Adventures in Radioland
Or I Saw Some Big Sand Dunes at the Beach

By Randy Sluganski

Saturday, July 29, 2000

So here I am, flying into Miami on a Saturday night and wondering how it was that I came to be chosen to appear on Dave Graveline's "Into Tomorrow," an internationally broadcast radio show with 3.1 million listeners. Asked to be the spokesperson for all of assembled adventuredom. It couldn't have been my voice, for only the JA staff has had the pleasure of hearing my soft-spoken inflections, and I'm positive it wasn't one of my charming email responses. It must have been my picture on the site. Yeah, that's it. My picture. One of the JA readers once remarked on how much I resembled Harrison Ford. Maybe I should have packed a fedora.

Yet here I am. Thirty minutes before midnight waiting in line at Budget Rent-A-Car. The only vehicles left in stock are Lincoln Towncars or a Jeep. As I am still under the age of ninety, I chose the Jeep. The Budget employee (whose name is also Randy, whose last initial also begins with an S, and who is also Polish) informs me that it is only a 15-minute ride to my hotel, gives me a free map, and points me in the right direction. Driving the Jeep has me feeling like a poor man's Arnold Schwarzenegger. The speed limit is clearly posted at 45 mph. Huge red traffic department warnings are posted every quarter mile that tickets for speeding will be doubled in price. Every single driver is flying past me. Elderly women with blue sparkly hair are shooting me the bird as they whiz by in their Lincoln Towncars. Off on the opposite side of the road, I see a flashing neon sign that gleefully announces ... Treasure Island. I can only see the top of the building, but it looks extremely festive with all the blinking lights. It must be one of those new video arcades for adults I have heard about. I promise myself to stop by tomorrow.

One a.m. I have finally found the hotel. A sudden downpour was the cause of my lateness. Yeah, that's it, I got lost because of the heavy rain. The polite young lady at the desk informs me of my room location. First things first, so I telephone my wife from my wireless. She lets me know that I am almost two hours late. Once she hears that I rented a car instead of taking a cab to the hotel, she does not ask any more questions as to why I am late. I quickly check my email from my laptop and then turn on the television. Pay movies are $8.99, and I know I won't stay awake long enough to finish watching Mission to Mars or Viva Rock Vegas. For only $3.99, I can play Super Nintendo games for an hour. That's not much of a bargain considering the age of the system. I'm still too excited to sleep, but eventually I succumb to exhaustion.

Sunday, July 30, 2000

10:00 a.m.

One hour to checkout. Just enough time for a quick check of my email and a shower. The moment I am finished reading my emails, the laptop crashes. Fifteen precious minutes are wasted trying to get it to work again, to no avail. Haste leads to blood as I cut my upper lip shaving. Finally all of my belongings are packed and I make it downstairs at ten minutes to eleven, just as the hotel staff is removing the complimentary breakfast. "It's only 15 minutes to the beach from here," the girl behind the desk answers in response to my question. I don't have to be at the radio station until two o'clock, so off I go.

Driving down the opposite side of the highway, I again see the Treasure Island sign, only now it is not blinking off and on. I turn off the road that leads to Treasure Island and pull up to the door. There is a huge sign on front of the door that I could not see from the road; it says, "All of our women are totally bare." "What kind of woman would play video games in the nude," I wonder to myself. I decide not to go inside.

12:05 p.m.

I finally find the beach. It should have been impossible to miss seeing as how it borders the entire state of Florida, but miss it I did. Amazingly, I immediately find a parking spot (the bumper-to-bumper traffic of people out for a day of sun is stupefying). The sight of the ocean is magnificent. The smell of the salt water is invigorating. I relax for about 15 minutes, thinking how nice it would be to have my loved ones here with me--my dog Charlie and my laptop. The beach has become crowded since I first arrived. While strolling back to my Jeep, I spot a woman laying to my right on a blanket who was not there before. As I quickly glance at her and then look away, my head does an involuntary double-take so hard that I pull a muscle in my neck. Apparently she notices me staring and puts her hands over her naked breasts. My first thought is, "If you don't want anyone to look at your breasts, then why are you laying topless on a public beach?" and my second thought is, "I wonder if she plays the video games at Treasure Island?"

It is now 1:20 p.m., and I begin to panic as the radio station is only 15 minutes from the beach and I have been driving for an hour. There is a seafood restaurant open, so I go inside and ask the waitresses if they know the location of Advanced Radio Network. Yes, they respond in unison, it is one block down the road on your right. You can't miss it! (They have never been in a car with me.) Since the show doesn't start until 2:00, I decide to take advantage of my promptness and enjoy a small snack, especially since I have not eaten all day. A half-pound lobster, Cajun shrimp appetizer, and a slice of key lime pie are washed down with a Pepsi-Cola. Everything is fine until I go into the men's room. Note to restaurant staff: Please do not blare Britney Spears singing "Oops, I Did it Again" over the speakers while customers are using the toilet in the rest rooms.

1:55 p.m.

I finally arrive at the radio station. Only I am at the wrong gate, and the guard tells me to drive up the road another half mile. Finally, I find the right gate. Steve Ziegler, the Senior Producer of Into Tomorrow, greets me at the front door of the station and ushers me into the studio. Computer junk and games are scattered everywhere. It is geek heaven. Steve makes me feel at home, and Dave comes out and introduces himself. I am then led into a room where I can watch and listen to the first hour of the show without being heard. A few minutes later, Charles Gray, former editor and now publisher of Happy Puppy, arrives. Happy Puppy is actually the oldest commercial gaming site on the Internet. Charles and I had met once before at a public relations party for John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles but had not really spoken to each other for the past 18 months. That was about to change.

The first hour of the show is focused on tech talk and features Dave and his three weekly cohosts updating the listeners on the news of the week. The guys in the booth are genuinely funny and work well together. Charles and I are both laughing at all the appropriate spots and occasionally exchanging small talk. Finally at 3:00 p.m., Steve enters the room to let us know we're on next. It's finally showtime! I feel like I'm going to throw up all over the Into Tomorrow studio.

The next two hours actually flew by. I had made a conscientious decision that I wanted to present adventure games and gamers in a positive light, and I think I succeeded. Dave is masterful at keeping a conversation flowing. Plus once he discovered that his guests were experts on the subject matter (ahem), he permitted Charles and me to develop a rapport that allowed for some humorous give-and-take in the second hour of the show (you can hear a condensed version of the show here). I listened to a cassette tape of the broadcast on the flight home, and I was surprised at how much I seemed to be enjoying myself. Dave is a great guy (actually, so was the entire staff). Though not an avid gamer (he is, though, into flight simulators), he knows the subject matter and is expert at picking up on the key points of a conversation. Looking back, he was probably thrilled to have a big mouth like me on the show. Personally, I got a huge kick out of his booming voice. It was like sitting across from a Ted Baxter with brains, and I often caught myself giggling when he would do a promo and make a product sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread.

So how does this story end? Well, I drove Charles to the airport and, for the first time during my trip, managed to not get lost. I arrived 90 minutes early for my flight home. So of course my flight was delayed by two hours, which meant I would also miss my connecting flight from North Carolina to Pittsburgh. The airline set me up with an overnight hotel reservation in North Carolina, but in another strange twist of fate, my connecting flight had also been delayed, so I still managed to get home only an hour behind schedule. As for the radio show, well, I guess they liked me since they have already invited me back.