Dungeons and Dragons (and Me): Part Two

Years before game companies went bonkers  got greedy and released new game editions at the drop of a hat and with the flimsiest of justifications, games like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D for short) chugged along nicely for years with few changes. New ideas and variants were brought in via Dragon Magazine, TSR's monthly role-playing game magazine, but other than that, things remained fairly consistent and unchanging.

Historical Note: One of THE coolest things ever to come out of Dragon was issue #39's article "Good Hits, Bad Misses", a set of tables for determining critical hits and fumbles. Strictly a non-official set of rules, it  nonetheless brought an element of sheer awesomeness, insane destruction, and unbridled hilarity heretofore unimagined, to the game. It also let one of our players kill a manticore by throwing a rock at it.

I Gamed Too!
Although DMing was far and away my favorite activity in D&D, I did get the urge to play my own characters every now and then. At Origins IV I had met this fellow gamer who lived out in the Worcester area, named Joe, who happened to be a DM as well. On the days when I wasn't running, I'd play in his campaign.

Joe is the classic example of what you get when you put a functionally insane person behind the DM screen. That's not to say that he didn't have his good and sometimes even awesome moments, but Joe was really "out there", and a full-fledged "Monty Haul" DM. Yes, I suppose to some extent I was too, but he was in a class (or padded cell) by himself.

I couldn't find a picture of Crazy Joe, so instead here's
Weird Al, posing with my two oldest kids, circa 1999.

He was also one of those DMs who would throw extra stuff at you if you were doing too well. Or if your character made a peep in the dungeon corridors it invariably would bring wandering monsters down on you. Accidentally say "Orcus" just once, and POOF! there would be Orcus, materializing in front of you, with an honor guard of six Balrogs.

My primary character was Noro, the elven tavern boy I described in Part One, now a few years older and striking out on his own. He's elven Chaotic Good Fighter/Magic User. Ah, good times.

Fortunately, for sanity's sake, Joe wasn't the only DM I had access to. A few of my friends also tried their hands at DMing, and I opened the Hawkhaven campaign up into a shared world sort of deal.

And so things went, with us gaming at least once a week, still with a large group, and still having a ton of crazy fun. Life was good, and things were stable.

The Insane Opposition
One thing that was most emphatically NOT stable was the opposition to the game by concerned parents and church groups. Ignorance breeds fear, and fear makes people act stupid. The game, a new and relatively unknown quantity, worried many people way more than it ever should have.

It didn't help that there was a case of a troubled young man named James Egbert III, who played D&D, and who engaged in several acts of self-harm that eventually culminated in him shooting himself in 1980. But before he did this, there was an incident where Egbert disappeared and it was theorized that he was acting out a live action D&D experience in the maze of steam tunnels under Michigan State University. This created a lot of bad press, to say the least.

Number one on the list of projects Tom Hanks would love
to forget ever existed. Yes, this includes "Bosom Buddies".

And it didn't help that a book and tv movie called "Mazes and Monsters" came out, starring a young Tom Hanks, and wow...it sucked AND made gaming look even worse. Two crimes for the price of one!

But certain ministries and so-called Christian groups didn't help matters either. There were "experts" who toured churches and youth groups and gave lectures on the evils of D&D (and rock music, etc.). One of these charlatans, in an attempt to show how evil D&D and TSR were, pulled passages from a gaming product called Arduin Grimoire, a most emphatically NON TSR publication whose content could be sometimes be charitably described as dicey. But this lecturer pulled the text from Arduin and misrepresented it as Dungeons and Dragons. After all, if you want people to hate and fear something, take something else that's far worse and not even a good representation of the overwhelming majority, and declare it a good example of the thing. Very honest, and very Christian.

Then there were the Godly, rational, fair-minded insane, conspiracy-loving, Pope-hating nutjobs at Chick Tracts, who were responsible for that classic tract, "Dark Dungeons". But then again, this was the same group that insisted the television show "Bewitched" was a tool to recruit people into being witches, Pagans, Satan worshippers, Democrats, I don't know...you get the idea. Let's not overlook the reality that "Bewitched" is about as effective a tool for recruiting new witches as "Hogans Heroes" is for encouraging people to become Nazis ("Don't be stupid, be a smarty; come and join the Nazi party!"- The Producers).

The whole anti-D&D thing would eventually affect me directly in the late 80's, and in the aftermath it would play a big part in pretty much destroying my desire to adhere to conservative Christianity from that point on (not Christianity as a whole; just the more hardcore, right-wing, stricter form). Let's just say it brought on some cataclysmic changes, but not because I dared play D&D, but rather because of how a non-incident was handled and how it left me devastated in its wake. But that's a long story for a different blog post, and I actually have to psych myself up to do it. Some whiskey may help too. The good stuff. And would it kill you to get some nachos going too?

