Greg Werner:
The Man Behind The Dragon Balls
(Yeah, You Heard Me)
A couple years passed by slowly. I attended Elementary School and was introduced to what would dominate me nine months out of every year, SCHOOL! However, I actually enjoyed Elementary School! Who wouldn't? For a quater a day, you'd get a cookie AND a glass of milk! Not to mention a garaunteed and insured nap-time! In second grade, I got my glasses. The highlight of that year was writing to a soldier in the middle east! He was a pen-pal of sorts and sent back personal replies to all twenty-six of us! After the war, when he moved to Hawaii with his wife, he sent us Hawaiin beach sand!! (You may laugh but to a second grader, that was awesome!).
Third grade was rough, but then again, so is any grade when your only teacher hates you. As a lovely incentive, our teacher the year before had taught only 8th grade for seven years. We were learning 8th grade material in 3rd! I actualy had to stay in from recess to finish my work for two weeks straight! Third grade was also when I had my first girlfriend, for about two months.
Fourth grade was awesome. My teacher wasn't too fond of me, but she didn't hate me. During that year I read every single novel from the "Wizard of Oz" universe. Those books were actually pretty violent and grim compared to the movie version, (no, seriously). During this year I was also obsessed with the Aliens toys. I still use those things to this very da....uh, no I don't, you didn't read that. And having played soccer since Kindergarden this was our team's first undefeated year! YEAH!
Fifth grade.....long....boring, but the Biology unit was truly awesome! We got to look at all sorts of embryos and dissect basic creatures, such as worms and grasshoppers. I was mocked for having a Jurassic Park backpack....but they....those bastards would pay with their liv....OH! I'm sorry, I must be mumbling again! Heh heh! Heh.....
Sixth grade was my favorite year of elementary school!! I made lots of new friends and played a lot of video games. This was the first year I seriously got into video games. My room was quite literally littered with Game Pro, Game Players (Remember them? They rocked!), EGM, Game Fan, EGM2, and Nintendo Power. As sad as it is, for a good year, I purchased all of these magazines every month in anticipation of the Nintendo Ultra 64! I also purchased what would become my favorite game of all-time, Final Fantasy 6. Previously, RPGs had bored me, and I didn't have the patience for them, but something about 6 compelled me, so I sat my butt down and played through it, ALMOST no other game has hit me the same way. The one thing I didn't like were those creepy illustrations in the instruction manual! They were so ugly! Bleh, some wierdo must have drawn them! (See: Junior Year) The Sega Saturn was on the rise! And it was awaiting a September release date of which I eagerly anticipated. But wait! What's this? A surprise June 9th release!? Haha! Victory is mine! All the other children in the school cowered before me and my almighty Sega Saturn! Well no, but one kid did ask if he could see the instruction manual for Panzer Dragoon. But on the Sony side of life, forget that Playstation baloney! No game could ever never ever never never EVER make me want to buy one of those things! Worthless piece of junk! (See: Seventh Grade).
Sadly, this was also the year my best friend, Ross Norris moved away. We'd been friends practically since I can remember, and it was an incredible loss to have him move to Ohio, but we kept in contact by letters, (Inter-what?), and phone. Every year in the first two weeks of August our families rent a house together in Cape May, New Jersey where we go on vacation, and we're still best friends.
Seventh Grade: I bought a Playstation at the end of seventh grade having spent enough money renting it throughout the year to have purchased four. This was a truly interesting year as I was now going to school in the Hackettstown Middle School. After 6th grade, Independence gave us the boot and put us in the real world. Our class size having nearly doubled, things were interesting. I got in a few scuffles and one fight that year, (which of course, I won and gained a friend by becoming buddies with the assailant afterwards), During the year I developed a very strong affinity for the Star Wars CCG, (I'm not a nerd, I swear it. I swear it!!!!), and collected all of the cards in the premier black border set. Strangely, I never once played an actual game. I knew every card, and what it did, but I enjoyed collecting them more than actually playing the game. This was also a pivotal year in my anime life, as this was the year Chrono Trigger was released for SNES!
