Nov 15, 2021 3 min read

When I lived in Los Angeles, I did some film and TV work. Yes, I was the boob on the tube.

Side note: I am using boob as in idiot and not as in breast, though, I did appear shirtless in a short film once. Don’t try and picture it.

But I digress, like I do. For a short time, I was an actor. Actually, I was a reenactor. I made my screen debut as Detective Baitx on an episode of “LA Forensics,” because I looked like the real-life detective who solved the case. The handsome devil.

Additional side note: The true crime show aired on TruTV, back when it was Court TV. My friend Sandy, a true crime aficionado, was the only friend I knew who had heard of the show.

On the episode, I had to reenact scenes where Baitx gathers clues when he is called to an alley to find a drag queen who is murdered and left by a dumpster.

The actor who played the victim had the toughest part. He had to put on makeup, a wig and a dress and lie down in the filthy back alley next to a garbage bin in the San Fernando valley and pretend to be dead.

I stroll over to the scene of the crime, greet a police officer (a cater waiter in a costume), and examine the body. On the first take, I accidentally kicked the victim’s purse and the contents went flying. On the second take, I came really close to the purse and the “corpse” started giggling. It may be true that dead men tell no tales, but this one laughed uncontrollably. Like Goldilocks, we got it right on the third take.

In another scene, I had to pretend to do research on the crime. I sat at a computer and typed, “The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” over and over again. I hate when I watch movies and TV shows where the actors aren’t really typing. They flop their digits on the keys like they’re having a stroke and trying to summon help via email.

In yet another scene, I had to retrieve the cold case files from storage and discover the evidence that solve the murder. My only audible line in the episode is “Thanks” when I take the box from a police officer (a dancer, singer and model). The prop box had to be zhuzhed up by the art department to look old and dusty. They could have just used a box from my apartment. I had lived in LA a few years at this point, but I had three boxes of old comics that I threw a tablecloth over and pretended it was a credenza.

When the episode shoot wrapped, I had to hand in my badge and gun, just like that tough-as-nails cop who doesn’t play by the rules and plans on solving the case even though he’s been kicked off the force.

I’m such a badass.