"Lonely, Lonely" Spooky Stories (1978, Pickwick Records cereal box record)

UPDATED 11/6/2017: See bottom of post

For a few days in the summer between 2nd and 3rd grade, I ran a detective agency with my friend who lived three houses down, Tiffany. We worked out of her backyard playhouse, and our biggest case (in fact, our only case) was The Mystery of the Hidden Treasure at the Empty House That Was For Sale Two Blocks Over.

The big twist in the "hidden treasure" case was that there was no treasure. More accurately, we left the case unsolved after a neighbor threatened to call the police if we kept letting ourselves into the backyard (a later attempt to return to the scene disguised as prospective buyers fooled no one.)

(image source)

So our little detective agency was forced to close its doors, ruining summer for about 5 minutes.

But Tiffany had more going for her than just a backyard playhouse... like an appreciation for ghost stories and spooky Halloween records. Sounds to Make You Shiver and The Story and Song From The Haunted Mansion were prized albums from my collection that were constantly playing in the background at my house. But one day Tiffany showed up with a record that I could never find a copy of myself, and so naturally coveted: Spooky Stories (1978, Pickwick Records), a "cereal box" record, meaning it was pressed to a very thin layer of plastic attached to a piece of cardboard (in this case, to the back of a box of Post Honeycomb or Alpha-Bits cereal).

As was the tradition with these types of records, there were multiple stories available, and it was luck of the draw which one you ended up with. Tiffany's copy contained a story I call "Lonely, Lonely" (I don't remember the actual title being credited anywhere on the record), a variation on the "Dark, Dark" type spooky story where the listener is lulled into a comforting rhythm by slowly repeated phrases, only to be startled at the end by a suddenly loud climax.

Transcript of the story below the video embed.



Lonely, Lonely
Along this lonely, lonely road,
Was this lonely, lonely hill.
Along this lonely, lonely hill
Stood this lonely, lonely house.
And inside that lonely, lonely house,
Was this creaking, squeaking stair.
At the top of the creaking, squeaking stair,
Was this long, long hallway.
And down that long, long hallway,
Was this flapping, clapping trapdoor.
And above that flapping, clapping trapdoor
Was this crying, sighing attic.
And in that crying, sighing attic
Was this shadowy, shadowy corner.
And in that shadowy, shadow corner
Was this big, old chest.
And inside that big, old chest...
...WAS A THING!!!

UPDATE: The background music used here appears to be "borrowed" from Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" (queued to around the 15:50 mark in the embedded video below). It also sounds awfully similar to the 1977 Star Wars soundtrack by John Williams, cut no. 4, "The Desert and Robot Auction" (retitled "The Dune Sea of Tatooine/Jawa Sandcrawler" on later editions of the soundtrack). Take a listen--what do you think? Credit to reader TheLibrarySound for recognizing the Star Wars track similarity!

Waiting for Star Tours (Time Voyager, 1986)

1985 was a long, long time ago...

It was a dark time for Star Wars fandom. The original trilogy had completed two years earlier, with no realistic prospect of new films on the twin-starred horizon. Fans desperate for new Star Wars content had to settle for made-for-TV kiddie fare like the Ewok movies (1984's The Ewok Adventure, and its next-year follow up, Ewoks: The Battle for Endor), and cutesy Saturday morning cartoon The Ewoks and Droids Adventure Hour. Print media spin-off material like the daily newspaper comic strip had ceased publication in March '84, although the Marvel comic book series trudged along for another year before finally wrapping it up in May 1986 after a 107-issue run.

There hadn't been a new Star Wars novel since 1983's Lando Calrissian adventures, and the Timothy Zahn books that would kick-start a new wave of Skywalker fiction wouldn't launch until the 1990's. Immersive Star Wars videogames as we know them today were not yet a thing, and the first role-playing game to tap the Star Wars universe was still two years away (West End Games' Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game book, published in Oct. 87.)

Star Wars, it seemed, was winding down.

