A Good Time Was Had By All --- You Shouldda Been There!

Yes, the recent "Project Centralia" was well worth the effort and was executed flawlessly. Tatia, you and Jimmy score extra points for knowing enough about Agent Robinson that you were able to correctly guess the hotel where he was booked. I haven't seen such good detective work since my days in San Francisco when I "detected" the interesting chemistry between Dr. Akevic and Cass, that married female recruit . . .

Yes, like Jimmy, my manner in reaching the interesting town of Centralia went smoothly. After changing planes in OAK, my Southwest Airlines flight deposited me at SEA, whereupon I rented a car and zoomed southward toward Centralia. Maybe they call it Centralia because it's "central" to both Seattle and Portland, lying about midway between the two cities.

By the time I checked into the Super 8 motel (which was a dump, by the way) and made my way to Boccata, the restaurant where Tatia made our dinner reservations, I was several minutes late. Oh well, not bad when you consider the logistics involved.

Yes, the play was everything I could have hoped for and more. At first I thought it was going to be a little rinky-dink as far as plays go --- an actor and actress sitting at a table and reading from two notebooks. But the storyline was so well written, and the delivery from Mr. Culp and Ms. Moreno so stupendous, that it turned out to quite possibly be the best play I've ever seen. Kudos to Scott White and everyone else involved for touching on the right demographic and filling the theater almost to capacity. Keion Marshall told us there have been other instances where the show organizers misjudged and mishandled the promotion of a particular play with the disastrous result being a theater patronized with just a handful of audience members. I'm soooo glad the people of Centralia really came forward and delivered on so many levels!

The party we attended afterward was also fantastic. I finally had an opportunity to talk to "Mr. Culp" about several topics, as well as having him sign a copy of the Trackdown "Tatia photo". When I presented the photo to him, his first words were, "Where did you get this?" As you know, Tatia made several copies of the photo and earlier had given one to him and Mrs. Culp. I don't know if he was aware that several copies were circulating, and perhaps he was wondering if I had performed a "five finger discount" on THE photo! As you saw, he also posed for a picture with me. I told him of a time about twenty-five years ago (has it been that long?), when I saw him at the Playboy Mansion but stopped short of striking up a conversation with him. I guess I didn't want to come across as a star-struck annoyance, and I figured that anyone who bothered celebrity guests at the Playboy Mansion would possibly be shown the door by the security personnel. Recall Samantha Jones' encounter with Playboy Mansion security from an episode of Sex And The City!

I complimented Mr. Culp on Home to Judgement and told him I thought it was the best episode of I Spy. I also asked him about that scene from So Long Patrick Henry where he was climbing on an outdoor ledge of the Peninsula Hotel. He said that was photographic wizardry in that he really was only a few feet off the ground and the camera angle made viewers think otherwise. Ah, the genius of Mr. Said. He did say, however, that he climbed on the scaffolding at Rocketdyne in Apollo and the production company never asked that particular director to work on additional episodes of I Spy. He mentioned that he and Nancy Kulp (Miss Hathaway on the Beverly Hillbillies) were cousins, even though she spelled her last name differently.

To illustrate what a small world it is, at the party we met a mother and daughter who are also hard-core Robert Culp / I Spy fans and they happened to live in the same town where Tonto and Tatia reside on the opposite side of the continent!

It was truly a pleasure meeting Tonto and Tatia once again, and meeting Jimmy Mitchell for the first time. If Keion Marshall and Ted Weiant pull off a repeat of this performance in Myrtle Beach, SC (there are rumors to that effect), I might just venture down there and soak it all in one more time!

About the only area where I saw some room for improvement was perhaps a lack of proofreading in the program that was distributed to patrons. I was reading it on the flight back home and noticed the following gaffe, among others:

More recently she [Ms. Moreno] was the lead in the Independent feature Carlo's Wake and in 1999 she completed the film Blue Moon opposite Ben Gizzard.

I've looked far and wide and I can't seem to find a "Ben Gizzard" anywhere on the Internet Movie Data Base ... Poor guy. What a name.

Uh, do you suppose they, by chance, meant "Ben Gazzara"?

Tatia, I believe your skills at proofreading may be of assistance for the play's program guide if Myrtle Beach is in the picture! Including that Trackdown photo would be a no-brainer!

We'll have to pick up a copy of Centralia's weekly newspaper, The Chronicle. I assume their June 13 edition has extensive coverage of the play. I remember seeing what looked like a newspaper photographer snapping quite a few pics at the theater throughout the evening.

The following day I returned to downtown Centralia and snapped some pics of the movie theater and the train station, both classic landmarks that you don't see being built in this day and age. I stopped by Pappa Ray's Family Cafe. It was interesting eaves-dropping on some of the locals engaged in conversation and reading the local paper over breakfast. Centralia is a charming little town that might make a good place for one to spend their days in retirement. I then drove back to SEA and caught my flight home. The plane made an intermediate stop at OAK. On the climbout, we made a big arc over San Francisco and I spotted the locales where all those I Spy episodes were filmed.

All in all, a great weekend!