Aw, shucks - thank you, Midnite!  If anyone wants to see, just look through the old archives of my photos from the 2003 Brooklyn DS Fest.  Fully clothed, of course.

Gerard

Lori, these are all 70s & early 80's porn stars.
Anyone familiar with them, as MB & I obviously are( )
will see the humor in these castings.

One of my jobs is as an adaptive aquatics instructor; i.e., I teach cognitively disabled people how to swim.  A few weeks ago, while I was conducting a class, with the pool filled with other classes and the deck lined with spectators, parents, etc., I jumped out of the pool and my swim suit, ravaged by years of being submerged in hyper-chlorinated water, completely disintegrated in the front, and my towel was way at the opposite end.  So there I was, trying to hold close what little flaps of material, along with my dignity, was left to get to it.  All I could say to the laughing-hysterically fellow staff members was:  "I feel like a has-been seventies' porn star."

Gerard

I guess mine would have to be Thayer David.  His voice was so rich and regal.

Gerard

Oh, all those wonderful subplots, most non-supernatural, during the first few seasons of the show!  There were so many of them, and the writers did have them simultaneously incorporate together, including with the supernatural elements, while at the same time they could stand alone.  Brilliant!  We had the "non-spooky" stories of Vicki searching for her parentage (with a blossoming romance with Frank, Jr.); which girl was going to get Burke (or which girl was Burke going to get); the falling apart of Joe and Carolyn's relationship and the development of Joe and Maggie's; what really happened in that hit-and-run accident involving Roger, Burke, Laura and Sam (and the incredible scene where the truth and resolution came out); the PEN - that PEN which ended up in more places than lost luggage on a United Airlines flight.  The only other inanimate objects which received almost as much attention were those paintings that Sam wanted back from Roger.

During those first few seasons, I wanted to know what was happening with each and every one of those subplots.  They were never enthralling and complex while never being confusing.  Sadly, as the show went more and more into the spooky realm, some of them were forgotten or tossed aside.  Eventually, few new ones saw the light of day.

Gerard

One of the Dark Shadows Alamanac books (a hard cover from the mid-nineties; I have a copy) has several floor plans of sets, from Collinwood, to the Old House, to the mausoleum, to a few others.  When you look at them, you see how incredibly packed together they were in the studio, literally what appears to be just inches from each other (probably a bit more separated than that, but not by much; a cruise ship bathroom has more space).

Gerard

I actually wrote two DS novels, back in the late '90's, in the hope that maybe they could've been part of the new HarperCollins series (and we know what happened to that).   One was called "The Watcher on the Hill," a where-are-they-now story set in the year 2000.  (Imagine Barnabas and Willie living happily in retirement in the Old House, now filled with electricity, plumbing, central heat and air, a satellite dish on the roof, and Barnabas surfing the Internet.)  The second, called "Occasion of Sin" was a massive, semi-historical epic (it ran over 500 pages) with a prologue set in 1918, the main story running from 1927 to 1949, and the epilogue set in 1967.  (We followed the characters not only in Collinsport, but also in Massachusetts [where Jamison Collins has a meeting with Joe Kennedy], to Philadelphia, to New York, to Los Angeles, to Paris.)  Though they will never see the publishing light of day, they sure were fun to write.

Gerard

I'm sending lotsa positive vibes Jackie's way!

Gerard