Atari: Game Over

I spent the morning unexpectedly entralled by Atari: Game Over (2014), streaming now on Netflix, and also available in pieces on Youtube. 

The Atari 2600 gaming console game out in 1977; I was 16 years old. I spent many hours in the local arcade (Framingham's Fun and Games, first opened in '74, and still around in an evolved form). And though my gaming days were relatively short-lived (the last game console I've owned was a Colecovision; I never really stayed involved as the industry morphed through PC, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, Xbox, etc.), as a young soon-to-be engineer who spent some time in college and in the workplace hard-coding micro-processors, Atari video games were still my first taste of geekery. My family owned a 2600; my younger brother Kevin (now a programmer / database geek himself) had an Atari 400 computer (with that membrane keyboard).

The documentary is kind of remarkable. It orbits two stories: an individual obsessed with the urban legend that millions of Atari game cartridges of ET: The Extraterristrial were buried in an Alamagordo, NM landfill. And the programmer, Howard Scott Warshaw, who created the ET videogame in five weeks at the behest of Atari management, trying to leverage a $22M investment in the game rights before the Xmas season.  When ET tanked (it was reportedly too difficult to play), Howard's career, and the first videogame bubble led by Atari, burst.

The film is technically excellent - interweaving these two stories, abetted by interviews with many of the key players - Warner Brothers executives, Nolan Bushnell of Atari, Atari programmers, and other public figures who have been touched by the games. There's a little bit of playfulness around "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (the movie, and also a successful 2600 game also designed by Warshaw) - comparing the search for the buried games to the search for the lost ark, and a very familiar closing shot....

When the urban archeologists finally get close to finding video game evidence, the dig has become a happening, with video game fans, Warshaw, and others flocking to the desert landfill site. And watching Warshaw (now a psychotherapist) get choked up, first as he visits the site of the Atari headquarters for the first time in 30 years, and then at the landfill, was quite moving.

Burger Prank Foiled

 The preliminary version (pretty much as told, with some things I forgot) at last night's edition of "The Mouth" at the Mark Twain House.  Thanks to Chion Wolf and Jacques Lamarre for hosting. The theme of last night's story-telling was "I Fought the Law: Encounters with law Enforcement".

An ironic twist - as I sat down, the story-teller sitting next to me, leaned over and whispered "That would not happen to be Marian High School, would it?" - turns out he grew up in Framingham and graduated from North High School in 1978. Small world!

In February of 1979, the band A Taste of Honey won the Best New artist Grammy Award on the strength of their hit “Boogie Oogie Oogie”.

In March of that year, the Three Mile Island nuclear plant melted down. In April, my father passed away after many years of struggling with cardio-vascular disease.

In June, I graduated from high school, and in August of that year – I was arrested.

But it all started with the Grammy Awards. “A Taste of Honey” had won the Best New Artist award that year, grabbing it away from our beloved favorites “The Cars”.   My friend Jim, the bass player of our high school basement rock band, with aspirations of making radical art, concocted a bit of social and cultural protest for this offense. We’d spray paint a Rolling Stones tongue, along with the tag “CARS REVENGE” on the billboard of radio station KISS 108, the local disco station whose advertising featured a pair of lips. The billboard he had identified was up three stories, on a factory alongside, and clearly visible from, the Massachusetts Turnpike.

So one night, a hand-picked group of friends drove in to Boston. We were able to get into the factory parking lot easily enough, and the building was designed in such a way that the three stories could be climbed one floor at a time. We each had been assigned our jobs – Jim did the painting, football lineman Kevin hoisted Jim on his shoulders, Mike (with his 70’s era Dodge Charger that you could sit five across) drove, one of the local track stars climbed the building and threw down a rope for the others. I think my job was to be nervous about it all and keep an eye out for the cops.

A lot could have gone wrong (not the least of which was Jim or Kevin falling off the sign) but nothing did – and we succeeded that night in our mission. No cops.

That evening gave birth to “The Maneuvers” – our code word for going out at night with an eye to making some sort of mild vandalism or mischief. I don’t remember all of the things we did that year – some were I am sure directed at or designed to impress classmates or fast food coworkers - although I do remember breaking into the Framingham State College gymnasium, and stealing a large plywood hand painted sign that said “The Pit” - the nickname for their student section – in order to place it atop the covered patio of the smoking area of my catholic high school, known somewhat less officially as “The Pit”. 

