Anyone who knows me via Facebook or, well, just knows me, will probably not be even a little bit surprised to hear that the semi-frantic hunt is on for a new job. It’s been made official to those of us who pushed the buttons that run the ads (and make the money) at the Fort Smith teevee station have been given a firm drop-dead date after which our services will no longer be needed. That date is Friday, October 7th. … Read more
It’s almost certainly not news to anyone here that Apple co-founder (and Pixar investment angel) Steve Jobs has died. I’m pretty confident that I don’t need to explain the guy’s background.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of his business practices, but it’d be nigh-on impossible for me to try to deny the huge influence Jobs (and Steve Wozniak) have had in my life.
My first computer was an Apple II clone. Okay, maybe that didn’t feed any money into Jobs’ bank account at the time – at least not until Apple sued Franklin and the other clonemakers – but the thing’s lifeblood was Apple II software. I learned to program BASIC and some machine code on an Apple II. I was convinced I was going to start cranking out games on that machine.
As it so happens, I also discovered bulletin board systems on an Apple II, and that’s why you’re reading this here, because that fascination – with reaching out and writing stuff that other folks could read – can be followed straight to the front door of this web site, whose oldest content started out as a series of files handed from BBS to BBS. All written, at least at first, on an Apple II (or a similar facsimile thereof).
During some of my most troubled teenage years, games like Ultima IV and Project Space Station occupied large swaths of my time and kept me out of trouble that I could’ve been getting into at that time (heaven knows I didn’t exactly have a strong parental influence guiding me at the time). Those were made for the Apple (and run by my trusty Franklin ACE) too. Then there was a very early desktop publishing program, The Newsroom, which helped me to further my interest in writing for print. Both my copy of The Newsroom at home and the one at school, ran on an Apple II.
Eventually time, and the diminishing availability of software, caught up with me and I reluctantly retired my Franklin ACEs from active duty and started writing my stuff on a PC instead. Only it was my stepmother’s PC and, as she commonly did, she let me use it and then yanked it out from under me just to cause me grief. All she really did was make me shrug and go back to writing the early LogBook files on a machine compatible with an Apple II.
Ten years ago this time, I was producing TV spots on a Mac-based Avid system, and was cursing its incessant ability to take forever to render, or just completely crash. Let’s skip the Mac. It wasn’t my friend.
The Android tablet that travels with me everywhere is not an Apple product. I’m consistent, if nothing else: it’s kind of like the modern day equivalent to the Franklin ACE. It’s also something that I’m sure nobody would’ve bothered to make if they weren’t trying to get the budget-minded portion of the market for Apple’s iPad. I use it… a lot. I’ve passed on the iPhone revolution, and I sat out several rounds of iPod in favor of a cranky old minidisc player and, more recently, the aforementioned tablet, but one would have to be perilously close to the crazy end of the scale to deny the huge cultural impact of those products. As Variety.com noted, the iTunes Store virtually single-handedly created the paid digital content market at a time when internet piracy was running rampant and outstripping the studios’ and labels’ ability to keep up (let alone comprehend) the changes taking place around them on the media landscape.
Oh, and my kid loves the Toy Story movies. Jobs brokered the deals that made those happen, too, having bought Pixar from George Lucas when Lucas needed a cash infusion in order to – and let’s be honest here – avoid feeling any impact whatsoever from a massive divorce settlement.
Now, to be sure, the hardware that made the Apple II happen was Steve Wozniak’s invention, and the design of the iPod/iPad/iPhone/iEtc. was driven by guidelines laid out and fiercely championed by Jobs, but he didn’t create the machines in either case. Jobs’ genius was that he could stride out into the middle of the American consumer landscape and convince us that, yes, we need personal computers in our homes, and they might as well be Apple IIs. Yes, you need a personal digital music device to replace your CD Walkman, and here’s the iPod. Yes, you need a phone that will grow tendrils that intersect every possible part of your life. Yes, those little flatscreen touchscreen computers they had on Star Trek: The Next Generation? Let’s move the timetable on those up from the 24th century to rightaboutnow. And, oh, by the way, you need one.”
He may well be the most successful carnival barker in history, because everything that Jobs’ company has cranked out since the introduction of the iPod, we’ve needed. Considering how ubiquitous everything since the ‘Pod has become, the man either had a deal with the devil, or he was a stark raving mad genius.
My money’s on the latter. Thanks for being a stark raving mad genius, Steve Jobs. Look at you. You went and changed the world. You made geeks out of everyone, even the folks who swore up and down that they’d never become geeks. And speaking as a fellow nerd… that is the sweetest revenge.
(Tapped out on the onscreen keyboard of my decidedly non-iPad tablet.)… Read more
The Game Doctor is out.
