Ladies and Gentlemen...The Palace Showboat Players (2010 Edition)

It's been close to a month since the magical land known as Pollardville ( or what was left of it) has been demolished into history, lock, stock and barrel-or theater, ghost town and restaurant. All that remains is the tower that once a mighty chicken stood at its tip like an angel on a giant Christmas tree. It's the end of the Ville as we know it.

As an ex-Ghost Town gunslinger and former Palace Showboat Player, I found it sadder that Pollardville sat in decaying ruins for the past several years than when it was finally put out of its misery. After the last Pollardville reunion in 2007, it was tough to say goodbye, but I made my peace with it and walked away, never to return. I wasn’t there for the demolition either and didn’t really want to watch any news footage since I thought it might be like watching the autopsy of a close relative. Curiosity won out and I relented, observing the process online from the Stockton Record website while fellow Pollardvillian Tom Amo, one of the few who witnessed the event, gave the last words on the matter to the various media outlets on the scene, like this one here.


But rather than give yet another obituary on the Ville, I recalled that back in 2006, I posted another blog, not about the past, but more about today and the accomplishments of my comrades in arms. (That post, if you are inclined to read it is archived as: There's No People Like Show People) I've noticed that. as of late, my friends are in a very creative period and I for one want to not only applaud them but toot their horns like the Tijuana Brass.


In recent months , I've mentioned our first Oscar nominee, Jeremy Renner of THE HURT LOCKER as well Grant-Lee Phillips, now touring the Planet Earth as a real-life traveling troubadour, kind of a riff on his character on GILMORE GIRLS while promoting his latest work
LITTLE MOON.


Here's an update on what some of the rest of that ol' gang o' mine is up to these days:

Our first Emmy winner, Bill Humphreys, has made his big screen directorial debut with JUST SAY LOVE, now hitting the festival circuit across the country.


Christian Berdahl continues to have considerable success in the Christian market. (Yes, Christian the Christian. I get it. So does he.) His latest release is THE APPEARING-HEAVEN'S LAMB.

Kim Docter Luke is quite an excellent writer in her own write (boy, can I turn a phrase) with 2-count 'em-2 one act plays (ALL SKATE and THE EDGE REVISITED) in 2-count 'em-2 separate theaters in San Francisco. Check out some of her recent blog posts at her spot on the dial called
MADAME LUKE . That is, unless she's out on the roller derby track as her alter-ego Mildred Fierce, a proud member of the Santa Cruz Rollergirls.

Charlee Simons has just scored the coveted afternoon drive DJ gig at Sacramento's FM country station 101.9-The Wolf as well as running his own production company Good Boy, Buster Productions.

Jim Walsh is helping put together the Peace and Justice Network (PJN) ins Stockton.

Matt Kenney's still rockin' SoCal venues with The Matt Kenney Band.

In Northern California, bassist extraordinaire A.J. Joyce and John "Wizard Fingers" Wilder are kickin' up the jams with their various respective gigs.

Then sometimes something comes out of the blue that you never expected but it makes you immediately rise to your feet and start cheering. Our own Scott Duns has pulled off what most of us have dreamed about ever since we were able to dream at all. He has just completed his very first starring role in a feature film, BAD FAITH, a film that he also written, directed and produced. This is the epitome of a true labor of love that you not only have to admire, but to also respect. To top it off, the Duns kid is having a private screening at the classic cinema known as the Crest Theater in Sacramento. Nothing could be better than that.

This is but an sampling of the few, the proud, the talented that passed through the Pollardville portal at one time or another. There are several others that have performed in one form or another since their stay at the Ville and have had their own triumphs that are equally well-deserved. They only need to stand up and be counted so they too can get the applause they deserve as well.

As the Ville no longer exists on the physical plane, its spirit still lives on thanks to its ongoing legacy known as The Palace Showboat Players.

Long live the Ville.

The Canyon Kid Rides Again!

"This here's a song of the lone prairie

It's a tale of woe and of misery

It's a tale of right and a tale of wrong

All about the weak and the very strong"

(sung to the tune of BURY ME NOT ON THE LONE PRAIRIE)

So begins SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE or POEM ON THE RANGE, a western comedy melodrama originally written over twenty years ago by yours truly and produced on the stage of the Palace Showboat Dinner Theater at Pollardville.


When the straight shooting, and guitar strumming singing cowboy hero known as The Canyon Kid, returns to Dirt Clod, Missouri, he finds his hometown in the grips of a tyrannical albino “hanging judge” named Basil Kadaver and his evil co-horts, including the slinky gypsy seductress Nastassia Kinky and her half-wit brother, Two Gun Boris. To make matters worse for The Kid, he also discovers that his childhood sweetheart, Darla Darling, is engaged to Dalton Doolin, a known desperado who is now the town sheriff. The action culminates in a knockdown, drag out slugfest on the streets of Dirt Clod when justice at last triumphs and The Canyon Kid saves the day.

Yeah, it was a hoot, all right, at least that's what the critic for The Stockton Record said. It was the best review I had received up to that point.

SOTLP (aka SOTLIP) was actually the best melodrama script I ever wrote. It represented the culmination of everything I had learned up to that point at Pollardville, the place I had considered my "college". You see, I got to do everything I ever wanted to do in show business at the place we called the Ville-acting, writing, directing, producing, stand-up, singing, dancing, improvisation and so on and so forth. This included my apprenticeship as a stunt cowboy performer in Pollardville Ghost Town all the way to my post-graduate studies as the writer/director/master of ceremonies on the Palace stage. It was the best time of my life and SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE was pretty much my grand finale.

It began as a possible running character in the Ghost Town, though it never got out of the idea stage out there. The character of Two Gun Boris, however, did end up in one of the gunfights, since it was written specifically for Grant-Lee Phillips who was working there at the time. But I knew that The Canyon Kid needed to be the hero of a melodrama and so it began. Previously, I had co-written LARUE'S RETURN with my best friend Edward (Max) Thorpe and had flied solo with THE LEGEND OF THE ROGUE which Bill Humphreys had admirably interpreted on the Ville stage. Ed had concocted the initial story for LA RUE before our collaboration while the script for LEGEND actually only took me a week . But SONG took a few years to put together. I had an idea here and an idea there, but nothing came together.

Then I hit on the idea of the albino hanging judge as a villain, probably inspired by Stacy Keach's character Bad Bob from John Huston's LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN written by John Milius. (Yes, I just mashed Bad Bob and Judge Roy Bean together and came up with an albino hanging judge. I always was the clever boy) Some of the early drafts involved a lot more about Judge Basil Kadaver that, unfortunately, got lost in a fire. There had been a great scene involving the judge as a baby, throwing a hangman's noose over the side of his bassinet. I never could recover those bits nor could I muster up the inspiration to recreate them, unfortunately. The other characters that popped out of my head-Charlene Atlas, the female blacksmith and Two Gun Boris' hot as balls gypsy fortuneteller sister, Nastassia Kinky, more than made up for it.

