My buddy Dave Waldon, RIP

I know this blog over the past month has read a bit too much like the obituary ads. Nonetheless, I can't let the passing of my pal Dave Waldon go unmarked. A freelance entertainment writer in Los Angeles, Dave was as smart and as funny in writing about Hollywood as anybody I know. (Check out his book Snakes on a Plane: Guide to the Internet Ssssssensation or his amazingly eclectic blog, which he called 3Finger for reasons which apparently ranked above my security clearance.) A kind of walking, talking version of IMDB, he could spout names of old movies, TV shows and their casts like a volcano -- writing a story beside Dave in a press room, you never had to look anything up.

We shared some of the same oddball passions -- for the nutty B-movie princess Elvira, for instance, or our China Beach idol Dana Delany. (In the case of Delany, her attorney probably would have called it "obsession.") And one of the wonderful things about Dave was that he remembered his friends' passions even when he didn'tshare them. I once mentioned casually to him that I was a great admirer of Rosanna Arquette's portrayal of a suburban princess slumming on the wild side side of high school in the John Sayles film Baby It's You. A couple of years later, he tracked me down at crowded, chaotic ABC meet-and-greet party during the TV critics' gathering in Los Angeles to alertme that Arquette was sitting alone in a corner and would probably be happy to talk to me. As always, he was right.

In fact, the only time that Dave was ever wrong in my presence came at another of those network parties, this one sponsored by the Sci Fi Channel. This one was a barbecue on the vast back lawn of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pasadena. Dave casually began talking to a pretty and talented actress -- to protect the guilty, I'm not naming any names, but you'd know her. Soon the conversation was anything but casual; they leaned toward one another, tuning out the rest of the party, and talked intensely for more than two hours. When she finally got up to go, she wrote her phone number on a scrap of paper and handed it to him.

"Wow, you guys really hit it off," I observed. Dave'seyes widened in surprise. "What do you mean?" he asked. "It was just party BS." I couldn't believe it. "Man, she gave you her PHONE NUMBER!" I exclaimed. "Does she have to come to your apartment and kick in your door?" But he never did call her. Dave never understood what a really interesting guy he was to talk to. I did, and I'm going to miss him a bunch.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one who misses Dave. Here's what Anne Bannon, who writes about family-friendly TV, had to say.

Comments

[Karen]

I guess the best tribute to Dave's character I can add is that I'm reeling because Dave was the first friend I would've called for comfort if I'd found out I'd lost a friend. I hope your readers have the privilege of having someone like him in their lives.

Thank you for the post, Glenn.

[Bill Brioux]

Sad, unbelievable news. Nice tribute, Glenn. I'll never forget the time Dave got beaned at Dodger Stadium. He always brought something to those TCA scrums.

[Sharon Kahn]

Here's some more to add to Glenn's wonderful portrait. Dave was (what an awful tense to use):

A true, generous, compassionate and open-hearted friend...

Funny, smart, curious, interesting and interested...

A moral being who thought about the world with an open mind and who asked the right questions in life too...

Someone whose life-saving liver transplant in college made him grateful for every year he got, and who reminded you to be grateful for your own life too...

An Oscar handicapper who could have made a bundle had he been betting money...

A real gentleman...

And, I'm sure he'd want it known, a Cubs fan who reasserted the existence of unconditional love every year between April and October...

By the way, Three Finger Brown was an early 20th-century ballplayer who turned a crippled hand into a remarkable pitching machine.

God, I'll miss him.

[Terry Morrow]

I didn't hear about this until late Friday. Dave was a great guy, and TCA will not be the same without him. He was funny and personable and warm. He was one of those characters that you couldn't help but like immediately. He will be missed.