First thing to know about Albert Bui:

He named himself.

If Albert wasn’t born in South Vietnam, his parents certainly hadn’t been in SoCal long when he appeared in this world.

As he related the story, Young Albert liked watching the Bill Cosby cartoon show, and was amused by one particular character: Fat Albert.

So Bui Xuan Vu became, for English-speaking consumption, Albert Bui.

By any name, this guy was a riot.

I know I’ve written that this or that staffer was funny. But Albert really was at the upper end of the entertainment scale.

He was sarcastic and cynical, sure. But funny sarcastic and cynical.

He also was something of a social critic/commentator with a sharp ear for hypocrisy as well as mimicry. He loved Jim Rome, the talk-radio personality, and brought several Rome-isms into the department. But he thought up plenty of stuff all of his own. One that sticks? “Toter” for outdoors columnist Jim Matthews. It was short for “gun-toter” — words Albert had put in a headline over a Matthews column , much to Matthews’ consternation (and mine). He referred to older staffers such as Steve Dilbeck and Mike Davis as “OGs” (Original Gangsters), called a balding colleague “Domer” and would announce, “Say goodnight to the bad guy!” whenever he left the office — a shout out to a line from “Scarface.”

I have noted before that the 1990s are something of a blur to me, as more people cycled through the department. So it is that my recollections of how we got hooked up with Albert in the first place … are vague.

It seems fairly safe to say Albert’s starting point with us came as an intern, and I’m thinking summer of 1994. The odd part of this is … I’m almost sure Albert attended UC Irvine, which isn’t known for producing journalists and a school with which I had little or no contact. As opposed to, say, Cal State Fullerton and its journalism department.

Anyway, he must have covered the local Single-A, California League ballclub in the summer of 1994, I want to say. (Though I may need someone to correct me on this.) He did well, at whatever he covered, because when a particularly weird part-time job we had, for most of the 1990s, came open, I hired him immediately.

The job was a pretty good one, actually. Didn’t pay much; like $10 an hour. But the job description was this: 30 hours a week, all of it devoted to writing and reporting, almost all of it as the backup guy on big-league beats. And that was catnip to young guys, to be filing from the major-league venues.

Thus, beginning in, say, January of 1995, Albert was covering the Lakers, Clippers, then Dodgers and Angels, and doing quite well. Rarely having to come out to the office; just filing from the venue, hanging with the old pros.

By then, or soon after, he was out of college, and when we had a full-time position come open, in September of 1996, Albert took it. Even though it was the less-than-exciting “recreation” beat that had been mandated by Gannett. It was features about whatever participatory sports stuff that we ferreted out. Wakeboarding or ballooning or whatever. As Albert said, “Hey, dude, it’s a full-time gig.”

The reality of the rec beat was that it afforded us a chance to use him on the copy desk for much of the week, and that’s where Albert’s wit and wisdom became apparent to us. And his party-animal potential. He lived in Orange County, and didn’t always hang out with the regular late-night crowd because he had the long drive back home. But a colleague, Nate Ryan, recalls a trip to Las Vegas with Albert that is memorable — even for those of us who only heard about it. And represented a blast from the past, from the 1970s era when Sun sports staffers would decide, at 11 o’clock at night, to make a Vegas run and would come back at noon the next day.

(Note: As time went by, we often referred to Albert by his given name, “Vu” — as in the story below. And Albert often would say, “they’re not booing, they’re saying Vuuuuu!”)

Wrote Nate:

“We left The Sun at 1 a.m. and got right on I-215 in my Tercel. Four hours later, we arrived at the Mirage, where we were scheduled to check in at 3 p.m.

“We had breakfast in the coffee shop, played some blackjack, then settled into the sports book around 8 a.m. On zero sleep, we drank and watched NFL football for six straight hours. Thankfully, they let us check in early because we were woefully behind on sleep and cash approaching halftime of the 1 p.m. games.

“After a four-hour nap, we went back out, and Vu was determined to teach me how to play craps. So we went to the Riveira — an “OG” casino (it’s Vu, so of course!) — and found a ‘mini-craps’ table for beginners. Some newcomer was shooting dice and had the magic touch, and though he had no idea how to turn that into money, Vu did. While I never figured out the game, Vu made about $400 in an hour…and then we promptly celebrated by Vu buying tix to the “Crazy Girls” show at the Riv.

“Later that night, we go back to the Mirage, and I crash, but Vu can’t satisfy the itch. He goes down to the tables by himself and loses everything he won, and a little more, on craps again.

