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Ray, you're so right. I'm very glad you brought up Dana's writing. Well before he made a name for himself as a performer, he was known to me as the sketch-writer credited on the back of an LP of one of the Upstairs at the Downstairs musical comedy revues, (I can't remember if it was "TAKE FIVE," or "DEMI-DOZEN"), specifically for a skit called, "Conference Call." It was a very prescient satire of Madison Avenue and Big Tobacco, years before cigarettes had to be sold with the health warning cards. It was such a sure-fire piece of material that I and three of my fellow sophomores got big laughs performing it in the high school talent show. (One ad man phoning in a report to his colleagues on the dire results of the latest laboratory test of their sponsor's product: "You know how they test the little mice to see if they get you-know-what? Well, you'd better go out and get yourself a couple of hundred teeny-tiny get well cards... The lab looks like they bombed Disneyland.")
Fade out my Connecticut childhood, Fade in L.A.'s Westwood Boulevard in the 90's. On my way to work one morning, I spotted Mr. Dana walking along in his jogging togs. I crossed the street and approached him to express my gratitude. He appreciated my appreciation, and I'd like to think he was pleasantly surprised that I was praising him for that obscure, pre-Jose Jiminez creation. Later that evening, after I got home and turned on "Entertainment Tonight," I discovered that this was Bill Dana's birthday.
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