AN ENCHANTED EVENING WITH STEPHEN KING 9/25/2013

         I had one of those magical, once in a lifetime experiences last night that I will never forget, and it will always be much more vivid and clear in the deep memory archives of my mind than any HD camera or video recorder could ever hope to capture. (There were inconsiderate idiots that did that anyway, despite being asked to NOT use video cameras or iphones.)

      Your pal Theodore felt like I was in an episode of Fantasy Island, where Tattoo said "Zee plane!! Zee Plane"...Steeven Keeeng iz here" and then Mr. Rourke welcomed me to Fantasy Island by supplying me one of my Three Lifetime Wishes: I have only a few: To have an ice cold beverage with my favorite actor Jack Nicholson and discuss the virtues of all you lovely ladies; To hang out with my favorite rock musician Angus McKinnon Young of AC/DC backstage and sing some Bon Scott tunes unplugged; and to have coffee and talk books with my favorite author, Mr. Stephen Edwin King.

      I didn't get my wish to be with Mr. King one-on-one, but got the very next best thing. I got to hear him speak, read, and answer questions last night at the sold-out Chautaqua Auditorium about his new novel Dr. Sleep the sequel to his 1978 masterpiece The Shining. One of my biggest heroes was spotlighted front and center and was as close as if we WERE having coffee together in my living room.

      He was an incredible speaker full of awesome stories about his life from A to Z that were told with wit, wisdom, & humor. He was an absolute delight to hear about what makes him tick as a writer, dad, and husband, and he was about as down-home and unpretentious as they come. He only chose two cities for his book tour: New York City and Boulder Colorado. He chose Boulder (and this is old news to all you fellow "Constant Readers") because he not only lived in Boulder, but wrote two of his masterpieces The Stand (where the backdrop of that book was set in all the landmarks and streets in Boulder) and also The Shining (and the idea to write that was when he was snowbound at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, just an hour out of Boulder.) Both were written at his tiny apartment at Table Mesa and 42nd Avenue, and he said that he knew he had to return to Colorado if he was going to write a sequel to The Shining to get that "vibe". He was absolutely mesmerizing, captivating and awesome. I have read every one of his novels ever since discovering "The Shining" in 1983, and some several times.  (I am at the present time reading The Stand for the third time, all 1, 153 pages of it.)

      There was a time, that I HATED reading, as I looked at it as a pain in the ass chore one had to do in English class to do a damn book report on. All that changed when a very special GHHS English teacher introduced me to Lord of the Flies in 1982 that tuned up the volume of my reading interest. Mr. King just increased the volume to "11" as Nigel Tuffnell once said, and I learned that reading was not an enemy, but a life time friend.

     I have had a few moments like last night that were larger than life and as I said, more vivid than anything caught on DVD. They are magic moments that are intimate, one of a kind, and timeless in memory, mood, and perception. A few of mine were seeing my hero Jack Nicholson speak at a movie convention up close, seeing Julio Cesar Chavez enter through the ropes to box at the MGM while sitting ringside, and seeing my baby brother Tommy come out of the tunnel on his very first NFL game as Cleveland Brown in Indianapolis. Last night was certainly one of those magic moments very personal and special to me. What was REALLY nice was the fact the entire evening was $35.00, which included a copy of the book...I would have paid $3,500.00 to see this.  To add a nice "epilogue" to this enchanted evening, every person in attendance in the packed sold-out house received a copy of Dr. Sleep and it was said that there were only a handful of signed autographed copies of the book that a lucky fan might receive. I was one of those lucky fans and was like Charlie getting the Golden Ticket.

    Maybe the book gods were rewarding my almost obsessive Annie Wilkes-like loyalty to Mr. King for 30 years. What a perfect evening and what an amazing man. (Oh, and by the way,  Dr. Sleep was AWESOME...As of March 18th, 2014, I have read it twice.)