Ah, Show Biz

Click on photo in order to (as Joe of JoeMyGod says) "embiggen."

Some people have asked me why I have such a teensy picture of myself in my profile. Well, up until this past winter, frankly, it was the most recent picture I had of myself. Yes, yes, and I was semi-disguised behind sunglasses, too.

But after a year of blogging I've decided to rummage through the pictorial trunk and see what else I could come up with to give you, Dear Reader, a couple of yuks.

I've already posted the picture of myself in boot camp, which was pretty scary. I looked like an anorexic miler.

But after the service I started to fill out a little and did some college theater. I have a bunch of photos of myself in various productions there, but this is my all time favorite photo of me (I'm the tall one, 2nd from the left) in my all-time favorite show (Damn Yankees). I loved singing barbershop quartet with the other guys (2 of whom I'm still in touch with). We did it in summer stock, on a nightly rotating rep basis, along with "Death of a Salesman" and "Hotel Paradiso." Let me tell you, it was confusion every night in the dressing rooms trying to figure out if we were supposed to be depressed or overjoyed.

To this day the closing night of Damn Yankees remains one of my most cherished memories of my college years. By then the show had developed a following in our college town of Newark, Delaware, and the place was packed with DY groupies who anticipated every joke and gave us rousing ovations after every song. And the more they loved and gave to us, the more we loved and gave to them. The intense feelings of euphoria poured across the apron of the stage in both directions that night. It was magical.

It was especially flattering to me because some fan kept stealing my headshot from the company bulletin board in the lobby throughout the run of the show. I think we had to replace it 3 or 4 times.

I had bigger roles in my 4 years of stage acting, certainly more "important" roles in Shakespeare or Chekhov, but none of them ever gave me the sense of joy and satisfaction I got from playing "Smokey," a member of the quartet, in "Damn Yankees."