"Club" can mean lots of different things. When I decided to start this page in August 2015, it was initially intended to be primarily about mail-order clubs I've been in throughout my life. Which I think is kind of stretching the definition... I mean, calling a business that just wants to sell you stuff a "club" is really nothing more than a cheap marketing gimmick. But hey, I'm not the one who made the gimmick up. A club could also be, like, a nightclub... but I've never really been to such things. (Ironically, it actually involves people interacting, unlike mail-order clubs, but in a way I kind of feel like it's an even greater stretch of the word.) But what clubs should be are groups of people, usually good friends, meeting on a regular basis, usually for a specific purpose, such as to discuss a common interest or engage in an activity you all enjoy. I've never really been a part of such things, in real life, though a couple of entries on this page are vaguely of that nature. And some online groups I'll mention come closer to it, even if they're not technically clubs. I mean... in a sense, a club is just friends hanging out together, but usually people don't call themselves a club when that's all they're doing. So... whatever. This page will be about any mail-order clubs, fan clubs, discussion groups, etc., that I've been involved with, at various points in my life. (Not just older clubs that are now nostalgic to me, but also more recent or even current clubs. But nostalgia is the primary reason for this page's existence.) Also I should say I've probably been (briefly) involved in some clubs or fan groups that I don't even remember anymore, which may or may not have been important to me, at the time. (I may add things to this page if they cross my mind, later.) For now, here are all the things I can think of....

Anime video club
I don't actually remember the name of this club. It's unlikely that "anime" was in its name, because I think I joined it at least a few years before I ever heard or read the word "anime." I don't recall exactly when I joined, but I feel like it was the late 80s, maybe the early 90s. Back then, it was called "Japanimation," though I don't remember if that word was in the club's name, either. Anyway, the club would automatically send a VHS tape once a month, I think. (The tapes were mostly movies, but some were OVAs, though I wouldn't have known that term until years later.) I have no idea whatever became of the tapes I got from the club, but I don't think I have them anymore. I will, however, list them here. (Some are things I'd like to get someday on DVD or Blu-ray, and some of them are things I don't much care whether I ever see again, in any form.) There was "Akira", "Barefoot Gen", "Crying Freeman 1" (OVA), "Dirty Pair: Project Eden", "Dirty Pair: Affair on Nolandia" (OVA), "Fist of the North Star", "The Professional: Golgo 13" (the title of which should be reversed), "Vampire Hunter D", and... I guess maybe that's it. But I don't recall how long I was actually in the club, nor why I quit. In fact, it's possible the club went out of business, rather than my deciding to quit it. And actually, looking online now, some of the official American licensing years for some of those movies strike me as being a bit later than I thought I was in the club (the latest is 1995). It's possible I joined later than I thought, but it occurs to me that the videos may not have been officially licensed when I got them. They certainly looked professionally made, but I know there are bootleggers who are capable of making high-quality cases and such, so maybe that doesn't mean anything. But I really wish I had a better memory. (Or better yet, if I could find the videos, I could just read off the name of the company that produced them.)

Avatar Fans
This is a LiveJournal group for fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I joined the group in April 2006, upon the recommendation of one of my LJ friends, musogato (aka Jade), the webmistress of Distant Horizon, my favorite Avatar fansite. In May 2006, I joined an offshoot LJ group, Avatar Vids, where we would share AMVs and other fanvids. I don't recall when I stopped reading/participating in those groups, but considering it's been several years now since I've had a LiveJournal account, I guess it's been... at least that long. Probably I stopped participating before I stopped using my LJ (which was still around for awhile before it got purged). And it's been years since I've participated on Distant Horizon's message board, too. It really is a shame about that, because it was fun and there were (are) a bunch of good people (both on DH and on LJ).

BMG Music Service
A mail-order music service that I must have joined sometime in the 1980s. Originally I ordered cassette tapes from the club, but sometime in the mid-90s I switched to CDs. I don't recall when I quit the club (and it's possible I quit and rejoined at least once). But this was pretty important to me, for several years. Partly because I didn't have a lot of chances to get to stores that sold music (and the ones that did probably didn't always have the widest selection). And partly because I just enjoyed receiving mail, whether in the form of monthly catalogs or occasionally (when I could afford it) in the form of packages I had ordered. And partly because the introductory offer of a bunch of albums for free (or practically free) was just so tempting.

