A Brief (?) History of SF Productions--Part 5
I've always been fascinated by the hoopla surrounding Presidential election coverage at the news networks. All the unnecessary gadgetry--it's like the IT dept got a blank check. So, when SF covered the 1980 election, we introduced the "NBS Election Computer", aka various handheld electronic games of the era blooping and bleeping.
We also introduced Mark Saylor to the team. I met the other Mark in high school--he had gone to Catholic school until then--and it was quickly clear to me that he would fit into SF very well. Mark would grab onto a character and start ad-libbing furiously--it's sometimes hard to rein him back in and get back to the storyline, but the ride is always fun. Bill returned as well, starting a long string of appearances.
Due to questionable election rulings, John Anderson was elected 40th President of the United States (hey, I was Anderson campaign chairman in my town--at age 16--so sue me).
Next, we made the dubious decision to tackle a major literary work--J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which we called Bored of the Rings. Eric and I both enjoyed the books immensely, and I figured it would keep us busy for awhile. We'll have plenty of time to talk about BotR in the next few entries, so I will just mention that Mike Harrison joined the team on BotR #1.
Mike is my oldest friend--we met when we were 6 years old; his mother babysat me when my mom went back to work. We ended up at different schools when I moved across town, and I didn't see him again until 7th grade. Mike became indispensible to SF, both creatively and from an equipment perspective. He really brought up our game, created most of our music, and ended up hosting many SF events and tapings in his basement. He also had his own production company (there was a whole tangled web of deluded kids in my hometown--more about that later).
Up next--more on Bored of the Rings.
Meanwhile, here's the NBS election team in (in)action.