Gary Portelli

Name: Gary Portelli
Birthday: Feb. 16, 1952
Age: 30 (As of Summer 1982- The Present)


Gary is a slightly heavy set man that wears thick, black-framed glasses and an unkempt beard. He wears his dark hair slightly long. His bangs are just past his nose, which he brushes to one side. The hair of his neckline goes just past his collar. He stands at just over six feet tall.

Gary was a stereotypical boy genius that was ahead in his class and went to and graduated from college early. He owns a 1977 Apple II computer he enjoys tinkering with and is a HAM radio operator, a hobby he's been involved with since his teens. He also has a fascination with telephones and spends hours experimenting with the phone network punching in codes to the receiver and listening to and recording the sounds on the network.

Gary is from Northern California just outside of San Fransico known as "Silicon Valley". He relocated a year ago with a company called "Pizza Time Theatre", a new type of pizzeria that featured an arcade, coin-op rides, and mechanical singing robot animals that entertain guests in the dining room. The restaurant's mascot is "Chuck E. Cheese", a smart-mouthed rat with Jersey accent that belittles the other characters on stage in a Vaudeville type set up.

The company is expanding rapidly and promoting from within. Gary is the technician at a newly opened restaurant in the area and is in charge of repairing the robotic characters, rides and video games at the store. He's been stockpiling a collection of reel to reel tapes that control the robots and collecting various spare parts to the control system and the animals themselves and has been working to cobble together his own robot in his garage as a pet project.

Gary runs a weekly Dungeons & Dragons game around his kitchen table for a group of high school teens. He is also an amateur storm chaser that follows what is going on using his radio equipment to track severe weather in his van. He likes progressive rock and is a huge Rush fan. He also likes the music of Genesis, The Police, Yes, Cream and Led Zeppelin. Other than Star Wars, Doctor Who and other sci-fi shows and movies, Gary seldom watches TV or goes to the movies. Instead, he spends his time phone phreaking on local payphones, messing with his radio or tinkering with code on his computer.

Gary is a bit socially awkward and has trouble relating to other people outside of his fellow geeks. He has a hard time finding common ground with people outside of his comfort zone given that he doesn't like sports and generally has not fit in well. He's terribly uncomfortable around girls and since he was a few years ahead in school, he was always around people older than himself making dating and interacting with the opposite sex even more difficult.

In addition to his awkwardness, Gary is also a bit absent-minded. He always has other things on his mind and bad to forget where he put things. He's also not the neatest person in the world and is bad to let things pile up. If left to his own devices, the dishes and laundry would never get done.

Secrets: Gary is in over his head. While he is a whiz at working on animatronics and video games, he has no experience with management or running a business. The owner of the franchise he works for has also made him acting head manager of one of his new stores in addition to the head tech. Not only is he in charge of keeping the rides, games, and robots in good order, but he's also has a hand in hiring the staff, managing inventory and other duties he's not equipped to deal with.

While he's bright and seems to be going far with his new career, he's also spending himself into oblivion. A bit overconfident, he's purchased a new house assuming he has "hit the big time" and realized that the payments were a bit more than he could afford, at least in the short-term. He's invested thousands in his radio equipment and home computer. To offset the cost of his new lifestyle, he's taken on a roommate and rented out a room in his new home.