image 96 dumbass

Other than my preparing for the Fall though summer of 1996 had a definite drop off in activity. Goldfish B.B.S. closed its doors and a lot of people went their separate ways. Chris M. stuck around, which made some sense since he had got far enough behind in school, mainly from lack of attendance during sophomore year, that he had to go back for another semester. This was also the time when Mom and Dad bought me the only console they ever would, the PSX. Chris and I would get a lot of use out of that during the summer. Having to find new staples of games to buy and weening off the SNES. This was the start of the PSX era for games.

Freshman year then. An interesting time for me. With all the pre planning senior year of high school, the fall was well setup for me. I Just had to skate along for a couple years then transfer. Chris M. had another senior year to go, but with less total people around it gave us a long period of time to settle into the L street house. Which we did, Friday nights we would stay up until all hours of the night. Luckily, I had the new PSX so we had new games to explore, along with the PC. Then either super late at night or really early Saturday morning we re-found cartoons.

Eventually we would religious stay up until six in the morning every Friday night so we could watch our two serial cartoons that aired from five to six. Beast Wars and Dragon Ball Z. While odd for a couple of eighteen-year-olds to get back into cartoons, this was right around the birth of Japanese animation leaking into late night American television. Chris M. had been known to watch a cartoon here or there according to Marty. He used to go on about his baby brother and his cartoons. These two early morning addictive ones got all our juices flowing for what could be out there.

It was not to long after that Cartoon Network would start a late night “Toonami” block of cartoons, featuring along with others Dragon Ball Z. That caught my attention because Chris M. and I got to a point where the story just ended and began over again in the morning time slot. Toonami and later Adult Swim would bring animation as a watchable style as an adult to my mainstream viewing. After Chris M. and I sputtered out in Dragonball Z in the mornings, I eventually started catching back up at night down the road, which leads to 2000 when we get there.

That first year with the PSX system was a lot of hit and miss shots with games. One of the bigger hits was Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV: Wall of Fire (RoTK4). Those late nights playing games until the cartoons came on, a lot of them would feature some RoTK4.  We had played a lot of the SNES version years before and this version hit all those notes but seemed expanded upon enough to make it exciting to attempt to reunite China under one banner.

First semester I decided to write my history term paper on the RoTK books. The RoTK series is an interesting one because it is a strategy game based on some novels written (many) years ago in China, retelling a portion of Chinese history. Coupling the books with the game allowed me to have access to some graphics that weren’t easy to find on the internet in late 1996 and gave me an even greater appreciation for the game’s subject matter.

ROTK would become the topic of my first college essay for my ancient history class. At the time most of what I had down from the timeline was from the instruction manual, sorry booklet. This was used mainly because the translation I had at that time was a two-volume set that was a lot to get through in a few weeks. I did fine on the paper though with the non-book version of events. Seems you can get a proper education from those little manuals, maybe we shouldn’t suspend kids for reading them.

The game, being addictive to that part of my brain that made Civilization such a hit, continued on past using it for term papers. During spring break in 1997 Karl and I would hit the game hard with an all-night multiplayer session of the game. That was hard throwback to our attempt to beat the NES game Gauntlet almost a decade earlier during another spring break. I guess I needed to schedule more gaming events with Karl around spring break.

RotK4 was not the end of the road for the series. But it was the one that put it into a special game series for me. After this point any time I bought a new one it was a warning that I was going to spend a good day or two planted in front of the television playing only this and forgo things like, socialization or grooming. Good times.

History class though would be the weird standout for me. I had the class I was supposed to bus to in Sacramento. Turned out, as I would find out time and time again, it wasn’t a required class. So I dropped it and got my money back just in time. I took some other generic general education classes and they were all hit and miss.

Second semester in January of 1997 would go the same way. I finished up the second part of my History class, which again went swimmingly, but without the video game tie in term paper. However I started here updating some personal web pages that would begin to suck more and more time from me. This would be a capital point to talk about that, but 1997 is the alpha testing face for webpages and that story is set to take off after Christmas.

But it was a factor in my slow down on the school plan. I would still for the next year or so keep going, just with less classes. History, Cultural Anthropology, Japanese, I stuck with a lighter load of classes that I was interested in and sort of sicked things the school wanted me to take like, Math and Speech. This though has to be seen how it plays out.

Chris M.  graduated in June of 1997. Marty and I went to his graduation and peanut galleried the whole ceremony. After the ceremony my folks took Chris M. out to Lyons, and we had a grand old time. It was slightly prior to this time that Chris had made his decision to join the Air Force. But his call up date wasn’t until 1998. Giving him some free time before leaving town. The summer prior through that school/work program that Marty benefited so well from he got a nice office job at ACE hardware in town. So, I imagine even though I know he spent a fair amount of time at the L street house that he probably had some disposable income before leaving.

Karl’s dumb ass would stick around in Davis too. He moved in two a couple places with Nate at this time. I remember Baywood the most, but their time at Cedar court is what everyone always reminisces about, even only a few years out from that time.