Geeks had to work a little harder in those dark times before The Internet to stay in the loop with their favorite fantasy franchises. That sometimes meant ponying up real money for dues membership to fan organizations like The Official Star Wars Fan Club, which remained active through the 1980s. The club's printed newsletter, Bantha Tracks, was still published quarterly, although the focus had turned to other Lucas-related ventures like the Indiana Jones series, Labyrinth, and Howard the Duck, while Star Wars-related content was relegated to the occasional backwards-looking retrospective piece (the club would eventually transform into the more appropriately named Lucasfilm Fan Club in 1987.)

So the good news couldn't have come sooner when it was announced in the Winter 1985 issue (Bantha Tracks No. 27) that Lucasfilm would be collaborating with Disney Imagineers to develop a Star Wars theme park attraction!

Turns out Star Wars was alive, and in perfect hibernation!

The prospect of my two favorite childhood things--Disneyland and Star Wars--finally coming together, was too good to be true. My imagination was ignited with fantastic visions of Disneyland someday devoting an entire land to Star Wars, or maybe even partnering with Lucasfilm to release a slate of new Star Wars films.

But those were just pipedreams.

Naturally, I devoured whatever information I could find about this mysterious new Star Wars ride while it was in development. It was to be called Star Tours, and would use cutting edge flight simulator technology, in which a tilting theater and other interactive elements moved in synchronization with newly photographed special effects footage created by ILM, to send riders on a trip around the post-Return of the Jedi galaxy, made safe for tourism thanks to the defeat of the Empire.

The Bantha Tracks blurb teased a June 1986 opening date, which was later moved to January 1987. This seemed like a huge span of time to wait (much longer than the mere 6-8 weeks it took to receive my considerably less anticipated mail-in Kool-Aid Man videogame ...and in order to cope with that excruciating wait, I had thrown myself into a strange "Kool-Aid Man phase".)

How was I expected to bide my time until Star Tours opened?

Enter Time Voyager.

Opening Memorial Day, 1986, six months before Star Tours, Time Voyager was an "experience of astonishment and wonder" that took passengers on an "intergalactic time travel experience" that blended "special effects, advanced computer technology, three-dimensional imagery, and Dolby sound and motion in an interactive global theatre setting".

Time Voyager was commissioned by Wrather Port Properties, Ltd. as part of a campaign to reinvigorate the Queen Mary and Spruce Goose exhibits they managed in Long Beach, California. The attraction itself was designed by John F. Decuir, Jr., a special effects designer for film who had worked on Ghostbusters and Fright Night (his father, John Decuir, had done design work for Disneyland, Disney World, and EPCOT Center.)

Installed under the geodesic dome that housed Howard Hughes' H4-Hercules plane, Time Voyager consisted of a sixty-foot diameter, 100-seat carousel-style theater that rotated to face a circle-shaped movie screen (or "porthole"). Electronic tilting seats and in-theater laser effects promised an experience of flight through Earth's atmosphere and into space itself.

Additionally, riders could expect a "close encounter" with friendly aliens called Orbons, who lived in the colony of Orloxin, "known to Earthlings as Halley's Comet".

That a reference to Halley's Comet was worked into the ride narrative was a timely one in 1986, as the short-period comet was completing another 75-year circuit and was visible not only through astronomer's telescopes but in various pockets of pop-culture as well (the 1985 Claymation film The Adventure of Mark Twain depicted a fantastic attempt to visit Halley's Comet on a spaceship, while software publisher Mindscape had released an educational game, The Halley Project, for home computers.)

So we have intergalactic travel, aliens, a flight-simulator style motion theater, laser effects, "astonishment and wonder"... on paper, this sounds like it has all the elements of the anticipated Star Tours attraction. Time Voyager may very well offer a sneak preview into what to expect when Star Tours finally opened the following year, was my thinking, as I convinced my family to purchase tickets ($11.95 for adults, $7.95 for children) when we visited on our 1986 Summer vacation.

Now, I had a real hard time finding information about Time Voyager on the web, outside of promotional blurbs in archived travel magazines. No personal memories posted by riders or vintage vacation photos. No discussions about the history of the ride on fan sites, or virtual recreation videos. Even designer John Decuir Jr's on-line bios frequently omit it (the only mention I could find was at the bottom of his Attractions resume at his website, here.)

And I think I know why.

Time Voyage, it turns out, was very lame.

More disappointing than that awful Kool-Aid Man game!

