View allAll Photos Tagged Christmasspecial
A Christmas Special - 2019 was a great year here on Flickr for me. I wish the whole Flickr community a peaceful Christmas time!!!
We put our tree up a little more than a week ago so I think that Snoopy is really getting off to a late start. But if he and his pal Woodstock could decorate Snoopy's doghouse in a matter of seconds, and win first prize in the Holiday Lights and Display Contest, I'm sure he'll have everything ready in time for Christmas!
This is a bit of detail from the 2015 Christmas windows at Macy's in Herald Square. They always do such a fantastic job putting these displays together!
EXPLORED on December 12, 2015 #59
Thanks for looking, everybody!
Another view of Bullied 'Merchant Navy' Class 4-6-2 35028 'Clan Line' steaming West along the Coastway line while heading up the 'Bath & Bristol 2024 Christmas Special'
276A4011
16.12.2007.
A shot from way back!
LMS Stanier Class 5MT 4-6-0 No 45407 pilots BR Standard Class 4 2-6-0 No 76079 on the approach to Brighouse with a Manchester - York railtour back in 2007.
The Nikon D70S was fully tested at iso 1000!
client | Tokyo Optical Co., Ltd.
brand | Face Fonts
photo | photomanm
more commercial photography and other works at www.photomanm.com
client | Canary Nail Salon
photo | photomanm
more commercial photography and other works at www.photomanm.com
To toast the 50th anniversary of the iconic holiday special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," Macy's enlisted the beloved Peanuts gang to front its windows. The six displays feature key scenes from the 1965 classic, with larger-than-life figures of Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, Lucy and the rest of the kids.
(see "album description" for this "pay what you can charity event") Comments to tribute the performing artists are greatly appreciated! Thanks for your views and fav's. Peace, love and Happy Holidays. Closing song brings all "happy" performers into view. From me to Flickr, and Smug Mug, thanks for extending the 3 min. limit on video uploads. All the best to you and your families!
My favorite Christmas special.The latest of my cross stitch creations. Drawn by my son and sewn by me.
well it wouldn't be Christmas without Morecambe & Wise!
This was my back up plan for today, and i'm really glad i did it. For those of you who don;t know Morecambe & Wise, please, please check out the link as they are probably the greatest comedy act to come out of Great Britain (IMHO)
Also please make sure to check my stream later as i have a special gift just for my contacts, 'what i'll be posting' later.
D200, Sigma 10-20mm, Tripod, SB-600 CLS on 1/4 power though umbrella, glasses from a car boot and home made pipe from an old envelope
I made this snowman in my front yard today, it is based on the snowmen form the 2012 Doctor Who Christmas Special "The Snowmen".
Santa's Elves, just some of the fiberglass figures modeled after the characters from the 1964 Rankin – Bass Christmas Special: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”.
Seen at Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze, Natural Bridge, Virginia. June 9, 2011
Sadly, a fire destroyed the property and all its contents in 2012
Located off Route 130 on Bell Tower Road where BTR dead ends in the woods
Burning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?
By Hawes Spencer | hawesinsky@gmail.com
Published online 6:07am Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
and in print issue #1121 dated Thursday May 24th, 2012
A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the Haunted Monster Museum as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a "redneck." But the fire means no attractions this summer from Mark "Professor" Cline.
"We're gonna take a break this year," says Cline. "I just need more time to regroup."
Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the "Elvis-stein" monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16.
During a next-day visit, the ruins are still smoldering when a State Police investigator shoos a reporter from the scene.
"This is Natural Bridge property," barks the officer, as Cline ushers the visitor away from the charred house.
"He was my dragon," laughs Cline, recalling the era when the future officer was a teenager piloting not a Crown Victoria but a lawn tractor and sporting a character costume at Cline's last attraction, the Enchanted Castle. In a still-unsolved 2001 fire, a blaze whose investigation (or lack thereof, as he alleges) still makes Cline bristle with anger, the Enchanted Castle went up in flames.
"I'd much rather have Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau out here," says Cline, recalling how State Police investigators conducted interviews hinting that Cline himself had torched the Enchanted Castle, despite the fact that the Castle was uninsured, and that he lost his office, his studio, and all the irreplaceable 8-millimeter films he made as a boy.
