Seems my friend Jose has been beating me to the punch on such morbid news…the loss of Larry ‘Bud’ Melman. That’s what I get for not staying rudely glued to my iBook all night long when I should be participating in the Wednesday night D&D game.
Larry was definitely a staple of the Eighties and a part of my generation’s shared comedic experience (could I make that sound any more pretentious?). Personally, I feel he was one of the reasons for David Letterman’s popularity because his appearances really made the show’s non-sequitur humor work. You could never tell if Larry was playing along with the joke or he was a terrible actor or he had no idea what was going on but he read the lines he was given.
I got the opportunity to meet him briefly in 1987 when he was the MC for a small comedy tour that came to Marquette. The headliner was Emo Philips with Rita Rudner opening. His autograph is shelved away along with a dozen others. It was pretty exciting to meet him because he was one of the first celebrities I helped WMUR (Marquette’s excuse for a radio station for the tuition we paid) get station IDs for.