I TURNED INTO A MISFIT!

It was the year 2000. Spring. My senior year in high school.

“Hi, Burns.”

“Oh, hey, Brian.”

“Wanna play the post-prom party with my band?”

“Sure.”

“Cool. Oh, and a friendly reminder that salad bar’s today.”

“Ah, damn, it’s Tuesday. Wish it was deli bar.”

“Me too. Oh well. See you soon.”

This is exactly how the conversation went down when I was recruited to play the post-prom party with my high school classmates Brian (guitarist), Steve (singer) and Steve’s cousin (bassist). I would be on drums.

We began practicing right away, for two or three months, and developed an eclectic set-list of songs. We would open with Korn’s “Blind” and then go right into Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Give it Away Now”. Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” would be in there, too. P.O.D.’s “Southtown”. Pink Floyd’s “We Don’t Need no Education”. And many, many more.

But one song was a tune I admittedly had never heard before up until that point in my life:

“Halloween”.

By the Misfits.

Whoa.

Indeed, this was my introduction to the band the Misfits and what I didn’t realize at the time was that it would mark the beginning of my metamorphosis into an all-out Misfit fiend. In other words, this was the beginning of a Misfits obsession that would last for several years.

The more I played “Halloween” with my band, the more I fell in love with the song. There was a strange familiarity to it, like my soul already recognized the music somehow and like it was inevitable that I would eventually stumble upon it. There was no avoiding this. It was meant to be.

I was immediately inspired to make an emergency trip to the local Newbury Comics and purchase a Misfits CD. Clawing through the CD bins in a fiendish frenzy, I saw one Misfits album after another, but I was a Misfits ignoramus at that point in my life, so I had no idea which CD I should purchase.

I soon stumbled upon two “best of” CDs named Collection I. and Collection II. The first collection had a bunch of songs I never heard of before while the second collection had “Halloween” and…well, also a bunch of songs I never heard of before. I liked “Halloween” and I didn’t own the song. I thought I better go with Collection II.

I popped my new Misfits CD into my car stereo and by “car stereo” I mean my battery-powered boombox I kept on the passenger seat of the 1986 Toyota Camry I drove at the time. I pressed play and immediately skipped over to track nine to get my “Halloween” fix. I listened to “Halloween” about five or six times in a row before I was ready to expand my horizons and discover the rest of the songs on the CD. I started right at the beginning and immediately fell in love with “We Are 138”, “Last Caress”, “Children in Heat, “Hatebreeders” and what-would-eventually become one of my top-five favorite Misfits songs: “Devil’s Whorehouse”.

Damn, I thought to myself. Misfits front man Glenn Danzig’s voice sounded so unique: a mixture of 1930s crooner and 1950s-era carhop rock, sprinkled with a dash of Jim Morrison, and haunted with a sound of doom and horror. This sound was technically known as “horror punk”, mainly because all the songs were either inspired by or outright named after old horror movies—particularly B-horror movies—but I didn’t care what the sound was known as. I just wanted more of it. I wanted A LOT MORE.

I returned to Newbury Comics a few days later and got myself a copy of Collection I. I popped this CD into my “car stereo” and I instantly fell ghouls over ghosts in love with songs like “She”, “Bullet”, “Horror Business”, “Where Eagle’s Dare”, “Ghouls Night Out”, “Astro Zombies” and, of course, “I Turned into a Martian”.

The metamorphosis from Matt to Misfit was in full effect. All I needed now was a Misfits T-shirt to officially pledge my allegiance to the Misfit Fiend Club.

Back to Newbury Comics I went and purchased a classic black Misfits T-shirt with the signature white “Crimson Ghost” logo on it. Damn, that Crimson Ghost logo was so badass. I may go out on a limb and say 65% of why I liked the Misfits was because of that one damn logo. So simple. So cool-looking. Talk about branding, man. Posers buy merch with that logo on it all the time and they don’t even know who the fregging Misfits even are. I wonder how much money that one simple logo has made for the Misfits over the years. I bet it’s something insane.

This is a photo of a photo of me in my Crimson Ghost T-shirt. The logo is based on a character from a 1940s crime film The Crimson Ghost. P.S. I no longer have an afro.

Anyway, the post-prom party was a hit, high school ended and the summer of 2000 began. I had two jobs, one at CVS Pharmacy and one at Stop & Shop supermarket, so I had, like, a billion dollars of disposable income to spend on anything and everything Misfits. I figured, hmmm, why not get another Misfits CD? Yes, another trip to Newbury Comics was clearly in order.

Back to the CD store I went, rummaged through the bins and found myself a super-sick looking Misfits album called “Famous Monsters”. The album title sounded horrid (in a good way), so I purchased it, popped it into my car stereo and…

“What the f*** is this shit?”

