Vintage RhodesTer

restoring old posts to their former glory

originally published August of 2008

I once made a living as a mime.

This was a long time ago – 20 years and 20 pounds, I tell people – but I haven’t had a job since that’s been as challenging, memorable and fun.

SeaWorld of San Diego has this ongoing Seal & Otter show that’s been around in one form or another since the sixties. The show changes story and format every few years, but I’m not going to talk about the show today.

Maybe some other post, because today I’m going to tell you about Michael and Saj. Those are two guys who met each other one day long ago, but I’m the only one who finds it ironic.

Until now, because you will too when I’m done.

Michael was a former Ringling Bros circus clown who’d been hired as a Mime but then promoted to show producer. He was a funny guy, and by that I mean HYSTERICAL. He still took the stage once in a while to fill-in when someone wanted a day off and when he did, he’d hand the audience their balls on a platter.

One day I only had a few people show up. The stadium held 1200, so when you only have 12 people sitting there watching you perform that’s one percent, and that’s enough to be a downer. I went out and did some of my funnier bits for them but it basically sucked and they applauded politely as if to say, “HAHA, very nice. Now get the hell out of the way and bring on the dancing otters.”

I left the show feeling kind of drained and ran right into Michael behind the scenes. He was carrying his clipboard while wearing a tie and showing appropriate concern that I seemed blue, and not the bouncy, happy mime I was supposed to be. He asked how the show went and when I told him about the 12 people he told me about an audience he had only a week earlier when filling in for someone else.

He said it was cold and drizzling rain, and he knew it’d be slow, so he hoped nobody would show up and he’d not have to do a show. But there they were, two teenage boys and a girl who climbed to the very last row at the top of the 1200 seat stadium, sitting in the drizzle and waiting to be entertained.

So he entertained them.

He pretended to be a mountain climber when he first came out, swinging an invisible pick and pulling on an imaginary rope to make his way up to them. That ate up the first five minutes of his routine so once he got up there he stood on the empty bench in front of them and offered up a silent yet panic-stricken prayer to his muse for ten minutes of inspiration.

It came.

He said he didn’t know how it came or from where, but dammit.. he was funny. Those kids laughed and clapped and had a great time, as Michael stood on that bench and did silly shit that he couldn’t recall when telling me about all of this a few days later.

His point was that if I’d just trust in my inspiration and let it flow through me, I’d be able to do it for one, one hundred, one thousand or a million people.. just let it be. Obviously, I’ve always remembered the story because it had an impact on me.

That was in 1988.

Fast forward to 1998 – coffeesister and I lived in Ashland Oregon. I was doing sound design for a local theater group and a young guy named Saj was doing lighting. After we’d finished our show set-up one evening, Saj came over to our place and we sat around drinking beer and swapping stories.

Turns out he was from California. Turns out he visited SeaWorld once with some friends.

Turns out it was while on spring break in 1988.

I’d told Saj I used to perform at the Seal & Otter Show as a mime, so he was telling me about the mime he saw.

He said it was a drizzling Monday and the place was virtually empty. After he and his two friends made their way to the top of the stadium the mime came out and did some kind of mountain climber bit to get up to them, followed by ten minutes of delightful comedy on the bench directly in front.

Saj, his buddy and his buddy’s girlfriend all thought it was hysterical.

After he told me this I asked, “Did you guys see the mime in another part of the park later and go up to thank him for doing a whole routine just for you?”

Yes, they did.

Michael had told me about that part too.. how the three kids came up to him later and said they really appreciated him doing the entire bit just for them.

I told Saj about Michael and his inspirational story ten years earlier. Here we were, a decade later and 500 miles further North, sitting in stunned silence for a few minutes until coffeesister finally laughed and suggested that perhaps now would be a good time to go buy a lottery ticket.

I did, but I didn’t win.

Steven Wright once said, “It’s a small world, but I’d hate to have to paint it.”

Me too.

Today, I’d like to tell you one of those “small world stories,” the kind that, when you get to the end of it everyone says, “Gosh, what a small world!”

It’s one of my personal stories that come to mind whenever someone tells their own “small world story,” about running into a long-lost cousin in a Toledo deli while on a business trip, or their old high school gym coach, who’s now a drag-queen in Hollywood.

This particular story starts back in the eighties.  Actually, the entire thing takes place in the eighties but the first part is a bit earlier in the decade – 1984.

I’d finished up a four year Navy hitch in San Diego a few years earlier and stuck around, living at various addresses with various roommates, including Andy The Greek.  He wasn’t actually from Greece but his parents were, so he was a first generation Greek/American who spoke fluent Greek to his Mama during the weekly telephone calls home to Boston.

