In the wake of this week’s passing of tabletop legend Gary Gygax, geeks everywhere have memorialized him in their own indubitable fashions. Though the various epitaphs scrawled across blogs and Internet message boards may seem sardonic and mocking to outsiders, those of us in the know realize that these references to Constitution modifiers and saving throws are, more often than not, the result of genuine, heartfelt sentiment regarding the passing of a man who helped to craft those undeniably dorky concepts.
And while the Web’s foremost comics mark Gygax’s passing with images and its most studious bloggers do so with words, nerdy musicians pay tribute in song. The first of these, to my knowledge, comes from self-described “Sock Puppet Rock Band and Multimedia Extravaganza-thon-a-rama” Uncle Monsterface.
Frontman Marty Allen says, regarding the track,
we realize all too well the unfortunate truth is that too often, folks wait until someone has kicked the proverbial bucketcan before they say all the nice things they meant to say about them. that isn’t reason enough not to, let it just serve as a collective reminder to us all that we should tell people that we like them and that we like what they do. before they [d]ie. people have tried to convince me otherwise, and i refuse to believe it. but if you miss the boat, make them a song.
And with that, I submit for your approval “(thank you) Gary Gygax,” freely downloadable from UncleMonsterface.com.
Irreverent? Yes. Strange? Absolutely! But also sincere and ridiculously geeky. Because Gary deserves no less.
Photo by www.shannoncaseysplain.com
[Cross-posted from my nerdy music blog Hipster, please! Though this post is clean, others may contain salty language so be forwarned.]
