Our Big Break, Courtesy of HBO

1997: Our Big Break! HBO’s WebDweeb Contest

Soon after completing the contract at Northrop Grumman, Roth received a cryptic email to follow a link, design a web page and submit an entry for what turned out to be HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. As the Grand Prize Winner (a/k/a WebDweeb), Lee was flown to Aspen to work backstage with HBO’s web production team on one of the first ever live events online.

Headlining the show was actor/comedian Sinbad who, it turns out, is quite the “web head” and who was spending a lot of time in the production room watching the process and sharing his enthusiasm for the duration of the multi-day festival.

Maintaining a running conversation throughout the event, Sinbad and Lee discovered they shared many mutual business associates, particularly from the Caribbean island of Aruba, where Lee worked previously while in the tourism industry. Sinbad’s Soul Music Festival: Part 3 was scheduled to air on HBO from Aruba during the upcoming Memorial Weekend.

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