It did not sound like the Misfits…at least, not quite. I grabbed the CD case from off the passenger seat and double-checked the cover art. Keeping one eye on the road to the best of my ability, I did a double-take when I saw the Misfits front man wasn’t…Glenn Danzig. It was somebody else! An imposter!

I thought I had gotten fleeced. Big-time.

When I got home, I took the CD insert out of the case and saw that Danzig was nowhere to be seen and in his place was a dude named “Michale Graves”. What I would later learn was that Danzig left the Misfits quite some time ago and he had been replaced with a new front man (Graves). I did not like this. I did not like this one bit.

A few weeks went by and I refused to listen to the Famous Monsters album. Nope, I was a Danzig guy. I wanted nothing to do with Graves. No way.

But the album kept calling my name. Not literally, of course (I wasn’t going schizo), but what I mean is that I would browse through my bookshelf full of CDs and my eyes were always tantalized by the purple, green and yellow colors of the Famous Monsters cover art. There was a seductive vibe about it. And then there was a (non-schizo) voice in my head that said, “Give it a try, Matt. Come on, Matt, give it a try, YOU FIEND!”

Eventually, I caved and I popped Famous Monsters into my new (but used) Aiwa Discman that a friend had recently sold to me. The instrumental intro-song “Kong at the Gates” played and then went right into a song called “Forbidden Zone”. Hmmm…now that I was a little more open-minded about this whole no-Danzig thing, the song sounded better than it did when I first heard it. Maybe this shit was better than I thought.

As time went by, the appreciation of Famous Monsters spread throughout me like an infection from a zombie bite. “Forbidden Zone” became a favorite of mine, but so didn’t “Lost in Space”, “Dust to Dust”, “Saturday Night”, “Hunting Humans”, “Helena” and especially “Pumpkin Head” and, oh my lord, I can’t forget “Descending Angel”—sooo good, my fiends.

Now, what I’m about to say may be controversial, but I think it’s possible that, over time, I grew to like Michale-Graves-era Misfits over Glenn-Danzig-era Misfits. Eeeeeeeeek. I don’t know. It may be a close tie, but sometimes I find myself leaning more towards Michale Graves. Sorry, fiends. But I have to be honest here. Eeeeeeeek.

What I do know is that, for most of the summer of 2000, I was pretty much blasting Famous Monsters in my car at a very high volume, mostly while driving to and from Stop & Shop and/or hanging out with fiends…I mean, friends. I was full-blown Misfit at this point and my friends were, at the same time, becoming full-blown Misfit as well.

One of these fiends was a friend named Jesse. He and a guy he worked with in the kitchen of a restaurant loved the Misfits. They were interested in starting a Misfits cover band. They wanted to know if I was interested as well.

I was.

Plan 9—a Misfits cover band—was officially formed in the middle of the summer. Plan 9, if you don’t know, was the name of the Misfits’ record label, which they had named after the classic Ed Wood movie Plan 9 from Outer Space. The movie is known as the “best worst movie” of all time. If you haven’t seen Plan 9, you should. It’s very entertaining. (As I write this, you can watch Plan 9 on Amazon Prime, complete with hilarious commentary from the same guys who brought you Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

Our first rehearsal was really a loose jam session at Jay’s house in Norton, MA. He had a large shed separate from his house that housed all his musical equipment, including a really siiiick set of drums that were waaaaaay better than my own. This was nice because I didn’t have to lug my set of drums (cool kids call it a ‘kit’ but I’ve always called it a ‘set’) back and forth when we practiced.

Since we were such big Misfits fans already, we hardly even needed to learn any songs; we basically already knew them by heart (at least, I did). I’m not sure about this so I wouldn’t want it written on my tombstone, but I think the first song we ever played together was either a song called “Some Kinda Hate” or “Hybrid Moments”. These are two…well, beautiful songs, the kind that you would want to play during a romantic evening with your girlfriend while parked on a hill overlooking American suburbia. Jay nailed the vocals. If Danzig and Michale Graves ever coupled and had a son, Jay would be that son. That’s how good his voice was.

The stars had aligned.

Plan 9 practiced for the rest of the summer and we played pretty much everything, both Danzig-era Misfits and Michale-Graves-era Misfits. Notable songs I remember playing were “Hatebreeders”, “One Last Caress”, “American Psycho” (from the not-yet-mentioned Michale-Graves-era album American Psycho), “Static Age”, “Hunting Humans”, “Astro Zombies”, “Where Eagles Dare”, “I Turned into a Martian” and so many more.

By the time September came around, we were eager to lay some of these songs down on tracks. Now, this was right before the time that Pro Tools and easy, DIY digital music production became prevalent. We also didn’t have a 4-track, nor did we know how to use one anyway. We decided, instead, to go to a “professional” studio and pay a couple hundred bucks to record like pros.

