When it comes to holidays, Christmas has all of the luck. There are toys and other gifts, great big feasts, and it arrives earlier and earlier each year. Superior celebrations like Halloween can barely get a month anymore before the big fat guy starts making appearances in every nook and cranny capable of being shoved into the average human’s senses. What a bummer!

Nothing sucks worse than hearing “Jingle Bell Rock” in late September when the stores are setting up their Thanksgiving displays, but at least Christmas has songs. Halloween often gets yuletide melodies with some cheesy new lyrics by and for preschoolers and that’s what we, as a society, have deemed acceptable. For shame! Sure, we have “Purple People Eater” and sigh, “The Monster Mash,” but do we really need to hear those on repeat due to a lack of imagination?

I guess so, because when we were at last given a record starring horror icon Freddy Krueger, this audio abomination was the result:

What can I say about The Elm Street Group and their sole release, Freddy’s Greatest Hits? That something this awful was ever made perplexes me more than how they managed to actually get Robert England to provide the voice of Freddy on every single song. I was almost positive that they just sampled audio from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise for the majority of it, but many entries very clearly have original takes of England performing new lines just for this dog turd of an album. I hope you’re in for a fright, because we are about to take a deep dive into this travesty and each of its nine tracks. You’ll never see Elm Street the same way again!

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1. Do The Freddy

Nothing says “horrible death at the hands of a sleep demon” quite like this bouncy ‘80s cover of an already strange 1960s fad song and its accompanying dance. The Freddie was performed by raising one’s left leg and both arms, then the right leg and both arms ad infinitum or until the tune ended. Sounds about as fun as a colonoscopy. Had this move gone by another name, or had been originally performed by anyone other than Freddie and the Dreamers, it would never have been included. With new lyrics that reference Mr. Krueger and a constantly repeating sample of his diabolic laughter and wailing, you will surely be left without friends after dropping the needle on this one at your next Halloween party.

2. Dance Or Else

While dance marathons are still a thing to some degree, they are a far cry from those held a century ago that could last days and, in some cases, result in death. If Freddy is hosting, that is probably going to be the standard from the get go. It’s unfortunate that we’ll have to dance to this obnoxious pop drivel until our dreams claim our souls or we somehow manage to wake in time. Bleh.

3. In The Midnight Hour

Another crappy cover, this time of a Wilson Pickett tune that, like “Do the Freddy,” was probably only chosen because of its name. Anyone who has listened to or read the lyrics would know that a song about love and sex has nothing to do with death by nightmares, but don’t let that stop the production! We also get to hear Robert England sing in character for a little bit in the opening, and it sucks about as much as you would expect. Don’t quit your night job!

4. Don’t Sleep

I take back what I said about this album being a turd; this song is awesome! While it would be fairly mediocre on its own, being a part of Freddy’s Greatest Hits makes it a masterpiece given the majority of what surrounds it. The one downside is the constant Krueger laughing and taunts telling the listener not to sleep or dream. Remove that tripe and you’ve got a decent ‘80s power ballad about murder.

5. All I Have To Do Is Dream

Oh look, it’s another shitty cover chosen only because of the title with little interjections by Freddy scattered throughout. Just rip me to shreds already; I’ve had enough.

6. Obsession

Humans and androids, I give you the best song on this entire album! Like “Don’t Sleep,” this is an original piece that actually rocks. It could just as easily be about Michael Myers or other horror villains (or a crazed ex-lover for that matter), and that makes it a playable gem that you can break out at any time of the year and not just at Halloween. While the lyrics are a bit too trite for my liking, you have to take a win where you can get one. Maybe some of your friends will even come back to your party after this starts, but don’t count on it.

7. Woolly Bully

It took me several listens before I realized that the only reason this cover exists is because Freddy Krueger wears a sweater, and that sweaters are woolly and Freddy’s a bully. Next!

8. Down In The Boiler Room

Mmm, milquetoast funk: tastes just like Wonder Bread! I love the emphasis England has placed on the word “boiler” when he sings the title. The sensual crooning is more out of place than some of the songs selected for this record. Unlike the last original track, this one blows. It’s too long, the music is overly repetitive, and the lyrics sound like they were created by artificial intelligence if you were to enter the prompt “scary song ooOOoo!”

9. Elm Street Dreams

We end this wretched album with an instrumental that was mastered at a lower volume than the other eight tracks, so that’s always a nice treat. Perhaps it was due to the bass solo that fills the middle of the piece, or the engineers just stopped caring and wanted to get home. The synth stabs are aggravating and I swear that I’ve heard that sound before in a low budget horror film playing a shoddy two or three note villain theme. Though Freddy sees us off, what we have just endured has made us all a little less frightened of him.

Now, what sort of friend would I be if I were to deprive you of this monstrosity? For your “enjoyment,” I now give you Freddy’s Greatest Hits!

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As a child, I was fascinated by the phenomenon of UFOs. My best friend growing up (I will call her "K”) and I would spend evenings staring at the sky at our homes and reporting to each other in class the next day if we had seen anything. The short answer was generally “no” most of the time, or an exited “yes” that was quickly turned to disappointment upon realizing that we had likely seen an airplane and that our imaginations had filled in the rest with what we were hoping to see. Sky-gazing was limited to summer nights without curfews or, once school started again, the winter months when the sun set earlier so that we could stare into the vastness of the universe for a glimpse of extraterrestrial technology before our bedtimes at 9:00 pm.

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We frequently watched The X-Files or the film Fire in the Sky, and K was even convinced at one point that she had been abducted by aliens at least two times. Looking back, she had likely experienced sleep paralysis that had tinges of alien life influenced by subconscious memories of the shows we had been watching and the plethora of paranormal reading material we subjected ourselves to in the Alien/Bigfoot Clubhouse that her father had built. Regardless, it was still a thrilling, but at times, frightening adventure for two six/seven-year-olds living in a small city in Central Massachusetts with a lot of nothing to do.

As a more skeptical adult who can safely rule out encounters with the supernatural using science and logic, I am much more inclined to see UFOs in the most literal sense and easily explained as misidentified aircraft, electromagnetic phenomenon, or flat out hoaxes. Fakery being the most common explanation, especially if there is a video on YouTube or The Travel Channel’s Paranormal Caught on Camera. Even with several declassified recordings of unidentified aerial objects by the Pentagon, there is no evidence that these are extraterrestrial in origin. Different outfits of the military are testing different devices and are not sharing that data with one another for security reasons. It’s an obvious answer to the sensational footage shown from time to time on local and cable news channels. Sorry to pop your saucer-shaped balloon.

That being said, there was one night in grade school when my routine searches of the night sky actually produced something. It was quarter of 1:00 in the morning on a Sunday in the middle of winter. I woke up needing to use the bathroom which was a mere two metres from my bedroom and, when finished, decided to raise the shade and take a peek outside one last time before going back to sleep. That is when I saw this:

A perfect sphere of bright, white light surrounded by an opaque halo was slowly moving in a southbound direction towards Worcester from the north, from about the location of Leominster. It made its way over the neighbouring streets silently. It had a small tail trailing from behind it that flickered outwards from the orb and retracted back into it at a steady rate of about 90 pulses per minute (I am using my metronome to calculate the pattern of the tail, as unscientific as that is). The light was so bright that it pierced through the thick fir trees that dotted the backyard of my childhood home. The bathroom window faced westward at 284° and the object was moving from about 345° N to about 275° W before disappearing behind the trees, houses, and hills. The entire event lasted less than a minute, but I never blinked or took my eyes off of the light as it made its journey into oblivion.

I went back to sleep with a feeling of satisfaction to have finally witnessed something that I remember feeling the biggest smirk across my face as I nodded off. Of course K was ecstatic that I had had an actual sighting, but nobody else in our class believed me, and this was a story that I could not wait to share. I remember, when describing the motions of the tail, I was ridiculed by another kid who claimed that I was the one who had a tail “moving in and out.” That has no bearing on the story; I just find it amusing, especially now after 30 years have passed.

Decades later, I can look at this so-called “encounter” and draw a few conclusions that better explain just what I had witnessed that night.

Explanation 1:

As a child, I suffered from anxiety induced insomnia that worsened around school, so my paediatrician had recommended that I take a Tylenol PM if I was having difficulty sleeping or became too nervous about attending the next day for my predictable ass-whooping at the hands of the class bully. I was likely in a very drowsy state and just conscious enough to make my way to the bathroom to take a whiz and, upon looking out the window, saw what I had wanted to see. I was probably in a sort of sleepwalking state and all of the exposure to paranormal literature and the desire to actually see something resulted in what was basically an hallucination.

Explanation 2:

The UFO was just an airplane or helicopter at an odd angle. The “tail” that I had seen could have been a light on the rear of an ordinary aircraft or life flight heading to the local hospital. The cold, dense air of winter could have played with the appearance of the lights and, combined with my drowsiness and imagination, became something extraordinary. At the time, there was an active base in Devens and it could have been a military aircraft performing exercises or other routine maneuvers.

Explanation 3:

Nothing: I had dreamt the entire thing.

I hate for a story like this to be anticlimactic, but that’s how the world works. At least, that’s how they want us to think the world works. By “they” I mean the council of extraterrestrial overlords from the Andromeda Galaxy secretly injecting our brains with their own farts to weaken our resistance to the secret invasion already underway. Wake up, for the love of all that is holy, wake up!

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Is there any holiday greater than Halloween? The answer is, of course, no. If you think for a microsecond that it’s out-competed by Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Presidents’ Day, you are a sad husk of a human being and I’m beginning to wonder if we’re even friends. For shame! Now that it’s “socially acceptable” to start painting everything black and orange to celebrate the season, the time has arrived to select an enormous pumpkin to begin carving your jack-o’-lanterns!

What’s that? It’s only September and too early for such things? Bah, it’s never too early! But let’s say you don’t have easy access to a good pumpkin yet. What are you to do then? No worries, because I have this handy guide right here for creating alternative jack-o’-lanterns for those of you too lazy to actually go out and kneel before The Great Pumpkin in order to receive His offspring on which to carve your ghoulish faces!

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Faux Pumpkins

You have probably seen these at your local home improvement stores. They are often stacked alongside those horrible inflatable decorations that besmirch every suburban landscape during Christmas and Halloween (though I have seen Easter themed inflatables in recent years). Often described as “no-mess,” these soft, vinyl squashes are an easy alternative to the real thing, are non-smashable (which is much better marketing than no-mess), and can be reused for many years to come. Light with an electric candle or flashlight and you are set to get your Freddie Kruger on! Just be sure to carve something that isn’t guaranteed to age poorly if you are planning on multiple uses, like “Elon 4Ever.”

Paper Bag

Ah, the original no-mess pumpkin alternative! I was first introduced to this concept in kindergarten and am now realizing that I had a bad childhood. This was a classroom project that served as nothing more than busywork where we would draw our spooky faces on an inverted lunch bag and “carve” them out with safety scissors before stuffing them full of crumpled-up newspapers. There would always be that one kid who couldn’t use those scissors properly and would ruin his “jack-o’-lantern,” ask for another bag and cry as he botched it again, knowing that this would be the version displayed in the classroom before the school district banned Halloween for being “offensive.” We never illuminated these; they just sat on a table at the back of the class. I suppose if you wanted to try to make these scary, using a candle and watching it go up like an old Christmas tree in June would be pretty terrifying.

Old Toolbox

This one will require metal shears or some welding skills. Personally, I’d go with the latter as it would be much easier to design a scary visage on a decaying metal box than the janky shapes a pair of shears would likely create. Toolboxes are great because some of them already look like they have a face; it’s only a matter of turning a mundane happy or sad expression into one of unmitigated terror. Maybe the old box is sentient, as Pixar has shown us in the form of toys, and that it has finally realized that its long-time owner died decades ago, and that it is now a forgotten chunk of steel left to rot away in the back of an antique store never to be used again. Never to be remembered…

A Hollow Log

If you live near the woods and can safely hike through without getting mauled by a bear or Sasquatch, there’s a good chance that you can find yourself a decent sized log that has already been partially carved by termites or carpenter ants. Take that soggy old wood home and add it your meagre Halloween décor! Depending on its condition, it may need some work to bring out a truly spooky face. After all, you can’t let the insects hoard all the credit here. Taking a file or chisel, carefully exaggerate the rotten features into a hellish grin. Leave the creepy crawlies alone so that it looks as though your wooden jack-o-lantern is coughing up termites! Alternatively, if you happen to possess some sweet chainsaw skills (read: a proper Canadian) you could always apply that and carve yourself some green wood in full view of the neighbours. If they have any gripes, well, you know what to do with that saw!

Your House

Now this one will require some work but, damn it all, it’s Halloween! You will first have to gut that pumpkin by throwing away all of your things, tearing out all but the load bearing walls and support beams, and disposing of that junk. This will totally be worth it, trust me! 

Next, paint an outline of your design on the front wall of your home, and carefully carve it out with reciprocating saws, sledgehammers, and other tools of destruction. Careful not to hit any electrical or water systems. Better yet, cut the main power to your home and turn off the water main. You may want to remove the copper wiring from the walls too. For later use. If you have gone and cut the power before you have finished the carving, you’ll probably need to get a generator or, if you’re smart, just run an extension cord from your neighbour’s house. They won’t mind at all once you tell them it’s for Halloween!

Finally, to make sure your jack-o-lantern is properly illuminated, you’ll want to light a couple bonfires inside. This is where gutting all that useless shit comes in handy for kindling and to allow room for the flames grow and let that house-pumpkin shine!

Don’t worry about anything else; that’s what homeowner’s insurance was made for!

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Now that we are formally entering the Halloween season, I want to share a true story that I cannot explain. I want to begin by stating that I am often very skeptical of tales involving the paranormal, and I choose to describe this experience as “weird” over anything else. With this disclaimer out of the way, let me take you back to the early-2000s and to the infamous city of Salem, Massachusetts.

During the summers, my family would vacation in Gloucester. We’d stay in a hotel on the beach, go out to dinner every few nights for fresh seafood and, when not on the sand itself, go shopping in Rockport, or spend a day in Salem visiting the witch shops, the haunted attractions, and the historical sites. In August of 2002, we thought that it would be fun to head up to the North Shore in October to see Salem in its full seasonal glory and to participate in a haunted walking tour, so we made reservations on the spot.

On a Friday after school, my parents, sister, and I made the drive to our usual hotel and checked in before heading to Salem for dinner and to enjoy the festivities in such a notorious setting. After eating at an Irish pub, we ventured through the cobblestone streets and into various shops, enjoyed street performances by local historians and weirdos (a latter of whom had a lifelike prop skunk upon his shoulder with which he freaked out many tourists), and explored all sorts of little crevices of the city that generally go unnoticed during the summer. We had at least an hour before the tour began, and the city was filled with a carnival atmosphere in which my sister and I in particular took great pleasure.

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It was around this time that we noticed a strange restaurant. There was a party going on inside of it with what appeared to be a Roaring ’20s theme. The people were all dressed in old fashioned attire. The men wore outdated suits with wide lapels, and at least one held onto a bowler style hat, never placing it onto his head. The women were wearing flappers in red, white or black, and a few others had more elaborate dresses in white, yellow or black that resembled tighter fitting gowns. Many of the women had bobbed hair, and I remember at least one in red wearing a feathery tiara. Some in the gathering held onto masquerade masks. In the window nearest to us, a group of four (two men, two women) sat across from one another and appeared to be joking; one of the women was laughing as a waiter arrived at their table with a pad of paper. The building also had what seemed to be a small ballroom, and there were couples dancing beneath antique lighting and at least one chandelier visible behind the people smiling beside the window.

All four of us saw this and smirked. It reminded my sister and I of the sort of weird pageantry that some of the goth and emo kids at school would have done if given the time and budget so we dubbed it “the goth restaurant” and went along our way to the tour. We didn’t see any signs, so we made note of the location and decided to get the name on our way back with the intention of going there ourselves the following August.

The haunted tour of Salem was very interesting. It began in the downtown area and went through the historic cemetery, the location of the jail where the accused witches had been held awaiting trial during the hysteria, the execution sites, outside the homes of notable colonial leaders, and finished near a recently defunct state prison that was creepier than anything else. It was outside the historic witch jail that I could have sworn I felt someone touch first my right shoulder and, after I had turned, my lips. I distinctly felt two slender fingers gently caressing my face without anyone being around to do so. I do not have an explanation for this, but perhaps it was a breeze and the power of suggestion at such a dark historical site.

One of the most memorable events occurred when we were near an intersection and taking a break at the halfway point of the excursion. A van slowed and stopped near our tour group and the windows rolled down. I thought we were about to be shot, but instead a mime stuck their head out and started doing a routine to loud techno music before speeding away. We were roaring with laughter and, from that moment on, called it a “drive by miming.”

The assembly returned to the starting area and we went our separate ways as a second tour was preparing. It was still early in the night and we continued to explore the city when my father suggested that we go back to “the goth restaurant” and find its real name so we could look it up online once we returned home. We made our way through the streets and side paths until we reached the location of the ballroom, but there was nothing there.

Nothing like a restaurant or ballroom or anything in use, that is.

The building where we had seen the party just two hours earlier was blocked off with a wrought iron gate and its windows covered by boards. The fencing was padlocked and another latch was on the sealed entrance. A large red “X” was pasted onto the barricaded door, indicating that the structure had been cleared for firefighters and demolition teams.

We assumed that we had the wrong location, so we continued down the avenue to the next corner and it was a busy street full of tourists and costumed party-goers. This was obviously the wrong part of town and nothing like where we had seen the mysterious chamber. We went in another direction and came to a museum; again nowhere near the right place! My family traversed this entire section of Salem, retracing our steps from the parking garage to the Irish pub, and then to where we knew that party had been. No matter how many times we looked, the scene where we had witnessed a gathering of people in early-1920s attire was this now abandoned building.

Going into a shop before it closed, we asked about the ballroom and the owners had never heard of such a place. As we processed that, we realized something else: we had not once seen a single person dressed like that while we were out and about in the city. Where could they have gone? Further thinking about the spectacle, it dawned on my sister and I that despite all the conversations, visible laughter, and dancing, we never heard anything while watching from the window.

The four of us let out a collective “huh,” and we walked back to the parking garage. Twenty-two years later, I still have no idea what we saw that night. Was it a hole in space-time that offered us a glimpse eighty years into the past? A gathering of spirits? A convoluted troll by pranksters who occupied a derelict structure for a few hours and then returned it to its decayed state? I sometimes hear about “glitches in the Matrix” on Reddit and YouTube, and wonder if something like this qualifies.

