The true and factual meaning of immortality is not to live
   forever as a physical being, it is to further your existence
   through a personalized and progressive mythology. It is to
   become an enigma through your art, work, fate, words or
   actions. You must cross the boundaries of time, erosion and
   mimicry. To truly be immortal one must hurdle over the
   obstacles of human nature's tendency to forget
   accomplishments and cannibalize celebrated ideas. It's
   something that, in many ways, is possibly harder than actually
   living forever. Remember, just because you're still around, that
   doesn't mean people remember you. Now, when thinking of
   people who deserve to be considered immortal, obviously,
   opinions will very. There are names, however, I think we all can
   agree on, such as Shakespeare, Mozart, King, Bogart, Van
   Gogh, Sinatra, Jesus, Hitler, Caesar, Kennedy and Elvis, just
   to name a few potential candidates for the hierarchy of
   immortality. In fact, in it's truest from, immortality is not
   something to be decided on or based in personal opinion. It is
   something that transcends such frivolities, it is the essence of
   a person's worldly energy imbedding itself in the minds of the
   masses, whether they like it or not. For example, Hitler is
   remembered not because we like him or necessarily choose to
   remember him, we cannot remove his essence from our soul.
   It is something that will always be there. He will forever be the
   face of human evil, his immortality preserved through his
   atrocities. Shakespeare is remembered not because we all
   have read his work and adore it, he is remembered because
   his words have laid the tracks for a higher from of literary
   expression. One does not need to read any of his work
   (although, one should) to know him or his words. He will
   forever be the voice of beauty and sublime expression in the
   written form, his immortality preserved through his words. This
   is the basic logic to be used when justifying someone's
   immortality. And the purpose behind this piece is to justify, not
   only the immortality of, but the wonderful existence in general,
   of the late, great Andy "song and dance man" Kaufman. The
   secondary purpose is to see how many times I can use the
   word "immortality" in a sentence.

   Part 1: The Science of Andy; Why He Was the Way That
   He Was

   Andy came from a nice family. He was born January 17, 1949
   in New York City. He spent his early life in Great Neck, New
   York, a suburb of Long Island. He started his creative direction
   at an early age, playing and dancing to records by the time he
   was one years old. It was as a child that Andy seemed to form
   his two most distinct and defining traits. It's no coincidence
   that people referred to Andy as a fully-grown child. He did all
   the growing he needed to before he was six. At age four, Andy
   started performing for his favorite audience, himself. This is
   probably the most important trait of Andy's creative
   development, the fact that his interest lied in entertaining
   himself before anyone else. That's what gave his "comedy" its
   power, its character, its beauty. The fact that he paid no
   attention to the expectations of an audience is what made
   Andy such a revolutionary voice in the realm of performance. In
   some respects, it's not what he did, it's what he didn't do, and
   what he didn't do was what made him laugh, not you. And
   that's why it worked; he catered to himself, which meant he
   catered to only those who liked him. He didn't rant and rave,
   trying everything to make you laugh. He didn't come on like a
   big hairy dog, begging to be loved. In other words, he was not
   Robin Williams. He understood what it meant to be in the
   public eye and he understood the fact that people tend to be
   sheep. He recognized the fact that people were going to laugh,
   even if what you were doing wasn't that funny. As long as you
   were supposed to be funny, you were, to some idiot
   somewhere. I think he resented that fact, he resented that the
   performer got off so easy, simply because he was catering to
   the audience. He didn't need the audience, or anyone, to feel
   whole. And he showed a hell of a lot more respect for his
   audience than any performer of his time (or any time) by giving
   them the chance to figure things out. Andy was not a comic
   dictator; he didn't tell you a joke and expect you to laugh. He
   allowed his crowds to run free though his mind. He gave them
   the power to question reality and to wonder what was really
   going on up on that stage and out in the world. And that's why
   so many people found him annoying, pompous, rude, childish,
   conceited, stupid, trite and so on. It's ironic that people saw
   Andy as an irritant simply because he trusted them enough to
   understand and enjoy what he gave them, without him telling
   them. Maybe if he had been an overwhelming demander of
   comic arbitration, then people would have loved him. People
   would have spent years singing the praises of the great
   comedian Andy Kaufman. It's strange that things work in
   opposites like that, that common sense is actually
   uncommon. But Andy never gave into the comfort zone of
   simplicity. He tried to expand the horizons of humor and make
   things more real, by making the fantasy of his stage persona
   more real than reality. For him, questions were answers, and
   vice versa. This is the second most important part of Andy
   Kaufman's creative (and human) development.
