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(FYI, the intended title of this blog was "On Adam Savage, the Mechanics of Fame and the Most Realistic Nid Berry Bush Model that Won't Ever See the Light of Day" but mleh, iStorya's Blog title had a limit so I had to shorten it...on with the show)

I think I finally figured out why fame is important or necessary for certain people (probably,including myself).

I was watching this TED Presentation...

YouTube - Adam Savage: My quest for the dodo bird, and other obsessions

...of one Adam Savage, talking about his quest to create his own Dodo skeleton model, and other geeky stuff he does. Now, before you go on reading this, let me remind you that I don't own a TV set, and thus I'm not currently attuned to what's going on in TV landia (also do take note that I only discovered about the existence of "The Big Bang Theory" the TV series about a month ago) and the different personalities and celebrities that have recently arisen from popular shows.

Now, as I went on watching this clip I said, "Okay, cool, he built his own dodo skeleton" and then it gets weirder when he starts to talk about about his obsession with a replica of the Maltese Falcon. All intriguing, but I began to wonder and ask myself, so what's the big deal? I know of some people out there who can make an exact replica of a 1917 Albatros DIII cockpit, or create and sculpt in ZBrush, a very accurate what-if face of Jesus Christ as based on scans and x-rays of the Shroud of Turin, or I myself, years ago, managed to even create an actual replica of a Nid Berry Bush.


A Nid Berry Bush, is a fictional alien plant, from the world of an old 1980's game called STARFLIGHT. In this game, this plant, based on description, looks like it was made out of every plant imaginable. You know, like one branch made it look like a begonia, and one branch looked as if it was sprouting daisies. The Nid Berry Bush was a key plot device, because in the STARFLIGHT world, there existed an alien race called the Dweenle that craved for this rare plant, and when you found one on one of your planetside forays, and presented it to the Dweenle, you'd be on your way to solving the mystery of the story/game. So after I managed to harvest some Nid Berry Bushes which I triumphantly located in some planet in the game, I felt so great that I had the urge to build a model of my very own Nid Berry Bush for my very own bedroom!

For this I had to invade my mother's garden and cut bits and pieces, pulled roots out of every plant I could see, and stick them into a clay "stem", put everything in a flower pot, and voila, I had created my very own Nid Berry Bush, right in my own bedroom (of course, the organic parts all wilted and died a few days later). So again, going back to this guy's supposedly remarkable feats, I began to ask myself, so what is the big deal?

Well I only realized he was "somebody" when I briefly saw the Mythbusters folder in his computer screen in one of the slides in his Powerpoint presentation, and realized who he was, and here is the catch...

...I only realized WHY his whole talk was something of significance--it was BECAUSE he was Adam Savage. I mean, if I took a cab right this very moment and went to Colon and found a sidewalk watchmaker who can rebuild a Rolex replica out of the spare parts of the watches he has collected all his 30 years as a watch repair guy, then it won't really mean anything...why? Because he's NOT Adam Savage.

Fame makes you appear important, even if what you do, from someone else's perspective, is absolutely trivial.

-RODION