So yeah … johanley made a comment on Kat’s recent post, saying:

Heh, I never really realized how validated the webmasters of a place called “Almeida is God” must be feeling. Tony had to suffer two years of decreasing screentime and eventually an ignoble death. Now, against all odds, he’s literally being resurrected and will playing a key role once more. If that’s not God-like, I don’t know what is.

This kind of struck a chord only because I have been thinking about whether or not to post the following for about a week now, and after reading johanley’s comment, I have decided to go ahead.  WARNING … personal details about Kasia’s life to be revealed.

When I started AlmeidaIsGod.com, I was in the midst of a pretty dark emotional time in my life.  I was just coming off the end of a long term relationship with someone who I loved deeply, and the end of this relationship was not my choice.  I sank into a deep depression and I know how psychotic and messed up this is going to sound, but my fandom of 24 was honestly one of the things that got me through.  I hated the useless, poorly paying job I had at the time.  I hated the sad empty feeling I carried with me almost all the time not being with my ex anymore.  The time I spent watching 24, being excited about it, analyzing it in my own head, and especially talking about it with Matt and Kat … these moments are the only real joyful experiences I can remember from then, the only times I felt like I was a complete person intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, the only times I felt like I was connected to anyone or anything.  I used my fandom as an emotional crutch and an escape from what I perceived as the reality of my bleak existence.  I can’t even tell you how many nights I fell asleep on the couch to the soothing strains of “boop beep”.

Obviously, my intense and voracious fandom pre-dates both this depression and this website.  I’ve been a massive 24 fan since Season 1, Episode 1, and Matt and I have been doing the weekly debrief since about Episode 10 or 11 of Season 1 (though we didn’t start recording the conversations into transcripts until after we started thinking about launching this website, near the end of Season 2).  It was absolutely the smartest, most captivating and most intellectually stimulating television show I had ever seen.  It had been a LONG time since something on TV got inside my head the way 24 did.  I was losing sleep because things about it were turning over in my mind and my adrenaline was pumping so hard after seeing it and then discussing it that I couldn’t fall asleep.  Many of you may not know, but I am actually a pretty serious poet and have been for the last 12 years or so.  I was highly inspired in my poetic endeavours by 24 as well.  I literally LIVED for Tuesday nights.

The concept of “Almeida is God” also pre-dates the launch of this website by about 2 years.  Matt and I knew pretty much from Episode 1×08 (Straight To Chappelle!) that Tony Almeida kicked serious ass.  We drafted the “Principles of Almeidaism” (which I have now come to believe must be revised and re-posted on the site in order to stay true to our roots) and I had them as a standalone on my old personal website for quite awhile before AlmeidaIsGod.com came to be.  These were the humble beginnings of what you now see before you.  12 paragraphs spoofing the 12 Holy Commandments and a grainy jpeg screencap of Tony Almeida taken from a VCD I made after downloading them through an iRC channel and burning them onto CDs (ahhhhh, the days before torrents).

The first iteration of this website was created on an iMac running MacOS 9.0 that had a 4GB hard drive, 128 MB of RAM, Adobe Photoshop 3.0 and Dreamweaver 3.  It was strictly flat HTML with some very basic copy-and-paste JavaScript elements.  On the day it launched, this was our greeting and our pledge to cyberspace at large:

Welcome to ALMEIDA IS GOD, simply the greatest Tony Almeida fansite on the net. Why is AIG the greatest Tony Almeida fansite on the net? Because there is no one who adores and worships Tony like Kasia and Matt. Together, we have taken Almeida fandom to new levels of excellence, and we honestly feel that in order to revere and celebrate Tony in the proper manner, the monument to his greatness that is this website was essential.

Almeida’s world is populated with a plethora of many of the most dynamic, complex, capable and charistmatic characters ever created for the small screen, all worthy of our reverence and respect. However, Tony Almeida remains the most under-appreciated character in the show. Tony Almeida has been a stand-out from day one as the the terse and sassy dark horse-turned-white knight agent of 24. He plays by the rules, but he does it with style (and a lot of lip)! So get set for the best coverage of everybody’s favourite soul patch and prepare to bask in the heavenly light of our personal saviour, Tony Almeida.

So what will you find on this site? Everything that makes Tony great! The style, wit and lighting fast reflexes of CTU’s most stand-up guy. A comprehensive 24 fansite with a Tony-centric approach. You will also find a shrine to obsessive 24 mega-fandom, with goodies only completely psychotic fans could produce.

The idea for this site came about shortly after the premiere of Season 2, but it has proved ot be a lot of work and the launch of the site sufered extensive delays. Many of the sections are still works in progress, so bear with us as we attempt to canonize Tony in the manner he deserves.