The studio was in Mansfield and was run by a handful of twenty-something-year-olds. They all had pitched in their life savings to build the place and we were their very first clients. We recorded on a Thursday night, I believe, and I only remember this because I know I had an 8:30am class the next morning in Boston (at BU) where I felt like I had literally become an Astro Zombie, lol haha (see what I did there?). The recording engineers were very excited about having their first band in studio and they drank many beers throughout the night, almost like they wanted to be all sex, drugs and rock & roll, but it turns out maybe they would’ve done a better job if they hadn’t done this. Not that they did a terrible job. But, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The engineers had us record separately. I believe Jay and Jesse laid down their bass and guitar tracks first, then I wore headphones and recorded my drums. Or maybe Jesse and I played together but in separate rooms? Don’t remember. What I do, remember, however, is that, at the end of recording “I Turned into a Martian”, I thought I screwed up and I was so pissed at myself because I’d been flawless up until that point. I screamed out of frustration but what I didn’t realize at the time is that the scream actually sounded like how one would scream if they were, indeed, turning into a Martian. So we kept the scream in. As for me screwing up? It was all in my head, apparently. Turns out I didn’t really screw up at all, at least nothing noticeable, so what I thought was a screw-up ended up creating a happy accident in the form of me screaming like a man turning into a Martian.

Overall, the recording went well and the end product was a Plan 9 EP with four professionally-recorded tracks: “Astro Zombies”, “I Turned into a Martian”, “Kong at the Gates/Forbidden Zone” and “Hunting Humans” (ok, that’s five tracks but “Kong” doesn’t really count as a whole song). Like I said before, the engineers did a good job, but on the last couple of tracks there are some weird snaps and crackles—worse than what you would hear in a bowl of Rice Krispies—and they may not have been there had those rambunctious engineers not been drinking all their beers.

Here is the full Plan 9 EP, if you’d like to hear:

Needless to say, we, the members of Plan 9, were excited to finally have an EP under our belt. Yep, life was going really good for the band by the time October rolled around…but things got even better when word on the street was that the Misfits would be playing a Halloween show in Worcester at a popular music venue called the Palladium. Me and the members of Plan 9 were very excited to hear this. Not only did we want to see our favorite band live, but we also thought this show would be a good opportunity to boost band morale or perhaps it would be a good “team building” event, though that sounds like corporate-office mumbo-jumbo, so forget I ever said it.

It was October 21, 2000. Jay, Jesse, myself and also our friend Tim piled into Jesse’s Dodge Shadow and drove to the Worcester Palladium. The band GWAR was opening for the Misfits and Jay saw GWAR’s drummer (sans costume) outside the Palladium before the show. The drummer acted all normal and like a human being, not like a mutant warrior from outer space. We also saw the singer from the band Tree and he was absolutely shit-faced off his gourd. I think I even saw Misfits bassist Jerry Only sitting on a curb in the shadows, but it’s possible my memory is just making that up. I think I have to put it on the record that I didn’t see Jerry outside the Palladium.

We entered the venue and all we could see was devil locks…everywhere. Leather jackets. Crimson Ghost shirts. People had white face paint and/or dark makeup around the eyes (a la Jerry Only). It was a bit spooky but insanely awesome at the same time. I felt very at home with all these fiends from all over Massachusetts and probably many of the surrounding states as well.

At the time, I wasn’t familiar with GWAR at all, but, let me tell you, my fiends, that was one performance I’ll never forget. They were absolutely incredible. Their music was good, but it was their onstage theatrics that made them so next-level. Each band member wore foamy space mutant costumes, sprayed hoses of fake blood into the crowd and had a dominatrix-like mutant named Slymenstra Hymen come out onstage wearing a metal thong and she swung chains around and/or danced with sticks of fire during one of GWAR’S more well-known songs “Sick of You”. At one point they even had two life-sized puppets of George W. Bush and Al Gore (this was right before the 2000 election) come out onstage and battle each other with swords, cut off each other’s arms and powerful hoses of blood would spray out of the wounds with pressure so strong it probably sprayed about 30 feet into the crowd.

I had never quite seen anything like it.

GWAR ended their set after 40-60 minutes and then there was 30 minutes of a build-up waiting for the Misfits. About every ten minutes, Jerry Only would appear in a little balcony window above the stage, make a ghoulish pose and then run away. The crowd would go wild whenever this happened. Including myself. I screamed in Beatlemania fashion.

Soon, the house lights went out, very large custom-made amplifiers appeared onstage that had big white Crimson Ghosts on the cabinets, fog floated up from the floor and a silhouette of a ghoul walked onto the stage. Wait, not just any ghoul…a spotlight came on and revealed that it was the Crimson Ghost! Yes, a man dressed as the Crimson Ghost—with makeup and all—menacingly walked onstage, wearing a hood on his head and he carried a lantern in his hand. The crowd went ballistic when they saw him.

