My Two Dates with Kathleen Turner... and a 28-Years-Late Thank You!

Do you remember where you were when you saw Body Heat in 1981?  I do... both times.

I had success on a first date with a college co-ed early that autumn, after watching the intensely seductive film together.  We spent the next three months together, and then parted ways when she had to leave town.  By December, I was barking up another tree and invited my new flame to watch Body Heat with me.  It had worked once, so why not?

"You're not very smart, are you? ... I like that in a man."

Well, this next relationship lasted two and a half years.

Nearly thirty years later, Kathleen visited our little burg of Amherst MA to help celebrate the Amherst Cinema and Pleasant Street Theater in our first annual Gala.  It was a beautiful night, and she really captivated the room.  No question that she's Still Got It.

Heat vs Humidity

After Q&A in which the Hollywood and accomplished stage actress shared brash insights and frank anecdotes, I saw my opening and pinned her down.  She locked on an listened to every word, every lurid detail of my story - chuckling, raising an eyebrow, tossing her hair...

"WELLDIDITWORK??!!" came the demand.

What do you think? was my reply.

We'll Meet Again...

Hearty-and-I-mean-hearty guffaw and a Big Wink from the star.  "I SHOULD HOPE SO!  ATTABOY!"

Twenty-six years ago tonight at the 1986 Academy Awards, Ms. Turner was a nominee for Best Actress in Peggy Sue Got Married.  But she and I go back a bit further than that, to two lovely, portentious nights.  We'll always have heat.

As I told Ms. Turner, I'll forever be grateful

Drinking with Mad Scientist Dean Kamen

Dean & his Segway

May, 2007 (Chicago):  NCIIA, a great organization that encourages technology entrepreneurship by preparing engineering concepts incubated on the campuses to launch, was at the Chicago Art Museum to participate in presentation of the Lemelson-MIT "EurekaFest" Awards to technology innovators.  I was part of the scene and our patron, the Lemelson Foundation, had invited an impressive guest-list.  Included was the great but enigmatic Dean Kamen - originator of the FIRST competition (similar to NCIIA's work, but targeted at high school age science whiz-kids) and inventor of numerous products including the Segway.

Father Jack had a bent for the dramatic

I was cutting through the crowd with a glass of fine red wine when I spotted the diminutive Kamen, clad in trademark denim work shirt and pants.  Strode right up and introduced myself - he certainly knew of NCIIA and I also had a personal card to play: My mother-in-law and her late husband had owned a vacation home on the perimeter of StoneBridge Golf & Country Club in  Boca in the 1980's-90's.  Their next door neighbors and friends were Dean's parents, Jack and Evelyn.

Jack had been an illustrator for Weird Science,  Tales from the Crypt, and MAD Magazine in the 1960's.

Well, Dean and I shot the breeze for a bit; he had mixed memories of Boca Raton and obviously preferred the inventor's bench and the life of the mind to life on the golf course.  Dean was a bit of a nebbish - but he's the awesome nebbish who invented the Segway!  He seemed interested in my tales of Discovery Channel's groundbreaking Australian co-pro "Beyond 2000" and two years later he would combine with Discovery's Planet Green network to create the series "Dean of Invention."

Valpo "Reverser"

We saw the awards given out, and the wine bottles cleared away.  Next morning, early, I drove into Indiana to pay a visit to the Valparaiso U. engineering department and survey their Tech. Entrepreneurship program.

Toward the end of the tour, Dr. Doug Tougaw stunned me with a visit to the lab where his senior class quirky cap-stoners had reverse-engineered a Segway to build a clone from scratch, "for less than $1,800!"  Doug had his guys fire that thang up and give it a go.

Total boldness: the vehicle wheeled and dealed.

Innovation Run Wild

I marveled, and later that evening wrote to my new friend Dean, alerting him to the work of these enterprising engineers.

I imagined he might take an interest in the program, or at least offer a word of encouragement.  However, he never acknowledged my note, nor our conversation.  Oh well.

... The great screenplay "The A-Rabs Are Coming! The A-Rabs Are Coming!"  includes a magnificent scene with a pair of octogenarian blue-bloods cutting figure eights in the driveway to their Nantucket manse on a pair of birthday Segways.  Thank you, Dean Kamen!  Thank you.