"We've done a pile of work on that case," says George "Stick" Austin, the State Police captain overseeing that investigation, noting that it's standard procedure to interview owners. "It is still considered an active investigation."
As for the recent fire, it was an otherwise uneventful spring afternoon when Cline says he was on the grounds of his studio, where– with a small crew– he manufactures fiberglass figures for America's roadside playgrounds.
"I got a call at about 5:45 from the assistant general manager of Natural Bridge," says Cline. "I dropped everything and ran outside."
Cline pauses, looking mournfully down the highway in the direction of the smouldering ruins.
"I looked up and saw a plume of thick black smoke," he says, "and I knew immediately it was gone."
By the time Cline could speed the three miles south on Lee Highway, what may have started as a minor blaze on a stage at one end of the structure had become an engulfing inferno. Cline snapped a few photographs as the mansion cooked.
At the time of a reporter's visit 24 hours later, all that's left are a trio of chimneys and the front wall, executed in a rusticated gray limestone.
To 64-year-old Kilmarnock resident Ann Gill, whose grandparents owned and operated the structure as a hotel/antique shop called "Stonewall Lodge," it's a crushing blow.
"It was a romantic old home," says Gill. "My mother was married there."
In the years after Gill's family sold the structure in the 1950s, the Natural Bridge company eventually let the place go to seed, and by the 1980s the expansive front lawn had reverted to forest.
Cline says the abandoned house seemed creepy when, a decade ago, he approached the owner, Natural Bridge LLC, with his plan to haunt it. In 2002, he unveiled his Haunted Monster Museum there. Two years later, as an April Fool's prank, he built a full-size replica of Stonehenge called Foamhenge about a mile away.
The past two decades have been a tough time on traditional road-trip destinations. While Natural Bridge keeps attendance figures under wraps, educational places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg reveal numbers that have fallen from their peaks in the pre-Internet, pre-water-park era.
The venerable Homestead Resort just announced plans to put in a water park. Massanutten installed its water park in 2005.
As some may recall, there was a proposal in Charlottesville 20 years ago to give land to a steam train operator. But that was at least five hotels ago, before the Downtown Mall and myriad wineries erupted with enough critical mass to fill all the new lodgings.
Despite having what's been billed as the Seventh Wonder of the natural world, Natural Bridge has had no such luck. The town's newest hotel appears at least 50 years old. A pair of zoos, a cave, a wax museum, an Indian village, and a new indoor butterfly garden helped draw families off the Interstate, but it was Cline's humor/horror compound that drew national attention from roadside enthusiasts.
"It was a nice addition to our attractions and particularly popular with kids," says Natural Bridge general manager Debbie Land. "It's a total loss as they say in the insurance world."
It's a great loss to Kay Lera. A retiree from the San Francisco Bay Area who for nine years ran a B&B in her new hometown of Lexington, Lera notes how one man can make a difference.
"Natural Bridge has the beauty of the bridge and the caverns," says Lera, "but having some wacky humor incorporated into the scenario does make it a family destination."
So strong is the pull of Professor Cline that when an unassuming adult walks into the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke to ask what the Museum has to offer, the first words out of the front desk lady's mouth are these: "Well, Professor Cline is gone…"
We didn't even ask about Professor Cline, whose exhibition there had closed a couple of weeks earlier. But when a man hangs a fiberglass King Kong on the side of your museum and breaks attendance records with such twisted figures as the "Franken-chicken," people take notice.
Like the rest of us, Cline says he's now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He's seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men's room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around.
Cline veers between "pissed off" anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.
"We made a lot of magic there," says Cline, mulling the impermanence of his creations. "Even one day the great Pyramids of Egypt will be just dust in the wind. This might just be one of those messages from the universe saying it's time to move on."
The latest of my cross stitch creations.Drawn by my son and sewn by me.
My Son decided that when Ralphie puts the brakes on and climbs back up the giant red slide and tells Santa what he really wants, only to be told "You'll shoot your eye out kid" sums up "A Christmas Story" movie the best. So he drew that scene.