The Name Game
On to happier topics! Yay! Since all of the players were neophytes to one degree or another, the naming conventions for characters was a mixed bag, to say the least. People didn't have much experience with nomenclature so they winged it best they could. Naturally, the fantasy genre was a rich goldmine of ideas.

For instance, we had a Strider, Samwise, Aragorn, Shasta, Galahad, Isildur, Galadriel, Luthien,

"You! Shall not! Rip off my name!"

Balinor, Rohan, Gollum, El Gallo, D'Artagnan, Hawkeye, Covenant, and Menion. Gain 500 XP if you can identify the sources of all these names.

Some went historical, like Bede, Gengis, Melchizedek, Zane Grey, and Dylan Thomas.

Others decided to take their first or last name and reverse it, yielding names like Lorac, Lemrac, Ellehcim, or Namllit.

Then there were the people who thought that their character names should reflect who they were, such as Sneeky the Thief, Revela the Bard, and Temptra the Paladin (wait...what!?!).

And let's not forget the people who thought they were being funny, with names like Pleighwood the Druid, or Yu Hengue the Fighter. We also had names like Wimp, Bogus, Snivel, Sneeze, Dart-Canyon, and Grimy Wormdung.

It got to the point that I had to institute something called the Dumb Name Syndrome. If in my opinion people weren't taking the game seriously enough, something that a stupid name was usually a dead giveaway for, I'd target that character and kill it ASAP. While this may sound a bit draconian (heheh), consider this: if you were putting together a touch football team and you had one person who just sort of stood there and did nothing, you'd probably ask them to sit down. If everyone's into the game and that person isn't, it ruins it for the rest of the players. You can't rely on them. Everyone else is getting into it and contributing, except for this one lump. In D&D, if everyone's in character and expecting all the other characters to cover their backs, then there's some bored person who's named his fighter Buttmunch and doesn't care enough to take things seriously within the context of the game, well, maybe it's time for Buttmunch to meet an ignominious end courtesy of a kobold poison trap.

At least people's character concepts were fairly sound. Well, except for one player who, in his never-ending bid to be different, came up with characters who necessitate creating a new adjective called "WTF-y".

For instance, since I allowed people's characters to worship God, he decided to create a Jewish paladin. And he couldn't adventure on the Sabbath. Since I hadn't created a fantasy world calendar yet, the day usually defaulted to the real day. Saturday. So, his character couldn't go into the dungeon, which made people scream "What's the point of this character!?!?!" at him. At least this prompted me to create a calendar.

"My next character will be a sentient bowl of hummus!"

So he replaced this non-character with a Ranger. A Ranger with amnesia. He had no idea who he was, or his alignment, or what languages he knew, or how to track, or use weapons, or anything. So basically, he was useless, which made people scream "What's the point of this character!?!?!" at him.

Eventually, he decided to put together a female thief who described as "a bald Grace Jones with a wooden foot".

Okay, so he was prone to creating flat-out weird and ultimately useless characters. But on the other hand, he also brought his own drinks and munchies to the game and didn't want to share, though he did help himself to the community munchies that other people brought.

Wait...what??!?

Other Games Butt In
Although we were tooling along nicely with AD&D, other games caught our attention. These other games offered new rules systems, different genres, new settings, and new challenges. We were introduced to Top Secret (modern day espionage), Traveller (far future SF space adventure), Twilight 2000 (World War III action in Central Europe), Paranoia ("Brazil" meets Kafka meets "1984" meets The Marx Brothers), and Call of Cthulhu (::twitch, twitch:: Ia, Shub-Niggurath! Fthagn! AIIEEEEE!).

But the biggest threat to our AD&D campaign was when we started a Star Trek: The Role-Playing Game campaign. We lost some hardcore D&Ders, gained some science fiction nuts and Trekkies, and ran a strong campaign for years.

It was a good thing we learned about all of these other games, though, because it prepared us for...

Conventional Thinking

We got directions to Milwaukee, a fist full of gas money,
and our dice bags. Let's roll.
Yours truly is second from the left.

Okay, remember the first part of this series, and the wargames conventions? Well, role-players have conventions too, but we were just not tuned into this. That changed fairly quickly. The first convention our players hit was called East Con, held at Glassboro State College in New Jersey.

But the big Kahuna of the gaming convention circuit was and still is Gen Con, which was held at the time in Wisconsin. I went to Gen Con 18 with a friend (we drove), and it became a fixture on our summer calendar. Hey, you pile four or five people in a car, take a 20-hour drive, end up gaming along the way there and back, it's all good!

And it was at Gen Con that we heard about the Role Playing Gamers Association (RPGA). Wow! We gamers actually had an association! We were organized! You paid your membership, got a nifty pin, a membership card, a subscription to their monthly zine "The Polyhedron", and you also got the chance to play and run RPGA sanctioned tournaments, and gain levels as a player! This was all mind-blowing stuff to us!

