The Celebs of Clearwater ’90
Thursday, April 26th, 2007
As I mentioned before, with all that was going on in my personal life, I sort-of mindlessy drifted through the 1990 Sons of the Desert convention. I was not very hot and heavy into collecting autographs at the time – although I certainly did gather a few from the celebs in attendence. As it turned out, this convention included very few: only three. I remember convention host Ron Young’s big dreams of actually getting Robert Blake and Robert Mitchum to show up, but that never panned out. Read the rest of this entry »
Yes, as ridiculous as it sounds, Bob and I took a special drive all the way to Palm Springs to meet up with a monkey on Monday, February 12. That morning we left Las Vegas after a hearty breakfast buffet at the hotel and headed back to his place in San Bernardino. On the way, we made a pit stop at Hadley’s, where he bought me my first date shake. It was much, much tastier than it sounds. After another brief stop at his house, and then running a red light and nearly getting creamed by a passing car, we headed to Palm Springs to see a monkey. 
The 2000 Seattle Sons of the Desert Convention was not the first occasion I had to meet Peggy Cartwright, but it turns out that it was the last. I was previously THRILLED to meet her for the first time during my 1992 trip to California. At that time, she was somewhat of a ‘missing’ Our Gang member – and quite an important one at that. Although she only appeared in five of the early silent Our Gang comedies, she was credited for being in the very first one one simply entitled Our Gang in 1922. 
This was my fourth time seeing Penn and Teller live, my second at the Rio in Las Vegas. I’m pretty sure no one was all that excited to see them again except for me. I’ve loved Penn and Teller since the mid-1980’s, so it is always a huge pleasure to see them perform live…even if their routines seem to seldom change. We had purchased discount tickets earlier in the day, and everyone decided to come along even though I would have understood if they didn’t want to. Our seats were up in the balcony and they were not all together – so Jimmy and I sat apart from Bob and Jimmy’s parents. 
One of the five Our Gang members who were in attendence at the 2000 Sea-Tac Sons of the Desert convention was Patsy Britten – now Pat Bell. Patsy was a recent discovery of convention host Jack Taylor and she actually lived right in the Seattle area. This was her first and only convention appearance. Patsy only appeared briefly in three Our Gang comedies but she did have a speaking role in Readin’ and Writin’ (1930). When asked by Miss Crabtree to answer the question “What is an escalator?,” Patsy responds, “It’s a great big thing that lives in the swamps. They make suitcases out of them.”