Now, that summer, we had graduated from high school and were heading out for college, and decided to enjoy one more evening of mischief. The goal that night was street signs – so we set out in Jim’s family ranch wagon, a cooler full of beer in the “hole” in the way back. We grabbed a lot of signs that night – we got our names, the names of friends. We had it down to a science – a rubber mallet, one of us climbed up on another’s back and gave the sign a couple of whacks – and it was off. We stowed the signs in the “way back” hole, and continued on.

Jim had a bigger catch in mind that night – we were going to grab a “Now Entering Framingham” sign. And we did indeed – this time with the aid of a ratchet set (there were a lot of mounting bolts) and a bit more time. We put that in the back of the wagon and set off back for Jim’s house. En route, we passed an “A frame” sign outside of a local burger joint, and one of us (possibly me, although it might have been any of us) suggested we swipe that sign and put it in front of the local McDonald’s, where a couple of us worked that year.

So after dropping the big sign off (but still with the street signs and beer in the hole), we headed back for the burger sign. Should be a piece of cake, park, swipe, drive away.

Unbeknownst to us, the Framingham Police were staking out the bank nearby. And, as one of the cops later reported, they noticed us and said “what the BLEEP are those kids up to?” Within seconds, we were busted.

Now, we were all “good kids” from the local catholic high school, and we were scared to death – we answered the cops questions, we were polite and suitably cowed. Well, except for Jim, who started to get mouthy with the cops. When the cops asked for help pulling the sign out of the car, Jim resisted “get it out yourself”, but I hissed “get over there” thinking about the storage hole full of purloined street signs, and the cooler full of beer, that I did *not* want the cops finding. As I remember it, the cooler was an inch taller than the storage home, and the door did not close fully. Even though I was not driving and it was not my car, I was also the only 18 year old (the legal drinking age back then) in a car full of 17 year olds, and all I could think of was 5 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor charge.

But, the cops never checked the car, we put the sign back, and they let us park Jim’s car in the restaurant lot while they took us to the station.

Here’s what I remember from the arrest:

1.  I was wearing a red I SURVIVED THREE MILE ISLAND tee shirt. The nuclear accident had happened that March; my father had died that April. So when my family went down to Lancaster PA to bury Dad, I somehow managed to pick up a tee shirt. Somewhere in the bowels of the Framingham PD is a booking photo of me with this dumb shirt.
2. The cop taking my fingerprints was making small talk, and when he found out I was going to Worcester Polytechnic Institute that fall, was all excited because his brother went there, and I really ought to look him up if I need anything. Um, how about if you just let me go right now?
3. Jim seemed to enjoy the experience, swinging on the bars in his cell, and castigating the cops for taking his shoelaces and belt “I’m gonna hang myself over a sign? Come on!?”

Amazingly, we did not have to call out parents - we called a friend who had gotten paid that day and had enough cash to bail us out; we had to go to court the next day. I remember standing at my mom’s bedside that next morning “Mom….I need to talk to you about something”. Here she is, a widow less than four months, and already her kids are starting the long slide towards juvenile delinquency, starting with her oldest.

And to our great fortune, one of our party that night (who I’ll call J. Worthington Smythe III, not his real name which was a hell of a lot more ostentatious) was destined for Holy Cross, ROTC, law school, the bar and with any luck a career in politics, and had a father who had taken the same route. An arrest record on J. Worthington’s permanent file would NOT do – so J. Worthington II got the charges dropped to a misdemeanor, gtot the case nolo’d and had the records sealed – we had to pay a fine but no conviction record. Although to be honest, I’ve told some version of the story in job interviews. It’s the sort of “show me you have character” story that works in the engineering field.

  

And that weekend, in small, page 16 news tidbit about 2 column inches long, we made the paper: BURGER PRANK FOILED, with all of our names (and our college destinations!)  Jim cut it out, and taped it up in his bedroom. I would not be surprised if he still has it…

Reunion

Last evening was an overdue (31) reunion of the Marian High School class of 1979.

We've been reuniting sporadically over the years. 5 and 10, surely. Not sure if we had a 15 - if so I did not make it. We did a big deal at 20 (I was in attendance, probably right on the cusp of my big life change). And now here we are at 31. Can it have been that long?