Karl was going to school at Sac State like my mother had, and I think he was also doing music. But I could be wrong. I somehow met up with him out there one day and we hung out and as I said we spent some serious time during spring break in 97 conquering China. But that was at his parents house. Not the house they were all renting.

That was a mess of drinking. That would then lead to the time I found what I still to this day have decided is the limits to which I will imbue. A night which ended with me having memories of the night, but unable to do more than crawl down the hall, and the visual portion of the night is just darkness after a certain point.

While Chris graduated from King High in June and we had that ceremony. The next day I attended the Davis High ceremony with Karl and others for Jim’s graduation. He also a year behind got a section of fans. While not as bad as the limit testing night, I did stay over at Karl’s and enjoy in the festivities. This is were our lead in picture comes from. Karl, drunk as a skunk, was told to draw himself on the white board in the front hall. And we got that gem. This small period of time is the only real drinking time I can think of like this.

To add to this, both Marty and Chris weren’t involved in hanging out over there. Chris could have easily come over, he was well liked. But I think I was actually aware that since Karl and the juvenile hall incident, that Marty wasn’t invited. Thus, I weirdly had to do Karl hang outs at the houses on weekends where we weren’t transporting Chris or Marty. Which considering how much those two would be around in the next couple years makes me wonder how I ever found the time.

But as odd as it comes about, college, classes, skipping classes, dropping classes, house’s and alcohol.  This sounds like early college life, I just happened to be living at home while doing so. In fact after that graduation weekend I remember spending Sunday or Saturday on the couch in the living room with a blanket, falling asleep off and on while I watched some golf tournament on TV. That may be one of the only times I was able to watch that much of a golf tournament. Thanks Microsoft golf for making me curious about it.

First adult summer.  I guess not really, I graduated the year before. Anyway this might make sense later in the Star Wars subsection, but to get to the summer I have to start with the beginning of the year and the re-release of the Star Wars movies as the “special editions”.

This event felt like a big deal. I had been so under the radar in love with my Star Wars stuff through high school. Well, I did name the band after Yoda, and we had the SNES and PC games. But it was still more of a niche little thing I liked. A year out and suddenly there is an announcement that Lucas is putting the movies back out in theaters with new or updated footage.

This seemed like a lot of fun. When the first one came out, I called around to friends to see who wanted to go. I may be an adult, but who goes to movies by themselves. I finally found Mike who was willing to go to the matinee on release day. I don’t remember there being any idea of a midnight release for the films. In fact I remember thinking the theater would only have sort of die hard guys my age and older that wanted to see these things in the theater specifically.

Well, turned out I was wrong. We showed up to a lot of fan fare and lines. I was most invested in the new scene with Jabba the Hutt since I had known of the scene for years thanks to the behind the scenes VHS that came with the original trilogy in the VHS box set.

Mike was an interesting friend though to go to the movie with. I haven’t talked about him much, but he, for lack of a better term, clowned on just about everything. So I was excited to see the changes and just the movie again, since my first viewing was in a church gymnasium. And well I just remember Mike clowned on the things he didn’t like. Which I thought was a weird way to focus, but that is who he was so I wouldn’t expect anything less I guess.

The release schedule had the next movie. The Empire Strikes Back due out the following month. This is when I made an interesting decision. I could go see and enjoy a movie in a theater by myself. No offense to Mike, but I knew it was hard to get people in the early afternoon, heck Chris M. was still in High School at this time. And I figured I would maybe enjoy things more if I could just watch it and go home without having to be social.

As weird as this sounds, this was a turning point in life. I can do things without having to have people do it with me. This is the point of telling this story. The movie itself was still excellent, always my favorite. I was mildly annoyed that the kid with his mom in front of me kept covering his ears during the movie, like we don’t understand the movie is going to have sound. And if I had more tale to tell I would, but I decided I didn’t need to go see the last special edition movie, I have for periods of my life not always held the Return of the Jedi in as high esteem as the first two films and I might have been snobby at this time.

Now we get to the summer. During the summer of 1997 I took a break from everything, websites, friends, etc., and went on the last family drive/vacation. I mean I will get in the car with my folks again, but 1997 is the last time we had a destination and plan to go as a family somewhere for a vacation.

We visited my brother Randy in Pleasant Grove, Utah. As to what ends I don’t recall. Unlike other trips this wasn’t a visit Randy for a week and move further east, it was just a trip to Utah. I wouldn’t remember much of this trip, if not for it being where I re-sparked my Star Wars toy collecting, well and being in Randy’s basement for the Tyson/Holyfield ear debacle along with the Hong Kong going back to China coverage I watched down there too. Okay maybe I remember some stuff, but not the why of the trip.

But it’s this come back to Star Wars that is the most historic for me personally. Now to be fair I hadn’t waned that much. I knew something was out there too. It hadn’t been too long before that I found the new Star Wars figures at the drug store in the University Mall. I had a couple of the newer plastic men. I think it was Darth Vader, Boba Fett, a stormtrooper and probably a Yoda. But it was out galivanting this summer that I would just get the itch to have them all. To start, collecting them.