   In the early 80's, Andy appeared on the Tom Cottle show to do
   an interview. It was the only time Andy ever let his guard down
   and gave the TV world Andy as himself, without any strings
   attached. He talked about an event in his childhood that
   seemed to shape his psyche in a strange way. Cottle was
   looking for some insight into why Andy was the way he was,
   and it seems as though he got more than he bargained for with
   Andy's honest and sad response. Andy spoke of his
   Grandfather, Papu he called him. Andy's grandfather was his
   best friend when he was a boy. He did everything with him. He
   was the only 3-D person who understood him. One day, Andy
   asked his parents where his grandfather had gone. His parents
   told him he had gone on a trip. In reality, he had died and
   Andy's loving parents were afraid to tell Andy the truth, for fear
   of sending the boy into an early spiral of depression. Instead of
   going on with his daily routines of cartoons and chocolate,
   Andy would sit in front of the living room window, waiting for his
   grandfather to return. He never did, and Andy never returned
   from the fantasy, from the lie that made the truth easier to
   accept. No doubt his perceptions were warped and his
   concepts of the importance of real life were blurred by this
   event. Andy learned that real life didn't have to be real, it was
   all in your head. The phrase "life is what you make of it"
   certainly seems to take precedence in the life of Andy
   Kaufman. He made fantasy life, and life fantasy. Andy's
   creations, like Foreign Man, Tony Clifton and Christian Andy,
   all came from this embracing of fantasy life. Andy lived through
   his dreams and his desire to bend reality and help everyone
   see the honesty that existed in the imagination. His childhood
   preservation made his very complex purpose real. He just
   wanted to have fun, and escape the burden of reality.

   Part 2: Wrestling the World

   Andy found comfort in professional wrestling. It was a
   carnivalesque show that embraced all that was important to
   Andy. It was a distilled fluid of magic brutality, an illusion of
   destruction and a mirage of pain. Wrestling gave Andy
   characters that were larger than real life, but fit just right into
   the fantasy world he embraced so strongly. Legends like
   "Nature Boy" Buddy Rodgers, "Classy" Freddie Blassie and
   Gorgeous George filled Andy's static box, black and white
   world with color and life. He found the energy and the ability to
   let fantasy over take reality overflowing from the wrestling
   world. It hit Andy hard and furthered his introverted love of the
   imagination. It also fueled his need to alienate people in order
   to initiate more extreme results. He saw in wrestling the need
   to stretch the boundaries of conflict to get people to care and
   become involved. Wrestling gave Andy Tony Clifton and, of
   course, Andy's wrestling character. Wrestling formed Andy's
   sexual function and taught him the beauty of theatrics when
   treated as reality. Andy spent his whole life, wrestling the
   world.
   One of Andy's most misunderstood and renowned routines
   was the Inter Gender Wrestling Champion act. Andy's concept
   of wrestling women was done, mainly for sexual kicks. It also
   gave Andy the chance to act out his pro wrestling dreams and
   be a wrestling bad guy, the ultimate reality subversion. The
   wrestling bad guy is the farthest-reaching human incarnation of
   all that is evil and hateful. Wrestling bad guys insult all that is
   sacred in the world. They toss handicap people from their
   wheel chairs, they spit on children, they scream hate
   mongering language that rips through the morals of America
   and they belittle and laugh at women. Andy loved the idea of
   turning this kind of exaggerated behavior into a stage persona.