When the site first launched, the catchphrase “Almeida Is God” simply did not exist on the Internet.  It was our creation, and it was also our website that popularized it amongst the Internet Fan Community, growing it slowly but surely, spreading the Holy Word of Almeida.  I can remember the first time I realized that what Matt, Kat and I were creating was having an impact on the world at large — when word got back to me that someone was seen holding up a sign in the audience during Carlos Bernard’s 2005 appearance on Cold Pizza that read simply, in black jiffy marker on cardboard, “ALMEIDA IS GOD”.

Then of course came the interview with Reiko Aylesworth where she mentions that she and Carlos know about AIG and that he reminds her of it when they are tired and stressed from long days on the set.  Obviously, they are artists and creators and they do what they do to inspire people and to share their ideas with the world, the same as me.  So to know that the impact they’ve had on me had an impact on them … I cannot even begin to describe how amazing I felt that day.

After a terrible Season 5 and Tony’s death, I was crushed.  Not only because my absolute favourite character on my absolute favourite TV show had been coldly written off, but also because the endeavour that I had literally poured every last ounce of my creative energy into, my heart and soul into, for 3 years was suddenly rendered moot and meaningless.  That was a tough blow, a REALLY tough blow.

From that point on, my passion and dedication to being a 24 fan all but died.  While I still loved the first three Seasons and Tony with all my heart, it was too painful for me to go back and rewatch them over and over again at that point, knowing there would never be a good or satisfying end to the amazing creation that was Tony Almeida.  I took the way the showrunners handled Tony’s death extremely personally.  I felt betrayed and I also felt like the way that Tony’s death was so cold and off the cuff and meaningless was basically an insult to all the work and dedication I had put into the site, and an insult to all the people out there who got something more than just an hour of entertainment once a week from the character.  I felt like they were laughing at me.  I mean obviously this is not the case.  My delusions of grandeur don’t extend to believing that the people behind 24 would ever do anything specifically to piss me off, or that they even have me on their minds at all.  But it hurt anyway.  Really badly.

At this point, not only was I chronically ill, but Matt had given up on the show and I just didn’t see any point to continue.  I knew I had to move on with my life and take everything I had learned from running AIG.com somewhere that could get me ahead in my career.  I fully expected AlmeidaIsGod.com to remain inactive indefinitely, existing not as an active participant in the discourse of popular culture on the Internet, but rather as a canon to the exceptional character of Tony Almeida and also to the phase in my life when I was running the site.  I got on with other things.  I got a real job in website design and development (a job which, by the way, I would probably never have gotten if it hadn’t been for the challenging, rewarding and educational experience of running AIG and constantly striving to make it better all the time.  During the interview, the person who was interviewing was looking at AIG while I was showing my portfolio and he said that 24 was a great show, but Tony Almeida was so over.  It was all I could do to hold my composure and not completely blow my chances of getting the job by going on a rant).  It was the weirdest thing, watching the message forum I started run on without me for months and months.

There were times I thought about shutting down the site.  There were times when I started to doubt my own creation, wondering “was this whole thing just fucking stupid and a waste of time?  Am I really this much of a loser???”  While there was something inside me that couldn’t quite let go completely of AlmeidaIsGod.com, for all intents and purposes I had moved on and didn’t really ever intend on resuming active status of the site.

Then the news of Tony’s “resurrection”.  That’s right, folks.  That’s what the headlines were reading on the entertainment news blogs and sites.  Not “Tony Almeida makes a comeback”.  “Tony Almeida’s Resurrection”.  It was then that I realized the concept of “Almeida Is God”, this idea that was born late one night at 2 am during a long distance phone call between Ottawa and Edmonton … it had permeated the mass media’s collective consciousness.  If you Google the phrase “Almeida Is God”, you will see people who have it as their username and login ID on message forums and myspace.  You will see people quoting it in discussions on forums.  You will see people trying to rip me off by selling t-shirts and button pins emblazoned with the phrase.  You will find several Facebook groups completely unaffiliated with any of the AIG site staff that cite this website as their home URL and post the “Principles of Almeidaism” as their group description.

Once I realized this — that our creation has had some kind of ripple effect on popular culture — I knew that there was not even a question as to whether or not I should continue.  I realized that we started something here … and we owe it to ourselves, our readers, the fans and the show to see it through until the end.

While obviously my state of mind, my life and my fandom did move on in the two years between the end of Season 5 and now, and it will never be the same magical, all-consuming force that it was when we first started AIG.com, I have experienced a fan rebirth of sorts and my passion is back, if not for EVERYTHING 24, then at least for the challenge, reward and growth I experience running this site.

Thank you all.  I love you.