Donald J. Sobol, the creator of the beloved character Encyclopedia Brown (Boy Detective) and book series, reportedly died last week (on July 11, 2012). However, it wasn't until today, when a Publishers Weekly Twitter account sent a message that announced his death that the news was of his passing was communicated with the public. Sobol's son told the Associated Press today that his father, who was born in New York, had died of natural causes in Miami. He was age 87.
The first in the Encyclopedia Brown book were published back in 1963, but it grew into a very prolific series during the '70s and has never gone out of print. I think kids that grew up in the '70s and '80s were especially familiar with the series, probably moreso than kids of today who have more reading options available to them, with online bookstores like Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com available to them. But, back in those days, we had fewer choices, and these books were always a popular option at school Book Fairs.
Courtesy of Penguin Books
In truth, I read more than a few Encyclopedia Brown books when I was a kid. The stories were written for youngish (like grammar school/grade school) readers, but the "crimes", if you can even call them crimes, were usually things like petty thefts (like stolen lunch money). Never murder, major theft or anything very serious. The clues, in my recollection, weren't especially well-articulated or well-written, and some were sometimes ridiculously vague, but others featured criminals who were usually incredibly stupid, so kids with reasonable intelligence could usually solve the those mysteries as well as Encyclopedia Brown could. Still, they did instill an appreciation for solving puzzles in a crime scene, and probably helped TV shows like CSI do well among audiences today.
Also, from December 3, 1978 to September 20, 1980, Encyclopedia Brown was a daily and Sunday comic strip published by Universal Press Syndicate. The artwork was reportedly done by Frank Bolle, although Donald Sobol was credited as the comic strip's writer.
In any event, this is a day for me to remember, as one of the writers I grew up with is now part of history. Incidentally, the name "Encyclopedia Brown" doesn't have quite the cache it once did, in part because nobody has encyclopedias anymore, so an entire generation is pretty clueless about what those were. A few spoofs have since been done to try and bring the guy into the 21st century by calling him "Wikipedia Brown" (see HERE), and a while back, The Onion reported that Encyclopedia Brown had been found in a dumpster in his hometown of Idaville (see HERE). Neither were legitimate, but my news, unfortunately, is legit. See the news courtesy of The New York Times at http://nyti.ms/PuDVXE).
The migration of a number of key elements in popular culture, notably music, and more recently newspaper and print media, as well as film and TV content, has occurred as the benefits of digitizing content are realized. Initially, based on the Napster debacle back in the 1990s, the entertainment industry was somewhat reluctant to move in this direction based on how that impacted the music industry's business model. But from the shooting process of a movie or TV show, to cinema projectors, the future seems to be in digital.
And beyond the risk of widespread content theft (hence the Napster reference), there are actually a number genuine benefits that the entertainment industry can realize from digitizing its content.
For example, digital content can be stored in brand-new condition forever (it doesn't deteriorate), and what's more, it can be delivered most anywhere (and there's an opportunity for content producers to charge for that!), which also happens to be where consumers want this stuff! With digital content, there is no need to worry about old celluloid film reels deteriorating in a warehouse someplace, and in the case of TV and movies, the resolution and colors on a digital version will remain in perfect, like-new condition regardless of the content's age. It also opens old content to new audiences who might never before have encountered it, in effect, stretching the income stream for old content over decades or longer.
Of course, over the years, Hollywood (by that, I mean the entertainment industry, which may or may not be based in Los Angeles) has produced tons (indeed, it may weigh tons in analog formats!) of content since the advent of "talkies" (meaning moving pictures with accompanying soundtracks). Given this huge vault of content, entertainment companies like Sony's Columbia Pictures (among others), Time Warner's Warner Brothers, Viacom/CBS Paramount Studios, Newscorp's Twentieth Century Fox studios, NBC Universal Pictures MGM/UA, Disney and others have been working to migrate their massive libraries of entertainment content to digital formats. The process of migration has been done with different speeds.
For example, music was the first to go digital with the advent of the compact disc back in the 1980s, which made converting music to MP3's and a host of other digital formats incredibly easy. Outside of music, a lot of movies and television content was already converted to digital format to create DVDs. This means that if it's already on DVD, the content has been digitized — someplace.
Not too long ago, I wrote about a specific television show, notably "Alice" which ran on CBS TV from 1976 to 1985 (catch my post HERE) whose first season was recently digitized for the first time ever. I noted in that post that Warner Brothers has a unique capability, specifically something called manufacturing-on-demand for DVDs. This means that digitized content can be transferred to a host of mediums, whether on a physical discs as DVDs, but may also easily be uploaded to a server someplace (if the producer doesn't already have it on a server already!) to be streamed to a PC, mobile device or tablet, or converted to another medium. This was one of the shows that had not been digitized, but Warner Brothers has a large library, and that digitized content exists on a website called "Warner Archive", which has many movies from Warner Brothers, as well as other studios including Sony and MGM. Television content also exists. Warner's Manufacturing-on-Demand also produces DVD on demand for Amazon.com.
What about all the non-digitized content?
