Wow.  That store sounds like a fun destination for a field trip!

We do have a Halloween store in Davis Square here in Somerville. It's just like a Xmas Store but open in Oct. instead of Nov./Dec.  Last year was the first year for it and they've brought it back this year.

I'm hoping to have the chance to visit it tomorrow and, if so, I'll report on whether the clientele is as colorful as the one you describe.

G.

What a fascinating interview.  I'm in complete agreement with his critique of the final product of the pilot.  Interesting detail about the lighting of the prosthetics.

I haven't really been paying attention to the discussions about that pilot and didn't realize that it was directed by someone named PJ Hogan.  Sounds unfortunate.  Someone named John Wells who apparently walks on water was always mentioned in the initial stories I saw about this project.  Too bad the "WB" did not hire someone to prepare Hogan properly for coming on board, but his attitude sounds very typical of what I know about the industry today and exemplifies just why, in my opinion, it is dying a slow and distasteful death...

G.

The hair, the threads, the tude--the fact that he once said to Barn, a propos Maggie Evans:  "Hey, you DIG her, man!"--Jeb Hawkes, now and forever, will always be my favorite Pennock character.

But ask me what his best performance on the series was, and I'll line up with the others and vote for Gabriel (in RT 1840--the other one was fun as the drunken spoiled brat who went off the cliff, but nowhere near as nuanced a performance).

G.

How sad.  I stopped checking it a couple of years ago, but I remember it well.  I remember the delightful surprise back in the Nineties seeing that not only oldtimers like yours truly were enjoying the show, but even "today's people of the Now Generation" as we used to say in the Sixties.

G.

I love Liz's various showdowns with Laura.  The two women have a few excellent, sharply written and directed scenes in which Liz works that vein of icy gentility of which she was a past mistress--"the freeze," Luciaphil calls it in her brilliant commentaries.  And, it's almost as fun watching Vicki be devious and mordant with Laura when Vicki's cottoned on to Laura's game with David.  Great stuff.

Liz's scenes with the Mitchell Ryan Burke Devlin in the 1966 storyline are fabulous stuff, too.  One of the things I love about the Leviathan storyline is the return of the armor-plated matron in the person of LeviaLiz.  I just love the scene where she "welcomes" Willie upon his return to Collinwood.  Bennett and Karlen played that one with brilliant panache.

G.

I do urge fans who haven't seen them to check out the original Laura Collins storyline shows from Dec. 1966-March 1967 (and it then segues very neatly into the introduction of Barnabas).  There's such an eerie quality to those shows.  I think if I had seen the part as a child where Liz disturbs Laura while she's casting one of her spells at the fire and we see a dramatic, snap close-up of Laura's death-glare (it showed up here once as a floatie! now THAT was frightening), I would have had horrible nightmares.

In many ways, Laura's story was a dress rehearsal for how they handled both the original Barnabas storyline, and Cassandra's story in the following year.  Cassandra even wound up wearing one of Laura's old dresses!

Even before Laura, though, DS was anything BUT another soap opera.  The only way I could prove this is to upload some episodes from Days of our lives from 1966 to show you.  From the beginning, DS was something very special.  So moody and atmospheric.  I really love the early months of 1966 but it's more character based and the spook moments are very judiciously paced.  (I'm watching an English series from 1979, Sapphire and Steel, right now, and there's this story set in a haunted railway station that really reminds me of the 1966 DS in how it is paced and performed.)

G.

Jonathan Frid's 1967 letters to his Mother mention that Dan Curtis told him in August or September of that year that they would do a going-back-in-time storyline to show the origins of Barnabas.  Decisiions about major plot points such as this were ALWAYS made by Dan Curtis up until late in the game,perhaps around the Summer of 1970? when Lela Swift started producing the show and she is on record as having come up with a certain notorious plot twist in 1840...

G.

Ye Gods, I wish that ship had been called the Witchie Queen.

I'm just imagine Grayson trying to say "Barnabas!  Barnabas! It's the... the Witchie Queen!" with a straight face, and totally losing it.  Priceless.

There is a whole narrative set up in the Summer of 1970 sequence that gets trashed once they actually arrive in 1840.  Of course, only one month away from 1795, they had set up a very elaborate narrative for Barnabas, Jeremiah and Josette in the 1830s that never, ever saw the light of day, so it would be unfair to cast particular aspersions on the writers in 1970--the ones in 1967 wandered just as far afield in their embroideries.

G.