The presence of the Crimson Ghost officially conjured the Misfits from the dead and, soon, the silhouettes of the band members appeared behind their respective instruments. Dr. Chud, the drummer, sat behind his enormous drum set that had spikes growing out of the drums. He slammed his drumsticks into his gargantuan Floor Toms...BOOM…BOOM-BOOM…BOOM…BOOM-BOOM. It was the beginning of “Kong at the Gates”, which the band played in its entirety all while the crowd screamed like banshees. Then, from Kong, they went right into “Forbidden Zone”, at which point Michale Graves came stumbling onto the stage, partially because he was likely drunk (he had a bit of an alcohol issue) but also to create the illusion that he had just been summoned from his grave. He had make-up on his face that made him look like a full-blown skeleton.

From “Forbidden Zone”, they went right into “Witch Hunt”, “Lost in Space”, “Crawling Eye”, “Dig Up her Bones”…

As he wailed on his warlock-looking bass guitar, Jerry Only’s devil-lock hung down to about his lips area. He was friggin’ jacked, too, almost like he was a wrestler in the WWF. Guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein’s devil-lock hung down even further than Jerry’s, probably down to the lower neck area. He, too, was jacked…SUPER jacked, not to mention tall…SUPER tall. In fact, Doyle was so enormous he looked like he was literally a different species of human being altogether, like from some sort of Land of the Giants. He slapped the crap out of his guitar, not in a Flea kind of way, but in a monstrous kind of way, almost like he was punching it from the top down.

Now, during GWAR, I had kind of hung back from the crowd, because I didn’t know GWAR that well, but also (admittedly) I didn’t want to get fake blood sprayed onto my cherished Misfits T-shirt. However, as soon as the Misfits took the stage, I went insane, ran right up to the edge of (but not into) the pit and practically screamed the lyrics at Michale Graves. I was a fiend out of control. I think I just about lost my voice during “Scream”.

Overall, that Misfits show at the Worcester Palladium was legendary and, when you combine it with GWAR’S Broadway musical from hell or whatever you’d call what they did on stage, you basically had one of the most memorable concert experiences of a lifetime. That show was definitely in my top-three concert experiences of all time, mixed in somewhere with Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine and maybe Stone Temple Pilots or Guns N’ Roses.

Newly energized from seeing the Misfits—our heroes—live, in their undead flesh, Plan 9 was determined to become the biggest Misfits cover band in the world.

This didn’t happen.

We, did, however, play a couple gigs, both of which took place at Wheaton College in Norton. Why Wheaton? Honestly, I’m not sure. I believe Jay had some connections there. We thought it would be a good opportunity to test out our shit.

The first gig was at a pub on campus called The Loft. We opened for a band from Watertown called Dr. Frog. Ah, wait, that’s why we played Wheaton—because Jay knew the lead singer of Dr. Frog and many members of that band either had gone to or still went to Wheaton. Mystery solved. Anyway, yes, we were psyched about our first gig, we put on Misfits makeup and, if my memory serves me well, we played one hell of a show. The only problem was that nobody was there to see us. Ok, maybe a couple friends were there, but what I remember is looking out to the “crowd”, seeing some preppy-looking college students eating burgers and fries, maybe sipping on a beer if they were old enough, and overall looking annoyed by our presence.

Lack of an audience notwithstanding, I do think we played very well and I still, to this day, kick myself because I failed to videotape our performance. I was a film major, after all, and I practically videotaped everything. How could I not have videotaped it! So stupid! In fact, I had my friggin’ video camera with me at the time. I know this because I ended up taping Dr. Frog after us. Ah, so dumb! I’m not worthy of existence!

Fortunately, I remembered my camera for our second (and last) gig. This show took place in Wheaton’s dining hall during regular dining hall hours. I’m not sure how this all happened but we somehow ended up opening for Wheaton’s jazz band. So, picture a brightly-lit dining hall. Students are there eating their dinner, some in groups, others alone. And then you got Plan 9 – a Misfits cover band – blasting power-chord-fueled tunes on a one-foot drum riser, and when I say blast, I mean we played at an energy of fucking 11 (to make a Spinal Tap reference). We held absolutely nothing back. With the exception of a couple fiends we invited, there was absolutely nobody there to see us and nobody who wanted us there, either.

We did, however, win us at least ONE new fan. I remember, after the performance, there was this dude five-o-clock-shadowing me while I packed up the drums. The jazz band was already playing at this point and this dude kept telling me that he didn’t want to hear “this pahn music,” referring to the jazz, which did kind of sound like porn music. “I wanna hear some Staiiiiiiiiiind,” he said, meaning the band Staind, who was popular at the time. I hurried to pack up the drums, wished this guy luck getting his Staind fix and never saw him again.