First of all, the "porthole" screen was just too small. It didn't come anywhere close to filling your field of vision, so the intended immersive effect of a simulator was never achieved. It felt more like you were watching a large television screen than looking out a spaceship window.

Second, rather than the entire theater tilting to simulate the pitch and roll of flight, the theater remained stationary and only your seats moved, tilting jerkily left or right. This simply didn't work. The screen remained stationary as well, so you felt completely disconnected from the on-screen action while watching it from your uncomfortably tilted seat.

Finally, we have to talk about these Orbons. These were the friendly extra-terrestrials that we encounter as we pass Halley's Comet.

Too friendly.

The aliens looked like little bald gremlins, and appeared in person as a full-head costumed character. At some point in the ride, an Orbon would emerge from hiding and proceed to dance around and wave at the audience from the front of the theater.

The handicapped seating was also located towards the very front, putting any wheelchair-seated rider in uncomfortably close proximity to the Orbon's performance area. On my visit, the Orbon, perhaps conscious that a wheelchair rider was practically sharing the stage with him, kept hugging him, patting him on the head, and otherwise making the poor guy part of the show, whether he wanted to be or not. It was all a little cringey, even to this obnoxious teenager.

I have no idea how long Time Voyager lasted, but I did not find it mentioned in a Dec. 1988 blurb for the Queen Mary/Spruce Goose attraction, and it wouldn't surprise me if had closed sooner than that.

Later that day, while roaming around the Spruce Goose exhibit, I passed a mom and dad with a young boy of maybe six or seven, who was cheerfully singing to himself.

The words his sing-song voice was reciting were, "I hate Time Voyager." Ouch!

Anyone have memories of this short-lived, definitely-not-to-be-confused-with-Star-Tours attraction?

"I suggest a new strategy, Artoo..."

Just a little hump-day silliness...

Ace of Aces (1980, Nova Game Designs)

Gather 'round, Gen-Yers, and I'll spin you a tale, of a time long ago when the personal computer was not the ubiquitous and indispensable tool found in every home, office and school across America.

(Puffs pipe, leans back in chair)
They called it "1980", dontcha know. I was in grade school in those ancient times, and my school owned exactly one personal computer. It was kept in a special room as if it were some rare piece of science equipment borrowed from NASA. To get access to it, you had to be enrolled in an advanced placement class, and even then, your actual hands-on time with the precious device was carefully metered.

Here's a picture of the old girl... TWO disc drives. Whew! There goes the school's budget!

Of course that little joystick to the right is for display purposes only. You won't be playing any games in The Computer Room, as this is a serious education tool, not a video arcade.

BUT... you were allowed to type BASIC code into the computer to make games, transcribing them from books like this one...

...or this one, "Basic Computer Games", featuring page after page of code, just waiting for you to key in a line at a time. Yes, I actually used to sit down for hours at a time to do this. Can you smell the fun?

Here's just a sample page of code, one of many required to create a text-based "Star Trek" inspired statistics game. Better hope you don't make a typo!

This particular book is interesting because it contains a wide range of gaming experiences, including this one that would surely be considered inappropriate (if not outright criminal) on a grade-school campus today: a "Russian Roulette" simulation!

Russian Roulette is the "game" where you take turns firing a revolver, loaded with only one bullet, to your head. The loser is the one unlucky enough to pull the trigger on the chamber with the bullet in it. Of course, being 1980, this electronic adaptation is all text-based and, well, rather dull. But what a devious concept! Sample gameplay text below.

Here's the actual program code (and looking it over, it appears this version of the game has you spinning the chamber before every trigger pull, instead of just working your way sequentially through the chambers, so this game could drag on for hours. Boo!)

What is the point of this autobiographical detour? Just setting the stage. You see, a lot of the casual entertainment afforded by today's powerful, networked PCs just wasn't available back in those early days of computing.

Of course the type-your-own games from the Basic primers were hardly representative of the state of the art. But even professionally produced software sold in stores was severely limited compared to today's fully rendered, three-dimensional virtual worlds just waiting to be explored and conquered at the nearest computer monitor, smart phone or I-pod. Back in 1980, computers just didn't have the horsepower to deliver those kinds of experiences. Games were crude, simple, and flat.

