Articles

You may have noticed that
this column has been absent from Just Adventure for several weeks
now. Sorry about that. (Or, for my loyal non-fans, you’re most welcome!)
Basically, I’ve been lying at home trapped under a shelf all this
time without a single useful item in my inventory, desperately searching
through my conversation trees for a dialogue option to say “HELP!!!”,
not realizing until this morning that if I shot the spitball at the
cat it would knock over the phone when it ran out of the room, allowing
me to use my Scroll Of 911 Dialing.

Anyway, on May 18th I drove
down to Miami, partly to sightsee the carjacking aficianados and narcotics
entrepreneuers, and partly to be on the radio show Into Tomorrow With
Dave Graveline to talk about computer games. Randy Sluganski, Just
Adventure’s dictator supreme and custodial supervisor, had invited
me to join him, and I figured the interview would go something like
this:

DAVE GRAVELINE: So, Jeff,
what’s the biggest hurdle the computer adventure game industry needs
to overcome?

ME: Randy’s face!

[Uproarious laughter
fills the studio. Dave and I exchange high-fives.]

DAVE: Heh heh, you can’t
buy that kind of funny in a store, let me tell you. So, Randy, same
question.

RANDY: Uh…Jeff’s face?

[A hush falls over
the studio. Dave shakes his head sadly.]

DAVE: Pretty lame, Sluganski.

[Several stagehands
drag Randy out of the studio. The sounds of baseball bats and steel-heeled
boots are heard outside.]

So I was all set to relax
and have some fun. But then I got another e-mail from Randy that sent
a chill down my spine and terrified me to the very core of my being:

“Make sure you
bone up on current games to make yourself look intelligent.”

My wonderful fantasy, destroyed!
I understand that there may be cultural differences involved, but
where I come from we warn people that they’re expected to know what
the hell they’re talking about BEFORE we invite them to be a guest
on a national radio show. So I had to do some emergency research.
I loaded up on computer and video games magazines and demo discs and
spent a few days learning about the latest releases.

NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO ARE
SYMPATHETIC TO YOUR PLIGHT WHEN YOU ARE FORCED TO SPEND A FEW DAYS
RESEARCHING COMPUTER GAMES: Zero (0).

Finally I was on my way
to Miami, confident that my hours of dedicated research would be forgotten
approximately three seconds before the show started. Randy and I met
at the World’s Most Crowded Denny’s for lunch, where I ordered chicken
strips after determining that it was the meal least likely to be regurgitated
upon Dave Graveline in my state of stomach-twisting panic. We told
the waitress that we were going to be on a radio show and she seemed
impressed, although she probably thought that we were going to be
on Bubba the Love Sponge.

We got to the studio at
2:30 and watched Dave and his cronies do the last half-hour of tech
news, while I realized that all of my research had leaked out of my
brain twenty-nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds sooner than anticipated.
I figured that the show was going to go something like this:

DAVE: So, Jeff, what’s
the biggest hurdle the computer adventure game industry needs to overcome?

ME: Uh…uh…uh…uhhhhhhhhh…uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…

DAVE: Answer the question,
you wretched fool!

ME: I can’t! I know nothing!
I’m a computer game poseur! [Disgusting sound effect.]

DAVE: I guess we should
shut off the webcam for a while.

Then it was 3:00. Randy
and I took our places and the show began. I have to admit that I was
pretty nervous about filling two hours, but I needn’t have worried,
since a two-hour radio show contains three-and-a-half hours of commercials.
We also had several call-in guests, and I came up with delightfully
witty comments to make to each of them, although not until after they’d
already hung up.

Many of the questions were
related directly to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which I was
unable to attend due to a prior commitment and a lack of funds and
a fear of colorful lights and a lifetime ban due to the corset incident
of ’97, so Randy handled those. I expressed my regret for bashing
the Survivor computer game in this column by bashing it on national
radio, defended the use of real-time decision making in Broken Sword
III (so if this game sucks, it’s all my fault, and I apologize), and
wisely avoided any sort of follow-up to Randy’s “size doesn’t
matter” comment.

I brought in copies of
my novels Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary) and
Single White Psychopath Seeks Same to be given away to forever
grateful listeners, and Dave mentioned the titles and my website (http://www.jeffstrand.com)
numerous times during the show. He also said that you should visit
my website frequently and buy my books frequently. I told him that
his shameless promotion was a bit distasteful, and he told me to shut
up, and then he said that if you didn’t buy my books he’d spray-paint
a bunny rabbit.

Finally, the show ended,
the hounds were released, and Randy and I left the studio. His wife
called him on his cell phone and yelled at him for the “size
doesn’t matter” comment. We exchanged tearful goodbyes, vowed
to meet again…someday…and then parted ways.

On the way home, my wife
and I stopped to get information on the Skunk Ape Festival coming
up in June, but that’s another story.

If you missed the May 18th
edition of Into Tomorrow With Dave Graveline, it has been
archived for your listening ecstasy in a one-hour version that’s probably
missing all of the parts where I talk. I would listen to it, but as
long as I don’t I can live the fantasy that I didn’t sound like a
gargantuan goober. You can also see photos of Randy and I looking
like a pair-o-geeks. Just head on over to http://www.graveline.com/.