The History of “Qhat”
Following the lead of one Jason Huls and his recent article detailing the history of our old band, I’ve decided to jump on the nostalgia bandwagon to chat about a different chapter of our collective past- a little comic strip known as Qhat.
What? Qhat? Exactly. One day about nine years ago, while trying to type the word “what”, I accidentally created the word “qhat”. My roommate and I took a liking to this new expression, so I turned it into a weekly comic strip with the magical help of Microsoft Paint.
Qhat followed the wacky adventures of my friends and I, who were all low-level Starfleet officers serving aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise. Captain Picard’s NCC-1701-D to be specific. It was kind of like a real crappy combination of Star Trek and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Perhaps The History of “Qhat” isn’t the best title for this article, since I really don’t remember why the hell I started making Qhat, what I planned on doing with Qhat, or why I even called it Qhat. No matter. I’ve hand picked some of my favorite episodes for your (possible) enjoyment. There’s probably some inside jokes, a good deal of crude humor, and a plethora of stupidity. That’s just how we roll in the 24th century.
Episode 15: Me and Jason Huls visit Doctor Rob Quinton, who is less than cooperative.
Episode 30: Jason tries out his new stand-up routine for patrons of the Holodeck.
Episode 37: The Quinton Brothers- Rob and Will- investigate Gale Murrin’s awesome “party”.
Alternate Dimensions
I’ve been waiting so long
To be where I’m going
In the sunshine of your love
This is a story about a band with big dreams. A band who plotted the release of a 75 hour blu-ray in 1996 and sought to completely dominate the planet. This is a story about Dimension Zero. Not the Swedish death metal group. Nope. My old high school rock band.
I agree with Brian Warner when he said that everyone should try to be in a rock band. I got a lot out of it. Did I mention I was voted most likely to be in a rock band at graduation! Destiny, right? As a side note, the bassist, Paul Brooks won best hair in high school. Our group had a Tool-ish prog rock thing going on. It started in 1995 and lasted around 4 years. Total, I think we played 10 or 12 shows and released a 6 song demo tape (TAPE lol?!). We did 99% original work and we were very determined. In fact, the only cover we ever played out was Sunshine of Your Love. Ok, I think we did some version of Free Falling at our first show. We ran out of songs to play so we noodled with that.
Here’s the most popular song we had, Invasion, from our release The Millennium Core (rawr!)
At an early point in our history Paul Brooks developed a timeline for our careers. A prophecy. According to this timeline, by now we should have released 5 major albums, a trilogy of films, replaced a band member and gone on a handful of world tours. Clearly all of that has happened. For many years we believed the timeline was lost but we recently received word that a mad arab uncovered a version in an ancient, Syrian cave in the Appalachian Mountains. Here it is…
The reason all of this did not come to pass may very well be because we lost this timeline. We may never know for sure.
One of the most interesting things I learned from looking at this was the actual birth date of the band. I had no idea. Similarly, I had no idea we played our first show on April 14 of 1996. Somewhere there’s a tape of this.
Coming up is my 15 year high school reunion. There’s no way in hell I would want the lifestyle of a touring musician nowadays. Filmmaking is way more my speed. I’m still trying to take over the world and I think part of my idealism and drive began in music and oozed through to who I am today. So the end goal is similar but, like our hairlines, the band faded.
Actually, the vocalist, Jon Thompson, is still in a good band. The Abacinators.
Let’s see. At this point, the next thing on the master plan is the release of our 6th full length album on June 20, 2011. It has always been a goal of mine to release a full length album but as it stands today I haven’t released even one. In the grand scheme of my life, it’s a goal that, right now, can be set on the back burner. I haven’t taken my guitar out of the case in probably almost a year. Paul doesn’t even have a bass guitar anymore. They’re actually in my closet. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy them from him rather than let him sell them to whomever. That feels cold. Our drummer, Al Holman, doesn’t have a drum set anymore. I don’t think he has in years. I haven’t even seen him in years. Last I heard he sold his kit and bought an acoustic guitar. Contrary to the timeline, Al hasn’t died (at least not that I’m aware of). Some people are hard to track down and Al is one of them. He has no digital footprint that I’ve ever been able to find. No facebook, no myspace, nothing. So while Al most likely is living in Bloomington-Normal, we cannot be sure. I like to think that somewhere, right now, he’s doing what he loved most: smoking.
In short, taking over the world has taken a little longer than expected.
I still intend to turn gold on May 24, 2018. I’ll look like a cross between Oscar and Dr. Manhattan.
