DER SPIEGEL!!

Christian Stöcker interviewed Grandma for a brilliant, long article on Spiegel Online. As of 9:00am EST here in The States, the article is still on the frontpage of www.spiegel.de; so as you can imagine, Grandma is getting a lot of e-mail from the folks in that beautiful country.

Most are from people congratulating Grandma on a mention in such an influential online magazine. We're familiar with Der Spiegel over here; with the war in Iraq and a crazy presidential election in 2004, the international press gave the US a good case for self reflection, and Der Spiegel was at the top of a short list of "foreign" news sites that provided great insight into issues while most of the local press here gave merely cursory overviews and sensationalism. We had great national press from MSNBC, CNN, CBS and NBC- sure, but I know at CWRU we also read BBC, Der Spiegel, CBC and Le Monde perhaps just as frequently. Knowing Der Spiegel's reputation made the interview a little intimidating at first for Grandma, but Christian put her at ease; he's definitely a gamer himself.


As with all great influxes of traffic, the "other" e-mails come out as well, including a gentleman from Hamburg who states "[...] If Grandma ever needs someone to take care of her, I think I might be the geezer to do it. Please have her call me so we can arrange a meeting [includes phone number] ...I believe in love at first sight." There are a few possibilities on this one: First, it might simply be a guy with good intentions that noticed from the blog that Grandma is single, and wants to meet someone with similar interests. Second, perhaps it's a prank by the German equivalent to some radio station's crazy "morning zoo" of "wacky" DJ's trying to get the woman on air, because "hitting on the elderly is funny!" If this is the case, then I think they'll be glad I deleted the e-mail, because Grandma handles such situations her own way, so to speak. The Wrath of Grandma has been known to trigger wars that make a football hooligan riot look like a harmless shoving match.

I'm trying to save lives here!


The article was fantastic. It includes the story of Helge Tantz, a 65 year old man who also has a passion for gaming. Christian's description of Grandma and Tantz doesn't portray them as crazy old people with a weird hobby; he writes of gaming's benefits; as well as Tantz's feeling of solitude amongst an apparent sea of young gamers online, even so much as to conceal his age on forums. The comparison between Tantz and and Grandma revealed they have so much in common; many of the similarities are conditional of each of their love for video games.

I'll stop describing it and just let you read it; it was VERY good!

There was one question Grandma couldn't answer in her interview, it was too big; too much without warning: Christian asked if Grandma had anything to say to folks in Germany who would be reading the article, folks who might consider gaming, her fans, everyone. She couldn't think of the right words at the time, so now she'd like to answer:

Grandma loves you too, Germany. Game on.