But, yes, I did fortunately bring along my video camera to that gig and, with the help of my friend Tim who manned the cam, I did capture much of our performance, though I don’t think it did Plan 9 justice. For one, the audio of the recording was distorted and for two, Jay had laryngitis that evening. I don’t think that performance was quite as good as our first gig or perhaps our first gig was the same or even worse and it was better that it wasn’t videotaped—who knows.

Here is us closing with “One Last Caress”.

By the time the summer of 2001 came about, Plan 9 had officially fizzled out, not for any concrete reason, but we all simply moved on to other things. As for me, I joined a female-fronted punk band called Death in Arms and we played all originals, no covers. My days being in a Misfits cover band were in the past…

But my days being a fiend were FAR from over.

As the years went by, I listened to the Misfits with diabolical dedication—mainly around Halloween—but also during other parts of the year when I was in the mood for doom and horror, which was often. I also procured myself a full-wardrobe’s-worth of Misfits attire: T-shirts, sweatshirts, even baseball jerseys. Furthermore, I bought a slew of Misfits patches and sewed them onto hoodies and/or blue-collar-like mechanics’ shirts that I bought cheaply at either Walmart or Savers. I wore one patch in particular—my Misfits “fiend club” patch—wherever I went and there is photographic evidence to support this claim (see below). I considered this shirt my party shirt. If you saw me with this shirt on, then—lookout—you know I was down to party.

If this guy’s not ready to party, who is?

In 2004, I made a fun short movie with my friends called Wendel’s Revenge and basically the whole soundtrack, with some exceptions, is Misfits music, mainly music I found on “Cuts from the Crypt,” which was an album the Misfits released in 2001. It was a compilation of tunes from 1996-2001 that had, I guess, been cut from previous albums, which I find to be crazy because they’re excellent songs. In addition to “Fiend without a Face” and “Dr. Phibes Rises Again” (the two songs I used in Wendels’ Revenge, despite egregious copyright infringement), you’ll find such greats as “I Wanna be a New York Ranger”, “1,000,000 Years B.C.” and a cover of “Monster Mash”, not to mention demo versions of “Scream” and “Dead Kings Rise”.

Flash forward all the way to 2010. It had been nearly a decade since I metamorphosized into a Misfit. Word on the street was that the Misfits were coming to town again and they’d be playing at Patriot Place’s new music venue Showcase Live that was adjacent to Gillette Stadium (where the Patriots play). This was exciting news, but there was a slight catch because the Misfits didn’t quite exist anymore. The only original Misfit who remained in the band at this point was Jerry Only, so it would basically only be Only. Only be Only? Sounds like an Abbott and Costello bit hahahaha. But what I mean is that it would only be the Jerry Only show. Nevertheless, it was still worth checking it out. Tickets were a humble 30 bucks. Showcase Live was right down the road, 7-10 minutes away. It was a no-brainer.

So me, my friend Matt and my other friend Matt got a 12-pack of Natty Ice, guzzled them quickly in the basement of Matt #2’s house, tied on a nice, menacing buzz and then went to see the Misfits. It had been about 12 years since I had last seen them and I was very excited about seeing them rise from the dead again.

This time around was a slightly different experience, mainly because I was buzzed, if not drunk, on the Natty Ice. I had much more liquid courage than the last time and had no problem getting right up in the pit, almost to the stage, and screaming at Jerry the whole time as he played with Dez Cadena from Black Flag and the drummer, who was supposedly Robo from Black Flag but he actually turned out to be a Robo lookalike. His name was Eric "Chupacabra" Arce who had previously been in Murphy’s Law.

Jerry sang many of the older, Danzig-era tunes for this show, probably since Michale Graves was gonzo. Songs like “Vampira”, “London Dungeon”, “Die! Die! My Darling!”, “Devil Lock” and maybe even “Skulls” come to mind. I also remember that they played the songs very fast, which was fine with me, but the songs were a LOT thrashier than the original album versions, let me tells ya. I guess Jerry liked to play them hard and fast. Danzig probably liked the opposite. In fact, now that I think of it, I think that was one of the reasons why Danzig left the band. Or maybe Danzig was the one who wanted to play harder and faster. I can’t remember.

Anyway, I was having a great time in the crowd and, at some point, I got kicked or punched in the face by some dude who was moshing a little too hard (he eventually got kicked out by the bouncer). It didn’t hurt at the time, but the next day I woke up and realized I had a black eye. No biggie. At least I didn’t have no brain damage or nothin’ and I figured the shiner was a sign I rocked as hard as I possibly could. Only a true Misfit fiend would rock that hard and I considered myself a true Misfit fiend, so there you go.

After the show, I saw the aforementioned drummer—Eric "Chupacabra" Arce—sitting at the bar, so I went up to him and told him how much I enjoyed the performance. “Oh, I saw you out there,” he said to me, meaning he had noticed me in the crowd while he was wailing on the drums. He must have noticed I was a true fiend who knew all the lyrics and was screaming them in the center of the pit. Then I had my picture taken with him and I asked if I could consider him a friend and he said not friend, but a fiend. Ok, that latter part never happened but I did get a picture with him.

