Pokemon Novice Discovers a Scary New World

I went to the Pokemon movie last night to find out what the multibillion-dollar fuss is all about.

It’s a cartoon with squeaky little characters that look like flattened tennis balls. That much, I can tell you. And it’s from Japan. The plot of “Pokemon: The First Movie” is murky to a Pokemon novice like myself, but it has to do with the brow-knitting ethics of genetic research, with science groping beyond the limits of humanity and with the nature of good and evil.

Then there’s the lesson about tolerance. (God forbid that 6-year-olds should enjoy themselves without being pummeled by a lesson.) In any event, the kids packing my local multiplex last night came in wriggling and went out rapt; at the end, there was barely a dry seat in the house.

This was different than the cartoons of my youth. Before Pokemon, before Bart Simpson, before Bullwinkle, way, way back in the Stone Age twilight when I was a boy, there was Farmer Gray.

He was little more than a stick figure, and his life consisted of being chased around the barnyard by domestic animals, and drinking. When he guzzled from a jug marked “Hard Cider-XXX!” his spherical nose darkened, and he did a crazy jig, and the goat would butt him over the fence. Now, there was a cartoon.

But today there’s Pokemon. It’s a cartoon, but it’s much more. It’s a set of video games, a TV show, an industry, a lifestyle, a passion, a lifelong commitment--at least until Burger King runs out of Pokemon toys. Nobody over 16 can pretend to understand it.

Fortunately, Brad Lowenberg is 15.

At his house in Moorpark the other day, he was hunkered down in front of a computer that looked as if it could run a small republic. When I displayed my profound ignorance of Pokemon, he was gracious; even in the clone-eat-clone world of Pokemon, one does not become a successful entrepreneur by being a jerk.

A Moorpark High sophomore, Brad runs a Pokemon Web site visited by 5,000 fans daily. He knows Pokemon’s 151 characters better than some kids know their cousins. He also knows the Pokemon marketplace and rakes in a nice pile of change by allowing companies to pitch a vast array of Pokemon paraphernalia on his site, www.poketech.com.

Several publications that rate Pokemon Web sites have pointed to Brad’s as particularly well-done. Fans download games designed by Brad. They chat with each other in a forum organized by Brad. They read his take on Pokemon issues of the day, which is not always uncritical; he said he once advised fans to “take a look at Pokemon.com (the official Web site) and laugh at it if you want.”

“I just tell it like I see it,” he said.

Brad is intense.

His mother, an interior designer named Dawn Lowenberg, sometimes has to tell him dinner is ready, then remind him once, and remind him again, and again after that.

“He lives his life in that chair,” she said. “We need a new one.”

Brad spends an hour or two daily--many more on the weekends--updating his site, protecting it from wannabe hackers, tossing out the occasional obscene posting, and answering the hundreds of questions that roll in constantly.

Brad’s father, a businessman named Gary Lowenberg, says he’s a bit of a techno-nut, and it rubbed off on his son. Computers have been part of Brad’s life forever.

“I remember when I was like 5, playing Pac-Man on a DOS!” Brad said, somewhat wistfully.

Over the years, things progressed.

Brad taught himself to type 60 words a minute.

He taught himself HTML--the elaborate coding for Web pages.

And, time after time, he spotted business opportunities. Over the Internet, he started marketing kids’ game cards and ancient video games he picked up at garage sales.

“All of a sudden, we were practically running a shipping business out of the house,” recalls his father. “He was sometimes taking in $250 a month.”

Today, merchandisers like Amazon.com and KB Toys give Brad a small cut of each sale made through the “store” on his Web site. It goes into a bank account, for college or a car.

All the same, Brad laments the inevitable fate of Pokemon.

“You can’t turn around without seeing a Pokemon-this or Pokemon-that,” he said. “It’s sick.”

The fad will die next summer, he predicted, and so will his Web site.

“Why keep updating it if nobody visits?” he asked.

But there will be a site after that, and another, and another, as long as there are kids with dollars to spend and hand-eye coordination to burn.

And when Brad’s a certain age, he’ll gaze across the sunset over Lake Washington to the place Old Man Gates built, and he’ll put his fine Italian loafers up on his computer hutch, and murmur:

“Pokemon. Now, there was a cartoon.”

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.