Happy Halloween

I miss Crematia Mortem.

In my high-school years (the mid-80s), she was the local ‘horror host’ on Kansas City’s KSHB TV. Some of you are probably too young to remember the time when there were more horror hosts than just Elvira. From the 1950s until the late 80s, most good-sized cities had their own horror show on the local UHF channel (remember UHF?), which would show old horror films (the Universal monster series, the Hammer films), with host segments done by a member of the channel staff done up in ghoulish make-up.

There are still a few of the guys working out there, but they are few and far between. In the 90s, the local channels discovered that they could fill the late-night time slots that these shows occupied with infomercials, whose producers would pay for the airtime.

So, now, nearly 20 years later, Halloween brings me thoughts of Crematia, who was a fixture of my Friday nights, and helped foster my love of the horror genre. She was the Ghostess with the Mostest.

(click for sound)

GMS

Cynical Conspiracy Theory #403

1) EN World announces yesterday that due to huge debts, their hosting service is pulling the plug. The site is going away.

2) Frantic EN Worlders, spearheaded by a few D20 publishers, set up a donation system to cover the debt.

3) A little bit over 24 hours later, the donations have raised over 16 THOUSAND DOLLARS…over 10 times the amount of the outstanding debt to the server host.

4) This evening, RPGnet apparently has gone offline….

Hrm.

GMS

Pirates n’ Monkeys

Just a quick update: Island of the Damned, the free pdf adventure that I did for Skull & Bones just went up on the Green Ronin site. It’s a promo for Buccaneers & Bokor, the bi-monthly pdf ezine for S&B that I’m currently finishing layout on (it’s available via RPGNow on Friday).

Check it out, and meet Captain Bobo.

GMS