Geek Idol
I’ve had few real idols; people of whom I could genuinely say “I want to be like them.”
In my early-to-mid 20s, Ben Elton was one of them. Amazingly funny, both on stage and in his writing. I wanted to write stuff that was half as good as his books, but never quite managed to write anything that was engaging enough to last over the length of a novel. My best attempt was The Year 2031, and even that wasn’t terribly long.
Ten years earlier, it was Tony Crowther. He was perhaps five years older than me, and a game programmer extraordinaire, writing hit after hit on the Commodore 64. I loved his game Blagger, and the sequel Son of Blagger, then got through Monty Mole (but only with help from a walkthrough). For a while I was hooked on Potty Pigeon, then Loco, which I enjoyed more than its astoundingly similar-looking followups Suicide Express and Black Thunder.
After that I moved off the Commodore 64 onto other things, and lost track of him and his games.
I suppose I dreamt in some ways of writing my own games and making a fortune from it. Back in those days many commercial games were written by solo programmers, or small teams. These days the gaming industry is dominated by borg-like big development studios, and Suits.
The other week I was in MagNation and noticed a copy of Retro Gamer which featured an interview with the man, as well as a big feature on Pacman. Wow. I was in a rush and made a note to go back and buy it the next day.
When I went back in, it was gone. Replaced by the next edition. I asked if maybe it was lurking somewhere in the shop. Nope. Everywhere else I looked was the same. Gone.
I had a look online. There are quite a few articles about Crowther, but most of them are reprinted from the 80s. I was also interested to know what he was up to these days, and what he thinks looking back at those old games — precisely the sort of thing Retro Gamer does well when they find people to interview.
I could order the mag from the publisher, of course. It would cost 5 pounds. Fair enough. But with 6.50 postage (!) it’d be a total of 11.50, or about $25 — double the Australian retail price.
While I was pondering that, Rae (who had been kindly checking newsagents near her work for it) pointed out I could look on Ebay, which was a brilliant idea. I found a copy for UKP 7.70 including postage, about $16. Much more reasonable. I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival from the UK.
In the mean time, I’ve discovered that Crowther has in fact been assimilated into the borg that is Electronic Arts. One of the games he worked on recently-ish was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was one of the last games I bought for the XBox.
And me? Well, I did start writing a few computer games, but never quite finished any of them. But I did end up making a living out of writing software.
Who were your childhood idols? Where did they end up? Did you get to be like them?
How many places have you lived?
Here’s a list of all the places I’ve lived. Some of the info from my early years is a bit vague. I suppose I could ask my mum for more details, but I’m not sure it’s that critical.
- 1970: A flat somewhere in Sydney — for a short time after my birth
- 1971ish: A flat somewhere in St Kilda, around Fitzroy Street
- 1971-3ish: A house (I think) somewhere in South Melbourne
- 1973-4ish: A house in Thornbury, I think in Hutton Street, though I couldn’t swear to it
- 1974-7: 7/62 Hotham Street, East St Kilda [Pictured]
- 1977-81ish: 11/62 Hotham Street, East St Kilda — we upgraded to the first floor
- 1981-82ish: 2/298 Inkerman Road, East St Kilda — apart from the semi-detatched house we rented, we also rented a bungalow at the back, which for a while was home to nothing but my small collection of model trains
- 1982-3ish: 6/23 Pine Avenue, Elwood — this was great, being so close to the beach. I used to regularly get on my bike and ride up and down the beachside bike path.
- 1984-6ish: 1b Staniland Grove, Elsternwick — above a shop. The night was regularly punctuated by passing trams, shop alarms and the lady in the neighbouring flat getting rat-arsed.
- 1987-9ish: 6/27 Beena Avenue, Murrumbeena — right next to the Dandenong line. After about a week we didn’t notice the trains going by, apart from it drowning out the television. In year 11-12 I’d regularly meet up with a bunch of other students on the 7:40am train.