I was off and running after writing and directing three back-to-back vaudeville productions at the Ville as well as assisting my mentor Lou Nardi with his two shows. Finally, SONG was starting to take form and in early 1987, I finally finished my lil' ol' magnum opus and was allowed by producer Goldie Pollard to direct it as well. (I think this was more economical this way-getting a script and a director for one lump sum-but an opportunity is a damn opportunity and I am eternally grateful for the chance)

Casting the show as easy as pie and I couldn't have asked for a better cast-EVER. Greg Pollard was the aw shucks epitome of The Canyon Kid. Bob Gossett fit Judge Basil Kadaver like a glove. As an albino, he looked just like a walking skeleton. Elaine Slatore was dead-on perfect as Nastassia, as funny and sexy as only she could be. Two Gun Boris was claimed and owned by John Himle. No one could have been better Dalton Doolin than Tony Petrali. Layne Randolph and Paula Stahley as the Mayor and Charlene were on the money. The came two actresses out of left field. Suzi Yelverton, all of fifteen years old, played the heroine's mother without a hitch. Then, for my heroine, Darla Darling, I had the pleasure of directing Leslie Fielding in her one and only Pollardville show. She was underplayed her role to perfection, a stark contrast to the regular melodramatic heroine which caused her to elevate her character to new heights.

At the time I was directing SOTLP, I had been immersed in two other projects at the same time. I was working as a second assistant director on my first feature film RETURN FIRE: JUNGLE WOLF II (a story I'll save for another day) and producing/promoting/hosting my very own comedy open mike night at the Ville, an off-shoot of my burgeoning (and was it burdening?) stand-up career following my first place showing in the one and only Stockton Comedy Competition. I was really running myself into the ground fast. In fact, I collapsed from exhaustion about five weeks into shooting. Oh well. I needed the rest apparently.

While recovering, I had a brilliant idea of an ending for SONG-a fight scene to beat all fight scenes, one that would involve every member of the cast and from everywhere in the theater-on stage, off stage, in the audience and so on. And so it was. The Canyon Kid fought Dalton Doolin. The Mayor had it out with the Judge. Darla and her mother took on Nastassia. And finally, Charlene punched it out with Boris. They all duked it out in the name of entertainment. It was my version of the BLAZING SADDLES fight and put this show over the top.

SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE opened November 6, 1987 and ran until May of 1988. What a great run and, if I say so myself, what a great show. Bob Gossett recently ran a copy of SONG on Portland cable access. While the video and sound quality was crude, it still holds up.

Now twenty years later, I expanded the script a bit (kind of George Lucasing it into a "special edition") and published it.

The cover sure do look purty, done it? The cost is $8.95 for paperback and $5.00 for a download e-book. Performance rights are available too since this was the whole point of publishing it to begin with. Well, that and to satisfy my long beleaguered ego. (Okay, everybody, in true melodrama style give me an "AWWWWWWWWWWW...........") Since LARUE'S RETURN has had some success on stage, I t felt it was high time to get SOTLP out there so others can enjoy it as well. Yes, I'm damn proud of my work. What of it? More info about performance rights can be obtained by e-mailing me at: writtenbysc@gmail.com

To buy SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE or to read a free preview, go to my storefront at:

http://www.lulu.com/scottcherney

Until next time, pardners, happy trails to you, until we meet again...

(Sorry, Roy. I couldn't resist)

That is SO Last Year-Part One

Hi kids! Ed Barbara, Furniture USA! We wanna get you started in the credit world!

(Anybody remember this relic from the Guido museum in 1970s late night TV?)

Yeah, it's time for me to pontificate on the year known as Two Thousand Seven or as some tools might say Twenty Oh Seven. I used to have a boss that called 2001: A Space Odyssey
"Twenty Oh One". It really irritated the shit out of me. (Honestly. I had the cleanest colon in town back then.)

Personally, 2007 represented a time to move on (and I don't mean dot-org). Much of what occurred last year pushed, coerced and even encouraged me to wake the hell up and get on with my goddamn life. My own mortality seems to have awakened from a restless sleep and hasn't been in a very good mood since. It's kicking my ass to cut off a lot of dead weight that has been distracting me and holding me back. But it's also allowed me the freedom to embrace what is good and important from my past, present and what I still maintain will be my future if I don't fuck it all up. The clock is ticking...and it doesn't give a shit.

The biggest personal events of the year revolved around the loss of two great loves of my life-Pollardville and its Queen Mother, my beloved Goldie Pollard, one of the best friends I ever had. I was blessed with opportunity to say goodbye to both before the end came, but I can't help but want more. Still I am grateful for what I was able to accomplish in my trip to the Pollardville reunion, especially for the chance to see the best people I've ever known-the Palace Showboat Players. The Ville saga continues, not only in this blog, but also in the website, http://www.showboatreunion.com/ which includes a lot of new material about that wondrous place. Confronting the demise of that wonderful institution has caused me to love that much more and cherish its memory forever, just as I will Goldie and all my Pollardville family.
The celebrity gravy train finally derailed, making casualties of us all. Anna-Nicole, Britney, Paris, Lindsay...my, what a wonderful world we live in. Once upon a time, the downtrodden masses could look to the stars and dream to live their lifestyles of the rich and famous. Now we can't wait to see how they'll fuck up next and hope to God it's worse than one of our own. And, golly, it wasn't gender-specific either. On the female side, we had Ann Nicole, Britney and Paris. For the guys, here's Michael Vick, Don Imus and the grand return of one Orenthal James Simpson. (Side note for Rosie O'Donnell: If Britney is this country's Princess Di, they you must Idi Amin.) For me it didn't get any worse than receiving US Weekly as a substitute subscription when Premiere Magazine went out of business. Each week was worse than the next, shaking my head until it almost fall off as I scanned each issue, nearly at the exploits of what passes as a star in Hollywood these days and as a media outlet "reporting" it all. But they're complient. CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX each and every one of them no better and often worse than The Star, National Enquirer or the new pretender to the throne of shit, TMZ. As far as I'm concerned, the whole kit 'n kaboodle began once the National Enquirer was considered a "legitimate" news source before the eyes of the American public. We've never been able to wash the smell out of the media since then. And those of you-including myself-who have wallowed at this pig trough of humanity: Shame on you too as well. What the hell have we become-or even worse-what are we becoming? To borrow a quote from David Simon, co-creator of THE WIRE, "While the American empire slipped off its pedestal, what the fuck were we paying attention to?" (For an even better rant on this sad state of affairs, watch Ricky Gervais' EXTRAS finale on HBO. )

Has the writer's strike changed how you watched television? Not me. I haven't watched a network work in the traditional sense in over a year. Maybe they've been forever altered by cable TV to begin with. But the networks had totally screwed themselves by their arrogance a long time ago. They have no respect for the audience, playing havoc with their schedules, doubling up on popular shows until they burn out and cancelling others prematurely before they've even had a chance and depending almost solely on "sweeps" periods during November and February. You know the ol' sweeps, don't you? That's when the networks drag out the "BIG GUNS"-the uber-specials, the extravaganzas or more often than not these days, four new episodes in a row. Then come December or March 1, it's back to reruns again, usually in the middle of a continuing storyline as is the norm with nighttime dramas. Maybe this why CSI and LAW AND ORDER survive while almost everything else struggles. Continuity occurs when the powers that be allow it. The networks are dinosaurs and deserve all the harm they are getting now.
So enough of this mishigoss for now. Stay tuned for what I considered to be the best of 2007.
Bye kids!

Forever Goldie

Goldie Pollard used to tell us, “I am the mother of you all.”

