(update: A small gathering to hang out and reminisce about OMG will be held at Little Italy’s Chipparelli’s this Sunday at 7:30pm. via Gorelick)
Today is something of a shitty day for the Baltimore area Internet, for one of its more inexplicably entertaining individuals has passed: Owl Meat Gravy, aka Bob (in real life). Bob was a frequent – almost obsessive at times (yet still pretty funny) – commenter on at-that-time Baltimore Sun’s Dining at Large as well as Midnight Sun, both of which have their own collections/recollections of OMG material today (here, here).
I met Bob a few times in person, we mostly got really drunk at one bar or another and discussed the strange nature of Baltimore’s online community, including how funny/necessary it was for him to invent multiple personas on the D@L to get into full scale comment fights with each other “just to liven things up a bit.” Our favorite collective experience was the concoction of horribly named bars with terrible themes, a feature posted on Midnight Sun once upon a time, where our long-standing inside joke (among probably six of us), a bar named C.H.U.D.s – the place for C.H.U.D.s – was born. A close 2nd was XTREME Cilantro, a spoof on the now defunct Green Cilantro, in which large amounts of cilantro were ejected from a cannon to ensure the most XTREME visit possible. Hilarious.
Shortly after our bar drinking came last year’s Mobbies awards ceremony, during which OMG had something of a Twitter Tantrum because no one knew he was in the back and/or assumed he wanted to remain anonymous and was glossed over somewhat for his dual-winning of two categories, Best Personal Twitter and Best Misfits Blog. He lamented the process of voting, he cursed the Baltimore Sun, cursed a few random people, cursed Twitter, and then later came back to Twitter and apologized. I saw him shortly after that, we all kind of laughed about it. I hadn’t really seen him since, but usually wondered when I would bump into him again.
Overwhelmingly though, every single interaction most folks had with Bob was via the Internet, making his presence in Baltimore ethereal rather than …real – and now that he’s gone, his (and yours, and mine) Facebook profile, Twitter feed and every single comment left on the Baltimore Internet becomes his digital tomb. It’s chilling. So long as no one has access to whatever passwords he was using for those respective accounts, they remain closed to any control from outside parties and are simply frozen in time. We’re living in an age during which people can actually be born, live their entire lives and die on the internet – so I suppose in addition to adding that “Expecting” status, Facebook might as well go right ahead and add a “Deceased” option to any individual’s profile. In the case of Bob, the Internet isn’t just how folks knew him best, but also how most people really didn’t know him at all. Pretty sure that’s how he liked it.
Be that as it may, if you want a few (ok, more than a few) laughs, check out OMG’s Twitter feed. You’ll see gems like this:
[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/OwlMeatGravy/status/97063294912839680″]
Far more often, you’ll see pervvy Tweets aimed at females, but it’s all kind of funny regardless.
This is so sad, wasn’t he a young guy?
Never asked him his age but yeah, his death was very untimely it seems to me
He was in his late 40s/early 50s if I can remember correctly, and I know he had health problems, but yes, too young.
Thank you for that nice homage to Bobby Swagger (that was his favorite name). He preferred to stay anonymous, so most people never knew that he was my 8th husband. RIP Bobby. XOXO.
Nice tribute. For the record, Bob did (eventually) receive his Mobbies certificates. RIP OMG.
I think we will begin to miss him more when we realize just how many twitterfolk and sunblog commenters were, in fact, OMG himself. It’s a loss.
This is a gain…not a loss. Twitter serves no purpose.
unregistered? wonder why.
Registered to what? The site? Would that change anything besides the picture next to your name? How is that at all relevant? At least what I said pertained to the subject at hand.
Classy post.
Ask not what your Twitter can do for you, but what you can do for your Twitter.
I do not have a twitter account. I only have knowledge of how useless it really is. Tell me what does it do for you? What does it offer you that no other thing can? Also make your answer a serious one otherwise don’t bother posting. Your previous post makes no sense and serves no purpose here. Junk posts..I guess to go along with the theme of this website.
ashley/jenny/whatever your name is, troll any other post than the one about someone who just died. i realize being employed by hopkins is boring but i’m sure you can find better things to do like being alone forever
I would like to read more of his writing. I am a computer idiot – how would I learn what his other “names” were?
Nicely done.
Being the person that OMG started his whiny, Twitter war with after the Mobbies, I can say that we buried that hatchet quite quickly and I always enjoyed his posts. Sad when people are gone too soon.
I had no idea. This is extremely sad news. I had many entertaining conversations with him over too many drinks at Bad Decisions. He will be missed.
Man… I had no idea. Good job on this post. Thanks.
Bob was 50, died of heart failure. He was a great kid, intelligent and I will miss him very much. I loved him very much. His Mother, June
I am sorry for your loss.
I didn’t have the heart to go back & look at this blog again until today. I am so sorry for your loss. I have so many very fond memories of Bobby (as I called him) (@OwlMeatGravy) and miss him very much, too.
One of my favorite ethereal locals, just heard about his passing. I loved his blog and shortly before his death had a very wonderful virtual confab with him over the hontroversy. Rip bob, I am sorry I never knew your real name, you will be missed as a vital part of a community no less realm for it’s online-ness.
Bob’s real life name was Bob Swank. I went to high school with Bob. Sat next to him in English class. He was a great guy and very funny. He kept us laughing. I somehow am not surprised at the mark he made in your lives in person or virtually or in the digital world he was unique and one of a kind from the get go…rest in peace Bob