Just got this in over at the SCOOP.IT site’s SUPER-SCOOPER…and thought we needed to add a lot more to the back story, for all of you to enjoy!
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http://blog.predatorbdu.com/2012/03/soldier-of-fortune-mag-now-on-kindle.html
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OK, so for the record, I have not always been a blogger…heck, we didn’t even have “A/Uh” computer at my school…even for the front office folks…until the year AFTER I graduated; when my now-computer-savvy Army Civilian support little brother and his friends started to learn BASIC programming on a TRS-80. Yea, I am THAT old. Not as old as dirt, but old enough to know that “exciting electrons” only happened once-upon-a-time in an analog world, and “blogging” was done with a pencil and paper, or a typewriter you could not plug into a wall socket.
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This was EXACTLY like my first typewriter at the radio station where I learned my trade. I still type with 2 fingers and my thumb on my right hand…so I can throw the carriage!
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But, one thing that fueled my teenage imagination…along with my monthly copy of “DIRT BIKE” magazine…and that was riding my bicycle down to the local bookstore to pick up an ANALOG copy of SOLDIER OF FORTUNE Magazine! Ah yes, the fuel of many-a backyard war with plastic army men and home-made guns….long before there was AIRSOFT or even the “P-WORD” in the USA…SOF and hard-chargin’ editor/publisher Robert K. Brown were “spanning the globe, bringing us the constant variety of war.”
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I gravitated to the Radioman…and it is NOT the WORST ARMYMAN of ALL TIME! (Click PICTURE for LINK)
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It didn’t hurt my desire to gobble up “all things SOF Magazine”, that Brown was a “prior acquaintance” of a good friend of mine who ran our best local hobby shop, fueling another love…building plastic armor and figure models and wargaming…and the stories of a “mercenary” lifestyle were the stuff of pirate legends to seaport boys of the 18th and 19th centuries. In every issue of SOF, you were there, with RKB and “his boys” ADVENTURE JOURNALISTS, on ambush in Rhodesia, re-fighting the fights over Vietnam and “our” POW/MIA’s…and long before the right-wing mainstream “Conservative Movement, ” there was Bob Brown, schooling a lot of willing ears…and some tender, teen ears, too…to the looming threat of communism, cronyism, capitulation, corruption and criminal acts that needed someone to step into their path and ‘call a spade a spade.’
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I am sure reading those pages (and I still have MOST of my original copies in storage) somehow fueled my passion to become a journalist. And, through a round-about way and tons of luck, I became a Radio and TV reporter who tended to gravitate to stories on the military. ’Hard to toot my own horn…and I won’t right now…but apparently I was good enough to make a living doing that for over 20 years. And, in my travels, I’d occasionally meet and interview folks who’d crossed paths with the mythical “RKB;” another great friend and “source” who was, like Brown, a Vietnam vet Green Beret and passionate activist about the POW/MIA issue; others who might have a colorful tale from times gone by, even a state-side leader of the “Contra” effort in Nicaragua…which also was on RKB’s “radar”…but I never met “the man.“
Until January, 2012. Dateline: Las Vegas
Sitting in the working media room at the SHOT Show 2012 with one of the worst colds/viruses of my entire life, imagine THUMPY’s surprise to look up from my lap-top and see ROBERT K. BROWN in the chair RIGHT NEXT TO ME! It’s probably divine intervention…’has to be…at least as far as me not squealing like a high-school cheerleader, but I managed to gather myself in a split-second and said, “How ya’ doin, Colonel?”
An inspirational and very-wide ranging conversation of some-animation took place over the next half hour, in which we swapped stories about:
-being in Saudi Arabia for “DESERT STORM” at the same time, in mostly the same places (short of Kuwait City, for a little local-TV reporter hangin’ with Camp Lejeune’s finest, that didn’t happen…while “Lion-of-Arabia Brown” was ‘flipping the bird’ to the enforced media pools and flat-hatting across the desert wasteland into enemy-occupied Kuwait with Arab troops…what a story!!)
- to talking about some of those guys I knew that Brown recalled from earlier exploits…
-to talking AIRSOFT and MilSim, which the Colonel was well-versed in and supportive of as a Real-Steel training and tactics tool…(SWEET!)…
-to meeting his very nice”lady friend,” and showing off the technological wonder that is a MacBook equipped one-man-SHOT Show covering machine…
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“So, what kind of gear is THIS?” Apparently RKB’s “lady” gave his MacBook away…he kept breaking it! Steve Job’s finest apparently met its match in a hard-typing journo-’merc and conservative SHOOTER!
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After our “photo op,” I got an offer to contact RKB after the SHOT Show for a possible real shot at doing a story or two for SOF..still workin’ on that, so no details yet, but STAY TUNED…and, got his contact info on an NRA Board of Director’s Business Card (‘gonna be bronzed some day, to go in the THUMPY Museum of Military History) and we shook hands and parted company.
SO, it came as a shock a couple of weeks later, as we built the SCOOP.IT Channels, that SOF High Tech news started to fly in over the transom here at the 3-D House of Scoopage…
First, we got a FB scoop from 2011 Heroes of Thumpy @ SHOT Show 2011, “Jager” and Brandy from OPSGEAR.COM, that they were long-time associates and getting RKB’s online sites into a higher-state of tech awareness…
http://www.scoop.it/t/thumpy-s-3d-house-of-airsoft-scoop-it/p/1054261678/opsgear-on-soldier-of-fortune-magazine
https://www.facebook.com/OPSGEAR/posts/282470131807293
Now comes word that Soldier of Fortune will be DOWNLOADABLE on NOOK and KINDLE, Visible on their own SOF website and FB pages, AND…in all likelihood, spreading the death-defying and dealing stories of RKB’s memoires…now being written, we are told…onto that most-leftwing of tech devices…the iPAD!
As they say on TV….”STAY TUNED.” We’ll be hearing a lot more from Soldier of Fortune Magazine and the intrepid and gracious (he’ll hate me for that one; I’ve probably just blown the ‘gig!) Robert K. Brown!
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SOF’s Website link HERE: http://www.sofmag.com/
“SOLDIER OF FORTUNE focuses on news and adventure based on firsthand reports from all over the world. Our commitment to presenting the facts in their entirety sets us apart from mainstream news sources. Our editorial policy is pro-military, pro-strong U.S. defense, pro-police, and pro-veteran. We strongly support the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. By opposing tyranny of all kinds, we support the basic freedom of mankind.”
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Amazon.com Kindle Link HERE : http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006BDWP58
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NOOK Link RIGHT HERE: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/soldier-of-fortune%2c-inc
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