I’ve lived in Hollywood/Silverlake for almost forty years. Movie industry everywhere. Yet once again a famous actor dies I have never heard of. I look at his IMDB filmography. I recognize the title of dozens of the movies he’s been in, some of which even deserve that dreadful appellation iconic. I have seen exactly one of those movies. One. Apollo 13, on cable, many years ago. If anyone wanted proof of multiple universes in the same space at the same time, I am apparently in one, Hollywood is in the other, and neither of us is aware of the other, though my universe would be much, much smaller. Way smaller. We’re talking Whoville. This would also explain how I once spent a good fifteen minutes standing next to Tony Curtis, looking right at him, and having no idea who he was. He was in the vast Hollywood universe. I was drifting by in my tiny little one. We were probably both staring at the same chick, our dimensions crossing on hers. I was twenty something. He was a dirty old man. We didn’t have those in my universe, not yet anyway.

The universes do come together occasionally, though, in those weird times where people insist I am somebody and demand an autograph. There must be somebody just like me in Hollywood. Big and tall and hulking. He’s been in all these movies or was it TV shows, it’s on the tips of their tongues. Then the people leave me alone and the universes part again.