This is a collage of photos on top of Pat Morita, the original Mr. Miyagi from the movie, “The Karate Kid” – the photos on the bottom row are of me taken at different times in my later life (note the grey hair) – When I was 20 years younger and around the time the movie came out I was frequently accosted and asked “Aren’t you Mr. Miyagi from ‘The Karate Kid…?'” My usual response was , “No, I’m not him…” and the questioner was disappointed, you could tell…

One incident was when we were coming out of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas after a show and someone ran by me and stopped and said, “Hey, you’re that guy from The Karate Kid…!”

Another time was on a trip to Florida to visit with Barb’s brother and family and we stopped at an IHOP for lunch – the waitress came up and did a double-take and said, “You look like that guy… Are you that guy from The Karate Kid?” and before I could say anything she said, “Naw, you couldn’t be – no one famous would ever come here…”

The choice episode was as I was driving home from my office in Marin County to my home in Berkeley coming off the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge – there’s a stretch after you come off the bridge that swings onto a road paralleling Hwy 80 and just before it swings onto the Hwy there’s a cutoff into Berkeley – just before coming to the cutoff I’m in the left lane and I see this black Pontiac Firebird roaring up on my right – as it passes, it’s windows smoky, it slams on the breaks and the driver’s window rolls down and there are two hispanic men with headbands on – they look over and smile and point to me – I do the “wax on-wax off” motion and they give me a thumbs up and roar off as I’m exiting into Berkeley – The best incident of all the mistaken identities…