Zombie Logic Press Productions VHS Intro Animation

Growing up as a teen in the 80's the video store was a sacred place in my life. And the animations for a hundred different horror movie distribution companies still elicit a Pavlovian response from me. There's still a void in my life sometimes on Friday night when I feel this irresistable draw towards the video store, but there isn't one around.

Hearing of my longing for those days, and knowing I wanted nothing more in this life than an animation for my own production company, Zombie Logic Press, my workout partner and long-time friend Tim Stotz set out to work.

And today after our workout at the Y, instead of doing cardio, we decided to finish this...

Or rather, he decided to finish it while I sat there and drank a Candian Club on the rocks. 

Well, I did help a little, by providing the sound effects. And now forever after I have my own animation for my production company. Now we just have to finish my movie Dead Drunk. 

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A Few Fantasy Novels Banned At My High School During the Satanic Panic

During the rabid years of the Satanic Panic, circa 1983, they started removing books from the Byron High School library, then eventually cracked down on anyone playing Dungeons and Dragons on school property or reading "objectionable" books on school grounds. All  weekend I've been trying to recreate in my memory a list of a few of those books. Then I did what I always do: I went to Ebay and Abe Books and started buying those books for my library. Surprisingly, after that episode in my teen years I never read sci fi or fantasy at all, but for the past year I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons on Tuesday nights and my interest has been rekindled.

Before I list the books I must relate another memory that puts it in a little more perspective for me. At that time we got a young librarian from NIU who was young enough to notice a bunch of us were hanging out during lunch and playing D and D instead of shooting baskets or outside smoking. He asked us what types of books we were interested in the library acquiring, and he got requests from a lot of us. 

We were overjoyed, and started checking the books out.

Others were apparently not overjoyed, and a few weeks into the books arriving they were pulled from the library shelves and never returned. Then we were banned from playing Dungeons and Dragons on school grounds, and eventually many of us bought the books on our own but soon found out they were banned on school property, also.

1) Hobgoblin- John Coyne. Hobgoblin is the first of the books I remember having read. It's about a teen who loses himself in a character he plays in a fictional RPG named Hobgoblin. Apparently Coyne had seen his nephew playing Dungeons and Dragons and wondered what it would be like to write a novel where a character actually came to life. I haven't read anything else by this author, but he was known for some lurid material, and there is some sex and violence in this book. Not as much as in about a thousand other books in the library no one was complaining about, but Rona Jaffe's Mazes and Monsters had really started a frenzy. Speaking of. The second book I bought was...

2) Mazes and Monsters. Rona Jaffe. I learned a new term today. Problem novel. The social novel, also known as the social problem (or social protest) novel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". For some reason AIDS wasn't considered a problem during the Reagan administration, but role playing games and fantasy novels were. 

We came back for the Spring semester, and the young librarian was no longer there. For the first time there were now electronic chutes at the door which monitored the egress of books with a chip. Whereas before the congregating of a few nerds in tha back room was of no interest to anyone, our gathering was now scrutinized closely.

What I can tell you about that group of kids is that one of them became a high-ranking Marine officer, more than one, and even more than two made a lot of money in Silicon Valley, and the one who came closest to freaking out and becoming like a character in one of these "problem books" now lives on one of the most hum drum and Pleasantville roads in this town. That would be me. And I'm still contemplating flipping out and just entering a fantasy game one evening and not returning at nearly 50. Here's a few of the other books I have already ordered or will still be ordering.

3) Magician. Raymond Feist. At Crydee, Pug, an orphan boy is apprenticed to a master magician. Suddenly the Kingdom is aswarm with alien invaders, destroying the peace of the kingdom. Pug and his friend Tomas are swept up into the conflict, with Pug's destiny leading him through a rift to a new world.

That sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I'm not sure if I finished this one. Just ordered it from Abe Books. Saw copies selling for several hundred dollars, but I settled on a more economical book club version. Here are a few of the others I remember.