“Next day, we go to the Rio to try to slow down with Pai Gow, which features a lot of pushes. For four hours, we succeed in getting majorly buzzed on free Coronas while keeping the losses (and winnings) down.

“We were leaving that night … and we wanted to hit the Hard Rock before we did, cuz I don’t think I’d been before. I wandered around, trying to find something cheap to play (and didn’t), and I returned to find Vu with a big smile on his face at a blackjack table by himself … with like a half-dozen black chips. He made something like $500 in 15 minutes, and as a token of appreciation for being a good luck charm who suggested hitting the Hard Rock, he bought me a hat in the gift shop (this was while I was standing at the back entrance to the casino, which was hosting the afterparty for the Billboard Music Awards, and all these musicians and actors were entering along a velvet rope. A lot of stuff happened that weekend).

“When I kept asking how he could muster the cojones to bet so much money as the pendulum swung wildly between winning and losing, I remember Vu kept saying ‘Human spirit, baby! That’s what it’s all about!’ This became an office mantra.

“So there’s my Vu tales. That might have been the best trip I ever took to Vegas. And I lost about $200.”

As I understood it, Albert’s dad had been in the entertainment business in Saigon, during the war. Running a nightclub, maybe? That may explain his skill at gaming, etc. I think Albert’s dad was something of a rascal, and Albert was a bit of one, too.

A big part of Albert were his sayings. Which he used so often that they became a sort of always-made-us smile patter. Many of which came from Jim Rome. People didn’t get drunk. They “got Moellered”, referring to a college football coach with a drinking problem. “West Coast bias” was his regular commentary on what he thought was Left Coast overreaction to the perceived “East Coast bias.” There was his “fantastic finish” comment, which often came in the opening minutes of any game. Every game. “We’re headed for a fantastic finish!” Mocking TV commentators.

“Hit the eject button” and “Goodnight now” were other things he would say on the way out of the room. “Run that guy!” meant “shut your yap and get out.”

What I remember best is the statement a seemingly serene Albert would trot out at a quiet moment in the middle of any chaotic situation — say, a prep football Friday night, when the stress level was rising exponentially.

Albert calmly would announce, “It’s all falling into place.”

Sort of a “I meant to do that” that always killed us. That some grand scheme was unfolding exactly as we had foreseen it. When, of course, none of these stressful situations ever went according to any plan at all. “All falling into place …” he would say contentedly. It makes me smile even now.

Perhaps the most memorable moment for the full-time edition of Albert, as a writer, was his coverage of the original Winter X Games, at Snow Summit in Big Bear Lake in January of 1997.

The X Games were already a pretty big deal, and now ESPN was branching out with a winter version. We sent Albert up the hill (behind San Bernardino, as it is) to the 7,000-foot mark to cover the event from start to finish, and he did a bang-up job, hitting the perfect pitch between serious reportage and the silliness of it all, such as the ridiculous (but potentially deadly) “modified shovel” racing. He was the guy who broke the story that ESPN didn’t really like Snow Summit, and vice versa, and that the Winter X Games were a one-shot deal for the San Bernardino Mountains.

Also, specially for the Winter X Games, Albert used his middle initial. Which happens to be X. A lot of papers that take themselves seriously wouldn’t allow a reporter to change his byline at a whim, but since it really was his middle initial … he was Albert X. Bui while covering the X Games.

I wish Albert’s coverage had been a year or four later, because it might have made the web and we could read it. Turns out, The Sun was slow to take to the web, and a Google search fails to yield even one slug from all the stories he did. Which is too bad, because he did such a nice job of it.

One other Albert quirk: He may have been the last serious smoker to work in the Sun sports department. He didn’t mind making “food runs” — which normally were assigned to clerks — because it meant he could get outside and have a butt.

A co-worker recalls that “Albert actually came to work wearing Marlboro-emblazoned gear. As in the kind of free clothing you’d get for sending in the equivalent of cancer-stick box tops. We used to tease him, but he loved wearing it.”

Summer of 1997, I think it was, Albert got married. My recollection is that it was a huge event in north Orange County, where the Vietnamese population is dense. If I were invited, I couldn’t go. I think it must have been fun.

The upshot of this is … eventually there was pressure on Albert to get a job that paid more money and didn’t involve driving 50-some miles each way to work.

He now works for an engineering firm in north Orange County. That’s a real job, less likely to disappear — as print journalism pretty much did, within a decade of his departure. He probably did the right thing to go straight sooner rather than later. He has remarried and has two daughters who probably shout “bust that!” when they’re annoyed.

Albert left The Sun on June 6, 1998. That’s the date on his farewell page, anyway. He was a guy who was missed immediately — but remembered fondly, too.