Robin William as a mime in Central Park during the summer of 1974.
“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”
Robin Williams
I am publishing My Two Meetings With Robin Williams on Sunday, August 11, 2024.
It is exactly fifty years since I first met Robin on Sunday, August 11, 1974.
And exactly ten years after Robin passed on Monday, August 11, 2014.
Requiescat In Pace, Robin Williams, July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014.
The last few days had been quite eventful in New York City and the United States. On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit performed his incredible tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex, which he called “le coup.” Then, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening. On Sunday, August 10, 1974, I decided to travel to Manhattan alone, walk around, and experience all the most wonderful city on earth had to offer.
It was around four in the afternoon, and I had already done a few hours of walking all over when I found the perfect place to sit and watch the world go by. So, I sat on a concrete bench in Grand Army Plaza, just in front of The Plaza Hotel.
It was a picture-perfect late afternoon, sunny, not too humid, with a high of only about 80 degrees. The Central Park South sidewalk was bustling with people, including numerous tourists, when I suddenly noticed a mime shadowing a person walking along the sidewalk.
From where I was sitting, on the bench closest to the sidewalk, I had a completely unobstructed view of his act. Little did I know at first glance, but I soon realized that I had a front-row center seat to what would be the most phenomenal live performance I ever witnessed in my life.
The mime would walk right behind someone, following them within one step of theirs for about 100 feet or more. Toward the end of miming one person, he would find and examine another person to mime, walking in the opposite direction, studying them for only a few seconds. Then he would quickly do a 180-degree turnaround and mime them, instantaneously becoming them. He had every mannerism of each person down pat, seemingly becoming each person. It was unreal.
This mime would constantly choose completely different people to imitate. He’d transition from a traditional businessman to an old lady, to a flaming gay guy, to a gawking tourist, to a beautiful woman, to a teenage hard rocker. It continuously went on and on with an endless array of unwitting victims. I sat there in utter disbelief for around 30 minutes until he finished. It was the most remarkable and funniest performance I’ve ever witnessed, and I had already seen an enormous amount of art and street performances in my 16 years.
It was a 30-minute non-stop belly laugh. I had to turn away many times to catch my breath. He was so funny that I was literally in tears the whole time. The performance of this mime was so incredibly wondrous that it was hard to believe. I kept asking myself, how could he so quickly and flawlessly become all these different people?
I must have sat down just as he began his act because only a few people had their eyes on him then. But as time went by, the laughter and applause got louder and louder as he kept perfectly imitating a diverse array of people. He would walk in their shadow, yet no one ever realized he was miming them. By the time he finished, hundreds of people were left stunned and in awe by watching his magnificent performance.
After he completed his spectacular act, I walked up to the mime and asked him his name. He stayed in character, said nothing to me, and handed me a business card that only said “Robin” on it. I put a dollar in his hat and thanked him for the astounding performance. I remember the genial, heartfelt, and big smile he gave me to this day.
When I watched the show Mork & Mindy a few years later, I thought Mork, played by Robin Williams, must have been the mime that gave the wonderfully brilliant performance by The Plaza Hotel. He was about the right age, the correct height, weight, hair color, the same name, and the same facial characteristics that I remembered. But I wasn’t 100% sure. Little did I know then, but within a few years, I would serendipitously meet Robin again, and he would answer this for me.
My second meeting with Robin occurred on Monday, September 27, 1982. I was driving my taxi at night in Manhattan as usual when I picked up Robin Williams and Warren Zevon together. I immediately thought back to that glorious summer afternoon when I watched the most transcendent live performance I’d ever seen in front of The Plaza Hotel. The incomparable mime was decisively better than anything I ever saw on Broadway, and I saw almost all the great Broadway shows and revivals while growing up in New York City.
When there was a pause in their conversation, I asked if I could tell a short story, and they both said sure. So, I told Robin and Warren the mime story. Then I asked Robin if he was indeed the mime. He said yes, I was the mime. I told him his performance was the most brilliant and funniest thirty minutes of my life. He was very appreciative of this compliment. I could see on his face how genuinely happy it made him, for he immediately broke into a huge smile.
Thank you, Robin Williams, for all the phenomenal joy and laughter you brought the world. Thank you for being one of the greatest stand-up comedians ever. Thank you for your magnificent acting career. And especially, thank you for that sublime August afternoon in front of The Plaza Hotel, where that 16-year-old young man witnessed firsthand the extraordinary virtuoso performer you were.
“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
Robin Williams
Robin Williams and I had yet another life intersection many years later. I write this personal encounter to show the world the true nature of this wonderful gentleman.
On March 3, 1998, I registered the domain name Robin-Williams.com. During 1998 and 1999, I bought hundreds of domain names of musicians, actors, and actresses that I thought were commendable to give to them. All I asked is that they read my groundbreaking and in-depth article, Rainforests Biodiversity Scale of Destruction, concerning rainforest destruction and the mass species extinctions that stemmed from this atrocity humanity was foolishly causing.
The findings of this study caused a shift in the perspective of biologists. Initially, they had estimated that only one or two species were going extinct per day. However, it revealed that the number was actually in the hundreds. At first, these findings were not welcomed but instead met with skepticism and ridicule from the established “experts” with a vested interest in downplaying the severity of the extinction crisis, somewhat understandably so, for they spent their whole lives saying one or two species were going extinct per day.
Nevertheless, over the next five to ten years, almost all biologists finally acknowledged that hundreds of species are going extinct daily. I believe the act of making another species go extinct is the number one sin in the universe, and our heinous actions will soon come back to haunt us, inflicting the severest consequences.
I wrote each of these handpicked and vetted celebrities a letter (I believe there were 144) saying that I bought your domain name to protect it from cyber squatters and wanted to give it to you for free. My letter also stated that I was trying to bring together and unite the top musicians and actors of the world to give up one or two evenings a year to help create awareness of the destruction we are causing to Mother Earth, especially about the preeminent issue facing humanity, the sixth mass extinction, recklessly caused by humans. I implored these luminaries to join this project because if enough of them agreed, dozens of Lovearth Concerts could be put on throughout Earth yearly to raise consciousness on this most crucial issue.
It soon became worse than a nightmare for me. Most lawyers began to slander me as a cyber squatter. These accusations constantly happened even though I did not make any money off these domain names, nor did I ask for any money for the domain names. The truth was the exact opposite. It cost me an enormous amount of money and time to try and create and launch this massive project.
During this same time, I was creating Lovearth, the largest network of websites in the world. These websites covered what I deemed to be the most vital issues facing humanity. At its apex, I created over one thousand top-level domain names, primarily .net, with relevant content. About half of these websites had good enough content to get listed in the first five on “Don’t Be Evil” Google, with the best one hundred or so ranked number one or two in searches. I created this enormous network with an abundance of my own money and time.
I was trying to raise awareness of our ecological destruction that was creating the sixth mass extinction and was lawyered by many from Apple (The Beatles, but strangely not John-Lennon.com, which I owned and developed into the number one website when searched on soon-to-Be Evil Google) on down the line. I had dozens of cases brought before an unjust Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) arbitration court. The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is a process established by ICANN for disputes regarding the registration of domain names.
I purchased Don-Henley.net and mailed him my letter, even though nobody wanted a hyphenated .net, especially prominent celebrities, who only sought the one-word .com domain. But I thought I’d give it a shot. Soon after, Eagles founder Don Henley called me up and loudly cursed at me for about a minute. Too bad I didn’t record what he said because it was an astonishingly remarkable profanity-filled rant. I tried a few times to get a word in through his nonstop expletives, but I couldn’t. So, I finally hung up on him.
He then sued me in Federal court, which happened before the establishment of the ICANN court. I received the Fed Ex with the court papers the same day I was trying to ascertain for him, DonHenley.com, which is the domain name he still uses for his website today, from another domain broker for 1,295 USD, and I wasn’t making a penny off the deal.
I found it rather peculiar behavior from a man who allegedly helped save Walden Woods, the forest around Walden Pond. Yet evidently, he’s so filled with rage it has somehow blinded him from grasping the big picture, and to make matters worse, his lawyer, Jill Pietrini, was the most despicable and malicious I have ever encountered. She was from the Los Angeles-based law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.
When I lost the lawsuit to Don Henley and again as soon as I lost the lawsuit to Apple (The Beatles), both of which I didn’t do anything illegal and never should have lost, the vulturous mainstream media descended upon me and maliciously described me in countless newspapers and television reports as the poster boy for cybersquatting. Both of these encounters taught me a hard-earned lesson about how corrupt our legal system was and how complicit the mass media was in broadcasting flagrant lies.
The following are just a handful of the dozens of domain names I gave away for free: GeorgeHarrison.com, BrianWilson.com, NeilDiamond.com, GramahNash.com, and StephenStills.com. Of these five, only Graham Nash said thank you to me, and he did this in person on March 11, 2000.
When the lawyer for Neil Diamond (I registered NeilDiamond.com on August 11, 1998) contacted me with the usual nasty letter, I called him to talk. We spoke, and I told him why I ascertained NeilDiamond.com and then asked what took him so long to get back in touch with me. It was about two years after I registered NeilDiamond.com, and nearly that long since I sent Neil Diamond a letter about wanting to give him NeilDiamond.com for free. Anyway, the lawyer offered me $5,000 for NeilDiamond.com. I told him it wasn’t about money. I soon found this was something he found difficult to understand, for I had to repeat it to him numerous times. I kept asking him if Neil would like to perform once a year. I never received a commitment.
We talked a few times by phone, and he always offered me $5,000, and I always said no. This man was one of the top intellectual property lawyers in the world. During one of the conversations, he asked me how Lovearth Concerts were doing. I told him because of his deceitful profession and the relentless attacks they undertook against me, it was doing horrible. He then told me perhaps it was time to shut down the project and sell the remaining domain names when contacted by lawyers, as he tried to do.
Then he imparted to me something I already understood. He told me that Neil Diamond would have to pay his law firm around $15,000 to try and get the NeilDiamond.com domain from me “legally” through the ICANN system. That is, of course, if you could call the crooked ICANN kangaroo court system legal. He then advised me to ask for $5,000 for each celebrity domain name and stated this offer would be accepted about 90% of the time.
Eventually and begrudgingly, I realized he was right about selling the domain names, yet this went diametrically against the reason why I ascertained these domain names in the first place. I ended up giving Neil Diamond, NeilDiamond.com, for free. He never even thanked me for keeping his domain name safe and giving it to him for free when he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
His lack of decency and not saying a simple thank you aggravated me the most. It was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I finally saw the light. After this, when a lawyer contacted me for a celebrity domain name, I responded that it could be yours for between $2,000 and $5,000. The price I came up with depended on many factors, such as the artist’s popularity and whether the domain name was hyphened.
As Neil Diamond’s lawyer had told me what would happen, most of the lawyers who contacted me after I reluctantly decided to sell these domain names ended up paying me. Some of these celebrities were malicious and still sued me. Pat Benatar comes to mind. She went out of her way to sue me when I asked her to help fund my film on John Lennon, which was nearly finished, in return for PatBenatar.com.
Even though a couple of dozen or so celebrities did pay me for domain names, I never even remotely recouped the large amount of money I put into Lovearth Concerts, let alone the vast amount of time. But at least some funds gradually trickled back in.
What I found most interesting was a few years later, with the outright theft of my Lovearth Concerts idea, which I so arduously and thoroughly worked on. The cunning promoters audaciously called it Live Earth. It was an event developed supposedly to combat climate change. The first series of benefit concerts began on July 7, 2007. They brought together more than 150 musical acts in eleven locations throughout Earth and were broadcast to a mass global audience through television, radio, and streamed via the Internet. Yes, it went from Lovearth to Live Earth, but nothing was mentioned about the most crucial issue facing humanity, the sixth mass extinction, that we were and still are recklessly causing.
“I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not.
The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone.”
Robin Williams
With the whole Lovearth Concerts and celebrity domain names background fully explained, let me now tell you about Robin-Williams.com and how Robin showed his true colors to me. Remember I mentioned Don Henley’s female lawyer, Jill Pietrini, the one I said was the most malicious I had ever dealt with, and I have dealt with dozens of these contemptible sharks attacking me throughout the years, from the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Bank, The Beatles, and The New York Times, to mention several.
A few years after she sued me in Federal court for Don-Henley.net, which cost me thousands of dollars to lose, I received another Fed Ex from her. So I opened it, and she was gleefully threatening to sue me again. It was now for the domain name Robin-Williams.com.
