Note by PJ Ahlberg

I met Ben in 2012 on a film shoot he was directing.

During which, he pointed at my grandfather’s old watch on my wrist, and asked me “can we use that for wardrobe?”. Not a fancy watch, but, apparently exactly what he was after.

As a gangly tech guy with no sense of style, it felt pretty cool to have the Director call you out for fashion choices.

I thought, “my grandpa would love this!” And then immediately after handing it off, thought “oh _____! Is that dude going to give my watch back!?”. Classic Ben management style.

Well, the watch made it on film and was returned to me before we wrapped the day.

Cut to a few years later — we found ourselves at Stink working a desk away, and as our hours overlapped we became friends. Our specificity for comics and music overlapped in a way that excluded pretty much everyone we tried to convince otherwise, and we found a couple of touchstones.

—

As it always goes, we both eventually parted desks. Most importantly, nouns are nouns, but places aren’t people.

I’ll miss his eye for the details nobody knew existed, his abundant knowledge of something that you maybe noticed once… but apparently don’t know enough about, and the moments when his creative gears were grinding in the ol’ thought box.

Falling in friendship isn’t something that happens all that often, so this is a note — not a missive.

Ben will forever be a top-tier nerd (you nerd)

— =Peej=