If you haven't already noticed, the first "feature" we published was a "lecture" piece titled "GTBT: Battle of Little Big Horn" by an author named "Prof. James O'Flannery." It's actually VERY GOOD! You should go read it if you already haven't! The issue is, we have no idea who Prof. James O'Flannery is or how he found the website. To that end I am going to try and explain what I know and the story behind our mysterious scribe thus far.
So we launched Flappr today, but the site has been "live" for several days now. We sent it around to friends and family to look at and give us feedback, mainly just to help us locate broken links and the like. Well, lo and behold . . . I got the following email from Prof. Jimbo (the Flappr Staff's current short name for him) on Friday evening, unprompted, unsolicited, out of the blue WITH the cover photo, unredacted:
I thought this was a troll (probably still is) when I received the e-mail, so I shot him back "you got yourself a goddamn deal." As the Flappr Website Maker/Founder Guy, I figured we needed some extra help at the beginning and if this turned out to be a farce, well . . . nothing lost.
Turns out, Prof. Jimbo got to work and had his grandson e-mail me a preview of his debut "lecture" the next day. It was VERY GOOD! So, I e-mailed the grandson back with instructions on how to gain access to the site and import the story from Prof. Jimbo's Commodore 64.
I woke up this morning and Prof Jimbo had e-mailed me to inform me he did not have a twitter account and wouldn't be tweeting out stories, that his story was ready for publication and to chastise me for referring to him as "Jim" in our previous e-mail exchange (sorry, Prof Jimbo):
I checked the drafts folder this morning and sure enough, it was in there. I read the entire thing immediately, laughed the entire time and learned a thing or two. The more you know, you know? I immediately decided that this would be our first feature piece on Flappr, from a guy nobody knows and we cannot engage with. . . .brilliant.
So to recap:
- Prof Jimbo is an old man who was (recently?) terminated from his job as a teacher.
- He's writing a weekly series of historical lectures called Good Thing / Bad Thing.
- He doesn't like being called Jim.
- He doesn't have twitter, won't get one.
- He uses a Commodore 64.
- He has a grandson (apparently three of them, from the article).
- His wife is named Gladys (from the article).
- Age? Old?
- ????????????
I have no idea what is going on. My guess is that one of YOU is Professor James O'Flannery, PhD and is finding this whole thing extremely funny. To be honest, I DON'T care, so long as the content machine keeps firing. Before you ask me, no, I DO NOT KNOW THE IDENTITY OF PROF. JIMBO! I don't want to know, either. I like the character, I like the content and I hope you do too. NO, I will not pester the "grandson" or share his information. YES, I will pester the grandson to try and get Prof. Jimbo on Twitter. At minimum, it should keep this shit interesting.