His parents lived in the Greek section of Boston, where papa owned a Greek restaurant and had taught Andy how to cook.  During my stay with him, I was introduced to Spanakopita, Baklava, Lemon Chicken and other savory salivation-making Greek specialties that Andy whipped up every weekend in our San Diego kitchen.

After all these years I still miss San Diego and Andy's cooking

We lived in a rented a duplex that was owned by a Japanese lady named Mrs. Green, who’d been married to an American WW2 veteran, thus the generic American name.  Andy and I each had our own room in the right side of the place, while Mrs. Green puttered about in the left side, all by herself.. a lonely, chatty widow who looked out for us boys.

It wasn’t uncommon to answer a knock at the door and find her standing there with a big smile and some kind of Japanese treats she’d made.  In turn, Andy would share some of his Greek delicacies with her – it was all very international.

One time she told us of her late husband.  Mr. Green had been a Navy flier who was held by the Japanese as a POW until the war was over.  It was never clear whether this was for months or years, but the interesting part about it was that’s where they’d met – she was there as a nurse who looked after the well-being of the prisoners.

After the war he’d been released and returned to the states for a few years, but decided he couldn’t live without her, so he went and found her.  They married and he returned home with her, settling in San Diego because he’d originally been stationed there.  How’s THAT for a romantic story, ladies?

Okay, so back to Andy The Greek..

One day he bought a jacked up monster Toyota truck with a chrome roll-bar and four wheel drive because he wanted to go four-wheeling somewhere, but he never did.  He just drove this huge truck around the streets and freeways of San Diego for the next year, guzzling hundreds of gallons of gas, which was okay because gas was about a dollar a gallon then and we all weren’t so ‘green’ as we are now.

I don’t think anyone gave Andy a hard time for environmental reasons, but they did give him a hard time for driving a butt-ugly truck.  He was still proud of it though, for Lord only knows what reason, and asked me to take a picture of him standing beside it one day while it was parked out in front of the duplex.  I did, and I kept a copy after giving him one, and as much as I’d love to post it here I’m afraid I can’t because it was lost long ago.

I still had it in 1987 though.

It was in a photo album, and I was showing that album to Cindy, a petite brunette whom I’d dated a bit after moving to Sacramento.  I lived up there for a year, having taken a job at a local radio station, and Cindy came over on one of my days off to hang out.

I’d rented a room from Paul and Pearl, a fabulous couple in their fifties who stayed on as friends of mine for many years after I’d left their house, but I’m afraid Cindy wasn’t a keeper.  She was fun to look at, but not so deep – think Mila Kunis‘ character of “Jackie” from “That 70′s Show” and you’ve nailed her.

By the way I never did, sadly enough.

Mila Kunis, the actress. Not Cindy, the nut. Close enough, though.

But we did flip through that photo album that day while Paul looked on, and Cindy was particularly interested in my photos from San Diego because she’d lived there for a few years.  When we got to the one of Andy The Greek standing in front of the duplex next to his monster truck, her eyes got wider than they normally were and she said, “OH MY GOD!”

She placed her hand over her chest and said it again, but with TWO exclamation points..

“OH MY GOD!!”

Paul and I looked at each other with the same puzzled expression that you have right now.

“What?” I asked, “That’s my old roommate Andy.. did you know him or something?”

But it wasn’t about Andy or the truck. It was the duplex..

She’d lived in it.

“I lived in that HOUSE!” she said.

“Oh, Really?”

I wasn’t sure I believed her.. she’d proven to be a bit of a drama queen before, and she loved getting attention.  The picture only showed Andy, the truck and most of the duplex, but it didn’t show the address, so this next part cinched it..

“YES! It’s on 41st street and there’s a donut shop up on the corner and across from that is a Unitarian church!  I’m telling you, I lived there in nineteen seventy eight, with my boyfriend, and we sold drugs out of that house and this is just too fucking WEIRD, dude!”

Paul looked at me and grinned.  “Dave, I think she’s got ya.. she lived there!”

She went on to tell us that the reason she and her boyfriend had to move out was that the place had been sold to a Japanese woman and her husband, who had plans to move into it and rent out the other side.

Cindy and her boyfriend had lived in the MRS. GREEN side of it, and she accurately described the interior to me – it’d been built in the fifties and was pretty distinct.  She even remembered the day Mr. and Mrs. Green came in and looked around as potential buyers, because she had to tidy up and hide all the weed.

So, out of the thousands of homes, apartments and duplexes in the San Diego area, this girl I met in Sacramento, which is about 500 miles away, had lived in the same tiny duplex that I had.

But she did agree that Andy’s truck was butt-ugly.. turns out the girl had some class after all.