Nobody wants to play with a Charlie in the Box. one of the fiberglass figures modeled after the characters knows as the “Misfit Toys”, from the 1964 Rankin – Bass Christmas Special: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”. They lived on the Island of Misfit Toys.
Seen at Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze, Natural Bridge, Virginia. June 9, 2011
A fire destroyed the property and all its contents in 2012
Located off Route 130 on Bell Tower Road where BTR dead ends in the woods
Burning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?
By Hawes Spencer | hawesinsky@gmail.com
Published online 6:07am Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
and in print issue #1121 dated Thursday May 24th, 2012
A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the Haunted Monster Museum as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a "redneck." But the fire means no attractions this summer from Mark "Professor" Cline.
"We're gonna take a break this year," says Cline. "I just need more time to regroup."
Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the "Elvis-stein" monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16.
During a next-day visit, the ruins are still smoldering when a State Police investigator shoos a reporter from the scene.
"This is Natural Bridge property," barks the officer, as Cline ushers the visitor away from the charred house.
"He was my dragon," laughs Cline, recalling the era when the future officer was a teenager piloting not a Crown Victoria but a lawn tractor and sporting a character costume at Cline's last attraction, the Enchanted Castle. In a still-unsolved 2001 fire, a blaze whose investigation (or lack thereof, as he alleges) still makes Cline bristle with anger, the Enchanted Castle went up in flames.
"I'd much rather have Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau out here," says Cline, recalling how State Police investigators conducted interviews hinting that Cline himself had torched the Enchanted Castle, despite the fact that the Castle was uninsured, and that he lost his office, his studio, and all the irreplaceable 8-millimeter films he made as a boy.
"We've done a pile of work on that case," says George "Stick" Austin, the State Police captain overseeing that investigation, noting that it's standard procedure to interview owners. "It is still considered an active investigation."
As for the recent fire, it was an otherwise uneventful spring afternoon when Cline says he was on the grounds of his studio, where– with a small crew– he manufactures fiberglass figures for America's roadside playgrounds.
"I got a call at about 5:45 from the assistant general manager of Natural Bridge," says Cline. "I dropped everything and ran outside."
Cline pauses, looking mournfully down the highway in the direction of the smouldering ruins.
"I looked up and saw a plume of thick black smoke," he says, "and I knew immediately it was gone."
By the time Cline could speed the three miles south on Lee Highway, what may have started as a minor blaze on a stage at one end of the structure had become an engulfing inferno. Cline snapped a few photographs as the mansion cooked.
At the time of a reporter's visit 24 hours later, all that's left are a trio of chimneys and the front wall, executed in a rusticated gray limestone.
To 64-year-old Kilmarnock resident Ann Gill, whose grandparents owned and operated the structure as a hotel/antique shop called "Stonewall Lodge," it's a crushing blow.
"It was a romantic old home," says Gill. "My mother was married there."
In the years after Gill's family sold the structure in the 1950s, the Natural Bridge company eventually let the place go to seed, and by the 1980s the expansive front lawn had reverted to forest.
Cline says the abandoned house seemed creepy when, a decade ago, he approached the owner, Natural Bridge LLC, with his plan to haunt it. In 2002, he unveiled his Haunted Monster Museum there. Two years later, as an April Fool's prank, he built a full-size replica of Stonehenge called Foamhenge about a mile away.
The past two decades have been a tough time on traditional road-trip destinations. While Natural Bridge keeps attendance figures under wraps, educational places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg reveal numbers that have fallen from their peaks in the pre-Internet, pre-water-park era.
The venerable Homestead Resort just announced plans to put in a water park. Massanutten installed its water park in 2005.
As some may recall, there was a proposal in Charlottesville 20 years ago to give land to a steam train operator. But that was at least five hotels ago, before the Downtown Mall and myriad wineries erupted with enough critical mass to fill all the new lodgings.
Despite having what's been billed as the Seventh Wonder of the natural world, Natural Bridge has had no such luck. The town's newest hotel appears at least 50 years old. A pair of zoos, a cave, a wax museum, an Indian village, and a new indoor butterfly garden helped draw families off the Interstate, but it was Cline's humor/horror compound that drew national attention from roadside enthusiasts.