One of the founders of Electronic Games Magazine, the very first publication devoted entirely to video games and computer games, Bill Kunkel and his cohorts Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley created the field of video game journalism, at a time when no publisher thought an entire magazine could be devoted to a topic and support itself with both advertising and subscriptions. Electronic Games Magazine managed to prove them wrong, and Katz, Kunkel & Worley were suddenly on the ground floor of a whole new field of entertainment journalism. Oft-imitated by copycat publications that occasionally managed to look cooler but never quite read like they were written by the Katz/Kunkel/Worley team, Electronic Games was suddenly making its publisher a boatload of money. As with the rest of the video game industry, it flamed out in the mid-1980s, mired down by indecision on the publisher’s part on whether or not to ride out the apparent crash of the “fad” industry on whose coattails it rode. Its three founders moved on to pastures new. Bill Kunkel eventually moved on to a whole new field of publication, getting aboard the strategy guide train when the getting was good.
It would be a disservice to imply that Bill’s entire career was wrapped up in video game journalism. He had already done seminal work in other areas of entertainment reporting that dwelled, like Electronic Games, in areas that no publisher would’ve thought profitable – until he proved them otherwise. He had covered professional and semi-pro wrestling, and written comics in the company of some of the greats in that industry, among other things.
Of course, it was Electronic Games that I latched onto as a kid, making its debut when I was almost ten years old and had come down with a bad case of Pac-Man Fever. The writing in EG was funny, to-the-point, and called a spade a spade. You could trust the opinions in those pages. The art direction was near-legendary, with incredible painted artwork depicting scenes that the games’ own graphics weren’t quite up to showing us yet. (The art department also came up with that nifty E-and-G-in-a-circle logo that I misappropriated back then, since it happened to be my initials, and continue to “borrow” now. In case you’d missed it somehow.) To put it mildly, I was in love. I still maintain to this day that, somewhere between Electronic Games, Starlog Magazine, Douglas Adams and some Harlan Ellison books I had as a kid, I learned more about how to write than I ever have in any journalism or creative writing course I ever took at any level of my education.
It didn’t ever even occur to me that I’d have a chance to thank Bill personally for his part in that. I just went about my business writing for print, the web and broadcast, eventually winding up as one of the frequent-flyer freelancers for Classic Gamer Magazine about a decade ago. (Indeed, there was one issue where apparently there were a couple of complaints that I had written too much of the issue. Oops.) It was understood by everyone on the staff of Classic Gamer that we were trying to evoke a little something of the “feel” of the long-defunct Electronic Games – unapologetically so.
To my amazement, our editor-in-chief, Chris Cavanaugh, made contact with Bill Kunkel himself and got the man himself to critique our little magazine. I went back to dig up the e-mail that Chris forwarded to me to see exactly what was said that made my day back in early 2001:
…on first look, my favorite piece was Earl Green’s superb overview of
the Odyssey2.
Not to toot my own horn – and to be fair, there was a fairly even-handed critique of my article to follow – but I’m not sure it’s even possible to get better validation than that from someone whose writing I looked up to with intense admiration from a very young age.
Oh, but it gets better. A couple of years later at the 2003 Classic Gaming Expo, I was lucky enough to win a drawing to hang out and dine with the special guests (i.e. the ones who we were all paying to show up and hear from) the night before the show actually started. There was an open bar shortly before a really great meal – the kind you spend the rest of the weekend recovering from – and I did my best to blend into the wallpaper. I wasn’t even in the industry. What in the world would I have to say to these guys? Fortunately, the feeling wasn’t mutual: Steve Woita got me out of hiding and took me around to introduce me to everyone else in the room. Finally, Chris Cavanaugh made sure I was introduced to Bill, who stunned me by remembering exactly who I was and what I’d written (keep in mind, this was two years after Bill’s critique of Classic Gamer Magazine), and insisted that I join him at his table for dinner, where we were easily the most boisterous table for the entire evening. Every year that I was able to make it to CGE after that, there was no question and there wasn’t even time for me to ask permission – it was just assumed I’d be hanging out at Bill’s table year after year (though I don’t think were ever got around to quieting down). And sure enough, I did.
Nobody – nobody – could tell a story like Bill. When he later put some of his best anecdotes in print in Confessions Of The Game Doctor (Rolenta Press, 2005), my only beef was that the book could’ve been twice as long – and it should’ve been an audiobook, because the only thing better than reading about Bill’s misadventures in the industry was hearing him tell those stories personally. Here’s a pretty good example of Bill preserving the oral history of the early video game industry, as he read a chapter of his then-upcoming book at CGE 2005:
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.media/phosphor/about/cge05/media/kunkelcge01.mp3,https://www.thelogbook.media/phosphor/about/cge05/media/kunkelcge02.mp3,https://www.thelogbook.media/phosphor/about/cge05/media/kunkelcge03.mp3,https://www.thelogbook.media/phosphor/about/cge05/media/kunkelcge04.mp3,https://www.thelogbook.media/phosphor/about/cge05/media/kunkelcge05.mp3]I wish I could pass along some of the stories from the CGE dinner table discussions, but I’m not sure I could. Not that there was any priveleged information exchanged, but I couldn’t do justice to the way Bill told his own stories.