   He jumped at the chance to, not only fulfill some of his sexual
   fantasies, but exact some of the dreams he'd harbored sense
   childhood. Being a wrestling bad guy meant Andy could do
   and say whatever he wanted, to anyone, and he would be
   justified. It was exactly what he was supposed to do. What
   wrestling bad guy didn't insult everyone and everything? If they
   didn't, they wouldn't be playing the part correctly. So it was
   only right that Andy say as many bad things about as many
   people as he could, he didn't want to sell the people short and
   give them a boring bad guy. He wanted to put his all into
   hating everyone, so everyone would put their all into hating
   him, in a fantasy sense of course.
   Andy started wrestling women, as an act, in 1977 and
   continued to do it regularly until 1983. It was a concept that
   was met with expected confusion. Andy submerged his
   unknowing audience in the wrestling world, and proved that
   supposedly sophisticated audiences were dumber then they
   thought. The science of the wrestling world is far more
   complex and involving than non-wrestling sympathizers know,
   and Andy knew that. He knew that people would fall directly
   into his conceptual trap and give him just what he wanted,
   venomous hate. Anyone who took the time to apply common
   sense to the situation would realize that no performer could
   behave the way Andy did and continue to work. No TV star
   can come on TV and talk about how women are the mental
   inferiors to men and yell at the audience to shut up, and mean
   it. Andy strutted around his blue floor mat, wearing long
   underwear and black soccer shorts, pointing at his head
   saying, "I've got the brains, not you!" And whenever anyone in
   the crowd bought into Andy's wrestling bad guy antics, he was
   right, he did have the brains, and not them. He turned crowds
   of ice-cold suit and tie, comedy club veterans into raging mad
   children, screaming for the bad guy to go down. People were
   so transfixed on Andy's routine that many of them failed to find
   the humor. Many of them failed to realize that they were
   simply being entertained. Many of them began to actually take
   their fantasy hatred for the bad guy wrestler Kaufman into the
   real world, and continue to hate him, as if he were really a
   woman hating, idiotic slob. It's amazing that one of Andy's
   best and most important acts, his love for the art of wrestling
   and his just plain drive to give an audience more than a fucking
   punch line, would cause him so much trouble in the real world.
   But for Andy, the fact that people walked away totally
   convinced that he really was the bad guy, had to be the
   greatest adulation he could ever receive. He had done his job,
   he had made fantasy reality and reality fantasy. And his spin
   on "all the worlds a stage" came true. For Andy, all the world
   was a wrestling ring.

   Part 3: Toybox of the mind

   By the time Andy was 30 years old, he had lived out all of his
   childhood dreams. When he played Carnegie Hall on April 26,
   1979, he reached the highest point in his creative life. He had
   emptied his toybox, and scattered his toys all over his room.
   The roots of his routine were his childhood. What made his act
   so astounding, and so wonderful was that he had spent his
   whole life perfecting his acts. The brilliance of his "Mighty
   Mouse" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" karaoke acts was the
   child-like simplicity of them, the awe-struck joy that he exuded
   while lip-synching. He wasn't acting like a child trying to have
   fun, trying to play along with the friendly and comforting
   grooves of the records. When he did those acts, he was a
   child having fun and playing along. He'd been playing those
   records and interacting with the friends on them for years and
   years, only now people all over were watching. His "Old
   McDonald" routine was the next logical step after "Mighty
   Mouse" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" -- it was the child
   learning to share and letting other "kids" into the fun. When
   you watched Andy perform, you were watching a lot more than
   a man doing an act to amuse an audience. You were watching
   a man opening up his dreams and his childhood friends, and
   remember, mommy once told him he couldn't perform by
   himself any more, he had to have an audience. So he got one.
   It started with his little baby sister who he bribed with bubble
   gum; then a basement full of kids who had great fun with
   Andy; then various birthday party crowds who always loved his
   games and songs; then the crowded comedy club, filled with
   the jaded and the confused, who never quite got the point.