4) The Mists of Avalon. Marion Zimmer Bradley. In this one the Camelot and King Arthur legend is told from the perspective of the female characters. Morgan la Fey is less of an evil witch bent on destroying the Knights of the Round Table than a druid priestess trying to save her pagan religion from zealous Christian barbarians. I wonder why they didn't like this one.

5) The Crystal Cave. Mary Stewart. In this one, written before the ohers, I think in 1979, the Arturian legend is told throuh the eyes of Merlin. This is the first of a trilogy, and is about his adolescent years and travels as he comes into his own as the sorcerer and prophet he is. This isn't my copy. I haven't bought it yet.

6) Sanctuary. Edited by Robert Lynn Asprin. 22 stories of heroic fantasy including: The Gate of the Flying Knives, by Poul Anderson; Blood Brothers; by Joe Haldeman; Looking for Satan, by Vonda N. McIntyre; The Secret of the Blue Star, by Marion Zimmer Bradley; Myrtis, by Christine DeWees; The Price of Doing Business, by Robert Asprin; Shadowspawn, by Andrew J. Offutt; Shadow's Pawn, by Andrew J. Offutt; The Face of Chaos, by Lynn Abbey; Sentences of Death, by John Brunner; To Guard the Guardians, by Robert Asprin; Vashanka's Minion, by Janet Morris; The Dream of the Sorceress, by A. E. van Vogt; The Fruit of Enlibar, by Lynn Abbey; Goddess, by David Drake; Spiders of the Purple Mage, by Philip José Farmer; A Man and His God, by Janet Morris; Then Azyuna Danced, by Lynn Abbey; The Rhinoceros and the Unicorn, by Diana L. Paxson; The Vivisectionist, by Andrew J. Offutt; A Gift in Parting, by Robert Asprin; Ischade, by C. J. Cherryh. Also includes maps of Thieves' World, introductions, and essays.

This one I'm looking forward to getting and reading. Maybe again. 

7) The Chronicles of Amber. Roger Zelazny. The Chronicles of Amber is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Roger Zelazny. The main series consists of two story arcs, each five novels in length. Additionally, there are a number of Amber short stories and other works.

The Amber stories take place in two contrasting "true" worlds, Amber and Chaos, and in shadow worlds (Shadows) that lie between the two. These shadows, including our Earth, are parallel worlds that exist in, and were created from, the tension between opposing magical forces of Amber and Chaos. The Courts of Chaos are situated at the very edge of an Abyss. Members of the royal family of Amber, after walking a Pattern that is central to Amber, can travel freely through the Shadows. While traveling (shifting) between Shadows, one can alter reality or create a new reality by choosing which elements of which Shadows to keep or add, and which to subtract. Nobles of the Courts of Chaos who have traversed the Logrus are similarly able to travel through Shadow.

Ordered those last night. 

When I talked about this to one of my Planescape buddies, also a child of the 80's, he told me about the Streisand Effect, whereby when you try to erase something from the memory of others it just creates the opposite phenomenon, and the thing becomes even more powerful. This is a list of books I may very well have read, enjoyed, and not remembered very much at all if there hadn't been some concerted effort to make them off limits to me, to demonize their content. The effort was even more insidious now that I think back about it because what they were really trying to do is get me to censor myself, to passively accept their introjects and their sense of morality and never question it again. The censor would become internal, and I would have believed it was really me, not them. 

A few weeks into that second semester I was suspended for continuing to bring these books in. I had gone as far as to ask for them from a book club for Christmas, and would share them with anyone who was interested. It has been a lot of fun for me reclaiming these memories from the void, and like the character in The Chronicles of Amber who has amnesia, seeing the books laid out before me in a growing pattern as I remember one after the other. Some of these are most decidedly not literary classics, but I hope you, too, will pick one up and read it, whether the ghost of Edwin Meese likes it or not. 

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There Are Stranger Things Than Dungeons and Dragons

There are stranger things in this world than Dungeons and Dragons, but in the small town I grew up in there didn't seem to be in 1983. It was the height of the Satanic Panic, and the Devil was everywhere. 