- 1989-1993: My mum’s place in Hampton, though it’s closer to the Hampton East (should be called Moorabbin) shops
- 1993-1995: Power Street, Hawthorn — the first time I moved out of home. From memory the phone number also ended in 1666, which was perhaps just co-incidence, or perhaps by-design, I don’t know. Being right next to the tram stop was handy, and in fact you could hear the city-bound tram coming around the corner, indicating if you wanted to catch it you might need to run up the driveway.
- 1995-2003: Booran Road, Glen Huntly — which was good, apart from being on a main road and having neighbours who occasionally left the TV blaring at night.
- Briefly in 2000: a flat in Waratah Avenue, Glen Huntly
- 2003-2005: Ames Avenue, Carnegie — the old cold house with the huge back yard which took forever to mow
- 2005-: My current place in Bentleigh
Hmm, 16 places (in 38 1/2 years), which is more than I thought it might be.
I know from going past and looking around on Google Streetview that most of them are still there, but many of them have been renovated and look little like they did when I lived there.
How about you?
See also: Commutes of my youth
Who are you?
When I was younger I used to focus on a fairly narrow range of music, heavily influenced by what my peers had introduced me to.
One day circa 1988 Raoul brought over a VHS tape of some band he liked called The Who. It was a compilation called Who’s Better Who’s Best. I remember I sat and watched and was particularly awestruck by the final song on the tape: Won’t Get Fooled Again.
At the end, the lasers swirl around, the keyboard goes mad, Moon goes crazy on the drums, Townshend leaps through the air with his guitar ready to play the final notes, and Daltrey lets out a guttural scream of rage before sounding the warning to all of us: “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”
Those of us who are miffed at Rudd’s position on climate change would do well to remember that.
(Still from the multi-angle feature from the movie “The Kids Are Alright” Special Edition DVD)
I subsequently bought the CD of the same name, and it went on high rotation. At the time a lot of my meagre income went on CDs, and I started buying up their albums as I found them. At the time, many weren’t generally available… I ended up with an imported copies of some.
By about the mid-90s I had just about everything there was to be had, and knew most of the songs off-by-heart. I ended up writing a spoof of The Who’s rock opera Tommy, called Pommy for the then-fledgling Toxic Custard list, based on the pretend heavy metal band Megabogue, an idea of Raoul’s from years before.
I look around at the poverty-stricken nation
Take a walk to the Army of Salvation
Smile and grin at the free food all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like Brian May
Then I get on my knees and pray..
We don’t get soup again!
At uni, some of my friends had similarly one-track minds when it came to music: Brian S was (and still is) a rabid Church fan; Peter B was known for loving Queen. The other one in our tight-knit group, Stuart H, to his credit, seemed to have a much wider musical taste, as I recall it.
My tastes eventually got wider too, and while my CD collection has pretty much stopped growing these days, the music in it is much more diverse. But while some older CDs have been cleared out, all of those Who discs are still in it — towards the end of the A-Z sorted shelves, you’ll find an awful lot of Ws.
Given they’re a band that peaked in the early-70s, and two of the original quartet have passed on, one could certainly argue that they’re past it. Over the years I played the discs less and less.
Then came September 11th, 2001.
Out of the terrorist attacks, came the Concert for New York City. I caught some of it on late-night TV. The Who performed four songs to an emotional crowd of NYC police and fire-fighters and their families. It got me all enthused again. Okay, so they were past their peak, but still rocking.
To my surprise, those songs are still ingrained in my brain. Who Are You, Baba O’Riley, Behind Blue Eyes, and Won’t Get Fooled Again.
They did play here in 2004, but I didn’t feel inclined to go. It was after bassist John Entwistle had died, and as Raoul commented at the time, “Who’s left?”
But I still love the music.
In March this year however they’re playing the Grand Prix. And this time around, I thought bugger it, I’m going.
