Ultimately - this is the wrong thing for orchestras to do, unless they want to continue to be the museums of the musical world. What's interesting about game music isn't the traditional notions of melody and harmony, and when this music is reduced to those elements, it reveals itself as far less interesting (IMHO, of course).

The music is interesting in its interactiveness - it's ability to change with the action, and in its timbral qualities. Otherwise these are campy arrangements, not unlike pressing the demo button on a Casio keyboard.

I think the date on the San Francisco Chronicle story is incorrect. By 1979 Woodward and Bernstein were well-known and celebrated for having broken the Watergate story 5 years earlier!

Last year for Xmas I got a book (published by Phaidon Press) of Boring Postcards USA. Best book I own.

It's got a slot in the front, maybe for a piece that's now missing. The long bracket in the back mounts it as it sits...I'd say that it is a lantern holder.