Strudel

When I was a kid, I had a poster of Dave Krieg hanging on my wall. An undrafted quarterback from the now defunct Milton College, no one would argue ol' "Mudbone" to be the greatest passer of his generation...not in an era that featured the likes of Joe Montana and John Elway and Dan Marino. Even so, I'd take him over plenty of the more respected QBs of the 80s...the Phil Simmses and Boomer Esiasons, whose numbers he eclipses. Heck, his passer rating for his 20 year career was better than Elway in 16, and it's Krieg who holds the NFL record for most seasons taking every snap at QB, not ironman Brett Favre. He is, hands down, my favorite Seahawks QB of all time. With all due respect to Russell Wilson, when Krieg was playing I always felt the team had a chance to win...he could make magic happen.

Now, would I take Krieg today over Wilson, our current "magical" quarterback? No way. It is a different era we live in, and Krieg would probably have had a much shorter career if he'd been forced to play behind the haphazard o-lines we've fielded the last few seasons (and Mudbone played behind some pretty terrible ones himself). Wilson is a fantastic player, and has a real shot to win multiple championships, and possibly be the first Seahawks QB to be inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame (we'll see if Hasselbeck squeaks in...maybe, if Andrew Luck stays injured and he can keep leading the Colts to victory on those 40-year old legs). The point is, I have a lot of nostalgia for #17, I miss him at times, but I wouldn't trade the present for the past. The present...with its multiple Super Bowl appearances and general success...is just too good.

[our 80s teams had great defenses, too, by the way]

So, yes..."old school JB" who prefers his books printed on dead trees and his RPGs to be played on a table (preferably with out-of-print books from defunct game companies) acknowledges that the past of our memory ain't always as good as the Real Life Present. And even if the past WAS as good (or better), most of the time that means squat anyway...the world has moved on. You're never going to have (pick your favorite ex-president) in the White House again, and who's to say he'd be any better than the current guy in the current circumstances anyway? Get over it, remember the past (if that floats your boat), but don't live in it.

On the other hand, there's strudel.

Strudel (please do not confuse with streusel) is a delicious apple pastry dish my mother used to (occasionally) bake when I was a child, using a recipe handed down from her grandmother, my great-grandmother. I loved it, and it has given me a lifelong taste for flaky pastries, especially ones of an apple persuasion. It has been years since my mother made strudel (I'm not sure she still has the recipe), and over my teens and 20s I sampled many "strudels" looking for something that tasted like the dish my mom used to make...all without success. I eventually came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as the strudel that existed in my memory...that what I remembered eating, tasting, loving was a figment of nostalgia wrapped in the cloak of childhood fantasy tinged with affection for mother's cooking/baking. I figured the dish only seemed so exquisite in my mind because it was the memory of a child; that the adult me (were I able to travel back in time) would not find the dessert quite so magical. My memory was a pipe dream...perhaps a nice one to be cherished...but nothing to pine over.

"JB," I told myself, "stop ordering 'strudel' every time you see it on a damn menu somewhere...you're in for nothing but disappointment that way!" And I did try to forget about it. Fortunately, you don't find strudel on menus all that often, except at the occasional bakery or German restaurant, so it was fairly easy resolution to stick to.

But then, about seven years back, while traveling through Europe, my wife and I had the pleasure of spending a couple-three days in Salzburg, Austria, childhood home of Mozart, where all the little old ladies attending Mass at the cathedral resembled my great grandmother (who was born in Austria). Guess what? Turns out we were able to get strudel in Salzburg, delicious Austrian strudel that was near perfect to the deliciousness my mother had made for me a quarter-century before. It wasn't a damn pipe dream after all...I just had to travel half a world to find what I'd been craving, to realize I wasn't crazy, that YES the past still exists (if you know where to find it) and it is as just good as you remember. Hell, it's fucking delicious.

No cream needed.

There are some things we miss from our past that we can't get back to...heck, some of those things we shouldn't go back to (smoking, for example). But just because something is of the past, that doesn't mean it doesn't (or can't) have good, positive value for us in the present. And I'll say that especially with regard to gaming, there are elements of the past that are worthy of being brought to the gaming table...just because it's old (whether we're talking system or style of play) doesn't mean it requires an update to be fun.

I'm doing some work on something right now, and I hope to get it completed in the next few days (now that might very well be a pipe dream). System-wise, it IS different, but stylistically I'm hoping for something that resembles my gaming from decades past. I'm not sure if that's even something I can succeed at, let alone if I should, but that's what I'm going for.

I just have a taste for it.
; )