$99 for general admission, with Grand Prix admission included. Not that I’m that interested in car racing.
Then I saw premium tickets were available, at slightly exorbitant prices. And I thought bugger it, if I’m going, and realistically this may be the only time I’ll ever see them live, I’m going to do it properly.
So I splurged. $175 for a guaranteed spot near the front. A Christmas treat to myself.
It’s certainly the most expensive single concert ticket I’ve ever bought. I’m looking forward to it. I expect to go hoarse singing along.
My dad and the trains
When I was a kid, my dad would take us to Camberwell Civic Centre every April or so, to see the huge model train exhibition they had there. We’d wander around for a couple of hours and I would dream that one day I’d have a really big, detailed train set.
Early on I had Lego trains; the ones with the blue rails, and coveted the mains electric ones, which I saw in a foreign language Lego catalogue that snuck into a Lego set I got. But I had the push and battery variety: the 171 goods train and 182 passenger train. Those red and blue couplings taught me about magnetism.
By my teens I had a handful of HO model trains; a mix of Hornby and Lima trains, including I think a Hornby Trans-Australian engine (have no idea if it was historically accurate), and a Lima Indian Pacific set. At the time we were living in Inkerman Road, St Kilda, in a rented duplex, and there was a bungalow out the back which I got to use for the trains. But I never did get around to building a proper layout.
A bit later I got the 1980s era Lego electric trains “Ideas book” courtesy of my UK uncle. A year or two later the trains went on the market in Australia, and although by that point I was arguably too old for Lego trains, I saved up my spending money from my parttime job and ended up with a 7740 Intercity express, and a 7730 Steam freight train. Both sets had numerous stickers for different operators you could choose to stick on the sides of the trains. Vicrail (by then defunct) was included, but I chose the German Railways logo, because its DB initials matched mine.
My sister and I had a Lego town built up with loads of buildings, vehicles, people, and way more train services than a town of that size probably deserved.
I’m sure a lot of these trains were at least partly funded by my dad (who also funded the computers when I got interested in those.)
Dad also took us to the Railway Museum at Williamstown regularly. We’d climb in and out of the trains and run around like maniacs and look at the displays there.
And he let me read his copies of newsletters from a mob he had joined, called the Train Travellers Association, which in 1984 became the PTUA. In his younger days, he’d been interested in various aspects of activism, though I don’t think he was active in the TTA.
The other week I took the kids to the model railway exhibition at Caulfield racecourse. Quite good. Lots to look at.
The advertising said it was the largest in the state. I was chatting to one of the blokes there. I wondered if it was the same one that used to be at Camberwell every April or so when I was a kid. Yes, same one. So there you go.
And they still have the U-Drive, where for a small fee they let the kids drive a couple of model trains for a little while. In my youth, I think they were just plain engines. Nowadays (perhaps inevitably) they’re Percy and Thomas.
We haven’t been to the Railway Museum since last year, I think, but now that the warm weather is coming back, I’m sure it’ll happen again in the near future.
Our parents have funny influences over us. Bits of them appear in us, and obviously some stuff we continue passing down the line to our kids.
In my case, I didn’t end up becoming a hard-core train enthusiast, nor do I have a bunch of model trains. But clearly aspects of his interests have popped up in me, and I wonder what of me will pass down into my kids.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there.
900 emails later
On the 12th of August 1990, I sent out an email. It went to a handful of friends, under the name “Toxic Custard Workshop Files.” It was the first of many, initially made up of (allegedly) humorous writing, though these days it’s mostly the previous week’s blog posts.
Tonight, 30th of June 2008, I’m sending out the 900th of these emails (more or less; the numbering isn’t exact). For some reason, I’m not sure why, people are still reading them.
- Toxic Custard — I haven’t had time to update it much recently
- History of Toxic Custard
- Subscribe to the weekly emails
Flashback to fifteen years ago
Fifteen years ago I wore a Seiko wristwatch. It was given to me by my legendary Uncle Kevin (UK in the UK), about a decade before.
