DIG FISH BELLS…
Ok, so this is going out a day late, as I warned in that very important and official letter I sent yesterday. Two competing client projects just launched and I simply ran out of time on Tuesday to do a proper issue. That’s all it was. I’m back.
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A couple of issues ago I shared that my friend Mikl-em was headed to hospice care. Well, he’s since passed — heartbreaking, to say the least. On Monday, a beautiful tribute about him was published on KQED. Its author Nicole Gluckstern asked me, and others, to contribute. Honored, I offered a photo and a few words. Only a bit of what I wrote made it in the final piece (I know as well as anyone that statements sometimes need to be chopped to fit the editorial). However, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share what I wrote, in its entirety:
“I don’t remember the exact circumstances of how Mikl-em and I first met. If I had to guess, I’d say it was around 1996 in the back room of Tommy Joynt’s. We were probably plotting and scheming future adventures with other co-conspirators of the Cacophony Society over plates of lavishly salted hofbrau selections. When you know someone for some 24 years, even peripherally, you get to see who they really are and how their life unfolds. By my observations, Mikl was a kinder, sweeter, and more wonderful weirdo than most anyone; his life was extraordinary — by his own design. Deeply entrenched in the San Francisco arts and theater scene, he will be remembered as a top-rate performer, raconteur, producer, and community organizer with a real joie de vivre. And a spirited Cacophonist. Many, many years after those late-90s meetings, Mikl and I found ourselves in the back room of Tommy Joynt’s again. We may or may not have been up to something. Rest in power, friend.“
— Rusty Blazenhoff
P.S. Life is short, peeps! Be kind to each other.
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