John’s been having a great run over the past year or so. He was on “Law and Order” in the episode Acid, which then lead to a role on “Bones” in The Superhero In The Alley. Before all that, he was on “Medium” in the episode Suspicions And Certainties, which was a brilliant role. It was very dark but VERY funny.

Of course all of these appearances are nothing new for John. He’s been very active for many years out in LA. Including starring roles on “Reasonable Doubts“, “Courthouse“, and the cult hit “American Gothic“, just to name a few. What’s different for me now is that John let’s me know ahead of time when he’ll be making an appearance, so I can be sure not to miss it.

So be sure to tune in tonight to CSI!

The plan was to leave the night of Thursday the 15th to get a head start on all the driving. High Point is an 8 hour drive, so instead of eating up all of Friday driving, we could break it up over two days and have most of Friday to browse the acres of furniture that High Point is known for. I also had to do my radio show for Computer Outlook that evening, and the day itself was crazy as ever with having to visit several client sites, shop for Holly, etc. Suffice to say that it I had a very busy day planned.

My second stop of the day was to my favorite caffinated watering hole Caffeine. They open at 7am and I was in the door shortly thereafter. My plan was to have some breakfast and get a little work done before my next appointment at 9am. I setup my laptop and sent my Tapwave Zodiac to go get my mail. Evelyn pulled a double espresso for me and Mark made my favorite breakfast dish of theirs – steak and eggs.

After a little chit chat to catch up on what they’ve been up to. I went to my table to enjoy a cup of coffee and go through my mail. I have a form on the weblog for people to contact me and my e-mail client flags them as urgent so that they don’t get lost in the deluge of my inbox. As I opened my mashby.com account, I saw that I had a “Contact Request”. As I went to open it, you can imagine my surprise when I looked at the address and saw that it was from John Mese. That’s right, I got an e-mail from John F**kin’ Mese!

It seems that John had found me while doing a Google search for when his episode of Law & Order was going to be re-aired and in the results was the article I did on my weblog. In his e-mail, John was very complimentary of the article that I wrote, although he said that he didn’t remember me, he did ask if I’d send him a picture. I sat there in Caffeine with my coffee in one hand, my Zodiac in the other and my mouth on the floor.

Now I’ve been meaning to reach out to John for some time now, but I didn’t have an address for him, or any method of contacting him directly. We do have a friend in common, so I had planned on calling her when I went to Baton Rouge the next month, but that was really my only option. What absolutely blew me away that HE reached out to ME.

I never even conceived that John would ever read the article that I wrote. I’m a small time writer publishing to a limited audience, so I had no grand visions that it would be read by anyone other than close friends. Case in point, I never would have written “He played some of the worst music I’ve ever heard in my life…”, if I thought that John would be reading the article. Thanks to Google though, he found it, read it, liked it and most surprising of all, took the time to contact me about it.

Sitting in Caffeine, I hit the reply button and responded. I sent him a link to a head shot that I had taken of myself a few years ago and also reminded him of a story from class in the hopes that it would trigger his memory. Much to my surprise, it did. In less than an hour, John replied again saying that he did indeed remember me, both by the photograph and the reminder of my final monologue I did in his class. Talk about flattered.

All throughout that weekend we e-mailed each other about what each of us have been up to and what we’re working. It was a great conversation and since then, we’ve continued to stay in touch. John has also offered some trivia about himself to add the to his profile, correcting a few entries I had made in error as well. Little did I know that by writing a little article about why I wanted to become John’s editor, would lead to actually being able to correspond with him one-on-one. When you connect the dots, it’s not so unfathomable, but at the same time it’s quite amazing.

I am continually amazed at how having a weblog can serve as a way to communicate with people. Sometimes it’s with people you haven’t talked to in ages and other times it can be complete strangers, but by putting a little something out there, your whole world can open up to new and exciting opportunities. Who knows, you might even get an e-mail from John F**kin’ Mese!

Back in 1988, I needed an elective at LSU and I opted for an Acting 101 class. John was the instructor and I have to say, he was an excellent teacher. It was clear that he found acting exciting and he translated that into the class. It was a blast and I ended up getting an “A” and fueled by John’s love of acting, I decided to go on to the 201 class after that. Unfortunately, the 201 instructor sucked and I dropped the class.

John ended up graduating from the Master of Fine Arts program, a graduate study curriculum in the Theatre Department, that year and moving to LA to pursue his career. While he was in Baton Rouge though, he was one a very cool guy to hang out with. I can’t say that we were friends really, I mean he was my instructor, but he was very approachable and fun to hang out with. I’ll never forget this party he through. He was living in an old shoe, or boot store (if memory serves) and he threw a party. I was lucky enough to be invited, so I invited a buddy of mine to go with me, since I didn’t know anyone other than John. We went and it was a blast. He played some of the worst music I’ve ever heard in my life, but it didn’t seem to matter because everyone was dancing and having a great time. I distinctly remember seeing John standing on a table howling up at the ceiling clearly enjoying his party as much as his guests.

Since I’ve gone off on a tangent, I might as well go off on another. During his days at LSU, John had long hair that was all one-length. If you remember Dan Cortese when he was on MTV Sports, then I think you get the picture. He was quite proud of his hair too, which is understandable, and would pull it back into a pony tail. You’d never know that he was a Catholic High School graduate to look at him then. He was definitely NOT preppy in any way shape or form.

OK, so back to the story. John graduates and moves to LA and although I wanted to continue acting, I dropped out of the 201 class because the instructor sucked. Even though I wasn’t in any classes, I had become involved with the local theatre community through my work as a trumpet player (my major in College). I played in “the pit” for several seasons of musicals at Baton Rouge Little Theatre and other theatres around town. It was at one of these performances where I ran into John again. He was in town for the holidays and that’s when I learned that he had landed a a co-starring role on Reasonable Doubts as Marlee Matlin’s love interest. As you might imagine, John was quite the star backstage at the local community theatre and deservedly so.

Since then, I haven’t seen John except for appearances on TV. Before I got hooked on TV.com this year, I never really knew when John was going to be on television, so when I saw him it would always be a surprise. Because of this, his name in my household has changed from John Mese to John F**kin’ Mese. My wife even says it! I know it sounds crude but allow me to explain.

Holly (my wife) and I got into the series Sex And The City rather late. We don’t have HBO, so it wasn’t until I started using NetFlix that we began watching it on DVD. One evening, we’re sitting down engrossed in The Chicken Dance episode when John Mese suddenly walks into the scene and begins talking to Samantha. They say a few words and then leave together. I suddenly blurt out, “That’s John F**kin’ Mese!” He had one other scene in that episode, which was funny as hell, and although his role wasn’t that large it was very memorable. In fact, he’s mentioned in the Sex and the City Hotspots tour. Anyway, I think you get the idea of how his name has changed and why.

John hasn’t hit it big per se, but he does have a nice body of work and has been steadily employed now for over 15 years. Bottom line – he has had a solid acting career. John tends to make his roles memorable ones and overall he is a damn fine actor. He was most recently in Law & Order as “Jason Corley” in the episode Acid (another “Hey that’s John F**kin’ Mese” moment). So since I have a slight connection to him and know a little bit of his back story, I figured he’d be a good actor to try and become editor for. We have some common friends, so I might be able to interview him and get some more tidbits for the site, you never know.

So there you have it. The whole story as to why I wanted to become John Mese’s editor. Sorry it wasn’t more exciting. I’m not stalking him, which would be kind of hard to do here in Nashville, TN, I don’t want to have his love child and I’m not a deranged crazed fan. I’m just his editor.