(( ... continued ))
As it turned out, all we needed were a few cheesy "McDonalds Drive Thru" headsets, a nearby computer and a penchant to ramble. He explained that we would try to plan out a thing or two to discuss and hopefully share our AWESOME gaming experiences and wisdom with listeners.
.... not that we believed there would be any.
So next week, we sat there with a circa 1937 microphone, enough cables and wiring to gag a mule and a plan. The plan consisted of Chris pointing at people and giving them frantic gestures to get them to pipe up and contribute.
Well, that in itself isn't very interesting, but what IS interesting is that I LOVED IT! I was instantly our Podcast's #1 fan. I started calling myself "The Shark" just because it sounded tough, mysterious and.... well.... sharky!!
Pretty soon I was bogarting the microphone with the best of them. We talked about what games we were playing, how we created characters, why we gamed, women, booze, movies and dang near everything that popped into our heads! We recorded these for ourselves, but soon realized that people were listening to us.
....Wow.
People started writing to us asking questions, requesting advice, and just overall wanting to contribute to the podcast. To handle all of this, Chris built a website and forums for us.. Now people could interact with us directly. To me, this was the single coolest thing I'd ever been a part of.. I was experiencing an almost perpetual multimediagasm!
I still experience the ticklepee-pees just thinking about some of the cool folks we interacted with on a regular basis. Brilliant people. Creative people. Down to Earth people.. People from across the world (we had listeners in Denmark and Eastern Europe... no kidding!) I still run into some of these people even now.
However, all good things must end. Scheduling conflicts, internal strife, divorce and other factors slowly prevented us from getting together and podcasting. Our listeners slowly drifted away to look for more active Podcasts, and we just kind of stopped. There was no speech given, no eulogies read... just silence.
But, it's STILL in there.. It's an itch under my skin that I can't figure out how to scratch. It's a nagging in the back of my mind... "Jeez, that would be awesome to 'Cast about.." I wonder what our listeners are listening too right now, and if I'd enjoy it too..
But most of all, I just wanted to cram as much of life into my mouth at once as possible...
RIP, Starting Now.
PS - Thanks to Miked! for inspiring me to reminisce about the show..
1 comment:
Your post gives me that sickening hope of a revival of the podcast. Kind of like the hopes of Firefly returning, the carrot dangles just enough for all hopes to be dashed!
I always felt bad that I came late to the show and never interacted on the boards. If I recall correctly by the time I started reading the forums the popular topic was "Where's the new podcast?". Didn't concern me too much at the time as I was plowing through the entire run of shows on my iPod, but it was unfortunate when I discovered that the forums were gone... as you said with no speech or eulogy.
Personally I could have gone for a dramatic speech. ;)
I don't want to pester you with questions about something in the past you did for fun (remembering to not look The Shark directly in the eye), but as a fan of the show, I wonder if you still game on a regular basis and maybe just the podcast went away? If so it would be cool to hear about gaming from you in some form. Don't know if this blog is the forum for that or what your intentions are with it.
As far as what podcasts this former listener moved on to, I guess the biggest compliment I can give you guys is that I didn't. At least not gaming podcasts. I tried a few, but I think like with real-life gaming groups themselves, you can't just enjoy the game itself (or in this case the game topic on the 'cast)... you have to enjoy the company of the people. Starting Now for me just had interesting people to go along with the gaming talk, and the gaming talk is easy to find on the internet, but it's not always people I want to hang out with in my headphones.
Perhaps you could point out a few gaming podcasts you enjoy? As of right now I pretty much keep it baseball and LOST 'casts.
But for now the old Starting Now episodes are still just as entertaining, especially considering that it was with the show that I was pointed in the direction of Eberron. We just started our Eberron campaign in earnest this past few months, and we have you all to thank for that. Perhaps this is why I can listen to the podcasts repeatedly as the first time around I really had no idea what references were being made when it came to the setting.
Thanks for the post on the show!
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