Smith: Rohnert Park light show something to see on TV

Monday night at 8 p.m., ABC launches the 2014 installment of a holiday-season reality show that might escape our attention were it not for the outlandishly delightful and creative Scott Weaver.

He’s the supermarket worker best known to us hereabout as the guy who took decades to create the astounding toothpick sculpture of San Francisco that blew away visitors to the Sonoma County Fair six years ago, and who transforms his family’s Rohnert Park cul-de-sac home each Christmas into a mind-blowing, hand-made fantasy castle.

The entire nation is about to get a taste of what this dazzlingly entertaining man is capable of.

Scott and his wife, Rochelle, and son, Tyler, are one of 24 American families to be featured on “The Great Christmas Light Fight.” The family deemed to have created the most astounding holiday display will win $50,000.

Perhaps you’ll recall that in mid-October a video production team from FremantleMedia North America spent five days at the Weaver home on Cielo Circle. Just prior to the crew’s arrival, Scott and Tyler and a few hardy helpers spent 27 days transforming the front yard and the house into a blinding and delightful Disney-inspired wonderland.

“The outcome is just incredible,” said Scott, who’s 54. He has seen a bit of the footage shot at his place, some with a camera on a hand-controlled helicopter.

He said his castle has never looked so good as it does on the tape that FremantleMedia submitted to ABC. Of course, Scott has no idea how much of that footage will make the show.

Nor does he know if the program will air his demonstrations of certain other of his talents.

As the cameras rolled, Scott juggled axes and knives, spun a Frisbee in his teeth and performed a handstand while riding a skateboard for about 100 yards. Who can do all that?

Scott said the people at Disney/ABC in LA loved the footage of the handstand but grimaced to see that he didn’t wear a helmet while performing it. So the camera crew was sent back to Rohnert Park to shoot him inverted on the skateboard again, and that time he wore head protection.

There are six episodes to “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” each featuring four families. The episodes air back-to-back at 8 and 9 p.m. the next three Mondays.

I don’t know which of the 24 families wins. But let’s see if the show’s most lasting impression is not any particular home Christmas display, but the crazy energy and showmanship of the guy in Rohnert Park.

His castle, by the way, is now all lit up and fully operational at night, if you care to behold it.

IF BILL COSBY returns, as scheduled, to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in June, Rob Kinney will be in the audience.

“It may not be pretty,” said Kinney, the owner of a Rohnert Park carpet-cleaning service.

The current rush of sexual assault charges against the long and widely beloved Cosby is nothing new to Kinney. For about two years he has tried to get people, including Press Democrat reporters and editors, to act on his complaint that the actor/comedian drugged and raped a cousin of his in 1985 at Harrah’s casino and hotel in Reno.

Kinney said his cousin worked at the time as a bartender. He said she’s not gone public about the alleged assault almost 30 years ago because she’s protective of her career and privacy.

Kinney said he took up her cause because he wants to see Cosby held responsible. “Prosecution would be great,” he said.

Kinney would like to persuade officials of the Wells Fargo Center to cancel Cosby’s appearance on June 6.

At the center, Kyle Clausen, director of marketing and patron Services, said the show is still on.

“We have sold a little less than 600 tickets,” Clausen said. He said the center has informed the Cosby show promoter of the “small number of people” who have contacted the center to object to it, and of Kinney’s allegations.

Cosby’s attorney recently called the increasing number of such claims “ridiculous” and said the media should stop airing “unsubstantiated, fantastical stories.”

Kinney pledged that if Cosby takes the stage in Santa Rosa, he will be in the theater on behalf of his cousin and will somehow let his complaint be known.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.