"My kingdom for some coke!"

I was walking down A'dam Ave. to work the other day, and, at around 68th St., I saw an enfeebled-looking Stacy Keach coming toward me. Stiff-legged and slightly bent forward wearing a beret, dark sunglasses and slip-on shoes, this was not the man who donned the fedora and wrinkled suit as Mike Hammer to battle crime and sleep with sexy, mysterious women in NYC back in the mid-80s. Remington Steele he wasn't. His allure was all 'tough guy' charm.

Interestingly, one of my mom's oldest friends recalls "discovering" S. Keach performing at the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon back in 1963. This was after he'd graduated from UC Berkeley, I'd imagine. <---I really don't know why I know this little factoid, but I suspect it has something to do with why I know that the actor Barry Bostwick (Brad from Rocky Horror) is from San Mateo and that Tom Hanks went to San Jose State University. I'm from the Bay Area of California. If anyone who's from there/lived there then goes off to become someone, news of their connection to the home turf is dug up and gets passed around.

After seeing my main man, "Mike", dodder down the street, I was reminded of his career's derailment due to repeated cocaine abuse throughout the 80s. Wasn't he busted for trying to smuggle the drug either into or out of the UK? Since then, he's done the odd TV spot, and a lot of NY theater. As a relative newcomer to NY, I've missed out on any and all of his East Coast performances.

If he's not yet performed the title role in King Lear, then I'd surely like to see him do so. Maybe the UK will forgive him his drug smuggling past, and I'll have the pleasure of watching Stacy perform in the West End once I've moved over there?