Who Is This Guy, Anyway?

A Short Biographical Sketch

A fairly recent picture of me

What's there to say? On a hot day in August of 1967, my mother increased the World Population from 3,486,729,841 to 3,486,729,842 by letting me loose. I was born in Europe. In Germany, to be exact. Why there? Frankly, I didn't have much say in choosing the location. I might have preferred something more dramatic, like being born underneath the Arctic ice during a submarine race. Not that it would have made much of a difference, the first few moments of my life I was too dazzled and inexperienced to really appreciate my whereabouts anyway, but it would make for a more exciting opening of the biographical notes. Those of you born underneath the Arctic ice during a submarine race will know what I mean. Either way, the first few months of my life I spent mostly napping, crying around, and being fed. I'm not too proud of them. Therefore I have decided to camouflage the mundaneness of my origings by liberally sprinkling completely unrelated but interesting tidbits throughout. For example, let me tell you a few things about Germany before I go on.

Germany is a country in Europe, which in turn is usually referred to as a continent, even though it's actually more of a peninsula located in the West of "Eurasia". Germany shares borders with France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, and the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia. Nowadays, Germany is a democratic Federal Republic not unlike the United States, but in its history it or parts of it have also been a fascist dictatorship, a communist police state, a monarchist empire, and a heap of divided, mutually hostile territories. It's a country best known for starting two world wars, its excellent - and usually fast - cars (Mercedes Benz, BMW, and Porsche alone attest to this) and its excellent beer. Lots of beer.

Most importantly, Germany is a beer drinking nation. Beer is acutally a staple food in Germany. No kidding. Like bread, milk, water, salt, and, you know, Diet Coke. But even in Germany children under the age of six are usually denied lager quantities of beer. Unless they are Bavarians, who are already used to the taste from breastfeeding. I was not in Bavaria, so I had to spend my entire kindergarden days in Germany sober. That's why I sill remember many of them vividly. It was an exciting time, or so I thought. Now in retrospect I don't think anything particularly extraordinary happened back then, but everything was new to me, so I didn't notice. But I digress. Where were we? Ah, yes, beer. And cars. Now, in the USA, you are allowed to drive a car long before you are allowed to buy your first drink, whereas in Germany, it's exactly the other way around: they get you drunk first before they put you on the road. Which is why there are no speed limits on the famous German freeway system, the "Autobahn". I mean, there's not much point in speed limits if you have a bunch of drunk teenage first-time drivers on the road, is there? Germany faces some problems these days because of its population decline and demographic ageing. Not to suggest that there's a correlation. Just thought I mention it.

Enough of that. Time went by, I grew up. Or not, depending on your point of view. My lovely long-time girlfriend certainly has her doubts but tries to not become low-spirited about it. That's about all of it in a nutshell. This way, I don't have to bore you with my career in Hollywood and all the movie stars I have met. I'd feel like such a name-dropping jerk if I were to tell you that I listened to Sandra Bullock playing guitar till early morning hours or that Madeleine Stowe once told me I look like Sean Penn. (To this day I wonder if that was supposed to be a compliment or not. Never met Sean Penn, so I don't know how he would feel about that. Anyway, I do not really look like Sean Penn, now, do I?) There's no reason for me to lower myself to such petty, juvenile behavior, so I'm not even gonna mention what was up with Bruce Willis. Come to think of it, I've never met Bruce Willis anywhere anyway, so I couldn't do that even if I wanted to.

to be continued...

Some Tabular Data

			Audio clips courtesy of the Little Box Sound Factory.
		name:	Nicolai P. Zwar
		birthday:	Tuesday in August, 1967
		place of birth:	Essen, Germany
		color of eyes:	blue
		color of hair:	It's a darkish blond.
		height:	185cm
		weight:	Gee, I dunno...
		width:	Huh?
		circumference:	What the...
		current occupation:	Marketing Consultant (Düsseldorf, Germany)
		job experience:	Language Coach (Cologne, Germany) Web Designer (USA/Germany) Software Consultant (Cologne, Germany) Killer Garden Gnome Exterminator (world wide) Cartoonist (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Storyboard Artist (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Copy Ad Writer (USA/Germany) Singing Bounty Hunter (didn't have much to do there) Mover (Los Angeles, CA, USA) Forklift driver in a sawmill (Los Angeles, CA, USA) California Beach Tester (good Job, but terribly underpaid) Tennis Champion (Wimbledon, UK... well, okay, I fibbed about that last one)
		icq:	243733209
		yahoo-im:	npzwar
		aol-im:	npzwar
		education:	It was mostly sex, drugs, and rock-'n'-roll back in those days.
		languages:	English German Latin (mostly forgotten) French (intend to learn some day) Mandarin (nope)
		interests/hobbies additional skills:	Collecting Duck comics by Carl Barks Penguin Counting Watching the Ocean Acting in TV, Film, and Theater productions I have also learned how to cope with many of the bugs in standard software