Sauntering Up the Edge of New York
Monday, February 18th, 2013
The second half of the New England road trip began on Wednesday, July 11, 2012. Bob and I had seen and experienced a great deal and it seemed like it had been forever since we began the road trip. But even though there was as much time on the road ahead of us as there was behind it, I could feel the pressure that time was pushing on us, knowing how much we still had left to see as we began the descent toward the end. Nevertheless, it was nothing worth stewing about so we pressed on as best as we could, beginning with the sights in Hyde Park, where we had just spent the night. Read the rest of this entry »
I must caution you that if you’re going to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, ignore the hype that surrounds it and don’t expect some over-the-top exciting science fiction extravaganza. That was what I did the first time, and I came away sorely disappointed wondering why nothing exciting ever happened in this film. Years later, I re-visited it, now knowing that there was nothing earth-shattering that took place in the film, but still knowing full-well that it had been critically acclaimed. After this second viewing, I came away loving the film – amazed at its depth and beauty, understanding how cool the special effects really were, even though on the surface there appeared to be none. 
Poltergeist is one of the greatest of all horror films, because it gets the bulk of its scares from general creepiness, jump-inducing surprises, and horrifying imagery. It seldom relies on any sort of gore or violence – and even managed to pull off a PG rating, so I could justify showing this film to Ashleigh and Briana when they were quite young. But there is one scene that involves a bit of gore, and it is that disgusting, disturbing scene that ultimately comes to mind whenever I think about the film Poltergeist. As you might guess from the photo above, it is the scene in which the young parapsychologist Marty hallucinates that he rips off his own face in front of a mirror. 
Although there are great many reasons that I like to take short excursions to California, the dates on which I take them always correlate to one of the Hollywood Shows. This gives me the opportunity to continue to build on my ever-increasing number of celebrity encounters, which has become my equivalent of collecting baseball cards. Naturally, the more celebrities in attendance, the greater the value in making the effort to get there. Of course I enjoy these shows for the most part, but like any hobby, they take money and effort – which can sometimes be exhausting. So once the show is over, what I really look forward is the time I get to spend with my California friends doing a variety of activities, the most common being an excursion to Disneyland. So if the title didn’t tip you off, that is mostly what you’ll be getting in this posting… 
I realize that Robert Davi’s most notable role was that of drug lord Franz Sanchez in one of the lead roles in the Timothy Dalton James Bond film License to Kill. That’s also why he was present at the Hollywood Show on January 12, 2013 – as part of the James Bond reunion. But I couldn’t help but be more fascinated by the fact that he had been one of the Fratelli brothers who plagued the kids at every turn as the worked to find the hidden treasure in The Goonies. He was Jake, the toughest of the three.