SCARY STORIES TO BAN IN THE DARK

Given history, I suppose it’s amazing I even got the chance to read SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK when I was a kid in the 90s. I was doing more reading on the upcoming documentary being made on this and learned something I never quite knew previously: This was among the most banned book of the 1990s..

Cody Meireck describes it best, 

The interesting thing that I have been encountering as I begin to talk about this documentary is the question of how I can “bill” the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. It is listed as the most banned book between 1990-1999 and remained at #7 in 2000-2009. It was #1 on the list for several years in the 1990s. In the 21st Century there are a number of other books that have taken the mantel for most frequently banned… Harry Potter is often up there, and recently the book And Tango Makes Three is often high on the list because of the presence of a homosexual couple (animals though they may be). So although Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is no longer top on the list, for the last 25 years that the American Library Association has been compiling a list, it has been a major title on the list. The original books are over 20 years old at this point, and yet they still show up on the lists amongst more widespread and known books such as Harry Potter and Huckleberry Finn. That says something.

I remember the moment I got my first SCARY STORIES book.. it was during grade school when a book fair truck came and set up in the school gym.. I found this black book with a skull on it and somehow was attracted to the concept and stories.. It became a treasure for me and then, with each new one, I would buy them up for the collection. 

The most amazing part, given history of book bans, is that I bought my SCARY STORIES book at a Catholic school book fair!  The same Catholic school that suspended me for a day for bringing a fake Freddy Kreuger glove to class in fourth grade for our field trip..  

I suppose the school’s nuns couldn’t be aware of every book that was sold. And even more, I ponder if the book seller was secretly trying to fight the pop culture movement at the time to hide these books from kids.

If it wasn’t for the SCARY STORIES books, my appreciation of the paranormal and even love of drawing perhaps would never have blossomed. I bet there’s a lot of 90s kids in the same boat as me because of this series..

A few minutes... I just can't do this television..

I watched the Kids Choice awards for a few minutes—enough time—to get a taste of the modern generation.. I’m not going to complain like some old fogey.. Instead I’ll say what annoyed me about these awards is the very things that annoyed me as a kid myself when they were on: the endless and senseless teen girl scream that echoes through the house for the duration of the event. I don’t know if the producers are piping it in or if it’s just how shrill it really is.. But the noise never changes.. 

Even back to the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That scream. That mind penetrating scream..I also thought to myself about the famed green slime tradition. Do kids today even know where that comes from? Do they know YOU CANT DO THAT ON TELEVISION? .. They know Marc Summers from a cooking channel, not Double Dare. They never saluted their shorts.. They never knew how to sing a song for Hey Dude. 

And they never knew that Dave Cut it out Coulier had an ‘experience’ with Alanis Morissette in a theater but still played Finders Keepers on Nick.

All this nostalgia.
Screaming kids.. But no mind for the history of generations who screamed before them..

As they said, blue skies, Barfy burgers..girls!

thedoomreport IT was the fun not knowing.. the idea that the truth was just ‘out there’ on the X FILES, and all of that was just fake. Right? All fun and fake.. Soup Nazis on Seinfeld and the Clinton scandals that weren’t really. Those were the days—the 90s were a decade about nothing. A decade in which we were infuriated about issues that didn’t matter. And I was moving through my teens toward 20, paying less than a buck a gallon for gas in a little Chevy car and staying awake often until sunrise listening to Art Bell with my father or friends.

Then the knowing began as I aged.. After 9/11, after floods and fury across the globe. And I began to know.. 

The knowing..
The fun all happens before that.

Thanks for the question—it made me think..

There are times I have such nostalgia for my youth in the 90s…

Monica Lewinsky gave a really, really important TED talk on bullying

ok.. ok.. ok.. I get it.

But yet, there is a part of me that wants to discredit this and completely ignore the bullying aspect. She was a part of history. As was her dress. The 1990s was the Seinfeld era, the decade about nothing. 

Bullied? I don’t know about that.. I just don’t..

Monica Lewinsky gave a really, really important TED talk on bullying

It’s time to burn the beret and bury the blue dress

Monica Lewisnky, in an exclusive VANITY FAIR story..

She expressed regret in the article concerning her affair with Bill Clinton.
She experienced job rejections because of her famed ‘job’ with Bubba..
And she expressed tears when she heard of a 2010 suicide of Tyler Clementi..

She blamed Matt Drudge and the Drudge Report for being “possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet.”

She said the public humiliation she experienced altered her life. I am sure Linda Tripp agreed.

Who sells a good pair of wind pants these days?

If you want to see the Internet(s) in its infancy, here you go

Look no further than Geocities.. This website captures some of the classics..

I myself had a few Geoshitties sites.. 

It was the original Myspace.. the original blogger..the original Facebook.. it predated Tumblr. The divorced dads and Jeep lovers from the 1990s paved the way for the personal blogs and opinionated sites of today.

God bless Geocities, and the pavers of the internet superhighway.

But Yahoo! shut down Geocities.
And now Yahoo! owns Tumblr…

Hmmm….