When I was a young boy I was watching TV one night and a scroll came across the bottom of the screen. Dan Blocker had died. He was Hoss on Bonanza...huge strong happy guy, gone. I was so confused....then a year later my Meemaw was killed in a car crash. My Dad drove all the way down to the funeral, his red Corvette was covered with dust from the all night drive. And I cried. For some reason the dusty Vette, my Dad in his suit from work the day before. It hurt me..My Meemaw was so full of life! She rode the roller coaster with me and the black widow and we laughed like crazy people and screamed at the top of our lungs with laughter. She was a GOOD. In my shitty life, she was a good. Then Richard Pryor died and I thought thats it...something is missing and will never come back to this world. A special sort of genius that can have you laughing and crying at the same time. It rocked me. I remembered huddling around a bucket with a cassette tape player playing Richard Pryor...What you gonna do at 11 oclock? My friends and I living in the heart of redneckville laughed and cried and grew a little more compassionate. But there was still Robin Williams. Oh he got lost for awhile. There were some times when I thought man what happened? Whered you go? And then suddenly he was back. I needed that. Moscow on the Hudson, Fisher King, Dead Poets Society...you all know his movies and shows and some of his standup. One standup show in San Francisco a lady handed him a scarf and he went off where he goes....where he went. Comic genius..and then he wrapped it around his head like a burka and whispered, help me...help me. The stand up show where he played a cabbie before the show talking to the famous comedian Robin WIlliams. Mr. Williams, Mr.Williams.. to laugh and cry and have your heart break, break wide OPEN. Who will do that for us now. Who will show such compassion and kindness in the face of the opposite. Dude, you shoulda called, we coulda hung out with the kids and swam in cool water. Drank a chocolate malt. Im tired of the GOOD people going.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 01:51:39 +0000