A Respectable Act of Cultural Vandalism - Robin Williams (1951-2014)

It's saddened to hear that the great comedic genius that is Robin McLaurin Williams has died. He has gone the same way as David Carradine and Isadora Duncan and joined the choir invisible (though the reasons for their strangling were very different to his). 

Before I continue this tribute, I know that some of you may not like the idea of jokes in a tribute of a dead person, but Robin is a comedian form the same school as Monty Python, and (using Graham Chapman's memorial service as a example) it is something Robin would have wanted. 

They are a lot of anecdotes about Robin's talent, but the best one I can think of now was this one said back in July by Adam Savage (my doppelganger born 20 years earlier) on his "Still Untitled Project" on Tested.com

Favorite Adaptations - Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project - 7/01/2014

(The anecdote in question begins on 22:00)

Before I continue (again) I like to say that the movie Bicentennial Man (despite been panned by critics at the time and been a flop in the box office due to (according to Robin) lackluster marketing and a cut in the film's budget by Disney (the owners of Touchstone Pictures) that resulted in a lowering of quality) is a good film. I think it's better than the original novella (which I have read) as the film includes more emotion. 

This is a truly sad loss for me as he has been a big part of my childhood and was responsible for a part of my sense of humour. I saw him as Mork in Mork & Mindy, the Genie in Aladdin, the Adult Peter Pan in Hook, Alan Parriah in Jumanji, the advance aging kid in Jack, and (of course) as Mrs Doubtfire. In my later years marveled his acting talent in films like Dead Poets Society and Man of the Year.

I would have loved to have met him (alive, of course, but the zombie version of him might be an interesting sight (how it would compare to Bill Murray in Zombieland I don't know until I see it (Them becoming zombies, not the film.))). In fact, back in primary school, me and a friend thought about doing a comic strip adventure about us meeting him. I only drew the first frame of us in the airport introducing the story. Maybe because of that (and the fact my heart wasn't fully into that project (and also it was my final year in primary school)) the project didn't go further and I forgot about it until just now as I am writing this. I can assume that any physical evidence of this project is all gone. Probably put in some shredder years ago to clear out the cupboards in St Lucy's Primary. I wanted to do something involving anthropomorphic animals, but the teacher said we'll do that after the Robin Williams story. Sigh.

So anyway, here is my tribute post to Robin Williams.