Here is me with the drummer:

From the bar, I joined the end of a line in the Showcase Live lobby where Jerry Only was doing a meet and greet. Normally, I would have been nervous about this kind of thing, but the Natty Ice was still running hard through my veins, so I went up to Mr. Only acting like we were old buds from back in the day. I said, “Jeeeeeerrrrrrry” all buddy-like and then I put my arm around his shoulders, we both got into an undead-like pose and my friend took a picture of the two of us. Then, Jerry signed my ticket and said in a gravely voice, full of menacing horror, “Happy Halloweeeeeeeen”. To this day, I wonder if that’s how he talks all the time or if he was still kind of in character.

Here is me with Jerry:

Here is my signed ticket:

What a fun show, though, especially seeing that I got to meet Jerry afterwards; that was certainly a highlight of my life. The show, of course, would have been even better with more original Misfits members, but it was still very fun.

In 2016, the Misfits resolved their differences and both Doyle and (to everybody’s shock) Danzig rejoined the band for two shows at Riot Fest in Chicago. Since then, they’ve been playing sporadic shows here and there, mostly in Las Vegas, but also one in California and even, just recently (October 2019), at Madison Square Garden in NYC. I haven’t been blessed to see “The Original Misfits” (what they call themselves now), but maybe someday I will. There’s still time. Until then, I will keep listening to Misfits music until my skull explodes, I will proudly wear my Crimson Ghost shirts in public so everybody knows I’m a fiend, I will brag to everybody that I was once in a Misfits cover band, I will die a happy man knowing I saw the Misfits live TWICE, and most importantly, I will never forget that fateful day when I first heard “Halloween”, fell under a Misfits spell and, before I knew it, came to and realized, oh my God…

I TURNED INTO A MISFIT!

…

MATT BURNS is the author of Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair With Guns N’ Roses and My Raging Case of Beastie Fever (now available on Amazon). He’s also the author of many other books, including his memoir Garage Movie: My Adventures Making Weird Films and his “screen novel” WEIRD MONSTER. Find more of his books at his Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/mattburns. 

The Rise of the Moral Supremacists

Perhaps one of the greatest existential threats to America right now (and perhaps the world) is a phenomenon that is rarely discussed. I don’t speak of white supremacy, which has been a hot topic in the media recently; rather, I speak of moral supremacy. Moral supremacists are people—in many cases, politicians—who talk down to, guilt and shame those who possess thoughts and opinions that they do not agree with. They label these thoughts and opinions as “immoral”. Moral supremacists believe they are or at least pose as somebody who has somehow achieved 100-percent moral clarity. They do this because a 100-percent morally conscious person can never be questioned or proven to be wrong. The problem, however, is that no human being can ever reach a point where they are 100-percent certain of what is and isn’t morally correct. They can only think they are morally correct, not actually know for sure. In fact, the only being who is 100-percent morally conscious is, well…God. So the ultimate goal of the moral supremacist is, essentially, to fool others into thinking they are God. If they get you to believe they're God, then they can convince you that your morality depends on voting them into office. You must vote for them to save your soul.

...

One of the most prominent moral supremacists out there right now is Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker. He uses the word "moral" incessantly -- in Tweets, speeches and interviews. One recent example is a comment he made after the recent El Paso mass shooting:

"I think, at the end of the day, especially because this was a white supremacist manifesto, that I want to say with more moral clarity that Donald Trump is responsible for this. He is responsible because he is stoking fears and hatred and bigotry." -- Cory Booker speaking on CNN's State of the Union

Also, this was a Tweet he posted from just three hours ago (as I write this). Notice how he also says "we must do better". This is his way of establishing his moral supremacy over us:

South Station Serendipity

Coincidence? Serendipity? Synchronicity? Evidence that the spirit of the late MCA is around me?

I was inside South Station today and I sat at one of those newish tall tables with the bar-like stools that are supposed to be all sophisticated and on-the-move and young-professional-like (let's switch back to the normal, less pretentious tables, please). I was looking at my phone or whatever when I heard a "Nice patch." I looked up towards the voice. The young man sitting across from me at the table saw the Beastie Boys patch on my bag. Then he showed me the book he was reading: BEASTIE BOYS BOOK, the new Beasties memoir that came out about a few months ago.

"I literally just finished it," he said. 

Yes, he finished it, looked up and saw my Beasties patch across from him. He couldn't believe his eyes. What a crazy coincidence!

I told him that I, too, had recently read the book and we discussed it for a few minutes (we especially discussed the chapter that had the Bob Dylan story; if you've read the book, you know what I'm talking about). Then I said, "You know, I wrote my own book about the Beastie Boys. Wild, right? It's called BEASTIE FEVER. You can find it on Amazon for a buck." He said he would check it out and then he left to catch a train.

