REAL GENIUS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
compiled by Erin Mills
Based on characters created by Pat Proft and Neal Israel
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In 1985, a suburban house near Pacific Tech college exploded in a shower of popcorn as a result of a misfiring experimental laser weapon. Many secrets concerning the weapon came out of "The Pacific Tech Popcorn Incident," as it came to be called.
Therefore, it seems appropriate to see where the principles of the incident are doing currently...
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Robert "Ick" Ikagami finally perfected his "Instant Ice" and has made several large fortunes selling the formula to ski resorts, allowing year round skiing even in the hottest of weather.
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Dr. Jerry Hathaway is currently finishing out a 20 sentence at Leavenworth Federal Penetentiary for fraud and embezzlement. He is also undergoing psychological treatment for his now-pathological hatred of popcorn.
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Kent Torokvei never recovered from his "religous popcorn experience." He dropped out of Pacific Tech and wandered off. He was seen in 1988 on Los Angeles Public Access Cable as "The Most Holy Kernelpope of the Church of the Divine Popcorn Revelation." Rumor has it he currently owns a large corn farm in Iowa where he waits for a sign of the Second Coming which, according to him, "will cause the unbelievers to drown in a sea of burned kernels and artifical butter flavored topping."
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Laszlo and Sherry Hollyfeld were last seen in the Mediterranean...No one knows what they were up to, but Hollyfeld was last heard to say that it involved "something really complex involving whales, the moon, and the inherent salt content of sixteen metric tons of McDonalds french fries."
Their current whereabouts are unknown.
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Mitch Taylor legally divorced his parents in 1987 when they were less than understanding about him dating a girl four years older than him. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Pacific Tech in 1989, and acquired Doctorates in several areas of electronics by 1992. He and his wife Jordan now live in Visalia, California where Mitch teaches assorted physical science courses at the local community college.
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Chris Knight never took the job at Darlington Electronics saying "It is a moral conviction that I have never to accept a position that I received through the graces of a man who is that irrational about his hardwood floors."
Instead, he took a position as a technical consultant at Apple Computer. After three weeks he was fired, whereupon he joined up with a, at the time, little known firm called Microsoft...
...he was fired after three days.
Undaunted by these turn of events, Chris instead took the knowledge he acquired from both companies and struck out on his own. Currently, Checkered Knight Communications is one of the top communcations firms in the world, specializing in fiber optics, sattelite communications, and Internet technologies.
What makes this so amazing is that Checkered Knight has only, at last count, three employees. Chris himself, his partner Jordan Cochran-Taylor, and a middle-aged guinea pig named "Mr. Wiggums."
He currently resides in Visalia, California where he divides his time between work with Checkered Knight, playing video games, hitting on beuaticians, and building assorted diversions in his continued life-long quest to avoid responsibility.
His personal fortune of $15 million seems to ensure that he will succeed.
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"Real Genius" and related characters are copyright (C) 1986 by Columbia/TriStar Pictures
Used without permission.