More often than not, some smart-ass, probably me (okay, it was me), would add, “Yeah, you’re a real mutha all right.”

She didn’t mind. In fact, she’d cop to that as well. Of course, she’d have to get the last word in with some rejoinder, cutting me right off at the knees and basically putting me in my place again.

That was Goldie’s nature. She could dish it out and take it with equal aplomb. If you tried to take her on, you couldn’t get the best of her. The best you could hope for was a draw. Then you’d better prepare yourself for a re-match.

Doris June “Goldie” Pollard wasn’t just the matriarch of the Palace Showboat Theatre. She was the Palace Showboat Theatre. Many a diva appeared on and off that stage over the years, but there really was one true diva at that place. Goldie walked the walk and talked the talk that nobody could deny.

Of course, being Big Mama to all of us on that Island of Lost Toys known as The Ville came naturally to her. She couldn’t help herself being a born nurturer and all. She’d take us under her wing until it was time for us to fly. Sometimes we’d fall on our faces but Goldie was there to make sure we’d try it again.

But hey, the woman was not a saint. She would have been the first person to admit that. More often than not, Goldie was a royal pain the ass. She could be downright infuriating and when she knew she pissed you off, she’d acknowledge it and move on. The thing is she was a flawed human being that wasn’t afraid to admit her faults and was that much stronger for doing so. It also allowed her to take all of us misfits in, sometimes at the lowest points of our lives and encourage us to deal with it all. With Goldie you took the good with the bad because the good became great. The woman had greatness in her and the legacy she left behind is proof of that pudding.

I've been wracking my brains out trying to come up with some relatable anecdote about Goldie to illustrate my points, but how about just a good story instead?

One Labor Day weekend during the Seven Brides of Dracula/Goodbye TV, Hello Burlesque show, the gang had all been invited over to Jaime Allison’s place in Lockeford for an overnight BBQ. This was a party for the ages, filled with laughter, songs and lots of good times had by all.

Earlier that summer, Jaime and I had been an item. (Yes, it involved canoodling. No brag, just fact) It was short-lived but I did manage to meet her folks at one point which I'm sure was a big a thrill for them as it was for me.

At the party, Jaime’s dad, a bit in his cups just like the rest of us, was chatting with myself, Goldie and whoever else might have been in earshot. Jaime’s dad, remembering who I was, kept laughing at me and drunkenly proclaiming, “I’m gonna shoot that sonuvabitch!”

After about the third time he repeated this boozy declaration, Goldie got right in his face and said, “You're not shootin’ anybody, you understand? He’s my friend and you leave him the hell alone.”

Jaime’s dad backed down, admitting he was only kidding and stumbled off into the night.

The soiree went into the wee hours of the morning (what else is new?) and we all ended up in very sections of the Allison compound. Goldie and a couple of others holed up in a trailer that Jaime had set up for them. I crawled into the front seat of Bill Humphrey’s Oldsmobile and passed out. (Bill apparently had gone to find his thrill on Bill Hill.)

As soon as the sun rose, Jaime’s brother and his friends decided to go shoot some rabbits on the property. When the first shot was fired, I woke straight up out my shortened slumber in a stupor of all stupors only to hear Goldie’s voice cry out.

“Scott!!!!!!!!! Oh my God, that bastard really shot him!”

It’s just a dumb damn story, but it did confirm what I knew to be true. In Goldie Pollard, I had a friend, a protector and someone that would stand up for me. She made me want to do the same in return. Sometimes I felt like we went into battle together and spent the rest of the night swapping war stories until the sun broke underneath the back door, which we did more often than not. We forged a bond that I feel will never be broken, even though she is no longer with us in this world,. a world that is a quieter, but nowhere near as sweet a  place without her..

Goldie Pollard left this Earth on August 1, 2007.

I love you, Doris. I’ll see you when I see you. Save me a seat. The first Rum and Coke is on me.

Tales from the Ville-Who Do the Voodoo?

Memories of Pollardville still keep flowing out of me like a hooker in a confessional. From time to time, I'm just going keep pouring them into here, the perfect outlet for stuff like this.

Rounding the last curve of my sojourn at Tule Flats Ghost Town, the lure of the theater was almost overpowering which, by the beginning of fall, became a reality. The first Palace Showboat production I had appeared in was the second go-around of Marian Larson’s melodrama The Downfall of the Uprising or Who Do the Voodoo? Bob Gossett had approached me to be his assistant director and to re-write the script. This was our "re-imagining" the original material as they say these days. We took all of the songs out of the show (including "People Gotta Learn to Get Along Together", a tune I didn’t really appreciate until the reunion), changed a couple of characters around (Melvin became Melisa, for example) and set out to add a multitude of gags. The result? A frickin’ mess, but a lovable frickin’ mess and pretty damn funny as well. The cast included, among others, Bill Humphreys as the villain Bugaloo, Cory Troxclair as Governor Julian Beam, Carol Lyon as an angel (yes, really) and Grant Lee Phillips as Bombo, Bugaloo’s henchman.

Bob cast me as Bertram Beam, an army officer who wore a bandleader’s uniform that would have made Michael Jackson jealous. (Check the photo) Bert was turned into a zombie by a voodoo spell and spent about 75% of the show totally immobile. For most of the melo, all I had to do was sit around, not move a muscle and bug my eyes out. Of course, this gave everyone in the cast the license to fuck with me incessantly. I had things stuck in my nose (thanks, Grant), my head used as an arm rest and so on.

On one particular evening just before the curtain opened, I had just gotten into place on a love seat and got into character, zombie-ing myself up. Goldie Pollard, playing Fanny Sweet, a character I don’t remember, began to pace back and forth in front of me as she did at the beginning of the scene. Just as the curtain started to open, she looked down at me and said, “Do you know that you have a hard-on?”

Curtain!

My eyes bugged out even more than usual as I tried to hold myself in check without breaking. I couldn't move. I was a zombie. I couldn't even check to see if there was any downfall to my uprising. Just as I was about to calm down, here came Cory, striking a match on my shoulder to light a cigar. Yes, it was pre-planned, but it didn’t help.

Next came Carmen Kiefer as my daughter Melisa. Now Carmen really threw herself into her characters. Sometimes she threw her characters into everyone else. If you couldn't move, you were an easy target. Melisa, pronounced Melittthhhaaa with the ultra-exaggerated lisp Carmen gave her, came bounding in the room and plunked right next to her dear old dad, drenching him in Melittthhhaaa thpit with every thingle tholitary line she thpoke. Needless to say, I was drenched. Working with Carmen in that show really prepared me for living up here in the rainy Pacific Northwest.

Finally I got some peace. No one could mess with me the rest of the scene. So I scanned the audience with my eyes, still not moving a muscle. Hey, I was a young actor. I wanted to see if any babes were out there in the audience that might enjoy the company of a zombie. I panned from stage left to right until I got to the center aisle. There in the fourth row was Al Hanley.

Al was probably the Ville's biggest fan. He was the equivalent of Mrs. Miller, the perpetual audience member who sat in on the old Merv Griffin Show back in the '60 and early '70s. Al and his family showed up every Friday night without fail sitting in the same exact place every time, the aisle seat of the fourth row. Neil Pollard even had that chair padded especially for Al, the only comfortable seat in the house. Well, sort of. Anyway, as I checked out the audience, I stopped dead center only to see Al Hanley, staring right at me and pretending to focus a pair of imaginary binoculars.