Eighth Grade, or as I call it, The Year of the Dragon! Yes, this was the year I caught my first glimpse of Dragon Ball Z! In March I traveled to China Town on a tip from my friend Steve Wong and grabbed all of the DBZ merhandise I could hold. As far as the school year....well....it was pretty much Dragon Ball related. In every class, it was all I drew, and all I thought about, like some sick disease. In Literature, writing assignments became documentaries of Gokou. In math, my tessalations were Gokou heads, in art I did etchings of SSJ3 Son Gokou, in science, I tried to ask the teacher if it was possible to absorb energy, and in history, I drew DBZ doodles. True? Yes. Sad? Very. On June sixth that year, I started a web-site called "The Ultimate Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon Universe!". Of course you know it today as.....
Freshman year was tons of fun! New people! New school! Fights! Yeah, I got in another fight.... And what a fight it was. The opposing force was a Junior who was supposed to have graduated some time ago, (you know the type). He blew his thumb off with a firecracker and his brother killed himself by jumping out of a window while under, *ahem*, certain influences, (yeah you really know the type). At any rate, I didn't know this gentleman from a hole in the wall, and he didn't know me either. But after he pushed me from behind in the senior hallway, I kinda snapped and knocked the kid back. Not the warring type, I cooled down and walked away. The...gentleman came around front of me and tried to charge me, I shoved him into a locker, and he faltered. I continued walking down the hallway. Trying not to lose face, he flicked me in the face and then continued walking as normal behind me. Well, good ole' Mr. Hard Ass decided to come out and I wheeled around and decked the mutha on the side of the face in similar fashion. Then I continued to walk down the hallway....again...with my back to him, which is when he came around from behind me and broke my nose. Teachers were on him like a pack of lions, and I casually smirked, waited for the stars to leave, (if you ever have your nose broken, it's not so much pain, ((as I don't recall any)), just incredible disorietation), and walked into my classroom....then the blood came. And WHEW, was there a lot of it! It didn't fully clot until an hour later. While waiting in the nurse's office I popped my nose back into place, (may you never hear the noise it makes), and waited. Long story short, he went to jail, and he's no longer in school. Yata! Anyway, that year was truly one of my favorite years of school! My love of DBZ was at its peak, I enjoyed the new friends, Final Fantasy 7 was an excellent game, I dunno what to say besides, "Woo-hoo!". I participated in Suushinchuu's DBZ Trivia Contest, (which I suppose our team won, I don't really know, Wuken never announced a winner). I made what would soon become a yearly tradition for Literature every year, "The Action Figure Video"! A home movie done as a "Visual" project in which I took all my old and *cough cough* un-used action figures and depicted a tale from whatever book we were working on. Interspersed were scenes of live-action, animation and good ole' improv.! Freshman year I made two videos, "Hercules" and "Odysseus: Chapter 5". Both ran about 15 minutes. World History's most memorable moment had to be watching the time-less classic "The Power of One", and repeating the phrase, "Piss-cup!", with a god-awful Brit-Swede accent while adding the words, "Would you like my.." or "....for sale!". (Watch the movie and although it's a disturbing and sad moment, knowing of my complete destruction of this scene, you WILL inevitably burst out laughing). Other highlights include Rob Houston's Final Four updates, and his Current Events presentation on the last episode of Seinfeld, (which he ALMOST managed to trick the teacher into letting us watch the entire last episode of). April Fools was fun as always, but since my greatest achievement wasn't till the following school year, I'll leave that to....
