The Terrible Catsafterme

The Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California, is a very nice Catholic cemetery which houses the final resting place of well over 150 famous Hollywood celebrities. The cemetery, which was founded in 1939, requires that every headstone or marker placed within its borders contains a cross. I had been to the cemetery in the past to check out the grave of Laurel and Hardy co-star Edgar Kennedy, but my visit in the summer of 2009 was by far the most extensive. Read the rest of this entry »

The last day that Bob and I spent on the road of our weeklong road trip through Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey came on Saturday, June 19, 2009. There were just a few places left on our itinerary that we needed to hit, and then there were a few select locations that had been on Bob’s to-do list since our last Ohio road trip. And finally, there were a couple of spots that we had in fact visited during that trip, but since Bob’s digital camera had dropped his photos of these places, he needed to see again. Read the rest of this entry »

Among the sea of midget actors and actresses in the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, one of the faces everyone would be sure to recognize is that of Jerry Maren. Standing three feet, four inches at the time, nineteen-year old Jerry was the middle member of the Lollipop Guild, the trio of Munchkins who hand Dorothy a giant lollipop upon her arrival to Oz. As a big fan of The Wizard of Oz, I have been pleased to meet Jerry Maren on three different occasions. Read the rest of this entry »

I had had virtually three full days in a row of traveling and sightseeing in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Charleston, South Carolina – and I was ready to spend my last day of my final major trip of 2009 relaxing in Myrtle Beach on Friday, July 31. The exhaustion I felt at that point actually allowed me to sleep a full eight hours that night before waking up to a bit of bacon and eggs…and two visitors. Read the rest of this entry »

Richie Scarlet is not a Big 7 member, but he plays one on stage. He had worked with former KISS member Ace Frehley in the first incarnations of his solo band and then returned to be a prominent player on this third solo studio album Trouble Walkin’. This album was cool in that it was technically as much of the original KISS as KISS themselves then were, as it also featured drummer Peter Criss as a guest performer on a few tracks. Read the rest of this entry »