The Boys from Angel Beach Are Here! (And the Girl Too!)
Thursday, March 21st, 2013
The teen skin flick Porky’s is a childhood favorite. You may have a problem with that statement but it’s the truth, plain and simple. Now my parents were not in the habit of watching such Rated R movies, but my Grandpa Murphy was in the habit of video recording them (among many other movies of course) off of HBO and Cinemax. This was one of the favorites that I’d pop into their VCR during sick days spent at their house when my Grandma would leave to go walking or to a doctor appointment or something. Read the rest of this entry »
I have two confessions to make. The first is that for the longest time I only knew Amber Smith from her Playboy pictorial from the March 1995 issue of the magazine. In the 1990s, her appearance alone would have been enough for me to be interested in an autograph/encounter with her. But the second confession is that I’ve matured and no longer seek out celebrity encounters with Playmates based on the strength of them being featured in the magazine. Therefore I had passed up meeting Amber Smith on a couple of occasions when she made personal appearances in the past. 
I think that I learned that I must not be 5 foot 11 inches tall when I met Kristanna Loken. Because that’s how tall she is, and she was taller than me. I remembered that she was taller, because you don’t soon forget standing next to a gorgeous blonde girl whom you’ve witnessed as a cold-blooded liquid-metal killer. And in the case of Kristanna Loken, you don’t soon forget her regardless of the whole killer thing. 
I sometimes wonder what it must to do one’s self-esteem to continually be cast as the evil villain. That’s a question I should have asked Billy Drago when I met him at the Chiller Theatre show on October 27, 2012. There must be a limited number of actors in the business who have a higher ratio of ‘bad guy roles’ to ‘good guy roles’ than he does. And clearly he does it well. I’m not familiar with a lot of the evil roles he played, but you might catch him as a gangster in an episode of Moonlighting, a corrupt deputy in Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, or most notably as Al Capone’s henchman Frank Nitti in The Untouchables. 
I stayed blissfully out of the evening TV drama scene throughout the 90’s. I simply didn’t watch them, concentrating solely on sitcoms and movies. But there was one exception and it was a most pleasant one: Picket Fences. I faithfully recorded each and every episode of this amazing, entertaining show, and watched them and shared them with friends ad nauseum. I loved each and every character, and had a particular fondness for the red-hot red-headed character of Deputy Sheriff Maxine Stewart – played to perfection by equally attractive Lauren Holly.