Truth Interview Thursday Spotlight - Geist

Welcome once again to our Clan Truth Community Spotlight! This week, we are highlighting Geist!

CT: So Giest, let’s learn about you. First of all, what line of work are you in?

Geist: Currently, I do a little freelance construction and security work in addition to the occasional consultant type thing.

CT: What hobbies or pastimes do you enjoy, outside of videogames?

Geist: As a fairly hermit-ish guy, it's mostly books, film and music. Obviously cooking falls in there as well.

CT: What is a skill that you have that you take pride in?

Geist: I make a pretty mean grilled cheese. I'm also a fairly decent manual machinist.

CT: Any fun facts about yourself?

Geist: I'm the shortest male on my mom's side of the family by three inches, and I'm 6'1".

CT: How long have you been playing video games and what are some of your earliest and/or favorite gaming memories?

Geist: My brother got the original NES when he was 8, so off and on since 88/89? The first time beating Street Fighter all in one nonstop session was pretty cool. We also used to have ridiculous Halo tournaments whilst deployed if we could get enough folks/consoles together, and those were pretty good times.

CT: What are your favorite foods, music, movies, shows, etc.?

Geist: Regarding food, anything involving a big bowl of noodles and/or broth. Dumplings of any variety, but especially savory. Lamb in all its many glories.

About music, a lot of what used to get termed backpack hip-hop, a lot of dark ambient/regular ambient stuff and Rostropovich's recordings of the Bach Cello Concertos.

For movies, the original Zatoichi films, Stalker and Solaris from Tarkovsky, I'm a bit of fan boy for Takashi Miike, Ridley Scott and Dennis Villaneauve. I have a great love for the old Shaw Brothers and Golden Pagoda Kung Fu movies and Heroic Bloodshed stuff out of Korea in the 80s/90s. (We definitely need to have clan movie nights soon)

CT: Is there any special story or significance to your gamertag?

Geist: Being a pretty pale kid when I started bouncing, and being really good at moving through/vanishing in crowds...my boss kept making ghost jokes. So, it ended up being my nickname and tag for actual graffiti and then got used for online stuff back when the internet came on 3.5" floppies and CDs. (Pretty sure I still have like 10k free hours of America Online…)

CT: Let’s talk a bit about your history with Destiny, and with Clan Truth. When did you first start playing Destiny? What drew you to it?

Geist: Was in GameStop a couple of days before the release, trying to find something new and my guy there showed me some stuff on Destiny. It all looked right up my alley, so I preordered maybe a week before it dropped. Even with Vanilla D1 and playing solo for the first couple months...I could see Bungo was on to something.

CT: What is your primary/favorite class, and why?

Geist: Hunter, day one and for always. I miss the original Arc version of Blade Dance something fierce. These days I'm probably either running Fun Police (Shadowshot hunter, ask about our Fun Police SWAT setup…) for Mayhem, or whatever the artifact allows for hunter.

CT: Tell us about your history with Clan Truth (how long have you been a member, how did you find us, what are your favorites moments and memories with the clan?)

Geist: Apparently, I've only been here a little over a year, but I feel like it's been longer than that (we feel the same way…). My main Destiny homie Uld and I had met in a previous clan that I left for...reasons...and he left a little later. We'd been kind of running solo for a while and he got tasked to find us a new home. The Truths looked pretty good on paper and turned out to be just as good in practice, so we've stuck around. Current favorite thing/s are having found a great group of folks from the team I tried doing day one DSC with (fucking Atraks) and then VoG...and Uld finally getting his Vex the other night (seriously folks, that took far too long. We fully blame Gale).

CT: If you could remove any one weapon from the game, which one and why?

Geist: Fucking. Shotguns.

CT: If you could design an exotic weapon or armor, what would it be?

Geist: That's a tough one. Something for the void version of Blade Dance that works like Mask of the Third Man? And yes, I can hear you lot booing me.

CT: That’s some good stuff, even if you chose the wrong class as your favorite. Let’s move on to the stuff people really want to know about you. Before diving into the personal stuff, we first want to thank you for your service in the Army. Are there any particular stories that you want to / can share with us?

Geist: I really need to get that Story Time with Grandpa Geist thing going, don't I? Probably the coolest thing I got to do while in uniform is that for our basic weapons training, there’s a day where we go out and train on the serious big stuff...Ma Deuce, claymore mines, grenade launcher, etc. One person in the company gets selected to rock and roll on the real deal tbing...and I got selected to fire the AT4, which is an 84mm high explosive anti-tank/armor weapon. It's a monster, and after I fired it my drill sarn't seeing me smiling like an idiot and asks why the fuck that is. I told him I just fucked up a tank and he told me yes, it's great isn't it? I affirmed that it was, and I wanted another one. He told "Fuck no, those things cost eight grand and you're smiling too much already."

CT: You’ve lived in a number of different places over the years, what were your favorite and least favorite places to live? If you could retire tomorrow anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Geist: Kuwait and Iraq weren't exactly the easiest places to live, but that was sort of a situational thing. Every place else, you put a little effort in, and you can find some fun stuff to do. On the retiring thing, I'd be up in the mountains somewhere in/around Tyssråa, Norway. Never been anywhere that felt like home to me, but that came the closest. (It’s because you look like a Viking).

CT: What jobs have you had over the years that you have loved and/or hated the most?

Geist: Being a bouncer was pretty dope, if a little hard on the body at times. Being a Waffle House cook was kind of great, same for doing the same for Uncle Sam. Security work afforded me some opportunities that not everybody gets, so it was also pretty great.

CT: Aside from your time in the military, I know that you have a background in working as a bouncer, as well as the body modification industry, are there any fun/interesting/crazy stories you can share with us?

Geist: For bouncing: I had a young lady once present me her temp paper license, on which she had erased the last digit of her birth year...and forgot to write anything back in. So, it basically said she was born in 199. Told her that while I know black don't crack, Morgan Freeman doesn't look like he’s 20 either. She found it less hilarious than I did.

From piercing: I think I may have had more dumb questions/situations here than I did in the bars. Had a guy once who wanted a PA, and to have it done at a ridiculous oversized starting gauge, like 2 or something. Finally got sick of it and asked him if he had a gun, which he told me he did. I suggest he should go home and blow the tip of his [Gentleman’s Sausage] off, because while he'd still be impotent, at least he'd have a cool story about it now. Boss yelled at me about that one. (Edited for sensitive eyes, and an excuse to write “gentleman’s sausage”)

CT: You have shown that you are a bit of a gourmand, with a very broad palette. What is your favorite meal and/or type of cuisine? What would you say is your signature dish?

Geist: My death row meal is my mom's meatloaf, I don't care what else comes with it. As far as other stuff, I'm a big fan of Vietnamese and Korean, and both Northern Chinese and Singaporean Chinese cuisines. Osakan Japanese stuff is also tip top in my book...and I like a lot of North African and Middle Eastern dishes as well. Basically, I like food. I've eaten stuff off street carts that to this day I don't know what it was, but it was tasty. I got a taste for whale, moose and reindeer while visiting Norway and Sweden. Which also for my money, both also have some of the best coffee and pastries in the world. (I want to take food tours with you and Duchess, then I can die happy)

CT: What would you say is your proudest achievement?

Geist: I'm just a normal dude...but I've never crossed a picket line I guess? I'm way more boring than folks tend to assume.

CT: Is there anything else you would like to tell us about yourself that we haven’t covered yet?

Geist: Don't get your armpit tattooed unless you absolutely have to.

CT: That sounds like a good place to wrap things up. Thank you, Geist, it was great getting to know more about you!