Michael,

I am he. Yes. And over the years have been impersonated a few times by different talents. The worst (easily) was the recent spoof on SNL. It was bad because it didn't grow out of actual fact. The best caricatures, for example, take known eccentricities or idiosyncrasies and exaggerate. But in making their Jack Perkins character a tottering drunk SNL had no basis of fact to exaggerate. I don't drink. At all.

Earlier, much earlier on SNL the great talent Harry Shearer did me and it was perfect. In fact, I first witnessed it on the monitors in the NBC newsroom. SNL was rehearsing in a studio down the hall. I didn't know what the feed was I was seeing but for more than a moment I believed it was I. I turned up the volume and listened and for another moment still believed it was I. The writing, the inflection, the pacing was precisely mine. Shearer was spot-on.

Then years later somebody called my attention to a clip of Mike doing me on MST3K. And not too long thereafter, at a convention, I met him and was blown away. He was so young to be so talented and I was enormously flattered.

That's why I was so happy to happen across your site and will be delighted to see the clips you have.

I'll see if I can't dig out an old publicity photo and sign it and send it along to you. Give me an address.

best,
jack

PS - What's Mike doing now? Any idea?