You know, it wasn’t until I sat down to write this that I realized how much Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino had soaked into my life. Because I wanted to find my image first. Okay, the first two roles I eliminated were Armondo Gutierrez and Señor Senior Sr. They’re both voice acting, and while I think that’s real acting, I also have a strict rule against using it for an article image. I want a picture of the person, even if both characters slightly resemble him in this case. I’ll be honest—Khan’s farther down the list for me than he is for a lot of other people. He’s below Mr. Roarke, and I don’t think I’ve seen Fantasy Island in thirty years.

The episode of Zorro he did? No, I always forget about that. Fun as Naked Gun is, no. I haven’t seen the later Planet of the Apes movies. And while the day is coming for Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, it has not come yet. Border Incident is an underrated drama that I discovered in the library catalog and really enjoyed, and one that’s relevant in today’s political climate at that. I honestly don’t remember if Neptune’s Daughter is one of the Esther Williams movies I’ve seen. I only saw Sweet Charity once and didn’t care for it. He was in a 1960 TV movie of Rashomon, but that’s not how I remember things.

I almost went with the car commercial. I really did. It’s hard to resist, for someone my age. Apparently, he said “soft” in the first one, but the way it will always be remembered for anyone who remembers TV of the late ’70s and early ’80s is “rich Corinthian leather.” And, yes, I went to YouTube to make sure that I could find video of the “rich” variant. This is not Mandela Effect, though I’m now wondering if so many people didn’t say “rich” when he was saying “soft” that later commercials gave up and went with “rich.” I’m young enough to be uncertain on that.

Another definite Mandela Effect is what I finally went with—his appearance on Columbo. One. Only one. Now, I definitely remember the right murder weapon. This isn’t a spoiler, as of course we see the murder at the beginning of the episode. He’s a bullfighter; he kills his victim with a bull. Then spends the rest of the episode in cat-and-mouse with Columbo as always happens on the show. But I remember another episode with him as the murderer, and now I stop to think about it, I’m not sure anyone ever played the murderer on more than one episode. I’m not sure any celebrity was a guest on more than one episode. But I’ve told several people that he was only the killer once and gotten “really?” in response. A lot of us remember that second episode, it seems.

The person I suspect would be most shocked to discover that it’s taken me over a year to get to him, however, is the lab tech at my OB-GYN’s office. She had multiple pictures of him up in the lab, and one of the reasons she really likes me is that I did know him from so many things. In fact, when I saw Border Incident for the first time, I was really looking forward to my next appointment so that I could tell her about it and encourage her to watch it. She already had, of course.

I’ll never be able to afford rich Corinthian leather unless people support my Patreon!