The Terrible Catsafterme

Although I did a decent job of remembering my last week as a camper at Woodland Altars in 1990, I had only a pathetic display of photos from the trip. It was obvious that I didn’t place much importance on photos like I do today. Fortunately when I met up with my friend and fellow camper Lee McAdams, I found that he had quite an impressive array of photos from this week at camp that he was willing to share with me. So enjoy these various poses of our group and some of me in various stages of mugging and tongue-wagging. And as you can see, I wasn’t kidding about wearing sunglasses 24/7. Read the rest of this entry »

The name Roy Seawright probably doesn’t mean much to the average Joe. But to me in 1986, he was a super-celebrity, having worked with Laurel and Hardy at the Hal Roach Studios as a special effects man. He was responsible for aiding Stan Laurel in igniting his thumb in Way Out West, smoking his thumb in Block-Heads, and wiggling his ears in Blotto. He helped design the special effects so that Laurel and Hardy could play their own sons in the film Brats and appear to be one-third the size of their parental counterparts. Since these films meant so much in my life, this made Mr. Seawright a huge celebrity and a highly desirable autograph in my eyes. Read the rest of this entry »

I met Lee McAdams during the Summer of 1988 when Shirely Yaussy, one of our fellow Beavercreek Church of the Brethren members and a close friend of our family, suggested that I might carpool with Lee to camp Woodland Altars for our week at Youth camp. Lee lived in Tipp City and immediately accepted me as a friend after I was dropped off at his place. For the next few years of camp, our names synonymous with ‘hell-raisers’ – or at least as close as you can come to that at church camp. Our counselor Mark from 1989 saw me again about a dozen years later and remembered me as ‘one of those Metallica guys.’ Obviously he had confused me with Lee. Read the rest of this entry »

I supposed I spoiled any suspense or anticipation on whether or not I ever met Donna Mills in my last celebs from 2005 posting about Thora Birch. More than one person asked me if that was her standing behind us in the photo. So here’s the answer: yes it was. But honestly I never noticed her in that shot before and have no idea why she was behind the velvet rope with the stars of the production of Casablanca. Nor did I really even know who she was until someone pointed her out…nor did I know exactly what she had done! Read the rest of this entry »