J. Michael - Thoughts & Condolences

[Sandstone]

The world has lost a kind old soul. I really admired Luuv for his pointed use of thorough explanations and rational discourse regardless of what or who he was talking about. From the little I admittedly interacted with him, he seemed to have the patience of a saint and the reason of a sage. I will miss him.

 

I think it is sweet to know that the personal touch he wanted to give this community for so long, according to his many statements in the past, is something he lived to realise at least in part. There are many people that go through life without leaving an impact on people or achieving what they really want to do, I think it is safe to say Luuv is not among those.

[naraku360]

I don't really know what to say.

 

Gave the guy a lot of shit. Hope he knew it was in good fun.

[StarPanda]

I'll repost what I put in that other thread

 

Luuv may you rest in peace, we dint really know you personally but you were a great person as a board admin.

Thank you for making this site and bringing us here, thank you for always listening to all of our request and complaints even of it did take you a while to get to them lol. You will be missed as a board member

[Guest squirrelygod]

Didn't always get along with him, didn't always agree with him, but he at least seemed to give a shit. Dealing with us in our various forms of being little shits cannot be anyone's idea of fun.  The fact that he was one of the ones to throw this up upon the collapse of ASMB, or at least open it up to become a ASMB refugee camp was admirable and showed that he and the others who did so at least gave a shit.

 

Given Luuvs age it's easy to see why him and I didn't always see eye to eye, even my last encounter with him was one of those situations, which ended with me bailing from here. Hell, I actually messaged him a few days ago to delete this account after about 2 months of not showing up here.

 

Hopefully what he passed from  wasn't too painful as it doesn't look like it is stated what he died from, but at least it was in the comfort of his home.

 

R.I.P. Luuv

[Blatch]

Luuv was arguably a paragon of this kingdom of shit. And he managed to survive it for 14 years? My god. In the end, I thank him for introducing me to the old ASMB (I joined in April 2014), and his unbridled enthusiasm managed to make me see it for what it really is... a rather decrepit place, yes, but one with people who genuinely care about things. As well as the belief that me could be one of them. There's a lot of people I think I'm better off having known and hobbies I'm happy to have (content ratings!) because of him, and his little slice of heaven, but I want to keep the spotlight on him and nobody else.

 

You got up, but now you'll never get down. Rest in all the platitudes, and do say hi to Chris for me if you have the chance. I didn't know him until it was too late.

[Chapinator_X]

I posted this before the confirmation:

 

RIP Luuv. I didn't have an extensive history with you, but you were one of the more reasonable mods and helped create this place for us. It was thoughtful of him to get me a link to the place while [as] was on nodeBB, mostly because I haven't stuck my neck out enough to be that popular of a poster. The fact that I was approached straight-up and told of UE months before the boards died was pretty cool. I even made an account as soon as I got the link. He was a great dude.

 

I still stick by it. Again, I didn't know him as well and didn't get into enough trouble to meet his disapproval, but to think I made enough of an impression to be invited by him to his new forum was a great honor and didn't mind adding to the UE Proboards while simultaneously posting on NodeBB ASMB. I'm sure there were some things he did that I wasn't a fan of, but I appreciate the effort he put into trying to keep things civil for the most part.

[Rogue_Alphonse]

May he rest well knowing we will carry on what he has built for us.

[Naraku4656]

i didn't post this before but i'll post this now.

 

He was one of the first people I spoke to when I joined the boards. I thought he was a secret admin for a while. He did so much for the old boards and for us here. It's kind of funny, because the day before we found out that he died I actually finally deleted my old bookmark for the old boards too. This is probably the old board member death to really affect me and make me sad.

 

There's not many people here I would consider as a friend, but he was one of those people I always kind of looked up to when i had first joined. I remember when he asked me to be a helper too, and I was happy to accept. He really was the face of the board for me when I was 13, and he still was at 26. That's a hell of a long time. I will really miss you bud, I hope you have peace wherever you are.  </3

[Lacks_Sympathy]

RIP Luuv. You will be missed.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mewn]

Damn, thanks for the death notice post.

 

RIP Luuv

 

You were a good man.

We all shall meet in the white lodge one day (or maybe the black lodge <_<).

[Naraku4656]

mods can also remove this if they want, but I'm going to post the only verified picture of Luuv that I know of

 

[new_disease]

Damn

 

Despite being on the [as] boards since 06 I never had much interaction with him since I was never much of an active user

but the times I saw him post he always seemed like a good guy that cared for the community. I appreciated the hell out of him for creating a place for us to keep on hanging out after the old boards shut down.  RIP Luuv, we'll miss you

[Guest Zintar]

JMC. I'm gonna miss you. You've been a swell friend. I'll also miss your long winded (and mostly great, haha) posts and writings.

