Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Darn you, Elam!

I've known my friend Chris Elam for about 20 years now.  I'm not quite sure of the exact date we met, but I'm pretty sure I was living in La Mesa at the time, which would put it around 1993.  so that's good enough for me.

I know he had subscribed to Xenorama around that point, and his letters were full of information about the then bewildering Power Ranger craze going on.  so much information that I asked him if he'd just like to write a regular column in the zine about the show and it's parent, the Super Sentai series.  I actually didn't really think he'd be interested, since it was just a photocopied zine on paper done once or twice a year.
I think he called me the minute he read my letter, and was enthusiastic about writing the column. this led to a lot of phone calls and he not only was knowledgeable about the Sentai and various other tokusatsu shows, he also knows comics better than I do, and has a deep abiding love for both Mid-South and the Memphis wrestling territories.

I'm not the only zine he's written for, I know his writing is in at least Oriental Cinema and Kaiju Review, plus a fan fiction story he wrote for G-Fan.    he also self published a zine called "Owari" which was always fun and deserved far more success than it got.

anyway, I wanted to say thanks to Chris for being my friend, and this rather arbitrary 20th anniversary seemed to be just the day to do it!  Chris is a good man and I highly recommend you read his blog there.

oh, and the reason for the title?  back when we would trade tapes he would send me lists of updates of new titles he had received.  and there was also something new I wanted to see, even if I hadn't finished watching the last batch.  it became a running joke with us at some point.

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