That summer my cousin Jeff had been staying at our house because he couldn't get along with his abusive father, and a couple of times his friend Brett came over to stay with us, too. He brought his Dungeons and Dragons books and we played a few rudimentary campaigns that he made up spontaneously. He was a brilliant person. Nerdy. The total opposite of my cousin Jeff who was a born con man and charmer. He was a year older than me, and my favorite cousin. Just full of it. The two of them seemed liked the most mismatched friends of all time.

As far as Dungeons and Dragons: I was hooked from the beginning. That first time I saw the Efreet on the Dungeon Master's Guide my imagination was unlocked. I always was fascinated with mythology and was just starting to become obsessed with horror movies, and it was the first season of Elvira's Movie Macabre, and all of this coalesced to ensure I wouldn't be able to show any interest in my first year of high school.

Dungeon Master's Guide first edition

The second time Brett stayed for the weekend he left me his Dungeon Master's guide and several modules. Actually, I traded them for a nudie magazine I had stolen from my uncle. It was the best trade I ever made.

I was so obsessed with studying my tomes that I had no time for school and barely knew all my friends had joined the Cross Country team. The coach tracked me and my friend Royal down and asked us if we were interested. We said we didn't know, and his quote was "Well, it's time to shit or get off the pot." We decided to shit because our friends were on the team, and group of friends I would keep through my high school experience was formed.

Royal was familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, but the rest were newbies. Their interest was tepid, but we'd meet in basements on the weekends when we could and Royal usually did the honors of Dungeon Mastering.

Then we made the mistake of trying to play after practice night in the school commissary. Retribution was swift and absolute. Not only was Dungeons and Dragons banned from the school, but a committe was formed and dozens of books removed from the library. 

People were honestly scared. The Attorney General had formed a commission to investigate Satanic Ritual Abuse in America, which according to Geraldo Rivera was rampant. 

But this only drove us underground. We started to expand our circle and fall in with some of the older guys on the Cross Country, who also were, surprise, surprise, Dungeons and Dragons nerds. Many of the kids I knew then went on to be very wealthy in fields such as computers and even entertainment. There was a small hobby shop next to the Ben Franklin called Claire's, and she carried a nice variety of Dungeons and Dragons products. My collection grew, and by today's standards was very impressive and valuable. 

It was a junior named David who was the ring leader now, and we'd try to organize sleepovers whenever we could to play. But mostly we talked about playing. And really deep stuff. It's interesting talking really deep stuff with adolescents who mostly go on to be supra geniuses.

Then the books disappeared. Someone had gotten to my mother, who was in the early stages of becoming very ill, and also in the early stages of becoming very religious, and explained to her how Dungeons and Dragons was a gateway to Satanism. I came home one night and my books were gone. 

I guess I slowly got into other things. Sports. Horror. I was till a long ways away from being able to attract the attention of girls, so I moved on and read a lot. 

Then at a cross country meet three years later I heard that Brett had committed suicide with a shotgun the previous summer. He also was a cross country runner. He never made it to eighteen years old, but I can say he had an impact on my life. It was so important in that Revenge of the Nerds 80's America that I knew there were others who shared the desire to get out, to explore other realities and interests without being persecuted, which we were mercilessly, even though we were jocks.

At least I was. The others were smart enough to drop it the moment they were confronted with the taunting. I don't blame them for that at all. Most of the time I wish I had, too. Lived out those two years of high school in what really was and still is an idyllic place, at least for those who knuckled under and didn't make waves. At least back then.

