Dan Zembrosky

http://www.noozhawk.com/local_news/article/0127_search_for_missing_kayaker_called_off

http://thosearentmuskets.blogspot.com/2009/01/dan-zembrosky.html

For the sake of honesty i must admit that Dan and I had long since drifted out of the spheres of one another's lives. He left San Diego, and though he came back for productions, my interactions with him became less and less, and by the time i moved away we barely kept up at all. I haven't seen nor spoken to him in over a year and a half, and had no plans to change that in the near future. I didn't even think of him that often. And for me, this is the true regret - that I allowed him to fall out of my life, and i cannot mourn him properly, and that i will never be able to rectify that. For me to attempt to eulogize him would ring false, even to me. Especially to me.

Nevertheless, it is within the bounds of propriety that i remember him and his influence on me, and there is certainly much to remember. Dan was my first Editor in Chief at the MQ, a year above me at UCSD, and though i at first attempted to pedestalize him as an authority figure, it was apparent from the first that he would not have it. He seemed to like me, and from my first day at the MQ he treated me like one of the guys. He laughed at my jokes. He asked me my opinions. And even if my ideas were bad, he would always think about them before dismissing them - but then, Dan always considered everyone's ideas. Even the really dumb ones.

Dan was the first person to make me question my career choice as a writer. Ideas tripped out of him like a memetic waterfall, and he would lunge from thought to thought and gag to gag like a child catching fireflies. I can distinctly remember thinking that if every creative person was like this, so full of passion and ideas, then i didn't stand a chance. At the same time, he was the first person to make me believe that comics might be something i could seriously pursue. There were other artists at the MQ, other people who could draw just as well or better than me, and yet that first year he leaned on me hard. Every production he handed me a thousand things to draw, and then to redraw - because he always knew in his head exactly what he wanted to see - and though i'm fairly certain that the other artists had other jobs that they couldn't be taken away from, a part of me likes to believe he saw some sort of potential or skill in me, that made me his go-to artist. And now i suppose i'll never know.

A part of me - most likely the part that is beginning that famous five step process - is convinced that this is all an elaborate prank. I wouldn't put it past him. Dan always loved one-upping somebody else. I remember once, during the annual UCSD Org renewal period, when the Koala tried to register as The MQ, to steal our funding and name for whatever nefarious shenanigans they thought they'd get up to, and Dan didn't even show up for the administrative meeting. He just sent a letter to be read aloud: "Thank you for your expressed interest in joining the MQ. Unfortunately at this time all positions have been filled..." I cannot help thinking - hoping, believing - that come the memorial service a singing telegram will stride into the hall in the middle of the service. "Thank you for your concern," he will recite, "but the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated..." Probably not, of course. But nothing else makes sense. Certainly not the thought that he's gone forever.

I'm not sure what else i could say about him. I liked him and admired him, but in our relationship, despite his best efforts, i always thought of him more as a boss than a friend. A good boss. A boss who demanded the best from me, and, by and large, one who got it. A boss who relished his job, and in the process made the rest of us enjoy ours as well. A boss who was crazy and hilarious and sometimes infuriating. A boss who cheated at NERF war because he was obsessed with winning it. A boss who couldn't quite bluff at poker. A boss who was always excited about every project i saw him work on.

The best boss. The best boss ever.