{"id":16709,"date":"2010-02-24T20:45:14","date_gmt":"2010-02-25T01:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=16709"},"modified":"2014-12-07T20:08:23","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T01:08:23","slug":"rondo-hatton-was-a-friend-of-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2010\/02\/24\/rondo-hatton-was-a-friend-of-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Rondo Hatton was a friend of mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, go ahead, call me out of the loop. But I never heard of the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror awards<\/a> until today.<\/p>\n

And this will be the eighth year they give the things out!<\/p>\n

Though the more I think about it, the more I realize that what’s far more likely is that I have<\/i> heard of them, only they got lost in the grooves of my brain with all the other awards handed out in science fiction, fantasy, and horror.<\/p>\n

But what got stirred up from the depths of those very same grooves is the memory of a weekend I spent with Rondo Hatton. Well … not the real<\/i> Rondo Hatton. (You may think I’ve met everyone, but I really haven’t.)<\/p>\n

You can see the Rondo Hatton I’m talking about in the photo below.<\/p>\n

\"TomWatkinsRondoHattonRutland\"<\/a>
\nHe could pass for the real thing, right? He’s not, though. <\/p>\n

Beneath that mask is comics fan Tom Watkins, who wore some of the most awesome costumes ever to grace Tom Fagan’s famed Rutland Halloween parades<\/a>. Some years he was Solomon Grundy. Other years Man-Thing.<\/p>\n

I can’t remember exactly when that photo was taken, only that it was the late ’70s. Maybe 1978. I’ll have to get back to you on that.<\/p>\n

And what did I<\/i> wear when Irene and I headed north to Vermont that Halloween? Sadly, while my wife and her sister cooked up wonderful costumes based on comic-book characters (Irene was the Valkyrie, but that’s her photo to share, not mine), all I did was put on a store-bought werewolf mask.<\/p>\n

Check it out below as I pose with our friend Ron Erickson.<\/p>\n

\"ScottEdelmanRonEricksonRutland\"<\/a>
\nSince there was nothing special about my mask, I didn’t climb onto one of the floats, but just walked along the parade route as my better and more appropriately garbed friends rolled by.<\/p>\n

See, I told you<\/a> I didn’t really do costumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, go ahead, call me out of the loop. But I never heard of the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror awards until today. And this will be the eighth year they give the things out! Though the more I think about it, the more I realize that what’s far more likely is that I have heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[566],"class_list":["post-16709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rondo-hatton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16709"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16714,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16709\/revisions\/16714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}