What are the odds? As soon as this guy finishes the 600-page BEASTIE BOYS BOOK he looks up and sees me sitting across from him, one of the biggest Beasties fans on the planet (some people call me the unofficial fourth Beastie and by 'some people' I mostly refer to myself and, when I say 'mostly', I mean 'only'). Yes, me: the dude who wrote BEASTIE FEVER, for cry eye!

Clearly the spirit of MCA had somehow brought us together and created the insane "coincidence". No, you haters out there say it's wishful thinking but this is fact, I tells ya. I was guided to that young man today. I tapped into a magical Beastie "Force"* on some alternate level of consciousness and that's how I had my what-I'll-now-refer-to-as South Station serendipity.

* MCA died on May 4th. You know, "May the Fourth be with you". Doesn't it all make perfect sense now? Of course it does.

You can find my BEASTIE FEVER book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXZ8SVY

And here's the BEASTIE FEVER trailer:

VHS Time Capsule

VHS. The video medium that time forgot. Well, it's not exactly forgotten. I mean, if I were to bring up VHS in a conversation, people would know what I was talking about. So it's not completely forgotten but it sounds more dramatic saying "time forgot it" even though it's not exactly true. Know what, let's just start this blog over again, ok?

VHS. The video medium that time didn't quite forget because most people still remember it and some people may even have dusty VCRs in their attics or garages.

There. That's better.

Remember how friggin' fun VHS was? You could record programs off your television and make your own VHS tapes filled with your favorite shows, cartoons and MTV music videos, kind of like making a mix tape only with TV shows. Then you could put stickers on these tapes, label them in any way you wanted, with colorful hearts or menacing skulls. Then there were other stickers that had all sorts of boxes that said LP, SP, Mono, Stereo, and you would check all the boxes even though you had no idea what any of them meant. So much fun! 

If you were skilled enough, you could press pause during commercials and you would end up with a full two hours of your favorite shows, commercial-free. 

If you were even more skilled, you could program your VCR to start taping at certain hours of the day, when you were at school or when you were sleeping or when you had to do homework.

And, if you were the most skilled VCR operator in the world, you could program your VCR to tape shows that were on a different channel from the one you were currently watching. This meant you could watch Alf on NBC and tape You Can't Do That on Television on Nickelodeon. What a fantastic piece of technology!

It should be noted that I personally never graduated to the upper skill levels of VCR operation. I could pause during the commercials just fine, no problem there. But as far as programing the VCR to start taping at different times of the day or taping on a different channel from what I was watching? Never happened. I tried but I failed. It never worked. I mean, I was young during the VCR era so give me a friggin' break.

In fact, now that I look back on it, I don't think I was ever really successful in taping anything that required much skill. I was lucky to get an episode of Saved By the Bell on half-inch (half-inch is your in-the-know term for VHS tape). As far as a mix tape or, to use a more sophisticated term, a collection went? I don't think I ever successfully created a self-made VHS collection of shows, unless maybe one year when there was a Mr. Bean marathon on PBS but that doesn't really count since it was a marathon all on one channel. All I had to do was pop a tape in, press record and then I just didn't touch the freggen VCR for the next two hours.

My brother, however, was a much more skilled VCR operator than I was (he was five years older than me) and, exactly 30 years ago, in the special year of 1988, he created the ultimate VCR mix tape...collection...whatever you would like to call it. It was a Christmas-special collection featuring all the best XMAS specials you could possibly find on television. Each special was from a different channel, at different times, on different nights...in other words, the creation of this tape wasn't a simple matter of just popping a tape into the deck and pressing record. This required skill and he possessed this skill.

Actual VHS from 1988

The VHS had all the XMAS-special greats. We're talking The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. We're talking Frosty the Snowman. How about a little Mickey's Christmas Carol? Yep. It was on there. Or how about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? Of course that was there. But you're probably saying right now that there's no way A Very Brady Christmas was on there, right? Wrong. It was. The two-hour 1988 Brady Bunch reunion special was there in all its glory. 

The VHS even had the most classic of all classic XMAS specials. Obviously I'm referring to none other than A Merry Mirthworm Christmas.

Wait, what?

Yes, A Merry Mirthworm Christmas. It's a little known XMAS special about a clumsy Earthworm named Burt who has just moved to the town of Wormingham and he's having difficulty making friends. He tries to make friends at the Town Hall where he helps decorate for the upcoming Wormingham Christmas party but he knocks over a table of ornaments and everything's broken. The town chairworm Wormaline Wiggler tells him to leave and get lost. Burt's heart is broken because he has no friends but (spoiler alert) he's eventually invited back in time for the party and all is well for Burt. Merry Christmas.