They say you should never meet your heroes. I think you should, on the off chance that they’re as cool as Bill Kunkel. As starstruck as I was initially, it quickly dawned on my that he was as much a fan of my work as I was of his. He was as interested in hearing about my unlikely adventures (namely the horses) as I was about his. Once we got that obstacle out of the way, he was more than just a childhood idol. He was just my friend, Bill Kunkel. And this is in no way a name-drop on my part: everyone who approached him at Classic Gaming Expo, or e-mailed him out of the blue, seemed to have the same experience. Bill was just Bill.
Bill Kunkel died unexpectedly this weekend at his home. That particular piece of news is still busy kicking me in the gut with steel-toed boots. I wish our paths had crossed sooner and that we’d had more time, but I’m proud – and I consider myself lucky – to have had the mutual friendship that we had. I have yet to see a tribute from anyone who doesn’t feel that way about Bill. He’ll be keenly missed.… Read more
With the whole credit downgrade debt doom business in the news lately, I’ve repeatedly seen the following phrase in print, on TV (in on-screen graphics and closed captioning) and on the web:
“unchartered territory”
…which makes no sense. It’s uncharted territory. It hasn’t been charted. It hasn’t been mapped. We don’t know where we’re going, and we don’t know what’s next. Uncharted.
In this context, “unchartered” makes no sense.
Really, so much about this whole situation makes no sense. But at least I can get my head around using the right word in an attempt to land somewhere in the same county and/or parish with the right meaning.… Read more
I had originally started writing quite a rant about the attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords, and the pointless murder of six other people who just happened to be nearby. But then I realized that I was spending whole paragraphs saying what could be better said with less flowery language. So here goes. … Read more
You might just have noticed that I’ve been using ye old blawg the past few days. I have my reasons for this. I’m not going to claim that any of them are terribly valid, but follow along in the little book here and turn the page when you hear the funky sound effect. … Read more
Just a little something to consider before heading to the polls. … Read more
The true (but necessarily vague) tale of the time I had to sue someone for stealing from theLogBook.com. 😯 Also included: more weird radio stories, waterproof droids and… a cat on crack.
Listen here:
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/10292010-ohpoopy.mp3]
Right-click here and “save as” to save to your hard drive or MP3 player; leave feedback with this post or in the forums.… Read more
Sorry about the complete and utter silence here lately – I haven’t had a lot to say. For those who weren’t aware, my dad passed away on March 29th and the wind has been let out of my sails a bit. I’m not going to claim any kind of great emotional trauma here – this is something that had been on the horizon for something like the last six months or so. And honestly, on a great many levels… I’m glad for him. Relieved. He’s free of a body that was increasingly trying to betray him, he’s free of pain, and he’s free of a situation that he was only going to escape feet-first. (Those who know what I’m referring to there will know what I’m referring to there; those who don’t… well, just understand it’s not something I’m going to blab or blog about out in the open.) … Read more
I almost backed into someone in a parking lot today – yay blind spot. When they started laying on the horn, I came to a dead stop at least two feet away from them. I know that even a slow-moving car in reverse can cover two feet pretty quickly, but the point is: contact was not made.
Well, not physical contact. The driver leaned out her window and started trying to contact me verbally immediately. I decided to put it in drive and just pull away.
She then pulled up alongside me at the point where the parking lot exits out onto the street, technically blocking the incoming lane so she could roll down her passenger side window and bellow at me. I finally decided I’d say a word to her. The moment my window opened even a little, all I was hearing over and over was “YOU ALMOST HIT ME! YOU ALMOST HIT ME!”
I waved – with all five fingers extended, I might add – and said “Sorry.”
“BUT YOU ALMOST HIT ME!” the other driver said, somewhere between angry and tearful.
“ALMOST SUE ME!” I shouted back with a shrug. I was more amused than genuinely angry.
For all I know, this woman has a nervous disorder, or panic attacks, or all of the above. I didn’t want to be any ruder than that. Then she waved at me – with just the one finger – and I realized that there was no disorder in play beyond her merely being an asshole.
What is it about our culture that we just love our little traumas? Mountains are tearfully made out of molehills on an annoyingly regular basis. Personally, I think it’s got not just a little to do with weepy “confessional” scenes built into nearly every “reality” TV show on the air right now. But the explanation on the ground floor is probably a lot simpler: it’s tied in, intensely, with the sense of entitlement-to-everything that pervades our culture even more deeply than the reality TV disease.
I think some people love their trauma and/or drama because then maybe folks will have to be nice to them, materially or otherwise, because in their world, the cosmic scales have to be restored to some kind of balance. I hate to tell them, but the universe doesn’t work like that. Despite our torted-up (as opposed to tarted-up) legal system which seems to reinforce the opposite view. Worse yet, it lessens the plight of those who really have been traumatized and those who really have been wronged. It’s like living in a village where every other boy is crying wolf while, on the outskirts of town, one boy really is being eaten by a wolf – but since he didn’t make enough noise to cut through the clutter, nobody notices and nobody helps.
This condition urgently needs curing. Please discuss.… Read more