It was good timing too, new waves of the figures had been coming out, since the Special Editions of the films had just come out the previous months. Now Dad and I would have some fun running around the toy aisle in downtown Salt Lake City, buying all the new action figures. These figure hunts would lead to a whole bunch more in the coming years and change my bedroom from a computer hub to a toy vault.

image 97 2004 a picture of my bedroom during the height of its existence as a toy vault.

Dad of coursed loved collecting things, and this was a throwback to when I was little and he used to take me to get baseball cards. But I also remember finding myself wandering the streets of Salt Lake City on my own in search of outlets that might have a green carded Bossk figure.

Part of the spark to do this came from knowing I only had to answer to myself these days, gone were some of the hang ups of childhood, I like these toys and I was going to buy them with Dad and display them proudly in my room. No one else I knew at the time cared at all about them, this was a hobby I would do by myself. For now, and a little bit with Dad.

I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed that it wasn’t cool to have little kid toys in my room. This is not high school anymore, I can go full nerd on something and it’s fine. I can hang out with Dad and it’s okay. It’s weird that collecting a kids toy started a actual branch of maturity in me, but somehow Star Wars toys broke my dependence on peer pressure.

The sad thing here is that all summer trips to come would be of my own making, usually to the San Diego Comic Con. So, like the end of the British empire, in the summer of 1997 went my travels with Mom and Dad.

Another note for this trip, and one I start finding a lot of. The end of something normal, like summer vacation with my folks, ends without a ceremony like the one for Hong Kong. Instead it happens, we forget a lot of it and then they never happen again.

If I am smart I will try and go over more of the actual collecting part of the trip in the collecting section I made on here.

My bedroom wall post summer 1997. Most of those figures were bought in Utah that summer.

image 98 drawing of my room circa 1997 when Chris M. and I played FF7 for the first time.

On September 5th, 1997, Chris M. and I rented Final Fantasy VII (FF7) that night from the Blockbuster at the marketplace on west Covell in Davis.

Let’s take a second to reflect on the Final Fantasy series to this point. Keith had the original Final Fantasy on the NES. We knew of the game, but it wasn’t until the SNES era that FF4 made its mark on me. It was also FF4 that solidified Chris M.’s time at the L street house going forward. Chris M. even had that great big blowout over the lost experience in the land of summoned monsters during Christmas of 1993. Damn shoulder buttons! Then a little older, a little more into games, we played FF6 through a piano recital and lessons to completion. And now here we were, three years after FF6 came out with our first Final Fantasy game to hit in the fancy new PSX era.

Chris M. and I were actually wary of the switch from 2D to 3D and from Nintendo to Sony at this point. So, we called up Blockbuster Video the weekend it came out, reserved a copy and got my folks to take us over there to pick it up since neither of us were drivers at the time. Renting it was the safe bet. If the switch over was bad, we would have only invested a couple bucks into the game.

Little did we know how silly we were being. The last two games in the series enthralled us. Why didn’t we just go buy this one? Well for one the PSX worked differently than the Nintendos of the past. No more cartridges, they were on CD, so all the game saves didn’t require extra hardware in the cartridges. Instead an extra memory chip, you already likely bought for the system, was required to save the games on, like a console floppy disk in a way. The memory cards though meant we could safely try out this new generation 3D version of our old 2D friend and if we liked it, we’d still have all our progress safely saved on our own hardware. But still we were being silly, being so cautious, the writing was on the wall that we would like the game, enough to own a copy.

We liked it. Big surprise. Chris M. and we stayed up playing it all night, and into the morning, and then all night again. By the end of day one we had managed to make it to the Golden Saucer and perhaps got sidetracked from a while off the main goal. But there was some fascination with being able to go to the video game arcade inside of a video game. It for sure slowed our progress on the story down as I can remember Chris M. trying the mini games for a while. This sidetrack would keep us from getting to the end of the first disk for a little bit.

It is of course at the end of the first disk where we lose one of our main characters in one of the more famous video games cutscenes ever. However, with fatigue and Nintendo generation logic being our two guiding forces it didn’t carry the hit that you see modern gamers have when they do Let’s plays on YouTube. As I said fatigue played a huge factor since we were well into not sleeping by then and it was the norm in video games that if something like that happened it was a fake out. The story would allow you at some point to bring the character back, which made sense since we still had items for the character, and we just moved onto the snowboarding sequence.

It was an intense weekend of playing and trading off sections of the game. Finally, after Saturdays play through, I still wanted to watch the 49ers game on Sunday. It was a pivotal game early in the season, the week prior Steve Young had been knocked out and Jerry Rice was lost for the season. They were starting a rookie quarterback and where zero for one on the season for wins.

As I watched the Niners eke out a very important win that day and Chris M. started his own save on the game. When it became time to return the game, we knew our own copy was the way to go. So, we returned the game Sunday night and Monday went out and bought a house copy.

