On Dennis Farina (RIP), Whom I Never Met but Wish I Had

Class. And a classy 'stache.

I've never been particularly starstruck. One time I met Spike Lee at a cocktail party following a speech he gave at my university, but instead of asking for his autograph or trying to push a script — one guy confronted him with a screenplay pitch that consisted of two minutes of rap — or land some sort of job with 40 Acres and a Mule, I peppered him with questions about Jungle Fever until he slowly made his escape in the direction of a pile of canapés.

I will admit there are a couple of famous people that I would love to meet, around whom I would try to be all cool but would likely be tongue-tied and unable to utter/stutter more than, "I'm like a big fan."

One of them is Darryl McDaniels, aka DMC of Run-DMC. Another is Dennis Farina, who died Monday.

Thankfully, there have been plenty of tributes about the guy, so it's not as if he's not getting his due as a popular character actor (which is a benefit because I won't have to repeat the entire career retrospective you can easily find elsewhere), but I do have a few things to say about him.