Well, they're working on it, but in some cases, it's not merely a simple transfer. In many cases, the studios struggle to keep the content true to the original producer's intent, which can be challenging. What's more, much of the content was created prior to high-definition video, so there is what can be called a "translation" process involved. That's where the term "Digitally Remastered" comes from. It means they have painstakingly reviewed the content, in most cases, literally frame-by-frame. The good news is that once the content has been digitized, the process is not nearly as painstaking to convert from one digital format to another. DVD. Streaming. Whatever. If the content has been digitized, all of that is possible, and quite possibly, in formats we have not yet imagined.
Recently, NPR took a visit to Warner Brothers' vaults to look at the process involved in digitizing archived movies and television content. But it's not always a matter of merely scanning the content; in some cases, the conversion to digital changes the resolution. But for a company like Warner Brothers, there is a desire to re-sell this archived content, so the financial incentive exists. That's why the Warner Archive and DVD manufacturing-on-demand is so important, because it enables them to sell the content in a widely-used format without having to mass produce it.
Ned Price oversees the digital archives at Warner Brothers. He says "You're creating a hybrid. You want to represent what the film's intent was, and what the look was, and what the feeling was of the film, but you want to take advantage of the fact that you can see a lot more." Hence, there is an art to it. Some film directors take issue with digitizing their content because they aren't convinced the studios will hold true to their "artistic visions" for their movies or TV programming.
But others say that movies and televison content can't really be considered works of art the way a Rembrandt painting might be. Richard Donner, the director of Superman — the 1978 version with Christopher Reeve, says "It's not exactly like repainting a Rembrandt. It's not like a singular painting hanging in a museum. A lot of people would like to think that, and I have a lot of arguments with some of my fellow directors about it, but my feeling is we've turned it over to the public — hopefully they will handle it with respect."
Have a listen to this fascinating NPR clip below, or by visiting http://n.pr/O5RrtK:
The end of June 2012 was the 40th anniversary of Atari Corp., a company that brought home video gaming to the masses back in the late 1970s, and arguably ruled the space until competition emerged in the 1980s. In fact, I upgraded to a Colecovision at one point, but the point is not lost that Atari really brought that stuff into people's homes. They were really the company to do it.
$#!t.
Forty f'ing years.
I can remember the elation of opening the Atari Video Computer System or VCS (which later became known as the Atari 2600) one Christmas morning. That was, by my recollection, perhaps the coolest Christmas gift I remember. That was MY Red Ryder BB Gun (that reference comes from the 80s holiday classic "A Christmas Story", which I actually saw in my local theater back in the day)!!
Sure, we probably got better gifts along the way, including a VCR (what's that? well, in the analog broadcasting days, it was a recording device that let you record TV shows for the first time ... ever ... although they became better known for enabling people to rent movies and watch those from their living rooms). Today, DVRs do the same basic thing, but remember, in those days, you pretty much had to plan your TV viewing schedule around broadcasters' schedules, or you missed out. The VCR changed that paradigm. The big downside of the VCR is that early versions practically required a PhD degree to program recordings! Still, by my recollection, the Atari was a much cooler gift!
My memories of Atari 2600 are still quite fond, although now that 40 years have gone by, it seems very rudimentary by comparison. Even my original Sony Playstation, which blows anything the 2600 could do away, is a dinosaur. And home PCs enable all that, and more. However, I expect that trend of planned obsolescence of home video games will continue. Today's Wii or PS3 or XBox whatever iteration will be history before too long, too.
Although a home version of Pacman was the epitome of geeky coolness back in the day (in fact, my readers may note that I even include Pacman and his ghosts into the design of this blog), even if Atari did a lousy job with it ... the company redeemed itself somewhat with Ms. Pacman which was much better (although nowadays, any smartphone has the original Pacman and/or Ms. Pacman available, complete with intermissions), and newer video game systems enable live competition with real competitors located across the country via the internet, but the notion of the time-sucking home video games was revolutionary back in those days.
You may note that I have a link in the right margin under "Links I Like" Called "[Atari] 2600 Online" (see http://www.2600online.com/ for that), where you can pretty much play most Atari 2600 emulator games online, including those from third-party developers like Activision.
There's another cool site called Atari Museum [http://www.atarimuseum.com/] which has lots of background info. people with an interest might like to check out.
Atari Age [http://www.atariage.com/] which actually was a loyalty program/magazine sponsored by Atari back in the day, also has even more stuff you can check out, including the original game owners manuals!
Although Activision's Pitfall! was IMHO the best game ever made for Atari, that company (Activision) still closely guards even the original and has since launched newer versions of that classic game.
Anyway, in recognition of the original time-sucker known as Atari 2600, I dedicate today's post!
Author P.S., January 21, 2013: The Associated Press reported that Atari's U.S. operations filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in an effort to separate from it's French parent company. France's Infogrames Entertainment first took a stake in Atari in 2000, but it acquired the remaining stake in 2008 and changed the whole company's name to Atari. Atari SA said it filed for bankruptcy protection in Paris and New York after it failed to find a successor to main shareholder and sole lender BlueBay as it wrestled with tough market conditions.