We would continue on, playing and beating the game. Now in our very late teens and with the internet we could even investigate what little hidden details we missed and play back through the game without flaws.  It was then that we hit some of the more memorable sequences to us, the rocket ship and the discovery of the “weapon” boss battles that would take a while to defeat. And by a while, not that weekend.

There was one monster swimming around at the bottom of the ocean that had us stumped. When we got online there was some walkthrough help, but seeing as the game was new to the U.S. a lot of the tips in the guides were in Japanese. We found that there was a missing spell that might help us, but we needed to access a remote island that was blocked off from normal travel. The way was through breeding our beasts of burden in the FF world, Chocobos, and that was one of the guides that was strictly in Japanese.

We had an out though. That Fall I was attempting to take a Japanese class at school. So, I got on Mother’s printer, printed the relevant parts of the Japanese guide and that Monday night I stayed after class to get the text explained to me. From that the way to get the fabled Knights of the Round summon spell was unlocked, and it was soon after that we were able to knock out our underwater rival.

image 99 Emerald Weapon combat from FF7 and the lonely island hiding the spell needed to defeat him.

The game intense took time away from other things in the beginning. I mentioned there were cutscenes. Games had these before FF7, but for some reason the ones in this game seemed bigger and better than we had before. The gameplay was generally the same as the ones before with a new system to upgrade ones characters, but it so totally worked.

The ability to dig in with the internet too cannot be overstated. Beyond just looking up hints and getting them translated, one could also download the music. Which in this endeavor seemed so much cooler than it had before with the CD quality sound. FF7 just seemed bigger, better and more epic than anything we had come across before in a game. The other FF games were big, but this one felt more real, and the fact it was on multiple CDs one had to climb through to get to the end made it seem like this was the way games needed to be going. In the end it didn’t just met our SNES expectations, it changed what we would expect from games.

Then of course there is the fact that FF7 was the last major release of a game that Chris and I ever got to sit down as kids and play like that. A lot has been said about the game itself. At the time the idea this game would have the lasting impact outside of our little world that it did was unimaginable. The game was always going to be special to the L street house regardless of the outside world. It was the last hurrah of another childhood relationship. Chris never lost contact with us, and we still have a few more months before he leaves but this was still kind of a neat way to go out. Our other Chirses. K and H both sort of went out with a whimper, or I guess with getting hated out of all social groups. This on the other hand was a memorable and fun send off.

So be a JRPG nay sayer all you want. Great game at the time, somewhat immortal. Sits up there with Civ I and SimCity for the SNES, as a decade defining title.

CD World and the games of 1997.

Gaming would have the holidays to go through, including the last great battle of the sexes Trivial Pursuit game that Thanksgiving. This year we’ve had the but the last great time with Chris M and FF7. The initial titles we’ve had with the PSX have been decent hits, ROTK4 being a big hit.

This was the first year we had enough computers to setup the dining room for a fun series of Network games for Christmas though. We also setup the television out in the piano studio too and where able to just get a lot of gaming in. Christmas day was spent with a lot of Command and Conquer: Red Alert (C&C:RA). This of course as a continuation of the RTS LAN parties that had been getting more popular, except with the family instead of the local computer kids.

This helped the C&C sequel but not a sequel up in my nostalgia banks. And that is something worth pointing out, Red Alert wasn’t a follow up to the C&C we played with the Goldfish LAN parties. It was another army men RTS on the same engine but with real world armies. Strange to go that route but it was just as fun as the original.

The big to do, though for that Christmas with the computers happened before the day itself. Marty was still clinging to some of the local chat BBSs and message forums. Somehow one of the nights before Christmas day he got in quite a pickle with a girl he was talking too online. The details are now years later a bit fuzzy, but somehow this girl and another friend of ours were somehow messing with Marty. What I remember is that Marty was losing his cool from whatever plot was afoot that night, which for Marty, I think led to his ending the clinging on to the old system BBSs for chatting it up online with locals.

The other, sadder part of the story was that the friend that was messing with Marty was so into his escapades in seeing if Marty would lose his cool to notice a rather bad domestic violence issue in the house. I don’t highlight this to call anyone out, just to show one reason why after years of doing online locally, what was left of the old system sort of became not worth saving and would push into 1998 and a much bigger focus on setting up online communities on the internet.

Christmas itself wasn’t forgettable that year, just it was a lot like the year before and the next year. The only thing I can remember being the C&C:RA games was that the PSX was setup in the piano studio. With what I think might have been a newly opened copy of Twisted Metal II but might have been from the Christmas prior since Marty was rolling around with one of the stronger deathrace cars. This stronger car prompted his mother to comment on how easy things were for him since he was driving around in a tank. To which he replied, “It’s not a tank Mom, its an A.P.C.”. Nerd.

What stands out odd about that quote though is that for all the Christmases and all the stories, that line is the only quote I know by heart from all of them. Chris calling Krystle “Big” while playing monopoly, I think at this same Christmas is close, but remembering one word repeated over and over again isn’t anything, and its more the interaction it sparked between the two that was memorable.

