Hey, hey! Pull your family and yourself around the campfire, good friends, because my ego's in need of a self-stroking! My name is Travis and I'll be 37 on June 24th (that makes me a Cancer, with Sagittarius Moon and Leo Rising, for those of you into that kind of thing). I'm only 37 on the outside, though; my heart and soul came across a rare vial of the elixir of Life and hasn't yet made it past age 16. I was born and raised, and currently live, in Tulsa, OK, USA, though I'm convinced I don't have a country bone in my body (maybe there is some trace country marrow in one, though; it took a long, long time for me to fall in love with "Love Rescue Me", but I eventually did). I grew up believing I would be a film director; as everything from finances to geography to the whole "wife and two kids" cliche had their respective rounds in the ring with me, I've had to settle for a still-rather-satisfying life as a new hire training instructor at the nation's fifth largest wireless provider.
I have a collector's metality/neurosis already, so this site has been the most natural fit for me I've ever encountered on the Web, and if it were to one day perish from the Earth, you cannot imagine the dark depths of depression and insanity to which I'd be plunged. My love affair with U2 began when I was all of 9-10 years old, when the nacent MTV featured the video of a group of ragtag, puffy coifed Irish lads performing a song called "Gloria" in heavy rotation. A song which had all the rock energy of, say, The J. Geils Band (the first LP I ever purchased was FREEZE FRAME), but with a power, majesty and scope to the song and lyrics unlike anything available on Top 40 radio...or even the rapidly aging stuff my mother listened to from the already calcified decades of the '70s and '60s. My appreciation of them grew with "New Year's Day", "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Pride" but it wasn't until the truly life-altering, transcendant arrival of "Where the Streets Have No Name" that I became "married" to the music of U2 and knew unequivocably that I had found the band that would define the soundtrack of my life forevermore. Due in very large part to the guidance of this powerhouse site, I have just this week collected my 220th 221st and 222nd U2-and-U2-related CD, the U2.com fan club exclusive MEDIUM, RARE AND REMASTERED the 2-track and 3-track European singles for "Magnificent" (but, sorry, my collector tastes run strictly digital--no vinyl or tape for me).
My collector mentality has also been responsible for my amassment of 1,800 Blu-rays and DVDs, nearly every Stephen King book in hardback, as well as enough STAR TREK memorabilia to build a fort to protect myself from nuclear fallout. With the solitary exclusion of the death penalty (I'll pull the lever myself, if someone ever touches my family), I'm a devout liberal. I have a wicked, deeply sarcastic and non-PC sense of humor (which has led to my banning from a couple of other non-U2 sites, but I see no issue with the quality of discussion here). Lastly, those who read the forums at @U2.com may remember a rather robust thread I started there last year, inquiring whether or not I was the only agnostic/atheist fan of U2 (only to find precious proof that the U.S. is quite a bit more hung up on that kind of thing than Europe). I'm eternally grateful to all the contributors of this amazing site; in fact, I tried to submit some information over a year ago on some titles I have that are still missing from this site (most notably, a Japanese CD called THE BAND AID SPECIAL with, to my knowledge, the only digital appearances of the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" 12" Mix and "Feed the World") but never received any reply of interest. So, if someone knows how I can get info to the people here that want it and need it, let me know...good to be with you all!
