Name: Iouri Abramovich Spekter, Ph.D
Nicknames:Age: 32 33 34 35 36
Birthday: April 12th, 1979
Sign: Aries
Blood Type: A-
Fav. Food: Pasta in red sauce, soft cheeses like brie
Hated Food: Borscht
Hobbies:Amateur Rocketry – To say Iouri dabbles in explosives is an understatement. Building and launching miniature rockets has been a hobby of his since childhood, and one he is happy to share with eager students. For a nominal supplies fee, Iouri runs classes at the museum on a quarterly basis for those interested in learning the basics of constructing scaled-down space ships and blasting them into the stratosphere.
Collecting Soviet Kitsch – Iouri and his Russian-Jewish parents fled the Soviet Union in the 1980s when he was a child, and their new home in Destiny City gradually accumulated all sorts of folksy Russian tchotchkes that reminded his parents of home. Iouri has a soft spot in his heart for some of the stranger propaganda and collectables to come out of the former USSR, and has developed an almost packrat devotion to finding and cataloging related weirdness. He also chuckles at modern joke products aping on soviet iconography, such as Leninade, and he has a
Communist Party shirt on heavy rotation.
Event Planning – Since taking over operations at the Destiny City Earth and Space museum, Iouri has been spending an exhaustive amount of effort on coming up with novel reasons to get people to the museum and excited about science. So far this year they’ve had stargazing parties, a murder mystery game, and with the reopening of the planetarium coming up, you can bet that Iouri’s got something up his sleeves.
Keeping up with the latest research: In his heart, Iouri wishes he was a rocket scientist. However, his degree is in museum sciences and he’s pretty happy with where he is, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a huge stack of scientific journals, Discover back issues, and the latest Popular Mechanics in his office. He’s devoted to staying on the cutting edge and knowing at least a little bit about what’s going on in all aspects of the field. According to Iouri, if he doesn’t keep up with the latest research then he’s hardly qualified to teach other people about it.
Gemstone: Diamond
Virtues: People Person – Far from the awkward scientist Iouri appears to be, he loves talking to people and is an expert at commanding a room. Whether it’s charming potential donators at a fundraiser, or getting a rowdy group of schoolchildren to pay attention, Iouri knows what to say and how to say it, provided it’s on a topic he cares about. He is somewhat soft-spoken and has never managed to shake the traces of his Russian accent, but at this point in his life it hardly bothers him and he’s learned to work around it.
Thrifty – Growing up as the child of immigrants, Iouri considers himself to be a self-made man. He is careful with money, and has leant his good economic sense to his work at the museum. In a time when grants are shrinking, the museum is flourishing due at least in part to Iouri’s shrewd budget work. He is able to make due with simple means and stretch dollars like they’re made of rubber and knows all kinds of tricks for saving money and getting discounts. Iouri flat out refuses to pay full price when there's a coupon or barter available.
Organized – Iouri’s office is full of carefully labeled files and books organized alpha-by-author. If you look into his rocketry toolkit, you’ll find that each tool has its own special nook. Iouri values orderliness to a nearly compulsive degree, but only as much as it’s functional. He doesn’t feel the need to order objects based on their size or color or other arbitrary categories, but based on how useful the organization will be. He is also incredibly punctual and frequently arrives at meetings half an hour early for the sake of taking care of any last-minute preparations.
Flaws: Workaholic – Iouri is notorious for failing to take time for himself. He keeps a strict work schedule, often pushing himself to the point of exhaustion, and rarely does things that are purely “fun.” Even his hobbies that he enjoys are in some way related to his work: Iouri just doesn’t know how to leave the office at the office. When forced to leave the museum and do things completely unrelated, he is frequently distracted with thoughts of how much time he is “wasting” and what “productive” things he could be doing right now, and he’ll let anyone he’s with know it.
Tunnel vision – Iouri is great at getting people enthusiastic about things he’s enthusiastic about, but when it comes to topics where he’s less invested, he might as well be dead in the water. He doesn’t know what movies are out right now, he’s not particularly interested in talking about cats, and he has no idea what music is popular right now. Iouri is totally out of touch with pop culture, which makes small talk painfully awkward for him. Once Iouri has exhausted his range of interests, he starts to sound bored, look for ways out of the conversation, and generally manages to make an a** out of himself.
Prude – Iouri’s got big problems with the phrase PDA, particularly the “public” part. He’s not asexual and he doesn’t have any problem with the fact that, yes, people have sex and that’s all fine and dandy, he just doesn’t want to
see any of it, or participate in any kind of romantic displays in public. To say that this has impacted his dating life is an understatement – refusing to do anything more than hold hands in public is apparently a big turnoff for most women, and Iouri has resorted to more often than not spending his Saturday nights sorting rocks in the museum’s back room. He’s also got no qualms about discouraging people from participating in overt PDA – many a teenaged couple stealing kisses in the museum’s greenhouse has found themselves caught in the sprinklers.
Physical Description:Hair: Dark brown, short, parted on the left, slightly receding hairline.
Eyes: Deep set, narrow, dark gray. Framed by a pair of thick horn-rimmed glasses.
Face: Light skinned, mostly unblemished save for a chickenpox scar at the right corner of his mouth. His face is round and boyish, and his expression is generally pleasant.
Body: He stands about 5'11", but people always seem to remember him as being shorter. Neither muscular nor frail.
Fashion: A combination of aging professor and young intellectual. Probably a tweed coat over a Soviet Kitschy shirt, khakis or nice jeans, and a pair of dress shoes. His museum ID card is always worn on a red lanyard.
Reply