Bullshitting with you here and there was always a joy. You've done so much for so many. Thank you. Much love. Your friend, J.B.

[Gina Szanboti]

I wish this hadn't turned out to be true, but here we are.  I never had reason to have much interaction with Luuv, but I actually enjoyed reading his long posts, being a veteran wall-o-texter myself.  I never understood how he took all the shit he did and endured all the headaches of being caught in the vise between [as]'s idiot management and the board users without burning out, but somehow he did.  Since he invited us all into his home here, I guess he must've liked us despite it all.  I hope he's enjoying the next phase of the eternal adventure.  I'll miss watching him spar with you guys. 

 

I am puzzled by what Viperslayer wrote on 8/17 in the now-locked Luuv thread though.  "I checked last night to see the last time I saw his IP on my server. It was 6 days ago....." which would be 8/11.  His obituary says he died on 8/8.  I guess he found it harder to leave than you'd expect...    -_'

[André Toulon]

 

 

I am puzzled by what Viperslayer wrote on 8/17 in the now-locked Luuv thread though.  "I checked last night to see the last time I saw his IP on my server. It was 6 days ago....." which would be 8/11.  His obituary says he died on 8/8.  I guess he found it harder to leave than you'd expect...    -_'

 

The only thing I can figure that was about was that they said he had been absent from work for a couple of days, so when the finally found him, someone may have woke his sleeping comp looking for any idea of who to contact and his browser restored.

[NaBarney]

Or luuv never visited viper's site, and he mistook someone else's IP as being his

[MEXobiologist]

i am not now, nor have i ever been good at expressing myself when it comes to the many sentiments regarding death. a family member, a friend, an acquaintance, a co-worker, a friend of a friend, the family of a friend, a complete stranger.... i guess you could say that he was a little of all of those things in a way, to many of us... past and present. just reading through the posts here is proof enough of that.

 

his long winded posts, emails, and messages, they were all proof that he was a listener and that he listened to all of us... even when we thought he wasn't. its heart warming to see now that it wasn't all that thankless after all, and that people still noticed. people still cared. people noticed that he cared.

 

so thank you Admin[/member] (respectfully)

 

and thank you to all whom have and will share their own special memories and kind words.

 

rest in peace Admin[/member] , luuv, j. michael crow, john crow...

you will be missed but you will also live on in our memories

 

<3

 

 

[enad]

I called the funeral home and they're going to have the director get in contact with me concerning the details of his arrangements.  I will keep yall posted.

[Doom Metal Alchemist]

mods can also remove this if they want, but I'm going to post the only verified picture of Luuv that I know of

 

 

I'm assuming that pic is quite old, as he looks nowhere near 54 there.

 

Anyways, I didn't have much interaction with him, as I very rarely got in trouble on ASMB, and he wasn't as visible in IB as Odin was, but when I started poking my head in other sections of the boards again, as well as nodebb and uemb, he always seemed very level headed no matter how much shit was thrown at him, which I greatly admired. He also seemed very genuine. And he was incredibly dedicated to ASMB, doing far more for the board than just the standard moderator duties. And then he let us lost travellers of the ASMB take root here, and he cared a lot for this board also. He just genuinely cared about us as a community, and did everything he could to give us a great experience here and ASMB (as much as someone with the responsibility to ban users and enforce rules can, anyway  ).

 

To John Michael Crow.  :brownbottle:

[MEXobiologist]

I called the funeral home and they're going to have the director get in contact with me concerning the details of his arrangements.  I will keep yall posted.

 

 

thank you very much dane.

depending on the details of his arrangement, i'm trying to think of different ways we could honor his life since most all of us are scattered and limited in ways to do such.

[Distortedreasoning]

didn't really talk much to him up until recently but i always liked how he made an effort to try and keep the community together *as dysfunctional as we are that had to be a difficult task* even in the dying days of the boards he could have just left but he did his best to moderate and that counts for something.

 

rip j michael

[Zenigundam]

RIP, Luuv. You always seemed level-headed and focused on balancing the community's demands with practicality. Maybe someday I'll become SwimMod_Zeni and carry on your legacy. I'm sure wherever you are they'll let you watch TV tomorrow, so that you can tune into Toonami. I guess most of my memories of you are from the Williams Street Culture board, the why did you ban me? floated threads, and the times you suggested that I try not to engage with Viper. Well anyway, RIP. If I were in your shoes, I'd haunt this place with ghost threads, but I have no clue what your plans are.

[molarbear]

Luv deserves a Viking funeral with the pyre being lit during the upcoming eclipse for all the shit he put up with over the years on the boards.  LB should show up with a smiley indifferent mask for shits and giggles.