No? Not ringing a bell? Well, you're missing out if you haven't seen that one.

The full Merry Mirthworm Christmas Special

Now, you would think my brother would've cut the commercials on this XMAS-special VHS tape since he was so skilled in the ways of the VCR. Nope. The commercials were left in, clearly because he knew that this tape wouldn't just be a collection of XMAS-specials but would actually function as a time capsule, capturing the late-1980s in its rawest form. What foresight.

To heck with history books. The best way to study a certain time period is by watching a TV-recorded VHS tape from the year you want to study. The recorded shows and cartoons and music videos say a lot about the era but it's the COMMERCIAL BREAKS that say the most about the time. The COMMERCIALS capture reality in its purest form. 

So Christmas 1988. What was happening?

Well, McDonalds still used Ronald McDonald as its commercial mascot (he's rarely used today because focus groups determined that McDonalds' key demographic had "coulrophobia", a fear of clowns). McDonalds also had a licensing deal with Disney for its new movie Oliver and Company.





Cheese had a commercial all its own. No specific brand. Just cheese. Paid for by the American dairy farmers. It was part of the "Don't forget the cheese" campaign.




A new hot TV show called TV101 was all the buzz. This show had several recognizable faces, including a young Matt LeBlanc (Joey from Friends).





Campbell's soup was heavily marketed to children.





The Swedish Chef had a new cereal called "Croonchy Stars".





The Halls of Medicine was the best place to go to cure your pesky cough.




The only cool way to brush your teeth was by using new Colgate Junior Superstar Toothpaste.




"Northwest Airlines" was the first commercial airline to prohibit smoking on all flights. Also, Northwest Airlines existed.




Pizza Hut was a favorite restaurant for kids and had a licensing deal with Universal Pictures for their new hot animated movie Land Before Time.




Huggies diapers kept your babies the driest.




Dinosaurs were big in the late-80s and Playskool dinosaurs were what all the kids wanted.




Playskool was cool if you were, like, a Toddler, but all the older kids wanted toys made by Tyco. Like these Radio control Turbo Trucks.

Lego's new mascot Zak the Lego Maniac gave the Lego brand more of a badass edge.

The new "Footnotes" toy capitalized on the success of Big, the hit movie of the previous summer.

Kids liked their pizza pie; they also liked their macaroni. But what they really wanted was their first Sony...Walkman and stereo, that is.

Dino-Riders was both a hit animated TV series AND a hit toy brand. By the way, these were the days when the toy commercials took place on the sickest-looking sets (i.e. miniature jungle or desert models etc.) that were definitely NOT included with the toys.

The New England Telephone company made it easy to call Dad on a landline, even if he didn't approve of your boyfriend Jeff.

Thanks to New England Telephone, you could also call a 900 number and get your horoscope read to you by self-proclaimed psychic Jeane Dixon. All it cost was 95 cents a minute.




Pat Petersen (best known from Knot's Landing) was doing anti-drinking PSA's for CBS. Be smart. Don't start.

There was still much confusion surrounding the relatively new Aids virus.

Sprite was the favorite soda of snowmen.




And the "Win by a Nose" board game was released but apparently not very popular because it's practically erased from existence. No commercial for it can be found on YouTube. Sorry.

RIP Win by a Nose Game

Of course, I could go on and on but I think you get a pretty good idea of what was happening in 1988 by now.

Unfortunately, with the VHS medium now obsolete, we will never have accurate time capsules ever again unless we make the conscious effort to make time capsules but nobody ever does and, even if they do, they won't be as accurate. Self-made VHS tapes were unintentional time capsules and were, thus, a much more accurate record of a time period than an intentional time capsule where people carefully pick and choose what they include, therefore manipulating the history of the time in a way that they desire. 

Who knew that Video Cassette Recorders (VCRs) would become the ultimate recorders of history? DVDs can't do this kind of thing. Nor can Blu-rays. Or DVRs on our cable boxes. YouTube is nice to look up random commercials and all sorts of nonsense but there is no context to what you're looking at. It's just a big, cluttered virtual dimension filled with every video from every time period, all at once. What a mess. 

With a VHS tape, you literally captured a moment in time and froze it forever...or at least until the tape withered away into snow. This is why I propose that a movement should be started to keep the VHS medium alive. Once we respect the fact that it serves as the ultimate time capsule, we will understand that it's imperative for the medium to live on forever.

As for me, I don't plan on making much of an effort to start this "VHS awareness" movement. But I think somebody else should get on this immediately.

...

MATT BURNS is the author of several eBooks on Amazon, including such nostalgic greats as I USED TO BE A GAMER: THE 8-BIT NINTENDO YEARS and I DREAM OF DREAM MACHINE. Also, his new "screen novel" WEIRD MONSTER is a fun love letter to the 1980s VHS era. Find more of his books at his Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/mattburns.