Sophomore year was indeed a memorable one! My "Action Figure Video" this year was based on, "Like Water For Chocolate". Better yet was the fact that I dressed up as the author and lectured the class, did I mention that the author was a Spanish woman? Biology was super great! Mrs. Miller let us tear apart all kinds of animals! Worms, starfish, clams, grasshoppers, fish, frogs, pigs, birds and pregnant sharks! Torturing my Spanish teacher, who I had for TWO years in a row, was easily accomplished, but of course we really loved her. And a snowball can last in Hades! Now, before I begin, I must say, that since fourth grade, I have had.....a certain.....affinity for April Fools, as some of my web-site viewers may know! I love it to the point where I'm almost cruel, but I always manage to keep the prank on the line between HA HA and UH OH....but Sophomore year I came pretty close to crossing the line. My father knows many a skill, and one of his hobbies is magic. He is in fact a professional magician, (NO! That is not his real job, he owns his own marketing business thank you very much), and over the years, has accumulated a massive amount of magic supplies. One of my favorite being of course, fake blood. It works on so many levels! I had pranked all classes in years gone by.....all except one...gym. Yes, gym, the one class where one cannot be too careful. If you go too far, you could have the ambulance there and a fine slapped on you, or you might not go far enough and everyone would laugh at you.....in a bad way. You have to hit that sweet spot in the middle. I was aiming for it! Between two large gyms in our school is somewhat of an in-door alley. It contains all the junk used throughout the year by gym classes. Usually teachers are on either side of it, but not inside. This was the place where we would pull the prank on our teacher, Mrs. Kling! By "we" I mean my partners in crime, James Sundheim, (a former DB aficionado!), and Michael Faschan. It was a simple three man job. I would lay on the floor, and pour the blood on my forehead, letting it drool over me and look like something dented my skull. Michael would lift a nearby ladder at one end, and on the signal, drop it. Calculating the size, and volume of the room, AKA "Taking a Wild Guess" we figured that the sound of the ladder would be quite frankly, f'n loud and attract the neccessary attention. At which point, James would scream for the teacher. Everything was set, I had the gooey sugary substance all over me, Mike had the ladder up, and I said, "Okay do it.". He dropped the ladder, and WOW did it make a loud bang! (That's the only thing I didn't factor in. In all serioussness, I could not hear much for about 5-10 seconds) James screamed, "Holy SHIT! MRS. KLING COME QUICK!". Now, although I did not see these following events, this is exactly as they were described to me. Mrs. Kling stuck her head in the doorway and said in a HIGHLY irritated voice, "WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE!!!!....OOH MY GOD MR. THOMAS CALL THE NURSE! CALL THE NURSE!". Mrs. Kling's expression changed from pure rage to one that she feared she might indeed lose her job, in an instant, and her eyes were as large as plates! When I heard her say nurse, I jumped up and said, "Don't worry, I'm okay.". From across the alley, her synapses could be heard self-destructing. For 4.676593 seconds she could not figure out what the hell had just happened. And then the coolest thing ever happened, she laughed! She brought me out and showed the class, and congratulated me. The other gym teachers rushed in, and after finding out that I was allright, (I swear to God), complimented the quality of the fake blood. But why did it come so close to crossing the decency line? Unbeknownst to anyone, one fine lad actually bolted to the nurse's office and brought her back, wheelchair and all! She wasn't very pleased. What I did was stupid, and some kid could REALLY have gotten hurt while I took her from her job, SO DON'T DO IT! But hey, ya gotta live a little right? In a nutshell, that was my Sophomore year.
Ah yes, Junior year. Junior year was typical but enjoyable! My "Action Figure Video" was based on Dracula, and this year my motion-picture masterpiece had now reached a whopping thirty five minute length! Chemistry was hard as anything, Computer Apps was a joke. British Lit. was a blast, History was refreshing, (no tests or quizes ever!), and with twenty seven people in a Trig class, how can you not have fun? Plus those graphing calculators are so useful in soooo many different ways, and I'm not being as shallow as cheating! On New Years we held a huge party and set off plenty of "Combustion Factories", (You see, Fire Works are illegal in New Jersey, so we light "Combustion Factories", not Fire Works ^_~). Our Final Project for History was more or less, a "Biography of New York City". We gave our class some info on the city, but then showed them a video we made over winter break of our group interviewing actual New Yorkers on the streets and inside the Museum of Natural History. Believe me, there's a lot of wierdos out there, AND WE LOVE EVERY ONE OF YA! NYC ROCKS! This was also the year I met Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano in New York! Yoshitaka Amano of course is the artist who drew all those "creepy and scary pictures" that appeared in my Final Fantasy instruction manual, a man whom I now respect very much, as I can appreciate his work on a different level. The stories are too numerous to tell, but I assure you, majority of them are long, involved and funny!
