...who's ALWAYS pleasant, ALWAYS has nice things to say, ALWAYS posts pretty birthday messages for everyone, AND has more posts on here than anyone in their right mind should!!    (just kidding)



Happy Birthday, Cassandra!

love
Connie 


PS - I KNEW it was your birthday today and TRIED to get on here before midnight but didn't quite make it!  LOL  ....but almost   

Yes....yes.....

I was messing with the calendar section.  Wanted to see how it worked.

Well, as I said, if one was to strip away the columns and the porch from the Spratt house, it would have been just as boxy as any house built in the Georgian style:
(picture)
In fact, it would have been far less interesting than the Lee House.

Ah....I like that picture of the Old House.
Yeah but it doesn't look as boxy because of the columns and the what d'ya call it design along the roof, etc.  I've always thought the house was rather unusual because it actually looks like a fairly small house when you take away the grand structure around it.  And it sort of fits with the modest size rooms that the sets conveyed.  That column between the drawing room and "foyer" also gives the interior an interesting, unique feel.  I've never seen a picture of the back of the house.  Do any exist?  Or any info about what the inside was like?

....It would have been extremely unlikely. Throughout the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, colonial architecture was firmly based in the current styles in England.....

Unlikely, but it COULD have happened, right?  Like you have some eccentric guy with money who just loved that type of house and decided to build one in Maine??

Thanks for all the historical info.  It's interesting.  I've now been paying attention to some historical houses about half a mile from me.  They were built in the 1700's and 1800's.  I think at least one has a plaque that says 1683 or something.  They're boxes -- quite uninteresting (at least to me).  There's one that appears to be made of cement that's quite stark and grim-looking -- very bland.  I can see why the powers that were, chose much grander, more interesting houses for DS.

...Carlotta explains to them (in unscripted dialogue, mind you) that,  "Collinwood was built by Joshua Collins in the late 1600s." HUH!!    If Collinwood had been built that early, why the hell was there a need for the Old House - and what the hell year was it supposedly built?...

Whoa!  ROFL
I never even paid attention to what she was saying.  What do you mean unscripted?  Someone just threw it in at the last minute?

But hey, why should the houses in the movies make any more sense than most of the other things in the original DS universe? 

Hmm.  Well, it IS sort of important to me.  (Why, I don't know).
I guess since there's so much other nonsense and unreality in the show, somehow if everything ELSE were "authentic" it would sort of lend some credence to everything.  Does that make any sense??  LOL


Funny, it's kind of bumming me out to know that the houses aren't realistic in terms of the timelines in the show.

Hmm.  I can't see Barnabas living in either of these places.  The front view of the Iron Works House, maybe.  But those ceilings have got to go.  Both houses are too boxy.  From the outside, that Lee House looks like a town hall.  Granted, the rooms are beautiful.
Ya know, I couldn't get with Lyndhurst as Collinwood in House of DS.  They just didn't look right living there.  I can't get away from the Old House and Collinwood sets on the show.  There's an intimacy to the rooms that is lacking in these huge rooms at these "real houses".

Is there NO way that someone in New England in the 1700's would have decided to build themselves a house that looks like the Old House?  I know nothing about architectural history.

 

....I would crawl over broken glass in a darkened alleyway through South Boston to see Grayson in that part!

REALLY??  And in a dark ALLEY???




 

....and I say, move over Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft in "The Graduate", because the sultry chemistry between the stud pup vampire Tom and our mature, tough but vulnerable Julia makes the screen sizzle....

Sandor,
On more than one occasion my daughter and I have talked about how we would have LOVED to see Grayson in the role of Mrs. Robinson!!

ANYWAY, my growing fondness for Don Briscoe, all the talk about Tom the Vampire, and the interesting montage, make me really wish I could see these shows.  I don't remember them and I don't have these episodes on tape.

Can somebody tell me the online address for MPI?
I went looking for it earlier and couldn't find it.  I'm hoping maybe the tapes are pretty cheap now??

[ psst, trees are plants (IMG) ]

Uh......um.......this is true!  You're absolutely right.  LOL

But YOU know what I mean -- a tree -- a big thing with a trunk and bark, as opposed to a bush, or some flowers, or ivy, or whatever.  Oh the hell with it.  I think I need to read up on tropical plants.  I wouldn't know a sago palm if it fell over on me.
All I know is, I've always wanted to live in a tropical paradise, like Bora Bora or something.  I absolutely despise the cold.
I bet if the Collins family had lived in Hawaii or some such place, they would have been in a much better mood!!!



Mrs. Johnson answers the door.  There stands Barnabas with a big smile on his face.

"Hello!  I'm Barnabas Collins - a distant cousin.  YOU know.....from the San Diego branch of the family!"

The plant in the photo is either a palm or a cycad-- it's hard to say which without seeing more of it-- but it does scream "tropical!"

What's a cycad?  Is that a plant or a tree?

You know what else they have to be careful about when filming something in California that's supposed to take place in the east?  The time of day at the ocean.  I've noticed on more than one occasion on film, it's supposed to be sunset in the east and they've got the sun setting over the ocean.  LOL
Sun setting over the ocean at Collinwood would NOT be a good idea! 

It's supposed to go THIS way.....

Sunrise at the Jersey shore:




Sun setting over the dunes (looking west):