 Earn Today?' or HMDUET: he was always willing to shrewdly guess what my daily total take of earnings would be, and ... to be honest, I wanted him to win, so I broadened the winning parameters a bit. After perhaps 200 evenings, he came within my stated parameters enough to win a 2nd prize in early 2017 - and so I hunted up some gift items on Amazon that were Pope or Papal -themed and sent them to him.
These are good memories.
This was a man who would willingly play a game with dubious chances of winning, probably to please me, a humble fellow-capper.... for 200 evenings or so.... until he was a winner!
- I always gave, and still give, my good wishes to his family, and now my condolences for their loss.
- At one time (as verifiable by a search of the Chat archives if you so wish) WEIRD_1 approved me as Capper Papal Nuncio (which means his plenipotentiary diplomatic representative to the Capper Papacy of Pope WEIRD.) I am proud to have served in this somewhat-mock-office for some time, and hope I did the office he granted me some credit.
- As ex-Nuncio, I must submit my nomination for the new Capper Pope: I formally nominate capper JediClone as 'Jedi Master' and Second Pope of Capping. In honor of his long and distinguished record, his high scores on the Stats (see the link to them that JazzSoda provided above), and just because having a Jedi Master as a Capper Pope sounds good to me.
We never appointed a College of Capper Cardinals, so I dare to be a nominator of the new Capper Pope.
- Cheers to us all, even if life passes, and somewhere up above, with 144b, JoeCrow, and other departed cappers, WEIRD_1 watches over his flock from above, with not just a smile of favor, but with ghost clicks (???!) to give us, should such a miracle occur :) and may his memory stay green.
Respectfully signed, UpSky2, capper since May 2000 A.D., and ex-Papal Nuncio of Cappers under Pope WEIRD_1 the First.
Like every capper, I was quite saddened to hear of the loss of our beloved Weird_1. Dan was and will always be a fantastic human being. I feel honored and blessed to have gotten to cap with him so much throughout the years. There are a ton of inside jokes between him and I that I'll never get to share with him again, and some of the wackiest one-on-one capping sessions I ever had. We particularly had fun when we'd come upon a screengrab of something that could be a thousand different things, of which we would then cap for hours on end (making hundreds of captions) cracking jokes about what the 'it' was in the screengrab. And that's just one example of the great humor Dan had and the fun he was able to share with others. I never got to meet him in person, but he was always a good online friend to me. I really appreciate the time I had with him and am grateful for all the unique laughs I got by interacting with him at HCC. Thanks for everything, Weird; You will be missed. I'd like to think that in a universe as vast as ours in time and space, we're somewhere out there capping together and having a good time. So long, and thanks for all the weirdness, buddy. Memories of you will always bring a smile to my face. My condolences to Dan's family and friends. I'm sure this is a tough time for them, just as I'm sure they know how lucky there are to have him. Wherever you are, Pope Weird the 1st, I hope you have 30 garments. : )
ReplyDeleteI missed then when you first wrote it, but I wanted to thank you for both the heartfelt tribute--and for the lovely night of capping in Weird's honor. I had the pleasure of meeting him years back at a capper gathering in Vegas, and he was a fixture of the galleries. He'll be sorely missed! - UnReality
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