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There’s nothing like autumn: the smell of the fallen leaves, tasty apple cider, and cozying up beside the fireplace with a good book as the dreadful spectre of snow grows closer. It truly is the best season, even if we have to say goodbye to the pool for a little while. Of course, what makes this time of year so magical is the coming of the greatest holiday there is: Halloween! As it is still early September, I thought I’d kick off this year’s season of horrors with a treat that combines the witches and ghouls with the terrifying reality of back-to-school.

Besides the constant bullying (and some sociopathic teachers), one of the worst parts of school had to be the bus. It smelled weird. The engine droned within your head. There was always some asshole who had to open the emergency window so that the driver pulled over and yelled at everyone. When I was growing up, it was not uncommon for there to be more kids than seats and some of us (almost always including myself) had no choice but to sit in the filthy aisle despite it being a blatant violation. If only there had been a short movie that could have helped us to better understand the safety procedures when riding that yellow tube of doom…

Enter Ghost Rider, a short 1982 film from the rural Northeast! Can this relic from the simpler times of arcades and shopping malls do the trick of getting the rabble of children on the bus to take the steps necessary for a safe ride? Let’s find out!

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We open at the end of the school day as an English lecture is wrapping. Our hero, Kevin Bailey, is called by the teacher, reminding him that he needs to be assigned his books before he leaves for home. I’ve never seen a school that waits until dismissal to do this but, then again, maybe things are different in the strange, distant land of Pennsylvania. 

I feel sorry for Kevin. The rest of the class looks around as though the instructor had summoned an unholy abomination as his name was spoken before being tossed aside as “some new kid” when they realize he is, in fact, not Cthulhu. Just look at that face!

Even though he’s welcomed by the teacher, Kevin is not having a good day. Who would after your classmates disregarded you so swiftly? If that were my old school, he’d have been sent right to the guidance office for not making friends quickly enough and out of fear by the faculty that they’d be teaching a “loner.”

Anyway, Kev has never had to ride the bus before so he’s a little anxious about the process as he heads to the line of evil Twinkies after the last bell has rung. He asks another kid where to find Bus 77, and feels as though his luck might be turning around with this bit of extroversion he has managed to conjure. All that changes as his new possible friend throws him to the bin like he’s a year old ham sandwich.

As the bus makes its rounds through dusty streets and seemingly endless farmland, Kevin has some time to reflect while haunting piano music plays. That’s actually what the closed captions say: haunting piano music. This is certainly hitting all the right beats for a new kid in town story.

As the bus heads towards his home, another passenger has appeared. Well, isn’t that strange? This young girl asks our scrappy hero why he’s crying, a point that he quickly dismisses in a macho ‘80s male manner.

She recognizes him as new, and offers her own support as someone who knows what it’s like to be a “stranger.” And while she hasn’t introduced herself, she certainly knows who Kevin is. My, this is an odd occurrence indeed! When pressed on the matter, the girl throws a pencil to the aisle. How rude! Being a gentleman, Kev fetches it for her only to find that she has vanished

Looking around in confusion, he comes back to the reality of the school bus as Mr. Caldwell, the driver, tells him it’s the last stop. Kevin asks the older man about the girl with “curly hair and white slacks” who was just sitting beside him, when he is told that no such girl got off of that bus.

However, the mystery passenger has left behind a clue:

Tracy Donnelly. Ah, the plot thickens as much as an ‘80s made-for-school plot can! We cut to the Bailey’s kitchen as Kev attempts to do his homework while his mother continues to unpack. Both seem unsatisfied with their recent move and make a point to openly yearn for Oregon. That’s some classic “show don’t tell,” great job! After Mrs. Bailey’s pencil breaks, Kevin lends her the one from the bus and his mother tells him that there are several like that around their new home. She casually mentions that the Donnellys moved away after their daughter, Tracy, died a year ago in a horrible bus accident.

We have a title! Kev’s reaction to the big reveal is priceless:

I’m going to do a little reaching and guess that this isn’t that much of a shocking surprise for all you readers out there. We’re not even four minutes into this safety video and it was obvious from the first frame.

The next day, Kevin is nearing his stop and apprehensively looks around the bus just as Tracy appears in the seat ahead of him and shouts “Boo!” Yes, that is the sort of movie we’re watching. It still gets him, though!

As the boy and his ghost talk, he makes a cruel joke about the driver losing control while they’re still on it. Not cool, dude. This visibly shakes Tracy before he apologies and realizes that he’s been a buffoon. She bluntly tells him that she was killed in a fire on the bus and couldn’t get out in time while Kev tries to downplay his insensitivity. As the bus reaches his stop, Tracy hands Kevin a bus safety manual as “homework” before fading away. Of course, he calls to her while knowing she can’t be seen or heard by anyone else. Mr. Caldwell is not amused.

Later that night, as he’s working with his weights, Kevin’s room becomes haunted. His pliers move around, the barbells roll, and the safety manual slides all over his desk. Bah, he’s never going to need that!

But he did promise the ghost on whom he’s clearly crushing that he’d read it, so he might as well skip arm day. 

For a kid who never had to ride the bus until yesterday, he seems awfully arrogant. I know that time on the inside can change you, but this is little too fast. He could at least learn how to use the emergency doors and windows to piss off the driver.

Besides, there’s some good stuff here! Don’t you think you should know what to do if there’s a fire onboard, or are you going to insult your lady ghost again? Typical.

The next day, Tracy once more appears to Kevin. This time the bus is full and I can never tell if they’re going to or coming home from school. 

It’s not that important, because those very few pages of reading material are about to come into play! The ordinary ruckus of the bus is interrupted by an erratic pickup truck, and the movie changes into a series of still images while Jaws-esque music begins to play underneath the truck’s droning horn.

Oh, shit: the bus is dangling over a cliff! That’s now two major accidents in a year’s time. What a crappy transportation service this school district has! I can’t be completely certain, but I think there might be a lawsuit here.

The movie goes back to being a movie as the children scream in panic. Kevin is unscathed and, thanks to Tracy, he knows exactly what must be done to save the day and avenge her death!

Calling upon the Sacred Five Pages of the bus safety manual, Kevin takes charge and quiets the students. Some are hurt, and Mr. Caldwell is unconscious at the helm. The pupils begin to exit through the rear emergency door as Kev tends to the injured.

Tracy has been helping him this entire time, and he probably could have skipped reading the pamphlet. As the kids leave the bus, it begins to teeter more and more over the ledge:

And the driver is still incapacitated! Tracy, ever the angel, tells Kev that the first aid kit could have ammonia capsules in it for just such an occasion. That lousy booklet didn’t even mention that. What a rip-off! Fortunately, this kit does have everything they need and nothing was missing after the local vagrants broke into the busses looking for a bathroom.

Kevin revives Mr. Caldwell and helps him off of the precipice. Another girl runs towards them looking to save her clarinet, but it’s a good thing we have some competence here. As she pleads with the driver, a low rumbling overtakes the students and one of the most spectacular scenes ever committed to a school safety film unfolds:

Kevin looks all over the hillside for Tracy, unaware that ghosts can’t be hurt or killed again. When he finally finds her, she is waving goodbye knowing that her work is done until next year when this inevitably happens again.

We get one more look at the mangled bus at the base of the cliff before the film cuts to Kevin sulking in the grass, his cries of “Tracy!” echoing to the ages. Though he’s been praised as a hero, he feels unready to bear such a burden. At least until two more girls join him and he can resume being an average ‘80s teen once more.

That’s it. Kevin finally makes a few living friends and walks off to the horizon while a melancholy piano plays over the credits. What a spooky way to start the school year! I can’t think of a worse hell than having to spend my afterlife on a bus. What a load of suck! Thankfully, Tracy is able to be freed from her yellow tomb thanks to Kevin’s heroics. Maybe there are good people out there after all. 

As a special treat, here is Ghost Rider in its entirety for your viewing pleasure!

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Suddenly —
You were gone
From all the lives
You left your mark upon.

Rush: “Afterimage”

We first met at the Sterling Fair in the late 1980s as kids. She was a few years older than me and I was just a toddler. We were supposed to be looking at the animals from nearby farms: chickens, bulls, pigs, etc. but I was more interested in her ice cream cone. It was a large soft-serve vanilla covered in a rainbow of jimmies that I just craved. That was the first time I ever encountered the girl who would become my best friend, the love of my life, my soulmate.

Her name is Danielle. We talked throughout the holiday weekend about our families, when I was going to get my increasingly green pool ready so that she could come over and jump in, and played several rounds of phone games through text like “Would You Rather…” and other such nonsense to burn off some stress. Everything had been fine.

Tuesday evening came and her mother called my family frantically asking if we had heard from her and, since we all had, it wasn’t much of a worry. I still felt the anxiety. I had been hit with a massive panic attack a night earlier and it became worse with that call. The next day, on the 8th of July, we called for a wellness check and learned that Danielle had passed away a night or two before.

There is much I have to say about this, and I hope that you please stay and read everything first before racing off to email me your condolences.

She was found unresponsive in her apartment by a firefighter after we had called for the check. There is very little information I can share about what may or may not have happened but all I can legally say is that there is an ongoing investigation. This article is also about her, not what happened to her. The world is a much worse place today without this incredibly beautiful, talented person full of love for so many.

I have become a shell of myself since learning this news and I have been largely running robotically and focusing on menial tasks while I stay with my parents in the aftermath. Daily Dilophosaurus is over. I have no idea when or if I am going to start recording or taking photographs again. If I do practice my instruments it’s a chore, not a passion. I haven’t been able to write a thing, and even this update has been heavily delayed because I just can’t get the strength to talk about it. I wake up crying, and I fall asleep cuddling a Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt that she had left at my house a few Super Bowls ago.

Just this past May, Dani had stayed with me after my father had fallen and was hospitalized for a month. We slept together, holding onto each other and her little red Care Bear. We cooked and cleaned the house as a team. She’d be off at work during the day, and then we’d be goofing around at night. We’d look at houses in Western Massachusetts and the Berkshires on Zillow, trying to find our dream home once every little thing had been worked out. She asked me point blank when we were going to get married, and I gave her a little wink and a nudge that she’d have to wait for her birthday in November to find out. I had a topaz engagement ring hidden away that had belonged to my great-grandmother. They shared a birthday and I wanted to surprise her with it then.

Danielle was an incredible flautist and, like many players, doubled on the piccolo. She told me that she had always wanted to add the alto and bass flutes to her repertoire. She would disagree with me, but I say that she was a gifted vocalist as well. She had thought about music school but was more than happy studying Communications Media at Fitchburg State, and even had dabbled with starting her own non-profit a few years ago to help children in need.

If it were not for music we would never have been reunited in college. We met very early on in my university years when she joined the jazz band. I also rewrote her parts as she was doubling the alto sax, which is in a different key than her instrument. We bonded immediately and were inseparable in my later college years. When she moved back to Pennsylvania unexpectedly I was heartbroken, but we talked by email and phone every day.

She was a great mother who sacrificed everything for her child. She took terrible jobs with horrible conditions to make ends meet, both in Pennsylvania and here in Massachusetts after she moved back to be near myself and my family. She battled the Department of Children and Families here over utter bullshit. I stood by her in court in 2022 during one such conflict. I wasn’t allowed in the courtroom itself, but she’d always say “I love you” before walking back in to fight on her and her child’s behalf.

This woman had been to Hell and back so many times, and always came back stronger than ever. I admire her resiliency for all she’d overcome. She is one of the absolute strongest and purest souls I’ve ever met.

Last week, I had to race around to ensure that she had the engagement ring that I was going to surprise her with after the funeral taking place in Massachusetts was abruptly cancelled. What was going to be a birthday treat turned into a sort of final offering alongside what would have been my wedding ring as a gift to her, and a little stick of love incense all together in a pouch. I nearly had to go to the hospital afterwards with an asthma attack while leaving the funeral home. I could barely tell the director that I had an engagement ring for her without breaking down.

I have been told that only her mother and step-father will ever know what really happed to her, and that her own child and sister are to never know, let alone my family of which she was absolutely a part. She always called my parents Mom and Pop. She looked to my late sister as a younger bonus sibling whom she admired despite never having met. She would cuddle my cats and they trusted her as one of their own while hiding from everyone else. Danielle is a Smale as much as she’s a part of her own family.

As of this writing, we are not receiving a keepsake box or any other sort of remembrance for Dani, so I have been trying to build my own with pictures, little trinkets that she owned and treasured, etc. in the hopes that my family and I have the tiniest bit of peace. There is nobody else that I could love as much as you, and I will love you forever.

I hope to see and hold you again someday soon, my soulmate. I love you, Danielle.

Part 2: Where I Am Right Now & My Favourite Stories

It has been a few weeks since I shared what happened to Danielle and my family. I have been consumed by stress and depression since this began, and I will continue to keep quiet about the nature of the events of that night so only myself and my closest friends and relatives know exactly what transpired in her apartment. The funeral services are in September down in Avalon, New Jersey and I have spent some time working with her mother so that a poem I composed back in ’09 will be read for her, as well as choosing pictures of her (and us) for a collage made by her family for the service. Her ashes will be spread down there and I am still unsure whether her daughter and I will be receiving any.

I made this headshot my phone’s wallpaper so that I can always say good morning, goodnight, and that I love her whenever checking the clock:

Ten days after I learned what had happened to Dani, my old cat Pawley passed after suffering a stroke in the early morning hours of July 18th. She was just a few months shy of nineteen and I was never able to create a memorial page for her like I did for Madra with everything that’s going on. I feel completely overwhelmed and nearing a breakdown after all that has happened this year.

Before I continue about Danielle, I want to make sure that my friends and family know that I am physically okay. I am still awake most nights and cuddling her Eagles shirt like a child with their security blanket, but it is one of the very few things in which I can find comfort. I am still crying on and off throughout the day, and I miss hearing my phone chime with her texts of heart emojis and how much she loves my family, my cats, and I. I’ve changed my ringtones so that I don’t trigger anything and accidentally think she’s calling or messaging, and even then my phone has been on silent for weeks. As you can tell, mentally and spiritually I’m a goddamn mess.

In 2004, my heart was destroyed when my little sister was killed beside me in a car wreck. Today, my soul is haemorrhaging like a slaughtered beast as I struggle to get through the most basic of daily tasks. I now have to carry the weight of my sister and my soulmate. Alone. Mostly. I have been diagnosed with C-PTSD in the aftermath and I don’t know if I’ll be able to even recognize myself ever again.

I’ve lost everything.

I called 988 back in July as I became desperate for any human contact, and the only thing I was connected to via the Lifeline number was an AI chatbot. No real people, no real support, just some ChatGPT clone that I could hear “thinking” in between monotone sentences with basic mispronunciations while hoping for any help. It was an absolutely dehumanizing experience for a service that is supposed to save lives. I have tried to find a therapist in my area, but as August dawned my health insurance dropped me and I’ve been fighting to get it renewed. Once that is confirmed, I can get back to finding a therapist or support group nearby if any even take MassHealth these days.

For those interested in 988 alternatives that do not rely on AI, and do not discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, there are warm lifelines that can be of greater help here.

I also need to give a massive thank you to Roger Barr of I-Mockery. When I ran the Krowness Chronicles site, that was one of my favourites to link to for fellow comedy writers, and I’ve always loved their articles and weird adventures. Rog lost his wife Re back in 2017, and he was the first person I wanted to reach out to after I had learned about Danielle. I wrote to him a week later and never expected that he’d get back to me in just a few hours with some of the kindest words I have received outside of family and lifelong friends.

In contrast, there are others whom I want to address that have flooded my inbox with links to dating sites, urging me to create a profile just weeks after losing the love of my life. You know who you are. That was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever experienced in my four decades on Earth, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

There were many other articles I had planned for this time of year as I would normally start Halloween posts in September, but all that is pushed to the side right now. It’s in poor taste and I just don’t feel like celebrating a thing anymore. If Steady ever offers a way to backdate they may appear then from a happier time.

I want the world to know the woman I love the way I know her, and not as some sort of social media footnote or whatever briefly holds one’s attention these days. She is a real person with a gorgeous soul and not just a set of Instagram pictures. These are some of my favourite quirks, stories, or just little details that I wish to share:

I’ve always felt a bit weird being with Dani when it comes to our spirituality. She’s a devout Christian and I’m a practicing Wiccan. In addition to the engagement ring I left her, I gave her what would have been my wedding ring: a silver band covered in pentacles and Celtic knots. I wanted to leave a piece of me with her. I had a second just like it that she loved and in that moment, more or less, it became her’s despite her Methodist upbringing. I have been wearing her ring around my neck since July, and my folks were kind enough to buy a heavier chain for it so that I never have to take it off.

She adores yellow roses. They are her favourite flower, as well as mine. I would love to have her name tattooed on my left forearm in her handwriting with two yellow roses growing out of it for her and I, and one pink for her daughter. I already have a Celtic cross that my sister designed on my left bicep as a tribute to her, but that was done twenty years ago and today I take anticoagulants for a recently diagnosed clotting disorder. I can’t get another tattoo. If anyone knows a way around that, reach out!

I kept a bottle of her pear perfume so that I always have her scent with me. Danielle always smelled like pears or peaches. Well, unless she had some dank weed that is! If she had a good joint, she’d smell more like a skunk than fruits, but a skunk that you’d still want to hug and cuddle up to.

Writing that last paragraph brings me to one of my favourite funny stories about her. She always wanted to take a tomato bath for no other reason than to do it (I guess). However, rather than just buy a bunch of soup and sauces and jump in, she insisted that she had to get sprayed by a skunk to justify it. She first told me this in 2020 when she stayed with me during the COVID lockdown and I’ve always found it hilarious. I don’t know if it was something that she thought was amusing, or if she just wanted to get skunked for the sake of being skunked and then have an interesting story to share with others.

One of her favourite movies, if not her absolute favourite, is The Wizard of Oz. Her family even has an Oz themed Monopoly game. When she was a senior in high school, she was able to play a medley of the movie’s score on both flute and piccolo with the school band. I was lucky enough to hear a recording of that when I visited her mother in 2013.

Being a fellow band geek, she performed in three of Fitchburg State’s four groups: Concert and Jazz Band on flute, and Choir as an alto vocalist. She insisted that she was a terrible singer whenever we’d play together, and I have always disagreed with her. There was also a period where she dabbled with creating electronic music in the college’s tiny recording studio. I still struggle to practice as we were jamming on the piano this past May, and I was the bassist for Jazz Band when she played with us. Music was and still is a central part of our relationship.

