Ouija Boards Scare Me!

Okay, okay, I know it is a totally irrational thing. We're just talking about a laminated pressed-cardboard surface with letters and numbers and a plastic stylus. They were sold my a major toy company for decades. Logic dictates that something mass produced for consumption as a kids' game cannot have any real occult powers. And anyone who knows me - logic is a strong factor in my psychological make-up and behavior.

They still scare the heck out of me! Here's why:

Back in the Fall of 1983 or so (I remember my friends Gary and Kathy were still dating at the time), I came back home from my freshman year at college on a semester break. So, I called up my usual high school gang to go and hangout one evening, and we all ended up going over to Alison's house. Her folks were out for the evening for something, so it was about seven of us just hanging out in the family room listening to music and such.

As we were catching up on things, it was brought up that the group members that remained back in the hometown for school and jobs had been doing some things with spirit writing. Gary had actually been doing it with the group of girls - he said he was channelling the spirit of some deceased child and would produce these writing in a hand-writing not his own that told this child's tragic tale. My buddy John and I were into tarot cards at the time and we would do readings for the others for fun (we must have brought along our decks based on the proposed plan for the night).

Anyway, someone brings up the idea that we should bring out the Ouija board and do some spirit world contact that way. Now, I was a skeptic that it would work - even if I did believe in spirits and ghosts. So, a bunch of us gave it a shot. I put one finger on the stylus as did Lynette and Alison. I'm not sure whose sprits we tried to contact at first, but at one point we thought we'd see if we could contact any deceased relatives. So, I asked "the board" a question that only someone in my immediate family (living or dead) would know. For sure Lynette and Alison didn't know what I was alluding to. And damn if the board didn't spell out the correct answer!

Yes, I did have a finger on the stylus but one finger alone doesn't move that thing. Even if my own thoughts concentrating on the answer were guiding my finger muscles to want to steer it in the right direction, how in the world could my muscles counter those of the other two girls? It had to be something else - it certainly felt like something else! Once that stylus started to move, it moved with amazing accuracy and pace. I can still hear the sound of the plastic device moving across the board, letter to letter to letter.

Needless to say, I freaked when that happened. I quickly told "the board" goodbye which is protocol for "releasing" the spirits you've contacted. Once the stylus hit that goodbye mark, I was done for the night. I was sufficiently freaked out by the whole thing.

To this day, I've never touched another Ouija board again

DHS alumni: Wendy Corsi Staub

I am very pleased to say that another famous person with whom I went to high school is best selling author Wendy Corsi Staub. Like myself, Wendy grew up in the small town of Dunkirk, NY. She was a year ahead of me in school, and both of our families went to the same church. I recall that she was very friendly to everyone in school and that helped make her popular. After high school she went to the State University of New York (SUNY) in Fredonia, the next town over. However, that was just the beginning of the journey that would take her to becoming a New York Times bestseller.

She writes suspense and mystery novels under her married name. She also writes romance novels under the name "Wendy Markham". She has also written a number of novels that would fall in the young adult/teen category. In total, she has gotten published more than 60 books which is just amazing.

I have actually purchased a few of her suspense novels in paperback and found them to be very enjoyable (even if this isn't a genre I read as often as others). Besides Fade To Black and All The Way Home, my favorite of hers would have to be In The Blink Of An Eye. The later book takes place in Lilydale, NY, a place not far from where we grew up. Lilydale is a renowned center for psychics and such, and the locale makes an intriguing backdrop for the novel. I am certain Wendy gathered a lot of details from the setting first hand - and the book is peppered with other references of nearby communities and locales, including the Book Nook which is the small bookstore in Dunkirk that I am sure Wendy (like myself) spent a lot of time perusing the shelves for that certain title to read.

I have to give it to Wendy - she is actually doing something I always dreamed of as a youth: making a living as a writer. I like too that she doesn't forget her smalltown roots even though she lives much closer to New York City these days. Often her book tours will take her back through western New York, and I hear she often makes the Book Nook one of her stops for signings.

Reign of the Rain

The editors of Vanity Fair magazine created a list of the top 50 movie soundtracks of all time. Looking at the Top 10 from bottom to top, they had The Big Chill, American Graffiti, Saturday Night Fever, Trainspotting, Superfly, The Graduate, Pulp Fiction, The Harder They Come, A Hard Day's Night and in number one position: Purple Rain. The editors describe Prince's masterpiece as "a flawless combination of funk, R&B, pop, metal and even psychedelia into a sound that defined the '80s".

Now, I'm certainly not going to disagree with that choice for number one. I'm a huge fan of Purple Rain. I owned it on vinyl and then again on CD. I had the movie poster adorning my walls for much of my college years. I owned the movie on VHS and again on DVD. I've easily seen it a couple dozen times. Sure, the acting in it is a little poor at times. But there are some shining moments. There is no denying the chemistry between Prince and Apollonia, and the comedy stylings of Morris Day and Jerome Benton were also key. I would have liked for the rest of the Revolution (Wendy, Lisa, Dr. Fink, etc.) to have a bit more meat in the film besides a few lines here and there, but that's okay.

What really worked for the film was the slick, music-video stylings of the various performance numbers. In fact, the whole album is properly showcased in the film with full numbers along with a couple killer performances from the Time, Apollonia 6 and other Minneapolis bands from the early 80's era. That's really when the movie rocks literally.

And, back to the soundtrack which is all tunes by Prince and the Revolution, the songs are a very solid combination when put together. The music has some variety - a little experimenting here and there by Prince to keep the audience totally interested. From the opening bounces of "Let's Go Crazy" through the final lighter-waving "Purple Rain", this is an album that delivers the goods through and through. Sure, it was one of the records that set Tipper Gore and her PMRC group a flutter about ratings being needed for music (nothing more amusing than hearing Tipper recite the lyrics to "Darling Nikki"), but that's just a total other angle of why this album has a place in musical history.

