So I know this guy in a band, who’s done pretty well for himself – he plays regularly, and he won a huge local singing contest last year and a boatload of cash to go with it. He also, when he’s out at night, wears black nail polish and eyeliner and all black. He’s such a rock star that they actually call him Rock Star Jim. And Rock Star Jim was initially reluctant when a lady friend talked him into seeing Rick Springfield at Mizner Park  last night. I mean, Jim’s a rock star, and Rick Springfield is a cute guy with some ’80s hits, right?

“No, man,” a thoroughly suprised and impressed Jim marveled, as Springfield ripped through a guitar solo onstage. “HE’s a rock star.”

And there you go.

Watching the former “General Hospital” star, best-selling memoir writer and noted owner of a wickedly well-received cameo on “Californication,” you immediately remember that he’s not just some pretty boy hacktor who decided to play a rock star. He WAS a rock star in Australia, and decided to hit the states as an actor, not realizing how much the ghosts of Dr. Noah Drake would overwhelm critics’ sense of imagination. No matter how complex his songwriting got, he was always just gonna be that cute soap guy.

But as he busted through the poppier stuff of yesteryear, some more well-aged than others (“Bop Till You Drop,” the fun and buoyant “Love Is All Right” and the surprisingly thoughtful “State of the Heart,” as well as the darker, more guitar-heavy musings of later work like the recent “Venus In Overdrive,” or even a tease of Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good,” you realized what a shame it is that radio didn’t take Rick Springfield more seriously. He’s doing OK – “Well, the faithful know it,” he said of a new song that some of the diehards knew all the words to – so no worries for him.

Springfield might be a great musician, but his theatrical charms play well onstage – he had an ongoing bit of banter with a guy near the front row who went to the bathroom during the show, and kept teasing him that he was going to play “Jessie’s Girl” while he was gone, and he didn’t want to miss it. He also went into the crowd to get their vocal input on “Don’t Talk To Strangers” and ended it with an ideal foil – a none-too-impressed 6-year-old girl who he pulled onstage. She refused to sing until the last possible minute, and when she did, even cracked a smile. It was adorable.

And yes, when he finally did get to “Jessie’s Girl” (with Bathroom Guy firmly ensconsced in his seat), the payoff was delicious. Springfield clearly feeds off his fans, and seems to like that they’re willing to indulge in the new stuff if he gives them a charming bit of Drake to go with.

Which brings me to the opening act Jack Wagner, Springfield’s fellow former “GH” star (although he’s still a soap star over on “The Bold and The Beautiful.”) This pains me to say, as I was in love with him for a good portion of 1984, and again briefly when he returned to the show in 1989, but…he’s a better soap star than a rock star. He’s plenty cute, and plenty engaging – he responded to the frequent requests to play big hit “All I Need” by saying that if he did, he’d have nothing else to do. (His other hits “Lady of My Heart” and “The Weatherman Says” were both neglected, which is OK, because they were pleasant but cheesy in the mid-80s, so who knows how they’ve aged?)

What he did play was stuck in that cheesy ’80s mode, and his voice, which was never all that impressive to begin with, hasn’t improved much. Sorry. It was a fun set, and cool to realize that I still remembered some of the words to “The Right Key,” but musically…Well, as a singer, Jack Wagner is a really good actor. I must add that I adored the opportunity to slow dance with my husband, who was a high school acquaintance of mine back when Wagner was first famous, to “All I Need.” What a great note to end on. I’ll think of Wagner’s set fondly – not musically, but overall. You go, Frisco.

1 p.m.

Here we go! The final ABC episode of “All My Children!” Hope it doesn’t stink!

We see the birth montage – a faked Erica Kane one, Janet having Amanda…what about Angie and Frankie? OH look! J.R…OK, there’s Frankie. I was going to get mad.

I kinda hated the whole “Nobody that we could hire back is dead!” storyline, but I get the nostalgia. I wish that Jenny, Tad’s sister, would have come back. Her death by exploding jet ski still bugs me….

Wait! Is that Stuart? Stuart’s not dead?

Debi Morgan is still amazingly gorgeousm and she’s an amazing actress. So many bad things have happened to Angie, and I know that La Lucci is the star. But I think Angie and Jesse are the emotional center of the show. For real.

1:06 p.m.

So apparently, JR is gonna freak out and shoot people. Can’t we all just get along?

I gotta tell you that I was never on the Jamie and Babe train, no matter who plays her, because they cheated on JR…and she stole her best friend’s baby and made her think the baby was dead. There is no forgiveness for that. Sorry. JR’s a brat, but he has a point.