As mentioned earlier, she loves the beaches of Avalon where her grandmother had owned a cleaning service for the New Yorkers coming every summer. Dani was always a beach girl and would sunbathe, swim, fish, go boating, boil up some lobsters, etc. It’s no wonder they want to celebrate her in one of her favourite places. We were planning on taking a trip to Gloucester this August. She had just started a new job and had only recently been granted vacation benefits and we both thought it would make a fun day trip to see where my family had vacationed before ’04. We were going to spend the day at Long Beach and have dinner in the city that night. If we had been able to find an available motel, maybe we’d even had taken a second day to visit the shops in Rockport, or get witchy in Salem before heading home.

She also loves skiing and snowboarding. Many days were spent at Wachusett Mountain enjoying the famously snowy winters of Massachusetts. Her mother suggested we spread some ashes there as well, but I haven’t heard any updates. You can see the mountain in the distance in my neighbourhood, and I always think of her when I’m out walking and look over the horizon.

Another funny story: Danielle always found a way to use the C-word. There were several ordinary conversations where she’d call someone else by that term or just blurt it out when frustrated with another woman. She is the only person I’ve ever met comfortable using that word, never mind in a regular discussion!

As we were talking about getting married, I couldn’t help but suggest we have a “Monarch Theme” for the big day. The Monarch from The Venture Brothers, that is. I would have dressed as the Mighty Monarch (including eyebrows if possible), Dani would have been Dr. Girlfriend, her daughter a Murderous Moppet, and all of our friends as butterfly henchmen. The cake would have been a cocoon. Somehow, I don’t think this would have flown!

In 2023, Danielle created a non-profit called Love All Wayz, Inc. that was designed to help at-risk children throughout the Fitchburg area. It did not last that long, and I had suggested that she use it as a fundraising venture given the plethora of similar, established programs in Fitchburg and Worcester. She could have put on fun family events that benefited the existing services and wouldn’t have needed so much to get it off the ground. It was still incredibly admirable of her to create something for others like that, even if it never turned out the way she had intended.

It’s hard to say if we had a song. With both of us being musicians, and with her taste being “everything” (as she would proudly state), there was always a piece or a set of lyrics that resonated between us. If I had to pick one, it would probably be “A Long December” by Counting Crows. We both had been through hell and the hopeful lyrics about moving past all of that were evergreen. I shared that with her this past April after she had overcome a setback with her mental health and it stuck. There is also Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mayonaise” [sic] that we listened to during the lockdown while driving around northern Worcester County to keep her daughter occupied with so much fear in the news. Whenever I hear that song I’m always transported back to that all day drive as we revisited our old stomping grounds from our university years. 

Heading home that night we took I-190, the site of the 2004 wreck, and I was able to handle returning there for the first time ever because she was with me, holding my hand the entire time.

This is about the best I can do for an update right now, as I’m making myself too sad to keep going. I also want to end on that highlight as it shows just how powerful of a soul she is if her presence alone could help me overcome something as great as travelling on that highway for the first time in then sixteen years. 

I will love you forever, Danielle.

Take care of each other out there, and I’ll write again whenever I am able to.

Part 3: Living as a Ghost

For my entire life, autumn has been my favourite season. The smell and sound of the fallen leaves. The arrival of ripened apples for various pastries and pumpkins destined to become jack-o’-lanterns. The quiet afternoons turning to earlier and earlier evenings as the animals and trees hunker down for the coming winter.

This year’s autumn arrived marred by the accompanying memorial service to my love, and the knowledge that justice has yet to be fulfilled. I am writing this in the midst of a major nor’easter on a late Sunday morning, in a dark studio that once housed life and inspiration. I feel guilty that I was unable to attend her funeral in-person or online; I suffered a major asthma attack as the spectre of said service weighed on my soul for the month of September. I know that Danielle would not hold that against me and would rather see me perform my own ceremony in my own way, if at all. However, growing up in the shadows of a church, and the self-hatred it instilled in me, has me feeling like a wretch.

I asked that all of our friends wear yellow yesterday to create a field of gold in her honour, embodying the colour of her favourite roses. Nearly everyone I asked did so, including those who only know me through my social media presence. Thank you all for such a display of love, even for a complete stranger.

For the past few weeks I have struggled to get out of bed, dreading the prospect of doing any housework or practice. Rush’s Vapor Trails has been playing on repeat. It was the band’s first album after Neil had lost both his daughter and wife just months apart from one another, and his subsequent motorcycle journey around the Americas in the aftermath. Each song resonates more today than when I first heard the record (and read his book) in 2004.

The promises of this fall have all been stolen. We were going to go apple picking, explore the local corn maze, revisit the Sterling Fair where we had first met as children, go on adventures to find the perfect pumpkin for Halloween. Dani was going to adopt a dog for her daughter when she returned home from her summer-long visit with her grandmother. We had the coming holidays. She was going to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and, with her birthday the next day, I was going to cover the gazebo in my backyard with Christmas lights and formally propose there, giving her the topaz ring that I had hinted about in May.

Her child has been robbed of her mother. I have been robbed of my love. My mother plainly stated that she has now lost two daughters, and my father has finally begun to show real emotions which is a true rarity. The world has lost an incredible musician and loving neighbour. It’s wrong, it’s unfair, and there needs to be real justice and accountability.

This year’s autumn arrived marred by the accompanying memorial service to my love, and the knowledge that justice has yet to be fulfilled. I am writing this in the midst of a major nor’easter on a late Sunday morning, in a dark studio that once housed life and inspiration. I feel guilty that I was unable to attend her funeral in-person or online; I suffered a major asthma attack as the spectre of said service weighed on my soul for the month of September. I know that Danielle would not hold that against me and would rather see me perform my own ceremony in my own way, if at all. However, growing up in the shadows of a church, and the self-hatred it instilled in me, has me feeling like a wretch.

I asked that all of our friends wear yellow yesterday to create a field of gold in her honour, embodying the colour of her favourite roses. Nearly everyone I asked did so, including those who only know me through my social media presence. Thank you all for such a display of love, even for a complete stranger.

For the past few weeks I have struggled to get out of bed, dreading the prospect of doing any housework or practice. Rush’s Vapor Trails has been playing on repeat. It was the band’s first album after Neil had lost both his daughter and wife just months apart from one another, and his subsequent motorcycle journey around the Americas in the aftermath. Each song resonates more today than when I first heard the record (and read his book) in 2004.

The promises of this fall have all been stolen. We were going to go apple picking, explore the local corn maze, revisit the Sterling Fair where we had first met as children, go on adventures to find the perfect pumpkin for Halloween. Dani was going to adopt a dog for her daughter when she returned home from her summer-long visit with her grandmother. We had the coming holidays. She was going to celebrate Thanksgiving with us and, with her birthday the next day, I was going to cover the gazebo in my backyard with Christmas lights and formally propose there, giving her the topaz ring that I had hinted about in May.

Her child has been robbed of her mother. I have been robbed of my love. My mother plainly stated that she has now lost two daughters, and my father has finally begun to show real emotions which is a true rarity. The world has lost an incredible musician and loving neighbour. It’s wrong, it’s unfair, and there needs to be real justice and accountability.

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It has been a few weeks since I shared what happened to Danielle and my family. I have been consumed by stress and depression since this began, and I will continue to keep quiet about the nature of the events of that night so only myself and my closest friends and relatives know exactly what transpired in her apartment. The funeral services are in September down in Avalon, New Jersey and I have spent some time working with her mother so that a poem I composed back in ’09 will be read for her, as well as choosing pictures of her (and us) for a collage made by her family for the service. Her ashes will be spread down there and I am still unsure whether her daughter and I will be receiving any.

I made this headshot my phone’s wallpaper so that I can always say good morning, goodnight, and that I love her whenever checking the clock:

Ten days after I learned what had happened to Dani, my old cat Pawley passed after suffering a stroke in the early morning hours of July 18th. She was just a few months shy of nineteen and I was never able to create a memorial page for her like I did for Madra with everything that’s going on. I feel completely overwhelmed and nearing a breakdown after all that has happened this year.

Before I continue about Danielle, I want to make sure that my friends and family know that I am physically okay. I am still awake most nights and cuddling her Eagles shirt like a child with their security blanket, but it is one of the very few things in which I can find comfort. I am still crying on and off throughout the day, and I miss hearing my phone chime with her texts of heart emojis and how much she loves my family, my cats, and I. I’ve changed my ringtones so that I don’t trigger anything and accidentally think she’s calling or messaging, and even then my phone has been on silent for weeks. As you can tell, mentally and spiritually I’m a goddamn mess.

In 2004, my heart was destroyed when my little sister was killed beside me in a car wreck. Today, my soul is haemorrhaging like a slaughtered beast as I struggle to get through the most basic of daily tasks. I now have to carry the weight of my sister and my soulmate. Alone. Mostly. I have been diagnosed with C-PTSD in the aftermath and I don’t know if I’ll be able to even recognize myself ever again.

I’ve lost everything.

I called 988 back in July as I became desperate for any human contact, and the only thing I was connected to via the Lifeline number was an AI chatbot. No real people, no real support, just some ChatGPT clone that I could hear “thinking” in between monotone sentences with basic mispronunciations while hoping for any help. It was an absolutely dehumanizing experience for a service that is supposed to save lives. I have tried to find a therapist in my area, but as August dawned my health insurance dropped me and I’ve been fighting to get it renewed. Once that is confirmed, I can get back to finding a therapist or support group nearby if any even take MassHealth these days.

For those interested in 988 alternatives that do not rely on AI, and do not discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, there are warm lifelines that can be of greater help here.

I also need to give a massive thank you to Roger Barr of I-Mockery. When I ran the Krowness Chronicles site, that was one of my favourites to link to for fellow comedy writers, and I’ve always loved their articles and weird adventures. Rog lost his wife Re back in 2017, and he was the first person I wanted to reach out to after I had learned about Danielle. I wrote to him a week later and never expected that he’d get back to me in just a few hours with some of the kindest words I have received outside of family and lifelong friends.

In contrast, there are others whom I want to address that have flooded my inbox with links to dating sites, urging me to create a profile just weeks after losing the love of my life. You know who you are. That was one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever experienced in my four decades on Earth, and you should be ashamed of yourselves.

There were many other articles I had planned for this time of year as I would normally start Halloween posts in September, but all that is pushed to the side right now. It’s in poor taste and I just don’t feel like celebrating a thing anymore. If Steady ever offers a way to backdate they may appear then from a happier time.

I want the world to know the woman I love the way I know her, and not as some sort of social media footnote or whatever briefly holds one’s attention these days. She is a real person with a gorgeous soul and not just a set of Instagram pictures. These are some of my favourite quirks, stories, or just little details that I wish to share:

I’ve always felt a bit weird being with Dani when it comes to our spirituality. She’s a devout Christian and I’m a practicing Wiccan. In addition to the engagement ring I left her, I gave her what would have been my wedding ring: a silver band covered in pentacles and Celtic knots. I wanted to leave a piece of me with her. I had a second just like it that she loved and in that moment, more or less, it became her’s despite her Methodist upbringing. I have been wearing her ring around my neck since July, and my folks were kind enough to buy a heavier chain for it so that I never have to take it off.

She adores yellow roses. They are her favourite flower, as well as mine. I would love to have her name tattooed on my left forearm in her handwriting with two yellow roses growing out of it for her and I, and one pink for her daughter. I already have a Celtic cross that my sister designed on my left bicep as a tribute to her, but that was done twenty years ago and today I take anticoagulants for a recently diagnosed clotting disorder. I can’t get another tattoo. If anyone knows a way around that, reach out!

I kept a bottle of her pear perfume so that I always have her scent with me. Danielle always smelled like pears or peaches. Well, unless she had some dank weed that is! If she had a good joint, she’d smell more like a skunk than fruits, but a skunk that you’d still want to hug and cuddle up to.

Writing that last paragraph brings me to one of my favourite funny stories about her. She always wanted to take a tomato bath for no other reason than to do it (I guess). However, rather than just buy a bunch of soup and sauces and jump in, she insisted that she had to get sprayed by a skunk to justify it. She first told me this in 2020 when she stayed with me during the COVID lockdown and I’ve always found it hilarious. I don’t know if it was something that she thought was amusing, or if she just wanted to get skunked for the sake of being skunked and then have an interesting story to share with others.

One of her favourite movies, if not her absolute favourite, is The Wizard of Oz. Her family even has an Oz themed Monopoly game. When she was a senior in high school, she was able to play a medley of the movie’s score on both flute and piccolo with the school band. I was lucky enough to hear a recording of that when I visited her mother in 2013.

Being a fellow band geek, she performed in three of Fitchburg State’s four groups: Concert and Jazz Band on flute, and Choir as an alto vocalist. She insisted that she was a terrible singer whenever we’d play together, and I have always disagreed with her. There was also a period where she dabbled with creating electronic music in the college’s tiny recording studio. I still struggle to practice as we were jamming on the piano this past May, and I was the bassist for Jazz Band when she played with us. Music was and still is a central part of our relationship.

As mentioned earlier, she loves the beaches of Avalon where her grandmother had owned a cleaning service for the New Yorkers coming every summer. Dani was always a beach girl and would sunbathe, swim, fish, go boating, boil up some lobsters, etc. It’s no wonder they want to celebrate her in one of her favourite places. We were planning on taking a trip to Gloucester this August. She had just started a new job and had only recently been granted vacation benefits and we both thought it would make a fun day trip to see where my family had vacationed before ’04. We were going to spend the day at Long Beach and have dinner in the city that night. If we had been able to find an available motel, maybe we’d even had taken a second day to visit the shops in Rockport, or get witchy in Salem before heading home.

She also loves skiing and snowboarding. Many days were spent at Wachusett Mountain enjoying the famously snowy winters of Massachusetts. Her mother suggested we spread some ashes there as well, but I haven’t heard any updates. You can see the mountain in the distance in my neighbourhood, and I always think of her when I’m out walking and look over the horizon.

Another funny story: Danielle always found a way to use the C-word. There were several ordinary conversations where she’d call someone else by that term or just blurt it out when frustrated with another woman. She is the only person I’ve ever met comfortable using that word, never mind in a regular discussion!

As we were talking about getting married, I couldn’t help but suggest we have a “Monarch Theme” for the big day. The Monarch from The Venture Brothers, that is. I would have dressed as the Mighty Monarch (including eyebrows if possible), Dani would have been Dr. Girlfriend, her daughter a Murderous Moppet, and all of our friends as butterfly henchmen. The cake would have been a cocoon. Somehow, I don’t think this would have flown!

In 2023, Danielle created a non-profit called Love All Wayz, Inc. that was designed to help at-risk children throughout the Fitchburg area. It did not last that long, and I had suggested that she use it as a fundraising venture given the plethora of similar, established programs in Fitchburg and Worcester. She could have put on fun family events that benefited the existing services and wouldn’t have needed so much to get it off the ground. It was still incredibly admirable of her to create something for others like that, even if it never turned out the way she had intended.

It’s hard to say if we had a song. With both of us being musicians, and with her taste being “everything” (as she would proudly state), there was always a piece or a set of lyrics that resonated between us. If I had to pick one, it would probably be “A Long December” by Counting Crows. We both had been through hell and the hopeful lyrics about moving past all of that were evergreen. I shared that with her this past April after she had overcome a setback with her mental health and it stuck. There is also Smashing Pumpkins’ “Mayonaise” [sic] that we listened to during the lockdown while driving around northern Worcester County to keep her daughter occupied with so much fear in the news. Whenever I hear that song I’m always transported back to that all day drive as we revisited our old stomping grounds from our university years. 

Heading home that night we took I-190, the site of the 2004 wreck, and I was able to handle returning there for the first time ever because she was with me, holding my hand the entire time.

This is about the best I can do for an update right now, as I’m making myself too sad to keep going. I also want to end on that highlight as it shows just how powerful of a soul she is if her presence alone could help me overcome something as great as travelling on that highway for the first time in then sixteen years. 

I will love you forever, Danielle.

Take care of each other out there, and I’ll write again whenever I am able to.

Suddenly —
You were gone
From all the lives
You left your mark upon.

Rush: “Afterimage”

We first met at the Sterling Fair in the late 1980s as kids. She was a few years older than me and I was just a toddler. We were supposed to be looking at the animals from nearby farms: chickens, bulls, pigs, etc. but I was more interested in her ice cream cone. It was a large soft-serve vanilla covered in a rainbow of jimmies that I just craved. That was the first time I ever encountered the girl who would become my best friend, the love of my life, my soulmate.

Her name is Danielle. We talked throughout the holiday weekend about our families, when I was going to get my increasingly green pool ready so that she could come over and jump in, and played several rounds of phone games through text like “Would You Rather…” and other such nonsense to burn off some stress. Everything had been fine.

Tuesday evening came and her mother called my family frantically asking if we had heard from her and, since we all had, it wasn’t much of a worry. I still felt the anxiety. I had been hit with a massive panic attack a night earlier and it became worse with that call. The next day, on the 8th of July, we called for a wellness check and learned that Danielle had passed away a night or two before.

There is much I have to say about this, and I hope that you please stay and read everything first before racing off to email me your condolences.

She was found unresponsive in her apartment by a firefighter after we had called for the check. There is very little information I can share about what may or may not have happened but all I can legally say is that there is an ongoing investigation. This article is also about her, not what happened to her. The world is a much worse place today without this incredibly beautiful, talented person full of love for so many.

I have become a shell of myself since learning this news and I have been largely running robotically and focusing on menial tasks while I stay with my parents in the aftermath. Daily Dilophosaurus is over. I have no idea when or if I am going to start recording or taking photographs again. If I do practice my instruments it’s a chore, not a passion. I haven’t been able to write a thing, and even this update has been heavily delayed because I just can’t get the strength to talk about it. I wake up crying, and I fall asleep cuddling a Philadelphia Eagles T-shirt that she had left at my house a few Super Bowls ago.

Just this past May, Dani had stayed with me after my father had fallen and was hospitalized for a month. We slept together, holding onto each other and her little red Care Bear. We cooked and cleaned the house as a team. She’d be off at work during the day, and then we’d be goofing around at night. We’d look at houses in Western Massachusetts and the Berkshires on Zillow, trying to find our dream home once every little thing had been worked out. She asked me point blank when we were going to get married, and I gave her a little wink and a nudge that she’d have to wait for her birthday in November to find out. I had a topaz engagement ring hidden away that had belonged to my great-grandmother. They shared a birthday and I wanted to surprise her with it then.

Danielle was an incredible flautist and, like many players, doubled on the piccolo. She told me that she had always wanted to add the alto and bass flutes to her repertoire. She would disagree with me, but I say that she was a gifted vocalist as well. She had thought about music school but was more than happy studying Communications Media at Fitchburg State, and even had dabbled with starting her own non-profit a few years ago to help children in need.

