Friday, April 14, 2006

Hello, I'm Brian Dennehy

Yes, the celebrated, esteemed (add "veteran" to that list of adjective these days) actor, of stage, screen, and cathode ray tube. I couldn't help but notice that my name was dropped a few days ago in some worthless jeremiad, so I figured I'd amble on over here and take a look at what's going on in this new "blogozoid." For myself.

I don't know a whole lot about these blogs -- my granddaughter Stevie tried to get me to start one of these "Mythings" accounts, but it just looked like a bunch of bleeping and blooping. I must be getting old. Maybe you can add the terms "imposing" and "barrel-chested" to that list of adjectives. I mean, that's what that website the "Internet Film Webbase" says about me right here.

Hey, that's a neat trick -- how did I do that? I managed to speak like a computer. Lemme try that again: "In 1986, I starred in "F/X" with Aussie sensation Bryan Brown." That was pretty sweet.

Does anyone even know where that guy is these days? Used to be, whenever he was in Connecticut... er, I mean, Connecticut, he would come by Greenwich and we'd get a coffee together. That stopped around 1992. Chrissakes, that's almost 14 years. I guess the kid's not a sensation anymore, either. I remember he shot himself in the head in "Cocktail".

That takes me back to the time I was hanging out with Stallone in ’82 in the Pacific Northwest... beautiful country, that. Shot "First Blood" up there. Ted Kotcheff, the director, came up to me midway through the shoot and tells me, "Sylvester has a great popular sense, as good as any writer I've ever worked with. He knows what audiences want to see, and what they don't want to see." I'll be damned if he wasn't right as rain.

I think I had a steak the size of Popeye's forearm at a bistro in Olympia. They had soft funnelcakes, too. I can't eat funnelcake anymore, with the damn high blood pressure. Next thing I know, some doc in a blue scrub'll whisper the word "diabetes" in my ear. Pop had it, unc had it. Wilford Brimley has it too, but I hear he manages it well.

I gotta talk to Stevie when I get back home... I can't seem to fucking stop doing it now that I've started... speaking like a goddamn IBM.