I watched off and on for years and never knew that annoying Marissa girl was Babe’s sister. No wonder I hated her. She was highly annoying and sort of simpering.

Walt Willey, who just played the Improv and who I met when they filmed Erica’s 87th wedding at the Boca Resort, is such a soap star. Classically. He has those dimples and that voice. He couldn’t be much else. I am oddly meh on whether Jack and Erica wind up together, because they’ve been on this love yo yo so many times.

1:16 p.m.

Dixie’s hair is so cute. JR’s still crazy. And a brat.

Nice to see David Canary again, that silver fox! And as Stuart, who was a very, very nice man and whose differences from evil Adam showed just how good an actor Canary was.

Does anyone have the complete list of who is going to be on the online version?

Look! Brooke and Adam! Remember they fired Julia Barr and never explained what happened to Brooke? Glad they’re doing right by her and the fans.

I know this is sacrilege, but didn’t David and Angie always have chemistry? I’m sorry…Jesse is her true north. But her goodness always brought out the best in him, like Maureen Bauer and Roger Thorpe on “Guiding Light.” Old school shout out!

1:24 p.m.

Why is J. Peterman on this show? What did I miss?

Opal’s belt is slamming. I always loved her. She was always true to the character and never changed. One of my issues with Erica is that she never changed her look – there was never a “Here is how an elegant 60 year old” dresses. She’s holding onto 33 so hard that her extensions are starting to snap off with the effort. (I love Susan Lucci. I just always noticed that.)

Wah wah wah-wah-wah JR. Your life is hard. Whatever. You’re awesome, kinda, Dixie, no matter what Lurky Mopey says.

1:27 p.m.

If David can save Stuart, can’t he save this show?

Those Velvetta Cheesy Skillets commercials make me cry. That creepy blacksmith? I heart him. But don’t want him in my house.

1:34 p.m.

Yay! Joe and Ruth Martin! Moment of silence for Mary Fickett, the original Ruth.

I’m getting a little nervous about how nuts JR is. Because the show isn’t ending, ending…are they gonna make him go postal and kill people? I would hate that.

1:40 p.m.

Look! It’s star dancer JR Martinez!

I never liked…what’s her name? Babe’s Mama? Crystal? She was so on the “forgive Babe, she’s awesome’ train, yet there was no awesome. Not even a little bit.

Erica looks fly. I know she can’t act her age, but she looks amazing. Amanda’s dress is cute.

Go Brooke! She was always my fave. Loved her and Edmund.

Look out y’all. JT has a gun. This is bad.

1:44 p.m.

So apparently J. Peterman is a Hollywood producer whisking Erica away to Hollywood to turn her book into a movie. Like she’s really going…

I hate the ads for “The Chew” during this episode. It’s like introducing your next wife at your divorce proceedings.

So is JR gonna shoot Stuart by mistake? And those dodo birds aren’t wondering who sent them a text to come to the party right away when Jamie said it wasn’t him?

The hizzie?

1:49 p.m.

Lurky McShooty is still in the corners with a bottle of booze and a gun. That’s a bad combo. Erica wants Jack to come with her. Wise choice.

Tad is giving the eulogy. I adore Michael Knight. I never cottoned to the new Liza, because she’s just so much younger than all the characters she was supposed to have gone to high school with. I always hoped they would replace Jamie Luner. Never happened.

You tell her, Jack. She’s taking you for granted and you’re too fine for that.

Aww…Tad and Angie and Jesse moment. Don’t shoot Angie, JR. It’s not cool.

He said “All my children!” I love that. Getting slightly emotional over here. Why couldn’t this show have been this good consistently?

1:54 p.m.

This is almost over and he hasn’t shot anyone yet.

Adam proposed to Brooke. Love it.

And Jackson has told Erica “Franky Erica, I don’t give a damn what you need!” Huzzah!

ARE YOU FOR REAL SHOW?

THAT’S IT?

Jack leaves and JR’s got a gun?

I know that this is a cliffhanger to get people to see the show online, but what about older people who don’t have computers or good connections? This is fair to them?

Auggh!

That was almost perfect. I guess they had to have a continuation, and Tad’s speech was a nice coda.

But I didn’t love it.

And the fans deserved better.

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In All My Children‘s final weeks on ABC, Angie has struggled to regain her eyesight, Bianca and Marissa learned that J.R. is not going to put their sex tape on the Internet, and Kendall, bathed in candlelight, succeeded in seducing Zach, newly back from the dead, which apparently makes it really hard to focus on making love.