If it were not for music we would never have been reunited in college. We met very early on in my university years when she joined the jazz band. I also rewrote her parts as she was doubling the alto sax, which is in a different key than her instrument. We bonded immediately and were inseparable in my later college years. When she moved back to Pennsylvania unexpectedly I was heartbroken, but we talked by email and phone every day.

She was a great mother who sacrificed everything for her child. She took terrible jobs with horrible conditions to make ends meet, both in Pennsylvania and here in Massachusetts after she moved back to be near myself and my family. She battled the Department of Children and Families here over utter bullshit. I stood by her in court in 2022 during one such conflict. I wasn’t allowed in the courtroom itself, but she’d always say “I love you” before walking back in to fight on her and her child’s behalf.

This woman had been to Hell and back so many times, and always came back stronger than ever. I admire her resiliency for all she’d overcome. She is one of the absolute strongest and purest souls I’ve ever met.

Last week, I had to race around to ensure that she had the engagement ring that I was going to surprise her with after the funeral taking place in Massachusetts was abruptly cancelled. What was going to be a birthday treat turned into a sort of final offering alongside what would have been my wedding ring as a gift to her, and a little stick of love incense all together in a pouch. I nearly had to go to the hospital afterwards with an asthma attack while leaving the funeral home. I could barely tell the director that I had an engagement ring for her without breaking down.

I have been told that only her mother and step-father will ever know what really happed to her, and that her own child and sister are to never know, let alone my family of which she was absolutely a part. She always called my parents Mom and Pop. She looked to my late sister as a younger bonus sibling whom she admired despite never having met. She would cuddle my cats and they trusted her as one of their own while hiding from everyone else. Danielle is a Smale as much as she’s a part of her own family.

As of this writing, we are not receiving a keepsake box or any other sort of remembrance for Dani, so I have been trying to build my own with pictures, little trinkets that she owned and treasured, etc. in the hopes that my family and I have the tiniest bit of peace. There is nobody else that I could love as much as you, and I will love you forever.

I hope to see and hold you again someday soon, my soulmate. I love you, Danielle.

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In a trend known on social media as “Thoring” or “Charging Up” and even “Getting Zeused,” teens all over the nation are going outside in severe weather and are deliberately being struck by lightning in order to get high. 

“I started off sticking forks into electrical sockets, and that just wasn’t cutting it for me anymore,” said Jacob a few hours after coming down from the shock. “Then I saw these guys on TikTok holding up pool skimmers during a storm and talking about how it was just an unbelievable high, like touching the toes of God.” 

“You don’t realize it until you’re already on the ground,” he continued regarding the strike and similar jolts he has experienced since he began Thoring in late May of 2026. “There’s a loud bang inside your head, then it’s just euphoria, like all your fears disappearing, and you’re surrounded by a purely loving light. It lasts for a few minutes before I come to again.” 

The trend has caused concern amongst parents as many teens who step outside “for a charge,” are often killed outright. In the past six weeks 379 young people, all between the ages of twelve and twenty three, were killed across New England while seeking the elusive high of lightning. Nationwide, at least 2,673 people have been killed while Thoring.

“Yeah, I know it’s a risk, but that’s why I stand on the gym mat. My friend Trent says it’ll definitely probably stop the bolt from hurting you and they’re pretty easy to buy online or steal from a local yoga studio.”

Like many of his peers, Jacob is addicted to the high that comes with a lightning strike. 

“I know it’s an issue, and I’ve tried to quit several times,” he continued. “But my parents just think I’m a freak following some stupid online fad; they don’t realize this is a very real issue.” 

During the interview, another severe storm warning was broadcast and Jacob ran outside to seek another charge. After this session all that remained of the teenager were a pair of Doc Martins and a scorched flannel shirt.

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But of all the watery demons in the world, I unconditionally love sharks. Next to the horseshoe crab, an animal that has roamed the Earth unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, they are the pinnacle of evolution. Sharks rule! This is why I have watched Shark Week on the Discovery Channel for nearly my entire life. As with many week long television events, there are many shows that do not make the cut. Here are some of the shows that did not make it to this year’s Shark Week:

Shark Locomotion

We’ve all seen sharks move but have rarely questioned how. Do the oceans contort to their will, or do they somehow transport themselves through the watery depths? In this two-hour special, scientists dive into discovery to join a group of great whites to find out. After the dissection of three sharks and the death of one human photographer, it is discovered that sharks move by swimming.

Tiger vs. Tiger Shark

A beast of the land and a beast of the sea, the hunting methods of the tiger and the tiger shark are compared. With an emphasis on the minor differences between life on land and that in the water, the two predators are followed, studied and gently teased by a team of wildlife experts. The programme concludes with a climactic battle between the two animals as a 275kg tiger is dumped into a tank with a hungry tiger shark as scientists watch to find which animal is superior in the ultimate television showdown.

Sharkasaurus

In 1999, a fisherman discovered something strange within the stomach of a great white. It was the head of an unknown Dromaeosaurid, complete with fresh tissue and feathers. Where did this shark find a live dinosaur? Scientists track great white sharks in the hope that they will be lead to the mysterious Dino Island. Included: the government cover-up to keep the partly digested head a secret, and shocking new footage from inside Area 51 where it is generally assumed that the original shark was taken.

The Magic Healing of Sharks

Using ESP, magic crystals, and astral projection, one psychic from Sedona, Arizona embarks on a quest to discover the lost art of sacred shark healing. Hear the account of a fisherman with a broken leg who was healed after encountering sharks that could sense his pain! Be amazed as a bull shark assists a Florida woman giving birth to triplets in the middle of the Atlantic! Relive the account of a lost 19th century whaler who was safely guided to land by a thresher shark!

Shark-o-mite!

Join The Travel Channel’s Stinky Doug and Lockjaw Jim as they take you through a step-by-step introduction to dynamite fishing for sharks. The bayou is gonna burble when these two all-American patriots get down and dirty to tackle some bull sharks in freshwater! Included: the lost scene where Stinky Doug and Lockjaw Jim engaged local wildlife authorities in a gunfight over a missing fishing license.

Sharks of the Bible

How did Noah save the sharks? Was Jonah swallowed by a whale or by a shark? Do sharks find paradise if they refuse to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour? The answers to these and more will be revealed alongside end time prophecies made by great whites, teaching The Word to sharks, and the fact of Creation 6000 years ago. Reverend Jones takes us on a worldwide journey from The Beginning to The Rapture with a shark-eye view.

Business Sharks

Discover the tactics used by today’s CEOs to get ahead of the competition, to line your wallet with tax cuts promised to the working class, and denying healthcare to the parasitic plebeians beneath you!

The Tiger Chef with Guy Fieri

Tiger sharks are notorious connoisseurs. They have been known to eat everything from fish to alarm clocks to clowns, and show no sign of relaxing their palate! In this hour long special, Food Network’s Guy Fieri creates a multicourse meal for his harshest critic yet: a half ton tiger shark! Will Guy’s hard work be appreciated, or will he be fed to the beast in order to appease it? Tune in and find out!
 
Those were some of the shows that didn’t make it to this year’s Shark Week. With any luck, we can see them next year! Keep your fins crossed!

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It is obvious that I am an old geezer by modern Web standards. After all, I am going to be forty next year. I have arthritis in my right knee and shoulder. I am a Millennial and I am disintegrating before you. For you Generation Alphas I may as well have stolen fire from the gods and led the birth of civilization from my cave.

After graduating high school in 2005 I kept in touch with my old pals just like I explained in that first paragraph. Things were nice and we even managed to maintain our D&D campaigns while attending colleges all over the country. It was around midterms that my best friend began asking me if I had joined Facebook yet and that everyone was there. I had never heard of this place as I was more focused on school, jazz ensemble, and another relationship where I was being taken advantage of by my partner. Neat. 

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In this age, registering for Facebook required a university email address (and later, a high school address for a weaker version of the site about which nobody cared). I could not access my student email because my ID number had two consecutive ones at the very beginning, and the college website wouldn’t acknowledge it as legitimate. I was never able to open the email that The Book had sent in order to create my account (or read messages from my professors) until December when the tech department finally helped me get that glitch rectified.

After creating my profile, I was immediately unimpressed with the platform. Everyone’s page looked the same. Messages were more like emails, and you received a real email when a friend sent you one for some fun redundancy. I quickly discovered that my first college girlfriend was cheating on me after seeing her account and her fiancé that she had just met two days after we had had lunch together.

I shrugged that place off and went back to perusing forums for fellow bassists and good ol’ Fiction Press to share my poetry and short stories. I never had MySpace until a year or two before it became completely irrelevant, and only because some other friends would not stop bugging me to join them there. It sucked, too, and was very swiftly deleted.

My most notable online presence was in the form of an extraterrestrial Viking character named Krowness the Skull Eater that I had created for a class and who mostly ranted on Blogspot about how much he hated football and other little annoyances that I blew out of proportion for laughs. My article on the Infamous Poets scam is just a simple rewrite of a classic from that old world. Sort of miss him every now and then. Maybe a modernized version of that football article will make a reappearance this autumn?

I emphatically hate what the Internet has become. We each had our own places and, for the most part, control over them. Now users censor themselves to appease YouTube algorithms and concoct words that desensitize us to real issues. Our willingness to stay within the ever narrowing guidelines of these behemoth platforms in order to protect a few cents has eroded our language. People are afraid to ask for help when they have a mental health crisis because they know that their plea will either be hidden or get them in trouble down the road. We are all at the mercies of billionaire (or even one hate-filled trillionaire) tech-bros who would rather see us fight each other in gladiatorial battles for a few slices of bread instead of using those unfathomable fortunes to actually help humanity.

Don’t worry though, I’m sure those Martian colonies are coming any day now!

I have tried to walk away from Big Tech but, given my job in music and the arts, it is not that easy when every local business and colleague expects you to have an Instagram account or wants to see what you’re up to on Facebook. Never mind the plethora of restaurants that now require you to have either of those accounts just to see their menus. Hell, just this article ended up being a rant announcing my departure from Instagram before I redrafted it into something more cohesive! Yet I am still there because I know that I would lose work and important contacts if I decided to rely exclusively on smaller, decentralized sites like Pixelfed. (Find me there, too!)

Every day we become deeper and deeper entrenched in a world that resembles Half-Life 2, and I’m so tired. I’m tired of losing old friends because of a political dispute that, more often than not, was based on bullshit (and/or Russian hacking). It wears me to no end when I see ridiculous conspiracy theories from people who should know better. No matter what site or platform we use, our data is being harvested and sold to the highest bidders. Relying on community notes written by porn bots and AI instead of actual, living fact checkers has destroyed critical thinking everywhere. I have even heard real doctors use words like “un-alive” when discussing mental health emergencies regarding self-harm.

What the hell is wrong with us?

Can we just have fun again, or make a video or blog entry for the sake of creating something instead of seeing it as a money printer? Can we just have working ad blockers and enjoy the Web with some semblance of privacy? Can we not hurl slurs at a total stranger because of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity? Can we act like we were taught to in freaking kindergarten?

I guess I’ll just dig out my historically inaccurate horned Viking helmet and help myself to a cup of mead as both the online and real worlds burn for the pleasure of the wealthiest assholes to ever live. I’m going to bed. Wake me when the Idiocalypse is over.

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June 9, 1989 - May 3, 2004

I want the pictures to do the talking here as I’m still very upset over everything that’s happened this week. I love you.

May 2, 2009 - June 3, 2026

the colour of the kid
in the backseat of the family sedan
rolling sixty miles an hour
off the Jersey Turnpike
with a flat tire.
Belching blue smoke,
the enraged engine sparks
blue, struggling over the
drainage ditch, into a grove
of blue firs.

Blue skeletal hands in the one man
band endlessly screeching the blues
in a honky-tonk noise
from the putrid corpse of a player piano.
Hands reaching for the blue lemonade
between beats. Fry the mind
sink into the blue void
and wake in a blue gutter
under blue neon lights.

Blue, blue, blue
in the face of the man
pressed against grime
in the alley. A swirling 
of sweat as he blew his change
on the vagrant whore to satisfy blue balls 
lost in fixed rounds at the billiard hall

to the hustler, gently stroking the blue peacock
feather in his blue velvet fedora. Drinking
blue lemonade and smoking a stogie
to the sounds of Miles’ blue trumpet
streaming from a radio held tight
with blue duct tape.

At Wonderland the raver’s wife
stood beside the T-Station
where the Blue Line ends.
Legs spread wide holding a sign
reading “No Turns,”
shouting to the blue, smoky air
of the blue Revere night. Five miles away
a man caressed his lover, discarding
his blue retail name tag as he eased 
onto the mattress. Leisurely fingering
his blue steel mistress 
in a final ejaculation of
potassium sulphate.

Change here for the Red Line.

© 2009 by Mike R. Smale. All rights reserved.

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Eggs? Is that what this is all about? Twenty three dollars American for a carton of eggs is absolutely affordable, if I say so myself. Why, if I could purchase a senator or a member of parliament for such a modest price, do you not think for a moment that I would do so? The things that upset you poors these days…

Money is tight all around! Why, I had to lay off twelve thousand of my unnecessary staff just last week so that I could get a new yacht. My old one was damp and smelled of salt, you see; completely unusable! Your attention: please do not be traipsing your mud and other foulness about the authentic Byzantine mosaics adorning my floors; those are priceless antiquities and they certainly aren’t making them anymore!

Perhaps, then, you should consider the following: eggs are for people like me and not for silly proles! We are creating a future for humanity among the stars, and that means that some of you must go without today to ensure the cosmos for our great, great, great grandchildren. At least mine, anyway. When you look at it like this, does it not seem so infinitesimal to be griping about the price of eggs? Just buy yourself a farm and grow it yourself, or however these things come about.

I say, get that guillotine out of here. You’re going to knock over all my looted pottery from the Han Dynasty. What gall!

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I see you there; your head rising 
against my chest, brown tresses 
tantalizing the skin, amethyst eyes 
a million within a million staring at the ruins 
of the universe, watching 
a nameless god climbing the fringes
only for the sake of shouting “I am here.” 

I try to hold resolve, afraid to mislay.
“You blinked,” she said, 
with a lively slap across my arm, she rose. 
Beyond the window carnations bloomed,
the scent of cloves mixing with a puff
of tobacco from a stale cigarette we had shared 
the night before, I joined you for one last hit— 
discarding the ashes out of the portal and onto dry, 
vindictive lanes. Your grin gives way 
to the sounds of Fauré, pausing only to invite me 

to join in the Fantasie, spectral weavings
of trembling metal against the darkening chords, 
like a fading spiral of the moon 
against an earthly night. You seated yourself 
beside me; those amethyst eyes watching 
ivory levers depress and release, 
only to be depressed again, 
a million within a million words spoken 
without declaration. They didn’t need it.
Not in the todays so far 
from all those yesterdays.

Upon the whirling world 
and impaling thrusts of the Ocean 
you rest your head at my shoulder 
for the healing resonation of summer,
transmuting the past harmonized to Chopin—
knowing that the dawn has enfolded the trees
and your tears reside in yesterday.

© 2009 by Mike R. Smale. All rights reserved.

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From the title of this piece, you already know that this is not an endorsement. While I never had any major issues with Backblaze as a safety net, they have certainly not treated their customers well over the years. From 2014 through 2019, I paid a measly $50 annually for the service. Then while the world was shuttered because of a pandemic that was killing our neighbours and tanking the global economy, Backblaze raised their price to $60. A year later it was $70. Then they jumped to $99 in 2022 and have stayed there ever since without improving a single aspect of their service.

With the release of their latest version, 10.0, everything has gone to hell. Until this past February, I was able to upload new files on both my internal and external hard drives within minutes, and I would regularly keep three of my main externals updated weekly even if I had nothing new to add just to keep them on the cloud. This new version forces me to back up each device from scratch every single time, a process that can take eight hours.

I contacted tech support and was only able to speak to a bullshit AI bot that recommended that I never turn off my computer whilst keeping all three external drives connected at all times. They also told me to disable my computer’s sleep mode so that it could keep everything running smoothly. As this is a recipe for trouble, and because it came from a dumbass AI, I never went through with that nonsense.

Each time I create or update a new text document, music project, photography series, or add a new digital movie from Rifftrax to my collection, I now have to wait hours to back up one file as Backblaze sifts through every single item on a given unit and uploads it as though it has never been seen before. Of course, when I was finally able to reach a real human being in between my hospitalizations, he suggested that the best course of action to prevent these issues was to upgrade to a more expensive subscription plan. Ah yes, the great problem solver: money! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?

Now instead of regularly uploading my devices to the cloud each Friday evening as I’ve done for years, I have to spread this task over several days or hand over more cash for an easier and more streamlined experience. When one round is finished, it’s nearly time to start the process over. This is no way to treat or retain a customer base, and Backblaze should be ashamed of their goddamn greed and this mistreatment of their users.

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Just before dinner last Friday (March 6), I suffered a second seizure while setting the table. I hit the floor face first and ended up with a black eye, minor head trauma, an injured left shoulder, and injuries along my right arm from where I was held down for my own safety during the episode. I awoke in the back of an ambulance again, and was so out of it that I had forgotten I had already experienced another seizure just a few weeks earlier.

This time around I ended up hospitalized for a day and a half and underwent an MRI alongside several other tests. I see a neurologist next week and have begun taking Keppra to prevent any further incidents. I also learned that I have Stage 2 kidney disease though that is not the reason for the seizures (and the medication I take for my blood pressure also treats this). Thanks, genetics!

The past week has been spent largely avoiding stressors, resting, and figuring out what to do next. I’m concerned about getting back into live performances if these are going to be a new feature to consider when taking the stage. Just what my existing anxiety needs.

Here’s hoping that such episodes are behind me and that I can get back to regular work and updates that don’t involve any further health scares. It’s been far too long since I’ve blogged regularly or had a nice, productive day writing and recording in Ableton Live. Between my own health issues, the horrible news that is constantly drowning the world and Odin knows what else, we could all use some normalcy without wars and genocide on top of it all.

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I have been taking my time in these last days of cold and darkness to recuperate after a major health episode just over a week ago. Whilst waiting for a takeout delivery on the night of Valentine’s Day, I collapsed with a tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure just as I was walking to the window to see if the order had arrived. I was perfectly fine one second, then everything turned into a brown and cream coloured swirl, and the next thing I know I’m in the back of an ambulance with the EMTs telling me what had happened.

Several tests later and there are no signs of bleeds or aneurisms, and I am finally discharged after midnight with nothing but socks and a sweatshirt with which to stay warm. I’m fine now, but a little paranoid when taking care of the house with a nagging thought that it could happen again, usually when I am standing over the corner of a table. The earliest I can see a neurologist is December of 2026 so this is going to be a fun wait.