That did it! I started to lose it again. This time I thought for sure I was going to break. My eyes darted all over the stage in an attempt to hold tough until the end of the scene. I didn’t think I was going to make it. Any second now I would just explode. So I looked to the one place where I knew I could get support…right to the orchestra pit.

There was my friend Joel Warren, sitting at the drums. Deadpan, he lifted a drumstick and began to stick it up his left nostril.

Blackout!

Curtain!

Thank you, Jesus!

I had six months of this. Oh, and I got to wear tights and ride a tricycle around the pit in the vaudeville section, Under the Big Top. And there were Nazis involved.

But that's another story...

The Ville: The Final Curtain- Requiem

Since the show dominated the proceedings, the time for more carousing and partying in general ran short that night. Since the powers that be had dictated that the bar close at the regular 2 AM deadline, a bunch of us found ourselves on the deck of the boat with no back up plan in place. This didn’t sit that well with one Joel Warren.

“I’ve been associated with this theater for over thirty years and I have never been asked to leave this early before.”

“Joel, you are positively indignant,” I told him.

“What’d you call me?” he demanded, then exploded with that Joel laugh of his that I’ve missed all these years.

Perhaps if we had a bit of foresight, we could have met up back at the Holiday Inn and met the morning hours as in days of old, provided of course that we had beverages to consume to help the time pass that much smoother. Alas, we did not, but through no real fault of our own. How did we know we wouldn’t be able to stay at the theater and watch the sun appear at the bottom of the back door like the old days? Ay. There’s the rub. It just wasn’t the old days anymore, was it? Still, the need for further celebration remained unfulfilled and a wee bit frustrating. Unsown wild oats and all that rot.

More importantly it was the desire to bond more with these folks. Goddamn it, I’ve missed them. If there’s been a void in my life, it has been the lack of friends like these. I’ve never underestimated the power of friendship, especially in the years at the Ville.

It’s Showtime, Folks!, the last vaudeville I created from scratch, was based on this truth. In fact, the finale was originally a combination of “With a Little Help From My Friends” and the Bette Midler song “Friends”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it work and instead ended up with two songs from The Wiz for some inexplicable reason that featured monotonous choreography and the worst costumes ever, as though there were inspired by some all male revue in Reno called It’s Raining Men. Regardless, I think the rest of the production came off rather successfully, if Murphy’s Melodrama, featured in the reunion show, was any indication. My point is that It’s Showtime, Folks! was something I wanted to give back to the theater and those that I still consider to be the best people I’ve ever known in my life.

Shawn B. O'Neal. me and John Himle

Sunday, a virtual “Murderer’s Row” of Pollardvillians gathered together again to join in a panel discussion about our final thoughts about the Ville. Just as he had the night before, Bill Humphreys shot the panel on video for a commemorative reunion DVD he was producing. He brought his equipment and crew all the way from the East Coast just for this purpose. Bill also conducted the interview. Again the stories flowed like wine and we all added our two cents to the conversation. We even learned a few things, like the fact that the theater had its roots in the USO where some of the founders had their start.

Sometimes I felt the panel was way too polite, but I suppose the goodwill of the night before pretty much dictated it all, still “Remembering the Best…Forgiving the Rest”. There were some moments of revisionist history and maybe just a bit of sugar coating for good measure. I guess I’m just lamenting the fact that I wasn’t a bit more coherent, still rather shell-shocked by the whole affair in general and a feeling that I held back when I shouldn’t have. Cry me a river, whiny boy. You had your chance to speak up. There never would have been enough to say everything that we wanted to say anyway. Look how verbose this thing is turning out to be.

2/3 of the cast of SONG OF THE LONE PRAIRIE

We did talk about the extended family aspect of the theater. With one show by itself running no less than six months at a time along with two months of rehearsals, we spent a lot of time together. Pollardville became a second home, especially for those of us who performed in show after show. Sometimes it was the only home that ever meant anything to us. Though we didn’t bring up the dysfunctional aspects of our brethren, I would venture to say that when it came right down to it, we were functionally dysfunctional.

Then there was the obvious fact of how much the Ville spoiled us as, dare I say, artists. The freedom we had at that place has been unsurpassed. We were able to develop, nurture and extend our talents in an environment that provided us that freedom. As I’ve said many times now that I’ve become my own broken record, I was able to do everything I’ve ever wanted to do in show business at the Ville-act, write, direct, sing, dance and even stand-up comedy. It made it difficult to leave and easy to return. No other place has been able to match that independent spirit. That may be what set us apart from the pack, causing the local theater community to look down their noses at us because, in their squinty eyes, the Palace Showboat was not a “real” theater. Well, they can kiss my “real” ass, now and forever.

The group also brought up the closing of the Ville for good. Most of us agreed that we
needed-and frankly, deserved-closure. Letting go of anything or anyone you hold so close in your heart is always difficult, yet, it was obviously time to do so. We had no choice in the matter. It was a done deal. Besides, since the Showboat closed in ‘92, the place just seemed like an empty shell sitting there on Highway 99, country bar or not. The Ghost Town had been forced to close off so many of its buildings due to building restrictions in the last few years that soon there would be no place left to go. I’m actually relieved that the Ville is going away for good rather than deteriorate any further into a condemned property or just another fire waiting to happen. There is something to be said for the Quality of Life. This way we could all move on with our heads held high with pride and the dignity of the Ville intact.

On Monday morning, Max and Tom Amo joined me on my last walk through the Ghost Town. Naturally, there was a story for every step we took, many involving our wicked, wicked ways way back when we were testosterone fuelled cowboys full of piss and vinegar, a lust for life and a thirst for adventure, ready to take on anything and everything that came our way. (see also: The Arrogance of Youth) The three of us speculated about the bawdy nature of the Ville in general. What the hell was it about that place that made us so damn horny? Was there something in the water? Or was it my theory that the place was built on an old Indian fucking ground? Whatever the truth may be, those who will occupy this land after we’re gone are going to have a big surprise in store for themselves.

As Max and Tom moseyed down Main Street, I found myself on the porch of the saloon and something told me to peek into the window for one last look inside.

“Goodbye, old friend,” I said aloud.

Suddenly, I heard in my mind’s ear a pair of faraway voices echoing from within my very being. They were reciting lines from the gunfight we called Saddle Drop.

"King of hearts!" some mangy cowpoke, probably Fast Fester, proclaimed.

“Ace of spades!” Sheriff John’s gravelly voice bellowed.

“Ace of spades?” Fester demanded. “I saw you pull that ace of spades right out of your sleeve!”

“Are you callin’ me a cheat?”

“Yeah I’m callin’ you a cheat!”

The sounds of chair legs scraping across the floor and boots stomping toward the front doors meant that some varmint was about to be tossed out on his ear out of the saloon and into the dirt. Only…

It didn’t occur.

The realization hit me right there and then that Pollardville had just become what it always aspired to be…an honest to goodness authentic ghost town. For me, I knew that this indeed the end.

That’s when the tears began to flow. I cried out of grief for the Ville’s passing. I cried for all the joy this wondrous place brought to me in my life. I cried for all of us that had been fortunate enough to a part of its history. I cried so much, I seemed to be crying just for the sake of crying. It became uncontrollable after awhile, coming in waves like irrepressible laughter. Just when I thought I had finished, I started sobbing all over again. Some unresolved issues must have been washed out of my system in the process.