All that being said, we see at the end of 1997 a complete shift into multiplayer games whenever a group has formed. We haven’t gone online with the games yet, but playing with all of us at the same time is becoming more and more a focus. And while I have highlighted the RTS series of games, lost in the time is the value of the first couple of Twisted Metal games.

I am assuming we had split screen multiplayer before Twisted Metal, but man if this is not the game where I feel like we game to embrace the idea and could almost find games that didn’t have the option to be a letdown. The game itself was so simple too, get in a death car and blow your friend up. Oh, and jump cars from building to building. It was a fun game and it isn’t by accident that pre another multiplayer console game, was our go to game when we wanted to mock each other.

We would also get some of the normal quarter four games at this point. A new Tomb Raider became something for a few years in a row, and a new Madden and NHL game. I did really like my sports games, but admittedly the PSX yearly games didn’t change much from year to year, so I only knew when I got the new ones in retrospect because they print the year right on the box.

However Madden 98 might have introduced the franchise mode, maybe it was 97, one of the two has the credit for changing the mode in which I would play Madden going forward. Okay if I am setting up the holidays this much, lets get into them.

November/December 1997

So, let’s tie somethings together here. Back in 1996 I talked about the traditional board game culture that would live through the house in the late 1990s. 1997 was probably the peak year for that. Which I did cover a bit, but rehashing is important so here we go.

As I will mention over and over again Marty and Chris did always seem to have some issues going on, but it also seemed for a while that they were managing them better than normal around this time. Perhaps it was because we were all older. In fact, Fall/Winter of 1997 was probably the only time that al of us were out of High School and sort of not doing anything else.

Now for me, I always feel like the last big emotional hurrah before Chris shipped out was FF7, it was just one of those memories were so much feel in line. But the truth is messier than that, since Chris was around for months after that and for the most consistent time Marty and Chris, and JF even would be around at the same time.

This is why Monopoly took off so much, all three of us enjoyed the cut throatiness of the game, and slamming the “Meghands” into the ground while playing brought us joy. Probably somewhat a kin to the 20s of my life and seeing the younger adults enjoy playing the netdecks for MTG. The fun of being able to be superior. Superior Trouz. If I were to be honest, late summer through new years was probably the time the three of us had the most time to bond, even with all the history through jr. high and high school. Now devoid of state responsibilities we all did the same stuff together. Coupled with the fact it was harder to get them over now because their mother moved them to West Sacramento.

With the move both would sometimes come and stay for days at the same time, not just weekends since there was no school to speak of at this time. It was like I said an odd coincidence that I was transition from college to web design slowly, but I wasn’t attending much at this time while I computer-ized, Marty was applying to police academy stuff and Chris had what feels like almost a year off from the end of High School until he joined the Air Force. One of those rare times everyone had real free time.

Luckily for the three of us, my parents would feed and house us and even indulge some of our dumb needs, like the board games. So we watched a lot of TV and played a lot of games, exciting I know. Late summer had introduced us to a new show called South Park, which was a complete shock to us on how much we liked it. Being that we had lived on Comedy Central since junior high South Park wasn’t the show we were excited about when the channel had announced new shows coming in the next few months. But this one surprised us. And it was this shows closeness to Christmas that pays off down the road.

But lets get to Thanksgiving first. This year was the year that all three of us were super excited as I mentioned about Trivial Pursuit. And so it was that Chris and I got Mom to buy the Genus IV version while we were out getting stuff for the upcoming Thanksgiving week. Now I don’t think she expected us to have JF read off questions and study like we did, but the fact I remember we had to go to the Toys R Us at Arden Fair Mall to find a copy means even Mom knew this year was serious business.

This is undoubtedly the year we had the biggest football game on L street too. Pre-Trivial, while there was still light we managed to get a large game going. Now I don’t know if I have mentioned this, but L street, was sort of still is a major road to get to downtown from. Even on a holiday it will get cars. And their us knuckleheads were, getting everyone to play a game with the white shoulders of the road being out of bounds, and the street being the field.

Of course this will always be remember by the three of us for Steve allowing himself to be referred to as Maxi, for Maximum Meghand, a nickname Steve allowed since this was Chris’s last holidays at home for the foreseeable future. Who won the game? Who knows, the only victors that night was going to be the boys and Trivial Pursuit, which was still to come.

Now by 1997, we’ve gone from the giant thanksgiving in 1994 with Jake, and the fork biting and Mom worried about us singing about Poop at the table, through two more of these events before this one. We had it down, the fact that this would be the last one with everybody is sad on reflection, but considering how much I can remember of what we got in at least we went out with a bang.

That night was also I think Justin’s first including into staying up with the older boys after everyone went home. We played “peg” the Medium, which didn’t mean what you think, we just all sat in the front room and through some sort of Koosh ball at him. Later on that night we ravaged the leftovers in the fridge and played the last game of Illuminati with the old pink cards. That original version of the game, I believe belonged to Chris K. who by 1997 was long gone from any normal invites, but I still had it. Unfortunately our caveman-ing of the turkey resulted in Justin giving his cards some of the turkey back and that copy would never get used again and sort of disappeared into the void never to be seen again.