Senior Year, we'll find out, won't we! ;)
I'm 5' 11" and weigh 160 lbs. If anyone wants my work-out plan and video, it should be ariving in stores early next month, or try this link to the Greg Werner Work-Out Plan! On the topic of food, I'm not a vegetarian, I enjoy meat, and I think it is an excellent source of protein since I despise eggs. Perhaps you've gathered that I am a health-nut, in which case you're so wrong, you may as well have been born backwards. I'm a fan of food! But I do want to look good too! :)
As I mentioned earlier, in the summer, the Werner and Norris families vacation together in Cape May. We have a relatively small family, (myself, my mother and my father), comapred to the Norris', (Mr. and Mrs. Norris, Ross, Andrew, Devon and Jacob), and they range in age from beyond High School, (Ross) to starting school, (Jake). Our house is actually in Cape May Point, not 45 seconds walking distance from the beach, on Brainard Ave. At night we frequent Louie's Pizza, and the Boardwalk Family Fun Center.....aw what the heck! Let's just call it an Arcade! Also on our agenda is Mariner's Pier at Wildwood and Duffers Ice Cream Parlor! So if you're ever in the area the first two weeks of August, see if you can spot me, and don't be afraid to say, "Hey! Don't you owe me money?", no seriously, come say hi! I don't bite, I promise.
So exactly how reliable am I when I translate Japanese? Well, here's little history of my experience with learning to speak and read Japanese.
This is my interpretation of Sephiroth's history in Final Fantasy 7 as near as I can come to figuring the entire thing out. Vincent was Sephiroth's actual father, and the woman Lucrecia was his mother. Hojo was in no way Sephiroth's father as he insanely claims to be. He was more along the lines of his "creator". He made Sephiroth into the tool for Jenova that he became by experimenting on him as a baby. Sephiroth was simply a means of connecting to and ressurecting Jenova, and he in turn eventually became more powerful than Jenova herself, even though "she" was just using him. He refers to Jenova as his mother, because she is, in the sense that she gave "birth" to the "new" Sephiroth, the ruthless murderer servant. The Sephiroth Clones weren't actual clones, they were people who were given the same treatment as Sephiroth in order to produce the same result, but for some reason or another, Sephiroth was the only one who reacted to it the way he did, perhaps Lucrecia or Vincent are special in some way we don't know about. That's my two cents!
What kind of person am I? Well, I don't think I'm the best person to ask that question to, but I'll answer it anyway. Maybe some other time I can get one of my friends to give a thesis on this topic, but in the mean-time, this is what you're stuck with, my evaluation of me. First and foremost, as I hope to convey through my site, I do have a sense of humor. Unless I am deep in thought, caught in the moment, trying to carry on a normal conversation, frustrated, or sleeping, I would be known to make some sort of wise-crack or tasteless joke. Take for instance "The Sentence" a friend and myself invented in British Literature. Each week we devoted a certain amount of time to learning new vocabulary words that would come in handy on the SATs. Several of the words could be interpreted as having a double meaning, and utilizing the book we were reading at the time, Beowulf, and the poetry, Kubla Khan, over the course of the semester, we developed somewhat of a grotesque meaningless and 100% clean sentence. It went a little something like this: "While roaming in Gaetland (pronounced:Gay-et Land), the king made sure to watch his largesse (pronounced: large ess) for fear that it might be ramified by the Wee Wee Man while wandering near the outskirts of Kubla Khan's Pleasure Dome....". And it went on for about a paragraph or so, I can't recall the whole thing. At any rate, we wrote this down on paper while being lectured, and sent it around the room, and the class became so "giddy" that the teacher wanted to know what was up, so he picked up the sentence read it, chuckled, and sent it back to us. I'm always coming up with qwips, and sometimes they sound a lot better spoken than written, or vice-versa, but I'm a virtual well of stupidity overflowing. I'd also like to think I have a sentimental and logical side, but I mostly keep that to myself, or when I'm discussing the mysteries of the universe, (like why hot dogs come in packag.....old joke), or watching a poignant scene in a certain anime. I'm a very nostalgia oriented person! I suppose I'm an artsy-fartsy fellow, without the fartsy part. I don't buy all the Thoreau and Transcendentalism stuff, nor do I look at paintings and say, "Wow man, you can see the strife and the inner-beauty of the artist like an enigma exposed to solar paper.", but I do appreciate art and the world around me with all of my senses. I recall events of days gone by simply by smell or feeling. Like when you open your window in the summer-time and there's a smell, (called life), that isn't around in the winter. Or when something is cooking, and the smell triggers a memory of when you were little and had the same thing. I have a high sense of morals when it comes down to something like loyalty, being honest and staying true to your cause. (Which is why I am at odds with so many political leaders....and companies). As far as sports are concerned, I could really care less until the finals of everything. I love watching the Super Bowl and World Series etc, but up to that point, I could care less really.
