I can’t remember whose idea it was for Billy to wear the red wig, but it looked funny with his bristle of a mustache sticking out and I remember he wanted to wear his shirt backward, so I buttoned it up for him. It was Billy’s first and last appearance on television. Our friend Mickey hosted and produced a cable access show that was a purposeful train wreck, and on this episode, she booked Francine Dancer as her guest.

Francine was an LA-famous, yet homeless woman with a fondness for garish clothes and bouts of spontaneous street dancing. I believe she had her own cable access show, too. Mickey asked Billy if he’d like to dance with Francine on the show, and while Billy said yeah, sure, he was still too shy to do it without some sort of disguise.

That Herman Munster laugh you hear in the background is mine, egging him on, proud as can be.

When Mickey gave me this clip a few days ago, I asked her when it was done. She looked it up and said it was November 21, 2001, which makes it two months to the day before Billy left. Two fucking months later…

And I still can’t believe it.

Tags: billy