Life, and love, after death (sometimes known as protracted contract negotiations) is a theme with characters such as Erica Kane – who had her debut as Pine Valley’s femme fatale in 1970 and went on to become the most famous name in daytime television – flying off recently in search of her formerly shot-dead ex-lover Mike Roy. Erica has been played the whole time by actress Susan Lucci, who had the television-watching nation cheering her in 1999 when she won the Daytime Emmy Award for lead actress after 18 unsuccessful nominations.

Leslie Streeter live-blogs the finale

And resurrection is an overarching theme for All My Children, airing for the final time on Friday after a 41-year run on network television but slated to return online and possibly via Internet-enabled television, along with long-running ABC soap One Life to Live.

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Previously: TV’s ‘Guiding Light’ switching off after 72 years | ABC cancels 2 longtime soaps from daytime lineup | 3:57 p.m. Saying goodbye to “Guiding Light” live

If nothing else, she’s down-to-earth . Never mind the three resurrections or the seven husbands or the four Daytime Emmy Awards that have been sitting, for years, in her Montclair, N.J., home.

Kim Zimmer’s new book 'I’m Just sayin!’ details her life as a daytime diva. (Photos courtesy of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.)

Kim Zimmer paints herself as a regular 56-year-old broad, pampering her 30-year marriage and trying to redesign a midlife career just like everyone else.

Except she’s not like the rest of us.

She’s Reva Shayne, a woman who for almost three decades was center stage on Guiding Light, one of America’s most beloved soap operas until it was pulled – some think, callously – in 2009.

The early soap opera began as mommy’s little coping mechanism, a 15-minute snippet of fantasy, dreams and drama that rescued many a housewife from the daily, man-drives-the-car-to-work doldrums, and Zimmer was a big part of that world since 1983.

Many a lonely woman, night-shift beat cop and procrastinating college student followed Reva Shayne’s shenanigans.

“I honestly never believed that Guiding Light would ever be gone,” Zimmer said during a phone interview this week to promote her new book, I’m Just Sayin!

“I really believed the networks would keep that block of time from noon to 3 for daytime soaps.”

But she believed wrong. And when joblessness, menopause, kids flying the coop and a 40-pound weight gain all hit at once, it wasn’t the story line she’d hoped for.

“I was blind-sided,” she said. “I was devastated.”

And this time, gutsy and unpredictable Reva Shayne wasn’t there to bail her out.

Kim Zimmer had to do that all by herself.

A Midwestern Michigan girl with down-home roots, Zimmer fell firmly in love with theater as a college girl, met A.C. Weary, the only husband she’s ever had, and moved to New York City to begin a serious acting career in 1979.

Their daughter was born in 1982, about the same time she appeared on – this will take you down memory lane – The Doctors, a steamy but short-lived soap opera that once starred, in addition to Zimmer, Alec Baldwin and Kathleen Turner.
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The unstoppable force that is James Franco has signed on for yet another stint on “General Hospital.”

The “127 Hours” Oscar nominee will return to the ABC soap opera as artist/murderer Robert “Franco” Frank for a long-term arc that will begin on September 20, the network confirms to TheWrap. This will mark the workaholic actor’s fourth run on the daytime drama since 2009.

Franco’s return to the show will come at a point in the “General Hospital” narrative when the object of his character’s affection, hired gun James Morgan, prepares to marry Samantha McCall (played by Kelly Monaco).

As soap fans wait to find out what kind of havoc Franco will wreak, the rest of the world can concern itself with when Franco — whose films “Sal” and “Cherry” are underway and who will also star in “Oz: The Great and Powerful” — will collapse in exhaustion.

Genie Francis is finding the joy in a darker role on daytime television.

On and off since the late 1970s, Francis had played the long-suffering Laura Spencer on “General Hospital,” half of the soap super-couple Luke and Laura. But in an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in February, she mentioned she would only return to the show if changes were made to her character.

She said she hoped the “GH” producers would contact her after she made the comment. Instead, she got a call from Maria Bell, the co-executive producer and head writer of “The Young and the Restless.”

Bell had in mind a character, Genevieve Atkinson, who is the antithesis of Laura Spencer.

“She spoke about how she was tired of sort of playing a victim and playing that character where things happen to them where they don’t really make things happen,” Bell said of Francis. “I wanted to create a character that really was much more a mover and a shaker.”

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The manicured greenery of Wellington’s International Polo Club doesn’t seem to have a whole lot to do with the bloody gladiator arena of ancient Rome, except for maybe the well-to-do in the stands watching an exciting sport (although in Rome, the athletes were slaves, and here, the polo players tend to be gorgeous, rich, and not sweaty-dirty.)

