For those of you who are new to Video Vulture, my name is John Tebbutt, and this is what I’ve been up to for the past 10 years:
            • Early 1990s: Begin collecting VHS tapes in numbers that would eventually engulf most of my apartment. Write “Loquacious Noggins: A non-comprehensive list of feature films in which at least one line of intelligible dialogue is spoken by a severed head,” an essay that makes me and my friends chuckle. Print up business cards that read “Video Vulture” as a joke. Sort of.
            • December 1995: Fast Forward Weekly hits the newsstands and immediately becomes my favourite periodical. Despite its awesomeness, the magazine doesn’t provide much coverage of obscure old video releases like Mad Mission 3 (1984), Infra-Man (1975), or Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988). I come up with an idea for a weekly column that will address this shortcoming.
            • 1996: Start showing up at Fast Forward’s offices almost every week, but only to pick up the free movie passes they’re handing out. Almost pitch my column idea, but chicken out every time.
            • Summer 1997: Finally work up the nerve to pitch my column idea to Mike Bell, the film and music editor. On the way to the office, I buy a can of Guinness and present it to Mike. It turns out to be a good investment.
            • June 1997: The first 300-word Video Vulture column is printed. Since I have no computer, I hand in typewritten pages that have to be transcribed into the database every damn week. Scanned images of video sleeves from my collection serve as accompanying artwork.
            • December 1999: The infamous “Y2K” column. Since I tend to ignore opportunities for event-themed articles, an incredibly sleep-deprived Mike Bell suggests that I write about the end of the millennium. He struggles to identify the one word that will describe the future after Y2K, and settles on “cannibalism.” This disturbs me. I write the column and include the entire nigh-incoherent conversation with Mike in the text. He doesn’t fire me. What a guy!
            • September 2000: My first celebrity interview, with Spawn creator and former Calgarian Todd McFarlane. My dearest hope is that we won’t run out of things to say. Fortunately, my first question launches him into an angry 20-minute rant about religion. It’s the most amazing first interview experience ever, marred only by the fact that my tape ran out, and I had to start recording over the beginning! This all takes place over the phone at the Fast Forward offices, so people are glancing at me and saying “Isn’t John supposed to be doing an interview? He’s just sitting there holding a phone up to his ear, with a shocked expression on his face!”
            • September 2001: Back-to-back phone interviews with Troma Studios honcho Lloyd Kaufman and animator Bill Plympton. I feel a colossal amount of trepidation interviewing these New Yorkers just days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but things go smoothly. Ever the outspoken iconoclast, Kaufman refers to the terrorists as “camel fuckers.”
            Also, I finally give in and purchase a DVD player. These machines are old hat by now, illustrating my cautious relationship with technology. I tend not to buy high-tech stuff until it’s cheap and ubiquitous. My first DVD column explores using the “zoom” function on Sonny Chiba’s The Street Fighter (1974) and the “repeat” function on the lead actress’s nude scene in The Killing Man (1994). Meanwhile, I’m still typing my column up on an electric typewriter.
            • August 2002: Write an impassioned plea to keep VHS alive in the face of the ever-increasing popularity of DVD. Also cite several shows that you can’t see on DVD yet, including Star Wars (released on DVD two years afterwards), Greg the Bunny (ditto) and cult oddity Blood Freak (released that October!). The article wraps up with my vision of the future, with VHS and DVD sharing equal shelf space for “a good couple of years.” Two years later, VHS practically disappears from store shelves. I still maintain that two years counts as “a couple.”
            • 2003: I finally acquire a home computer! Still, I don’t bother getting an Internet connection for a year, so in that time, all columns are delivered to Fast Forward’s door on floppy disks. Hello, new millennium!
            • 2004: After seven years of weekly columns, I run out of ideas entirely. Keep writing anyway.
            •2005: Finally get around to watching Reptilicus (1961), after years of joking about how long it’s sat unwatched in my collection. It’s pretty good!
            • Summer 2006: Desperate for living space, I finally downsize my movie collection by giving away eight boxes full of tapes to readers. Some unclaimed movies remain in the office to this day.
            • October 2006: Tom Bagley begins supplying artwork to appear with my column. I don’t make things easy; his very first assignment is to illustrate the rubber-tubing karate battle from one of the most obscure films in my collection: Crack Shadow Boxers (1978). With no visual reference material from me at all, he nails it on the first try. I am impressed to death. Tom, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship!
            • August 2007: I suddenly realize that Video Vulture’s 10th anniversary came and went back in June, and I didn’t even notice. Egad!
            Thanks for the amazing decade, guys! See you next week!