Name Dropping The Dead

As previously promised (& avoided until now because it will take more than a single paragraph) our most (& only) interesting story involving the now-late Tom Davis, of the comedy duo of Franken & Davis.

In 1974/75, we used to hang at the Pitschel Players, a club run by an improv troupe that had moved from San Francisco to the center of the known (media) universe using money one of the Players, Roger Bowen, had made from his role as Col. Blake in the Robert Altman classic M★A★S★H. Most of our hanging was done on open mic night (Tuesday, we think). No or tiny cover, so ...

Anyway, open mic night included no-talent losers trying to get started as well as talented acts trying new routines, the Credibility Gap & Redd Foxx (Saw him do most of You Gotta Wash Your Ass one night.) among them. And Franken & Davis. (One thing we remember from their bits was a post-nuclear devastation of L.A. newscast, in which the weather guy reports that the temperature is "800° downtown, & 810° in the Valley." Probably stuck w/ us because an excess of temperatures to report is one of the oddities of local reporting; we & F&D had both just hit town, & that's the sort of thing clever people notice.)

Being much more outgoing at the time, we struck up an acquaintance, & one day were riding w/ Tom to the Santa Monica pad of another acquaintance of ours, then-KMET newsman Ace Young, to dub copies of some F&D routines they wanted to shop around, Ace having two reel-to-reel decks. (A very different time. It's entirely possible that the demo reels were sent through the U.S. Mail. Believe it or shove it, kids!)

So we're on the Santa Monica (Or The 10. Oddly, few of us call it the Christopher Columbus Intercontinental Highway. Some of us call it the Mason-Dixon line, but that's another story.) heading to where the sunset would eventually be, smoking a reefer. We'd just finished a toke when, from the corner of our eye, we saw the front of a CHP cruiser which was dropping behind us. We said something to the effect of "Whew, could've been trouble," figuring the CHiPs hadn't seen us, when Tom reported that they were now behind us & had turned the red lights on. Thought he was joshing us, but he wasn't, & added/insisted "Eat the roach, & that joint in your cigarette pack." Which we did.

So there we were on the side of the 10 w/ a pair of pigs, & though they didn't search us (Could've not eaten the whole reefer!) they did look in the F&D Microbus, & went through their prop trunk which was in the back of the bus. First prop they found? A life-sized baby doll w/ a bread knife stuck through it, part of an Alice Cooper parody the boys were doing at the time. Not what the ossifers were expecting.

Then we were both advised to "Keep it at home next time," & the singular we (some of the reefer we'd just eaten was visibly stuck to our teeth & gums) was asked/told "Doesn't taste very good, does it?" Easily the most reasonable law enforcement encounter we've had when we were in actual danger of arrest.

We can only figure the CHiPpies probably didn't have a legal leg on which to stand for an arrest, or figured all the evidence was gone. Still can't figure why they didn't at least frisk either of us for weapons, or make us turn our pockets inside out, not that we're complaining.

Not too long after our little adventure Franken & Davis were snatched up by Lorne Michaels, the cheap bastard (From the NYT link: [The two should actually be called one of the show’s first writers: they accepted a single salary of $350 a week. Each, singly, was called “the guys.”] And: "Mr. Michaels summoned them to New York, where he negotiated with the writers’ union to offer the two a single apprentice job.") & we never heard from them again.

Condolences to all who knew Tom more recently. 59 is too damn young. (Too damn close to our age too, 'though we suspect our bile & other ill humours will enable us to outlive a lot of our idols.)