Those turtle boys don't cut 'em no slack.

Josh Christopher is a nerd; unassuming, unapologetic, unconcerned with what people think. I was hired by a production company to interview Josh last week for a project related to the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series. He doesn’t have the biggest collection of toys, comics, shirts, or videos but he does live an an apartment that he chose because it reminded him of a lair and his study of Japanese language and martial arts at Indiana State University is a direct result of childhood contact with the TMNT. He knows the series backwards and forwards and is comfortable discussing the nuances of the newest cinematic rendering of the Turtles and how it ties into the universe of the comic, the cartoon, and the first trilogy of TMNT movies.

After listening to Josh talk about the dynamic between “Raph and Mike” and how he wants to be the cool guy (Raphael) but in reality is the humble nice guy (Michaelangelo), I asked him who he would be if it weren’t for TMNT. It sounded like a silly question when it came out of my mouth but I meant (and mean) it seriously – everything Josh does now is an outgrowth of a cartoon he watched when he was a kid. At the risk of overstating it, a 30-minute Saturday morning cartoon changed the trajectory of this guy’s life. On the surface it’s hard to understand because I don’t share his obsession. But there were moments that shaped me similarly, subjects that I can talk about with such depth and passion that I can shut a party down with tunnel-vision nerd babbling. I poked fun at the idea of being a TMNT superfan before I met Josh but I have to give the dude props for being himself. Party hard.