I have begun to rebuild a set list at the piano with the hopes of returning to public performance for the first time in years. I had taken a break from the gigging scene in the mid-2010s to focus on studio work, only beginning to reemerge in late 2019. The ensuing pandemic put an end to that goal.

I am now waiting for the weather to clear enough so that I can get my glasses repaired (they were broken during the seizure) and readjusting to contacts in the meantime. I figured it was best to provide an update after a health scare and use this newsletter as, well, a newsletter rather than just a place for old articles and short stories to dwell. Hopefully I’ll see you soon from behind the keys, and it’ll be warmer.

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So there you have it; another piece of lost media that simply does not exist. Case closed! I really wish it were that simple here. Two people I know, who are the least likely to make up bunk for fun wrote in regarding this non-existent Smoke Bee show. These two individuals also never met one another, and were growing up in different states on opposite sides of the country when this allegedly aired around 1994-95. Both have described a nearly identical cartoon.

It opens in a dim bedroom and there is a swift zoom to a spider’s web in the corner of the ceiling. A sleepy, anthropomorphic arachnid is sitting on the strands of silk as the camera continues past and into a small hole in the plaster. There, a small, lanky honeybee is building a model of some sort and gluing the pieces together with honey when the room lights up in red with a warning on a nearby computer screen. He drops everything and in a wisp of smoke transforms into an insect superhero complete with muscles and a red hood over his head before flying out of the wall, through the spiderweb (tearing it as the spider glances up with a dopey expression) and the title of the series is shown as the bee zips out the window of the bedroom. (One person says the Smoke Bee flies through the partially opened window, the other says he breaks through the glass as he flies out.) All the while, an adventurous theme is playing on a tinny trumpet that sounds as though it’s really a little Casio keyboard performing the part.

I can safely say that I have never seen anything like this. I remember Maya the Bee on Nick Jr. back in the day but that’s about it as far as cartoons starring Apoidea are concerned. There was a Goosebumps book titled “Why I’m Afraid of Bees” which sucked and was one of the worst in the series, but that was a book and not an animated short or series with what is apparently a memorable opening sequence.

So either there is a lost VHS with an unaired pilot on it that was spread around through a parent, or aunt, or babysitter that just so happened to be in New England and Arizona at the same time, or this is a show that slipped out of an alternate dimension and only two people in the world have bared witness to it. I’m going to lean more towards a misremembering of Maya the Bee or something involving Flecko from Rocko’s Modern Life.

This show doesn’t exist. Or does it?

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Dominik decided to join the Polish Resistance as a young man barely out of his teens. His work was largely that of a messenger for the more seasoned fighters operating in plain sight of their oppressors, but he was able to use a rifle if the need were to arise. The majority of his espionage work was, we believe, in and around Warsaw.

One winter day, I don’t know exactly when as my grandmother never knew the dates, Dominik was arrested by the Germans. He was tortured with beatings and gods know what else in the early days of his captivity. He was starved and deprived of water unless he gave his detainers the information that they demanded. Dominik refused to say anything.

In the end, the Germans decided to restrain him in a bathtub. They dumped snow and ice over Dominik’s naked body and demanded that he reveal the locations used and operated by the Resistance. He remained silent. This process continued until Dominik froze to death in that bathtub, never betraying his countrymen or their clandestine actions.

A relative who survived the war and immigrated to the United States in the aftermath recalled this story to my family here. Dominik died a hero for liberty. I don’t know why, but something made me want to share his story here and now so that such acts of bravery are not forgotten.

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While a junior in high school, I created an account on Fictionpress to share my poetry and short stories with the world. They were garbage, but to my young ego having a following of nearly fifty people in a rather short period of time was a good dopamine hit. This had even managed to transcend into the real world when a nurse, who was working with my grandfather’s primary care provider, happened to notice that he had the same surname as the author she had been reading online, and he and my grandmother were both proud to say that their grandson was said writer. Mmm, brain chemicals!

This was an era before ad blockers, and the Internet was plagued with animated banners promising a new ringtone if you could click the dancing cartoon man to shave his mullet, or wildly flashing ads for online casinos that were in no way operating within the United States (or legally).

Other ads were far more insidious and attempted to blend in with the legitimate website you were currently using. One such ad appeared on Fictionpress announcing a nationwide poetry contest. Given my positive experience and naivety with the online world at this point, I decided to enter a song I had written for the band that my sister and I had recently formed.

Then the bullshit started.

I will refer to this sham as The Society of Infamous Poets. While the group is defunct, and despite that it had been openly referred to in print media as a scam as early as 2001, I do not want to summon the wrath of the conman who ran this thing if he’s desperate for some money that he can attempt to gain in a frivolous lawsuit. If he’s even alive anymore.

The warning signs that something was off were abundant. First, despite having been a finalist and receiving the prize of having my work put in print for making it that far, I was only able to receive the book in which I was being published if I paid for it in advance. Second, though the first letter telling me of my placement in the finals claimed that an upcoming Infamous Poets symposium would be held in Philadelphia, the second package containing all of the relevant information pertaining to both the book and the in-person event now stated that symposium was held in Reno, Nevada (I had no plans on attending regardless). Third, all of the other accolades that I was being told that I had “won” were only available, much like the book, after paying for them.

My parents were so excited by all of this that they never really questioned the rather strange prerequisite of money. I was nearly finished with high school and was planning on majoring in professional writing; having been published before college had even begun would look great not only for admissions, but also for prospective employers after I had graduated. They happily paid over $150.00 for the book (of which they purchased two) alongside a few other features such as a dedication, a short biography, and a headshot. I also had to resubmit the song for it to appear in the book (I thought I had placed and was already in the book?) and pay one dollar for every line that ran over the 21-line limit. Note: I had beaten this line requirement in the “contest” phase by extending some of them and had wanted my song to appear correctly in print.

The books finally arrived a year and a half later and looked as though they had been crafted in someone’s garage. The binding was extremely crude and basic, the interior pages were very thin and fragile (read: cheap), and from pages 11 to 100 the text was faded and unreadable, as though it had been made with a home computer and printer that was in need of new ink cartridges. It was a mess:

Those books sat in my parents’ house for a little while before I started doing some research into Infamous Poets. I had read a blog by another young writer who had been duped into spending hundreds of dollars in a very similar sounding contest. I felt a little sick to my stomach, and upon visiting the site that had scammed the blogger, I felt my face and hands go numb as I came to the realization that they were the same people. They had the same banner showcasing the same “winners,” the same caricature of Shakespeare adorning the page, the same logo, the same rules for the same contest. The only difference was that this incarnation was called “Infamous Poets of Hollywood.”

Looking deeper, there were other versions targeting writers in the Midwest such as Infamous Christian Poets, and another along the lines of We’ll Be Your Friends Poets (again, I’m altering these names ever so slightly). These all had different domains, but were the same website as The Society of Infamous Poets. Each showcased the same blonde woman as their “publisher” with a fictitious name similar to Floral Borealis. (I could easily use her “real name” because she doesn’t exist but, again, I don’t really want to risk it.) The photo of Floral displayed on the Infamous Poets website was obviously a picture that had come from inside of a frame found at a KMart by the man behind the scam. You could still see traces of the decorative border after he had swiftly cropped it in Microsoft Paint or something similar. That he didn’t just scan the stock image and chose to photograph it on an early 2000s digital camera or cellphone means he didn’t even bother to purchase the damn frame. Probably used up all his money on that beautiful printing quality!

After I had calmed down, I notified my folks that we had all been the victims of a scam and proceeded to go into every tiny detail. They were disappointed to say the least. I was livid that they had lost over one hundred dollars to a sleazy schmuck promising rainbows out of both his ass and his single room office in the middle of farmland Oregon (I looked up their physical address on MapQuest, again this was a while ago), and that he was still operating using several websites and false identities to capture as many amateur writers as he could.

Despite it being a couple years later, I thought I would try contacting the Better Business Bureau regarding this matter in the hopes that my parents’ money could be recovered and the scammer brought to justice. I never heard back. I decided to take matters into my own hands at this point.

I posted every detail to my comedy blog in the autumn of 2007, included the image of the poorly printed book seen here, and warned everyone to avoid this contest by its real name. I even shared the post in my college class on writing for the Web, and my professor shared it with every one of her writing classes. Soon the entire campus was aware of Infamous Poets. Then I started getting comments from predominantly young poets in their teens who were just minutes away from entering the contest, had doubts about its legitimacy, found my post and were writing in to thank me for the warning. The emails were even more frequent, so much so that I had to set up a Gmail account under my comedy persona’s name just to handle the volume.

To demonstrate that the entire writing challenge was fraudulent, I got together with some friends and we all wrote the worst poetry imaginable and entered our concoctions into the Society of Infamous Poets website. Within a few months, we each received a letter stating that we were chosen out of thousands of submissions to be finalists in their contest. Here is one of the creations from that evening:

Red in the colour of the apple
I go to reach for it.
It shines in the summer sun.
My hand explodes — 
it was really a stick of dynamite.
I like red.
And dinosaurs.

I guess they know a winning poem when they see one! I love how the apple is shining red in summer when they usually do that in autumn. Our junk entries and their respective telegrams alerting us to our high placing statuses were all posted in an update to my page.

It was around this time that I started to receive aggressive messages from an individual calling himself, oh, I’ll say Marcel. This was yet another alias along with Floral Borealis. According to public information regarding the ownership of the scam’s many websites, they were all registered and owned by a guy whom I’ll call Big Johnny. Articles appearing in The Boston Phoenix dating from 2001 openly called Big J the “granddaddy of dodgy poetry contests” and state that he had been pulling this scam in some form or fashion since the 1980s. Marcel was just a name he had whipped up to make it sound as though he had actual employees running his many websites and contests. Rather than check to make sure his home printers had enough ink to make those shitty books, he had to waste countless hours trashing my old site. What a loser!

At first, he filled the comments section with links to photos of “real winners” of the Infamous Poets contest and desperately attempted to sell himself as a legitimate publisher. The latter being hard to do when Floral was always credited as the publisher. Then he began to reply to each entry in the conversation before finally using the comments function to make various threats towards my readers and myself. These increasingly strange remarks escalated into emails from Marcel’s official Society of Infamous Poets address, alongside several sock-puppet accounts, each saying the same sort of thing: that I’m the bad guy and he’ll make sure I never write again, I’m bad mouthing a wonderful contest, etc.

Marcel/Big Johnny practically lived in the discussions for around eight or nine months. Even with new articles coming out where I reviewed strange movies I had picked up in the bargain bin at a local Walmart, nearly all of the notifications I received in this time revolved around the poetry post. I guess it isn’t that hard to run a sham literary contest and half-assed publishing service if he was able to dedicate so much time to one little column on a page with nearly one hundred total entries. As my site was a subdomain for a then popular blogging service, I reached out to the host to see if it would be possible to have his IP address permanently blocked, but I never received anything conclusive. It seemed that he tuckered himself out by the summer of 2008, before any further action was warranted on my part.

Infamous Poets, along with its alternative titles, abruptly stopped all operations in 2015. Searching for the original page outside of the Internet Archive only yields results referring to poets such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, William Shakespeare and other faces from your high school English textbooks. We’ll probably never know just how many people were ultimately victims of Big Johnny throughout his long running racket, or how much money he was able to con from aspiring writers (the 2001 article claimed tens of millions and it was still running for another fourteen years). This filthy, smelly scam’s demise likely came about in part due to more accessible self-publication tools, savvier Internet users more aware of deceptions, and the use of social media to share original work over actual criminal justice.

It is fun, however, to think that a little post by a weirdo in university who often wore an historically inaccurate horned Viking helmet to class, could also have contributed to its demise, even if it were just a tiny bit.

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It was in this stew of some great, wholesome shows and many thirty-minute gonzo advertisements that I first encountered an animation that would come to perplex me for the next twenty-six years. It was typical for the time, apart from lacking excessive gross-out comedy (for you young whippersnappers reading this, the ’90s loved gross humour in pretty much everything). What was most notable about this show was how sparsely it aired, and that it had a really catchy theme song. It was centred around sports of all kinds and I remember how there were at least one or two background trees that looked exactly like soccer balls with light and dark green pentagons to imitate that design. There were also a few buildings in establishing shots made to look like athletic shoes.

The main character was something that, in my memory at least, resembled an ant. The character design and animation style were distinctly Western; this was not an anime. The design of the characters was also out of style with Hanna-Barbera, even in this period, ruling out The Laugh Olympics and possibly any other show the studio had produced. This had to have aired a few years before A Bug’s Life and Antz (both 1998 titles) and it was not computer animated.

While I was able to describe the most basic aspects of this cartoon, I could not remember its name. It had come back to me maybe a year or two later after another phantom airing during the summer, and my sister and I both pledged that we would never forget it again, but that only lasted a few weeks or months before it was once more burned away in the Memory Hole. Even the Internet seemed incapable of solving this mystery once my household got online in the fall of 2001.

Every now and then I would try to hunt this animation down, only to be met with bottomless pits and completely wrong answers. It was not Sport Billy and I had simply misremembered the main character; this was clearly a show about a professional athlete who was also an ant or something along those lines, and the animation was much smoother. It was not Hurricanes, though in this case the series has a rocking earworm of a theme song, it is not the same. Also, the main characters were, again, ants. Maybe.

In the summer of 2011, Nickelodeon launched The ’90s Are All That (renamed to The Splat and now exclusive to Paramount+) where gems from that era were aired at and after midnight on the TeenNick channel, and it quickly blew up on social media as all of us aging Millennials began crying in a cacophony of childhood nostalgia that probably blinded us to the horrifying return of authoritarianism around the world. Cool. I used this opportunity to talk with other ’80s and ’90s kids in the hopes of finding the name to the mystery sports cartoon, and was quite vehemently told that it could be nothing other than Captain Tsubasa, an anime of which I had never heard. This series did not match my description in the slightest, yet protesting this answer resulted in some pretty nasty comments. Oh social media, were you ever a mistake!

At least two or three times a year, I would scour the Web in a desperate attempt to find the name of this cartoon before the few details remaining in my memory dissipated. It was only in the last few years that I discovered the concept of lost media and the user base dedicated to finding everything from obscure animations to a song that has been baffling the Internet for over ten years. I guess the latter has too powerful an allure as even this subculture either showed no interest in my cartoon or were too dedicated to tracking down an evil farming game that, as it turns out, never existed.

Three years ago, I had a little free time in between projects and decided to browse the Lost Media Wiki’s animation section, going through titles in alphabetical order for anything that could possibly be related to sports or jog my memory in some way. I had barely even begun my quest when I felt a surge run through my limbs as I navigated the “B” titles. One had jumped out, and after opening the page I honestly shouted aloud in excitement. There it was, after twenty-six years, a partially found Swiss cartoon called Bill Body: Crazy World of Sports in its English release.

Before I go any further, I have to admit my one major mistake and the likely reason as to why this was so damn hard to find: that is not an ant. I guess Bill and the other residents of Body Island are supposed to be very stylized humanoids of some sort, but they look more like worms with limbs or sentient colons. Not having seen anything regarding this show apart from two or three airings nearly thirty years ago has obviously affected my memory.

While the original production dates of this series are from 1992 through 1993, that is likely for the original German language version when the cartoon first aired in Switzerland before moving around Western Europe a little bit. The American adaptation has a copyright year of 1996, meaning that this was imported a little later for a network in need of content, or that it was originally aired as a special to coincide with the Summer Olympics in Atlanta that same year. Just what network was carrying it that summer remains a mystery, but it is not important.

A near three decades long journey has come to an end, and this time I swear I will not forget the title. I mean, it is only stated multiple times in the opening theme song. If only I had been able to remember the lyrics this entire saga could have been avoided. Oh, well. Now, as a special treat, here is a full episode of Bill Body: Crazy World of Sports for your enjoyment!

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Let’s be honest: you’re not here for nostalgia. No, you’re here for the pain! After coming across a post about how the horrors of high school are so intense that the average person experiences nightmares about it for the remainder of their life, I couldn’t help but comment as I had just suffered from a series of night terrors about my old school not even a week earlier. Bear in mind that high school was over twenty years ago and I’m still waking up in the middle of the night after fantasizing about being behind on my English homework and the endless torments lying behind every door and within each haunted cranny.

School is not something that you attend; it is something that is inflicted upon you. How I wish I had a time machine so that I could walk right up to those who dared to tell me “These are the best years of your life!” and surgically remove their teeth with nothing more than a protractor. That has to be one of the most harmful lies that authority figures routinely spout.

I was never a popular kid. I was a straight-A bookworm content to read about dinosaurs and other prehistoric life. I was diagnosed with severe asthma at eighteen months old and was born with a mild heart condition that made me generally un-athletic in a town that loved (and still loves) its sports. I wrote, illustrated (poorly) and stapled together my own short stories about the adventures of garter snakes on rainy days. I may as well have been born with “Kick Me!” tattooed on my ass in order to save my bullies the time it would have taken them to write such a sign themselves. Or spell “kick” correctly.

On the very first day of the first grade, I approached a group of boys and asked if I could join them at the Lego station in the back of the classroom when all of the day’s meet and greets had ended. One of them hit me in the face. That set the par for the rest of my time in the local school system.

Come the sixth grade, I was routinely kicked on the playground by a kid who wore the heaviest work shoes available for an eleven-year-old to the point where my shins were bloody and bruised on a near daily basis. Oh boy, but that was nothing compared to what follows. The shop class decided to have a dumpster on the yard to discard scrap wood. On a spring day near the end of the year, another classmate (who already had a fully developed moustache at the age of twelve) decided to grab a 2x4 from this dumpster and just beat the shit out of me one recess. No breaks, no interruptions: he just whaled on me for what seemed like the entire period until my rear end was so sore that I couldn’t walk correctly or comfortably ride in a car for over a week.

There was also a group of young ladies who would encircle me on the basketball court and demand that I act like a dog or another animal for their amusement before they’d push me to the ground and walk off laughing, often in front of a girl on whom I had a crush. So that was fun, too. At least I could physically stand upright after that humiliation was finished.

It was for reasons such as the above that I wound up in a parochial high school sixteen miles from home under the assumption that it would provide me with a better experience.

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Teachers from Hell

There is no way to tiptoe around this issue. While the students in high school were little better than what I had dealt with in the public system, the faculty introduced me to an entity that, until that point, I had only assumed was the invention of cartoon and teen drama writers: the teacher bully.

