he was the illustrator of the Daily Nexus.

he was so good i made him my assistant arts editor because i wanted his art on the cover of our section every week.

he always delivered.

after college when i was transferred up to Frisco i needed a place to live and he had a spare room in his apartment on 22nd and Folsom.

we had a mice problem. there was a hole in the apartment somewhere. but he had these giant snakes in a fish tank.

he let them out to roam. they ate all the mice and slithered back into their tanks.

todd was the first person i met who said its ok to have dinner consisting of nothing but vegetables.

we even tried it a few times.

those were the days of AOL. id sit in my room on a 14.4 modem writing poems in the poetry rooms and sexting the girls who i hope were women. it was pretty easy to tell the fakers, but you never know. i probably said something to some dudes without knowing it.

ah frisco.

todd and i saw the OJ chase together because he loved hoops even more than i did, especially anthony mason and patrick ewing.

so as we were watching the game they broke in with the slow Bronco chase and we got to see parts of LA that we missed.

little did i know that Todd would slowly become one of the biggest names of skateboard design.

i didnt know how far his fame had reached until i was back home in ILL a year ago and in our crappy mall there was a skate shop and i asked the kid if he knew about Todd and among 100 boards he quickly picked out the 5-6 that he designed.

he said he drove to the city to get Todds autograph back when he was doing a book signing.

so many talented friends at the Daily Nexus.

we were all so lucky to have had each other.

because if you are the only one with weird ideas, gross pictures, or stupid plots to change the world:

it’s nice to have a room full of others who, instead of vetoing you, say,

“you think that’s weird, check this shit out.”