Photo taken by Grant-Lee Phillips

Finally I was done. A sense of relief restored me back to normal again. I could leave now.

Saying hail and farewell to the Ville was cathartic in more ways than one, an emotional and spiritual release that, though it wasn’t easy, was necessary. The place literally meant the world to me. This was my world, one that I gratefully shared with some incredible people that I’ll cherish forever. As much as I loved my years there, this grand finale made me appreciate who I was then and what I am now. I feel proud to have been a part of it and validated for what I’d been able to accomplish-and will continue to-because of my time there.

Making my goodbyes to my comrades in arms, I left the Ville behind to head back to Oregon. As I drove down the frontage road, the image of the Pollardville tower reflected in my rearview mirror. I watched the big chicken in the sky disappear for the very last time as I pulled onto Highway 99, heading away from what will always be deep in my heart as the place I call home.

The Ville is dead.

Long live the Ville.

The Ville-The Final Curtain: Tribute

Saturday night, the Palace Showboat Theater sailed into history in grand and glorious style. The reunion was an overwhelming success from pretty much top to bottom. This sold-out event brought attendees from across the country, far and wide as they say (some wider than others as we soon discovered).
Arriving the day before prepared for the onslaught of even more familiar faces at every turn of that place. Sometimes it became tough to get my bearings when bombarded by some many people that I have known and loved (well, mostly) over the years and many I thought I never would be able to encounter again.

The renuion not only attracted former Palace Showboat Players, but some Ghost Town veterans, Chicken Kitchen employees and people who have supported this institution over the years that just had to make one last visit and share the love with the rest of us. As for myself, three former school teachers of mine, each of whom had coincidentally served some function at the theater over the years. Judy Caruso-Williamson, my very first drama instructor (and one of my favorite co-stars), Ed Carr, my senior art teacher who had painted sets for many productions and Lou Nardi, a man who was the closest thing to a mentor that I ever had. There were so many different people from various aspects of my life that I became torn and found I could only spend a short amount of time with some that I should have spent more. What can I say? I got caught up with the whirlwind.

Maximum occupancy be damned, we all filed into the auditorium to a series of makeshift tables, quite a change from the theater seats that had been pulled out when the Showboat closed to create a dance floor fro the country bar it later became. After dinner and much carousing, we all strapped ourselves in for the ride. After all, it was showtime, folks.

The extravaganza Ed Thorpe (heretofore to be referred to as Max) produced for the reunion pretty much summed up the whole Palace Showboat experience, reverentially I might add if the title Remembering the Best...Forgiving the Rest was any indication. Max designed this this show to be tribute to our beloved institution and to us all.

Cast of the orginal production of LA RUE'S RETURN

The melodrama fit perfectly into this format and actually went over quite well. I had no problem at all with any liberties they took with the piece. Why should I? Their additions seemed to work. I couldn't help but quote George S. Kaufman who, while he was backstage during a Marx Brothers play he wrote, quipped, "I think I just heard one of the orginal lines." Of course, back in the day, I would have kicked their asses for not performing the show "as wriiten" like I was Neil Simon Jr. This is despite the fact that I rewrote almost every script out there that didn't have my name on it.

The first big "Gulp!" moment when the tear ducts just opened up came early as the cast sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" as each presented our dearly beloved Goldie Pollard. In rather frail health in recent years, the "Mother of Us All" beamed like an angel as she proclaimed, "You came here as actors, singers, dancers, writers and directors and youa left here as stars..My stars." As I said, Gulp!
Following the melo were various vaudeville bits performed by the show cast specific to the Ville interspersed with a series of specialty acts by former cast members.

Julie Grider, one of the original cast members, favored us with a tune

Ray Rustigian and Phil De Angelo fractured and slayed 'em with their classic "Heckler" routine just as they had every night on that stage.

Kim Luke sang a hilariously bawdy song she had written herself in the grand tradition of the red hot mamas that were a Pollardville staple.

Bob Gossett played a touching acoustic version of "People Gotta Get Along Together", a song that musical director Marian Larson composed for the melo The Downfall of the Uprising.

Another Gulp! moment was the memorial video Bill Humphreys had masterfully pieced together as a salute to Palace Showboat Players who had since passed away. The footage of Vaudevillian Extraordinaire Ray Mello ("I gotta standing ovation from a bunch of midgets and didn't even know it!") and the original Red Hot Mama herself, Jeri Worth, just hit everyone where they lived.

The one and only Daddy Goose

Now this is where I came in. Yes, I had to follow what I so charmingly referred to as "The Death Parade" with a funny comedy bit. Oh, lucky me. I had to cut my first line "Look at all these familiar faces from my past. Am I about to die? It wouldn't be the first time on this stage." So for the very last time, I performed Daddy Goose, the piece that I performed at the Ville and what won me the stand up comedy competition. Now I never have to do it again. No. Don't ask me. Please. No really. Don't. Did I kill? Yes, I killed, right after The Death
Parade. Oh, sweet irony.

Soon after I finished, along came a very special guest star, our favorite son, Grant-Lee Phillips.
Just like the rest of us, he too returned to his point of origin, in his case, a launching pad for his incredible career that we are all proud of. Naturally, Grant not only sang, but surprised us all with a little stand-up, a mind reader bit that brought back memories of his, pardon the expression, wild and crazy side. What else stood about Grant's appearence was that this was the first he had performed anywhere in the area since hitting it big and that his brand new CD, Strangelet, was being released not days later.

As so often with a Palace Showboat show, the band kicked up a number , highlighted as always by a solo from the master of the drumsticks himself, Mr. Joel Warren. Just to give this night an extra kick in the ass, Joel revised his signature piece, playing the entire theater. His sticks rolled across the stage as emerged from the pit, just he used to, rapping and tapping as he went and working his way into the audience, hitting tables, bottles and even the hollow noggin of a certain Stockton Record employee. Joel then moved back to the stage, banging his sticks on anything and everything, disappearing behind the curtain until he emerged again at his rightful place at the drums. Fantastic.

The finale of the show began with the cast reading the name of each production and ending up with all-too famililar rendition of "Grand Old Flag", which, on the last note ends with the cast holding hands around the pit as the sound effects of bulldozers tearing the theater down is played. After 8 seconds of silence, Max stood forward and gave the final benediction while a mournful violin played "Ashokan Farewell" . Struggling to hold his emotions back, Max told the audience that this was indeed the last show of the Palace Showboat and Pollardville in general. He ended by saying that he had purchased the main red curtain from Neil Pollard. As his gift to every Palce Showboat Player, he proceeded to cut it in strips with a pair of scissors. The first tear of the curtain resonated throughout the house and it was right then and there, we had closure. We all lined up to get our own swatch of the red for ourselves, literally taking a piece of the theater home with us.

This grand gesture put an exclamation point on an evening filled with laughter, tears and so much goodwill. With this show, Max and everyone else involved in this production gave us the tribute we wanted and the tribute we deserved.

Gulp! indeed.