Here's the other cool thing about Gen Con in those days; it was very affordable. The prices weren't out of control, and yeah, if you could get a bunch of people together who could tolerate a long drive, the entire experience was very economical and a lot of fun. The FTE ratio (Fun To Expense) was very favorable.

D&D Helps My Writing Career
Dragon Magazine was always looking (and paying) for new material, and so in 1985 I decided to turn my talents in that direction and see what happened. I wrote the editor, Roger Moore (not the actor), and decided to take a different tack: I asked him what game topics he'd love to see covered but that people seemed to avoid writing about. His immediate reply: Top Secret. So I sent a pair of articles, he liked them, and published them. That opened the door to me being picked to write freelance for...TSR itself! WOOOO!

Here's some quick advice for people who want to become writers: Write what you know, take

Follow my writing advice and someday, you too can do
autograph sessions!

assignments no one else wants, and remember the almighty deadline and keep it holy. You're welcome.

So before I knew it, I was on the roster of TSR freelancers, working with Acquisitions Editor Bruce Heard, and I was getting an increasing amount of assignments. This worked out rather well for me timing-wise, because my then wife Ellen was pregnant with our first child, and the talk turned to who would stay at home. Full time care was prohibitively expensive. She was a Registered Nurse in a very good job at a prestigious Boston hospital. I was a low-level white-collar CMS hack at a desk job at Harvard Community Health Plan, and I always wanted to write. Well, I was writing now and earning money from it, so it was decided that I'd be the stay at home dad and become a full-time freelancer.

Announcing: AD&D Second Edition!
At long last, TSR announced that they were working on a new edition of AD&D and they wanted play-testers. Courtesy of my TSR connections, I immediately volunteered my group, and we hurriedly put away all other game systems and created a whole new batch of characters. But by this time, Hawkhaven was sadly over-worked, so instead, I picked up a boxed set, a pre-packaged TSR campaign setting called the Forgotten Realms and used that as the backdrop for the new, second edition characters rolled up, starting up fresh. We had 13 players by this time.

Those 13 players had characters who all started out in the town's militia. So, in order to give them cohesion, they were called the 13th Regiment. When the RPGA introduced the concept of registering gaming clubs, we joined up calling ourselves The Valiant 13th Regiment. The Valiant part came from the campaign ship in our Star Trek game, the USS Valiant, NCC-1718.

I also found out, years later, that though other New England based RPGA clubs thought that we were a formidable group with excellent players, we also had the reputation of being snobby, except for me. Well, then. Nice to know.

So back to the playtest. Eventually, it ended and AD&D Second Edition came out in 1989. None of our ideas were used (though we're not bitter), and we felt that, though it was a good version, it didn't take the changes far enough. This became the definitive version of D&D for the rest of the 1900's, then Third Edition came to play in 2000. During this edition's tenure, my players really enjoyed showing off the fact that their names were in the credits of the 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide.  Some of the guys even managed to parlay their new found gaming fame into success with the ladies.

Actually no. No they didn't.

Other Campaign Settings
The Forgotten Realms was just one of TSR's campaign settings. There was also Dragonlance, Greyhawk (THE original D&D setting), Mystara, Ravenloft (Gothic horror with vampires when they were still awesome, not whiny sparkling wimps or sex maniacs), and of course, Dark Sun.

Dark Sun was a desert world where magic had pretty much sucked most of the life of the planet away. Think Mad Max, minus the cars and firearms. Characters started off at fourth level, everyone had at least one psionic power, metal items were scarce, magic was hated, the gods were practically non-existent, and stats could exceed 18 (unheard of at the time!). It was also incredibly brutal and violent. We started a Dark Sun campaign and after a few sessions, I ended up doing a Total Party Kill (TPK) on the group courtesy of a random encounter. Rather than create new characters, we all looked at each other and said "No, let's not go back to Dark Sun...it's a silly place" (for best effect, read that quote as if you were a Knight of the Round Table).

So instead, we went back to the Forgotten Realms and kept playing, happy as clams, while I raised the kids and did freelancing for not only TSR, but other gaming companies as well. We were all unaware that the nineties were approaching. Well, that's to say, we knew the nineties were coming; I mean we could count and such, but it's more a case of what the 90's brought with them. Some of the stuff we just did not see coming.

Photo Credit: Tom Hanks, Crazy Guy

Dungeons And Dragons (and Me): Part One

Dungeons and Dragons turns 40 this month, and considering how prominent a part of my life it's been, I'd be remiss if I didn't create a post series about it. In fact, I recently came to the sobering conclusion that there have been two major forces in my life that have shaped who and what I am, and those are Christianity and D&D, in that order. Furthermore, it's amazing how much those two forces have come together in my life.

So sit back and enjoy my reminiscing of how this crazy game, in all of its iterations, helped make me who I am today. Call it my way of celebrating this amazing hobby.

Anyways, allons-y!