 

All jokes aside, Luv seemed like a pretty stand up guy.  I could pm him with a question and receive my novel within a day tops. 

 

 

[Gina Szanboti]

The only thing I can figure that was about was that they said he had been absent from work for a couple of days, so when the finally found him, someone may have woke his sleeping comp looking for any idea of who to contact and his browser restored.

 

I prefer to think he was checking in one last time before heading out.

[RPM Jr.]

^ Holy shit, I'm not the only Devin Townsend fan here.

I'm finally getting into him. It took quite a few years, but from what I've heard so far, it's awesome!

 

 

And dude, empty_cookie_jar's a huge Devy fan. I thought it was obvious. (But I digress.)

 

 

Dane: Thanks for the update regarding his final arrangements.

[NaBarney]

I will compile all his writing I can find tomorrow if nobody has done it yet. Besides maintaining this place, I think reading & sharing his stories would be the best way to honor his memory.

 

Maybe ask a mod or admin to see if you can get the writing from that Menagerie folder that was here for a bit. Seemed like he was setting up an original fictional universe for a forum rpg or something.

[Ric]

mods can also remove this if they want, but I'm going to post the only verified picture of Luuv that I know of

 

 

I know I've seen that, didn't he have it as his avatar for a while?

 

I remember not knowing it was him for a while and thinking it was indie music artist or something.

[DBZ4ever]

Well I do hate that this happened. When I first joined the Boards way back in 05 I saw he had threads in every folder explaining the rules and such. At the time I thought he was the leader of the mods. To an extent I wasn't wrong I guess but I knew him the most from when I was a Helper. I saw how passionate he was about adult swim and the community that built itself around it. He was always thinking of ways to make the Boards better and entertaining, especially when they started to decline in traffic. He told me of his new site before the Boards went down. He wanted a place where he could be more free and carry on his passion. After they went down they became a gathering place for the remnants of the old Boards. I think he wanted this place to be great and to continue on with us being an online family of sorts. I hope we do continue on and always remember his care for us, the Boards, adult swim and his love for long winded explanations.

 

It was nice knowing you and a pleasure to have talked to you. Goodbye my friend.

[GunStarHero]

It's got to be one of the absolute dumbest fucking requests I've ever made, but...

 

 

 

 

thanks for making me spaghetti, Luuv.

[Codename: Jackass]

I really didn't have all that much contact with Luuv over my time at ASMB or here. I regret that now, even though it's my nature to let people be unless they take an interest in me. However, despite not being that well acquainted with him, I've got huge respect for the way he dedicated so much time to all of us, even the miscreants and weirdos. He didn't have to put this community together. He could have said "forget it" once ASMB went under for good, but he stuck through it after all this time. (Let me also acknowledge the contributions of the other staff, but this place was Luuv's baby).

 

In the end, I wish I'd been able to tell him that I appreciate the amount of time he put into this place and ASMB. I kind of took his presence for granted because he was such a constant. I never really recognized the work he had done until the tail end of the ASMB experiment, where he was really the only member of site staff who seemed to even take an interest in us. I hope somehow we'll be able to continue on with the ideas he was trying to implement, be able to continue his legacy. I wish I'd taken the time to thank him when I'd had the chance, but you never anticipate something like this.

 

Another thing that makes this hit home is that he was my dad's age. That kind of rocked me, sort of made it real in a way.

 

I really hate using the words "I" and "me" so much when this really isn't about me. I know I'm kind of rambling now, but if anybody gets anything out of this, it's that I'm grateful for the work Luuv did in all his time, both before and after I started showing my face around the community.

 

Thank you, J. Michael Crow. You were one of the good ones. I should have let that be known while you were here to know it.

[Codename: Jackass]

mods can also remove this if they want, but I'm going to post the only verified picture of Luuv that I know of

 

He doesn't look that far off from how I imagined, tbh.

[ThisIdiot]

this ...this can't be real...oh man...

[The1gairon]

It really happened.

 

[HardcoreHunter]

He doesn't look that far off from how I imagined, tbh.

 

Well that is a younger picture of him. I don't think we have one of him in his 50s.

[bnmjy]

RIP Luuv. I'm at a loss for words. I appreciate everything you've done for the community over the years.

[HardcoreHunter]

[enad]

So I talked to the funeral home director, and his next of kin are two sisters; one in Ohio, the other in Florida.  They've been informed of his death, but haven't made any decisions concerning what they want the medical examiner to do.  The funeral home director said they hadn't seen each other in a number of years.

[Raptorpat]

That doesn't surprise me, given the the winding route the past few days have been to get to this point. But I guess it's a relief that now we know that they know.

 

Did he happen to mention if anyone had put together an obituary?

[enad]

They had not.  I don't know what their intentions are in that regard.  I can call back and ask about that specifically if people would like.

