Here is another personality who I'd met in the past, and had the opportunity of having my picture taken with...

If the face is not familiar (not mine, his), and you haven't been to the movies or watched much TV, you probably wouldn't know the name of Mike Jittlov, either. An avid collector of all sort of fantasy things, Mike dabbled around with movie cameras and created some incredible effects for the amusement of himself and his friends. His best known work was a short subject entitled "The Wizard of Speed and Time" (which was later included in a feature-length film of the same name). The folks at Walt Disney Productions liked his material so much, they got him to produce a mini-piece for "The Wonderful World of Disney" titled "The Collector" (which incorporated stop-motion effects, time-lapsed photography, etc. - in its tell about a man who is obsessed with all sorts of 'Mickey Mouse' memorabilia).

These days, we are quite accustomed to seeing films with computer-generated effects, almost to the point of taking them for granted. But before they became the norm, it was Mike Jittlov, whose time and patience in creating his own brand of mind-blowing special FX made viewers - young and old alike ask the age-old question, "How did he do THAT?!"

Anyway, this photo of me with Mr. Jittlov was taken in the early 1990s, when we'd met at the sci-fi/fantasy convention "PhilCon" in Philadelphia, PA.