The Beginning

Welcome to historic Park Street Church,
where I learned about God, gaming,
zombies in shopping malls, and
sex parasites

When I was in high school, I attended a Christian youth fellowship at Park Street Church in beautiful downtown Boston. PSC is a conservative Congregationalist Evangelical church, and is one of the heavy hitters in the New England church scene. It's even a stop on the Freedom Trail, since it's been around since the War of 1812.

It was in this church's teen group that a staff member introduced me to Avalon Hill wargames. I always enjoyed board games and history, and this staffer, named Bob, thought this would be right up my alley. So, I was brought into this hobby by Midway, a game that recreated the historic carrier battle. As high school progressed, I learned how to play Luftwaffe, Third Reich, Jutland, and Wooden Ships/Iron Men. I was satisfied with this hobby, and had heard very little about D&D at the time.

I had gone to Origins II, III, and IV (the annual national wargame convention) and had heard rumblings about D&D. But it seemed that wargamers hated the D&D people, and the D&D people hated the wargamers. Sort of like the feuds between the 19th century frontier cattlemen versus the sheep ranchers, only much stupider. In any event, I was a wargamer. D&Ders were stupid.

Then when I entered college in 1977, I began attending Park Street's college-age Christian fellowship, called Seekers. I met a guy there who ended up becoming a good friend of mine, a man named Bill Hussar. To this day I consider Bill my mentor, since he steered me in the direction of many aspects of geek culture.

Well, one day, Bill  invited me to play Dungeons and Dragons. His brother was going to be something known as a "Dungeon Master". Bill and I each rolled up three characters, and his brother ran us through a dungeon he made.

Incidentally, that's how we had to play D&D back then when we only had a few people around us that we knew of who played the game. You rolled up a handful of characters at once, watched in horror as many of them didn't make it, and odds were, you'd come out with a few strong ones that hung in there. Sort of like starting a family in the 17th and 18th centuries.

So anyway, we played that first game. That's when the sky opened up, the sun shone, and the angels sang.

I was hooked! I've always had a wild imagination and a big streak of creativity, and here I was exposed to the tools to let that creativity go nuts. I could create a world, and people could interact with it! After that first session, I went home and hurriedly tried my hand at creating a dungeon of my own. Naturally, this meant getting that nifty boxed set that had the dice that you had to color in the numbers with the crayons provided. The cover showed this fearsome dragon, in a dungeon (naturally), with a warrior and a wizard about to attack! AWESOME!

So yes, I learned how to play D&D thanks to my participation in a conservative church's college-age group. It was also thanks to people in this group that I was taken to my first George Romero movie (Dawn of the Dead), and was introduced to the movies of David Cronenberg. Yeah, I know. I'm still trying to figure that one out, and it was 35 years ago.

The Golden Age

If you can gaze upon the awesomeness that is
this cover and not want to play, then you
have no soul. None.

Anyways, this boxed set came with its own pre-made adventure, Into The Unknown. It had maps and room descriptions, but it let you fill in the monsters and treasure yourself. I was thrilled! All I needed to do was to find people to play!

In the summer of 1979 I moved in with four guys from MIT who lived in a triple-decker in Charlestown and were also fellow Seekers. Now, I'm sure you're thinking "Four MIT guys, eh? Sounds like fertile D&D fodder!" But no! No, they weren't. Even though one of them did in fact play (his name was Tim, and he had a cleric named....Tim). They were too busy working on theses and splitting atoms and doing other sciencey stuff. But the four women who lived downstairs, who also went to Seekers, ah, they were another story. They were intrigued enough to give it a try.

(Yeah, I was in an arrangement where I lived with four turbo-nerds, and adjacent to us were four women, and we all knew each other and were friends. It's was like "Big Bang Theory", except there were more women, no drinking, no sex, and it wasn't in California. And no one was from India. And no one was Jewish. And there was a lot more praying and Bible study. Otherwise, totally the same.)

They were hooked. So was I. And so, my first campaign began, with me as a newly minted Dungeon Master, and the all-female pack of players, although by all accounts at the time, women weren't really into this sort of gaming. Good thing we never really paid attention to all accounts.

But of course, the dungeon they ran through meant the players' characters needed a place to rest and heal up. So, I created the Three Crown Inn, with a recurring NPC, a young elven teenager named Noro Goldentree, using Tolkien as a means of giving me an idea what the heck to name an elf. He was the tavern boy who waited on the heroes and looked up to them. And of course, the inn and the dungeon needed to be placed somewhere, so I had to create a bit of land. And we'll put a forest here, a coastline here, and hey, there seems to be a lot of hawks who use the forest as a haven, so we'll refer to this area as Hawkhaven. Okay, that works.

As I bought more D&D modules, I'd sprinkle them in this newly created land, expanding its borders, adding more details like roads, more inns, a town or two, a city, rivers, swamps. I was beside myself. I had finally found my element!