So you want to know my bad qualities huh? Well, maybe I'm not the right person to be asking this question as well, but I'll be honest. I do have fits of anger that are related to the malfunction of in-animate objects: lawnmowers, computers, boulders, tiny pieces of plastic that won't snap off of a Gundam model, math related questions, video games, etc. Majority of the time, my titanic battle with a non-breathing object ends with my victory in having thrown, crushed, broken or obliterated it. I also think I spend way too much time futzing around with the Internet during any free time I have, (like right now), but at least I don't live on it. I am an ego-maniac when it comes to DBZ knowledge, but when you're the best, why shouldn't you be? (That is a joke to anyone who might take offense at that, and yes I know exactly who you all are). One of my handles at Yahoo is DBZInfoGod, and I anonymously challenge unsuspecting victims to DBZ trivia. Look out...YOU COULD BE NEXT! Or maybe not, whatever. One thing I do get falsely accused of is being a rich-kid, which I find funny since no one actually knows me. I've worked for almost every single piece of DB/Z/GT merchandise I own, and what I haven't worked for and bought myself, was given to me for Birthdays and otherwise. In eighth grade I started doing odd jobs to get the money I needed to buy fansubs, so I really can't believe youngster's sob stories about how they can't buy dirt cheap fansubs, yet they're old enough to waste money surfing On-Line, and not go out and do some menial form of work for their next-door neighbor.
In an age where full-motion interactive web-sites are becoming the norm. I retain the simple look of my site. And not without reason. First of all, to be brutally honest, I have no idea how to write or program anything beyond basic HTML! Second, I work on the site alone, (by choice!!!), and don't have anyone more advanced than me to help with the design. And third, I'm perfectly happy with the way it is. I do have access to Flash, Java, Shockwave and all the latest web-site-developement tools and programs. I just do not care to use them. If you're going to enjoy my site, enjoy it for the content, not for how pretty it looks, or how "hip and sharp" the design is. I don't believe a site's potential should be judged on design only. A site could be the coolest looking thing in the world, but only tell you that Gokou is the main character. If I do have time in the future to fully learn the above programs, (yeah right!), I will use them here, but that's not likely. I really hate computers and am lucky enough to get mine to turn on without blowing up each time. I'm happy being old fashioned for now. ^_^
What makes me continue to work on the site? Well, to be honest, my DBZ craving is done. I've come to a point where I know everything and can no longer be surprised. However, I still love the series for what it is, and for thousands of you, I know that the craving is just beginning! So, like a parent talking to their kid about drugs, I'd rather educate you about DBZ, than have you hear about it from some other nutcase. I actually had a person swear on their life that Brolly was Gokou's brother and appeared in the manga story-line. Another reason I do it, is because you all really appreciate it! I've never received so many different forms praise for something I've worked on like this. Everyone who has ever sent me an e-mail saying something as simple as, "Great job! Keep it up!", gives me enough heart to want to continue working on this site. I have no ulterior motives, and I don't seek fame, as I always say, this is a hobby, and that so many appreciate it so much, means an awful lot to me! So thank you all for making the site possible!
Who am I kidding? You're not going to read anything I wrote above this, these are the only reason you're here, right? RIGHT? yeah, thought so. Well enjoy these shots of me, my friends and my family!