TO BE CONCLUDED

The Ville-The Final Curtain: Homecoming

There's an old Motown song, covered almost simultaneously by Issac Hayes and The Jackson Five, enititled "Never Can Say Goodbye". It's a tune that kept running through the soundtrack of my mind when I visited Pollardville for the very last time. Maybe it's a good thing I don't own an Ipod. I probably would have loaded it up with a plethora of send-off tunes, including "Auld Land Syne", "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" and "Nearer My God to Thee".
Even though I knew this was to be The Grand Finale for this beloved institution, I actually tried to put that thought on the backburner, rationalizing that this was more of a reunion than a wake, as others had called it. Chalk it up to an atypical case of denial, one of my specialities. Want fries with that?
Even though I packed lightly for the trip, I brought a lot of emotional baggage with me. I can honestly say that my ulterior motive for this Cherney Journey was to find some answers to at least some of these questions that have been nagging me since before I moved to Oregon. I was hoping that the finality of the situation I was about to deal with at Pollardville was going to help me confront whatever it was that's eating at my ass all this time. Primarlily, the big issue tended to be "Whatever happened to me?" I've felt a big gap in my life, a void that desperately needed filling and returning to my roots would be the best starting point for this voyage to the bottom of the me.
Of course I really wanted to see the Ville one last time. I had been looking forward to seeing the Palace Showboat reopened and perform on that stage one last time. Tickets for the reunion had sold out and there were going be people there that I have not seen forever and a day and that in itself was going to be a cure for my on-going blues.

Me, Scott Duns, DW Landingham and Cory Troxclair

I traveled to California with my old friend and fellow Pollardvidian R.J. "Bob" Gossett, also an Oregon transplant. When we landed in Sacramento, he couldn't resist repeating his mantra "Everything's so flat here!", in reference to the landscape with which we were both so familiar. Oregon spoils you for other places if you return to places like central California, the heart of farmland. Of course the scenery going to be blander than where we live now. If we headed somewhere more majestic than the San Joaquin Valley like, say, the coast, which I personally prefer to Oregon's, that Bob couldn't complain. As it was, we were headed to that spot between Lodi and Stockton, so he had no argument from me. Flatter than day old Mountain Dew.
However, once on Highway 99, the big chicken in the sky beckoned to us and as I pulled my rental car into the Pollardville parking lot, nothing seemed so flat any longer. As soon as I stepped onto what I unashamedly call hallowed ground, well, as Paul McCartney once said, all my troubles seemed so far away. I might as well been skinny dipping in the waters at Lourdes. I was so elated to see that the Palace Showboat was all gusssied up for the occasion. I halfway expected to see a broken down old sea tramp, but instead feasted my eyes upon a true lady of the lake. It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint and some streamers will do. The old gal hadn't looked this good in years.

A flood of memories washed over me when I stepped inside the theater, damn near knocking me off-balance in the undertow. But then, riding the next wave were a host of all-too familiar faces, special guest stars from my past-my friends, my comrades , my fellow Palace Showboat Players. These were people with which I spent a lifetime in one form or another-on stage, off stage, performing, partying, loving and living-and sometimes, all at the same time.

They had gathered together for a final dress rehearsal for the big show planned for the following day. The theme for this extravaganza was "Remembering the Best, Forgiving the Rest", a metaphor for the reunion itself. This was to be a conglomeration of specalty acts from Palace Showboat Players combined with tributes and salutes to the grand past of that glorious stage. First up was a short melodrama, written by yours truly, entitled "Murphy's Melodrama" that was featured in one of my vaudeville shows called It's Showtine, Folks. Actually, it was a parody sketch of a melo production gone awry (Murphy's Law, hence the title). In this go-around, it was directed by the one and only D.W. Landingham with a cast that read like an all-star lineup. What an honor it was to be the creator of the last melodrama on that stage.

Since I too was on the call board, I had to participate in the rehearsal as well. I could have moaned and groaned about being on the road all day, but what was I going to do? I couldn't complain about jet lag after an hour and fifteeen minute flight from Oregon. It wasn't as if I just flew in from the East Coast. So suck it up, boyo and join the fun. This is show biz, remember?

Yes I did. I remembered everything. It all came back to me, so I went I hit the stage later that night, it was just like I never left at all. I began to feel something that I hadn't in years. I felt like myself again.

Oh yeah. I remember you.

Welcome back.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Ville-Part Three

After that afternoon in the Ghost Town, I was treated to an evening at the Pollardville Palace BS (Before Showboat) for a Saturday night performance of ALASKA or THAR'S GOLD IN THEM THAR PANTS (or whatever the hell it was called) and the vaudeville entitled...uh....VAUDEVILLE (fill in the blank).

What struck me most about the showand the theater iself  was how vibrant all the colors were...and I wasn't even high at the time. Take a look at the cast photo from ALASKA, probably the best looking picture ever taken on that stage to see what I mean. Now I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the melo itself except that the show opened with a rendition of PAINT YOUR WAGON, Phil DeAngelo as the hero wore a Hoss Cartwright hat and there was my sixteen year old friend Ed, gussied up as an "old" miner with a beard that made him look like he just stepped off a kid friendly cough drop box...Smith Brothers Jr. I also remember Ray Rustigian as a terrific villain. That night, whenever he entered, an audience member tossed a single peanut at him that bounced off his chest and his slow take would be consistent each and every time.

As for the olios, I haven't got a clue. I'm sure it was a patriotic finale...or a spiritual...I got nothing. But there is no way in hell that I could have forgotten the great diva herself, our very own Red Hot Mama, Miss Jeri Worth. As much as I enjoyed her performance as the femme fatale in the melo, but I was totally mesmerized when she took the stage during the second half. She tore the roof off of that place for what seemed to be a solid fifteen-minute set, culminating of course in "You Gotta See Your Mama Every Night".

Jeri was my favorite and most vivid memory from that night, not only on stage, but after the show as well. She was actually the first person at that theater that spoke to me for any length of time. I sat there like a star struck fan just chatting her up for at least a half hour. She told me how much she loved being on stage and of course in the spotlight. That was the first time I heard her line, "Every time I open the refrigerator, I do five minutes." Jeri was so totally gracious to this dopey little teenager. I’m sure she knew damn well that I had a little crush on her that night, pretty obvious by the fact that I found it difficult to take my eyes off her ample chest, causing me to cross my legs every couple of minutes.

Regardless of my post pubescent urges, I've always cherished those moments with her and didn’t realize until later that it was another reason I wanted to be involved with that place. I wanted to work with people like Jeri Worth. Later on when she changed her name to Starr, I understood completely. She sure was a star in my eyes and anyone who ever had the privilege to see her in all her glory, right there in the Pollardville Palace spotlight.

And that, my friends was My First Visit to the Ville.

What a day. And there were many more to come because this was just the beginning.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Ville-Part Two

It won’t be long now, a matter of hours actually, when I visit the Ville for the very last time. In honor of that occasion, it’s only right that I devote the next couple of installments to the first time I ever set foot on those hallowed grounds.

I was probably 16 years old when Ed Thorpe (aka Max) began singing the praises of the place when he was both a gunfighter in the Ghost Town and a Palace performer in the days before the Showboat sailed into port. He asked if I wanted to come out and see what it was all about. At the time, Ed was staying out in the legendary trailer in the town's Gazette building on weekends. (Why was the trailer legendary? That's another topic
entirely. Let's just say that not all of the action in the Ghost Town took place out on Main Street.)