Fifteen years ago I didn’t carry a camera routinely. I had a 35mm Kodak one that my mum had given to me. I It was heavy, had no zoom, but reliable. (I suspect it’s still around somewhere.)
Fifteen years ago I carried a diary. A basic Filofax clone, which I think was another great gift from UK in the UK. It also had phone numbers and addresses in it.
Fifteen years ago I had a payphone card. Provided I knew the number (or had written it down) I could phone anybody when I wanted from any payphone.
Fifteen years ago I didn’t play computer games when away from home. I’d had a couple of Game & Watchs in high school — Donkey Kong Junior and Donkey Kong II — but by the 90s, they were long gone.
Then in 1994 I got a mobile phone. The first was an Ericsson GH198, and at the time hardly anybody had a mobile phone, and you could choose some pretty good phone numbers. Mine ended in the numbers 326435 - or DANIEL. (I’ve changed it since, which memorably caused my departing phone company to send me a bill for three cents.)
And gradually the mobile phone (or to be accurate, subsequent models) took over from the diary, camera and game. Eventually I even stopped carrying a wristwatch.
I can barely remember what life was like before I had a mobile phone.
Until yesterday, when I left it at home accidentally. It’s happened on occasions before. And each time, I feel more naked without it. Some might feel liberated from it for a day. Not me, I felt isolated. Despite having ready access to email and web — including my appointments in Google Calendar — through the day.
Of course, I can ring the number and wait for the voicemail greeting, then press # to check the messages. Though it took about half a dozen goes to remember the PIN, which had me worried that I might really be cut off from the world.
Somehow, I managed to survive a full 10 hours without it. But I won’t leave it behind again, if I can help it.
Old photos on that one day of the year
It’s that one day of the year… when the 7:30 Report isn’t on at 7:30.
Other than that, today…
I’m tired.
Both kids were home sick today, coughing their guts up. Wears you out. (Maybe I’m not feeling 100% myself.)
Bank account almost drained for the month.
My eldest son Isaac officially became a teenager.
I goofed by (yet again) ordering some of his presents by mail order, and they’re running late. Sigh. I’ve got to stop doing that (though I know he’ll like them when they arrive).
On the bright side, I’ve been scanning in old photos from the 70s and 80s. A couple of them are quite prophetic. (And don’t I look cute!)
I also found proof I’ve always been a Cats fan.
Thanks to my mum for holding onto them all these years, and digging them out.
Twentieth reunion
Friday night’s 20 year school reunion had all the standard components: old mates chatting; drinking; fairly raucous singing old the school song; a meal; more drinking; a few speeches, that kind of thing.
And a school tour. If my kids had been there, I’m sure they would have thought it was very Harry Potter, especially the school tower, which now contains the school’s archive, with many and varied items of interest. The library is now the staff room. The computer room is now the geography department. The hall has barely changed — even some of the seats are the same.
Colin, the President of the Old Boys Association is an ex-teacher at the school, and this made for some amusement, as he attempted with his best stern teacher’s tone to get people to quieten down during the speeches.
A number of blokes I knew well at high school but whom hadn’t been in touch over the years (including the previous reunions) showed up, which was great. Most looked similar to how they had done years ago. Many now have families and kids.
John and Tristan decided that Essendon coach Matthew Knights was the most prominent old boy of our year, though he didn’t attend on the night.
Some noted my efforts, which was nice. And Andrew, who I had a lot of laughs with in years 9 and 10, surprised me by saying how much he enjoyed the How To Destroy Your VCR web pages.
One of the current assistant principals spoke of the current school’s battle — to prevent a 25 storey building going up behind the historic 1927 building, spoiling the vista. Most of us were roused up enough about this to give money on the night to the fighting fund.
Was a great night. To be followed up with a flurry of emails and Facebook additions, no doubt.
