Cobourg, Ontario, a picturesque town where the people are nice, the dragonflies are friendly (photo on right tweeted by Steve Byers of dragonfly landing on his leg in Cobourg) and the hotel coffee pots are suspected to have been taken over by evil Transformers, a.k.a. the Decepticons.Okay, maybe it's only Steve Byers' coffee pot that was taken over by Decepticons...or perhaps he was the only one to publically acknowledge the incident. Which is it? All we can know for certain is that his coffee maker did, in fact, go haywire. While we're at it, is it really a dragonfly? Is it attracted to him because he's a Fire Dragon under the Chinese Zodiac, causing it to feel a kinship with him, or is it a cleverly disguised Autobot sent to make sure the Decepticons don't sabotage more than his hotel coffee maker? We may never know.
I loved watching Steve as John Bennett on Syfy's "Alphas." A show which should have remained on the air. I mean really, doesn't Syfy know that they shouldn't take off stuff I love to watch? I digress...
Like a little kid in December I've been eagerly awaiting the release of "Catch a Christmas Star," a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie starring Steve Byers and Shannon Elizabeth. In the meantime, just when I was about to go crazy waiting for his new film to come out, I was thrilled to learn he was cast in another TV movie, this time for the UP network (stands for Uplifting network,) formerly known as the Gospel Music Channel. Still, I'm getting off topic.
Photo on left of Steve Byers and Rebecca Dalton. The photo was tweeted by Mark Salling.
"Rocky Road" is not a remake of previous movies by the same name which come up when you Google the title. It's also, fortunately, not a joke by Steve. Let's face it, he's funny, and while I know that anyone would be crazy not to hire him for whatever role he desires, I was a little concerned at first when I asked him what he was working on and he referenced a film called, "Rocky Road," because of course the phrase "rocky road" could also refer to a long haul and rough time finding work. But no, fortunately, this wasn't one of Steve's cleverly-worded Tweets, the kind that make a person think twice (or three times) before they begin rolling on the floor laughing.
Photo on right of Mark Salling, Rebecca Dalton, and Steve Byers (tweeted by Mark Salling.)So what's the film about, you may be asking? Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll quote from Pete Fisher's article, "TV movies to film scenes around Cobourg" which appeared online in the "Northumberland Today" on
"Rocky Road is a story about a young hot shot Wall Streeter named Harrison (Mark Salling from Glee) who loses his job and expensive lifestyle due to a failed merger. He's forced to move back in with his parents in the small town he’d fled, and take over his old ice cream truck route in his father's dwindling business. Having spent a lifetime looking up to the power brokers of Wall Street and looking down on the simple ways of his small-town father, Harrison starts to appreciate his father's values and find the faith that he lost along the way. Sometimes the best road is the Rocky Road home."
Certainly we'll all be cheering on Mark Salling's character, who pretty clearly sounds to me like he's set up to be the good guy. Rebecca Dalton, who we've seen on screen before with Steve in "The L.A. Complex," also stars in the film. Steve Byers is cast as Rick Johnson, a character who is, he tells me, aptly named as he's quite the jerk. Since Steve's such a nice guy we'll get to see him showcase his great acting skills in this as he's obviously nothing like his character in real life, well, apart from being super handsome. :)
Steve being super handsome brings me back to the opening of this post. I imagine the Decepticons are targeting the actor because he's such a good guy, as we know from his tweets that his hotel coffee maker went berserk and brown liquid when everywhere other than in the coffee pot.
It was suggested to him that he could've gotten coffee in the hotel lobby. Now, apparently he wanted his java quickly as he tweeted, "Lobby coffee in your underwear is frowned upon." Though in his case, I think (and if you read my tweets you already read this) that the reaction would be one of dancing and great rejoicing from the women of Cobourg which I'm sure would have led to a female stampede the likes of which had never been seen before. So, I'm certain that the owners of the hotel as well as hotel security appreciated Steve's good judgment in delaying coffee consumption until he was fully covered and could make it out of his room without causing a riot :)
More about Steve Byers:
You can follow him on Twitter here. You can read his interview with me here. You can find my letter telling Steve I want to adopt him here. Or for a good laugh you can read my post, "Am I Part Alpha?" here. To follow Steve's unofficial Twitter Fan group go here.
About the blogger:
