On the trail of the Count

It all starts in August 2004 on the South Side, 47th Street, with a strange conversation with an old martial arts buddy. A rumor that a man we all knew was somehow alive — thirty years after he'd supposedly died. His gravesite had no headstone.

John Keehan. P.T. Barnum of martial arts. Hairdresser to Playboy. Walker of pet lions down Rush Street. Pimp-daddy to two — count them, two — Playboy Bunnies. Leader of the tragic dojo war that got his best friend, John Konsevic, killed.

I met him at a 1964 tournament — at the Coliseum, or maybe it was the Medinah Temple, I honestly can't remember. I was living in the projects back then. Was this the tournament he later robbed of its own receipts? I need to check the record — I think that heist was '68. But I know I was eleven years old when I met him.

My buddy Simmie Williams, over at Playboy, kept pushing me to make this into a film. He's always had a good nose for what people want. But it was standing over that empty patch of ground where a man was supposed to be buried that actually moved me to act.

And thus, I began this blog.