a scan a day

Jaleel White, mid 90s

So, if you’ve been keeping up, you know that I worked on this show for a while. Three seasons, actually. (By the way, if you wrote to the Family Matters production offices & requested an autograph from Jaleel in the mid-90s, it was probably signed by the lovely & talented PA, Meghan O’Sullivan — as this one was. It wasn’t that Jaleel didn’t want to sign autographs, it was more that Meghan loved getting away with doing it herself. She was also the best female prank phone caller I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, and that’s including the folks I know who do it professionally. Nor was she a random prankster — she specialized in calling your exes, and oh, she was goood. I imagine there are at least a few dozen men who are still out there, wandering around, to this day puzzling over that long ago phone call, late one night.)

FM Trivia: Season One, Episode 12: Jaleel’s character, Steve Urkel, is introduced. Originally a one-off guest starring role — Laura Winslow has a date with a nerd — 12-year old Jaleel got such a tremendous reaction from the studio audience, the producers brought him back again. And again. And again. If you were thinking that this might have caused tension on the set as the focus of the show slowly started to shift away from the the adults in the Winslow family & began to center more squarely on Urkel & his antics — well, you would be right.

90s

This cartoon broke my heart, so I kept it.

90s

Rachel Arieff was another client during my agenting days. I always liked her, & I always liked this picture. I googled Rachel to see what she’s doing now & apparently she’s HUGE in Barcelona. Weird.

I loved her impression of herself working a 9-5 office job. She’d put a plastic bag on her head, tighten it around her neck & then collapse on the stage, feigning suffocation. Killed me every time.

1994-2000

If I have any regrets about California, it’s just this: that I only have two photographs of my beloved car Dino. I bought this ‘72 Plymouth Valiant at Rent-A-Wreck shortly after arriving in Los Angeles for $350. That’s right, $350. It was dented & rusty & looked like hell but drove well enough & it was better than walking. We dubbed it Dino right away because it was green, & my friend Chris (Bonno) was always offering to paint it for me. After a couple of years I finally took him up on his offer & I told him to do whatever he wanted — anything would look better than the current rusted-out hulk. If you were in the LA area in the 90s, you may very well have seen my car. It was hard to miss. Here’s the other photo, it shows more of the body:

Those are supposed to be dinosaur scales. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the back, which featured the Flintstones’ Dino scampering across the trunk. I left the car behind when I moved away from LA — he wasn’t doing very well & needed a lot of TLC, much more than I could ever give him. Chris was able to sell the hood for $2000 & I understand it’s now hanging in someone’s living room & is quite the conversation piece.

(That is a small rubber chicken hanging from the rear-view mirror.)

I mentioned once that I worked on Family Matters for a couple of years in the 90s — you know, the Urkel show. This letter came to our offices one day & it killed me — third-to-last line — so I kept it. I wonder where this kid is now.