Happy Memorial Day, everyone.
Jeanette got Batman and Superman pajamas for the boys. They love them. After my last post I realize the world may be going to hell, but I'll be damned if MINE is. Thanks to Jerry Siegel, Joe Schuster, and Bob Kane and Bill Finger for creating these cultural mainstays that we all look up to.
Sucks that one of NBC's popular television programs decided to steal the title for this particular section of CS. Ah well, if we inspire, we inspire. What can ya do.
I had two best men at my wedding. One was Jason Emery, who needs no further introduction. The other was the ultra cool guy pictured here: Aaron Rudkin.
Aaron lived on the same street as I did in Annapolis, Maryland. His family moved here and there but are now all settled in San Diego. Lucky for me, I'm not that far away. I was able to be a groomsman at his wedding and the photo is the rehearsal. Not more than six months ago he was hitched to the lovely Kaitlyn Chau. I couldn't be happier for him.
Enough of the boring background. This guy is about the best IT professional I've met, and it isn't because he knows the latest RFID and server tech (although hell, he just might). It's because he instilled a philosophy of customer service many of us would do well to emulate. On the phone one day he explained "the guy had a problem I couldn't solve, but I told him to hang on while I found someone who could solve it." He didn't just give up. He was tenacious. I've heard stories of IT group directors who might as well be shift managers at McDonalds in terms of their actual managerial and people "skills", and his infamous joke, walking into work early one morning saying "Oh man, am I feeling scuzzy... and I'm NOT talking about the Adaptec!" At which the entire staff bursts into screaming fits of laughter.
Aaron also has a sense of humor second to none, and an uncanny knack for analyzing film and TV, extracting funny things hidden in the script or plot. Time to quote him, and write the first genuinely funny thing in CS history:
In Superman II there is a scene where Lex Luthor is attempting to join forces with General Zod, Non, and Ursa; the Krypton criminals, to fight Superman. Luthor explains: "he is... just one. Where you are... three!" Non then lets out an irritated low growl, to which Luthor nervously responds "Or four if you count him twice."
There are two possible reasons for Non's primitive interjection. One, Nom, under any circumstances, does not like being referred to as only one person. Two, the growl was completely random, which makes even less sense than the first reason. So why the growl?
I have to admit the first time I read that I couldn't stop laughing. Go see the movie and, sure enough, the big lug growls, and you can't help but wonder what kind of crack the script writer was smoking when they put that one in.
Aaron and I used to spend time at many a bar in Annapolis talking of life, culture, women (of course) and sheer insanity. We played Doom 2 deathmatch and his prowess was only matched by a dozen or so. In fact, he wiped the floor with poor John Romero in a Doom 2 deathmatch at his bachelor party (thanks again to Romero for obliging, I still owe him a case of champagne). If anything John had Aaron beat for smacktalk that night. John was on speakerphone with us during the match and after being killed a little too quickly after a respawn, he burst out "Fuck that lucky ass bullshit shot!" Awesome.
We also quote Red Dwarf and Black Adder constantly along with some other favorite films:
Deep Cover
Deathtrap
Commando
The Fugitive
Cracking Up
Spinal Tap
Basic Instinct
The Punisher (yes, the Dolph Lundgren version)
Iron Eagle
I could honestly go on forever, but time is short, and his charm can best be communicated through an interview, which will be provided in a post coming soon to an MP3 player near you.
To sum up, they just don't make them like this anymore, and I'm glad through life's tribulations that we are still keeping in touch and enjoying (however rarely) the occaisional cigar.
As a preliminary, there are fires burning in Southern California, but you all know that already. This is a sincere thank you to the firefighters who are working so hard, being injured and dying to save lives and property, and a sincere "you suck" to the many sites that can't seem to keep their facts straight, most notably KPBS' Google Mashup, praised by InfoWeek who of course have no concept of in depth research because, understandably, there's just too much to cover too fast. The Fire Map in question makes it appear as though half the state is actively on fire. This is not the case. Red areas are "burned" areas but not necessarily actively burning. In all seriousness, next time, please, be sure to note that. It is easy to incite panic that way. As today's Hero would say: "Onto the post!"
Jason Christopher Emery. The legend.
A friend of mine since the third grade, it's hard to know where to begin. What makes him a hero is:
A funny little anecdote was that at Massanutten Jason's mother, Jason and myself attended a happy hour. A game was played there where you had to put on a name tag (on your back) and the people at your table had to give you hints as to who it was without actually telling you the name. Jason was Bruce Springsteen, and our first hint was "Born in the USA". He had no idea who we were talking about. "Dancing in the Dark" yielded no success either. He had actually never heard of the singer, and mind you, this was only two or so years after those hits had topped the charts.
He pronounced Beret "ferret", and Evangelist "Evan-Gullist". The quirks of a slightly eccentric yet incredibly imaginative mind.
In this deplorable camera phone picture is Rob Atesalp handing me a check. Last week he bought a few items of old gear from the Midway Home Entertainment Sound Studio. Rob is a fascinating hero for several reasons:
Rob began doing music and sound effects for Sierra On-Line in 1989, the most notable games being Sorcerian, Police Quest 3 and Space Quest 4, all of which I played and enjoyed. In fact, when I got a Roland MT-32 sound module, his name is indicated in the instrument panel as he did custom instrument conversion on numerous games.