[enad]

Yea so the medical examiner is still trying to get in touch with his sisters. 

 

This is the website for the funeral home that is handling the pending arrangments.

 

http://www.weertsfh.com/

 

It might be worth the while to anyone thinking about sending flowers or what not to periodically check the obituaries section, to see if he has been listed.  Or to give them a call eventually if nothing is listed over the next week or so to see if they're still the funeral home of choice. 

[Jman]

For all the shitposts, the long winded explanations, etc, there's a few things I knew.  Luvv enjoyed talking about all this geek and weeb shit.  Luvv was honest about his opinions but never tried to silence someone just for having one.  He was honest about everything.  And in this crazy internet, that's worth its weight in gold.

[MEXobiologist]

Yea so the medical examiner is still trying to get in touch with his sisters. 

 

This is the website for the funeral home that is handling the pending arrangments.

 

http://www.weertsfh.com/

 

It might be worth the while to anyone thinking about sending flowers or what not to periodically check the obituaries section, to see if he has been listed.  Or to give them a call eventually if nothing is listed over the next week or so to see if they're still the funeral home of choice.

 

 

thank you. i will keep checking back there to see if anything crops up and i will also just keep doing general daily searches to see if an obituary or services show under another funeral home. because like you said, i think some would like to send flowers with their condolences. also, at the very least, while we may not be able to bury the man, we can submit our own obituary should his surviving family choose not to be involved.... which i sincerely hope is not the case. so for the time being, i suppose we just monitor the situation.

[AnimationFan14]

R.I.P. Luuv. I have no idea how he was patient enough to deal with a group of assholes like us for so long.

 

Luuv was the strongest one of us all, if nothing else than this very fact

[HardcoreHunter]

For the first 3 years of me joining the site I thought his name was Luvv and no one corrected me 

[katt_goddess]

So I talked to the funeral home director, and his next of kin are two sisters; one in Ohio, the other in Florida.  They've been informed of his death, but haven't made any decisions concerning what they want the medical examiner to do.  The funeral home director said they hadn't seen each other in a number of years.

 

Thank gods he has some form of direct family. The new worry is if he was the baby of the family, they might not be able to travel. Fingers crossed. I'm sure it's as much a shock to them as it was to this community and they need time to process too.

 

Thank you for getting all this info for us and keeping us all posted.

 

It might not happen for any number of reasons not the least of which it's running a bit late for things as it is since usually everything is already programmed by now, but I put in an official request for a memorial bump for J. Michael Crow [swimMod Luuv] on behalf of the [as] message board community in exile. I didn't get a company form reply so it went through to someone in the building.

[wacky1980]

He lived in Bettendorf?  That's like half an hour from me.  Holy shit, no wonder I was always getting banned.

i want to say i knew this, but this community has been around for so long, with so many members coming and going, that i could be confused. i can see bettendorf from across the river, every time i drive back up to visit my parents. you don't live in hog capitol, do you?

 

anyways, back to this shitty, shitty news. i've been avoiding the luuv threads until this afternoon because i didn't really want to know, but it's undeniable at this point. death is a fucking jerk. these boards, and all of us, have lost a leader and friend. rip luuv.

[Meilag32]

Heard about the sad news. 

 

He touched all our lives by giving us a place (both back in the [as] boards and here in UE) to chat, have fun, make friends, and be ourselves.  And I, for one, am grateful for that and will miss him.

 

 

 

Farewell Luuv, may the road ahead rise to meet you.

 

[K_N]

What can I say? I didn't know him that well, though I knew him for a long time. Spent many a day arguing with him on the old ASMB to give me back banned accounts that I deserved to lose.

 

These last few months I feel like I got to know him at least a little better - I saw a creative man with a passion to make something worth spending time on.

 

I wish we had more time with him. I wish we had that last phone call we were supposed to have, the day before he died.

 

I really didn't know him in much of a personal way, but I feel a strong, deep sadness - the kind you feel when you lose a family member. I think that's just a sign that he was something special to the world, and a powerful force in the lives of those he knew.

 

I'm really gonna miss you man.

[NumyMufn]

Over the past week or so I have been lamenting the loss of my ASMB family, and now I know why.  :'(  It's as if I sensed another passing, and this one hits me hardest of all. Luuv never gave up on us, and I don't think I ever let him know how grateful I was for his optimism & hard work. His words of wisdom regarding modding, "Hold on loosely, but don't let go" often rang in my ears. I miss him  :'(

[3ngag3]

I can't say I knew Luuv all that much outside of his imposing presence here and on the old ASMB boards.

 

For him to put up with all the nonsense that's gone on in both places all these years makes him a goddamn legend.

 

Rest in Power SwimMod.