   Then it was national TV where the world watched Andy's toys
   & games, and never knew whether to laugh, get angry or just
   smile along. He played with his childhood hero Elvis all the
   time and ate ice cream just because he liked it. He sang
   songs about animal noises and asked his "friends" to sing
   along. Some "friends" did, reaching into Andy's open toybox.
   Some "friends" didn't, they just sat there, trapped in their
   smug, adult protection suit. It wasn't his fault some people
   didn't want to play. They could just go home then, couldn't
   they?
   At the end of the 70's, Andy Kaufman needed new toys. He
   was at a point in which he needed to let go before the
   audience took them all away. People were catching on. He
   conceived his dreams and toys at a time when his innocence
   was pure, during childhood. Suddenly he was in a new world,
   struggling to keep his innocence and find new toys that were
   fun to play with. He started filling his toy box with things made
   up of his new found world. He played with the celebrity image
   and the pompous nature that so many around him had, and
   expected him to have. He played with reality more than ever
   now, making things happen that didn't. He still played with his
   old toys, but in a new way. He brought in the new toys and
   started a war with the old ones. It was a war between his
   natural innocence that helped make his old toys live and the
   cannibalization of that innocence that his new toys needed to
   be real. He figured out what was happening and how easy it
   was to loose touch with the real life he had , no matter how
   fake it was, and he saw that there was no coming back. So he
   decided to confront the realities and the audience that had
   taken away his toys.

   Part 4: Tank You Vedy Much: The Necessity of Character

   Andy never felt at home on a stage just being himself. He was
   himself all day long, and you have to remember, his first
   reason for being on stage was to entertain himself. And for
   Andy to entertain himself, he couldn't be himself. What's fun
   about that? The stage gave him the chance to explore his
   subconscious and take an unknowing group of people along for
   the ride. For Andy, characters became a lot more than just
   characters. They became friends that he found comfort in. He
   could escape the harshness of the world through Foreign Man
   and he could embrace it and give it a run for its money through
   Tony Clifton. Both characters represented Andy's continual
   love of reality subversion.
   With Foreign Man, he put people on edge, and as always, he
   kept them wondering if it was for real or not. He used Foreign
   Man to expose the nature in people to laugh at the innocent
   and groan at the uninitiated. And he threw it back at them with
   the transformation into Elvis, which was a total turn around
   from the innocent, unsure Foreign Man. It showed Andy in
   total control of his audience. The transformation not only
   changed Andy on stage, it changed the audience as well.
   People went from squirming, embarrassed, cruel and
   inattentive slugs to shocked, enlightened, welcoming and
   joyous worshipers. Their attention immediately turned and their
   eyes became glued to Andy. And when Andy ended the Elvis
   act, he didn't let them off the reality ride there. Elvis vanished,
   replaced by Foreign Man, once again. Andy gave the crowd an
   answer only to put the final decision in their hands by falling
   back into the Foreign Man guise at the end of the act. People
   wondered, is this guy for real? Is he really foreign? Foreign
   Man may have been Andy's greatest achievement in the realm
   of audience manipulation. Of course, all of that changed, as
   Andy became better known. Foreign Man became Andy's
   calling card and people began to figure things out. By the time
   Andy got the job on Taxi, Foreign Man had been completely
   cannibalized by pop culture and stolen away from Andy. Latka
   was not Foreign Man, and Andy hated what Taxi did to Foreign
   Man, but for Andy, it was a sacrifice he had to make. Throwing
   Foreign Man to the media lions helped Andy grow as a
   marketable star. It gave him room to breath and more chances
   to bend reality, and in new directions. It was no doubt a big
   loss to Andy, but a necessary one.
   Tony Clifton came about because of Foreign Man's
   disintegration. Andy needed a new place to hide and Tony
   gave him that place. Andy had been toying around with the
   Tony Clifton character for some time, sense around 1969, the
   year he claimed to have seen the real Tony Clifton perform at a
   club in Las Vegas. Tony represented a lot of things in Andy.