"It was a nice addition to our attractions and particularly popular with kids," says Natural Bridge general manager Debbie Land. "It's a total loss as they say in the insurance world."
It's a great loss to Kay Lera. A retiree from the San Francisco Bay Area who for nine years ran a B&B in her new hometown of Lexington, Lera notes how one man can make a difference.
"Natural Bridge has the beauty of the bridge and the caverns," says Lera, "but having some wacky humor incorporated into the scenario does make it a family destination."
So strong is the pull of Professor Cline that when an unassuming adult walks into the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke to ask what the Museum has to offer, the first words out of the front desk lady's mouth are these: "Well, Professor Cline is gone…"
We didn't even ask about Professor Cline, whose exhibition there had closed a couple of weeks earlier. But when a man hangs a fiberglass King Kong on the side of your museum and breaks attendance records with such twisted figures as the "Franken-chicken," people take notice.
Like the rest of us, Cline says he's now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He's seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men's room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around.
Cline veers between "pissed off" anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.
"We made a lot of magic there," says Cline, mulling the impermanence of his creations. "Even one day the great Pyramids of Egypt will be just dust in the wind. This might just be one of those messages from the universe saying it's time to move on."
A Holding Slide from The Vicar of Dibley: Christmas Special, originally slides like this were used by the BBC during the BBC One Balloon Era (1997-2002) but were then used by UKTV that showed the same programmes years later.
(This was used from going to and coming from ad breaks).
A Relative in Show Business?
We have been trying to figure out what breeds went into Cami's parentage. She looks a lot like an Australian Cattle Dog (a Queensland Red Heeler), and she has many of the traits of that breed. She has the speckles and spots, the speed, and she makes a lot of the signature sounds (the chuffing 'throat clearing', high-pitched calls and 'monkey sounds'). Her front in particular (below the neck) resembles some sort of hound, but she also shares some traits with the Jack Russell Terrier (known to some snooty owners as the Parson Russell): her speed, hyper-alert nature and facial markings. If Russell Terriers have natural, undocked tails those caudal appendages are usually slim, curved, pointed ones -- similar to Cami's.
Probably the best-known JRT is 'Eddie' from the American sitcom Frasier, but Eddie was a 'broken coat' dog -- Cami's coat is smooth nigh unto slick.. He also had darker markings, more toward brown than red. The resemblance that comes to mind is 'Olive', from the television Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer and at least two children's' books. Here I've posted Olive (inset) next to Cami; I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
I took this a handful of hours before the Christmas special 12/25/2013 where the doctor once again regenerated. I will miss Matt for sure but I am also looking forward to new adventures with Peter.
Unveiled by the Queen in July 1999, the statue features some of Eric's famous sayings - and the names of 103 celebrities who starred alongside him and Ernie Wise in the Morecambe & Wise Show. At its height, the duo drew audiences of twenty million and their Christmas 1977 special, an audience of more than 28 million viewers.
The man is a Marine who lost his right eye while fighting rebels in the south of the country. This scene is a reenactment of one of his many emotional phone calls to his wife and family back home, from whom he was often separated for months on end.
Taken by my EP Ernestine Tamana, while I was directing this scene for the Jesuit Communication Foundation's special Christmas program.
A Bird that can't Fly, I Swim. one of the fiberglass figures modeled after the characters knows as the “Misfit Toys”, from the 1964 Rankin – Bass Christmas Special: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”. They lived on the Island of Misfit Toys.
Seen at Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze, Natural Bridge, Virginia. June 9, 2011
A fire destroyed the property and all its contents in 2012
Located off Route 130 on Bell Tower Road where BTR dead ends in the woods
Burning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?
By Hawes Spencer | hawesinsky@gmail.com
Published online 6:07am Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
and in print issue #1121 dated Thursday May 24th, 2012
A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the Haunted Monster Museum as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a "redneck." But the fire means no attractions this summer from Mark "Professor" Cline.
"We're gonna take a break this year," says Cline. "I just need more time to regroup."
Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the "Elvis-stein" monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16.
During a next-day visit, the ruins are still smoldering when a State Police investigator shoos a reporter from the scene.
"This is Natural Bridge property," barks the officer, as Cline ushers the visitor away from the charred house.
"He was my dragon," laughs Cline, recalling the era when the future officer was a teenager piloting not a Crown Victoria but a lawn tractor and sporting a character costume at Cline's last attraction, the Enchanted Castle. In a still-unsolved 2001 fire, a blaze whose investigation (or lack thereof, as he alleges) still makes Cline bristle with anger, the Enchanted Castle went up in flames.
"I'd much rather have Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau out here," says Cline, recalling how State Police investigators conducted interviews hinting that Cline himself had torched the Enchanted Castle, despite the fact that the Castle was uninsured, and that he lost his office, his studio, and all the irreplaceable 8-millimeter films he made as a boy.
"We've done a pile of work on that case," says George "Stick" Austin, the State Police captain overseeing that investigation, noting that it's standard procedure to interview owners. "It is still considered an active investigation."
As for the recent fire, it was an otherwise uneventful spring afternoon when Cline says he was on the grounds of his studio, where– with a small crew– he manufactures fiberglass figures for America's roadside playgrounds.
"I got a call at about 5:45 from the assistant general manager of Natural Bridge," says Cline. "I dropped everything and ran outside."
Cline pauses, looking mournfully down the highway in the direction of the smouldering ruins.
"I looked up and saw a plume of thick black smoke," he says, "and I knew immediately it was gone."
By the time Cline could speed the three miles south on Lee Highway, what may have started as a minor blaze on a stage at one end of the structure had become an engulfing inferno. Cline snapped a few photographs as the mansion cooked.
At the time of a reporter's visit 24 hours later, all that's left are a trio of chimneys and the front wall, executed in a rusticated gray limestone.
To 64-year-old Kilmarnock resident Ann Gill, whose grandparents owned and operated the structure as a hotel/antique shop called "Stonewall Lodge," it's a crushing blow.
"It was a romantic old home," says Gill. "My mother was married there."
In the years after Gill's family sold the structure in the 1950s, the Natural Bridge company eventually let the place go to seed, and by the 1980s the expansive front lawn had reverted to forest.
Cline says the abandoned house seemed creepy when, a decade ago, he approached the owner, Natural Bridge LLC, with his plan to haunt it. In 2002, he unveiled his Haunted Monster Museum there. Two years later, as an April Fool's prank, he built a full-size replica of Stonehenge called Foamhenge about a mile away.
The past two decades have been a tough time on traditional road-trip destinations. While Natural Bridge keeps attendance figures under wraps, educational places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg reveal numbers that have fallen from their peaks in the pre-Internet, pre-water-park era.
The venerable Homestead Resort just announced plans to put in a water park. Massanutten installed its water park in 2005.
As some may recall, there was a proposal in Charlottesville 20 years ago to give land to a steam train operator. But that was at least five hotels ago, before the Downtown Mall and myriad wineries erupted with enough critical mass to fill all the new lodgings.
Despite having what's been billed as the Seventh Wonder of the natural world, Natural Bridge has had no such luck. The town's newest hotel appears at least 50 years old. A pair of zoos, a cave, a wax museum, an Indian village, and a new indoor butterfly garden helped draw families off the Interstate, but it was Cline's humor/horror compound that drew national attention from roadside enthusiasts.
"It was a nice addition to our attractions and particularly popular with kids," says Natural Bridge general manager Debbie Land. "It's a total loss as they say in the insurance world."
It's a great loss to Kay Lera. A retiree from the San Francisco Bay Area who for nine years ran a B&B in her new hometown of Lexington, Lera notes how one man can make a difference.
"Natural Bridge has the beauty of the bridge and the caverns," says Lera, "but having some wacky humor incorporated into the scenario does make it a family destination."
So strong is the pull of Professor Cline that when an unassuming adult walks into the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke to ask what the Museum has to offer, the first words out of the front desk lady's mouth are these: "Well, Professor Cline is gone…"
We didn't even ask about Professor Cline, whose exhibition there had closed a couple of weeks earlier. But when a man hangs a fiberglass King Kong on the side of your museum and breaks attendance records with such twisted figures as the "Franken-chicken," people take notice.
