NOT a Self Promotion....

Brandenburg Gate at Christmas Time

If you are within Wifi of my Facebook, Twitter, Domain site, email or happen to live next door, you know my DVD is now shipping. In fact I am almost getting tired of saying it.
Even though my college Marketing Professor, Dr. McQuarter, said "there is never a time when sales can take the day off," This blog is not about the DVD.
Being dyslexic and a little OCD it is hard for me to concentrate on one thing for very long, like the DVD release.  This "special" condition of mine also has another odd side effect.  Once I make myself concentrate enough to get some "on going task" done, it becomes an obsession. Then I find it difficult NOT to engage in that activity.  Perhaps this conflicted brain is one of the reasons I am able to partition my mind enough to create characters on stage.  As I read this back to myself,  this sounds like some clinical definition of mental illness.
You know my friend Bob Mandan who played Chester Tate, but you may not know him the way I do. He is quite silly and often becomes the "piss elegant" character he played on SOAP for my amusement.  Well,  he was kind enough to attend the Egyptian Theatre Screening of "Jay Johnson: The Two and Only" last week.
At the end of the screening and the Q and A there was a fan who ran down to talk to me.  He mentioned that he had Asperger's then launched into a litany of every performance I ever did. He had seen them all and kept asking me if I remembered them too.  He was phrasing my resume in a way that sounded like he was telling me something that I had never heard before.  At one point he started talking about SOAP and how revolutionary it was.
As Bob Mandan is coming down the aisle the fan is saying, "And Chester Tate was the womanizing ladies man who was not faithful to Jessica, Chester was played by Robert Mandan... do you remember that?"
This person had not seen Mr. Mandan yet.  I got this idea that I would freak the fan out and say, "Well as a matter of fact this is Bob Mandan right here." As the fan kept talking I locked eyes with Mandan.  He had sized up the situation completely and knew that I was probably going to rope him into the melee.  Mandan simply raised one finger and shook it side to side with a "NO No, you don't" gesture.  I burst out laughing. Fortunately the Autistic Fan thought it was something funny that he himself had said and never knew.
The picture above is from a Christmas a couple of years ago we spent with our son in Berlin.  It was certainly a different Christmas than what we are used to in LA.
Happy Holidays,
As you were,
Jay