bizarretOG 2003

An Italian-speaking, deer-hitting, band-fronting programmer from Milford, New Jersey, Toby Bazarte arrived on eZabel in the summer of 2003 and immediately proved he could turn any conversation into a comedy routine. His very first comment praised someone's sideburns; his second was a Dumb and Dumber riff on a news post that became a running bit — "just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber, you go and post something like this... AND TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF!" Toby posted with a manic, riffing energy, the kind of guy who could explain the rules of Capture the Flag in exhaustive tactical detail one minute and then describe a Coronal Mass Ejection as a metaphor for popping a back pimple the next. He spoke Italian well enough to hold full conversations with forrestina in the forums, flexed obscure trivia (Murphy's Law origin stories, the real pronunciation of ramen, why manhole covers are round), and once created a poll about childhood movies that sparked a genuinely passionate debate about Falcor's unsettling voice. His humor leaned absurdist — death by rabid space shuttle leeches, ear cleaning with a flathead screwdriver, a parking ticket joke so well-constructed it reads like a standup bit. But underneath the comedy was a guy dealing with real life: job hunting, pioneering, getting laid off by a boss who lied about it, and studying programming at night school.

Toby's eZabel life revolved around a tight crew of Jersey friends who showed up both online and at each other's houses. His top interaction partners — yodasucka, thatdarngirl, skaorsk8, tinser, and forrestina — were the same people he was playing manhunt with, attending LAN parties at, and crashing overnight with after snowstorms. He fronted a band called Fin with flomojopoanode (Todd), Jose, and John — a project he'd dreamed about for years, and whose name he explained with endearing cheesiness: "fin is 'the end' of that searching, the finale... i'm so cheeeeezy." rocksupastar was the friend whose house his brand-new car got destroyed at by a plow truck, launching the legendary Murphy's Law journal saga where Toby documented his battle with insurance companies, disposable cameras, and nervous apartment complex employees. downwithoppeter roasted him as "that flaming homosexual that sleeps over on random nights," ukrainium tried and failed to insult him with a Monty Python quote, and ophelia narrated his deer collision like a gangsta rap recap. His brother Daniel posted as frobro, and the two occasionally crossed paths in threads with the easy familiarity of siblings who'd both ended up on the same weird little website.

What set Toby apart was range. He could go from quoting the Reasoning book in field service discussions to riffing on Keanu Reeves's filmography ("Bill and Ted Go to Camp, National Lampoon's Bill and Ted, Willy and Tizzle") without breaking stride. He attended 32 events — everything from Six Flags to acoustic shows to the eZabel Formal — making him one of the site's most active in-person participants. He pranked a friend on an unassigned territory trip with Mexican jumping beans during a demon scare, drilled door-to-door visitors on Ezekiel's temple vision until he started laughing, and set his homepage to the eZabel leaderboard sorted by score. His 314 comments came almost entirely in a single six-month blaze from July 2003 to January 2004, with his final post being a genuinely upset reaction to a car crash video — a rare moment of vulnerability from someone who usually kept things light. He was studying, pioneering, job hunting, and planning a trip to Italy with friends, all while posting like he had nowhere else to be.

eZabel Personality Type: ENFP — "The Riff Master." Toby brought absurdist humor, real warmth, and an Italian vocabulary to every thread he touched. He could make a manhole cover question funny, turn a deer collision into a serialized journal, and name a band with the kind of earnest symbolism that only a guy who also quoted Monty Python and NUFAN lyrics in the same breath could pull off. Brief and bright, his time on eZabel burned like one of Fin's acoustic sets — over too soon, but everyone who was there remembers.