Surfing the Cosmos A moving memorial for radio personality/actor/ comic who soothed everybody's fears except his own FIRST Edition

• Published in: The morning call (Allentown, Pa.)
• Main Author: GEOFF GEHMAN Of The Morning Call
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Allentown, Pa Tribune Interactive, LLC 15.07.2001
• Subjects: Burkett, Lee; Klee, Mark; Michael, Kenn; Schappert, David; Swanson, Joe
• ISSN: 0884-5557; 2641-3825

For Laurie Wagner, Klee was a kind of ideal big brother in a creative sandbox. He joined the Allentonian in the Live Poets Society; she recommended him to play Coulmier in "Marat/Sade." Klee not only helped her create a public service announcement for a haunted-house fund-raiser, he designed fliers and tickets, for free. He guided Wagner's WMUH show with fellow poet Nori Zelenz, then shepherded Wagner when she hosted the surrealistic program alone. Wagner and Klee shared drinks, games of pool, hikes, dreams. Klee's performing pal Barney Dannelke performs a Klee-like routine in a Klee-like voice. "A Really Terrible Parable" is a relentlessly funny portrait of a pitiless town, where the Allentown Parking "Junte" employ Venusian Brain Bats, where children drink "Tropiano Correct Thought Juice," named for the very righteous former member of Allentown City Council. Our hero retaliates by building a Frankenstein Robot to teach kids the Happy Penguin Dance, and venturing past the "here there be no monsters" sign, only to discover "only big friendly Dinosaurs." 4 PHOTOS by [Kenn Michael], courtesy of Theatre Outlet and [Joe Swanson] and [George Miller]; 1. In the early 1980s, before he launched "The Mr. Mark Show' on WMUH-FM, [Mark Klee] flexed typical glee -- and me-against- the-world abandon -- in his 124 charcoal portraits. It was Klee's idea to photograph the totems for + posterity; it was photographer Kenn Michael's idea to lay them out like a kaleidoscopic carpet on the floor of Klee's room in the basement of his parents' house in Emmaus. Klee killed himself on May 24. 2. Mark Klee was a riveting Dr. [Gall] in + "R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)' last year at Theatre Outlet, Allentown. 3.Mark Klee plays the keyboard in the 1970s with the Modern Mummies, one of his many experimental, fourth-wall bands. Some of his charcoal faces hang on the back wall. 4. A + bare-chested Mark Klee performs toast about marriage rituals across centuries, species and galaxies during the 1998 wedding of Theatre Outlet directors George Miller and [Kate Scuffle].