bobby posting:

We here at the Harrisonian are beginning something new today.  We like to write about our own world.  We like to update friends and family on the what-goings-on of life, love and learning on North Pine…but we both came to the revelation recently that we really like talking about other people even more.  So we decided to begin posting on “people we like”.  Sometimes they’ll be 850 words.  Sometimes they’ll be a paragraph.  All the the time they’ll be heartfelt.  I’m kicking things off with a dear friend of mine.

MATTHEW AARON SAX

The New Yorker's take on Matt

A couple of weeks before heading up to begin college at Northwestern University, I receieved an email from the school.  A guy named Matthew Aaron Sax would be my roommate.  It listed his phone number and where he was from.  New York?  We emailed a few times back and forth and shared the things we liked with each other.  He recommended I read Dave Eggers’ first book (which I did in 2 days) and I told him about a little known band named Sigur Ros.  He said he was a theater major who was aiming for Broadway and beyond…I told him I was going to be on SportsCenter one day.

Me and Matt met a few days later in September of 2002 and besides the fact that our mental pictures of each other were dead wrong, we became best friends immediately.  That first night at orientation, the other freshman just assumed me and Matt were Sophomores or Juniors because of how quickly we’d developed a chemistry and ease with each other.  How did a Jewish kid from New York become so close, so quickly to a Christian guy from Arkansas?  I think me and Matt can both agree that only God knows the answer.

That whole year, with the difficulty of being far from home, with me and Amy’s long distance relationship, with my father passing away over Christmas, Matt was always there for me.   And that whole year, with Matt in a constant on-again / off-again relationship with his girlfriend and everything else that freshman year can bring, I was there for him.

We didn’t live together again in college and I think Matt was the better for it.  Definitely career-wise.  Sophomore year Matt put pen to paper on the dream that he’d voiced all year long while living with me.  He began writing a one man, hip-hop musical.  The following summer he decided he was taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland.  He asked me to join his production crew.  He’d raised all the funds and would help pay for my trip.  I just had to hop on board.  The only problem?  A few weeks before my pastor had approached me and the missus about joining in on our church’s inaugural trip to Kenya.  We’d already made our minds to head to Africa.  Matt understood…and just like not living together Sophomore year, I think we were both the better for it.

Sax in the New York Times

His show, “Clay”, exploded!  Rave reviews followed his raw performances.  He brought the show back to Northwestern for our Junior year.  It did so well that a big time theater company in Chicago decided to pick it up.  So while the rest of us were looking for jobs as we graduated college, Matt was setting up shop for a run at a theater on Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile.  After impressing Chicago’s critics, “Clay” wound it’s way to L.A. and Kansas City (where me and Amy saw the show a month ago).

Somewhere along the way, he managed to get picked up by one of the biggest agencies in the world and began seeing movie scripts in his mailbox on a regular basis.  He’d even been told by the director that he had the lead in this Ben Kingsley film which won the Audience Award at Sundance, but the producers called him a few days later to let Matt know they’d given the role to some kid from Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”.

The news wasn’t even a bump in the road though.  Because after 4 years, Matt’s finally taken his own show back to his hometown.  “Clay” is now an off-Broadway production in New York City…right there on 42nd Street.  Pretty amazing.  The New York Times has written a piece on him.  On Monday, The New Yorker’s famed Lillian Ross wrote a piece about Matt. The Chicago Tribune, The L.A. Times…they all think this kid’s got the goods.  Heck, I even did my own feature on Matt during my senior year of college, but he’s actually still unhappy about that one!  In Almost Famous terms, my honest made me the “enemy”!

The greatest part about Matt though, is that through all of his success, we have stayed good friends.  I’m not “wowed” by any of his success and I think he appreciates me for that.  He knows that I like him for who he’s always been, and not just who he’s become.  We will always be authentic, good-for-life kind of friends.  That’s why he is “People We Like”.