Meet Rob Bricken:
(Rob with Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero from The Room.)
1. What is your idea of the perfect day?
As a professional nerd blogger, it might shock you to know that I am rather sedentary. My perfect day is one of leisure, starting with coffee and a DVD. I’d manage to escape my house for a lunch out with my wife, then back for more videogames but this time with a few afternoon cocktails. I might relax then with a book or perhaps a nap, then, I’d most enjoy having some friends over for — wait for it — movies and videogames. I love showing friends my favorites movies they haven’t seen, and I also love playing Beatles Rock Band with a group. I would happily cook or order food, but most importantly, I’d mix drinks for a long evening of drunken pop culture enjoyment. Astonishing, eh?
2. Describe one of the best moments in your life:
Meeting Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax’s Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett at last year’s San Diego Comic Con. They are my idols, and, as I told them, anything I have ever written and or said that has been at all funny was almost certainly something I stole from them. They were gracious, put up with my star-struck jabbering, let me take a picture with them, and even said they read Topless Robot. I was on top of the world.
3. What is your most common nightmare?
I have two nightmares which recur with shockingly regularity. One is where my wife and I take my cat somewhere wholly inappropriate, like Russia, he gets loose and I chase him for hours across unknown terrain. The second is where, due to some clerical error, I have to repeat a year of high school at age 32. I hated high school.
4. What are your three favorite possessions?
1) My 50-inch Panasonic Viera TV. Since 90% of my time not sleeping or working is spent watching movies or playing videogames, I adore my large, beautiful and still reasonably priced TV.
2) My collection of 2002 Masters of the Universe figures. I love He-Man, and the Four Horsemen’s reinterpretation is my favorite toyline of all time. Is it cheating to pick an entire toyline? It’s probably cheating, isn’t it? Well, I don’t care. I have them all displayed in one location, so I could grab them in one armful if necessary.
3) My original English translation of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. It was made for some “Learn English through your favorite novels” series for Japanese people, and yet I find it superior to the later approved translation. I paid $400 for it, and I don’t regret a penny.
5. What is your goal for 2011?
As a professional nerd blogger, I cannot possibly conceive of life that far ahead. I suppose that I will make myself suitably useful to our inevitable alien overlords. Or, if an alien invasion doesn’t happen, that I halt my body’s general progression — thanks to innate laziness and my professional blogging lifestyle — into a large, sentient sphere of flesh.
6. What super power would you most like to have?
I would like the ability to pause time — well, for everything but myself, of course. I don’t need to travel through time or space, just pause it to get more stuff done — specifically, videogames, books, movies, and naps.
*Previously: Read more Super Punch interviews here.
*Buy Haruki Murakami books at Amazon.