My freshman English teacher was a dog turd that had somehow gained sentience. This arrogant prick gave us an exam on the “theory of language” and how it came to exist. This included such scientific concepts as “The Yo Ho Ho Theory” and “The Michael Jordan Theory,” meaning that language came about as a side effect of physical work (Yo Ho Ho) or from the changes in vocal pitch like Michael Jordan “flying through the air over the court to dunk the basketball.” Actual quote from the worksheet. Needless to say, he had made all of this bullshit up and had the audacity of grading us on his asinine ideas. That was the least of my worries.

This motherfucker, whom I will henceforth refer to as Mr. Computer, refused to believe that I was writing my own assignments. It all began in mid-September when he decided to task us with entering the local VFW’s essay contest on war and international terrorism. He just took the idea out of the newspaper and issued it as a major assignment that suddenly counted for a larger portion of the final grade of the semester. I guess someone didn’t plan their lessons ahead of time? Then again, with the way this dink invented the “theory of language” exam, using such a contest for homework was probably a merciful alternative to whatever schlock he had brewing in that tiny brain of his.

I mentioned this before; I was a bookworm and often found myself writing in my free time. As a result, I had a larger vocabulary and a more developed writing style than most of my peers. Combine this with a quote lead from Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” because Mr. Computer required us to open with a quote lead, and you have a recipe for plagiarism accusations. Apparently the idea of a fourteen-year-old listening to music from the 1960s in 2001 was beyond his scope of understanding.

The essay came back a couple days later without a grade and only a statement that I had to rewrite all five pages in their entirety by the next day. I did, and it was sent back to me by the end of the period. In addition, he also requested that I rewrite my book report on the summer reading assignment of The Call of the Wild, my essay that I had turned in earlier that week after the class had finished To Kill a Mockingbird, and all new leads in each of the six styles he had issued as part of our study on creative essay writing.

Bear in mind that I had five other classes for which to do homework. Mr. Computer was also my teacher for Writing Lab, and he was pulling this same “redo everything” feat there as well, meaning my homework load was quickly becoming six or seven new tasks in both English and Writing Lab in addition to rewriting everything I had done in the past five weeks. I also had separate essays, tests, labs, etc. for the other classes.

I was so frustrated that I concocted a scheme to flunk out of the school by deliberately bombing two quizzes in science class, receiving gorgeous 0s by intentionally going in the wrong direction when writing metric conversions and scientific notation. If you ever read this article, sorry James for using your class to pull this stunt. You were one of the great instructors in that hellhole.

Come October, with my grades sinking in all of my classes due to limited time to prepare for anything under the plethora of redos Mr. Computer was issuing (along with the generous comment of “I need to know if you are actually doing your own writing” in red ink atop my latest rejected VFW essay), the bastard called a parent-teacher conference. Both of my parents were teachers in the local system, and knowing the sort of hell he was putting me through, had arranged for all of my middle school instructors from the 5th grade onward to vouch for me and make it clear that this was, in fact, my own writing. Even some of the teachers in the Catholic school had told good ol’ Mr. Computer that this was the way in which I wrote.

He was furious and I was punished. The next time progress reports rolled around, he refused to grade me in both classes and continued to ask me for redos. At this point I was just reprinting the exact same thing off of the computer as soon as I got home and he still found new ways to tear them apart, not realizing what I was doing. Now the guidance department got involved because my workload was marked as “incomplete” for all of Dipshit’s classes. More reprints were made and this time handed in to my guidance counsellor where they were rejected again and again by Mr. Computer.

My parents gave me the option to transfer back to public school after Christmas break and midterms. I was all set for that but something big happened. The administration got wind that he was making inappropriate comments and advances on fourteen-year-old girls, and Mr. Computer was abruptly fired after midterms. He vanished off the face of the Earth for years until I was in college and a friend of mine at a prestigious Massachusetts university alerted me that he was teaching over at his school. Another friend was taking his creative writing class and had mentioned that the assignment was to write short stories about fish and having sex with fish, and they immediately messaged me on AIM about it. Seems like something he’d do.

Here are a few other Teachers from Hell. My sophomore biology teacher smacked a kid for clicking his pen. The schedule made it so that science was the last period on this day. He was anticipating dismissal and was repeatedly clicking the pen subconsciously while waiting for the bell to ring. The instructor became so annoyed and angry that she screamed at him and smacked him across the face. This was in September and she was fired before October began. We went a month without any supervision while waiting for a new teacher to be hired.

A member of the religion faculty was secretly sleeping with a sixteen-year-old pupil of his while he claimed to be coaching her for CCD. The story got out and it took weeks before anything was done about it. Of course the police weren’t involved and it was covered up by the principal and headmaster. The instructor was not even fired; it was only strongly suggested that he submit his resignation and he walked off without any legal consequences.

Last but not least we have Sister Clara, the sole nun in the entire school. Notice how I used her real name; she’s been dead since 2009 and I have no fears about the fabled magical powers she possessed. Sister Clara was the only sophomore math teacher in the building. No matter your level, no matter your class, you were in her wrinkly grasp and God wasn’t listening to your prayers once she got you!

For some reason she always thought that my name was “William” and insisted on calling me that every single day of the school year. I’m honestly surprised I even had a final grade because she must have looked at “Michael” on the documents and marked me as never having attended a single class.

Do you want to know how to scare any of my old classmates? Ask them to go up to a whiteboard and write their homework. This woman had no idea how to teach. Every class for 180 days involved having our (incorrect) names called to the board, we’d write our homework on said board, and then she’d slowly slink down the length of the wall, inspecting each equation. She’d stare at your work for several seconds and either check it or strike an “X” over it. If you got the “X” you were required to report back to the front of the class and correct it. I saw plenty of my classmates stand at that canvas for the entire period, trying to amend the same equation with which they had started. Sr. Clara would not show you where you had made a mistake, and instead forced you to redo the work from scratch with all eyes upon you.

She never once helped a student who had made an error. Had she shown you where the mistake was made, one would, I don’t know, learn something. This would make solving future geometric equations much easier. Instead, you were on your own and you either sank or nearly drowned. I can say, without hyperbole, that everyone Sr. Clara taught had below average grades. The highest grade in my class was a C+. In others it was a goddamn D.

If we were done sharing the prior night’s homework, we were to start the next chapter’s assignment. One of her methods that we able to decipher was that we had to be able to recite every geometric theorem and postulate from memory, word for word. Spelling counted. If you used shorthand to write “Two parallel lines cut by a transversal create congruent alternate exterior angles,” the entire equation would not count even when you had the correct answer and proofs. If you ran into the margins, you were marked wrong. If you made a spelling error, you lost half of the available points.

This was fun when you only had six lines with which to work. Imagine writing all the steps of a proof within their respective lines and margins and you needed to write something like this: “When two secant segments are drawn to a circle from an external point, then product of one secant segment and its external segment is equal to the product of the other secant segment and its external segment.”

And no, we weren’t allowed to draw our own lines to create more space.

The Cafeteria

I’m sure that many of you have some stories to tell about the slimy, flaky, spoiled repugnance that is typical school food. At least back in the ’80s and ’90s that was the case; maybe things have changed since then. I’m pushing forty so cut me some slack! Some day you’ll be posting a video to TikTok, or whatever platform is relevant then, saying similar things when you’re looking back on a time long since passed.

In high school, nasty food wasn’t a worry because we simply were not fed! We had vending machines for candy, chips, and soda with two more units for some deli-style sandwiches that were never fresh and seldom replenished. If you wanted something warm you could get a Cup-a-Soup for a few dollars, add water from the coffee-less coffee machine, and microwave it in one of the five microwaves. That also meant playing microwave roulette as there were always two that were out of order and long lines would quickly form behind the working three.

I never once saw anyone bring in a meal from home, and am still wondering decades later if the administration didn’t allow it out of a fear that we’d stink up the lockers and hallways with some forgotten bologna.

Fridays were an exception when local pizzas would be delivered and that exhilarating aroma would fill the school starting in fourth period. The only other time we would get pizza was on Ash Wednesday, and then we were strongly encouraged to fast for Jesus. There were no toppings unless you count cheese as a topping (it’s not), but it was real food! Was there a catch to this weekly treat? You bet! You see, we had three lunch periods of around fifteen minutes each. Those who had first lunch usually gorged themselves when unlimited pizza slices were available to students, and when there’s a guy whose nickname is “Moose” you can rest easy knowing that there isn’t going to be much left afterwards. Second lunch usually could get by without issue apart from some of the pies getting cooler. If you got stuck in third lunch, you were screwed.

After two periods without restrictions on how many slices one could buy, there was not much left come the third. Guess who almost always had third lunch on Fridays. By this point, the two volunteers selling the slices were often tearing them in halves or thirds and selling them at full price, shouting “One slice each!” after completing an inelegant cut. This could easily have been avoided by limiting students to only two slices in first and second lunches or they could have ordered two more pizzas to begin with, but that would have made sense.

I also sat alone almost every day for four years. The few friends I had were never on the same schedule as I was, and the only time people came over to me was when they wanted to ask if they could take one of the three empty chairs at my table. Just like in that Rush music video after which this article is named! Yes, I tried reaching out and attempted to sit with others, but this more often resulted in me being told to “sit on the floor” by those I was trying to befriend. By my junior year, the assistant principal had issued a draconian rule of four people to a table during meals and demanded that all the seats be filled as overcrowding often left students sitting on the stairs leading into the cafeteria and clogging the only exit. Despite this, I was still alone like the complete prog-rock nerd I was (and am). Cool!

Catholic Schools Week

You remember pep rallies, right? The whole school (regardless of one’s social caste) would be forced to cheer on the athletic department with a typical focus on the school’s football team just before homecoming. Imagine this sort of thing but really, really Catholic themed.

While we, too, had pep rallies, every March we’d be subjected to what is best described as medieval-era propaganda. This meant assemblies from Monday through Thursday where we’d have guest speakers teach us the importance of not believing in any other religion or Christian sect, and the horrible consequences to your body and spirit if you dared to engage in the act of self-sex. I wish that this were an exaggeration. The program ended with an extra long Mass on Friday.

One such speaker opened with a video on how only Catholicism can possibly be the “correct” religion because there is a pope who is God’s appointed representative on Earth. Don’t tell him about that time in the Middle Ages when there were two or even three popes at once. He went on with a story from his youth about seeing a boy carrying all of his books while walking home one day from school, thought “Nerd!” but befriended him regardless. It turns out he was going to die by suicide that night and was carrying his books home so that his grief-stricken parents wouldn’t have had to clean out his locker. Our speaker had saved this young man life’s by becoming his best friend and this point was only revealed at their graduation. Then he sang a song about this event and we all felt warm and hopeful.

A few years later I would find this exact same anecdote on Snopes as “The Story of Kyle.” It’s a story from Chicken Soup for the Soul (1993) called “A Simple Gesture” that was rewritten by an anonymous user in 2000 with a first person perspective and sent around the early Internet as a sort of chain email. The speaker stole the entire urban legend and lied to us about it being a personal story.

During a different Catholic Schools Week, while I was a junior, we had a rapping Jesuit priest visit who played the bass guitar and used looping pedals to create his own backing tracks on the spot. Neat! Any guesses as to how he opened his set? A bit about himself? A thought provoking parable? A story he stole from an email he had received a few days earlier? If you guessed “horrible racist jokes” you’re correct! He was called out on this by the senior religion teacher, but only after he had finished his performances and opened the floor to questions. That was an uncomfortable hour to say the least.

This weeklong event was often our only access to sex education. Rather than doing this by grade or by gender (as assigned at birth because Catholic school) it was done with every student in the auditorium at the same time. We were told such scientifically accurate things like birth control pills cause the womb to fall out, that condoms actually cause sexually transmitted infections and have never once prevented a single disease, and that the only true cure for any STI was marriage. Yes, the holy sacrament of marriage was so strong that it could prevent and even cure STIs! Someone give this man a Nobel Prize!

At the end of this sermon we were given contracts between ourselves and God that we were required to sign, thus swearing that we would remain abstinent until our wedding nights. Most of these ended up in the trash cans at the entrances of the auditorium.

The Dress Code

“Tuck in that shirt!”

“Those skirts are too short!”

“Office. Shave. Now!”

Those are the wonderful sounds of morning before homeroom. The staff would patrol the halls to ensure that all of us were properly dressed in our itchy school uniforms. Girls were constantly harassed and forced to measure their skirt lengths by kneeling on the dirty floor to prove that they were, in fact, up to standard. This was frequently ordered by a male teacher or administrator and always performed as a way to humiliate the female students they had targeted.

Guys did not escape this scrutiny, though we weren’t as subject to the blatant sexism. Any highly religious, coed school is likely to be filled with such male privilege. A tiny bit of facial hair was a violation. That meant a strand of peach fuzz or even a single hair that the razor had missed. If you were considered too stubbly you were sent to the main office and made to shave with a crummy Bic. There was a longstanding rumour that the school only had a single rusty razor that was shared by everyone going back to the 1940s. The administrator who was most likely to order a guy to shave was also the one sporting the largest, fanciest beard of them all. I guess he never really read the Bible or all of the passages about hypocrisy.

We were occasionally given breaks from wearing our uniforms if we sold enough magazines during the annual drive or donated to a militant anti-abortion program for a pin designed to look like miniature feet (for the fetuses). These were taken as often (and ethically) as possible. While the polo shirts we could wear in September and then again from April through June were okay, the sweaters that were required the rest of the time were the stiffest, most irritating in existence. My arms would often break out in hives after wearing this shit for a whole day. They were also highly flammable and many of my classmates deliberately set them on fire after graduation to see just how flammable. That would have been nice to know before we used the Bunsen burners in chemistry class.

There were many more horrors that were much worse but I’d rather not discuss them as they are too personal for the Internet. Those who know me will understand. As for the rest of you, class is dismissed! Be ready to put your homework up on the board next week or you’ll get your hands whacked by the spectral ruler of Sister Clara’s ghost!

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12. NewSong: “The Christmas Shoes”

You know things are going to get ugly when “The Christmas Shoes” is our first visit in the lowest branches of the Tree of Misery. Recorded by the Christian rock band NewSong in the ignorant bliss that was pre-9/11 America, this vacuous tune serves little more than to cheaply manipulate the heartstrings. I am well aware that this is low hanging fruit, which is to be expected this early in our climb. There is also a small possibility that this song is not that well known outside of North America, so this may be completely new to my readers elsewhere in the world.

Unlike most holiday carols that are about Jesus, Santa Claus, or the miracle of Hanukkah, this is a song about death. It is sung from the perspective of a cantankerous, middle-aged man who was played by Rob Lowe in the TV movie version (yes, that is also a thing). He is in a store, standing in line and a little dirty boy is pacing about in front of him with a pair of shoes. The boy tells the clerk that they are just his mom’s size before saying: “I want her to look beautiful, if Mama meets Jesus tonight.”

Isn’t that a jolly treat? It’s Christmas Eve, and this child is buying shoes for his mother who is about to expire before the night is through. What a fun and joyous song to come on the radio right after “Silver Bells.”

Making things worse, the grimy rapscallion is also paying for the shoes with literal pennies before finding that he is too short. The clerk demands full price while the boy frantically searches his tattered clothes for a few more coins. What a jerk! Despite my upbringing that rejects the concept of eternal punishment, this asshole is definitely someone who should enjoy a little visit to Hell. It’s zero hour for Christmas and this kid’s mother, and you’re that much of a prick that you need a few more cents?

It is then that the narrator/Rob Lowe pays for the shoes, allowing the boy to race home before his mother buys the farm. This is when the song becomes completely sacrilegious with the line: “I knew that God had sent that little boy / To remind me just what Christmas is all about.”

Yes, that poor kid and his dying mother were there for you, so that you would have a happy holiday. I have a great idea as to where you can stuff an extra pair of those shoes.

11. The Smashing Pumpkins: “Christmastime”

Here is a piece that makes you stare into the frosty night sky and wonder aloud just how did this band make such an inexplicably poor decision? When you think of The Smashing Pumpkins, you usually think of hard, depressing songs with lyrics that shake the soul like “Mayonaise” [sic], or dark ballads such as “To Forgive.” Yet, here we are with a strangely lightweight tune and its whimsical melody of Christmassy clichés.

For a band that, at times, looks as though they are about to strap their fans to a board and offer them up as a sacrifice to some unknown cosmic evil, this song is completely out of character and is even more hilarious for it. In addition, the complete laziness of the lyrics with a chorus that sings: “Christmastime has come / There’ll be toys for everyone / ’Cause Christmastime has come for you” makes me think that this was written by a 2nd grader and given to Billy Corgan as part of a community service after he was arrested for drunken driving.

The verses are all equally appalling and filled to the brim with typical Christmas banalities about decorating the tree, fondly remembering childhood, and playing with toys. A friend of mine once covered my head with two cans worth of spray cheese on a dare, and yet this song is still cheesier than that incident. I must make a note that Billy Corgan has stated his interest in creating a full length Christmas record, and after hearing this song, I hope that it’s true. The world desperately needs more laughter and joy.

10. The Cheeky Girls: “Have a Cheeky Christmas”

We’re only at number ten and we’re already entering some dark territories. If The Chipettes were human and had eaten their third member, you would have The Cheeky Girls. This song starts off as what you would assume to be a typical children’s Christmas tune with sleigh bells and a cheery whistling melody. Then the sexy starts and you realize that this is soft-core pornography set to a beat and topped off with a Santa hat. The video destroys any illusions to the contrary.

In the very first verse, The Cheeky Girls sing about how “we all go crazy” while dancing and drinking heavily at a Christmas party. Very soon, the guys join in to “get sexy in the snow” before they “take the reins and hold on tight” because this is going to be one heck of a lucky night for them. I have to give The Cheeky Girls credit for showcasing how sexual assault can go both ways, especially since this was released in 2003, fourteen years before the Me Too movement swept the world.

Regardless, basic decency is not going to stop these horny girls from having their way with you! They have made it clear that it’s a hot Christmas night and you are going to enjoy it whether you want to or not. If you’ve been good, they will even be your “special dish!” I wonder what would happen if you were bad?

The bridge makes the song as the duo sings about Santa “coming” and not in the traditional sense of “heading towards a destination,” combined with shots of the girls getting felt up by their possibly reluctant lovers. What a magical recording.

9. Dr. Elmo: “Grandma’s Spending Christmas with the Superstars”

Do you know what’s worse than a shitty, overplayed novelty song? A shitty, overplayed novelty song’s sequel. Combining the insufferable, nasally singing of the reindeer ditty with a melody that is painfully similar, and the fact that this track immediately follows the original on the record, this is less music and more state sanctioned torture.

