Star Pick with Justin Paul Kelly

It was an absolute pleasure to sit down with guitar guru Damon Johnson a few months back. The co-founder of Brother Cane, the band helped shoot Johnson onto the national scene – partially thanks to three number one hits on rock radio, namely: “Got No Shame”, “And Fools Shine On”, and “I Lie in the Bed I Make”. And, for horror fans, “And Fools Shine On” was used in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (the sixth entry in the franchise). Disbanding in 1998, Johnson has been in demand ever since. He has worked (either touring or writing/recording) with Sammy Hagar (album: Marching to Mars), Faith Hill, John Waite, Whiskey Falls, Queensrÿche, Stevie Nicks, as well as many others (including his own solo projects). In 2004, he joined Alice Cooper as his lead guitarist. . . also co-writing and recording the superlative album Dirty Diamonds – some standout songs include, “Woman of Mass Distraction”, “Perfect”, “Dirty Diamonds”, and “Sunset Babies (All Got Rabies)”. On the road for five consecutive tours until 2011 (I saw them back in 2006), he was asked to join another iconic rock band, Thin Lizzy – Cooper gave him his blessing, and he made the jump.

What is there to say about an icon like John Carpenter? An auteur with the skill to make dynamic features with a minuscule budget, his film Halloween majorly influenced the slasher sub-genre (along with gialli, and other movies such as Peeping Tom, Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas). One of the most prolific horror filmmakers since the 1970s, he followed up the October 31st related motion picture with titles like The Fog, The Thing, Christine, They Live, amongst many others, whilst he has branched out into other genres with films like Assault on Precinct 13 (action), Escape From New York and its sequel Escape From L.A. (sci-fi action), Starman (a sci-fi romance), and Big Trouble in Little China (an action adventure comedy).

I was fortunate enough to sit down with actor Jayson Warner Smith at CAPE (Cornwall and Area Pop Expo) recently. Perhaps best known as Gavin, Negan's trusted and rather level-headed manager of the Kingdom in The Walking Dead, he has quickly carved out several quality roles on both television and the silver screen in a short time. Also with a key role on the highly acclaimed series Rectify (which ran for four seasons and ended in 2016), his character of Wendall Jelks is a master antagonizer and death row inmate, while he takes a wholly different turn as a loyal yet wild right-hand man airplane pilot to Tom Cruise's character in 2017's American Made (directed by Doug Liman). He has also appeared on the big screen in films such as Footloose (the remake), Mississippi Grind, Christine, and Birth of a Nation.

Sometimes, you need luck on your side. As you can probably imagine, many of the celebrity interviews I conduct are arranged well in advance. . . though, not always. A prime example of said luck, as I attended a National Hockey League game a few months back, I just happened to bump into the one and only Alex Trebek. A man who definitely does not need an introduction, he has hosted one of the most popular game shows in the history of television – Jeopardy, since its revival in 1984 (when it became a daily syndicated show). . . he has also emceed many others, including High Rollers and Classic Concentration, to name but a few. So popular in fact, Trebek was spoofed for years by Will Ferrell on Saturday Night Live (always the butt end of one of Darrell Hammond’s Sean Connery puns/gags about his mother).

It was an absolute pleasure sitting down with Lee Meriwether at Trekonderoga, the Ticonderoga, New York, convention that is all things Star Trek, this past August. An icon in the industry for the sixty plus years, Meriwether won Miss California in 1954, following it up by winning the Miss America pageant in 1955, the first year it was televised. Joining the Today Show soon after, it did not take long for her to nab her first major role in the 1959 sci fi horror flick 4D Man. Splitting time between television and the silver screen, she made guest appearances or had recurring roles on shows such as Dragnet, Leave It to Beaver, The Jack Benny Program, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Perry Mason, The Fugitive, The Time Tunnel (all thirty episodes), Mission: Impossible, and of course, Star Trek – playing the mysterious Losira in the 1969 episode, “That Which Survives”. On the film front, Meriwether took over the role of Catwoman from Julie Newmar for Batman: The Movie (the first feature film, though there were two serial features created in the 1940s), also making two appearances as Lisa Carson soon after on the Batman series, she also starred opposite Andy Griffith in Angel in My Pocket, as well as John Wayne and Rock Hudson in the western The Undefeated, both motion pictures were released in 1969.

It was an absolute pleasure sitting down with Guy Boucher just prior to the beginning of the 2017-2018 National Hockey League season. At a charitable event for The Children’s Treatment Centre, he was one of the roasters of Ottawa Senators’ assistant coach Marc Crawford, in what can only be termed a hilarious evening. With an impressive start to his coaching career, Boucher began in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, capping it off by winning the Paul Dumont Trophy in 2009 – awarded to the personality of the year, while with the Drummondville Voltigeurs. The success brought with it a head coaching job with the Hamilton Bulldogs in the American Hockey League, the affiliate of the Montreal Canadiens, where he took home the Louis A. R. Pieri Memorial Award (coach of the year) in 2010.