“I went to sleep dreaming life was beauty — I woke up knowing life is duty.” — written by David Mamet for a Hill Street Blues episode called “Wasted Weekend.”

I heard this line once during the original broadcast of this episode on 1.13.87. The guy who said the line was Dennis Franz‘s Det. Sal Benedetto, and I’ve never forgotten it. 31 and 1/2 years ago. I was watching Steven Bochco‘s fabled series on a 21″ cable-connected color TV. I was living in a cool little pre-war studio on High Tower Drive, a few hundred yards from the Hollywood Bowl and just down the street from Elliott Gould‘s deco-moderne, elevator-accessible Long Goodbye apartment. Reanimator‘s Jeffrey Coombs lived in the same complex.

I was working for Cannon Films publicity at the time, writing press kits. My future wife Maggie and I had either just returned from Paris or were planning a trip there. We got married the following October, and Jett came along the following June. [Originally posted on 11.14.09.]