The story here is that the titular Grandma, who was brutally murdered by one of Santa’s reindeer just a few minutes ago, is now enjoying her first Christmas in Heaven, surrounded by dead celebrities who all want that sweet, sweet granny love. Elvis is even consoling/seducing her as she is missing her earthly husband, but that doesn’t stop The King from giving her “the keys to a new Cadillac” and a whole lot of postal stamps bearing his likeness.

Heaven seems very materialistic, but I guess “The Christmas Shoes” already proved that. Grandma is shopping in the mall with Marilyn Monroe and even gets a “full-length mink” from Liberace who is swiftly played-off in a homophobic manner before the “send them back!” joke is reused from the first song. I would have thought that given Jesus Christ’s nomadic lifestyle and his attitude against worldly objects that Heaven would be a little better than the commercialized Hell we have created here.

Never distancing itself from “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” the ending returns to an ensemble reciting the chorus ad nauseam but instead of “sing it Grandpa,” we get “sing it Superstars!” If the computerized actions of “copy/paste” were turned into an audible sound, this would be the result.

8. Günther & The Sunshine Girls: “The Christmas Song”

Is it getting hot in here or what? If The Cheeky Girls didn’t get your motor running, then Günther and his amazing moustache will make you quiver like a holiday pudding. Günther became an online sensation with his breakout hit “Ding Dong Song” all the way back in 2004, a piece in which he spends four minutes singing about his dick that he also affectionately refers to as his “tra-la-la.”

Günther is the inventor of duck face. He is the defiler of humanity. His is the second most infamous moustache to ever hail from Europe. Listening to even a single Günther recording requires that you immediately head to your local fire station and request that you be hosed off after mysteriously becoming covered with jizz.

While The Cheeky Girls (barely) attempted to downplay the sexual nature of their song, “The Christmas Song” openly embraces its existence as musical porn. Between Günther’s tantalizing moans and raspy utterances of “yeah” and “mmm,” the lyrical content is more or less a description of foreplay only interrupted by the girls singing about Santa, the holiday season, and never, ever having a dirty thing on their minds. Oh, you tease!

Like most of Günther’s creations, the video is the main attraction. Besides a few closeups of his glorious lip hair (both with and without a festive lap dog) the majority of the time is spent showcasing the Sunshine Girls in nothing but fur coats or threadbare lingerie with only a feather boa for a top, close-ups of their bare legs, or the girls sharing candy from mouth to mouth when not slobbering all over Günther.

Once more, we are reminded that “Santa is coming” and you can bet your sweet bippy that he is not trying to be discrete! Two little people dressed as elves show up in reference to an old porno trope in time for the grand finale, and the girls ogle both them and Günther as they cuddle by the fire and exchange gifts that include a pair kinky handcuffs because of course it does.

I must admit that I absolutely love this song. It is a classic example of the “so bad it’s good” phenomenon. There is also an extended “Santa’s Ding Dong Mix.” If you are going to listen to any of the entries on this list in their entirety, it has to be this one!

7. The Star Wars Intergalactic Droid Choir & Chorale: “The Odds Against Christmas”

*Shudders* I just felt a horrible disturbance in The Force, as if a billion Jar Jars were unleashed upon the world. Oh wait, that’s just The Star Wars Holiday Special welling up again. A quick trip to the porcelain transporter to relieve myself of all this Wookie hair in my stomach should fix that right up…

With all the terror inflicted upon humanity as a result of the Star Wars prequels and the aforementioned Holiday Special, I sometimes have to ask myself: Was Star Wars even a good franchise? If so, why are only the original three any good, and if not: why do we think that the original three are any good? Philosophical questions aside, did you know that there is a Star Wars Christmas album?

Of course you do, because this is a listicle of horrible Christmas music and I just spent two paragraphs talking about Star Wars! It’s also in the name of the “group.” Get with the program! When discussing Christmas in the Stars, I have a lot of difficulty choosing just which song I consider to be the worst. “What Do You Get a Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns a Comb?)” deserves some honourable mention purely because it had its own single, and “R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas” has an actual 18-year-old Jon Bon Jovi on it, so I just took my download of the album (yes, I have this), put it on shuffle, and picked whichever song came up first.

In a fitting result, “The Odds Against Christmas” won the raffle. The title makes me think of a Rankin/Bass special or yet another local news segment on the fantastical “War on Christmas” that is obliged to make at least three weekly appearances from November through Christmas Eve.

This song opens with an electric harpsichord providing an air of pretentiousness behind C-3PO as he recites a poem. The nature of this “song” is that Christmas may not have even happened, just like in 1647 when an act of Parliament banned the holiday throughout England. C-3PO continues to ramble off plenty of Earth history and references that come across as alien in a galaxy filled with literal aliens because Star Wars has no place breaking the fourth wall.

Finally, at 0:51 the song portion starts with the whiny soft rock vocals you’d expect from any other holiday trash and the lines: “The odds against Christmas being Christmas / Are 365 to 1.” Historically speaking, Christmas never began in East Asia, vast areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, or the Americas until centuries later and the holiday as we know it never existed until the 1800s, so maybe fix up your math and dust off those history textbooks. Also, you forgot about leap years.

“You have a day / When love came to stay” says C-3PO, ignoring all other winter holidays (and thousands of years of human history prior) that celebrate such things in the Northern Hemisphere. So Christmas is the only day for love and light according to this self-absorbed robot. No Hanukkah in your ideal worldview, huh? Well, at least we now know that Threepio is a Nazi.

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6. Milton De Lugg & the Little Eskimos: “Hooray for Santa Claus”

Used as the main theme for the 1964 holiday bomb Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, this tune is an assembly of all that makes a terrible song, never mind a terrible Christmas song. A choir of untrained children shouting as loudly as possible into the microphone? Check. Harsh instrumental segments that struggle to maintain intonation? Check. Sleigh bells? Check.

Of course there are sleigh bells; it’s just not a Christmas song unless there are sleigh bells!

Just one listen to this tune’s opening will plant it so firmly in your brain that you will require a chainsaw to dislodge it. I know. I have found myself playing it on the piano when that accursed earworm finds its way through my skull. This song is so annoying that it makes “The Twelve Days of Christmas” seem reasonable. And there is never a reasonable time to sing that.

I don’t understand why so many producers out there feel that screaming children is a desirable sound. This is far from the only Christmas song I’ve heard that was performed entirely by an inexpert choir of kids. My family had mistakenly purchased an 8 cassette album of holiday carols some thirty years ago and after hearing that every track was performed by the same group of unskilled children, promptly threw it away.

Those kids all got coal that year.

5. Matt Rogers: “Illegals in My Yard”

Oh dear. We have reached a song that made the list because it’s racist. When constructing a good parody, one should always ask: “What Would ‘Weird’ Al Do?” This, my friends, is not what “Weird” Al would do.

As a satire of Jose Feliciano’s classic “Feliz Navidad,” the musical aspect seems to be a faithful recreation while the non-singing banter of a xenophobic uncle was glued on top of it in a free audio workstation. This thing premiered in 2009 on Human Events, and was quickly picked up by anti-hate watchdogs for its despicable lyrics.

Playing off of the most harmful stereotypes of Latinos imaginable, this “parody” shoves extremist drivel into every line to the point that it is nothing more than some skinhead-approved audible sludge that only the worst of humanity could possibly enjoy. Rogers sets a scene that implies all immigrants from anywhere south of the United States are only good for what amounts to slavery and the amusement of white folks.

In the last chorus, the songwriter accuses migrants of spreading diseases like bubonic plague and parasites like bed bugs just to make sure that your secretly racist friends will get a laugh and expose themselves for what they are before they can formally exit the Ku Klux Kloset. Guess which finger I’m holding up.

4. Tiny Tim: “Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year”

Look kids, it’s Tiny Tim! You know him from that song in that SpongeBob episode, right? Let’s hear what he has to say for Christmas this year and… oh no!

For this tune, we have to do some digging. I am going to take you back to when I was a wee lad in the 1980s. Despite what Stranger Things and Ready Player One would have you think, that decade was quite atrocious. Nuclear war was a greater threat than it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The economy crashed because of reckless financial policies. The Falkland Islands were invaded. And a newly discovered disease was spreading around the world that was a death sentence to anyone who contracted it.

In the early ’80s, that disease was known by the acronym GRID for the poorly-aged title of “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency,” which would eventually become known as AIDS when people stopped being so prejudiced, and also realized that anyone could contract the illness. This was a terrifying time.

I distinctly remember my mother, who taught kindergarten, having to be trained in how to handle any blood-related emergency for something as minor as a nose bleed or paper cut. No one knew how HIV developed, or who might have it, but at this time it was only known that it spread via blood (and thereby through sex), and all blood was at risk until deemed safe. Teachers had boxes upon boxes of latex gloves in the classroom to handle any child who had an open wound, no matter how small. That is how paranoid everyone was in the ’80s and early ’90s about this disease.

So, Tiny Tim went ahead and wrote this heartless song in 1985, when AIDS had officially become AIDS, and everyone knew the severity of it. Apparently, he assumed it was similar to a very nasty flu and that it was something that could be recovered from with bed rest. He also seems to have thought it was similarly airborne because he describes Santa as having to stay away from all the kids of the world and even his reindeer.

Just imagine someone releasing “Santa Claus Has Got the SARS This Year” for Christmas in the 2020s.

3. Jan Terri: “Rock N Roll Santa”

At long last, we are nearing the top of the Tree of Misery. My Lord, these branches are icky. Does anyone else smell something or what? If you have to ask “How, just how, can it get any worse?” then I’m about to show you.

Let me introduce you to Jan Terri, a Chicago native who entered the indie rock scene in the early 1990s with her homemade VHS music videos. On one hand, you must admire her raw and authentic approach to music. She doesn’t let anyone stop her from pursuing her dreams, even a fellow musician writing a scathing review of twelve Christmas songs where she has found her way into the top three. On the other hand, one cannot shy away from the low quality of the songs from a compositional or lyrical point of view.

With that, here is “Rock N Roll Santa,” just one of Jan’s many recordings from the decade that gave us gross-out cartoons and Yikes school supplies. The song is fairly… okay at the beginning, then the vocals enter and add three extra syllables to the word “window,” and any semblance of this being an ordinary tune is fired off past Pluto.

Seeing a colourful cacophony of adults dressed as dolls, elves, and children sitting upon the lap of St. Nick really gives off a weird vibe today, but I suppose it was easier than getting actual kids to follow directions and deal with an increasingly rowdy Santa as the shoot progressed. I love how the shots are all too long and never fit the rhythm of the song. I know that editing on a VHS wasn’t as simple as today’s digital everything, but there could have been a better attempt so that we didn’t have to watch grown-up elves/toys dancing to six completely different beats for an extended period of time.

This song’s chorus will haunt your ears well into Mother’s Day and you, too, will be “Jumping around like a house on fire / Having some fun tonight” or you’ll find yourself on the naughty list for decades to come! I wonder why Jan thought a “house on fire” was such a fun thing to compare to dancing. Since when do burning buildings jump? I’ve seen them collapse, but never jump. Oh, well.

The next verses have similar uses of extended syllables on short words while retreading the clichéd tropes of the earlier Smashing Pumpkins song. There are toys, there are decorations, “chestnuts are a’ roasting.” The presentation is obvious and over-the-top, with visuals that reinforce everything the song states. It comes off a little stale, but sort of nice at the same time? I mean, one cannot help the technical limitations that resulted in some of the strange editing choices, and if we overlook that what we are left with is more or less a typical Christmas melody.

A Christmas melody so typical that it is almost like a setup wizard, providing the bare bones for another songwriter to construct their own piece over it. To me, this song comes off so threadbare that it could easily be one of the Sunshine Girls in Günther’s entry. I also have to point out the infringing video portion at the very end that was clearly lifted from The Year Without a Santa Claus. It’s just something that I find amusing, especially with today’s copyright obsessed algorithms and swift punishment for those who use a clip even in Fair Use.

What a simpler time those ’90s were…

2. Jan Terri: “Excuse My Christmas”

Oh look, it’s Jan Terri again. Am I a bully, picking on this one woman with her zany videos and off-beat songwriting style? Let me explain a bit. I had first heard “Rock N Roll Santa” in 2011 as I was writing my very first incarnation of what would become “Festive Filth” for my now long defunct comedy blog. Shortly after that article was published, Jan returned to the limelight with this song just in time for the holiday season and announced a new record: Wild One. I discovered this too late, and included this recording in 2012’s “Festive Filth” alongside plenty of generic country and western songs that, to be fair, never deserved to be on that list when this list showcases so much worse.

Compared to “Rock N Roll Santa,” this one just doesn’t cut it. Jan seems lacking in the energy and enthusiasm that made the latter tune so great by comparison. Yes, this is a downtempo song, but her delivery of the lyrics is just forced. It’s almost as though she is not enjoying herself in the making of “Excuse My Christmas.” She was very clearly having fun in “Santa,” while here her performance comes off as an imposition.

The music is a drudgery of Casio piano chords and sleigh bells that just do not sit with her singing. Jan’s voice also seems unprocessed with little to no space or levelling, so it sounds and feels as though she’s right in your face without any mixing that would allow the music and vocals to blend a little better. And if you thought adding three syllables to “window” was a train wreck of a passage, the words here are all crammed into as many beats as possible. Come the chorus, Jan is completely out of tempo with the rest of the song and sounds as though she is desperately trying to find the click track while still being able to breathe.

Jan is also highly redundant with lyrics like: “In Spanish they say: Feliz Navidad / Feliz Navidad this Christmas.” She is literally saying “Merry Christmas this Christmas” akin to how the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate is just a dumb way of saying Hands: The Hands of Fate.

While the technology advanced immensely in twenty years, this video seems a lot cheaper with its green screen use and poorly drawn Adobe Flash figures dancing with the most basic of animations. There was just so much more effort in “Rock N Roll Santa” even with the primitive video tools of the day! The difficult, low-tech approach of the past required passion to make something even remotely usable, and this comes across as a barely involved side-project at best and depressingly dull at worst.

Jan made up for this a few years later with her 2015 rendition of Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” which delightfully blends modern video editing with her old fervent approach to creation. If you think you see a pattern here, and you think you have already guessed my Number One pick for Worst Christmas Song of All Time, then you are dead wrong.

1. Nancy LaPlante: “Debbie’s Last Christmas”

Holy shit. Welcome to the little devil sitting on top of the Tree of Misery. We’ve made it, but do we really want to be here? I know I don’t want to be here. From high atop this muck encrusted pine, we are so far from any hope. We can feel the incomprehensible permanence of death, and the lonesome void of an uncaring cosmos. Listen closely and you may even hear the dark, maddening chants of the Old Ones as they sing to us the absolute worst Christmas song ever committed to tape.

This song is evil. It was forged from a volcanic shit pushed out by Satan himself, transformed into paper at the hands of Adolf Hitler, and the lyrics penned with the blood of a billion murdered cherubs by Vlad the Impaler. Unless you are morbidly curious, I highly recommend that you skip listening to this one.

With the arrival of “Debbie’s Last Christmas,” we have established the end all be all of worst music, period. This is not only the worst holiday song, but the worst song ever. We began our journey so long ago with a track about a little boy who was trying to make his dying mother’s Christmas beautiful. Coming full circle, this is a song about two parents trying to make their own child’s Christmas a beautiful one as she suffers from an unspecified terminal illness.

Opening on the same tired chord progression as Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” with a sour electric keyboard, the instrumental introduction takes no prisoners and lets us know that this is going to be horrible for every single moment that passes during this 2-minute and 47-second abomination. Nancy LaPlante’s nauseating, congested vocals enter and introduce us to the story:

Annie and Johnny are in a hospital, awaiting word from Dr. James on their daughter Debbie’s condition. He enters with a grim look upon his face and bluntly tells these young parents that their only child is just days away from dying. Neither of them have seen their daughter smile since her diagnosis, and knowing that she will not survive to see December, they decide to celebrate Christmas early for one last chance to change that.

Debbie is brought home with her favourite toys: a teddy bear and a generic mouse, and she looks forward to celebrating Christmas while her parents know that there is no possibility of her living that long. Debbie is bedridden, so a tree is placed in her room and Johnny will play the part of Santa Claus to surprise his ailing child. As Debbie’s health wanes, Santa shows up as planned and she is elated upon seeing him and even receives a cute little doll.

As Santa sits with Debbie on this cold November night, Annie receives a phone call. Johnny is stuck in a snowstorm and will not be able to make it home to play the part of the jolly old elf. Just as Annie realizes that the real Santa is in the room with their daughter, Debbie dies while smiling.

There is no Christmas miracle. There is no happy ending. In a world where Santa Claus is a real being, capable of magic and for whom there is nothing impossible, Debbie is still allowed to die. Her father is absent when the moment comes and he never gets the chance to see his only child smile for the final time. There is nothing good for anyone to be found here.

For years I was convinced that this song did not exist and that it was, in fact, an hallucination on my part or on the collective consciousness of a select few, like how only kids and some adults can see Pennywise. How anyone could have thought that this would be a great Christmas hit is so far beyond rational thought that one must ascend to a higher plane of reality to even begin to comprehend it. Did the songwriter(s) really think that this would be fun for the whole family to sing beneath the tree after dinner? Or maybe they just thought that such a cruel and blatant tearjerker would be so shocking that people would buy the record just to prove it existed. We’ll probably never know.

This is a piece that had the potential to make us believe in Christmas magic, to help us feel better about the tormented mortal world we occupy, but instead it chose to hurt us. This song hurt me. If you ignored my advice and listened to it, then it hurt you, too. There is no place in this world for “Debbie’s Last Christmas.” Like weaponized gas and nuclear bombs, this is a piece of history that we all want to forget, but ultimately must learn to live with and hope that we can ensure a better future for the next generation.

Now I’m sad. So here’s a bunch of people chasing a pair of llamas set to Yakety Sax:

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© 2018 by Mike R. Smale. All rights reserved.

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© 2018 by Mike R. Smale. All rights reserved.

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All of her preparations worked as I was one of the very few students able to maintain my composure and exit the building down the small, rusted fire escape and into the playground without terrified wails or tears. After things had settled down, a local firefighter visited each of the four classrooms and discussed the usual safety measures: never play with matches, never try to put out a fire yourself, always get as low to the ground as possible to avoid the smoke and, of course, stop, drop, and roll if you or your clothing ever ignites. The way in which he presented this life-saving information was not too stern nor too comical, but just the right balance to educate such young children in a way that would guarantee its retention while preventing nightmares in the days to come.

My phobia began to disappear over the following weeks. I was able to sleep through the night without staring at the smoke alarm or imaging my house, with my family still inside, consumed in an unending hell. I no longer was waking at two in the morning to run downstairs, checking that the kitchen stove was switched off, or feeling various doors with the backs of my hands for hidden pockets of heat. I was, at last, a normal and rested child.