The land wasn't the only thing that expanded. As more people heard of the game and how much fun

Uh..no.

we were having, they wanted to join as well. The fifth player yet was another woman. Someone outside the group suggested I name the group "Johnny's Angels". I wasn't amused. Then we got our first guy, one of my roomies who wasn't doing the thesis thing yet. Then Bill joined in occasionally. Then a floodgate of people from Seekers joined the game.

Things got so insane that we had to play at the Miles Standish dorm at Boston University, commandeering one of the common areas, and played on Saturday nights pretty much from 6 pm to oh, whenever. And since Seekers met on Sunday evenings, we didn't have to worry about getting up for church on Sunday mornings. We'd sleep in on Sunday morning, then go to the Seekers meetings in the late afternoon, hit the evening service, then back to the second Seekers meeting. So we played till all hours the night before with no ill effect.

In fact, I recall one game that went rather late, and ended with the party getting a huge haul of treasure (of course), and let me tell you, people dickered over that pile of treasure with a level of conviction and avarice that would make a pack of  red dragons blush. I remember passing out, seated upright with my back against a dresser, then regaining consciousness as a beam of the rising sun shone through a window and struck my face, while the players adamantly made their cases for who'd get the +5 shield from the treasure hoard. Apparently, the Vorpal Blade had already been allocated.

This period was the crazy insane time, the time that most of us old gaming farts remember with mixed measures of fondness and horror. My average group size was around sixteen people. By this time, the holy trinity of D&D books had come out: The AD&D Players Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide, and the Monster Manual! JOY! More classes! More monsters! More treasure! And hey, psionics! You could blow up people's brains, just like in Scanners!

And, Hawkhaven became a sort of bizarre Monty Haul/Kitchen Sink hybrid that incorporated ideas from Lord of the Rings, the Narnia Chronicles, Earthsea, Arthurian Legends, and some greasy steak and cheese sub-inspired dreams from the night before. Then, when Deities and Demigods came out, things got REALLY nuts.

See, when the original Deities and Demigods came out, TSR (the makers of D&D) threw together stats for a wild selection of pantheons: Greek, Egyptian, Japanese, Norse, American Indian, Indian, Finnish, Babylonian..it was nuts. But unfortunately (for them, anyway), they also included some intellectual properties that they weren't supposed to: namely the worlds of Elric of Melnibone, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Oh, and one other, a mythos that made me ask a fateful question:

"What's a Cthulhu?"

Incidentally, TSR was eventually brought up to speed on the whole "using other authors' copywritten work was BAD" concept and had to pull the Melnibonean, Nehwon, and Lovecraftian material out of Deities and Demigods, and release a new edited version. I'm proud to say I still have my original Deities and Demigods, though it was slightly damaged by a rabbit.

Don't ask.

Anyways, as the DM, I let people choose whichever god they wanted to worship. Nothing was rejected; I simply absorbed it into the game and made it work. But, speaking of worship and gods...

Onward, Christian Paladins

An excerpt from the rollicking comedy pamphlet
"Dark Dungeons" by Chick Publications

What needs to be stated here for the record is that every single one of us was a practicing Christian. Yes, that's right. Every. Last. One of us. We all came from Seekers, so what do you expect? Naturally, this caused some friction and raised eyebrows in other quarters of the group, since this is also when the stories about how D&D was absolutely positively corrupting our youth were starting to circulate. You know the drill, it's evil, it's Say-tanic, green pea soup spouting everywhere, heads revolving completely around, dogs and cats living together...

Anyways, since we were all Christians, I allowed people to choose God as their character's deity, especially if it helped overcome any reservations they had about the game as a whole. Naturally, that meant their character needed to be either Lawful Good or Chaotic Good.

And we started every session with a word of prayer. No joke. Swear to God (oops). Among other reasons, it made the whole evening seem more like an organized gathering of Christians for the purposes of fellowship, you know? So, we'd start with a word of prayer, and soon be hip deep in orc blood, giant viscera, and undead. And arguing over stuff. And doing barmaids.

Of course, you throw together over a dozen people ranging in age from late teens to early 20's, and you know there's going to be drama. There were real-life romantic triangles played through each person's respective characters, arguments, grudges, shouting matches, the usual. Hey, I said we were all Christians; I said nothing about perfection! I shudder to imagine what it would have been like if there had been alcohol served. But there was none, because Christians.

And people who did stuff in the game that annoyed others, would carry that around for a long time. Sort of like how you never forget your friend who dropped the ball in the 9th inning during that big softball game. One player's Ranger ran away from an encounter while everyone else got blasted by red dragon's breath, and let me tell you, that player was NEVER allowed to forget it. You know, the usual gamer insanity.

The quests got crazier and yet also more over the top fun. Battling liches who turned player characters into giant cucumbers and ate them, or finding the Holy Grail, or battling Orcus, or exploring the sunken island of R'lyeh. Nothing was off-limits. No adventure too weird, no treasure too big. Except I never sent them looking for the One Ring. That would have just been stupid.