Brigade Lodge
In my hometown of New Sweden, Maine, there's a building called the Brigade Lodge, and in the field behind it there are (or were) things like monkey bars, a tetherball pole, and probably other such equipment. It's hard for me to remember what all was there and what may have been removed, since I was a kid. (Heck, it's hard for me to remember exactly what I saw while exploring just this summer, that's how bad my memory is.) But anyway, lots of events are held there. There used to be an organization, or a couple of organizations, called "Brigade" and "Stockade." One of them was for younger kids and the other was for older kids. I know I was in the one for younger kids, for awhile, though I don't remember it clearly. And while I think that one was Stockade, I can't remember for sure. (I never got involved with the group for older kids.) I believe both groups were run by the local Baptist church (or maybe several local churches). Surely we were taught Biblical lessons, or something. And we did crafts. (I remember making a pencil holder out of tin cans that I painted and attached to a wooden base, and a wooden plaque that I put a picture of raspberries on and then painted over with some sort of laminate, and a wallet I "made" by sewing plastic thread around the edge. Though that last one I may have done at VBS.) And we had a sleepover once (I had a Smurfs sleeping bag, I believe). And there must have been contests or something. I remember, vaguely, one meeting where awards were being given out for various things, and my name was called, and I was embarrassed and confused. (Actually, I think it was a combo of awards and other things, like maybe uniforms that members like me had ordered. Probably it wasn't an award that I was getting, so it was unexpected that the uniform or whatever it was that I was given would have been given out at the same time.) I think the guy handing stuff out asked if I remembered (whatever it was I'd done or bought), and I shook my head. That's probably one of the earliest memories I have of my social anxiety acting up. Anyway, in spite of how little I remember Stockade, it's kind of nostalgic to me, now that I think of it, as is the building itself. And aside from Stockade/Brigade, the Lodge is used for other things, like Vacation Bible School, and the annual Fourth of July breakfast, and probably other things.

Columbia House
I have belonged to at least a couple of different mail-order clubs from Columbia House, over the years. The first one was a music club, which I probably first joined sometime in the 90s. I don't recall whether I ever belonged to both Columbia House and BMG at the same time, but I think I probably did, for awhile. And like BMG, I think I quit and rejoined the club at least once. And I probably was still a member of Columbia House for some years after I quit BMG (for good). I don't remember exactly when I quit Columbia House's music club for good, but I would guess it was sometime in the early 2000s. I was also in Columbia House's video club for several years. It was probably sometime in the 90s that I started getting VHS movies from the club (though it could have been the late 80s; it's also possible I was in some video club other than Columbia House, I really don't remember). Like the music club, I may have quit and rejoined at least once. The same might be said of the Columbia House DVD Club, which I originally joined... probably in the early-to-mid 2000s. In fact, I'm pretty sure I joined before I even had a DVD player, I was just that eager. (Come to think of it, I probably started buying CDs before I had a CD player.) Anyway... by the time I joined the DVD club, it was pretty pointless to be in such a club, because by then not only did I have internet, which provided virtually infinite (and generally much cheaper) options for buying DVDs, but also I was at the time living much closer to actual stores that sold almost any title I could possibly want. Still, there was that old attractive nuisance, the introductory offer of free stuff. And there was nostalgia at play, as well, I'm sure. I probably quit the club at some point, and later rejoined, but maybe not. Either way, the most recent time I was a member of the DVD club, I stayed with it far too long, even after I stopped buying movies from the club. (Partly I stopped because I was getting movies elsewhere, and partly because I could only rarely afford new DVDs anywhere, let alone at CH's prices.) Of course, every month I'd have to tell them not to send me the selection of the month. (In the old days, this meant returning cards through the mail, but for the last few years at least, it meant clicking "decline" on their website.) And in spring of 2014, in spite of my declining movies as I always did, there were a couple of months where they sent me the selections anyway, and claimed their system had no record of my declining them. I was planning on keeping them and not paying for them, because I figured it was the company's responsibility to make sure they didn't send things that had been declined. But I wanted to quit the club, and I couldn't do that with an outstanding debt. So eventually I returned the DVDs... and later, my account was credited for one of them, but they still insisted I owed money on the other one. For a long time I refused to pay, but finally in... I think spring or early summer of 2015, I paid what they said (incorrectly) that I owed, and I quit the club. A few months later, the company went bankrupt, and I suspect if I'd waited a little longer, I might have gotten out of the club without paying. But whatevs. It's all in the past, now.