A reasonable turn-out, 45 or so pre-registered out of a class of 160 and a few dropped in, but that (I think) includes a handful of spouses and SOs. Kudos to the folks who planned this (Dawne, Eileen, Jacqui....you rock!). It was nice to see old friends and schoolmates.

Always a little disappointing regarding who did not show - a lot of what might have passed for my posse (or at least the clump of kids I knew best, by dint of taking similar classes) were absent. Going through the yearbook now - Nancy, Keats, Mary, Jeff, Winifred, Claudette, Joyce, Rich, Kevin, Mike, Andrea, Cheryl, BJ, Maura, Jim, John. All you guys were missed, by me at least.

A few random observations. A couple of my classmates could have walked out of their yearbook photos and into the reunion - Dan, Kevin, Lisa, Marcia - you guys are timeless. Pushing 50 and you look like kids! Others seem to have grown a few inches - almost as if high school was diminishing and somewhere along the line they figured life out and grew into themselves - people you want for friends. Others have aged a bit but still bringing their spirit and energy forward from high school to now. And a handful changed quite a bit - often for the better. The women especially changed hairstyles and fashion, or grew into themselves.

All in all, the class seems to have done very well - lots of kids, interesting careers and lifestyles, lot of great energy. One might suspect a bit of selective filtering (the folks who made a point of coming were happy to be seen) but on the other hand, perhaps those missing have amazing lives that they were not willing to step away from for the reunion. So let's just call us a typical cross-section and say "bravo!"

Although "Most Changed" was not one of the class superlatives to be elected (thanks for trying, organizers!), I nevertheless accrued a significant write-in vote. Kind of hard to top my journey in terms of changes. Tee hee.

A lovely time. Thanks for your kind words everyone. I'll try not to be a stranger going forward.....

Dad

Mom sent an email last night. "APRIL 19 IS DAD'S ANNIVERSARY. PLEASE SAY A PRAYER! LOVE, MOM" - I so often forget, although I often hit a bit of a sad spot this time of year.

April 19, 1979, my father, William Joseph Russell, passed away. He was at (then named) Framingham Union Hospital, in the midst of an angioplasty attempting to repair a heart damaged by a series of heart attacks. He was not yet 45; missing his birthday by a few days - I'm older now than he ever was; if one were to believe in a corporal afterlife where one retained ones age at death, my dad would be my junior when next we met....

It is perhaps indicative of where we were at the time that none of us were at the hospital - Dad had been in and out of the hospital repeatedly over the past year or so; my sister and I had grown used to stopping by to see him after high school (right now the block from the hospital) and later finding him puttering around the house as he recovered. On some level, his infirmity had become an annoyance; we wanted to ignore it and hope it would clear up, and let us get back to our lives. So on some level, this procedure and his passing were just one more thing in a slow but seemingly inevitable slide that we had grown accustomed to.

I remember driving the family in his 1973 AMC Hornet to the hospital to see him - as the eldest child who had just turned 18 myself, I suddenly assumed a heavy mantle of family responsibility; Mom seemed in no condition to drive. At the hospital, I went in to see him; not sure if they kept him alive via machines until we got there or not, but it was clear that he was gone. I had learned well his lessons regarding torquing down on my emotions, and I did not cry even as I stood over my father's lifeless body.

I don't remember a whole lot about the next few days. I remember a little black humor with my family at the funeral home regarding caskets (Dad wouldn't want something too ostentatious, dad won't care, that sort of thing); I remember tucking a guitar pick into Dad's suit pocket; thanking him for my music. I remember a reception following the funeral at the house; not quite an irish wake but with some lightness and spirit. At my graduation a month or so later, mom presented me with a typewriter that she and dad had picked out together.

Not too long afterwards, I left for college, beginning the slow pulling away from family. My brother took over my bedroom soon thereafter and I slept on the couch or an empty bunk bed when I came home for vacations and summer. I kind of missed the mourning and getting used to a house with one less person in it. My family got a dog soon thereafter - Kyla was a mix of Coyote, Labrador, and Samoyed, she was a companion, protector, and friend - and came to live with me in CT in her dotage. I was with her when she died....

Dad has been in my mind to a greater and lesser extent over the years. I think we miss him most at those times of ceremony and ritual - holidays, graduations, weddings, births. Mom has watched over us kids in the years since - at this point she has lived as a single mother and widow much longer than she lived with her husband.