A few of the more hard-core members of Seekers express
concerns about Dungeons and Dragons

Well, anyways, Seekers leadership never interfered with the game nor suggest we stop. A few people did have misgivings and suspicions about it, expressed in a variety of ways, including bad poetry.

Which made it all the funnier when in the summer of 1980 I ended up being appointed to a leadership role in that very group! I was a member of Seekers summer staff that year, and in fact, four other members of staff were also avid AD&D players, and a fifth player was an avid wargamer. Our infiltration was complete (insert evil laughter here).

But like all good things, this one had to come to an end. As people graduated college and moved on from Seekers, the group began to dwindle. Boston being a college town that lures in students from all over the country (and the world), a lot of Seekers who attended school consequently left the area when they graduated.

So there I was, looking to continue the game going by rallying together the people who remained in the area. Fortunately, I had a good solid core to work with since a good number ended up staying, and soon we supplemented our ranks with new blood. This set the stage for the eighties!

Next time: AD&D goes 2nd Edition, and I go pro.

Photo Credits: Park Street Church, ArcticJane

New Christmas Television Specials For The 21st Century

Every December, it seems that we're treated to the same holiday specials and Christmas-themed movies. After a few years..er..decades of seeing the same ones over and over, I for one am getting kind of sick of them, and yearn for something new.

That's why I've come up with a series of brand new holiday specials for Christmas or whatever the Hell else you want to celebrate in December. Where appropriate, the suggested network is provided. Any television executives who see this list should feel free to contact me courtesy of this blog.

A Charlie Brown Krampus (ABC Family)
Charlie Brown and Linus finally get fed up with Lucy being a violent, raging, football-pulling turbo bitch, and summon the Krampus to drag her off to Hell. Meanwhile, Woodstock deals with the repurcussions after he's shown at the conclusion of "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" eating turkey, which implies that he is now considered a cannibal.

The Kardashians' Khristmas Karol 
The Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future (Khloe, Kourtney, and Kim) visit Ebeneezer Scrooge (Bruce Jenner), after a visit from the ghost of Jacob Marley (Kanye West). The constant whirring sound you hear is Charles Dickens spinning in his grave at 100,000 RPM.

I'm Dreaming Of A Great White Shark Christmas (SyFy)
A massive school of cold-thriving, snow-capable great white sharks converge on a town's Christmas celebrations during a super-blizzard brought on by sunspot activity. Starring Shaun Cassidy, Maureen McCormick, Mike Lookinland, and Tiffany.

Teen Jesus (MTV)
An ongoing series that explores the time between the Nativity and the beginning of Christ's ministry. In this episode, Teen Jesus get His friends in trouble when he accidentally turns the football team's drinking water into wine. Later, Teen Jesus ponders whether or not to cure the head cheerleader (Mary Magdalene) of her acne in order to get the school bully (Pontius Pilate) to stop teasing her. Back at home, Joseph uses the last of the wise men's gold to purchase a new camel for the family, and Teen Jesus wants to borrow it.

Behind The Music: The Little Drummer Boy (VH1)
The life and career of the Little Drummer Boy is examined with a series of interviews and rare performance footage. This installment details the LDB's attempts to keep his career going after playing a solo for the King of Kings, which let's face it is something that's difficult to top. LDB struggles to stay relevant while dealing with his frankincense addiction. Includes rare footage of LDB's "Do or Die, One Last Shot at Redemption" Comeback Concert at the Coliseum in Rome. Special interviews with band members Beat-master Ox and Time-keeper Lamb, LDB's agent (Judas Iscariot), and Brutus, the Roman Coliseum lion who ultimately ended LDB's career for good.

Black Friday/White Christmas (Lifetime)
A widowed mother (Valerie Bertinelli) who lost her husband in a Black Friday X-Box riot the previous Christmas tries to get over the trauma of her loss in time to go and buy presents for her children. Along the way, she is aided by a mysterious yet daffy Christmas angel (Lady Gaga).

One Horse Openly Slays (AKA Jingle Hell) (FearNet)
A demon-possessed horse (Sarah Jessica Parker) goes on a violent murderous rampage through a crowded shopping mall on Christmas eve. Oh, what fun.

A Very Dyslexic Christmas
Things end in soul-shattering tragedy when a group of dyslexic revelers try to sit on Satan's lap.

Herbie, DDS
This hard-hitting medical drama showcases Herbie the Elf (Hugh Laurie) and his attempts at bringing dental hygiene to the North Pole. In this episode, Herbie tries to fit the Bumble (Seth Rogen) with dentures, and Yukon Cornelius (Jack Black) loses four front teeth when he accidentally bites in a frozen solid piece of peanut brittle. It's a race against time for Herbie to reattach the teeth in time for Christmas dinner. Meanwhile, Clarice (Jodi Foster) is being stalked by Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).

