flomojopoanodeFounder

There was never any mystery about where Todd Jared Bastidas stood on anything. He'd tell you his middle name and why he loved it, explain the exact pronunciation of his screen name ("Flow-Mow-Joe Poe-uh-node"), offer his take on the Beatles (overrated, except for Sgt. Pepper), and then pivot into a poem about heartbreak — all in the same afternoon. His username was chosen specifically because it meant nothing, a nonsense rhyme he picked over "marmalade lagoon" back when eZabel was still in its infancy, and it suited him perfectly: an unpredictable burst of energy wrapped in a name nobody could spell or remember on the first try. malibu once tried and came up with "flomonjaple." Close enough.

Todd was one of the site's original members, joining in November 2000 from Stanhope, New Jersey, and he brought with him a kind of relentless, caffeinated enthusiasm that never quite wore off — ironic for a guy who didn't drink coffee and never needed to. He once took a single caffeine pill and spent five hours doing handstand pushups, climbing trees, biking ten minutes to the beach, and swimming until his body finally surrendered. His grandfather, nearly eighty at the time, played tennis until ten in the morning and then did yard work. The Bastidas family ran hot. That energy poured into everything: 3,400 comments across twelve years, snowboarding trips to Vermont and Mountain Creek where he and his crew became known as the park's resident daredevils, bass guitar in multiple bands — Absolute Zero with bozo (Brandon Zabel), ballyhoo (Brett Holloway), and thefunkyfresh (Matt Kelly), then later FiN with bizarret (Toby Bazarte) — and a World of Warcraft rogue named Xjarius whose dagger collection he catalogued with the devotion of a sommelier.

What made Todd distinctive wasn't just the volume but the texture. He wrote poetry that swung between playful rap battles with thefunkyfresh and genuinely raw vulnerability — poems about heartbreak and isolation that he posted without pretense, alongside absurdist inventions like the Ford Mammoth (a factory-sized woolly mammoth car with tusks for clearing traffic) and the Daewoo Underoos (motorized underwear). He dreamed of Monty Python wars and shrunken heads at the barber shop. He invented words with his friends — "germunki," "pinch," "growlsh" — and threatened to kick people in the "heemph." His journal about eating his packed lunch at 10 AM on his first landscaping job, then starving the rest of the day because nobody told him that wasn't the lunch break, is a small masterpiece of comedic timing. So is the story of dumping Caribbean chicken into his lap in front of a Circuit Overseer in Costa Rica.

Beneath the hyperactivity was someone who cared deeply and showed it without embarrassment. When ekulu (Adam Mims) was going through a rough stretch, Todd checked in on him repeatedly and celebrated his baptism with genuine joy. When a car accident at a convention in Philadelphia left a parking attendant injured, Todd was devastated — he wrote about crying at the scene, praying for the brother constantly, and the relief that the man's medical expenses would be covered. He helped an older sister down the stairs during field service, then defused her pride by joking that he got to brag about holding hands with a girl. He spent years pioneering, eventually moving to the Spanish-language congregation, and the proudest moment he shared on eZabel was when his 87-year-old Ecuadorian grandfather — who had refused to study for forty-five years, always too busy playing tennis — finally agreed to a Bible study after a knee replacement took away his last distraction. Todd teared up writing about it, and you believe him completely.

His social world was enormous. His top interactions were with iwz, fivezero, socalgal, thefunkyfresh, and juicymango, but he threaded through the entire site, sharing forum threads with 127 different members. He lived with Matt Kelly for a stretch, dethroning and being dethroned at ping pong in an ongoing war. His sister arriba (Jamie Bastidas) married bozo, making him and iwz something like extended family. He attended every event he could — Brian Regan shows, Six Flags trips, LAN parties, bonfires — and once mobilized the entire eZabel network to help his girlfriend's sister and brother-in-law stranded at LaGuardia. web-toedchloe (Diana) once told him he needed someone "smart, confident, mature and still playful, easy going and just a tiny bit nutty" — which was, of course, a description of Todd himself.

eZabel Personality Type: ENFP — "The Campaigner." By 2009, things had gotten quieter. He wrote an unusually open thread about loneliness and the temptation to isolate, about not wanting to get hurt, about appreciating the small trips to the A&P and Blockbuster with Matt more than any grand adventure. His last real activity trickled off in 2012 with a comment about Dropbox and zip code formatting — practical, helpful, and completely Todd. He left behind 3,400 comments, a handful of poems that cut deeper than they had any right to, and a screen name that still sounds like someone falling down a flight of stairs in the most joyful way possible.