Years later, and I don’t know if I have mentioned this already, Justin would say even though we teased him mercilessly that night, since it was his first time getting to stay on with the boys that he remembered it fondly and was just so happy we didn’t treat him like a thing. Which of course was Chris K’s original term for Steve’s kids.

Now Thanksgiving was always a big deal, but more so Christmas was always an event by this time. And I’ve touched on this, or will, I don’t know where I’m shoving this section. But Marty will definitely let us all know the difference between and tank and an ATV. But one thing I didn’t go over was some of the build up to this Christmas.

And here is where South Park comes in, and Mr. Hanky, well and Terrance and Phillip. The first was a special Christmas Poo that the show introduced. Poop jokes and us in our teens, that’s the only box that needs to be checked. Now for the uneducated, South Park was an animated show that initially was done with stop motion and construction paper. So the three of us realized something, we could easily make a Mr. Hanky ornament to hang on the tree since Mom always had tons of construction paper. And that’s exactly what we did. Sadly there seem to be no pictures from that Christmas, but there center stage in the tree was Mr. Hanky the Christmas poo and the two loose lipped Canadians Terrance and Phillip. You’re welcome family.

The BBS drama was still awfully weird that year, but for Chris and I we had left that realm, so I wouldn’t really remember it if not for how heated Marty got over the whole thing, and of course the sad side story to that event. I just remember how much fun it was playing Command and Conquer Red Alert with all the computers setup that way. If somehow we could have known that this was the Christmas that needed a film backup, unfortunately these holidays have to just stay in our noggins.

After sort of writing this the first time, I found the calendar for December of 1997. While we didn’t use the calendar in the kind of detail Mom did with the one in the kitchen.  This calendar hung in my room and did get marked up.

1997 was the first “schoolish” free break. I think I was still taking some classes, but the semester would have ended already and Chris was graduated and Marty was waiting to attend the Academy. So this was just insane time at the house, which I have covered. But the calendar gives some reference. One to the fact there was a obvious countdown to Christmas day.

Some interesting stuff, Saturday’s having a mark for football. Now this is perplexing to me because I thought Saturday football stopped in 1996 seeing it up on the calendar is interesting, I don’t remember what this would have been then. I don’t really remember any of us interacting much outside of our circle at this time. The Goldfish BBS kids that were a grade below us would have all be graduated by now too, so who we were throwing the old pigskin around with is a mystery to my memory in December of 1997. The only other thing I can think of is that the niners maybe had Saturday games, or there were some sort of important NFL games on those days so I marked it.

What then is extra notable is the 13^th, which also says Raw. I had until recently forgotten about this completely. But during Christmas break of 2023 I was on YouTube watching random things and came across something I had totally forgotten about. WWF Monday Night Raw came to Davis. I think it aired in January of 1998, I may even have the exact date somewhere. But the show was that Saturday at the Rec Hall in Davis.

I think Marty and I were fully intending to go, and forces that obviously I don’t remember stopped us from doing so. However, what I instantly remembered in 2023 was that JF attended and that Marty and I watched the whole episode when it aired in an attempt to find JF. Even more so, somewhere in my storage unit I may have a VHS copy of the airing of the episode. We never saw him or his cohorts.

There is a review of this episode of Raw online, and it seems Marty and I didn’t miss much. To be honest though at that time we didn’t really now much of the storylines. JF was really the one into it. But the novelty of the situation was pretty fun, and for the next few months I started watching and episode or parts of here or there, which by 2000 is going to turn into its own story.

The next week there is an obvious note that Detroit and Colorado play on the 17^th. Coming on the heels of one of the more famous hockey brawls between these two teams in March, this game was a must watch and marked so on the calendar. Looking at the score of the game though looks like it ended in a 2/2 tie which means it might not have been the must-see TV that I was hoping for a week out from Christmas.

The other two items this week are puzzling. I don’t think Marty and I went to Reno in December. In fact, I feel like this was a plan that was hatched and didn’t happen. I am pretty sure we did the successful trip with Mike and Alyssa earlier than this planned one. For one I don’t remember that successful one being pre-planned, it was more of a let’s go now, spur of the moment kind of thing. Then B / U, that entry is a mystery completely.

But it’s really the time we’ve already talked about that is the most interesting here. The “it’s not a tank…” Christmas week. The 22^nd is a day I wish I knew more about. “Monthly play with DCN’s head day”. By now I have started my web page quest. DCN, or Davis Community Network, which I probably have mentioned a few times, was our internet provider at the time. You had about three choices in Davis at the time for internet. DCN, Mother.com which just felt like where the old Purgatory BBS migrated too for its own reasons, and then having a way to connect through UCD.

Given those you’d think we would have gone with Mother.com. Alyssa may have been working there at the time. Marty did for a short period. Almost all the SysOp’s and friends from Purgatory migrated to working there once the BBS scene started to die. But for some reason Mom got DCN. And it was with Mom’s account that all the webpagier birthed.

