Saved by the Skull : *** “DIGITAL DEAD”, The Grateful Dead Screen Saver, Grateful Dead Merchandising/ Delrina

If you’re seeing psychedelic swirls, colorful dancing bears and a mischievous roller-blading skeleton on your computer screen, either someone slipped something into your latte or you’ve got this Deadhead’s delight of a screen saver. With this CD-ROM (for either Mac or Windows), you can fill your idle time with visions of Grateful Dead iconography that, as any good screen saver should, practically invite you to goof off.

Of course, Deadheads get accused of being pathologically laid-back, and this is a mostly passive package. But the playfulness of the blissful, frolicking bears (two different programs) or the tap-dancing line of Uncle Sam skeletons stand up to repeated use. The more basic clock (with three possible Dead-related faces) and three variations of the band’s skull and lightning bolt logo are less engaging.

Two programs are most worth returning to. Skater Sam, Uncle Sam’s prankster nephew, dashes to and fro over your work-in-progress, sometimes “tearing” off a chunk of your screen and occasionally banging into the edge and collapsing into a heap of bones.

The trippiest entry, however, is Tie-Dye, in which ever-changing patterns of colors and shapes recall the old liquid light shows from the Summer of Love. The bonus here is that you can interact via simple keyboard commands and create your own graphics--which you can even save and print.

Somewhere, Jerry is smiling.