Daring Brave Adventurers
The DBA is something I made up one winter day on the playground at school. I don't remember what grade I was in or anything, but I believe I was playing king of the mountain on a snowbank. At least, that's when I think I came up with the idea. I can't recall which other kids I may have gotten to join the DBA, nor anything we might have actually done together, nor how long this "club" lasted, nor whether anyone but me ever really thought of it as anything at all. But at least I've always remembered the name of the group, and I have a vague sense of nostalgia about it. And someday, if I ever get around to writing my third book, I intend to have some kids in the book form a club with this name, themselves.

Disney Movie Club
I joined this mail-order club in March 2012. (At least that's the date on my account history; probably it's when my introductory order shipped, and I actually enrolled a bit earlier.) I'm sure I had tried to join a year or more before that, but I was annoyed to discover that they won't accept debit cards as credit cards (which is bizarre, because who doesn't do that?) And since I have never had a credit card, I was out of luck. Actually, you can join by sending a check, but I think you need to have like a physical order form to mail. I don't think I ever saw an option for "pay by check" if you're trying to join the club directly from the website, which is also annoying. And I think I did try mailing an entry once, but it didn't go through, for some reason. But eventually I tried again, and that time it worked. You know, I always say it doesn't make much sense to belong to mail-order clubs (such as Columbia House) anymore, since it's so easy and usually less expensive to order things from sites like Amazon. But there are some clubs that serve a specific niche (like the SFBC) that I think can still be cool. And this is one of those things. You could probably get most of the videos offered by this club elsewhere, for the same prices or cheaper, but the club isn't too expensive. And it does always have good deals, even if I can't always afford anything. Also it does have some exclusive Disney movies and shows that would be harder to find elsewhere (unless someone's selling them secondhand). But I do enjoy receiving catalogs, just like the good old days of my youth, with more general music or movie clubs to which I no longer belong. And the catalogs sometimes come with neat little extras, like bookmarks, or one-page calendars, or a sheet of stickers, or what have you. And, I dunno... the club just appeals to the Disney fan in me.

Message Boards / Chat Rooms
I'm going to suppress my natural inclination to ramble on at great length, and instead be (relatively) brief. These aren't really "clubs," but I think they had (or have) a sort of club-like feel, a sense of community. I'm not going to list nearly every message board I've been on since I first got online in 1995, just a few of the most important ones. One of the earliest websites I began frequenting was the Dominion, which was what the Sci-Fi Channel's website was called. There were various groups that hung out on different parts of the Dom's message board, and I was involved with a few of them. One of them included some people with whom I'm still friends elsewhere on the internet, though the Dom doesn't exist anymore. It also included a ton of people I haven't heard from in years, which is kind of sad. This particular group (whom we'll call "Diners") held discussions in various forums on the Dominion, most notably Woody's Virtual Diner. I was probably involved with some other groups on the Dom, but the most significant beside the Diners were the Rounder writers. We wrote collaborative fanfic, mostly Star Trek, and that was hugely important to me for awhile, and I miss it.
Later, various Diners started their own message boards (on ezboards, which later became Yuku). The main one of these was Woody's Diner, named after that old forum. I started my own board called Volcano Mountain (originally on ezboards, but I later moved to Proboards rather than stick with Yuku). Most of the boards aren't visited much anymore (if at all). But aside from Woody's Diner, the other major board on which I'm still active (even more than Woody's) is The Templeton Gate Forums.
A completely unrelated message board I used to visit for several years is The Adult Swim Message Board, for fans of adult swim. And for some time I went to a Gilmore Girls board (which I don't think exists anymore). I was involved in a few different groups on that, but the main one I recall was the Auteurs (fans of the character Kirk). And... what else? I mentioned Distant Horizon's forums, in the entry for Avatar Fans. And currently I spend a little bit of time on the Geek & Sundry forums. And... at the moment, I can't recall any other message boards that were important enough to me to mention here, but it's possible I'll think of others, later. Or not.
But I also wanted to mention chat sites, and the only one that was ever of importance to me (hell, maybe the only one I ever visited, I don't recall) was the Park. It included several chat rooms, and I may have frequented more than one, but surely the main (if not only) chat room I used on the Park was the Poetry Room. Although I'm pretty sure I discussed more than poetry there (in fact, probably I discussed poetry less than anything else, ironically; though maybe that was in other rooms on the site). I'm still friends with a few people from there (some of whom I may have also known on the Dominion, but we're talking about the 90s, and it's hard for me to remember every detail from that long ago). And that's all I can think to say about that.

The Music Exchange
This is a facebook group that I started in August 2010 for the sharing of music. And I dunno what else to say.

