AND THUS DIES ANOTHER PORTION OF MY MISSPENT YOUTH

As I was browsing through my Yahoo! Homepage news feeds, I came across a sad, sad piece of news. Calvert DeForest, better known as Larry ‘Bud' Melman from Late Night with David Letterman Has passed away at the age of 85.

Do you remember back in the day, when You'd stay up late to watch Letterman, just because you'd get to see Chris Elliot eat a can of dog food, or Brother Theodore yell obscenities at Dave? But the best were the segments with Melman, in his thick horn rimmed glasses, over projecting poorly read cue-cards at some hapless stranger. Dave would send him to the oddest places, like movie premiers, or the Olympics. I remember him greeting arriving passengers at a New York Transit Bus terminal. "Welcome to New York. Here's your complimentary hot face towel."

Or when he was in that Run-DMC video?

Reading the article, I learned he was the first face to appear on Letterman's NBC show, doing a parody of James Whale's speech at the beginning of the 1931 version of Frnkenstein.

He seemed like such a nice guy, a genuine person who had been thrown into a spotlight by Dave's warped sense of humor. I think that's why I liked him so much, and why everyone I knew back then did too. Just his flappability and sincerity, in spite of the ludicrous situations he would be in.

In the article they said "At his request, there will be no funeral service for DeForest, who left no survivors." But I think they got that wrong. He left a lot of survivors behind, and he left us all smiling.