A while ago I was searching for information on some of the guys from that Dungeons and Dragons group, and saw almost all had really made it. They hadn't careened out of control like Tom Hanks in Mazes and Monsters, or lost touch with reality at all. They seemed to be the ones creating the new reality we now all live in. Computers and games and virtual reality. I was happy for them

Except David. He was the quietest, most pensive of the group. He had bushy hair and looked like an overgrown Hobbit. His family lived on a large farm, and it must have been a shock to them that he had fallen so far from the tree. He had joined the Marines after getting an advanced degree in nuclear engineering and joined the for lack of a better term, and this was how it was termed in the obituary I read, germ warfare program. He died of cancer a couple of years ago. It's hard to say if Dungeons and Dragons continued to be a part of his life. It wasn't much a part of mine until recently. It seems there is a resurgence of interest  with shows like Stranger Things. 

I'm guessing and hoping it's a lot safer to play Dungeons and Dragons in the open now. I never got my books back, but I have new ones now. The one I would trade them all for is the one Brett gave me when I was a new teenager all those years ago. Unlike all those other guys in the group I did go through hard years, long stretches of trying to find myself. I've landed on my feet solidly and prefer reality to fantasy by wide margin now because the last few years have been a fantasy come true. 

In October these gates open, and I want to thank Brett and David for leading the way for me. Introducing me to not only a game, but a way of approaching life that is not by the book: challenging the untruths and stereotypes people try to impose on us if we diverge from the beaten path. 

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Why USA Network's Night Flight Was So Important In the 1980's

USA's Night Flight aired from 1981-1988

MTV debuted on August 1st 1981. USA Network's overnight video and music show Night Flight debuted June 5th 1981, featuring not only a healthy dose of videos from alternative bands, but B movies, interviews with artists and cultural figures, cult movies, short videos, cartoons, and stand up comedy. It was a lifeline to those of us living in small towns where there was little to no access to anything alternative or weird. In fact, in the town I lived in MTV was banned until 1985, but since they couldn't ban an entire network I looked forward to Friday and Saturday nights and Night Flight. 

The show began at 10 p.m. Central time, and lasted four hours. It was then reshown at 2 a.m., and the rising sun often found me sitting there watching that second showing in its entirety even though I had also watched the earlier showing. 

There was no "host" in the early years, just the voice of Pat Prescott doing an introduction to the individual pieces. It was the first place I encountered the Church of the Sub-Genius in the segment Love That Bob, and most likely the first time I saw the Devo video for "Whip It." other segments included New Wave Theater, featuring punk and New Wave bands, Atomic TV, featuring Cold War era videos, The Video Artist, and Tales From Tomorrow. No doubt about 99% of it was going right over my head at 13 years old, but I knew I liked it and longed for a world that was more like Night Flight than the small town reality of conformity and Revenge of the Nerds type bullies I existed in. The 80's really were a lot like the high school John Hughes' type movies about cool kids and jocks and freaks and geeks. Despite current fashion standards that geek is sheik, and being a nerd is cook, it sure wasn't in 1983. And that's what made Night Flight such a lifeline to geeks like me who were so outnumbered and so isolated in small towns across America.

Night of the Living Dead, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dementia 13, Eraserhead, and The Terror were shown in their entirety on Night Flight. There was nothing like it. MTV was nothing like it. Nothing like it existed before, during, or after its original run from 1981-1988. I guess you had to be there and know what it's like to live in a world without 24 hour access to every cool and new and interesting thing, and social media blasting out and sharing it all so we all virtually instantaneously can share in every new zeitgeist to understand what it meant to have just that one source of connection to someplace out there that contained people who thought and believed and created the way you did, and weren't punished or ostracized for it, they were revered. 

By the time Night Flight left the air in 1988 the era of grunge was about to sweep out the long national nightmare of Reagan, hair metal, and blind conformity. By 1990, everyone in America was cool, and  Night Flight was just one of dozens of ways one could access what was cool and hip and new. It was there for those who needed it at a time where there was almost no alternative. 

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Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord For PC 1981

Wizardy:Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord for PC

My school had one of the first advanced computer labs I encountered anywhere, and it seemed impossibly futuristic in the early 1980s. It also happened to contain enough serious computer nerds—several of whom later went on to successful careers in technology—to make what happened in that room considerably more interesting in retrospect.

