I want to tell you a little more about our editors.
The newest addition to the Blast crew, Bessie King is with us in Boston as the Entertainment Editor. That’s the reason why you’re seeing a ton more content and some quality news reporting, like our instant coverage of Marie Osmond’s fall during Dancing With the Stars. She’s an ace reporter who has also done work with the Quincy Patriot Ledger.
Dan Peleschuk is the stalwart culture editor. The Boston Globe correspondent and top-flight writer is as comfortable putting together features as he is doing hard news reporting.
Elizabeth Raftery is second in command on the editorial side. Lexis Nexis should have a section devoted to the amount of work she’s put out in her career so far at the Globe and the Bloomsburg Press Enterprise.
So that’s the family.
Blast Magazine November is a wholly different animal for us. We’re touching some deep issues in this issue — drugs, pornography, Brittney Spears’ new album, etc. We’re running a scientific study on whether or not the government should step in and regulate the adult film business. We’re running a review of a Brady Bunch porn spoof. We’re running a long-form feature story on the Salvia herbal drug craze.
We also have two new retro technology features. I put together and edited a bunch of 10-year-old tech and game reviews. Not exactly cover stories, but there’s some serious gaming history in these articles. Shareware used to be all the rage. Freeware was a novel idea. This was, of course, before the open source revolution. You’ll also see that there used to be a little outfit called GT Interactive Software. They distributed Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and then decided to make a bunch of games from Duke’s “Build” engine, which sucked, even back then. They don’t exist anymore.
Second, I’m putting something together called “The Old Shoebox.” I think all of us tech-nerds have one. An old sneaker box with magazine CD’s, old operating systems, multiple game distributions, early CDR’s of Knoppix and a burned copy of Microsoft Office 2000 — before they started limiting how many times you could use the CD key.
I’m dusting off these half-scratched discs, taking the legal stuff and giving you a bunch of freebies. Next week you can download AIM 4.X and Aim + here. I’m not sure that you can do that anywhere else. There are also some excellent full games in the abandonware category that you can have. Duke Nukem 1 is first on the list.
So that’s November so far. If you’re a prospective advertiser, please be advised that the girl on the cover this month is not a porn star.
Everyone else — hey, check it out, porn star on the cover!
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