Starting Now... A Few Years Later... PART TWO!

(( ... 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..