I recently had a very nice exchange of mail with a high-school pal of Kevin's. He was nice enough to share the following:

As far as I know, he didn't have any kind of "spacey" nickname in high school. We weren't REAL good friends, but I knew him well enough to know that, I think. The Spencer Tracy idea makes a whole lot more sense to me.

(Well, that blows my pet theory, doesn't it? - ed.)

I remember him being a funny, really personable guy. I'm glad for him to be having such great success.

Our school drew drama students from around the Valley. Kevin was from another HS originally, if I remember correctly. Our drama director, Robert Carrelli, was EXCELLENT. I was only music director because the school's music teacher didn't want to do it, and the school was too cheap to hire one, although they did hire me to come back for a few years after I graduated. I started to go into film scoring, which is kind of what everyone expected, but went out on the road with rock 'n' roll bands for a few years, landing in the Seattle area :-).

Oh! I just remembered something. I actually acted opposite him once, also! (Wow, wait'll I put that on my resume!). His first part at Chatsworth HS was in our spring play, called "U.T.B.U.", which stood for "Unhealthy To Be Unpleasant". It was about an organization that went around blowing up unpleasant people. Mare was in it, too. He played an Oscar-winning director (wow this is weird, I haven't thought of this for years!) who was a real jerk, Mare played his mom (I think) and I played a beatnick piano player. I remember we had a hard time coming up with a prop for the Oscar (the character had a shrine to it in his office). We ended up spray painting a "Ken" doll gold, and pinning it's hands to it's chest. I'm gonna have to pull out my yearbook for this one. Kevin got blown up at the end.

Another recovered memory! The last night of the run, the special effects guys at the high school thought they'd use up the remainder of the powder they used for the explosion. It went off twice as big as any other time. Singed Kevin's hair and caught the curtains on fire (well, made them smolder...).

There's some tasty stuff for your fan page, huh? :-)

Indeed! Many thanks to Steve, for being generous enough to write me and share his memories - maybe someday I'll get a crack at that yearbook and we can all see what that Ken-Oscar looked like!

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