PERSONAL NEWS: Look, Mom, I'm Famous!

Hi Everyone,

You all know a celebrity now! I'm famous!

For those of you not in the know, a local reporter from an arts/culture newspaper was interested in doing a short piece on the gaming community and I somehow ended up as the interviewee. It's a pretty short piece, a sort of fifteen-minute Q & A format, but it's still cool!

Here's a link to the article:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A48163

Sacramento News & Review, as previously mentioned, is primarily an arts / culture rag, but when they do do news, it tends to lean to the left, which is a bit odd since the majority of the gaming community, at least the wargaming community, tends to swing to the right (...and that makes sense since many gamers/wargamers are ex-military). However, if you want someone else to understand who you are, you have to speak and listen to them, so I took a chance on SN&R and hoped that my little interview wasn't going to turn out to be some sort of "ambush journalism," a "smear campaign," or some other kind of effort to paint people who play games with little cardboard chits and army miniatures as "evil warmongers" or "fascist-pig warhawks." I'm very pleased that while my words were heavily paraphrased and awkwardly arranged for space, the reporter, Sarah Sol, didn't put my words out of context! Yeah!

In fact, the experience I had with the reporter, Sarah Sol, and the photographer, Larry Dalton, was VERY POSITIVE! They were both very personable and polite folks. I'd do it again if asked.

And, for the curious, the game about the French Revolution I taught and played with the reporter was "Guillotine," a simple, fun and irreverant look at the French Revolution. And for the even more curious, I won!

And here's a quick link to "Guillotine" before I end this post:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/116

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
The game in the photographs is "Ticket To Ride: Europe" for those who are curious.

P.S.S.
I was surprised to see that the news reached TMP. I'm guessing that Bill, the TMP Editor, posted it. We've been friendly for ages. Here are links to the TMP article and discussion of the article:

http://theminiaturespage.com/news/609754/

http://theminiaturespage.com/news/talk/msg.mv?id=609754