Strawberry Festival VIP Celebrity Lunch And More Career Memories

The photo above was taken at the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival "VIP Celebrity Lunch" (which took place in between the Strawberry Festival Parade and the Celebrity Meet And Greet), featuring me with our parade's Grand Marshal, Kate Linder, aka Esther Valentine on the TV soap opera "The Young And The Restless" (Kate and yours truly were two of the festival's featured celebrities this year, invited by the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival Association Board of Directors). My lovely blonde wife April is sitting in the background in this photo...we ate lots of delicious food at this buffet lunch, including, naturally, a strawberry dessert that was berry good!

Before and during her run on TV's "The Young And The Restless" (she's been on the show for 43 years now), Kate has maintained her weekend job as a flight attendant for United Airlines (which she says keeps her grounded). This reminds me of an in-flight video for United Airlines that I acted in, which was shot during the mid-to-late 1990s at United Airlines' corporate headquarters in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. This video shoot, directed by Phil Lanier, involved me acting as an airline passenger wearing a business suit, first seen sitting inside the plane, with me somehow winding up floating in the clouds in the air, doing goofy things with luggage props and making goofy facial expressions. This was all shot on a set in front of a green screen (I'm still waiting for the day when I will be lifted up into the clouds...see 1 Thessalonians 4).

One of my old Urban Wrestling Alliance TV colleagues and fellow believer in the Lord, Andrew Vassos, aka former pro wrestler Donovan Morgan, has seen me on this in-flight video, back when he took international flights via United Airlines when he wrestled in Japan. Two months ago, Andrew/Donovan sent me a message while he was on a United Airlines flight to Switzerland...he told me that it's easy to think of me whenever he's on United Airlines flights, expecting to see my face to pop up on the screen anytime for the in-flight starting video! Wow, it's nice that I'm thought of whenever certain folks fly the friendly skies! Donovan Morgan was a talented wrestler who I enjoyed working with, and these days, as Andrew Vassos, he works in the financial services industry and is on the Board of Directors at The Father's House church in Leesburg, Florida.

I am honored that I was chosen to be one of the celebrities at the 65th annual Garden Grove Strawberry Festival. What's even more exciting is that my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ chose me, as He says in John 15:16...He chose me and appointed me to go and produce fruit that will last (on a more temporary level, I must say that a certain kind of fruit at the Strawberry Festival was berry, berry good).