Archive for January, 2008
Thomas Benton Roberts 1980 and 1986
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
Thomas Benton Roberts was the only celebrity at the Hollywood ’80 Sons of the Desert convention who signed my autograph book twice. I reckon that I had him do this because I really had no idea who he was at the time. Later on I realized that he appeared in the classic Laurel and Hardy silent film Two Tars as the hapless victim of Stan’s gushy tomato. Still later, I found out that Thomas Benton Roberts actually meant much more to the production of the L&H films. He was what was referred-to-as a ‘stand-by carpenter’ – a less-than-glamourous term for a special effects artist. Read the rest of this entry »
More Photos From My Last Summer at Woodland Altars
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
Although I did a decent job of remembering my last week as a camper at Woodland Altars in 1990, I had only a pathetic display of photos from the trip. It was obvious that I didn’t place much importance on photos like I do today. Fortunately when I met up with my friend and fellow camper Lee McAdams, I found that he had quite an impressive array of photos from this week at camp that he was willing to share with me. So enjoy these various poses of our group and some of me in various stages of mugging and tongue-wagging. And as you can see, I wasn’t kidding about wearing sunglasses 24/7. Read the rest of this entry »
A Package of Stuff and a Phone Call From Roy Seawright
Monday, January 28th, 2008
The name Roy Seawright probably doesn’t mean much to the average Joe. But to me in 1986, he was a super-celebrity, having worked with Laurel and Hardy at the Hal Roach Studios as a special effects man. He was responsible for aiding Stan Laurel in igniting his thumb in Way Out West, smoking his thumb in Block-Heads, and wiggling his ears in Blotto. He helped design the special effects so that Laurel and Hardy could play their own sons in the film Brats and appear to be one-third the size of their parental counterparts. Since these films meant so much in my life, this made Mr. Seawright a huge celebrity and a highly desirable autograph in my eyes. Read the rest of this entry »
Lee McAdams – Pretty Funny
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
I met Lee McAdams during the Summer of 1988 when Shirely Yaussy, one of our fellow Beavercreek Church of the Brethren members and a close friend of our family, suggested that I might carpool with Lee to camp Woodland Altars for our week at Youth camp. Lee lived in Tipp City and immediately accepted me as a friend after I was dropped off at his place. For the next few years of camp, our names synonymous with ‘hell-raisers’ – or at least as close as you can come to that at church camp. Our counselor Mark from 1989 saw me again about a dozen years later and remembered me as ‘one of those Metallica guys.’ Obviously he had confused me with Lee. Read the rest of this entry »