   He gave Andy the sociological release that life didn't. While
   Andy used Transcendental Meditation to further his personal
   enlightenment and find comfort in himself and his thoughts,
   Tony Clifton gave him the ability to put his foot in the ass of
   authority. With Tony, Andy evaporated, left town and didn't
   come back until Tony had caused as much damage as
   humanly possible. Andy owned a pink convertible Cadillac that
   only Tony could drive. Andy never drank, swore, smoked or ate
   meat. Tony drank, swore, smoked and ate meat. Andy
   maintained a humble and quiet existence while Tony spent
   lavishly and made as much noise as he could, everywhere he
   went. Andy was not Tony, and Tony was not Andy. They were
   just two guys who happened to live in the same neighborhood.
   Tony Clifton has always been the biggest defense people have
   when referring to Andy as a schizophrenic. I've heard people
   make the claim that Andy was a schizophrenic and an insane
   megalomaniac. I've heard people say that Andy was an
   asshole and a hypocrite. I've heard people say that Andy was
   a disgrace and a weakling. I've heard people say lots of terrible
   things about Andy Kaufman, all because of Tony Clifton. Well,
   I think that all of these statements were made by people who
   fell for Andy's manipulations. Andy put himself through a lot to
   maintain his stance in the world, as Andy Kaufman, and when
   he returned from Cliftonville, he put himself through a lot more.
   He would eat cheesecloth to purge his system of the toxins
   Tony had invaded his body with. He would spend weeks fixing
   the havoc Tony had caused. He did all of this to get in the
   heads of the people he resented the most, the people who
   walked through life trapped in the concrete of reality. He knew
   that Tony would absolutely throw perceptions of Andy out the
   window. Tony would make people mad as hell because of what
   he did, he would make them absolutely enraged because they
   knew it was Kaufman, and Tony refused to play along. For
   Andy to give in and mix minds with Tony, would have meant
   that Andy would have, not only ruined the whole point of Tony's
   existence, he would have ruined the whole point of Andy's
   existence. Tony kept Andy's creative spark alive, as long as
   Andy kept Tony alive.
   When Tony Clifton began to only be associated with Andy
   Kaufman, it made it harder and harder for Andy to "leave
   town". Andy became distraught and felt that Tony was quickly
   going the way of Foreign Man. The only difference was that
   Tony was not nearly as marketable as Foreign Man and all
   Andy stood to gain by outing Tony Clifton was the total loss of
   his old friend and creative catalyst. At least Foreign Man still
   helped Andy pay the bills, but for Andy to lift the Tony Clifton
   curtain, he really would have been crazy. So Andy turned Tony
   over, in a way, to his friend Bob Zmuda.
   Andy crafted one of his most brilliant tricks when he got
   Zmuda to take on the Clifton guise. Since Andy had already
   been accused of being Clifton by every Hollywood hipster and
   industry know it all, Andy thought it might be funny to make
   them all look like fools, sense they felt the need to try and ruin
   Andy's fun. Zmuda went on The Merv Griffin Show and The
   David Letterman show as Clifton. He even played an exclusive
   weeklong engagement at Harrah's Casino in Vegas as Clifton.
   Everyone of course assumed that Tony was Andy, that's the
   only reason anyone would have Tony Clifton on their show or
   book him for stage time anyway. It was a way to get a major
   star on your show (just ask Dina Shore). But Andy was at
   home, watching, while Tony made the country look stupid.
   Zmuda has said that during the commercial break when he
   was on the Letterman show, David leaned over and told him
   "Andy, if I didn't know it was you, I'd swear it was somebody
   else." Victory at last.
   Tony Clifton continued to make appearances, sometimes he
   was Andy, sometimes he was Bob, sometimes he was Andy's
   brother Michael and sometimes he was, well who knows,
   sometimes he was Tony. Tony even made some scarce
   appearances after Andy's death, figuring, now is his chance to
   distance himself from Kaufman. Of course, it didn't work.

