October 8, 2017 I attended the second annual real life Bauer BBQ. I had an amazing time. It wasn’t overly well attended, but it was a great group of people. I was so glad to talk with Guiding Light fans and a couple of people who even knew my blog. I was especially pleased to get to meet in person my online friend Elizabeth who does the Guiding Light discussion board. I’m going to write up a full report that I’ll save for Bauer BBQ week next year and a special post on a bit of Bauer BBQ history I managed to nail down.
NOTE: For this post I’m going to use the term actors rather than actors and actresses or actors/actresses just for the flow of the post. However, I’m including both men and women in my statements.
Bloss Breakfast Two Shot
About Me
Now, I normally don’t talk about me in this blog. My opinions and memories of the show? You bet. My family history with the show? All the time, but I don’t talk about my personal history much. That’s really not what this blog is for. However, this post I think I need to give you a little bit of my personal history for you to get the full impact of the last bit.
Normally meeting actors isn’t that big a deal for me, even for shows I watched as a kid. There is another interest I have that is connected to a TV show I loved growing up. I’m there for events that often have a TV component (now a days I’m more for the research but if the TV stuff is there how can you not take part?). I certainly don’t make all of the events, but many are within a reasonable driving distance and so I get to quite a few, so many that a couple of the actors call me by name without prompting. I also have a cousin who is an actor and a father who is in the theater. So I know actors.
Also, while I was growing up, my mom had a job which had her, among many other things, do spots on local TV shows. Back then there were a lot more locally produced TV shows and she appeared on several on a regular basis, even being a guest host of one for about 6 weeks once. She usually had us come with her on one of the shows once or twice a year. So I know a little bit of TV from the other side of the camera, I know how the camera cues work, how hot the lights are (were? have they gone to LED and are they cooler than they used to be? No idea) and as a result how cold the studios were kept when you weren’t under the lights. I learned how green screen worked at a young age and knew that one of the local anchors always went on camera sock footed for some reason I never understood.
So my point is that I’m not normally all that excited to meet actors. They have a job. A pretty cool job which they are often very good at, but it’s just a job and one that I know a little bit about so a lot of stuff doesn’t impress me that might other people. I know in most cases who I really wanted to know is the characters and I know I can’t do that, so I’m pretty calm about meeting the actors who played them.
But…..
So I surprised with my reaction to some of the Guiding Light people. Honestly I knew I’d enjoy talking with other fans which I totally did (WAVES if any of you are reading this), but I wasn’t expecting as much of a reaction as I had to the actors. It wasn’t all of them of course. A couple of them were working the room and you could tell that’s what they were doing. I certainly admired the skill they showed at it, but that’s what it was — working a room. Some of the actors seemed much more interested in visiting with the other actors than the fans. But the magical bit was at the Bloss Brunch.
It was a small group and as early arrivers me and my friend Elizabeth (of Guiding Light Central) got to sit next to Jerry verDorn and Liz Keifer aka Ross and Blake. I had an actual conversation with them about soap history (with which they seemed impressed by my recall of long ago plot) and the current state of the industry which was fascinating. But it was a bit surreal. My vision even did a funny thing for a second when I first walked over to the table, like my mind couldn’t believe my eyes were working properly. I think it might have been that by the end their characters had become so like them, that it was like they WERE their characters at least a little bit. This was the third event of the weekend, but somehow they seemed the most real. For a just a flash there while we were talking I honestly felt that somehow I had stepped through the TV and had some magical way ended up in Springfield. Oddly it felt really normal as well. I had heard them talk on the TV for years and often talked back to it (I tend to get a bit vocal when I watch – see my YouTube comments). Only this time they could hear me. It just was natural, but in a wild dichotomy it was also absolutely amazing.
I don’t know if I’ll go again soon. I have a couple of other trips I want to cross off my life list that I’ve scheduled for the next couple of years (a conference I’ve wanted to attend for at least 10 years in Canada and a family trip to Disney), but I hope that I’ll be able to make it to another Guiding Light event. This one was certainly worth the trip.
Robansuefarm is the handle of one of Manny and Guiding Light‘s biggest fans following in her family’s footsteps of Guiding Light fandom since 1939. This blog is an effort to make it easy to find Guiding Light and especially Manny online. Check back here for her blog, find fanfic previews and fake WSPR newscasts on her YouTube, find podcasts that look back to old shows and audios of her fanfics on Blog Talk Radio, and finally follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Tags: Bauer BBQ, Blake Thorpe Marler, Bloss, Daytime Stars and Strikes, GL, Guiding Light, Jerry ver Dorn, Liz Keifer, Ross Marler
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