Anyway, I came out to visit on Saturday afternoon and got the two-bit tour of the place. I was completely fascinated that something like this existed in virtually the same town I had lived in my entire life, but never had set foot until that day. Ed was using the Gazette building to take olde tyme photographs that, as I recall, wasn't very lucrative. He probably made about two nickels and button the entire time. After awhile, the call of nature beckoned and Ed asked me to watch the place when he went off to the can.

While waiting for him, I heard slow, lumbering footsteps on the porch and the jingle-jangle of metal, not unlike Jacob Marley's Happy Christmas greeting to Ebeneezer Scrooge. Suddenly, the meanest son of a bitch I ever saw in my life appeared in the doorway. He wore a black hat, a sheriff's badge and a set of jail keys hanging over the butt of his pistol. He looked a lot like Richard Boone's pissed off brother while he stared at me with total contempt, as if he had once stepped in something that resembled me. He literally growled at me.

'"WHERE IS HE?"

His voice shook the interior of that little shop and me right along with it. With a voice that sounded like I had just lost every hormone I had grown at that point in those formative years, I croaked, "He went to the bathroom....." at the same time I was doing the same right then and there. This mean old son of a bitch sneered at me and mercifully loped away, leaving me to quiver in fear like a chihuahua.

That was my first encounter with Sheriff John Hoffman, a man I eventually was proud to call my friend. Even then,he still scared the crap out of me, but at least I was on his good side and he wouldn’t have shot me unless he felt I really deserved it..

Soon after I cleaned myself up, I sat front row center for my very first gunfight on Main Street. This was after the announcement over the PA system: "Folks, in about five minutes, there's going to be gunfight on Main Street just like in the days of yesterday. So if you take seats along the porches and general store, but stay off the streets because that's where all the action takes place. In about five minutes..."

THAT I believe is the verbatim spiel by none other than Gene "Fast Fester" (Don't you you mean FAT Fester?) Meechum, who was as close to a Smiley Burnette double as John was to Richard Boone. Gene even had the same dumb Burnette hat. The gunfight in question was the one and only SADDLE DROP, which I can also recite verbatim I'm sure. The cast was John, Fester, Ed as Fester's sidekick and Crazy George Lindstrom as Doctor Percival P. Hackemgood.

Sample dialogue:
Fester: I paid forty dollars for that saddle.
Sheriff: When…forty years ago?

Well...it wasn't Ibsen, but then again, Ibsen couldn't write a decent gunfight to save his life. Still, this cornball outdoor skit lit a spark in me, one that never went out. Sitting on that porch with splinters in my ass and a mouth full of peat dirt planted the seed right then and there for me. I knew I wanted to be a part of this place. I just had to be.

Little did I know what else was in store for me that day.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Ville-Part One

Throughout the ages, tales of mystical lands and worlds have fed our imaginations like dreams from the dessert tray. Places like Shangri-La, Brigadoon, El Dorado, Xanadu and even Middle Earth allow us to escape from reality in order to cope with our every day existence and fill our lives with hope that, hey, maybe some magical kingdom really does exist.
Sometimes it does.
For me, that place was Pollardville.
That's right, it's time to turn on the golden bulb of nostalgia again and bask in its glow as we gallivant down Memory Lane.

Below are some excerpts from the introduction of my book, Now THAT'S Funny.

"My favorite TV show of all time is The Dick Van Dyke Show. Other than the fact that the show is an acknowledged classic, one of the things that always appealed to me was Rob Petrie’s job as a comedy writer. Now, that seemed to be a perfect profession for me. Not only would I be able to create comedy all day long, but I’d have a lot of laughs in the process. Of course, the icing on Rob’s cake was that he was able to go home every night to the young Mary Tyler Moore. Woof!

I was able to live part of that dream for a while during my time at a magical land called Pollardville, the kingdom that fried chicken built. Located just outside Stockton, California on Highway 99, Pollardville began as the Chicken Kitchen, a take-out restaurant specializing in deep fried poultry. Years later, the Pollards acquired some buildings and sets from the William Wyler film The Big Country starring Gregory Peck, which had been filmed in the area. They schlepped these down the road virtually intact and stuck them behind the Chicken Kitchen to create the Pollardville Ghost Town, a roadside attraction complete with western stunt shows and train ride. Another building they purchased later was part of an old warehouse from a nearby cannery, which they converted into the Pollardville Palace, a dinner theater that served chicken (naturally) for audiences to munch on while watching stage shows consisting of old time melodramas and vaudeville. A few years down the road, the outside of the building had an entire makeover when it was remodeled into a riverboat facade to became the Palace Showboat Dinner Theater.

My own saga began in my teenage years out in the Ghost Town. I was a full-fledged weekend cowboy, robbing the not-quite-full-scale train and performing in the aforementioned western stunt shows and gunfights on Main Street. It was a great comedic training ground for I was able to create and perform several different characters, test the
improvisational waters and even write my own material.

After many seasons, I finally hung up my spurs and graduated to the college course known as Palace Showboat 101, which I attacked with a vengeance. It was within those hallowed halls that I was able to do everything I ever wanted to do in show business-act, write, direct, stand-up comedy-EVERYTHING! (Well, everything except make a decent living wage, but that’s another story) If Disneyland hadn’t already claimed it, I would have dubbed Pollardville at that influential point in my life “the happiest place on the face of the earth”.

Now the Pollardville show formula was quite simple. First up was the melodrama, a modernized version of the archaic theater form. These were your basic audience participatory CHEER the Handsome Hero, BOO the Dastardly Villain and AWWWW with pathos with the Helpless Heroine scenarios. Following intermission was the olio or vaudeville section, basically a mini-revue with song and dance numbers and lotsa comedy.

Many of the sketches and blackouts (quick gags) in the Palace Showboat productions were rehashes of classic old bits from vaudeville and burlesque shows from what seemed to be from the Dawn of Time. One could never argue their effect on audiences because they ate ‘em up with a spoon. But, being young, impetuous and thinking that I knew it all, I had to try to come up with new material to call my own. After all, I had co-authored an original melodrama for the Palace Showboat a couple of years before entitled LaRue's Return or How's a Bayou? with my best friend, Edward Thorpe. It was pretty well received and good enough to be revived a few years later.

So, I dove in head first, hitting my head on the bottom of the pool a few times, but eventually able to write and direct my own show within a year’s time. In fact, I almost pulled an Orson Welles by writing an original melodrama, The Legend of the Rogue and writing/directing the second half of that production entitled Life is a Cabaret. That would have been quite a feat if I didn’t get in so far over my head that I couldn’t even call for help. Of course, pride had a lot to do with that near debacle. I thought I could do it all. Ah, the arrogance of youth. After some re-tooling, the show came off well, but it took a couple of years-and several slices of humble pie- before I tried to pull off one of those again..

As far as the material I wrote, I believe my own success rate was not too shabby. My instincts for what an audience might go for were usually dead-on. In my shows, I didn’t write everything. I’d spend hours at the library in those days before the Internet researching material. I’d scan old joke books, even sketch collections like this one. But, those were just filling in the blanks for my own material. I think the ratio of what was used as opposed to what was cut or unproduced was about 3-1. Not bad.