   Part 5: The Understanding of Your Existence: How Andy
   Solidified his Life, by Dying

   In body and mind, Andy Kaufman is dead. He died of a rare
   form of lung cancer, large cell carcinoma, on May 16, 1984 at
   the age of 35. He left behind a family that loved him, a
   daughter that never got to meet him and a world that never
   understood him. What's important is that he understood this,
   he knew that the world that watched him jump from one thing
   to the next wouldn't get it all of the time, if any of the time. The
   world watched him go from Taxi to wrestling, from being the
   darling of Saturday Night Live to working as a bus boy at the
   Posh Bagel, from playing bongos and speaking in gibberish to
   reading the Great Gatsby in a mock British accent, from
   wreaking havoc on a live show to singing gospel songs with his
   new, Christian fiancée. And he never once gave in and let the
   illusion fall. He spent his whole life trying to turn the world into
   an enigma. And with his death, he just about did it.
   My theory on Andy's death is this: I think that Andy found out
   he had cancer long before he told anyone. Just watch his TV
   appearances starting around 1982 up until his death, and you'll
   notice a steady stream of coughing followed by a quiet internal
   fear in his eyes (maybe it's just me). From his Letterman
   moments to his Tom Cottle interview, from his 'Soundstage'
   show to his televised feud with Jerry Lawler, the cough and the
   strange gleam in his eyes are always there. He understood
   how important he was to the people he was close to (his best
   friend Bob Zmuda, his long time girlfriend Lynne Margulies, his
   parents and so on) and he knew how hard it was going to be to
   tell them the sad truth and watch them react. He remembered
   his grandfather and how he never really got to feel the pain of
   his death, the fact that the reality of the pain was altered by
   turning the fantasy into reality in a child's mind, and I think he
   really valued that fact. He decided to make his death as much
   of an illusion as possible. He began to drop hints about his
   sickness and about his inevitable death by making mention of
   the fact that he was going to fake his death. He told Zmuda he
   was going to fake his death, he told Lynne he was too. He told
   friends John Moffit and Bill Lee (the producers of Fridays) that
   he was going to fake his death and that he would do it by
   faking cancer. He told numerous people that were close to him
   that he was going to do this, and that he would keep the
   charade going for a long, long time. He even began to alter his
   public image by going on TV shows a more humble and sweet
   natured man. He let down all of his guards and gave people the
   real Andy, all the while he was trying to fool people into
   thinking he was lying, when for the first time, he wasn't. He
   brought his parents on the Letterman show and hugged them
   and told them he loved them, he also told David Letterman that
   he loved him and thanked him for supporting him when no one
   else would. He held onto this idea, and continued to try to
   drive the lie home as long as could, until he really started to
   get sick and show it. He kept up the act until he couldn't, until
   he needed the help of the people that loved him. Around
   Christmas time of 1983, Andy let the truth be known. He came
   back from the doctor with grave and horrible news for all of his
   friends and family. He was diagnosed with terminal lung
   cancer and he'd be lucky if he lived three more months. Here
   is a man who never smoked, except when he was Tony
   Clifton, which wouldn't amount to much smoking, who was
   going to die of lung cancer in three months at the age of 35!
   Naturally, people didn't buy it. People thought it was another
   Kaufman put on, another joke. Even his friends had their
   doubts. And that was just fine with Andy, his plan was
   working. Soon after his announcement, Andy's health began to
   decline. He lost a tremendous amount of weight and his hair
   began to fall out, due to chemo treatment. Even then, with his
   physical appearance so evident, people still weren't sure if he
   was really sick.
   Andy fought the cancer as hard as he could, trying all that he
   could to get a hold of its power. Towards the very end, in late
   March, he went to the Philippines to undergo psychic surgery.
