Some Days in the Life - May 20, 1999

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Saturday I work in the office. Two more weekends of that -- and next weekend is actually Graduation, so that doesn't count. I give out an award at graduation, which is a lovely chance for the ham actor to emerge from his coffee-soaked stupor and speak to the wealthy parents of wealthy children for a few moments when they all have to politely pay attention despite the fact that they couldn't care less about the award I'm giving out unless I'm giving it to their child, which is unlikely.

But you don't give that award to the parents. And while you pitch your remarks to the parents, it's the graduates you want to hear them. It'll be fun.

We're in meeting Hell this week. Yesterday, I met with Apple for about four hours. It was a very productive meeting. Actually, it was a series of meetings where we addressed problem control and repair and then went on to high level strategic alliance talks. Bob Simoneau (our Business Manager), Alan Bain (our Associate Headmaster and one of the few geniuses I can say I know) and I were the point men on that second meeting. And as we each handed off to each other, I noticed something remarkable.

We didn't do much coordination before the meeting. Heck, I didn't know Bob would be there at all. But each of us were clearly on the same page with what we're doing at Brewster Academy... and all three of us are tremendously idealistic and excited about both our program and how we can work with Apple to disseminate it and Apple's products at the same time.

That's astounding to me. I honestly never expected to work in a place where the business manager could wax for ten minutes about Educational Reform and changing the entire world to be a better place. And have a decent chance of doing it, to boot.

The School Design Model® is a great thing, which I can't adequately describe here so I won't. But the real strength of it is its adaptability. Any school willing to pursue educational reform instead of talk about how they need reform and isn't it a pity there's no practical way to do it can take the School Design Model, build it within their setting, and adapt it to their setting's needs and it will still work. Astounding, but there it is. It will simply work.

Which makes me the luckiest kid in the world. I get to be so enthusiastic about the way we do things here. Amazing.

Writing news of note -- I sent in a couple of queries to Steve Jackson Games, and they bit enough to want to see full proposals, so I'm going to be spending much or most of my free time between now and Monday working on those. The second proposal -- on the Crusades -- will take the longer time, as there's lots of research involved in the subject, even for an outline of the book. I'm working on the other right now, which also has a lot of research, but it's research that's focused on an aspect of the game itself, which is easier to pull off.

No one gets rich writing Role Playing Games, but dang it, I love being productive in the written word again.

Guilty admission note: of all the trailers I saw before The Phantom Menace (including Wild Wild West, The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio looking disturbed out in the distance, and Anna and the King which is clearly an adaptation of "Anna and the King of Siam" which The King and I was based on, making this the second The King and I remake in a year, only without the songs) the only one I know I'll go out of my way to see is... Inspector Gadget.

I can't help it. The technology and CGI effects look right, and Matthew Brodrick looks okay with it to. And they didn't significantly change the theme music.

I have an odd recollection of Inspector Gadget, which came out after the time I was watching such cartoons. In between my Junior and Senior years of high school, I went to a program called the Maine Summer Humanities Program (or MiSHaP) at Bowdoin College. It was a phenomenal couple of weeks -- all the geeky kids got a chance to be somewhere where they were the peer group instead of the exception. I had a blast. We had a toga party. We did fun, stimulating things. Thousands of Bible Students descended on us and we tormented them. Good times.

But our morning ritual was the important part. We would go to breakfast early, eat quickly, and run to the TV room that was next to the cafeteria. This was the only time of day we watched TV. What did we watch? In order -- Batman, Voltron, and Inspector Gadget. We were all five minutes late to class because of the last.

We were all just shy of eighteen years old. We were all supposedly Maine's Gifted and Talented students. We were all amazingly cynical. We bonded. And we loved that cartoon. We sang the songs. We shouted "Go Go Gadget Umbrella!" at irregular times. We hummed the theme music. At our talent show, a very pretty girl who clearly never got to act like a fool back in her own school did a one-woman version of Inspector Gadget I still remember as being funny. She even did the extension-hand bit.

Disney owns the good Inspector, which is a pity. But, I expect I'll go see the movie. I mean -- why not? Go, Gadget Go.