Having said that, in recent years, Atari's U.S. operations have shifted to focus on digital games and licensing, including developing mobile games, and it had become a growth engine for the parent company, to the point of being much better-performing than the rest of the company. In fiscal 2012, digital and licensing revenue both grew significantly and contributed 70% of revenue, while sales in bricks-and-mortar stores declined. In a statement, Atari said the move was necessary to secure investments it needs to continue growing in mobile and digital gaming.
In the mid-1970's, Americans were in a pretty bad mood.
Although the Vietnam War had ended a few years earlier, there was still a great deal of bitterness among those who were drafted to fight that divisive war, particularly given the outright unappreciative treatment those veterans received upon their return home to the country that drafted them.
Beyond that, there was a not-so-little matter of the 1973 OPEC Oil Embargo which lead to rationing of gas and oil that was still fresh in people's memories. In fact, I can remember waiting in the long lines at the gas pump with my Mom, and the fact that we had to plan around the days that we could actually buy gas (the government rationed fuel purchases based on the last digit of people's license plates, so even [and odd] numbers could only buy gas every other day). But average cars were not very fuel efficient, so it was a big deal at the time.
There was also a feeling of disgust with the Federal government, since President Richard Nixon had resigned just a 3 years earlier after the Watergate scandal (news of that was broken by two young reporters for the Washington Post named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein who recently wrote that the deceptions and lies they uncovered were actually worse than originally believed, see that article at http://wapo.st/LulCz4).
As a result, many Americans weren't feeling particularly patriotic, and with good reason. In short, people were p!$$ed off and felt the nation's leadership was unable to manage much of anything.
Yet Congress felt the time was right for the country to celebrate, and what better reason than the nation's 200th birthday, or the "bicentennial"?!
There was a debate about what the country should do, as some argued that events should really be held in either Boston or Philadelphia, but in the end, a decision was made to allow local events to be held across the country, which in hindsight, was actually a wise decision. Besides, Boston and Philly weren't the only places involved, as many other places played important roles in making the American "revolution" happen.
The U.S. Bicentennial was a bunch of celebrations and observances that paid tribute to the events leading up to the birth of the U.S. as an independent republic. It culminated on Sunday, July 4, 1976, with the 200th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
At the time, I was just seven or eight years old, so much of it is a somewhat vague memory. I seem to recall a discussion of it in my first-grade class (before we left for summer break!), but my recollections were of stuff like the history lessons. I do remember picnics on the 4th, however (I spent the 4th in the Seattle area with my uncle, aunt, cousin and grandmother)!
But the celebration went beyond this. All over the country, cities were painting things like fire hydrants red, white and blue, and there were many other things intending to recognize the anniversary. Notably, my first grade class picture had a flag featuring only 13 starts (for the original 13 colonies-turned-states, along with "76" noted, see the photo at the bottom). Some stuff lingered for quite a while after!
On March 30, 2010, ABC News digitized a piece of it's historical news coverage of Americans' Bicentennial Celebrations on the nation's 200th birthday (July 4, 1976) with the various parades and parties. It's a nice piece if you can tolerate the annoying singing in the early part of the news clip, which is narrated by former news anchor Harry Reasoner.
A short movie tribute to the country's 200th birthday funded by a Bicentennial Project Grant was animated by Vincent Collins (who made other psychedelic cartoons). The film's producer was Deborah Lastowka. This film was produced by the United States Information Agency ("USIA") which existed from 1953 to 1999. The USIA was devoted to "public diplomacy", particularly outside the Untied States. But in 1999, USIA's broadcasting functions were moved to the newly created Broadcasting Board of Governors, and USIA's functions were folded into U.S. Department of State.
In any event, the USIA produced this short (but fun) clip called "200" which is arguably a very "trippy" tribute to our country's 200th birthday which came out in 1976! (It has a look from the drug-laden 1960s reminiscent of The Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds", but I digress).
Beyond this stuff, there was an official "logo" (see above) which was a star made from red, white and blue ribbons (although the British flag is also red, white and blue, so in hindsight, that choice didn't seem particularly "independent") for the bicentennial, which I recall mainly because of the postage stamps which featured it (this was pre-email, folks!).
Even today, you might still have al remnant from the bicentennial in your pocket: the Treasury issued coins with special designs as part of the Bicentennial. An open contest was held to select the designs for the quarter, half dollar, and silver dollar and reportedly, more than 1,000 designs were submitted. The quarter featured a colonial drummer and a torch encircled by thirteen stars, the half dollar had Independence Hall, and the silver dollar had the Liberty Bell superimposed over the Moon. These coins bore the date "1776-1976."
Class Pictures Commemorating the Bicentennial With 1976 Flags
Elementary schools, including mine, also commemorated the Bicentennial with special, flags with '76 emblazoned on them and stars for each of the 13 colonies-turned-states. As I understand it, that was permitted by the Bicentennial Committee that coordinated the events around the country.
55, writer, speaker, brother, son, friend, spouse, advocate for people with autoimmune (type 1) diabetes, thinker, dreamer. Reading and writing is becoming a lost art, but we can learn a lot from reading the medical and scientific literature before drawing conclusions. The press publishes abbreviated facts to fit into limited space, I don't mince words or omit facts.