This all changed the following year when I was six and I began the first grade. As the air began to cool and summer became a distant memory, Fire Prevention Week again arrived at our desks one October morning. Though the timing of the accompanying drill was kept a secret from students and much of the faculty in order to simulate a real emergency clearing, we had a good idea that it would soon begin when we saw the fire engine driving over from across the street and into the school’s parking lot just after lunch. Aside from a quick burst of adrenaline at the sudden sound of the decades old alarm the exercise went off without much trouble for the majority of us. After exiting the school I spoke with some friends while our teacher, Mrs. Wallace, attempted to console the handful of students who were having a much rougher experience.

The firefighters gave their lesson once more while we were all outside and they provided us with an enthusiastic demonstration of the many tools used in the field. This included a chance to hold onto a working fire hose while the professionals held it down and watching them spray the side of the school with a moderate jet of water. After the assembly we were each given a worksheet and a plastic firefighter’s helmet before returning to our classrooms to continue the discussion. While we were filling out our papers Mrs. Wallace began wheeling in a television for the next portion of the lecture.

“Okay, everyone,” she began as we became quiet. “We’re going to watch a short movie on fire safety. This could be a little scary for some of you, but it may one day save your life!”

She carefully loaded a shining red cassette into the VCR.

“I hope you all pay attention!” she said while adjusting the tracking.

The video began with a small, brown house with dark smoke belching out from the roof and windows. Charring fingers of orange and red quickly reached out from beneath the gutters, taking hold of the shingles and spreading as the sounds of approaching sires drowned the crackle of the inferno and moaning wood of the dying structure. The title faded in over the sequence of the house: Don’t Play Games With Mr. Matches.

“We all know how dangerous fire is,” the narrator began as several firefighters raced towards the burning home and the title faded away.

“Once a fire starts, it can be very, very difficult to control it. Once something is burned, it’s gone — forever.” The camera panned over the faces of the former occupants of the house, faces covered in soot and eyes swollen in silent cries. A little girl was desperately running towards the disaster, telling her parents that she had left behind her favourite doll and that it would only take a few seconds to retrieve it. As they pleaded with her, stating that it was much too dangerous, a blaze erupted from the window to which she was pointing. She began weeping, knowing that the doll was nothing more than ashes as more water fell over the home.

A loud snap jolted us all from our seats as part of the roof collapsed. The family looked on with terror as one firefighter became pinned beneath a smouldering wooden beam. As he was pulled from the wreckage, his comrades began patting his legs with fire blankets in an effort to kill the flames.

“Fire burns through every part of a building, weakening it, which could cause it to fall,” the voice-over continued. “And being inside of a fallen, burning building it like being trapped inside of an oven.”

I closed my eyes and ducked behind the girl sitting in front of me as the screams of another firefighter could be heard from within the crumbling residence. I never saw what transpired. I just remember his screaming; shrieks growing fainter as the roar of the blaze overtook him until it was the only sound that remained.

“This didn’t have to happen,” said the narrator. I opened my eyes and saw a peaceful suburban scene playing on the television.

“Proper fire safety can prevent tragedies like the one we’ve just witnessed,” he said. “Knowing how to prevent a fire from ever starting is just as important as knowing how to escape one.”

The video cut to a scene of a boy playing with an RC car in his driveway.

“This is Timothy,” the narrator said. “Timothy loves to play with his remote controlled toys.” Just as this was uttered, the car stopped moving and the boy began banging on the back of the controller to no avail. He opened the rear compartment and removed the batteries before entering the garage, a fresh pair in his hands when he returned. A short closeup revealed that they were beginning to corrode.

“These batteries are old and worn,” the narrator said as the boy inserted the two cells into the remote and closed the compartment. “Decaying batteries are dangerous and, if not disposed of properly, they can lead to fire.”

As the boy flipped the power switch on his remote, there was a burst of sparks followed by a sudden bright flash of white and a howl unlike anything I had ever heard before in my young life echoed throughout the classroom as the movie showed Timothy running in slow motion through his front yard, overwhelmed with flames. Slowly he fell to the ground, attempting to extinguish the conflagration before he stopped completely, the fire never easing.

The piercing sound of a whistle accompanied a new scene as the film continued. A kettle had sprung to life atop a stove as a woman reached for it, pouring the boiling water into a cup before dipping a teabag.

“Every home has a kitchen,” the narrator said as the kettle was returned to the hot burner. “How else would we cook our food and wash up after a meal?”

We then saw a young girl sitting in the parlour as she hosted a tea party for her dolls and an oversized teddy bear. She smiled towards her mother as she sat down on the nearby couch, blowing over her fresh and steaming beverage. The telephone rang and the woman stood to answer it, leaving the girl to her play.

“Do you want some more tea, Mr. Diddims?” the girl asked the bear while she served an invisible drink. As her mother wandered into another room, still speaking on the phone, the child glanced to the kitchen with a smile.

“I’ll make you the kind Mommy likes!” she said cheerfully before grabbing the plastic teapot and walking to the stove. Standing on her toes, she grasped at the kettle’s handle and slowly slid it aside, placing her own atop the burner still glowing with heat. Soon, the toy pot began to smoulder and melt, small flares bursting forth from the edges as it ignited. Panic overtook the girl and she reached for her toy, burning pieces falling around her as she attempted to reach it.

Another white flash and hellish screech overtook our classroom. I tried to stare out of the window to the playground, or to the cartoon children jesting with different letters and numbers that decorated the walls. I wanted to see anything but the television. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t escape the next scene.

A close-up of the girl’s face engulfed in fire greeted us as embers flew around her head. Her eyes were blistering over, scorched skin peeling away to reveal the burning muscle beneath it. Her hair fizzling to nothing but a swiftly blackened scalp, and her lips — my God — her lips swelling and oozing a clear fluid that dribbled down what remained of her chin as she screamed that same howl that had overpowered the entire room just minutes earlier! She fell over, still ablaze, still crying out as if she were begging for some diving force to help her. A force that would never arrive.

The film abruptly cut to an outdoor birthday party. Nearly a dozen children were gathering near a wooden picnic table adorned with a red and white checker board patterned cloth. Two boy were playing with foam dart guns, pestering one of the girls in attendance by firing the projectiles into her hair. Others ran around the small yard while a boy about my age sat at the end of the table, patiently awaiting the arrival of his cake.

“Who doesn’t love a good party?” the narrator began. A young mother slowly walked into the yard carrying a chocolate cake adorned with six large candles. The children began to flock around her.

“But what birthday cake is complete without candles?” the voice-over continued. “Candles that can only shine by inviting one more guest: Mr. Matches.”

The kids all took their places at the table. Everything appeared as though it were vibrating — a very slight movement, but enough to be noticeable. As the woman reached for the matchbook, the picture froze and the video became a series of still images: the mother removing a single match. A few eager children reaching towards the cake as she was preparing to the light the candles. One of the boys aiming his dart gun. A yellow dart striking the woman’s hand as she was finishing. The still burning match falling towards the tablecloth.

The television illuminated us in white. There were so many screams and a continuous roaring louder than anything prior as the film slowly faded back into view. Enormous flames wrapped around the table as the young woman desperately attempted to smother the inferno enveloping her son, her own clothing scorched. Other children were lying in the grass or slowly crawling through it. The girl who had been teased earlier in the scene poured soda over her arm as fire made its way through her tissue. The camera began to inch closer to the birthday boy. He had fallen onto the lawn, singed bone becoming visible as he violently shook.

“Fire is no toy,” the narrator said, the chaos continuing. “Don’t play games with Mr. Matches!”

The movie cut to black as a synthesizer played a delicate, melancholy melody over the credits. It was over! Mrs. Wallace approached the TV and ejected the tape.

“Well, I hope you all learned something from this!” she said in a chipper tone, almost unaware of what we had just endured. “Are they any questions?”

The room was hushed; nobody dared move and even something as involuntary as blinking seemed to have been paused. Then my best friend, Maria, very slowly raised her hand.

“Why — ” she began in a soft, shaking voice, “why did all those bad things have to happen?”

We were all trying to comprehend that very question and, indeed, the very nature of what we had just seen. I was still frozen in the wake of the viewing and it was only her timid query that began to ground me. Never had I been so relieved to reach the ending of a movie in school!

“Well,” Mrs. Wallace started, “those little boys and girls didn’t know how to take the right precautions when dealing with fire, or the things that can make a fire!” She seemed so distant from the film, unfazed by its graphic exhibition of an uncontrolled blaze.

“But you all know better,” she continued. “That’s what this week is all about; to make sure that you know how to react in an emergency whether it’s at home, in school or even outside in the woods. Fire is a dangerous tool but if used correctly, like in the hands of a well-trained adult, it can keep us warm and cook our food. But if you ever see a fire where it’s not supposed to be, that’s when you call 911 and tell a grown-up right away!”

I wasn’t paying attention anymore. The images of children struggling to escape the flames eating away at their bodies had solidified in my psyche. My only thoughts were What if that were me, or my house? and Would the firefighters even bother trying to save me if it were that bad? The day was nearly complete, so while my numbed classmates went about small school exercises or a little mindless play, I sat at my desk and stared towards the clock, counting down the minutes until my bus number would be called and I could at last leave the school.

I don’t remember the ride home, but I distinctly recall ignoring my grandmother after I arrived there. She would always be at the house to watch me until my parents came home from work and we would play games or bake a small snack; it wasn’t normal for me to just walk right by her and go to my room without a sound. This is what alerted my family to the unusual circumstances at school that day. My mother, upon hearing how I was acting, immediately came to my side, asking if I was feeling sick or if anyone had been bullying me. I merely told her that I was fine and that I wanted to be alone. My father received a similar response when it was his turn.

I never said a word about the movie that night; I barely ate dinner and refused dessert. At some point past midnight, in the darkness, I found myself awake and gazing down the hallway at the smoke alarm for the first time in a year. I imagined that it was ready to sound and that I’d meet a similar fate as those kids in the film as I stared into the corridor.

The week progressed fairly normally in class as far as the curriculum was concerned. However, in the halls, the stories of that dreaded tape abounded and we openly spoke about how it was bringing us grotesque visions, or forging the new habit of asking our folks to double check if the oven was off before we went to sleep. Then the parents started showing up at dismissal, exchanging fierce words with both Mrs. Wallace and the school principal, telling them that their children were developing insomnia or waking up in the middle of the night screaming about “the girl on fire.”

My mother, being in the same school system, soon heard the stories of restless nights amongst the first graders and rumours about a traumatic short film as the primary cause. She asked me outright about any movies we watched when she came home one day. I could tell that she already knew the answer, so I told her everything as I cried into her shoulder. While she didn’t reveal her anger in front of me, I could hear her and my father shouting with one another, outraged that my class had been shown what they assumed was a video aimed at much older kids.

A PTA meeting had been scheduled in the aftermath of Don’t Play Games With Mr. Matches. My grandmother came by to watch both Maria and I, as all of our parents were attending the conference and finding a sitter was extremely difficult with so many family members heading to the assembly to express their concerns. We kept busy watching cartoons and eating cookies, but that movie was still on our minds. It was inescapable.

“I took the batteries out of all my toys,” Maria blurted out as we sat before the TV. “I don’t want them to burn me up like that.”

“I’ve been blowing on my allowance every time I slide it off my bookcase,” I replied. “You never know, right?” I didn’t want to admit how paranoid I had become but I felt at ease knowing that I wasn’t alone in it. Nothing more was said about school or the movie, though I knew she was just as eager to let loose about it as I was. We just couldn’t go there again.

After what felt like many hours had passed, all of our parents came home with a look of relief upon them. Mine cheerfully said goodbye to Maria, who looked to me with confusion, as she was whisked through the door by her folks. My mother and father came over to talk to me on the couch as I waved goodbye. They said that Mrs. Wallace had shown everyone the film at the PTA meeting, and that it was just a silly little puppet show teaching kids not to play with matches so that we would not become hurt with such carelessness. There was no burning house, no kids on fire, no screaming, nothing of the sort. Their explanation was that my imagination had gotten the best of me and that my old phobias had resurfaced as a result of going through another Fire Prevention Week.

I was completely dumbfounded. How, just how, could they not have seen what I did? What we all did? Maria and I were just talking about the exact same thing, yet my Mom and Dad had no idea where we were getting these vivid stories! I tried my best to tell them what was on the VHS again, but they said the only fire in the whole movie was a bunch of orange tissue paper dancing about on a puppet’s stove, clearly fake. And even then a firefighting doll quickly extinguished it. They told me that there was nothing frightening about that video.

The next week, we all exchanged stories on how the film our parents had seen wasn’t the same as the one we had watched and that we all had overactive imaginations in their eyes. One of the tougher kids in my class accused Mrs. Wallace of switching the tapes at the PTA meeting so that she wouldn’t get in trouble. It was plausible, but then why did the other classes see the same thing we did? What about those teachers?

For the next month we came up with different ideas and conspiracy theories regarding our instructors and Don’t Play Games With Mr. Matches, but it gradually tapered away. The movie was becoming forgotten beneath Thanksgiving and Christmas, and eventually we didn’t even think about it at all. Aside from the occasional nightmare or trigger that would bring it back as a topic for discussion amongst my classmates, it was a relic of the past not worth mentioning.

It has been twenty-three years since that day in the first grade. I haven’t thought about the film in ages. Hell, I couldn’t even remember the name of it until a few years ago when I tried to find a copy of it online as a curiosity piece. While I couldn’t get my hands on a VHS or DVD, there were a few people sharing their own experiences with it in various Internet forums, and it brought back a couple of old shivers, but nothing exceptional.

I am now married and I have a little girl of my own. That’s what restored all of these repressed childhood memories and fears from the deep fissures of my mind. Yesterday, when I went to pick up my daughter from school, she came running over to me, crying and clutching my shoulders harder than I thought possible for a child.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I asked as I held her. I was growing anxious that another student had harmed her in some way and wanted to have the issue settled as quickly as possible.

“We — we watched a really scary movie,” she started, her blonde curls dishevelled as she hid her face in my torso. My skin felt as though it were struck with thousands of small wires that wrapped around and pierced my body.

“What — what was the movie about, sweetie?” I asked very cautiously.

“F — fire!” was all she said before breaking down.

No. There was no way it could be the same one! In that moment everything flashed before me in full detail: the family looking towards their burning home and the firefighters trapped inside of it. The boy set ablaze by his remote control and the girl with the melting face, howling in such agony that it could shake a devil. And the party; the birthday party full of screaming children consumed by fire as a boy convulsed on the grass as he was reduced to ashes.

I wasn’t about to have her endure the same traumatic nights I did. I took my daughter’s hand and walked with her into the school and right towards the principal’s office. I couldn’t wait to tear into the administration, a feeling my own parents must have felt over two decades earlier.

“Oh, my!” I heard a vaguely familiar voice say. I turned to see Mrs. Wallace standing in the doorway, looking older and with some grey highlights in her otherwise dark hair, but not too dramatically different in appearances after so many years. She was now principal.

“Well, haven’t you grown!” she said excitedly, recognizing me almost in an instant. She then looked at my daughter, still sniffling as she stood beside me. Just as I was about to state my intentions, she calmly ushered me into her quarters. I knelt down to my little girl and asked her to wait outside until I got back. She nodded, wiping away some more tears before sitting in a chair beside the office door.

“I think I know why you’re here,” Mrs. Wallace said. “It is October, after all.”

“She saw it,” I started. “She saw that same goddamn movie!”

Mrs. Wallace sat at her desk and let out a heavy sigh. She then opened a drawer and removed a shining red VHS. The title and text had long since worn away, but I knew it was the same one I had seen when I was an elementary school student.

“Do you — want to watch it?” she asked.

I stared at the cassette, filling with abhorrence for it, for what it had done to me, for what it had done to my own child! I wanted nothing more than to pulverize it and wrap the tape around the casing before throwing it into a river. I put that ire aside and nodded. Mrs. Wallace loaded the cassette into a dusty old VCR in her office, fiddling with the long outdated equipment until the picture came into view on the TV.

“Hi there, kids!” shouted a furry blue puppet. “I’m Willy, and I’m here today to teach you all about fire safety!”

The movie continued as I stared, mouth agape. This wasn’t the same thing! There were no fires, no screaming children! It was just some silly little puppet show like my parents had told me so many years ago!

“You don’t need to say anything,” Mrs. Wallace began. “I know.”

I was released from my stupor.

“What?” I asked, breaking my gaze with the screen.

“Every year, for over twenty years, we’ve shown this same movie,” she said. “Every year the children are frightened.” She sunk lower in her seat. “Beyond frightened, even, and I always end up having to deal with the fallout: the angry parents, the crying kids. I don’t know what it is, but I know that it happens each time. And I know you saw it too — the real movie, that is.”

I looked to the television as the ridiculous puppet carried on a conversation with a cheesy anthropomorphic ember that was encouraging him to play with a book of matches. The real movie?

“There’s something in this tape,” she continued. “Something you can’t see when you grow up, but the kids can see it.” I looked back at my old first grade teacher, suddenly looking worn from so many years of enduring this same conversation.

“I’ve never seen it myself,” she said before standing and ejecting the tape. “But,” she continued somewhat wily, “you never played with fire after this, did you?”

“No! Never!” I said, shaking my head like a child just caught in the candy tray before dinner. Mrs. Wallace chuckled a little as she returned the red cassette to her desk drawer.

“Well then,” she said, “whatever is in here must work. Why else would we be holding onto it for so long?”

I left with my daughter and headed home, keeping silent on the revelations I had had in that office. I did my best to reassure her that everything was safe, that she didn’t have to fear the spontaneous blazes that the movie had showcased. That the house wasn’t going to burn down without warning, and that we had a plan to get out both quickly and safely if such an emergency were to arise.

After a struggle to get her to bed, I decided to contact my old friend Maria online. She had long since moved away from the town in which we grew up, so I figured she wouldn’t know anything about the video outside of what we had seen when we were kids ourselves. We joked for a bit before I brought up Don’t Play Games With Mr. Matches. Her messenger was still for a little while, then a large block of text appeared:

“Oh, my God! I forgot all about that thing until the other day! So weird! My son came home crying, saying that he was terrified of fire. Then he started telling me about this movie they watched in school and it just sort of came back to me! I remembered the burning boy running through the yard and, when I asked him, he said it was the same thing! I was so afraid that this was going to traumatize him so I went to the school to talk about it. Now, you’re never going to believe me, but when I watched the video it was just some stupid puppet show!"

© 2016 by Mike R. Smale. All rights reserved.

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