Who Were Those Masked Men?
August 2nd, 2016
My track record for meeting the leading actors and actresses from the original Star Wars films had thus far been pretty darn good. Besides Mark Hamill, Kenny Baker, and of course Alec Guinness, there were only two of the so-called leading characters whom I was waiting to meet. I have no hope of meeting Guinness since he’s dead, and my hopes aren’t gigantic for Hamill. And they weren’t all that huge for the other two: David Prowse, who was the man behind the Darth Vader mask (voiced of course by James Earl Jones, whom I have actually met… but not gotten a photo with), and Anthony Daniels, who had not only played C3PO in the original three films, but actually has become the only performer to reprise his role in every one of the films – including the eighth installment currently in production. Read the rest of this entry »
Although I had met Angela Cartwright on several occasions, I had had her sister Veronica on my radar to meet for quite some time. In fact I had nearly traveled all the way to the Memphis Film Festival just on the prospect of meeting her. My friend Bob had already gotten one autograph of her for me, but that still did not satisfy my yen to have a personal encounter with Veronica Cartwright. Whey the big interest, you ask? You might say she had a triple dose of coolness leading back to her… 
As we made it near the end of the first third of 2016 (which in itself, was hard to believe), there were some happy moments and some sad, painful, and irritating moments. Out of those irritating moments spring my desire to take a break and get away for a while. Not as if going to California was anything out of the norm, but I barreled forward with planning this trip even though Carolyn couldn’t take off work for it. Frankly I had teetered with going, mostly due to high air travel costs and a relatively unimpressive Hollywood Show. But in the end, I found a pretty reasonably priced ticket that left out of Indianapolis, which was a first for me. 
It’s taken ten years, but I’ve become acutely aware of how I spend my money at autograph shows these days. At one time I insisted on either having both an autograph and photo op or nothing at all. I didn’t like paying for photo ops, but now I’ve become grateful for them because when they’re separate from the cost of the autograph – and typically cheaper – I can actually save money and still be happy. The picture with the celeb is worth a thousand words, and the autograph of someone of whom I’m only minimally interested in becomes extraneous. A perfect case in point to this notion (which I’m sure I’ve now stated a dozen times before, probably using different words) is Shane Rimmer, who made what was touted as his first ever appearance at the Hollywood Show on April 9, 2016.