Now I eventually got my own account, and I don’t know how deep into things we are in December of 1997. But I can see by the entry that I, or I and Marty, or I, Marty and Chris were feed up with something and at least wanted to fantasize about making DCN have a crappy day for some reason. Oh, I wish I knew why and if we did. We had so much free time though during this particular window in time we might have done something silly in the vein of Doug and the DHS server back in 94. But I cannot say for sure, just that it is an interesting mark on the calendar.

So Hanukkah started on the next day, but obviously we had a bigger celebration in mind. National Porn Day. Which honestly was just something dumb that we thought funny to write on there. The house being run by my parents had an air of discipline to it. Not cursing, no porn. We of course were 19,19 and 21 at the time, so Porn wasn’t something illegal for us to have on the computer or be managed. But it was understood too technically not be okay.

Now of course with the BBS, we had been underage system operators distributing the stuff for years. However, with the BBSs going away and the internet having so much else to explore than just dirty images, porn was just more of a term to use to get a reaction out of people then something that was going on anymore in the house. Our adult image peddling days were over, this was just to mark the calendar as edgy, I guess.

Okay I will try my best at Christmas Eve. HAM, kill the big f? little kid day. Fake? Fat spelled with bad handwriting. I only get the Ham part. Which was just throwing a national Christmas ham tradition in as a joke to go with the newly minted love of South Park we all had on television. Perhaps the whole thing is a Cartmen reference, but I don’t get the rest of it if it were. It is my handwriting so it’s bad and it means that in 1997 I knew what that meant. I don’t know.

Ahh Christmas day 1997. Too bad we didn’t have the camcorder we got next year this year. In Marty’s handwriting right in the middle of the day it says, “National beat the Meghans Day.” This I know was marked well before the other days of the week. In fact, for whatever reason taunting Steve’s kids had become a funny inside joke with the three of us. Absolutely it was time to get our A game on for older sibling torment.

Chris got he only memorable example though when he insisted on calling Krystle, Big, while playing Monopoly. Now I have a feeling Marty tried to enjoy the idea of Meghan herself losing her cool over Tomb Raider. Since Tomb Raider 2 would have been one of my Christmas presents that year, I am sure some sort of silliness happened there, but since no doors were kicked in, meh. And by now I think Justin was starting to get to just be little brother status, which meant, he sat quietly, enjoyed his time and dodged plush footballs if we threw them at him.

So, it wasn’t as bad as I lead in with it. But it was going to be a big family day and obviously we were excited as a team. Why Marty’s name is written on the day is a little more perplexing. As dumb as this sounds, I think it was Marty’s way of staking claim to staying over. I believe at this time both boys were “living” at home in West Sacramento. Since Marty and Chris would get along some at this time, it seems weird, but perhaps they had to split up Christmas night to appease for something. I don’t know why I think Marty would stake claim this way, but it sounds about right for some reason.

But then we have Chris’s name at the bottom, so maybe it was some sort of tug of war over something else that the calendar would allow. I wrote Chris’s name for sure, but it also looks like I wrote Marty’s so who knows what the deal was with it. Maybe Marty stayed in the morning and Chris at night, that might make some sense if this was the Christmas Eve that Marty had the weird BBS chat interaction with Joe.

Boxing Day once again has a Marty note annotating it as Oliver’s Birthday. Oliver being his cat and Marty always loving his cat. It’s just as simple as that. Oliver was his cat, that he called a bunny, and he would talk about it, a lot. Then for fun’s sake to give every day something, I proclaimed it National Beer Day. I don’t think we had a drop of beer unless we went to Karl’s place or something that night.

One can also see that once we hit Christmas the X count down ends. We’ve also noted Nate and Nik’s number, this may have been to see if they were down to play football on Saturdays if that was indeed what was going on, or it might have been because I was starting up a web page for Silvara. Then we have the lovely note that Graham eats feces for dinner.

Graham, I want to say at this time was on the shit list for a bit because of his mother and her campaign for city council. This has a weird history of JF and his hatred of leftist politics. Marty and the same along with I think a dislike of Graham himself. Then there was this interaction my mother had had with Graham’s that left a taste of elitism in the rest of our mouths.

JF and Marty, of course being very into the political issue had pulled up all sorts of dirt of the electric internet, which I think people didn’t realize had all the public records available on it without much oversight and had started mocking things from the campaign. The most notable was Graham’s generous donation to his mother’s campaign, which we all found funny. Yeah, we were down on him for a couple things at the time. I would later get older and hang out a couple times with him and it was fine. But I will admit he has turned into a FB adult that likes to show off all the better things he is doing for us all on social media which is a little much. But really, he is getting mocked here for the sins of his mother.

I hope to maybe find more saved calendar items though because I don’t think I would have remembered as much about Graham, or WWF Raw normally. These were in one case a memory totally forgotten if not for finding and researching my own life. It also gives a lot more context to this moment in time.