Rock Video Monthly
Like the anime video club, this was a club that would automatically mail you a different VHS tape, periodically. I was a member I think from late 1992 to late 1994. (I had a list of tapes on my site, which I later deleted but now have found using the Wayback Machine, so I remade the page. I'm not sure if this is all the tapes I ever got, but I doubt it. Probably it's just the ones I chose to keep, though I don't think I have them anymore, which is why I had deleted the page.) Anyway, each tape would have like ten music videos by different bands (and it wasn't all rock; there was also some rap, pop, metal, alternative, whatever). I think for awhile this was pretty much the only way I had of seeing music videos (aside from Video Hits), before I had cable. There were a lot of songs on the tapes that I didn't really care for, but I was exposed to a few gems that I probably never would have known existed, otherwise. So on the whole, I enjoyed it while it lasted. I guess.

Science Fiction Book Club
A mail-order book club of which I was a member for several years. I don't remember when I joined, but I would say either the late 80s or early 90s. And I don't remember specifically quitting the club, but I think I probably must have, at some point. (Or maybe I didn't. I just know they haven't sent me catalogs in years, and I can't log into their website anymore.) I ordered a number of books from them over the years, and there were always plenty of other things in their catalogs that I planned to get someday. Anyway... someday I should rejoin the club, but that's not something I'll do unless I have a pretty regular source of disposable income. (Which I currently don't.) This is one of those clubs that are maybe no longer as necessary as they once were, now that you can just order any book you want from Amazon or lots of other websites, but it's still a pretty good club, which has some of its own exclusive prints of books which can be better than the standard prints of the same books, which you find elsewhere. And I think it probably offers some things you can't get elsewhere. And in general I just feel like there's a certain geeky prestige about belonging to the club.

Star Trek: The Official Fan Club
Mainly this "club" was about subscribing to a magazine, but it was somewhat important to me for several years.

Troll / Scholastic Book Clubs
When I was a little kid in the 1980s, at school we would regularly get catalogs from Troll (see some pics at Branded in the 80s). And also from Scholastic, though that probably came in later grades. I'm really not clear on the relationship between Troll and Scholastic, like whether they were owned by the same company, or what. But I think even if they weren't when I was a kid, they are now. Anyway, it's not like I (or anyone) was ever actually a "member" of such clubs, but they're a very nostalgic part of my childhood, so of course I had to mention them. Oh, and in addition to catalogs, there would sometimes be "book fairs," where the company would set up a bunch of books at school to peruse and buy in person, instead of ordering. (Like a bookstore for kids, with all the fun of the fact that it happened as rarely as a carnival. Or Christmas.) Actually, I think that's something that happened in high school as well as grade school. And... it was always awesome. (I mean, if you're a kid who likes to read. Which I totes was, obvi.)

Vacation Bible School (VBS)
This kind of thing happens all over the country (otherwise it wouldn't have a Wikipedia article), and my home town of New Sweden is no different. It's not really a club, but this seems the best place to mention it. I think most of the years I attended it, it was at the Brigade Lodge, but it may have also happened at my church, or other churches. I don't quite remember. Anyway, it's a weeklong thing that happens every summer, where kids attend a meeting each day and learn Biblical lessons, probably also do arts & crafts, and play games and stuff. I dunno.

Viewers for Quality Television
VQT wasn't really a "club," but rather an organization, dedicated to promoting quality television (as the name suggests). I joined sometime in the late 90s, and I was a member until the group ended in fall of 2000. I still have four issues of their newsletter (one from 1998, one from 99, and two from 2000). Three of those issues include letters I had written. (I have no idea how many newsletters I received over the years, since I didn't keep most of them.) It was also in 2000 that a book about the history of the organization, by its founder, Dorothy Swanson, was published. And I'm not sure what else to say, except that the organization was important to me, and I was saddened when it ended.

The Vortex
This is a facebook group that a friend of mine started in May 2014, to discuss sci-fi TV & movies. I dunno what else to say.

Woodsorrow
When I was a kid, I was slightly fond of eating wood sorrel, though I'm pretty sure the first time I ever heard its name, I thought it was pronounced "wood sorrow," and it probably wasn't until much later that I learned differently. Anyway, at some point a friend and I made a club which I guess was just the two of us, and we called it Woodsorrow (at least that's how I remember it). And we had a little wooden model sailing ship that I think we also gave that name. (Hopefully I still have that ship somewhere, but I'm not sure.) And I think we even kept a treasury, though I have no idea what we ever did with that, and certainly we never had much money. And I don't think the club lasted very long. But, many years later, when I was writing my book "The Chaos," I named a real sailing ship in it after the model ship from the club.