   Andy had grown tired of the doctors telling him he was going
   to die. For Andy, the illusion was everything. The reality that
   the doctors in America were forcing him to deal with was too
   much for Andy, and it made it impossible for him to find a
   better place inside. He absolutely couldn't get better as long
   as the fantasy of him getting better remained snuffed out. The
   Philippines gave Andy that place. He knew damn well that
   psychic surgery was a lie. He knew it was a scam and a
   cheat. He also knew that it was an illusion. Once Andy
   reached Jun Labo's psychic surgery clinic in Bagiuo, he was
   just about ready to die. But the overwhelming mirage of hope
   that radiated from the place gave Andy the chance to fake his
   recovery. He could finally delve back into the reality of fantasy.
   Over the six weeks Andy spent recovering in the Philippines,
   he got better. His hair started to grow back and his weight
   began to stabilize again. He felt better and looked better. Of
   course, the cancer was still there, eating away at his life, but
   his imaginary world had given him a second chance.
   When Andy got home to Los Angeles, he was better. But
   soon after his return, he died. His imagination had given in to
   the reality of the cancer, and he had to let go of the fantasy of
   real life. Andy's funeral was a strange event. Just imagine a
   room full of people, all mourning the loss of a great and loved
   man, all the while not sure whether or not he was really dead.
   People poked his lifeless body, lying motionless in the coffin,
   trying to assure themselves that Andy was really gone. It's a
   lot like Peter Lorre's reaction at Bela Lugosi's funeral when he
   approached the open casket and asked in a hushed whisper,
   "Bela, are you really dead?" And, of course, after it was all
   said and done, Andy was gone. But the beauty that comes
   from this fact is that Andy knew exactly how things would play
   out. He understood the importance of immortality as it relates
   to the true understanding of ones art. He knew that he was
   ahead of his time and that people wouldn't get him,
   completely, for some time. And he knew that if he could pull
   off his ultimate subversion, and plant the seeds of doubt in
   people's minds that he was really dead he might stand a
   chance of living far beyond his years. And guess what, it
   worked!
   As it stands, the last days of Andy Kaufman were not pretty.
   He was a failure. His career had taken a total nosedive, with
   the cancellation of Taxi, his banishment from Saturday Night
   Live (due to a heartless manipulation from producer Dick
   Emersol) and his name being equated with just plain bad. His
   personal life was a spiral of despair, with the Transcendental
   Mediation movement that had meant so much to him (simply
   another need for illusion or a determined and absolute
   dedication to something real?), turning their backs on him due
   to his excessive behavior giving them a bad name. His health
   was rapidly declining, and for a while he couldn't even tell
   anyone, he had to keep up the act, in order to make things
   work. It's safe to say that Andy went through a lot the last six
   months of his life. And he did it all it save his art and preserve
   his existence.
   Now Andy Kaufman is a pop icon, a born again comic Christ
   saving the masses from mediocrity and prediction. He is now
   known as a world-renowned "comic genius" that has been
   heralded as our first true performance artist. His essence has
   become a hot commodity these days. He has a major motion
   picture about his life coming out, with a 70 million-dollar
   budget, a major Hollywood star and a major, internationally
   acclaimed director behind it. He has a massively researched
   biography hitting the shelves soon. His three unpublished
   novels, The Hollering Mangoo, God and The Huey Williams
   Story are all being released. The Museum of Radio and TV in
   Los Angeles and New York are running an exhibit dedicated to
   his television work. And he's got at least four documentaries
   on his life saturating the TVs and VCRs of the nation. He's still
   hated by people, who still believe that he hated women. He's
   still loved by people who got the joke, and continue to get the
   joke (it's not that easy sometimes). He's still confusing people
   who fail to see his genius (give them time). He's still studied
   by people, struggling to figure him out. His enigmatic presence
   breathes new life into the self-imposed Kaufman myth, more
   and more with each coming year. And he's still being accused
   of being out there, somewhere, waiting for the right time to
   come back and fool us all, again, which he seems to be doing
   right about now.

   Got a problem with this? Feel free to email all anger and praise
   to sam@supersphere.com.

   Sam McAbee is 24, weights 130 pounds and is a baseball
   catcher looking for some hot balls cuming his way. Oh, and he
   already knows he's a pseudo-intellectual, so don't remind him.