February Means Birthday

I am posting this on the day before The Mrs’ birthday, which means that the bulk of the month is dedicated to celebration. She has spent most of her life extending her birthday celebration beyond just the day of her birth. Quite frankly, I can’t blame her. This month pretty much sucks anyway. The holidays are over and the associated bills are starting to roll in. If you are in the midwest like we are, the weather varies from sucks to really sucks. We do our best to celebrate Black History Month, which unfortunately often translates to listening to whiny people asking when white history month is. PS. It’s OK to punch those people right in the throat.

The Mrs got part of her present early. Last Saturday we attended the Game of Death at Genitti’s Hole in the Wall restaurant. A seven course family style meal was followed by a hilarious, audience participation style murder mystery. The setting of the show was a 1970s game show pilot. They absolutely nailed the 70s show feel. I honestly felt like I was sitting at home sick from school and watching day time TV.

I also attended a showing of the 4K digital remaster of Hellraiser. I haven’t seen this in the theater since it first came out. It was a joy to see on the big screen.

In case you missed the Hot Guy Killer episode of the Otherworldy Podcast, Suzy listed her favorite hot guys who played killers in various horror movies. Apparently I took the assignment too literally, as my list consisted of:

Listening To: Good Dogs by Blake Crouch. I do love a good werewolf tale. I’m intrigued by the duality of the human/monster entity living in the same space and how the characters come to grips with that.

Currently Reading: Videotapes from Hell: A Visual History of Cult, Collectible, and Crazy Video Covers edited by Stephen Jones. As you know, I am quite fond of the history of cinema, horror cinema in particular. This title allows the reader to revisit some of the movies which graced the shelves of the local video stores. More on that below.

Current Obsession: The deer in our yard. We’ve been trying to get a count on the local population. Before I started writing this, there were 8 in our yard. They’ve been coming ever closer to the deck which has lead to some interesting encounters. It also means Tesla has had to really work on staying hydrated as she “reclaims” the yard after they leave.

We have been spending most of our time working on this year’s publication schedule. Let the Sun Shine In: Poems Torn From the Dead Flesh of The Autopsy of Jane Doe is in the final stages of review before release. Edits have been performed on Some People I Have Killed. There are plenty more on the slate as well.

Reading Videotapes from Hell has gotten me thinking about the drastic change that happened when movies became available for home viewing via the new technology of the VCR (and Laser Disk player). It is hard to conceptualize now, considering I can literally watch a movie whenever I want to wherever I want to. From where I write I am only a few steps away from no less than four devices I could use to stream just about any movie I choose.

But it wasn’t always like that, dear friends.

Some of you may be old enough to remember when going to the movies was just about the only way to see a release. After that you had to wait until it was released for television broadcast, often heavily edited and probably cut down in the horrible pan and scan format. If you were unlucky enough to live out in the boonies, you probably didn’t even get first run movies until after they had passed through the big cities. I was fortunate enough to live in Detroit where there were a number of second run theaters which would occasionally show older films, as well as a couple of drive-ins who had double features.

There were also specialty television shows which showed older films. WKBD, (UHF channel 50 before becoming the WB affiliate) had Bill Kennedy at the Movies, a program which focused on classic films. I cut my teeth on the noir classics here, as well as some of the Universal monsters. Both channel 50 and channel 20 (WXON before a brief foray into being a pay station connected to OnTV) both had special weeks when they would show horror fare. It was such a big deal that my mom would let be bring the black and white TV out of the basement and prop it in the window of my bedroom so the neighborhood kids could watch Toho Week.

By far the King of the monster movies for those of us in Detroit was Sir Graves Ghastly. Lawson J. Demming hosted a show on WJBK (channel 2 — a VHF station!) (before channel 2 became the local Fox affiliate) which showed horror movies on Saturday afternoons. The films were broken up by the occasional bit of sketch comedy. I was forever traumatized by The Glob. IYKYK.

Note, that this all happened back when there were three “real” stations (2, 4, &7 locally) which broadcast ABC, NBC, and CBS. The kind of dreck I wanted to watch was delegated to the UHF stations 20, 38, 50, and 62. If you were lucky and could position the rabbit ears just right (with a crap ton of tin foil and/or a sibling to stand there) you could watch the late night movie on channel 9, the CBC broadcasting out of nearby Windsor, Ontario.

Our selections expanded a little with the advent of On, It, HBO, Showtime, and the eventual expansion of cable, but you were still limited by what some other asshole programmer decided you should watch. The real change came with the VCR. Suddenly you could decide what you felt like watching at the moment. If there was something coming on TV that you wanted to see but weren’t going to be home, you could record it and watch it at a later time (not that this was ever a thing for me. It wasn’t like I had a roaring social life or anything.). The TV Guide even published codes you could plug in to your VCR and it would record the show. This was a bit of a problem, as it would just record that block, so if some stupid sporting event ran long you ran the risk of missing the end of The X-Files, not that I’m still bitter.

Oh, and for those who are too young, The TV Guide was a little magazine that listed all of the upcoming shows with little descriptions of them. Kind of like the guide on your streaming service. You could pay to have it delivered or just use the subpar one that came with the newspaper.

Oh, newspapers were these publications…

Man I feel old. Pardon me while I go yell at some kids to get off of my lawn.

Where was I? Oh yeah, video stores. These places popped up like mushrooms. Every little mom and pop store had a rack of video tapes for rental. Soon the big places started crowding them out. Maybe I’ll write something about the juggernaut that was Blockbuster at some point, but this is little trip down memory lane has already gone a few miles off course. The problem with many of these was the same one you had with broadcast and cable TV — curation. BBV prided itself on being a Family Store so there were limitations on what you would find there.

If you were really lucky, there would be a large alternative to Blockbuster and Mammoth Video. For me that was Thomas Video. They had something for everyone from the cinephile to those looking for something straight from 42nd Street. You could tell they were serious, because they had LaserDiscs for sale (those were for the serious collector). Thomas Video was where I first met, and got an autograph from, Bruce Campbell.

To put it in perspective, I worked at a Blockbuster Video as an Assistant Manager but I rented from Thomas.

There was something about the hunt through the various titles, looking for something you had heard about but never seen in person. Or for an old favorite you wanted to revisit. Or just something new because it was the weekend before Halloween and it was time to go nuts.

Video tapes prices would eventually lower to the point where everyone could be the curator of their own collections. You could even get 12 VHS tapes for a penny! (and that’s another topic for another day)

I am still a fan of owning physical media of my favorites (something The Mrs is most definitely not a fan of). While most of my VHS tapes have been replaced by DVDs and BlueRays, I still have quite a few of those classics.

I even have a VCR I can plug them in to should I feel like it.

(Although at this point I’m actually scared to do so because my video tape repair skills are a little rusty.)