I have Robin Williams to thank for my favorite Minor Brush With Fame. In 1984, one of my day-job co-workers (or more accurately: cow-orker) had, during his bar-hopping, picked up a fistful of free passes to a new Comedy Club. The new club was a class act, owned by a former partner of The Ice House, and after several evenings laughing loudly and not heckling, my cow-orker got four passes to a super-secret event. Robin Williams was going to do his first live stand-up since the death of John Belushi at a few small venues, and this new L.A. club was the second stop on his mini-tour. My cow-orker invited me and a date, and I invited a lady friend who would sue me if I EVER called her a ‘girlfriend’ (yeah, a Pete & Ellen relationship). His date stood him up (no sense of humor), so the three of us gathered outside the club a half-hour early and got a table front-row center for Robin Williams. He did over an hour on stage, including quite a few recognizable ‘bits’ (I'd followed him closely enough to recognize) and some outbursts of manic improvisation, one of which consisted of looking over the visible part of the audience, seeking someone to do a riff from, and then he pointed at ME wearing my white cable-knit sweater (it was cooler-than-usual in L.A. and that was the closest I had to something warm that was cool) and called out "Look! It’s Bill Tilden!" Imagine, having a true comedy legend mistake you for a legendary... dead... gay... tennis player.

I have some reservations about RW because of his cheesy movies. But this was indeed funny.

Damn you, I wanted to sleep last night.

So much fun! I could watch this kind of crazy all day.

Oh, god. I got my abs workout.

MORE!

I just went through all three parts of the interview; that was really great. :)

Oh wait, there's more than three parts- onward!