Used To Be

 I spend way too much time on this blog pining for those who have recently passed on. Today's entry attempts to shake that up a bit by bringing a tribute to someone who is still with us. But not as much as he used to be. 

Bruce Willis was recently diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. The reason for my qualifier up there in the first paragraph is because in many ways the Bruce we knew, the Bruce that I grew up with, is gone. But I have memories. 

These go back to a time when a wisecracking detective had his agency nearly sold out from under him by the owner, a supermodel who had been cleaned out by her manager of everything except this one asset. Moonlighting was, for me, appointment television. In the days before DVRs and in a time when it was easier to sit down and watch commercials for an hour than to program your Panasonic VCR, I was watching every episode. Bruce Willis starred as David Addison, the wisecracker mentioned previously, looking for every angle to keep his business open as well as find a way to woo his boss Maddie Hayes, played by Cybill Shepherd. Will they? Won't they? And how about the mysteries that each episode nominally revolved around? I couldn't tell you about those. I was there for the workplace interactions and the whip smart dialogue. To this day I quote Mister Willis/Addison: "Vacation never ends, it just changes location!"

Which is why most of the planet reacted poorly to the suggestion that this same wisecracking detective, he of the poorly received solo album, Return of Bruno, and it's follow-up. If It Don't Kill You It Just Makes You Stronger, was slated to appear in an action movie. Die Hard. As the legend has it, turned out to be a smash hit and Bruce Willis became an action hero on a par with Stallone and Schwarzenegger. A big enough action star that he no longer needed to pad his resume with ill-advised dips into Motown's vaults for a third album. 

Since then, Bruce ahs been all over the map in his career, from his quiet turn in The Sixth Sense to the hero out of time in Twelve Monkeys. He was in Pulp Fiction. He even got himself a guest shot on Friends. 

Some of us wondered when the Die Hard train was going to end. Sadly, that decision was essentially taken out of Bruce's hands. But I will always have those Tuesday nights to remember, and the way he used to be.