Q: Have you heard from Dean lately?
A: Yes, he wrote to me a few days ago and it was very Impressive.
Gotta luv a guy who isn't afraid to cry when given a balloon by a
passing clown. Someone who loves kittens and keeps several in his short
pockets at any given time. Someone who still knows why it was called
the BIG band era and who can give you the name of any dixie rag time
song after hearing just a few notes. Someone who has single handedly
funded the NAAMP (national assoc. for the advancement of mime
professionals) who's motto "A mime is a terrible thing to waste" was
penned by him. You don't get a lot of thanks from people like mimes.
Among their community his name is rarely spoken. He is an unsung hero.
Someone who fought the injustice and censorship to have the scripts for
the "Lost in Space" tv show entered into the congressional record by
lobbying congressman Sonny Bonno to use them for several Republican
fillibusters. Who painstakingly highlighted each line of dialogue by
Dr. Smith on those same transcripts for emphasis. What else can I say
about Dean? Nude bungie jumper? Ventriloquist extrodinaire?
Hemophiliac? Liver eating advocate? Survivor of Waco and can laugh
about it? A man who speaks in palidromes accidentaly? (I can remember
him saying to me, "You know John, there are *So Many Dynamos*.) A man
who can name all of the Banana Splits and can recite their biographys
with intimacy? A man who, through a single symbolic act, riveted the
worlds attention by releasing thousands of golden hamsters in Golden
Gate Park with the song "Bless the Beasts & the Children" playing in the
background. Who also endured such hardship from a law suit by the
Winchester Dog Show which was disrupted by said hamster release in the
park.
If you want to know what one thing I am hearing from Dean these days, it
would have to be this,
"Life is a stage.
Make a dramatic entrance.
Be kind to the extras, the little people.
Don't pay the actors more than union scale.
Keep your best profile forward.
Avoid overtly dramatic lighting
like the kind they use in bank commercials.
(It's really annoying.)
Touch greatness.
If you can't touch it then buy
a life size replica of greatness and touch that.
Billy Jean is not my lover.
she's just a girl that says that
I am the one but the kid is not my son.
Make a grand exit.
Make sure that when you make that exit you don't cut off anyone like
the guy I saw this morning driving to work. I got so
ticked that I grabbed the nearest thing I could get my hands
on and threw it at him. Now we'll see how he will explain all of
that
kitten blood on his windshield!"
At this point Dean stopped and stood silently for about 10 minutes and
after some grimacing he pulled a tiny golden bottle from his pocket,
carefully unsealed it, and holding it up to his right eye he shed into
it a single tear. He said "I am saving this for all those people who
can't cry." I am that person he was refering to. He gave me that bottle
and I keep it around my neck at all times.
Long live Dean. May his legacy be as long as this e-mail. (Written in 1997)