The War On Christmas (History Channel)
The tactics, weapons systems, and prominent military leaders are showcased in this hard-hitting documentary detailing the organized humanist assault on Christmas. Includes footage of fruitcake IEDs, creche fire-bombings, and surface-to-air candy cane launchers. Actual combat footage of Christmas Caroling squads engaged in skirmishes versus ACLU-backed Christmas-haters. May be too intense for young children and toy-making elves.

RuPaul's Drag Race: Don We Now Our Gay Apparel (Logo)
Drag queens. Christmas outfits. You do the math.

The Sarah Palin Holy Christian Jesus God Bless America Traditional Family Values Old Timey Christmas Special (Fox News Channel)
This variety show features Sarah Palin and her guests Rush Limbaugh, Ted Cruz, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and Bill O'Reilly, as they celebrate an all-American old fashioned Christmas celebration, just like Jesus and His family did, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence. Also, guest star Kirk Cameron delivers a rambling and confusing Christmas message.

The Terminator Saves "It's A Wonderful Life" (Spike TV)
The Terminator (Ah-nuld) goes back in time for the sake of humanity, and positively murders the living Hell out of anyone even remotely connected with the production of the "It's A Wonderful Life" sequel.

Things I've learned thus far this Christmas season.

1. Every Christmas season has its particular recurring themes. This year, they appear to be: Elf on the Shelf, Ugly Christmas Sweater Parties, and Krampus. 
2. The world needs more ugly Christmas sweaters depicting Krampus dragging the Elf on the Shelf off to Hell.
3. The proper response to the Cthulhu-inspired turduken amalgam of turkey, octopus, bacon, and crab legs is "Kill it with fire".
4. For some reason, tickets for the World Champion Boston Red Sox 2014 season are cheaper than Bruins tickets.
5. There IS no war on Christmas. Any politician telling you otherwise, is selling something.
6. On the other hand, people who are "offended" by their neighbors' Christmas light displays really need to shut the Hell up.
7. If you think the ASPCA commercials with the Sarah McLachlan song "Angels" are eye-gougingly depressing and make you want to open fire on your television, then you haven't heard the holiday version, with "Silent Night" being sung like a dirge.
8. It is possible to maintain one's vow never to set foot in a Wal-Mart ever again and yet still find extremely good Christmas shopping bargains.
9. It's never too early to start bitching about the snow and cold.
10. For some reason, the average Joe or Jane on the street seem nicer and, dare I say, merrier this season. I won't question it; I'll just continue basking in it.
11. Apparently, pine trees are poisonous to cats. But it turns out, fir trees aren't, Thankfully, we got a fir without even realizing it.

Honorable Mention: This is the best Christmas video this year.

Facts You May Not Know About The Pearl Harbor Attack

Today marks the 72nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. As a history buff, especially in terms of military history and naval history in particular, I've always found Pearl Harbor to be a fascinating event.

So here's a list of eleven factoids that many people may not be aware of. Read on!

1. US Army general Billy Mitchell, an early proponent of air power, predicted that the US would go to war with Japan, and that Pearl Harbor would be attacked by aircraft. He made this prediction in 1924!
2. The Japanese were good at taking other nation's lessons and learning from them. The attack on Pearl Harbor was inspired by a similar attack by the Royal Navy against the Italians in the Mediterranean, at Taranto. The British bombed the Italian naval base with aircraft launched from the HMS Eagle, in 1940. One Italian battleship was sunk, and two damaged. The Japanese studied the battle carefully, and implemented the tactics when they hit Pearl.
3. The Pearl Harbor attack was but one of a series of simultaneous attacks across the Pacific by the Imperial Japanese forces. The overall plan had been to knock out the US Navy, drive off the Royal Navy, seize as many bases and territories as possible, reinforce and fortify them, and dig in, bracing themselves in anticipation of America's manufacturing might eventually building up a large navy again. Japan figured that if they took enough territory and then made it impregnable, they could eventually negotiate a peace.
4. While it's commonly said that there were eight battleships at Pearl on the morning of December 7th, technically there were NINE. The aged USS Utah, no longer fit for front-line combat duty, was stripped down and converted into a target ship. The Japanese mistook it for a carrier, and sank it.
5. One battleship, the Nevada, was not sunk, but rather beached at Waipao Point. The Nevada was the only battleship that had steam enough to get underway, but as she made for the harbor exit, the Japanese focused on it as a target for bombs, and it occurred to the captain that if the Japanese sunk the ship at the mouth of the harbor, it would render Pearl Harbor useless until the ship could be raised. So, instead, he ordered the battleship to run aground.
6. Only two battleships actually were total losses, the Arizona and the Oklahoma. However, a lot of American propaganda at the time insisted that the Oklahoma had been rebuilt and was fighting in the Pacific. Um, no.
7. The attack happened on a Sunday morning, and many servicemen were at services. According to author Walter Lord, who wrote Day of Infamy, one chaplain's benediction was "God bless you all, Pearl Harbor is under attack, report to your stations."
8. In the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!", considered one of the best and most accurate movies about the attack, the band on the fantail of the Nevada was playing the national anthem and raising the colors as the attack began. They are shown increasing the anthem's tempo because they saw the Japanese planes swooping in for a bombing run, and they wanted to get the heck out of there. While it made for a kind of funny scene, it did NOT happen that way. The band played the anthem at the normal tempo, didn't miss a beat, finished it, THEN ran for their stations.
9. The US Navy fuel storage fields were mistakenly labelled as baseball fields on Japanese intelligence maps, so they were not bombed. Had they been, the resulting destruction of those supplies would have gone a long way towards crippling the surviving ships' operations.
10. When FDR gave his Day of Infamy speech and Congress voted to declare war, it was declared only against the Japanese, not the Axis Powers as a whole. America was assuming that they would be fighting only the Japanese, while providing arms and material to Britain and Russia in their fight against the Nazis. It was Hitler who declared war on America a few days later, followed by Mussolini.
11. Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the attack, was reportedly upset by their Foreign Ministry's messing up the delivery of the declaration of war. He was upset that the attack occurred when the two nations were technically at peace, and that the attack would be considered a sneak attack.

