• We got Muffin for my 11th birthday!

  • E.T. came out, and we were treated to seeing it on a weekday Summer night, at the last minute. I was outside in front of the house when we were told about the plan. And I was so excited; we never saw movies on weeknights.

  • Journey’s Escape album was released. The girls played it in the schoolyard during recess on a portable boombox.
  • Rush’s Moving Pictures was released. My brother bought it, maybe his first Rush album, I’m not sure. But he blared it all the time, and it got my attention. I listened to it on his record player when he wasn’t home I fell in love with Rush. Some of the love was due to my idol, my brother, liking them. But at some point after 1981, I grew to enjoy them on my own terms. But before that, I started buying their other albums and wearing t-shirts. There is a photo of me from 1981 wearing one of their shirts in 3-quarter black and white sleeves.
  • Mr. Cwanger’s 6th grade class. I loved Mr. Cwanger. And I joined the gifted group with Matt Goldberg, David Gordon, and 1 or 2 other kids. We were pulled out of class regularly to do extra work.
  • MTV started
  • Foreigner 4 !
  • Echelon roller skating rink (Gorgar pinball, birthday parties). Girls would slow dance with boys to songs that had just been release like “”Waiting for a Girl Like You” and “Urgent”. But not me.
  • Mt. Misery: the Jersey Devil movie, vistiing the Pasedena Ghost Town in the Pine Barrens
  • Summer camp at Na-Je-Wa in the Poconos. It was generally bad time with my bunk makes hating me and calling me a Nazi because of my last name (it was the first and last time I remember being picked on, or bullied, as it is called today). But the best parts were:
    • Making my first real circuit with blinky-lights. It is a purple heart with two flashing LEDs that I still have today. I gave it to my mom who wasn’t sure what to do with it. My father taught me how to solder before this, but it was always repair work. This was the first time I created something with electronics, and I remember the teacher well (an older man with gray hair who guided me in soldering the 505 timer chip).
    • Damn,  I forgot.
    • bad part: the counselor stabbing me with his electric razor after he found my playing with it (I was fascinated by the electric motor because I’d been playing with electric motors with 9-volt batteries before camp). I was bleeding and still have the scar under my chin,
  • Dungeons & Dragons!
    • Another inspiration from my brother. I “dungeon mastered”  for Chuck Trobman, Scott Mazer, and (at times) Mark DeCheser. Jan Robbins was too silly to play. I played Rush’s “YYZ” and Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now” during play for ambience. Both of those songs have a certain mood that fit the milieu. It didn’t work so well because Scott asked that I turn the music down, but I had the right idea. Playing mood-specific music is what all the kids do now apparently.
  • Heavy Metal the movie
    • I can’t underestimate the influence of this film. I saw it on HBO or Cinemax late at night. Both of those were new for us: we’d just gotten cable TV (with MTV) that same year. I’d never seen nudity let along animated nudity. And the soundtrack included Journey, Blue Oyster Cult, etc, bands I was already listening to or soon started listening to (and also saw in concert).