In a world where the Midnight Devil is traveling around the U.S.A.; one man agreed to meet up with him...

...and that one man was a fella by the name of Don LaFontaine. You may not recognise the name, but you would almost certainly recognise the voice. He's the bloke responsible for many, many voiceovers on film and television trailers. With catchphrases such as "One man's struggle...", "In a world where...", and "This summer...", he has written, produced and recorded such voiceovers for just over 40 years.

And what a great guy. He took time out of his busy schedule to come and meet with me specially. We ate some lunch and chatted. He answered all of my questions fully giving me an insight into how his business works, how he got started (by accident, apparantly), and how he feels about the cheeky scamps who now imitate him for their own professional gain. Yes, he really is a kind, caring, loving, gentle man. And those compliments are in no way linked to the fact that he said he would hunt me down and break my face if I wrote anything bad about him.

Genuinely though, he was a friendly, funny guy. Plus he likes the English and bought me lunch. Compliments and free food are possibly the two best ways to get me on your side. Also money works just as well. And torture.

Here's a photo...

...it's not of Don LaFontaine however, no this is a gent lifting some serious weights on Muscle Beach. He was like John Baker, but weaker and with less clothing.

Another guy who was strutting his stuff down on Venice Beach was 'Brad the Sand Guy'. Actually, when you consider that there was a sand sculpturer, the weather was windy, there were volleyball nets on the beach, and there were plenty of old folks milling about, it was very much like the old-school family holidays that we used to take in Weymouth. This time though, there was no where to buy football comic books, and no older brothers putting sand in my food. No, this time I had to do that myself.


The familiarities to the English beaches were found when I was in Miami as well. When I was out there I was drawn in to thinking that the ocean I was swimming in (which was the Atlantic for anybody struggling with simple geography) was the very same passage of water that I used to frequent back in the day in England. It reminded me of being back in Hastings, Kent as a nipper and taking a drenching, all because I had the gall to challenge the the tide by getting really close to the sea and then attempting to run away from the waves as they came in. Don't mess with Mother Nature people. She's a right bitch. While in the sea in Miami I found a plaster which I reckon was mine that fell off in the water back then. I'm sure it was mine because I licked it and the scab on it tasted like my blood. Who needs D.N.A. tests.

My apologies, I've managed to go from meeting the great Don LaFontaine, to licking scabs. How do these things happen?

Kind regards.

Adam Marshall