Hey, gang,

I don't know about you, but "Oceans' Eleven" has always been one of my favorite films.  And, how could you not enjoy a film, which featured the legendary members of THE Rat Pack: Mr. Frank Sinatra "THE Chairman of the Board"), Mr. Dean Martin (a/k/a "The King of Cool"), Mr. Sammy Davis, Mr. Joey Bishop, and the junior member of the Rat Pack, Mr. Peter Lawford, all, sadly, now gone.

These men were all so hip and with it, that the new "Oceans' Eleven" crew, featuring that vacuous, albeit now noticeably aging, pretty boy, George Clooney, among other eminent forgetables, literally pales by comparison.

Anyway, as lifelong fans of Dark Shadows, wouldn't it be absolutely tremendous if we could each have a personal rat pack, or close coterie, if you will, of our own Dark Shadows favorites to both hang out with and chill out with?  

I'd like to have a hopefully eclectic band of DS characters to hob nob with, comprising a cross section of some of the greatest minds and wits to ever reside in Collinsport, including Bathia Mapes, Ezra Braithwaite, the Eagle Hill Cemetery Caretaker, and the somewhat younger members of my personal DS Rat Pack, the voluptuous and sensual Donna Friedlander and the always uber-cool Buzz Hackett!

Oh, it would be like Collinsport's answer to the famed Algonquin Club, having the extreme privilege of being able to sit down with this truly urbane and sophisticated group at a table in the Blue Whale, and discussing such heady topics as will Sheriff George Patterson really stay on Dr. Irwin Stillman's famed Water Diet this time or are Prof. Stokes and Janet Findlay actually more than just "colleagues" and "friends"? 

Are there any specific DS characters with whom you would like to chill out with and discuss the true meaning of life over a couple of tall, cool ones at the Blue Whale?  

Bob


   

Very sad news, indeed.

My condolences to the Hall family.  Mr. Hall was a true wordsmith and, along with his wife, Grayson Hall, contributed tremendously to Dark Shadows' phenomenal success.

Requiem aeternam, Mr. Hall

Happy Birthday, Josette!

As my dear and close friend, the Eagle Hill Cemetery Caretaker, is wont to say:

"Age is just a state of mind, I think?"


Bob

The way that Dan Curtis and the DS writers interspersed the time travel periods on the show with the contemporary story lines afforded the actors the opportunity to portray other characters, and remain fresh in their performances.  I believe that KLS once said that she particularly enjoyed portraying other characters in the various time periods, and not just having to portray Maggie Evans all of the time. Besides, it would have become extremely tiresome to see one current day catastrophe immediately after the other on the show for nearly four and a half years.

One criticism I've had about the 1897 story line, however, the longest time travel story line on DS, is how DC and the writers ended the story, seemingly, so abruptly.  I don't believe we ever got to learn what happened to the irrepressible Magda Racosi or to the stuff-shirted Edward or to the shrewish and miserly Judith Collins-Trask for that matter.   After nearly nine months, we never got to see what happened to these remaining 1897 era characters, who were always compelling, charming and, at times, even exasperating. 

As to Maggie's future with the Collins family, DS writer Dale Clark, in his series of superb DS novels, suggested that Maggie became Mrs. Stoddard's personal assistant/aide after David obviously became too old to have a governess anymore.  (I think that Dale also suggested that the unfailingly jittery Hallie Stokes left during 1970 to attend a high school somewhere out of Maine.)


Alas, we'll never know what might have happened at current day Collinwood after April of 1971.

Well, let's face it Barnabas.  Jeremiah is younger, taller and better-looking than you.

No, Josette, I never said that your Minnesota accent was more pronounced than my Canadian accent is.

I agree with anyone, but I also think that all the time traveling got kind of boring.

Vickis Ghost,

Yes, the time travel schtick did get a bit boring.  (I believe that one DS fan even wrote a serial about the Collins family during 1870 in Dale Clark's excellent DS magazine, "Inside the Old House," a number of years ago.)

However, when the then Sci-Fi Channel was airing DS back in the days before the world literally changed on 9/11/01, we all had a lot of fun with Barnabas and Dr. Hoffman's brief sojourn into the future, to the year 1995.

Gerard, one of our most senior and most insightful posters/cousins here, posted a thread in which he suggested that there might have been certain future "disasters," which Barnabas and Julia might have prevented while they were in 1995, such as HMOs, Roger Clinton and several more.

I also suggested that Mr. B. and Dr. H. might also have prevented the onset of disco music in the 1970s.  For example, I posited that if DS had remained on the air until the mid 1970s, then some truly "timeless" group, like say, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, would have recorded a song, entitled, "Disco Dark Shadows."    (Maybe the great Sir Monte Rock might have even played "Disco Dark Shadows" during a scene in that Brooklyn disco, where we got to see the eternally youthful John Travolta do his best Denny Terrio impression in that cinematic classic, "Saturday Night Fever"?)

The ultimate disco insult, however, would have been having to see Barnabas, entering Collinwood, and attired in a leisure suit. Ugh!!!

So, many of us still have a warm spot in our hearts for Barnabas and Julia's visit to 1995, albeit a very brief  visit.

Bob