Most days I ate lunch as quickly as possible and headed for the gym to shoot baskets. But every once in a while I'd wander upstairs to the computer lab to see what everyone was doing.

Usually, they were playing Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

Calling it "playing" might be generous. These guys had already figured out how to alter the game. Characters that were supposed to claw their way upward one miserable level at a time had been transformed into 100th-level demigods with thousands of hit points. Long before I understood much about computers, I was watching teenagers treat a commercial computer game less like a finished product than a system they were free to investigate, manipulate and rewrite.

That may be the part that interests me most now. We tend to remember those early computer games for their primitive graphics and brutal difficulty, but the computers themselves invited curiosity. You didn't merely consume what was on the screen. If you knew enough—or were willing to learn enough—you could get underneath it and start changing things.

Even with their absurdly enhanced characters, though, I seem to remember that they still had to slog through the endless wire-frame corridors of the maze to reach Werdna, the evil wizard waiting at the bottom.

Apparently even cheating had its limits.

Looking back, perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that some of the kids who spent their lunch periods doing this eventually made careers in computers and technology. I mostly watched from the sidelines before going back downstairs to shoot baskets. But Wizardry remains one of my earliest memories of seeing people interact with computers not as mysterious machines, but as things that could be understood, altered, and made to do what you wanted.

Why not?

Straight, I guess.

Of course there will be a small surcharge on the gold pieces, and they're not real, so there's that. 

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Space Invaders For the Atari 2600

I don't remember whether we got our first Atari 2600 for Christmas in 1977, the year the system first appeared in American stores. I suspect we didn't.

The Atari Video Computer System, as it was originally called, had a respectable launch, but it wasn't immediately the world-conquering phenomenon the Atari 2600 would eventually become. Atari had invested heavily in producing consoles for the Christmas market, and the home video game business was still new enough that nobody really knew whether Americans wanted another electronic box attached to their television.

Then came Space Invaders.

The original arcade game was created by Japanese designer Tomohiro Nishikado and released by Taito in 1978. Nishikado experimented with different ideas for the enemies before settling on creatures from outer space, drawing inspiration from science fiction including The War of the Worlds. He also credited Atari's Breakout as an important influence on the game's design.

Whatever combination of influences produced it, Space Invaders became a phenomenon.

By the end of 1982, billions of quarters had reportedly been fed into Space Invaders machines around the world. The rows of aliens slowly descending toward the player, speeding up as their numbers diminished, created one of the simplest and most effective forms of electronic anxiety ever invented. Everybody understood what was happening immediately: they're coming down here, you're down here, and eventually they're going to get you.

But the version I remember most wasn't standing in an arcade.

It was sitting in front of our television.

In 1980, Atari released Space Invaders for the Atari 2600. It was the first officially licensed conversion of an arcade game for a home video game console, and it became the Atari's killer app. Sales of the console exploded. People who might not have understood why they needed a dedicated video game machine suddenly had a very good reason: they could play Space Invaders without putting another quarter into a cabinet.

I'm guessing that's when the Atari arrived at our house.

The 2600 version couldn't reproduce the arcade game exactly, but that hardly mattered. Having anything resembling an arcade game available whenever you wanted to play it was astonishing. The television wasn't just something you watched anymore. You could interact with it.

And Space Invaders wasn't simply one game on the Atari. The cartridge contained an absurd number of variations—different player speeds, moving shields, invisible invaders, two-player versions and combinations of those options. Atari advertised 112 game variations, which sounded like you were buying an entire arcade on one cartridge even if most of those "games" were variations on the same basic premise.

Shoot the aliens before the aliens reach you.

Simple enough.

It's difficult now, when almost any game ever created can be downloaded or emulated in seconds, to explain how futuristic that little black cartridge seemed. The Atari joystick had one stick and one red button. The graphics were blocks. The sound effects were primitive electronic pulses.

None of that mattered.

There were aliens coming down the television screen, and you were controlling what happened next.

That was enough.

Atari 2600 Space Invaders 

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