There were a few attempts at "first-person" type immersive graphics. But the limited computing power of the day meant you were reduced to exploring almost abstract grids and monochrome shapes.

From 1980, Akalabeth: World of Doom (home computer) and Battlezone (arcade):

So gamers who wanted a deeper, more immersive experience, still had to rely on their imagination, and innovative, genre-pushing games from the non-electronic realm... role-playing games, statistic-based wargaming simulations, Choose Your Own Adventure type interactive fiction, and ...Ace of Aces.

Ace of Aces, published by Nova Game Designs originally in 1980 (with a few later editions) is a one-on-one World War I bi-plane dogfighting game that did something videogames of the day couldn't yet achieve--provided a first-person perspective for each player.

The game is packed with two thick books, one for the German player, the other for his opponent.

Each book is filled with illustrations depicting a first-person point of view from your plane (the German's perspective from within a Fokker Dr I, the Allied seated in a Sopwith Camel). A virtual control panel of possible maneuvers to select from appears at the bottom of each page, as well as the page number for the other pilot to turn to in order to update their view.

Each player announces their desired maneuvers (and its corresponding page number) to the other, pages are flipped to orient the other player's plane correctly to yours, then flipped once again to complete your maneuvers and end the turn. The end result is a person-to-person dog fight game that kind of plays out like a series of decompression chart calculations.

But you can actually see your enemy's plane in the correct scale and perspective, and it changes realistically as you both maneuvers in and out of each other's airspace, something no personal computer of the day could yet accomplish.

The basic game assumes both planes stay at the same approximate altitude, but you can still lose sight of one another, which lands you on dreaded page 223, the "lost" page:

You have the option to either disengage and end the round, or pursue your opponent and battle on. Optional "advanced" rules force you to monitor altitude, speed, ammunition usage and plane damage. I was getting a headache just browsing this section.

Nova promised several expansion packs for Ace of Aces, as well as games in other genres using a similar play mechanic (how about a wild west shoot out?), but many of these went unrealised.

However, in 1989, in the middle of that Star Wars fandom desert between the opening of Star Tours in Disneyland and the relaunching of the canon with the Timothy Zahn novels, fans were thrown a bone... the Starfighter Battle Book (West End Games), an Ace of Aces style game pitting an X-Wing fighter against an Imperial TIE-Interceptor.



Official Ace of Aces website found here.

Trick or Treat (1978, CHiPs)

CHiPs (an acronym of California Highway Patrol) was the cop show for kids that didn't like cop shows. Officers Ponch (Erik Estrada) and John (Larry Wilcox) rarely drew their weapons, and let legions of criminals walk free with a stern warning.

In the world of CHiPs, police work wasn't about using either brute force or ingenious detective work to bring hard-boiled criminals off the gritty Streets of Mean. Instead, a typical beat might entail rescuing a runaway boat on jet-skis, luring an escaped circus tiger back to his cage, or delivering a newborn on the floor of the disco (after winning the disco contest, of course!)

The Season 2 Halloween episode, Trick or Treat (1978), stayed true to the formula.

Nothing scary to see here, folks, as Ponch and John tackle decidedly lightweight incidents like a hold-up woman dressed as a ghost, candy-bag theft by an older woman convinced she's lost her wedding ring in a batch of candy, and a pair of naughty ladies stealing city property for a scavenger hunt.

Sarge demonstrates how to thoroughly search a suspect for hidden contraband.

The biggest treat of this episode is getting a look at vintage plastic Halloween adornments... close encounters of the Ben Cooper kind.

Below we have Bigfoot (mask only, missing the smock, from the 1977 Sid & Marty Krofft show Bigfoot & Wildboy), a Batman (1974, this rendering based on the comic strip), and a Raggedy Ann (1973). Oh yea, there's also a non-plastic vampire and witch, too.

Later that evening we'll encounter this group. Bigfoot again, this time complete with smock, Skeleton (looks like a slight variation of a 1974 version that I remember as being the first costume I ever wore), The Incredible Hulk (looks like an earlier version than the 1980s model posted below), and Darth Vader (sin smock, con cape).

Here's a closer look at Skeleton.


Costume images came from the awesome and topical book Halloween: Costumes and Other Treats. See many more images in a previous post here.