Like the rest of us, Cline says he's now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He's seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men's room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around.
Cline veers between "pissed off" anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.
"We made a lot of magic there," says Cline, mulling the impermanence of his creations. "Even one day the great Pyramids of Egypt will be just dust in the wind. This might just be one of those messages from the universe saying it's time to move on."
A Cowboy that rides...... an Ostrich! one of the fiberglass figures modeled after the characters knows as the “Misfit Toys”, from the 1964 Rankin – Bass Christmas Special: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”. They lived on the Island of Misfit Toys.
Seen at Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze, Natural Bridge, Virginia. June 9, 2011
A fire destroyed the property and all its contents in 2012
Located off Route 130 on Bell Tower Road where BTR dead ends in the woods
Burning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?
By Hawes Spencer | hawesinsky@gmail.com
Published online 6:07am Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
and in print issue #1121 dated Thursday May 24th, 2012
A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the Haunted Monster Museum as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a "redneck." But the fire means no attractions this summer from Mark "Professor" Cline.
"We're gonna take a break this year," says Cline. "I just need more time to regroup."
Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the "Elvis-stein" monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16.
During a next-day visit, the ruins are still smoldering when a State Police investigator shoos a reporter from the scene.
"This is Natural Bridge property," barks the officer, as Cline ushers the visitor away from the charred house.
"He was my dragon," laughs Cline, recalling the era when the future officer was a teenager piloting not a Crown Victoria but a lawn tractor and sporting a character costume at Cline's last attraction, the Enchanted Castle. In a still-unsolved 2001 fire, a blaze whose investigation (or lack thereof, as he alleges) still makes Cline bristle with anger, the Enchanted Castle went up in flames.
"I'd much rather have Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau out here," says Cline, recalling how State Police investigators conducted interviews hinting that Cline himself had torched the Enchanted Castle, despite the fact that the Castle was uninsured, and that he lost his office, his studio, and all the irreplaceable 8-millimeter films he made as a boy.
"We've done a pile of work on that case," says George "Stick" Austin, the State Police captain overseeing that investigation, noting that it's standard procedure to interview owners. "It is still considered an active investigation."
As for the recent fire, it was an otherwise uneventful spring afternoon when Cline says he was on the grounds of his studio, where– with a small crew– he manufactures fiberglass figures for America's roadside playgrounds.
"I got a call at about 5:45 from the assistant general manager of Natural Bridge," says Cline. "I dropped everything and ran outside."
Cline pauses, looking mournfully down the highway in the direction of the smouldering ruins.
"I looked up and saw a plume of thick black smoke," he says, "and I knew immediately it was gone."
By the time Cline could speed the three miles south on Lee Highway, what may have started as a minor blaze on a stage at one end of the structure had become an engulfing inferno. Cline snapped a few photographs as the mansion cooked.
At the time of a reporter's visit 24 hours later, all that's left are a trio of chimneys and the front wall, executed in a rusticated gray limestone.
To 64-year-old Kilmarnock resident Ann Gill, whose grandparents owned and operated the structure as a hotel/antique shop called "Stonewall Lodge," it's a crushing blow.
"It was a romantic old home," says Gill. "My mother was married there."
In the years after Gill's family sold the structure in the 1950s, the Natural Bridge company eventually let the place go to seed, and by the 1980s the expansive front lawn had reverted to forest.
Cline says the abandoned house seemed creepy when, a decade ago, he approached the owner, Natural Bridge LLC, with his plan to haunt it. In 2002, he unveiled his Haunted Monster Museum there. Two years later, as an April Fool's prank, he built a full-size replica of Stonehenge called Foamhenge about a mile away.
The past two decades have been a tough time on traditional road-trip destinations. While Natural Bridge keeps attendance figures under wraps, educational places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg reveal numbers that have fallen from their peaks in the pre-Internet, pre-water-park era.
The venerable Homestead Resort just announced plans to put in a water park. Massanutten installed its water park in 2005.