Science!

Last night on America's Most Smartest Model, the remaining models were mentally challenged with a science fair project (which they did in teams of two). Later, they then had to tie it in with modeling by mixing their own sunless tanning products and doing a photoshoot with their "bronzed" pasty skinned nerds. Very funny stuff.

The beauty was that to help on the science fair judging and such the show brought in Bill Nye the Science Guy. How cool is that? Bill freaking Nye! Even before we had a kid, my wife and I used to watch his show on Sunday mornings (along with Beakman's World). Nye was his usual quirky out-there sort of self. A great casting on a reality show that is shaping up nicely.

Only downer - Jessie, the gay black model, was the one "purged" this week. I knew it would happen. He's been on the chopping block for three weeks. Mary Alice has been harping on him to lose weight and that he's "not a model". Jessie had the smarts and a nice look in the face - just a little gut. What a shame. We really liked the guy.

Comics of the Week (10/24/07)

Countdown #27 was okay. I realized this week that I have to take this weekly title as if I was reading a novel. There are many storylines going on, thus each one doesn't move much on a week to week basis. I have to look at the broader picture. There also continues to be a lot of preping for other spin-off mini series - again we're seeing the beginnings of Countdown: Arena and Salvation Run in these storylines.

Tales of the Sinestro Corps: Superman-Prime is a one-shot tie-in to the whole Sinestro Corps Wars plot going on in the Green Lantern titles. This one-shot goes over the origins and motivations of Superman-Prime, a character many of us old time readers know as Superboy from Earth-Prime (the parallel Earth where "we" live - that had only one super-hero - a planet that was destroyed when Crisis On Infinite-Earths happened in the mid-80's. It is interesting to see someone so young, with powers potentially greater than Superman, deciding to fight the other fight because the heroes he "read about and believed in" are gone. It is kind of a fitting analogy to how us older readers sometimes feel about modern comics. Some of these characters are not the ones we grew up with. I guess Superman-Prime gives a voice to that frustration.

Teen Titans #52 ticked me off slightly with it's cover. It shows the team fighting Starro the Conqueor in a classic homage to the debut cover of JLA back in the 60's. Many books have done this over the years. No biggie there. So, why am I ticked? The artist couldn't even give a proper "after..." credit on it. It does not credit the original cover artist for the concept, and it does not even quote the right issue (it says "JLA 28" when it should be "B&B 28" - as the JLA debuted in Brave and the Bold #28). As for the rest of the issue, it was okay. Basically a center issue of a multi-part arc with a couple good moments and that's about it. I'm kind of bored with the whole 'Future Titans' angle now.

Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #7 is another fun read in the animated series style. The cover shows the boys of the team surrounded by the warrior Amazon women, very classic sci-fi to be sure. Inside, the book ties in nicely with the Themiscyra concept (aka. Paradise Island for us old school Wonder Woman fans) with a 31st century spin. The villain of the piece makes sense given her potential for longevity of life. A nice, fun issue that tells a story with a beginning, middle and end. If only more comics these days could be like that.

Back Tomorrow

To all my faithful readers, I'll be back tomorrow. Out of town for the day so no major post this time. I'll have two for you late Sunday - promise. Enjoy your Saturday.

Out of the Closet - Harry Potter revelation

Last Friday, J.K. Rowlings announced that the character of Albus Dumbledore from her beloved Harry Potter series of books was in fact gay. She said that it was something, as a writer, she decided about the character from the very start - even before the first book ever got published - though she would pepper only slight clues through out the books to this fact. Based on the hub-bub on the Internet and in the media after the announcement, this fact wasn't quite as obvious to her readers as she might have thought.

I don't at all find this surprising - the fact that not everyone picked up on it. I know I didn't catch it when I read the books over a marathon session over the summer and I'm a grown adult who should be able to read between the lines. Maybe, as a writer, Rowlings should have been a tad less subtle on things - especially in her seventh book where Dumbledore's youthful "great tragedy", as she put it, plays such a key role in the many revelations between what the students know and what is the truth about their headmaster.

Sometimes the signs are there and we don't always see them. In both high school and in college, I had good friends whom I thought I knew very well. It wasn't until decades later did I find out that they were in fact gay (one told me right out via an email after I contacted him after all those years, the other still hasn't said so though I know from other reliable sources in his life that he is). It is very possible that at the time I knew each of these guys that they hadn't come to their own conclusions yet. If they had, both were very much in the closet at the time.

I don't know - maybe it's a guy thing. Guys don't always want to tell their guy friends that they are gay. Maybe they think that'll change the friendship. Hard to say. From my perspective, it doesn't change the friendship at all. I'm friends with someone because of common interests we share (professional, hobbies, etc.). Just because we have one interest that we don't share in the same way does not have any bearing on the friendship.

My experience with female friends who have come out is a bit different. One of my closest friends in high school realized in her mid-twenties that she was a lesbian. I remember when she first told me; she was very open about it. I was very happy for her in that she found out what made her happy as was persuing that. She is still one of my dearest friends whom I great with a great big hug every time we get together. And for a few years in the 90's I worked with someone who was quite open about being a lesbian. She and I often talked about music, and she steered me towards a number of musical artists that I've found to enjoy for many years since. Her sexuality was just a part of who she was and it didn't matter to her who knew about it.

It is my hope, now that it is late in 2007, that the world is starting to become a bit more tolerant and open-minded. We are who we are, we like who we like. None of us has the right to judge what people should and should not do, especially when it is causing no one else harm and it is actually allowing some folks to finally find happiness in who they are.