I certainly I have danced with his ghost in my therapy, on the mat, at various retreats, workshops, and ceremonies. I have moved from numbness to anger to grief; from resentment to pity. For many years I assumed I might follow his lead and expected an early death; my various transformations and personal growth has effaced that surety; I feel like I have a lot of life ahead of me. Death has not touched me much in the years since; having taken Dad, the reaper has been mostly silent these many years save for grandparents and an aunt.

Rest in peace, Dad. Miss you and love you. Not sure I have a prayer today, but you remain in memory; tears have been shed.

Glastonbury Kids

Popped over to Cinestudio this afternoon for the premiere of a local film, glastonburykids, by Justin Donais.

Was not really planning to go, but I heard a small piece on Colin McEnroe's show, and drove up that way to check my PO Box and get out of the house before the snow came. When all my likely places to hang out for a few hours came up empty, I remembered the film, and headed over to the Trinity campus.

Pretty interesting and resonant on a few counts.

First, I too was one of those kids who got into trouble young. Not quite so egregious or destructive, but my posse went out on what we called "maneuvers" which was typically some form of minor vandalism with a social, political, or arts purpose. So we (for example) drove in to Boston to spray paint rolling stones lips on a Kiss 108 billboard (the local disco station back in the late 70's) with the words CARS REVENGE, ostensibly a protest of Taste of Honey winning the Best new Artist Grammy over our beloved Cars. That the billboard was three stories up, clearly visible from the Mass Pike, and we needed to scale the building on the outside (through various sub roofs and levels) added to the charm / mystique. For the record, I think I got about two floors up my friend Jim and Kevin did the dirty work.

Another "maneuver" involved breaking in to the local state college gym, stealing the plywood sign that hung over the student section "The Pit" and placing it on the roof of the outside smoking area (also called The Pit) of our high school.

Our final maneuver came the summer following senior year. After a night of sign stealing (mostly road signs with our names) we took a "Now Entering Framingham" sign. En route back from that little escapade we noticed an A-frame sign outside a local (as opposed to national) fast food place; since several of us worked at McD's, we decided it would be funny to grab the sign and put it in front of our restaurant. Unfortunately the police were staking out an adjacent bank watched us (What the heck are those kids doing?) and we were busted.

We spent a night in jail, got booked (the booking officer was all excited I was going to WPI and told me to look up his brother if I needed help there), bailed ourselves out. One of our number that night had a lawyer dad who got the case Nolo'd and closed - we ended up with a few months probation and a fine. Somewhere in the bowels of Framingham Police files there is a mug shot of me with a red "I survived three mile island" tee-shirt. It was written up in the paper - "Burger Prank Foiled" was the headline - and we were damned lucky the cops did not search the car and find the beer or other signs we had pilfered that evening. Stupid kids.

I just remember standing beside my mom's bed that morning to let her know what happened as I headed off to court. My dad had passed away just a few months before and already her worst fears were coming true as her eldest (the smart one) was headed to court. Poor mom!

So, glastonburykids kind of resonated on that line. But in addition, I spent a long year ferrying my mentee back and forth to the same courthouse that the kids in the film went to - as she struggled with an arrest and probation related to a stupid answering machine threat (I believe the exact words were "I'll stab you with a fork in your throat, b*tch") she made to a drag queen from the Polo Club; the DQ's ex boyfriend (who lived in Glastonbury, coincidentally) was dating my mentee. This 19 year old called the cops on a 16 year old high school kid who lived 20 miles away and had no way to even get to Hartford, and the cops arrested her. What a joke.

So I trucked her back and forth to court - first for the initial charge, and later when they picked her up for violating parole (she assumed parole officers could be ignored the same way the school guidance counselors could - she assumed wrong). She spent a night in jail - and I went and bailed her out. So I get where these parents are coming from. I must have spent more than 20 hours in that courthouse over a year.

Back to glastonburykids - good documentary. Interesting to see how these kids of privilege (cell phones, cars, little supervision) were left to roam and get into trouble. Interesting to see how "jackass" style stunts went from stupid to dangerous to criminal. And the film-maker did a nice job of slowly revealing the scope (and criminal nature) of the kids stunts.

The film-maker and 4 of the subjects were there this afternoon. The kids (for the most part) seem like they've got their lives back on track, although interestingly one of the kids NOT busted at the time of the documentary sounded (from his statements after the film) to have gottne in trouble later. So perhaps it was just a matter of time for all of them.