Ulysses S. Grant and Me
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
Our 18th United States President was a prime example of a military hero being elected into office without the proper credentials to exercise the office of Commander-in-Chief. Ulysses S. Grant held office from 1869-1877 and was the first President to serve two full consecutive terms since Andrew Jackson forty years earlier, but his most notable achievement came before office, when he led the North to victory as General of the Union army during the Civil War. It was based on this popular public reception that soon catapulted him into the job. At the time, he was the youngest man to assume the Presidency and had never held public office before in his life. Read the rest of this entry »
Among my many favorite films is the 1988 Academy Award winner for Best Picture Rainman starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. My friend Garry from work had clued me in that a restaurant that appeared in the film was located in the greater Cincinnati area. So when I drew up the plans for my day-long Cincinnati tour a full ten months or so before actually embarking on it, I made sure that a stop to this restaurant – Pompilios – was included in the itinerary. 
I don’t think that anybody would argue that despite Barry Bostick’s one-hundred or so roles in films and television, his most notorious appearance came early in his career when he portrayed Brad Majors – a hero – in the 1975 ultra-cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. His second most notable role was as Mayor Winston in the popular Michael J. Fox sitcom Spin City. Of course, I am not the average fan – so I naturally have chosen a completely obsure role to call my very favorite. 
When I first began to plan my October 2008 trip to California nearly a year before it took place, there were four goals that I had in mind which I hoped to accomplish while there – and I had no idea if any of the four would even be possible to arrange. Soon things began to really take shape and not long before I left, I had made arrangements to make three of them actually happen – and these all will be covered in this series of postings. I will go ahead and tell you the fourth since it didn’t happen: an old high school friend is employed by NBC in the publicity department and I had hoped to set up a private tour of the facility and sets. She didn’t seem to think that there was anything of interest that she could show me (or perhaps she just didn’t want to), so that prospect was quickly nixed. Turns out her job took her to New York before I even arrived in California, so it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. 
The Sons of the Desert convention was now over on the morning of Sunday, July 13, 2008 – but there were even bigger fish to fry in Europe. We had spent a wonderful week in Holland, preceded by a day in Germany, and stops in Belgium and Luxembourg – all of which were fabulous (with the sole sore spot being that I never found a magnet in Belgium). We had arranged for a cab to pick us up at 11am that Sunday morning from the Hotel Avifauna. Originally we were going to leave from the train station in Alphen ann den Rijn, but due to some maintenance going on, the station was closed that morning.