Gathering Of Divine

Here is an old pic I dug up of me laying on David Caradine's couch back in the Fall of 1980.

There were a whole series of photos taken that day of my buddy Bill Riedel, Calista Caradine, her baby, and Robby Romero (another aspiring Hollywood star wannabe of the day), when we were all visiting David Caradine's house in the Hollywood Hills.

This year the monsters were all swarming at the Shrewsbury base camp on Birch Brush Road. Click here to see the video!

Iowa City West High School has gone Virtual!

Click here to come see the new high school web site - complete with a Teleport to the Virtual Reality version of West High in SecondLife.

Rest In Peace Dad

John William McLure

November 9th, 1934 - February 8th, 2009

We've been a little busy since Friday chopping wood and clearing trees after the worst ice storm I have ever seen. Click Here to see a slideshow of images taken here in Shrewsbury Massachusetts the morning after the storm hit.

We hosted a wonderful little Halloween dinner party this year. Too bad the food didn't agree with everyone...

Sealed with a Kiss!

Fifty years old is a funny age to be. You're supposed to start settling down and preparing for retirement or whatever, but somehow I can't quite relate to this concept. Instead, I feel ready to enter a world of intrigue. In short, I am becoming James Bond.

p.s. In reality, I really don't have time for these things, but it's always fun to fantisize.

Amanda and her friends are shown here posing in their formal garb in preparation for the Semi Formal at Shrewsbury High School earlier this year.

There are undoubtedly still a few warts here, but for the most part things still seem to be working (some things even better than previously). If you ever wanted to join McLures.net before but were unable to, chalk that up to a healing phase which was brought on by hackers. From this point on, things around here will be treated a little more like the castles of old - with security in mind.

This is merely a glimpse of what the future holds - stay tuned for much more exciting changes!

Many years have passed since I was living in West Hollywood and trying my luck at sparking a career in the Film Industry, but for some reason, I was never successful in locating any proof of what little success I did have in the acting profession until recently.

It turns out that even though there is still apparently no official listing on IMDB.com of my acting debut in the Roger Corman movie "Smokie Bites the Dust" (in which I worked the majority of the time as an extra, and was only finally "Taft-Hartley" 'ed on the final day of the Bakersfield area location shoot), it was recently brought to my attention that my acting bit part in the "Chips" TV series pilot "Mitchell & Woods" did indeed list me on IMDB. Mitchell & Woods was a promising pilot starring the two gorgeous female cops "Mitchell & Woods" played by actress Jayne Kennedy, from "Body and Soul" with Muhammad Ali, and Cindy Morgan of "Tron" fame.

My parking valet role in this TV series consisted of exactly three words: "Miss Martin's Party?" which I uttered in amazement as these two beauties drove up to a ritzy party at the evil lady's house driving an old beat up car. The punch line was offered by Cindy who replied, "Yeah, can you believe it? The Bentley's in the shop, so we had to borrow the gardener's car." For this ten second role, I spent the better part of the morning preparing with costume and make-up staff to make sure I looked nice and California tanned. As I was officially a dues paying member of the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) at this point from my earlier work, I was paid full minimum acting scale, which in 1981 was over $500 a day. By this time, I was living in North Hollywood and shleping as a host and bartender at the Moskva Cliff restaurant on Ventura Boulevard most of the time, so to be paid this much for what was essentially a half of a day of work seemed like I had suddenly become a member of royalty! (Of course, it is only royalty if you can land that kind of cash on a regular basis, and I was soon once again among the ranks of the unemployed film actors after this day's work was done).

My completely unsubstantiated theory has always been that this pilot was actually killed by "Tron", and I only say this because of the expression I saw on Cindy's face when she was talking on a pay phone immediately after the shoot that day I worked on the pilot. Cindy looked and sounded like she had just won the lottery! Tron staffing had to be taking place around the same time, which was early 1981, and it wasn't more than a day or two after that the TV series pilot "Mitchell & Woods" cancelled for some unknown reason. Great movie, Tron - thanks in large part to Cindy Morgan! Then again, Jayne Kennedy's "Body and Soul" movie came out about the same time, so the pilot could also have been sucker punched by the stinging butterfly himself (Muhammad Ali, of course)!

Then again, the pilot could have simply fallen victim to the strikes that began to plague Hollywood in 1981. Almost as a reaction to Reagan taking office, Hollywood seemed to shut down completely as one by one, the Writers, Directors, and finally the Actors all went on strike - ending the party for good as far as I was concerned and putting the final nail in the coffin of my relatively brief Hollywood career. It was then that I left Hollywood and the Film Industry and returned to the midwest where I would eventually return to school to experiment with multimedia using computers instead.

Time has passed, and dust has collected on many of my Hollywood memories: I lost track of an 8mm documentary film I had made of the many actors who worked on the movie "Take This Job and Shove It" in Dubuque, Iowa, which I would give anything to watch today. The wild times living in the historical bungaloes on North Orange Grove Avenue (one block east of Fairfax Avenue near Santa Monica Boulevard) in West Hollywood are lost forever since they were torn down and replaced with a Senior Citizen high rise. Along with the bungaloes, two life sustaining orange trees and a fig tree in the central courtyard were likely also lost to what is now primarily a parking lot (the red X in the photo marks the spot where this bungalo once stood) :

Virgil Frye's acting studio was less than a block away east on Santa Monica, and only a block and a half or so west down Santa Monica was (and apparently still is) the famous Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute (http://www.strasberg.com/), which was where we would go to watch plays and learn from the masters. Someday I will have to return to this neighborhood to see what remains of what was once truly a Hollywood film making community.

My Grandfather, Omer Eugene Thomas, shown here in 2005, died June 10th of this month at age 96.

It's official! I am now the proud owner of a little piece of Scotland, which entitles me to legally use the "Laird" (Lord) prefix. I was treated to a sharply framed version of my title and associated landholder documents for my 21st wedding aniversary present from my clever wife Karin (and daughter Amanda).

It's all a little silly, as the exact size of the plot of land is exactly one square foot! By all accounts anyway, it is part of a project which is intended to save a much larger plot of Scottish Highlands Conservation land in Glencairn and John O'Groats from what would otherwise likely be development interests, so it is actually all for a very good cause. Besides, in my book, the sillyness factor is just as important anyway!

Glencairn Estates are located near Lybster along the A99 coastal highway in Caithness on the far northeastern coast of Scotland. Here is a map of the Glencairn Estates :

Here is a larger scale map of the Northern end of Scotland to get a better idea of where the Glencairn Estates are located (see Lybster area) :

(for a better look at the above map, take a look at this)

The Glencairn area in particular is thought to be the Oldest Stone Age site in Britain, and the Long Cairn of Camster was used for many centuries as a burial chamber for the first Highland Clan Chiefs.
Click Here to learn a little more about the historical significance of the "Grey Cairns of Camster"

For information about touring this section of Northern Scotland, click
here
If you are interested in purchasing your own piece of Scotland as well, there are several companies out there ready to help you out. You could google it on your own, or you mght try the company my wife used to purchase my own Laird title.

p.s. Also, I might like to interest you in a one square foot section of relatively untouched Shrewsbury forest in Massachusetts. As for titles, we could draw up some papers for you, but first we'd need to establish an appropriate marketing campaign which would appeal to investors. For example, we could refer to you with the title "Superbeing" for owning a piece of land in the American Super Power... or not.