Of course none of these would have ever worked at all without the talented actors known as the Palace Showboat Players. Without a doubt, these were collectively the finest group of performers I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Oh, we were a motley crew to be sure and fiercely protective of what we did at the Ville. Many in the community looked down their noses at us because we weren’t doing serious theater. Yeah, well, how many times can the average theatergoer sit through Our Town anyway? Maybe our shows had a certain unsophisticated quality about them, but they were as legitimate as anything anyone else in the so-called theater community was staging at any given moment. We crammed more into one show than many companies did in an entire season and I would have stacked our actors against any of theirs anytime anywhere. Those nay-sayers rarely saw what we were up to on our stage, not daring to darken our doorsteps during any of our runs. When we gravitated in their direction after the Ville closed, they saw what we were all about and eventually had to eat their damn words. That was fun to watch for it was another case of history repeating itself. Performers in the early days of vaudeville were also treated as second class citizens until they drifted over to the Broadway stage and the American theater scene would not have thrived without them.
Here's to that group of scalawags, rapscallions and n’er-do-wells known as the Palace Showboat Players and to the patron saint of comedy itself, the chicken.

Forever may it cluck."

Unfortunately, the cluck has run out. Soon, like Brigadoon, Pollardville will disappear into the mist and exist as only a memory. Neil Pollard is closing up shop for good this year-lock, chicken stock and barrel. It's all going away for good. By this time next teay, a housing development will sit where the Ville stands now.

The Grand Finale has begun. I headed down there next week for this one last blow-out. There's going to be a few tears, a lotta laughs and one last howl at the moon.

To Be Continued

There's No People Like Show People

In the Big Valley of California, home of the Barkley clan (Nick, Heath, Jarrod, there's a fire in the barn!), fantasyland known as Pollardville, consisting of the Chicken Kitchen Restaurant, Ghost Town and Palace Showboat Theater. This institution, near and dear to many a heart including this one, will soon be no more. The Ville is going to that great roadside attraction home in the sky and, by this time next year, will exist only as a sweet memory. Since this is indeed the grand finally, a big reunion is in the works for next year, which I will be attending in case anyone had any doubt. Tracking down folks that have graced the Showboat stage, Ghost Town streets or worked at the Ville in any capacity has been quite an education in itself. (It's amazing what Google will turn up) I am humbled by the amount of my fellow performers that have continued in this business I call show. In the past, I've mentioned my friends Grant-Lee Phillips and Bill Humphreys. Here are some more:
there's resides a
Artis "A.J." Joyce, the man who schooled me in the joys of the bass guitar, has been tearing it up for years playing with blues artists like Ron Hacker and the Hacksaws and on Charlie Musselwhite's Grammy nominated "Ace of Harps".
Kim Docter Luke , front-woman of what has been described as the "psycho country combo" Moonshine Willie, is another Palace Showboat player who shared the stage with...
Matt Kenney, he of The Matt Kenney Band down in SoCal aka Southern California. It's true....it's true! The one and only Matt Chismo has his own band.
Along with his numerous radio gigs and voice-over work, my old pal Charlee Simons also has his own improv group down Fresno way called the Comedy Commandos.
D.W.Landingham has been adding more film roles to his resume and is fulfilling a lifelong dream appearing in the western End of the Trail. (that's his picture above. I could be wrong, but I think his character's name is Winky)
Then of course there's Tom Amo, a published author (Silence, available from Amazon, see the link to your right) and playwright (Bob's Your Auntie, among many others) AND ran his own theater company. Geez!

This is but an inkling of the talent that passed through the Pollardville portal. There are innumerable others that have performed in one form or another since their stay at the Ville and have had their own triumphs that are equally well-deserved. Some of them were spawned on the Showboat stage, orchestra pit or Ghost Town streets and honed their skills over time. Others merely made a short pit stop, making an undeniable impression before they moved on. Regardless of how long they stayed, they were all essential elements in the legacy of Pollardville. The buildings will soon be gone, but the legend will remain as long as the memories survive.

Summer Bloggin' Numero Dos

You know, there’s something so gratifying about taking a leak in a major department store and hearing a song by someone you actually know coming through the speakers. Such was the case today when I took a comfort break at the Nordstrom can and listened to my friend, Grant Lee Phillips singing TRULY, TRULY. It reminded me of our days back at the Palace Showboat Theater when he and another performer would sing Rush songs in the men’s room, just because the acoustics were so good.

Continuing on with my Summer '06 Endreport.
(Yeah, as if this stuff is so damn important that it has to be serialized…)

Wrapping up the movies section, I ventured out a few times to view the aforementioned and chastised SUPERMAN RETURNS: THE QUEST FOR FRANCHISE CPR and A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION, which I covered in an earlier piece (look it up yourself. What am I-your mom?)
I also caught the following:
ARMY OF SHADOWS: I am a sucker for French crime dramas and while this doesn’t fall into that genre, it was directed by a master of the game, Jean Pierre Melville (LE SAMOURAI) which is why I jumped at the chance to view it. This is an ultra-cool as all get out look at the French Resistance in WWII, a 1969 film that had finally made it to the American shore this year. While about twenty minutes too long, ARMY was a fresh approach at a subject that seemed milked dry.
undt
CLERKS 2: Kevin Smith is a very funny man. Rosario Dawson is a very hot woman. 'Nuff said.

However….my favorite films of the season were DVD rentals.
WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. Writer/director James Marsh’s film version of Michael Lesy’s book concerns the horrific and bizarre events that occurred in a small Wisconsin community during the late 19th century. The recreation of this farming community going absolutely bug fuck is just astounding. A hauntingly beautiful piece of work.
and, because I’m a new fan of Korean cinema…
3-IRON-A great twist on a love story when a drifter who breaks into homes not to steal but to merely spend the night, discovers one that is occupied by an abused wife and the two fall for each other without speaking a single word to one another.
TV this summer had several riches to enjoy as well.
RESCUE ME ended another sensational season, one that both made me laugh heartily as well as bawl my eyes out toward the end.
DEADWOOD came to an unfortunate close with a season that matched its first and sometimes surpassed in its intensity. Special tribute must be paid to the jaw dropping performance of Gerald McRaney, the most incredible villain turn of the decade. Who knew Major Dad was such a goddamn good actor?
BUT….
the summer belongs to one star, hopefully rising to the heavens but one who has earned my respect and admiration for being a class act all the way. I watched the dumbass AMERICAN IDOL rip known as ROCKSTAR:SUPERNOVA where a supposed “supergroup” of has-beens and who-the-fuck-is-this-guy auditioned potential lead singers for their band. (Just who is Gilby Clark anyway and why does he look like Travis Tritt on heroin?) From Portland, Oregon came the Amazonian goddess Storm Large who heads up the local band Storm and the Balls (click on the title of this blog to link to her site). While she didn’t make the band (a blessing, considering these guys are going nowhere after their national tour following the show), Storm did make it down to the final five and was able to showcase her enormous talent for a national audience. Her rendition of Dramarama’s ANYTHING, ANYTHING sent chills up and down my spine that still resonates down to my soul to this day. I regret that I have not seen her perform live, but I vow to rectify that error in my judgment as soon as possible. If there is one thing that I’ve learned from this extraordinary lady this summer is that I feel like I am now an Oregonian because she made me feel proud to be living in the same air space she occupies.

Storm, I love you, baby…especially when you’re LADYLIKE.