Thursday, October 12, 2006

Long Live The Black Pepper!

It is with great warmth in my heart that I say congratulations to my favourite Caribbean Frenchman and former flat-mate in London the one and only Jean-Paul "The Black Pepper" Rovela! That most enigmatic and indefinable of all computer graphics artists has gained more than a little self-definition in getting married! C'est formidable!!! I suppose this is as good a forum as any to relate the story of how Jean-Paul gained his nick-name. Jean-Paul and I worked together on "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" at The Moving Picture Company in London during the dark soggy winter of 2003/2004. It was then we became friends and ultimately flat-mate on Museum St. We would often go for a coffee in the afternoon at Caffe Zilli on Broadwick Street when we realized that today, yet again, we would be at work until well into the evening. It was on one of these sessions, taking a break from the pressure of production and getting to know each other that the subject of nick-names came up... I thought it was a cool way to get to know each other! To find out what each other was called by friends... Illuminating. Of course, I explained how I gained the nick-name in the third person "The Walshman" from my rowing coach at the 1994 World Rowing Championships Volker Nolte who had the habit of adding a "man" to the end of people's names and only referring to them by that. So he would say "where's the Walshman!?" or something. For others, it disappeared after they were no longer in Volker's midst, however, for some unexplainable reason, it stuck on me. Of course later, there was this strange association to lighting and rendering highend computer graphics and RenderMan... But that's another story. So, I asked Jean-Paul, "what do your friends in Paris call you?" To which he replied "Well, ze onlee zing isza guys sometime call me Casanova... Because of the girlzzz!" to which there was much laughter. But, I then (now famously) responded "The guys may call you Casanova, but to the girls you are The Black Pepper!" And well, I guess that stuck too... Bless The Black Pepper and his new family! Long Live The Black Pepper!!!

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