There is, possibly, one connection – Actor/former soap star/erstwhile “Dancing With The Stars” contestant Aiden Turner, who was a guest at last week’s season opener where EFG Bank defeated Vailente. Turner, who played hero Aiden Devane on “All My Children” until being inexplicably turned into a wacko and written off, is one of three actors up to replace actor Andy Whitfield as the titular hero on Starz’ “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.”

Whitfield left the ultra-violent and sexy series after being diagnosed with cancer, and so far, producers have been mum on just who gets to fill Spartacus’ leather sandals. But Turner, a friendly guy who spent much of the polo match shaking hands and smiling for curious well-wishers, is hopeful.

“They flew me first class to New Zealand – I worked out two hours a day in my underpants,” said the droll Brit. “But the thing about acting is that you’re so into the story, you’re not thinking ‘I’m in my underpants being filmed.’ We’re all still waiting to hear. Hopefully, it’ll be me. And my prayers are with (Whitfield), as well.”

Meanwhile, Turner is stead working – he shot a Mercedes commercial and is hoping for some love come pilot season – says he likes Palm Beach, “which reminds me very much of England on a good sunny day. The people are very stylish, and there are a lot of warm, educated people around. They’re very proper, and I love to be proper.”

Of course, mud, sand, blood and bare chests are not very proper. But here’s hoping Turner gets to wear them on “Spartacus.”

It’s a breakthrough for Susan Lucci. No, not a second Emmy. She has a book deal.

It Books said Wednesday that the longtime star of “All My Children” has a memoir coming out next year.

Her book is currently untitled. It will cover her role as Erica Kane on the daytime soap and her years as a stage performer.

Of course, she’ll also talk about snagging an Emmy in 1999 after years of falling short.

It Books is an imprint of HarperCollins.

Soap fans are constantly explaining to their non-daytime drama-loving friends that the “unknown” actor playing the victim’s mother on “Law and Order” or that “Burn Notice” villian aren’t newcomers – they’ve been working hard for years in daytime and wildly famous to the people who follow their show.

But not to anybody else.

And that’s why soap fans like me can’t help but feel a little bit of pride when an actor that they’ve long followed hits the mainstream and just blows the joint up. So it was this morning during our viewing of “The A-Team,” which was not only co-written by Brian Bloom, who established the role of “As The Wolrd Turns”‘wolf blue-eyed teen heartthrob Dusty Donovan in the 1980s, but features the actor in a surprisingly significant role as a wry mercenary named Pike. He not only has an intense fight scene with B.A. Baracus (Quinton “Rampage” Jackson), but seems to have written himself some of the script’s best lines (A disgusted Pike disapprovingly watches his own would-be assassin fumble with his gun and snaps to a rival “Don’t let this guy kill me” as if the prospect is not scary but just beneath him.)

Bloom left “As The World Turns” in 1986, and spent the next two decade guesting on everything from “Matlock” to “Law and Order SVU”  and “Oz” and appeared in 2006′s “Smokin’ Aces”. But the “A-Team” role is biggest and most significant as an adult actor, and even though the movie’s not doing as well as predicted, he’s an incredible amount of fun.

My only regret is that as “ATWT” winds down to its last episode this fall, Bloom probably won’t come back to make a cameo because there’s another actor, Grayson McCouch, currently playing Dusty (and not doing as good a job, honestly). Seeing him blow stuff up on the big screen will have to be enough.

For some reason, Palm Beach County seems to be one of the nation’s leading suppliers of soap stars and soap star families – “Days of Our Lives” stars Deidre Hall and Nadja Bjorlin and former “General Hospital” star Drew Garrett grew up here, and the mothers of “All My Children’s” Susan Lucci and “One Life To Live”‘s Ilene Kristen live here.

And here’s another: Daytime vet Hillary B. Smith, who plays “OLTL”‘s principled lawyer Nora Hanen, was born in Boston but raised in Palm Beach attended Palm Beach Day School and lived on the island until she was 19 years old – “My father was down there until he died in 2000, my stepmother lives there and my sister lives in West Palm. She’s got the better view,” Smith says.

Since 1992, Smith, 53, has played Nora, half of one of the show’s most enduring couples with police commisioner Bo Buchanon (Robert S. Woods). Through separations, mistaken paternity, comas and that time she married his brother, Bo and Nora’s quirky chemistry never dimmed. And the two will celebrate the recent rekindling of that flame this week, when they remarry. Their first wedding, in 1995, was officiated by none other than Little Richard. Smith, who previously played “As The World Turns” super detective Margo Hughes, confirms that the self-named Originator of Rock won’t be returning, but promises something spiffy.

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