As some may recall, there was a proposal in Charlottesville 20 years ago to give land to a steam train operator. But that was at least five hotels ago, before the Downtown Mall and myriad wineries erupted with enough critical mass to fill all the new lodgings.
Despite having what's been billed as the Seventh Wonder of the natural world, Natural Bridge has had no such luck. The town's newest hotel appears at least 50 years old. A pair of zoos, a cave, a wax museum, an Indian village, and a new indoor butterfly garden helped draw families off the Interstate, but it was Cline's humor/horror compound that drew national attention from roadside enthusiasts.
"It was a nice addition to our attractions and particularly popular with kids," says Natural Bridge general manager Debbie Land. "It's a total loss as they say in the insurance world."
It's a great loss to Kay Lera. A retiree from the San Francisco Bay Area who for nine years ran a B&B in her new hometown of Lexington, Lera notes how one man can make a difference.
"Natural Bridge has the beauty of the bridge and the caverns," says Lera, "but having some wacky humor incorporated into the scenario does make it a family destination."
So strong is the pull of Professor Cline that when an unassuming adult walks into the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke to ask what the Museum has to offer, the first words out of the front desk lady's mouth are these: "Well, Professor Cline is gone…"
We didn't even ask about Professor Cline, whose exhibition there had closed a couple of weeks earlier. But when a man hangs a fiberglass King Kong on the side of your museum and breaks attendance records with such twisted figures as the "Franken-chicken," people take notice.
Like the rest of us, Cline says he's now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He's seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men's room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around.
Cline veers between "pissed off" anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.
"We made a lot of magic there," says Cline, mulling the impermanence of his creations. "Even one day the great Pyramids of Egypt will be just dust in the wind. This might just be one of those messages from the universe saying it's time to move on."
A Plane that can't Fly - one of the fiberglass figures modeled after the characters knows as the “Misfit Toys”, from the 1964 Rankin – Bass Christmas Special: “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”. They lived on the Island of Misfit Toys.
Seen at Professor Cline's Haunted Monster Museum & Dark Maze, Natural Bridge, Virginia. June 9, 2011
A fire destroyed the property and all its contents in 2012
Located off Route 130 on Bell Tower Road where BTR dead ends in the woods
Burning roadside: Can Mark Cline rise again from the ashes?
By Hawes Spencer | hawesinsky@gmail.com
Published online 6:07am Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
and in print issue #1121 dated Thursday May 24th, 2012
A mid-April blaze demolished the Victorian-era mansion that served as the Haunted Monster Museum as well as the centerpiece of a bizzaro place called Dinosaur World where dinos would gobble Union soldiers and where brave visitors could also hunt Bigfoot with a "redneck." But the fire means no attractions this summer from Mark "Professor" Cline.
"We're gonna take a break this year," says Cline. "I just need more time to regroup."
Although the fiberglass dinos in the woods outside were saved, the Monster Museum was incinerated. The mechanical rats, the "Elvis-stein" monster, and the mighty fiberglass python that seemed to slither in and out of the second-story gable windows all went up in flames late on the afternoon of April 16.
During a next-day visit, the ruins are still smoldering when a State Police investigator shoos a reporter from the scene.
"This is Natural Bridge property," barks the officer, as Cline ushers the visitor away from the charred house.
"He was my dragon," laughs Cline, recalling the era when the future officer was a teenager piloting not a Crown Victoria but a lawn tractor and sporting a character costume at Cline's last attraction, the Enchanted Castle. In a still-unsolved 2001 fire, a blaze whose investigation (or lack thereof, as he alleges) still makes Cline bristle with anger, the Enchanted Castle went up in flames.
"I'd much rather have Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau out here," says Cline, recalling how State Police investigators conducted interviews hinting that Cline himself had torched the Enchanted Castle, despite the fact that the Castle was uninsured, and that he lost his office, his studio, and all the irreplaceable 8-millimeter films he made as a boy.
"We've done a pile of work on that case," says George "Stick" Austin, the State Police captain overseeing that investigation, noting that it's standard procedure to interview owners. "It is still considered an active investigation."