After Sierra, Rob went to Midway. Yes, the same Midway I'm working at now. He was audio manager #1 at the office in Mira Mesa, doing SNES and Genesis titles as well as arcade classics such as Offroad Challenge. He is handing me a check for gear that he probably bought for Midway over ten years ago! The irony, eh? Well, Rob is now out of the games biz in the local booming real estate market, but wants to get back in at some point and to help him do so I'm officially proclaiming him a game audio master and posting this interview: Download RobAInterview.mp3 .
In 1990 a game called Wing Commander was released by Origin Systems, a little company I lived up the street from ten years later in Austin, TX. The game sold well over a million copies and is considered one of the finest classic PC space simulation games of all time.
One of the standout features in this game was the music. The soundtrack for the first time tried to be cinematic, as the game itself was very cinematic. Programmer and director Cris Roberts himself has his infamous quote "what I'd really like to do is make movies", which he did years later when the game became a feature film. Amazingly the soundtrack, even on an Adlib soundcard, DID sound cinematic. The melodies were both sweeping and adaptive in the game itself, following every element of the action as though you were in an episode of Battlestar Galactica. It was fun and very impressive at the time.
The team who wrote the music for this was none other than Team Fat, led by George Alistair Sanger, aka "The Fat Man". Don't ask him why he's called The Fat Man when in fact he is not fat. George showed up at GDCs and E3s dressed in a Nudie suit covered with rhinestones. Couple this with cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and you have the industry's first rock star. He really was. Now let's get to the bits you might not already know.
When I first met him it was after a lecture he gave on General MIDI at GDC where, when faced with the boring subject of making General MIDI instruments sound the same across numerous sound cards, he took his pants off to keep the attention of the audience. Afterwards I cornered him about MODs and he was in favor of them being very enthusiastic. His stock went up. When I told him about the great work on Wing Commander his first reaction was "thanks, but if you're talking about all those Alan Silvestri sounding cinematic bits that was pretty much Dave Govett standing right over there." Stock went up again. About thirty incredibly funny and insightful stories about the game and record industries later, plus fun jams and a trip to the driving range, the stock is pretty damn high.
Over the years he has enabled me to get my first editing job, write my first book, write my first game audio column, and go to the most exclusive computer music conference, Project Bar-B-Q. His heart is huge and I'll never be able to repay his kindness. While he is not as in the forefront these days of games, he's making a killing doing slot machine music and is lending some ground breaking knowledge to Multimedia Games' titles with new speaker systems and adaptive soundtracks. He also wrote the second book on video game audio: The Fatman on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness. His cohorts Kevin Phelan and Dave Govett are some of the world's most knowledgeable experts on Gigastudio. I wish him the best and hope he returns to write another Wing Commander. Because I know him fairly well, he'll never do that sort of thing again in the same way, but I'm single minded and nostalgic and can certainly dream.
Joel and Cynthia Brandon are two of the best people I've ever known. Parents are like that, but in this case there's more unique qualities to them that I have come to know as an adult that would fascinate even the harshest of "camp family feel good statement" critics. I didn't grow up listening to popular music. Though I eventually was opened to a new world by switching my radio to a station that played a "Mister Mister" song that I enjoyed, I grew up listening to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Sousa, Gershwin, Scottish pipe bands, Flanders and Swan, Stravinsky, and of course the Smothers Brothers. They had a record of "Cats" and one of Bob Dylan that I remember, but I was taught "serious" music first, at least according to my mother. As such I give credit to this a great deal for my compositional skill, though I consider it a foundation, not the final word in music that deserves respect. I also didn't read much in the way of comics (some, though), I was taught poetry, Shakespeare, and bits of the Bible (my mother would read excerpts from the book of Acts). I didn't watch sitcoms, I watched Britcoms. My father would teach me about oriental culture and my mother would teach European culture. My father would be supportive of my musical efforts with my first synthesizer, and my mother put me in piano lessons as well as church choir, and be proud but skeptical, giving me both satisfaction and a drive to prove myself; a perfect combination. I got the benefits of a classical education and the social training of a gentleman, and hopefully a smattering of writing skills along the way. While I have learned that a great deal of this knowledge is dying, it gives me the benefit of experience from many different sources. Throughout life I would hear such phrases as "all the other kids" and "well, most parents...". Generalizations indicating a sheeplike and stagnant mindset. Who wants to be like "most people"? A foundation of shared and familiar things is good, but it shouldn't permeate one's entire life. I'm glad I was raised differently and wouldn't have it any other way.
Therefore thank you, Mummy and Dad. Thank you for being the source of my creation. Thank you for being kind and patient as well as unusual and off kilter. It is one of my greatest and most constant wishes that I can show you the same love you have given me.
This is a series of articles that will feature those I idolize, either personally or professionally. The first heroes I wish to honor, for giving me the most inspiration in my life, are my wife and son.
Jeanette Monica Eby was a teacher when I first met her, and since then has shown me a completely new way of thinking about everything, from daily activity to music. She inspired me to write my first country song, complete with dobro playing by Cindy Cashdollar (one of the foremost dobro / steel guitar players in the country with five Grammy awards to her credit). She also inspired me to write my first Nat King Cole style ballad. If inspiration like that takes 28 years to come along, it's pretty special.
Little Nicholas inspires me in different ways of course, but through him I've written the greatest soundtrack of my career: Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows. An inspiration from someone that shows you your childhood again can't be measured. Plus, with him around it's constant entertainment. He's always doing something either funny or surprisingly intelligent.
Finally there's the intangible factor: what someone does to you when you just look at them. How to explain it? I look at Nicholas and I find a new reason to love him each time. I look at Jeanette and the same thing happens. Putting that into a bottle and selling it is going to make someone very rich.
Next Heroes entry: Joel and Cynthia Brandon.