Incidentally, I highly recommend Walter Lord's book "Day of Infamy". Lord was an excellent writer who wrote non-fiction, documentary style accounts of some important events of the 20th century (Pearl Harbor, Dunkirk, the Titanic, the Battle of Midway).

I Can't Stand The Elf On The Shelf

So I made this in its "honor".

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes! Red Sox Version!

Although most of Red Sox Nation is still walking around with big dumb grins of delighted victory disbelief on their faces, we must turn our attention now to the off-season and the plethora of moves that the teams are conducting, particularly our beloved Red Sox.

I would be remiss if I didn't commentate on three significant Red Sox bits of news that hit teh Interwebz today. And what's that they say about news coming in threes?

1. Jarrod Saltalamacchia Rides Off Into Tropical Obscurity
Okay, so let's say you are a free agent who has two choices. One, you can take a two-year contract with your former team, a World Champion team, no less. Enthusiastically rabid fan base, great teammates, historical park, just an all-around awesome deal. But again, they won't offer you more than two years. Your other choice is THREE years on a pathetically bad National League team located in the state where America goes to die, with a fan base that doesn't approach anywhere near the level of enthusiasm of your former team's fans. What do you do?

Apparently, you take the crap team.

What a pity. I liked Salty. I also liked saying his name; it sort of rolled off your tongue. Saltalamacchia! Sort of like how the name Antonio Banderas does (although you must say it with a slightly Spanish lilt to it. That is, you use the lilt for Antonio, not Jarrod).

But think of it...Marlins are big salt-water fish. Saltalamacchia is often referred to as Salty. Fish. Salty. You have to admit, there's a bond there.

Fun Useless Fact: The Homecoming Queen in my senior year at Hell..er...Hull High was Eileen Saltalamacchia. And yes, she was the perfect choice.

2. Tacoby Bellsbury Goes Over To The Dark Side (Though They Don't Have Cookies..Just $153 Mil).
Come on, is anyone really surprised by this? Jacoby wanted his big payday and he's a client of Scott Boras. The Sox weren't going to give him what he wanted. He was a goner already. So, in steps the Yankees, whose roster is aging so badly that Depends are now standard equipment in the dugout, and they throw a 7 year $153 million dollar contract at him. Because, you see, the Yankees are the leaders in hideously ill-conceived contracts. Just ask A-Fraud. So let's improve their roster by bringing in an injury-prone 30 year old.

Look, I wish the guy well. He was a part of two of our World Series wins, and is a great lead off hitter and a great base stealer. When he's healthy. And therein lies his Achilles heel (any reports of a damaged Achilles tendon are just rumor). He has difficulty staying healthy, and his recoveries are notoriously slow. And I got news flash for ya, Sparky...the older you get, the longer you take to recover from injuries. Fact.

But I'm sure the Yankee fans will be their usual understanding selves.

And for what it's worth, if I get to a game next year, and by some miracle it's Sox vs Yanks, no, I won't boo him.

3. Say WHAT!?
But wait! The news today isn't just about who we lost...it's also about who we gained! We now have a new catcher! Salty wasn't interested in the two year deal the Sox offered him; he wanted at least three years. We didn't want to give him more because we have a couple of minor leaguers who will be ready soon. Okay, so all the Sox had to do was find a catcher for one year, perhaps a slight possibly of two. Someone whose temperament would fit in well with this team of loveable, personable, wacky guys!

And boy oh boy, did the front office find someone!

We got...

Wait for it...

This is gonna be good...

A.J. Pierzysnki!