As for the recent fire, it was an otherwise uneventful spring afternoon when Cline says he was on the grounds of his studio, where– with a small crew– he manufactures fiberglass figures for America's roadside playgrounds.
"I got a call at about 5:45 from the assistant general manager of Natural Bridge," says Cline. "I dropped everything and ran outside."
Cline pauses, looking mournfully down the highway in the direction of the smouldering ruins.
"I looked up and saw a plume of thick black smoke," he says, "and I knew immediately it was gone."
By the time Cline could speed the three miles south on Lee Highway, what may have started as a minor blaze on a stage at one end of the structure had become an engulfing inferno. Cline snapped a few photographs as the mansion cooked.
At the time of a reporter's visit 24 hours later, all that's left are a trio of chimneys and the front wall, executed in a rusticated gray limestone.
To 64-year-old Kilmarnock resident Ann Gill, whose grandparents owned and operated the structure as a hotel/antique shop called "Stonewall Lodge," it's a crushing blow.
"It was a romantic old home," says Gill. "My mother was married there."
In the years after Gill's family sold the structure in the 1950s, the Natural Bridge company eventually let the place go to seed, and by the 1980s the expansive front lawn had reverted to forest.
Cline says the abandoned house seemed creepy when, a decade ago, he approached the owner, Natural Bridge LLC, with his plan to haunt it. In 2002, he unveiled his Haunted Monster Museum there. Two years later, as an April Fool's prank, he built a full-size replica of Stonehenge called Foamhenge about a mile away.
The past two decades have been a tough time on traditional road-trip destinations. While Natural Bridge keeps attendance figures under wraps, educational places like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg reveal numbers that have fallen from their peaks in the pre-Internet, pre-water-park era.
The venerable Homestead Resort just announced plans to put in a water park. Massanutten installed its water park in 2005.
As some may recall, there was a proposal in Charlottesville 20 years ago to give land to a steam train operator. But that was at least five hotels ago, before the Downtown Mall and myriad wineries erupted with enough critical mass to fill all the new lodgings.
Despite having what's been billed as the Seventh Wonder of the natural world, Natural Bridge has had no such luck. The town's newest hotel appears at least 50 years old. A pair of zoos, a cave, a wax museum, an Indian village, and a new indoor butterfly garden helped draw families off the Interstate, but it was Cline's humor/horror compound that drew national attention from roadside enthusiasts.
"It was a nice addition to our attractions and particularly popular with kids," says Natural Bridge general manager Debbie Land. "It's a total loss as they say in the insurance world."
It's a great loss to Kay Lera. A retiree from the San Francisco Bay Area who for nine years ran a B&B in her new hometown of Lexington, Lera notes how one man can make a difference.
"Natural Bridge has the beauty of the bridge and the caverns," says Lera, "but having some wacky humor incorporated into the scenario does make it a family destination."
So strong is the pull of Professor Cline that when an unassuming adult walks into the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke to ask what the Museum has to offer, the first words out of the front desk lady's mouth are these: "Well, Professor Cline is gone…"
We didn't even ask about Professor Cline, whose exhibition there had closed a couple of weeks earlier. But when a man hangs a fiberglass King Kong on the side of your museum and breaks attendance records with such twisted figures as the "Franken-chicken," people take notice.
Like the rest of us, Cline says he's now trying to face the prospect of a summer without his Monster Museum. He's seen an uptick in contract work, like the 13 men's room sinks he recently built for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying. A couple of reality show producers have made inquiries about following him around.
Cline veers between "pissed off" anger at an unknown arsonist and the peace of knowing that nobody was killed or injured in the fire.
"We made a lot of magic there," says Cline, mulling the impermanence of his creations. "Even one day the great Pyramids of Egypt will be just dust in the wind. This might just be one of those messages from the universe saying it's time to move on."
Icing sugar is captured on its journey down. My wife, the creator of this, looks on from the background. I used slow-sync flash and relatively slow exposure for this effect.
This is the final stage before Croqueenbouche is ready for presentation.
Nikon D90
Nikon 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor
Set at 12mm
Fill Flash-Slow Sync
500 ASA