So, I immediately stopped my work and wrote Robin Williams a detailed letter about our two meetings, telling him that I had recently created the largest network of websites online and that I was still working on this more than full-time, continuously adding and updating content.
I included a tale of precognition I had on Monday afternoon, March 23, 1998. I saw Robin winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor later that evening. Interestingly, the same foreknowledge happened to me as soon as I finished watching the film Crazy Heart at the Burns Court Cinema in Sarasota. When I stood up from my seat, I loudly announced to the sold-out audience that Jeff Bridges had finally won his Oscar. My wife immediately became deservedly embarrassed, but Bridges did end up winning Best Actor. Please excuse the digression into my clairvoyant nature.
I told my webmaster to update the front page on Robin-Williams.com to state: Congratulations on winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, with a picture of Robin playing psychologist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting, along with an image of the Oscar.
My webmaster, Tony, bless his heart, said we can’t do that. I told him Robin would win the Oscar. So, he and I created the front page telling the world this a few hours before Robin won his Oscar.
In this letter, I also asked for $3,000 for Robin-Williams.com and told him the funds would be used to help grow and update my Lovearth Network. I found his mailing address in Paradise Cay, California, the same one I had used previously to send him the letter about acquiring Robin-Williams.com and Lovearth Concerts a few years prior. I mailed it out to him and never replied to his vicious lawyer.
A few weeks later, I received another Fed Ex from the diabolical lawyer. Within this one, much to her chagrin, it stated that Robin Williams has agreed to pay $3,000 for Robin-Williams.com.
I am sure this lawyer strongly recommended to Robin Williams that he should sue me, as she had done to me with Don Henley. She probably did her best to discredit and badmouth me, but Robin didn’t take her hateful bait. Instead, he showed me what he was all about, and now I am happily telling the world. Yes, Robin Williams was one of the greatest stand-up comedians ever and a superb actor. But he was even more than this, for he embodied what it is to be a beautiful and loving human being.
My story about Robin is just one of countless stories about the benevolent, giving, and warmhearted nature of this phenomenal man.
I, and a billion other people, still miss the beauty and laughter you gave us all.
Bless you, Robin, and may you requiescat in pace.
“There are no rules. Just follow your heart.”
Robin Williams
Robin Williams – IMDb
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000245
Robin Williams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Williams
Photographer Snaps Two Mimes in 1974, Only Realizes 35 Years Later that One Was Robin Williams
Photographs by Daniel Sorine
https://petapixel.com/2014/08/14/photographer-photographs-two-mimes-1974-realizes-35-years-later-one-robin-williams
On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit performed his incredible tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center complex, which he called “le coup.”
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9SLRU38-i-ZWlu_UtFP7_CAUBUlaZXmw
Then, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, after addressing the nation on television the previous evening.
https://rumble.com/v5a5ln9-nixon-resigns-the-presidency-august-8-1974.html?mref=wrdkl&mc=7vj9z
I found the perfect place to sit and watch the world go by. So, I sat on a concrete bench in Grand Army Plaza, just in front of The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7644126,-73.9733473,3a,75y,246.74h,99.05t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sTrw441YiQ9GPxS1KbtD2Kw!2e0!5s20130801T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-9.049999999999997%26panoid%3DTrw441YiQ9GPxS1KbtD2Kw%26yaw%3D246.74!7i13312!8i6656?coh=205410&entry=ttu
Robin Williams Miming In Central Park (1974)
Photographs by Daniel Sorine
https://flashbak.com/robin-williams-miming-in-central-park-1974-370526
Warren Zevon
https://www.warrenzevon.com
Rainforests Biodiversity Scale of Destruction
by Mark R. Elsis
https://rainforests.lovearth.net
Lovearth, the largest network of websites in the world.
by Mark R. Elsis
https://network.lovearth.net
Strawberry Fields: Keeping The Spirit Of John Lennon Alive (Film)
by Mark R. Elsis
https://strawberryfields.net
Robin Williams
https://www.instagram.com/therobinwilliams
Good Will Hunting (Film)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119217
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Meetings and Stories
The Wondrous Journey of My Life
by Mark R. Elsis
https://MeetingsAndStories.com