Rhonda in the Beyond

Published July 22, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

My boyfriend in Chicago in the early ’90s was best friends & occasional roommates with a talented actress named Rhonda Reynolds. Rhonda and I weren’t incredibly close…horror films made her physically squirm in discomfort…but she once acted in a short play that I wrote, and we had many of the same musical likes. In fact, I still have the L7 shirt that she got for me when she saw them open for The Beastie Boys in Chicago. Her future husband Robb was also a talented bassist. Robb and I spent one Saturday evening, in the Wicker Park apartment that I shared with Kelly – the afore mentioned boyfriend, pouring through my CDs and cassette tapes, listening to the latest Fugazi and other alt-rock/punk gems.

In 1994, Wreck, Robb’s band, released an LP on C/Z Records and they went on tour. I went to the kick off show with Kelly and Rhonda – procuring another band shirt that I had for decades. Rhonda, herself, soon took off for Los Angeles, landing a prominent gig opposite Lloyd Bridges in a sexy TV film about a small-town scandal called Secret Sins of the Father.

Going the way of many first relationships, Kelly and I broke up that fall. We did keep in touch for a handful of years after that, though, and I learned through him that Rhonda was landing other nighttime gigs, here and there. But my ears really perked up when I found out that she secured a job playing a ghost on an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction, a syndicated anthology series that was many a young genre fan’s entree into the macabre. I never could figure out when her episode was airing, though, and as the years passed, it became just one of the many interesting factoids that decorated the background of my existence.

Of course, as I age, nostalgia is ever nipping at my heels and, in a flush of newfound determination, I recently found her segment online. As you can see from the photos alone, she played her character, an apparition warning a family against impending dangers, with an ethereal potence. Of course, my viewing was amplified by my experience with her in my theater salad days and my sincere gratitude for having lived a life surrounded by so many uniquely creative individuals. But you can judge for yourself at….

A Spirited Update:

All these years later, Robb and Rhonda are still continuing their artistic journeys — this time through the culinary arts. Their restaurant Masa, a celebration of Chicago style Deep Dish pizza, in East-Central Los Angeles is a smashing success with both locals and the city’s many visitors.

https://www.masaofechopark.com/

Music to Make Horror Movies By: Cyndi Lauper

Published July 15, 2024 by biggayhorrorfan

The recent announcement of Cyndi Lauper’s final concerts sent me traveling down memory lane.

One summer day in 2002, I discovered that I had some time to kill. As I biked around Lincoln Park, I recalled that Lauper was doing an instore mini concert & signing at the (late, lamented) Tower Records on Clark in Chicago. I decided to fill up a bit of my morning by attending.

Little did I know that side trip would turn into an all-day adventure.

After purchasing her (then) new EP Shine – which served as my ticket into the show, I was sent outside to wait. Two hours later, we were led back into the building…and there she was on a hastily constructed stage! It was truly awesome to see her perform in such close proximity. She even broke down & shed tears of joy when some of her hard-core fans began singing along with her on latest ballad called Water’s Edge – probably one of my favorite concert moments of all time.

We then were put in another long line to meet her. I, honestly, thought about leaving, but I figured I had already put in a lot of effort & time. When I got to her at last, she happily signed my CD….but just as we were about to take a photo, one of her handlers approached her & told her that she could no longer personalize the signatures as they had to leave soon for the United Center (where she was opening for Cher — coincidentally, for that icon’s own never-ending, inaccurately entitled goodbye tour.)

“Oh,” she cried, “I don’t want them to hate me! I have to let them know!” A very sweet notion – & a moment captured forever by the employee who was taking our picture. The first shot here is of her getting the news & the second is of her addressing the crowd. I suppose I could also look at the experience as a lesson in life’s eternal sense of balancing expectations. My photos with her are kind of funky…but I did get the last personally addressed CD!

One song that she did not sing that day, but one that ultimately served as the opener for her set in the 2007 True Colors shows, was Hole in my Heart (All the Way to China). Taken from the soundtrack to Vibes, the bizarre ’80s comedy that saw her playing an eccentric psychic opposite Jeff Goldblum’s equally odd clairvoyant, this number is an underground fan favorite.

Of course, in this critically maligned offering that phenomenon was played for humor. It would be decades later before Lauper, playing a Broadway musical loving private detective, would fully enter the world of horror in the Sweeney Todd inspired The Horrors of Dolores Roach.

A Land of Terror Tunes:

Additionally, Lauper’s quiet storm ballad All Through the Night was used to grand effect in the well-regarded Netflix spook show The Haunting of Bly Manor. Her almost 300 soundtrack credits also include spots on such horror adjacent television programs as Ghost Whisperer, Bones and Medium, as well.

Ghosts: Watching Over

Published October 17, 2021 by biggayhorrorfan

My dad would have been 75 last week. In some sort of coincidental converging of significant dates, we are also inching towards the 20th anniversary of his passing. His death in 2002 was totally unexpected….there was no early term cancer or other major health issues – just one final popping of his heart, one warm, late summer afternoon . That endlessly surprising week, my sister and brother & I camped out in the living room of his house in the far stretches of Western New York, pouring through boxes of photos & family mementos, writing his obituary. I would wake in the morning on the floor of that well worn area, my body curved towards my sister’s on the couch, almost like a human cocoon. It was like I was trying to protect her, unconsciously in the night – to cradle her from any further, completely unexpected blows. My niece Gabby arrived later in the week, descending breathlessly upon the funeral home with her father & younger brother. There was no one my father and I adored more in the world…each of us fighting to spend as much time with her as possible on those all too rare get togethers between our far flung family members. That evening, I walked with her into the waiting area where we, quietly, looked at all the memorabilia pertaining to my dad’s life – his existence laid out on cork boards and carefully scattered photo albums. There, upon seeing a photo of herself and my father, my dear, dear niece’s chin began to quietly tremble. As her adorably plump cheeks quivered, one single, fat, perfectly formed tear eventually leaked from her left eye. “Grandpa is dead,” she gasped, “and – I – will – never – ever – see – him – again!”

And I, being the kind of uncle who sang her Husker Du songs as lullabies when she was a toddler and tried to engage her in feminist chants during my infrequent stints as a babysitter , said, “Oh no, you’ll see him again, honey! He’ll appear to you when you need him the most. Your great grandmother, dad’s mom, has shown up to talk to me…even on the day of her funeral. So, maybe you’ll even see grandpa this week. But even if you don’t, he’ll be watching over you, always.” Perhaps, thankfully, it didn’t register in her 5 year old mind that her agnostic, punk rock loving uncle was talking to her about ghosts as the dawn leaked away from the sky that twilight gloaming – but I was….& perhaps rightfully so. My niece has grown up to be strong and sure and independent- the product not only of her own fierce will & a strong familial hand… but perhaps also due to the presence of a man who loved her very much and who has been watching over her from some misty, far off plane.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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