Friday, December 7, 2012

RAY BRADBURY AND MY BROTHER

I just received an e-mail from my brother Ken who usually reserves e-mail to send me some item or another about goats (although his previous e-mail was about different type of animal).  Yes, my brother seems to have a fixation about small farm animals; don't ask.  Anyway, here's his comment on Ray Bradbury:

SUBJECT:  RAY BRADBURY AND ME

Jerry --

In, oh, 1971 or so USC was putting on a play based on one of Ray Bradbury's stories and I wasn't able to get a ticket.  Hearing that the master himself was going to be there, I wandered over and got to shake his hand.  Somehow I ended up in a group of about a dozen students and Bradbury, sitting in a lounge and just talking.  That's when I heard him tell this story, almost word for word what was recorded at the National Book Awards ceremony in 2000.

And here I thought I was special.  Sigh.  Quoting Dashiell Robert Parr, (Everyone's special)  "Which is another way of saying no one is."

No goats this time.

-- Kenny

+++++
My folks wandered out to Los Angeles because my Dad was looking for work in the Great Depression and I was enamored of movie stars and I wanted so see famous persons so I puit on my roller-skates, I was 13 years old, and I roller-skated out to Hollywood and there standing on the steps of Paramount Studios was everybody's hero, Mr. W. C. Fields himself.

I roller-skated over to him; I said, Mr Fields, May I have your autograph?  And he signed it and gave it back to me; he said, "There you are, you little son-of-a-bitch."

http://www.raybradbury.com/awards_acceptance.html

No comments:

Post a Comment