I keep mentioning the same things. I guess that is me. Anyway I wrote things up non-linearly initially and focused on events, eras and other such nonsense in a manner than came out of my brain the quickest. And so, it seems I started off two sections about going into college. One at the end of High School and then another titled “Roaring Twenties.” Which is interesting because the first year and a half of college I am 18 and 19. But I did cover some more subjects, and then looks like a went over the same stories again. I apologize and will hopefully get this more organized over the years.

I am going to start though with a story that is out of time. So, there was that day marked Reno on the calendar for December of 1997. We didn’t do Reno that day, but we had done a Reno trip, presumably before we tried to plan one on the calendar. In my brain so much of this doesn’t make sense timeline wise, but I can logic it out as the Reno trip must have been probably fall of 1997.

For one I wasn’t old enough to go when I went on the trip. Fall of 1997 puts me at 19, so that lines up well. Mike and Alyssa who went with us are older, and so is Marty, so 1997 seems okay for then too. So this probably happened before that date on the calendar. Here we go:

Ever since Marty started into his police officer arc after high school, being needlessly technical became way too common a joke. Whereas a couple years before that my mom was driven to the brink by the overuse of the word poop, we now used negative and affirmative for no and yes way too much. With the occasional pository and the elegant suppository when one couldn’t get affirmative out fast enough. Marty while still arguing like he did at the tail end of high school just sort of solidified his ways with attempting to be overly technical on issues that, well, sometimes, he brought up on his own.

But with Chris M. having so much free time, and Chris M. and Marty always having disagreements this was a sporadic pattern at the time with him. Which is an odd way to say, we were older and haring time with Chris mellowed it out over the year.

Marty had started staying with someone in some apartments not too far from the L street house and got a job selling cars if I recall. So, he was at least keeping himself busy away from the L street house. It was somewhere along here that their mother had moved to West Sacramento, and I think that sparked both of them to hurry and find avenues out of that house. The details are fuzzy for me on that though, and I guess it’s not really my story about their time in West Sac with the West Sac kids that roamed the streets. What I do remember was that Marty was in full law enforcement mode and somewhere in here got himself a mid-90’s Chevrolet Impala, his “cop” car of choice and he called his roommate Dirto. One important memory and the other, probably not so much.

I’ll admit it was funny watching people slow down in front of his car which mimicked a law enforcement vehicle pretty well. Also, kind of annoying when you wanted to get somewhere fast. But the memory of this was that Marty decided one weekend, probably in early 1998 before his academy stint took hold and after Chris M. left, to go on a trip one night to Reno, Nevada. This ended up being a strange ordeal. For one, I was underage at the time, which led to the next issue.

Note, once again with more information, this was maybe late 1997 instead of early 1998, but I am fighting memory versus discovered evidence.

That issue being when Marty had me first bring it up to Karl and his boys at a Silvara practice, they were having, oddly at the Davis Teen Center, none of them wanted in. There was some logic to be unwound here, some of us being too young to technically gamble or drink thought it unwise to drive all the way to Nevada. Beyond that, ever since the incident Karl had with Marty that ended in incarceration, Karl seemed to not want to do things with him much or at all anymore. After that dead end, we had to just try and get the word out to as many people on no notice as we could.

Mike G. and Alyssa answered the call. This of course made me the only one under 21 on the trip. I oddly wasn’t worried, and once we got there, I was right not to be worried. When tested I was able to get my comped drinks and I just sat at my nickel slot machine for those. However, most of my time I ended up as a spectator. Marty, I believe fancied himself a craps table shark, so watching that drama transpire was amusing. But the start of that weekend was Mike. Mike got drunk, and he gambled like someone who could easily develop a problem with it, to the rest of our amusement.

Fascinated, at one point the other three of us watched for a good hour as he plummeted quarter after quarter into a machine that would just pile those quarters up and give a false sense that these little mechanical arms would push that pay off pile into his earnings. He never hit the big pay day. As for the case with me, my favorite part was laughing, the buffet and the time when we were transferring casinos and Mike wanted us all to rub “The barnley stone” for good luck. In the end Karl and the other’s prejudice towards Marty’s antics made them miss out on a fun weekend. But going forward it seemed there was going to be a lot of not getting others to come over when Marty was around.

Which is another reason things slow down after high school. Not only are people moving away from Davis, but those that stayed don’t like hanging out with so and so, and thus I have to start scheduling what I do more. This is probably why I can’t think of much interaction between Karl and Chris M. even, after high school. If I were to hang out with Karl it was usually to go over to where he was living, engage in whatever party they were having, then come home the next day and then have one of the other guys over for games and cartoons. No more mass group activities at the L street house for now that weren’t holiday events.

Because of this, 1998 will be a year of even more transition. Chris M. will trade off with Marty as the brother in the house. Marty will do so while attending the Police Academy, which will see him take the “basically living” with us line up a notch but just coming back to town on the weekends and staying all weekend and getting a ride back up Sunday night to the academy. 1998 will also be my first hiatus in college. It really marks the end of High School. People are gone and eras are over with. I’m two decades in.