One thing leads to another

Hey, speaking of weird, unsettling noises that should never have ended up on the finished records of professional musicians aided by technologically competent recording engineers, do you all remember the Ohio Players hit single "Love Rollercoaster"? Sure you do, if you spent any time at all in a skating rink or disco in 1975. There's an urban legend that an audible scream on the song is that of a woman being murdered when the song was recorded.

It isn't what you think.

Yes, there was a scream but nobody was murdered. We know, we were there. We had rented an apartment next door to the Players' recording studio in New Jersey (go figure).We were trying to track down the first known video pirates who had somehow produced bootleg copies of "The Exorcist".

We owned one of the first VCRs. It cost $4000, weighed 120 lbs. and the only movie available for rent was "Zardoz".

Jeff was screening one of the copies and let out a blood-curdling scream when something startled him.

"Movies don't scare me", he scoffed. "A mouse ran across my foot...I mean a rat. An enormous rabid, rat. He got up on his hind legs, making him four...no, six...feet tall. Everybody knows New Jersey is home to massive, diseased rodents. He hissed at me whilst baring blood-streaked fangs. I screamed...yelled... to scare him off because if you guys saw him you'd shoot him or kick him out of a window. That's all."
"So... we shouldn't try to kill giant rats with rabies?", I asked.
"I'm saying you two tend to overreact every time you see something strange, like an innocent little girl's head turn completely around while she's projectile vomiting and saying the most awful things."
"Little girl? I thought we were talking about a rat", Michael said.
"Shut up!"
The Ohio Players came over to make sure everything was okay. We made friends with those guys quickly after this exchange took place between Michael and drummer Jimmy "Diamond" Williams:

MICHAEL: If you guys are the Ohio Players, why aren't you in Ohio?
JIMMY: I don't know; if you guys are The Unbelievables,why aren't you at Disneyland?
MICHAEL: Point taken.

They really liked Jeff's scream and asked if they could leave it on the record. We were honored and didn't give Jeff a hard time about it because it was the '70s and people went around screaming about different things all the time.

Childhood Memories

Memorieeeees...light the corners of mah mahhhhhhhhnnnnddd...

Oh, hi folks. Jeff here. As Clark so rightly said on Monday, we do have fond memories of childhood. For example, the first time I met Marissa...

Wow. I had forgotten how much she used to look like a goofy Natalie Portman. But she clearly dug my style.

And the first time I met Michael...

Debonair fellow even then.

I remember also the first 'official' photo session.

Double knee denims were our idea, by the way, folks. Essential for when you're hiding in a crouched position for hours on end. Comfort is paramount.

I even remember an early case. We met a pair of beguiling twins, Greta and Gerta Klumpmasterflash.

They looked a lot younger than they actually were. This was Junior High.

Greta and Gerta were sweet and funny and charming, and Michael, Clark and I almost came to blows over who was going to take which one to the sock hop and which one of us fellas was going to end up as the gooseberry.
Sadly, what we did not realise right off the bat was the fact that the Klumpmasterflash Twins were evil. Pure evil. One day, we showed up and there they were, in full 'evil twin' garb.

Bad. Ass.

That didn't stop us from wanting to date them, though. Those gals was purty. But they were up to no good. They had bad news written on them like a Washington Post headline. We hadn't realised that the whole time we'd been chasing them, wooing them and generally being goofy teenage boys about them, they'd been studying our every move, finding out about all our secrets and using this info to gain favor with our early nemesis Henri Petit, that little brat!

Lil' devil.

Well, we are pretty sharp, you know, and Petit isn't, so as soon as he started making cardinal errors such as bragging to us about all the dirt he had on us, we made the connection and ditched the ladies. Actually, what Petit said to us was the childish "I know something you don't know!" which was a stupid thing to say. We knew all the stuff he knew. It was about us! Doyyy!

Nope, when it comes to the ladies, we were better off stickin' with our best gals - like Laura here.

Laura had skills. Laura could LEVITATE.