King Weirdo
BARRON WAS A WEIRDO
Not the kind of weirdo you’d cross the street to avoid, but the eccentric kind that lives life to the beat of their own drum. He was the type of person your Boomer mother would call a “character.” A weirdo of high calibre.
During 2006 I was working in a blindingly fluorescent lit hell of cheap furniture and office supplies helping customers with pressing quandaries about the proper ink cartridge their shoddy home printer required, or which pink eraser was the one their spawn needed from their back to school supply list (customer service is a nightmare, and I don’t envy those who get stuck working Black Friday, but you should try “Back to School” time at Office Depot). The job, a penance I paid for trying to follow my dream of being an animator, and having to pay back the substantial student loans I took out in order to achieve said dream, was only made bearable by a new acquaintance I had made of a fellow coworker, the long-haired, shit-eating grinner Kristian Day, who, through idle chit chat, had discovered that I too liked outrageously gross horror movies and obscenely loud offensive music. We’d found kindred spirits in each other, and quickly became friends. Kris was attending a local college as a sound engineer, a study that he hoped to parlay into scoring movies, and was producing his own chaotic collections of noise music. Myself, while temporarily exiled here in Bic pen purgatory, was working on my own art and animated horror stories. Two weirdos against the world.
One afternoon while trying to keep the retail boredom at bay, Kris told me that during his previous job as a clerk at a nearby convenience store, he had befriended a customer, an older gentleman by the name of Barron Christian, who’d come in multiple times a day to refill his Big Gulp for free, a perk granted to him by the store’s previous manager. “A real weirdo,” Kris told me. The kind of weirdo you want to introduce to your other weirdo friends because their flavors of freak might mix well. Kris said he’d introduce me as Barron was expected to grace the Office Depot with his presence that very day.
Stuck behind the register, a particular location in the store that defied all laws of the universe making time slow to a creeping crawl, I heard the automatic sliding front doors separate, and through them walked a tall, cocksure older man, looking about casually from behind his dark lensed aviator sunglasses. “Barron,” I heard Kristian eagerly call out, approaching the gentleman. Pleasantries were exchanged and the two wandered off into the labyrinthian recesses of the store, only to emerge a few minutes later at my register, Kris sporting that famous previously mentioned shit eating grin of his.
“Barron,” he said. “This is Kevin. He’s an artist.” Barron, ever the gentleman, or so he’d say, eagerly stuck out his hand to shake mine, and, in his low, well-honed, broadcast voice, enthusiastically ask me if I was also in “the business.” Barron, you see, was an actor. Pronounced with a capital “Aye,” a hard snap on the “cee” and “tee,” with an extended emphasis on the “or,” and “the business” was “show business.”
I responded, “kinda,” I’m an animator.
“An animator,” he joyfully remarked, the timbre of his voice lifting. “Like Hayao Miyazaki? Princess Mononoke is a favorite film of mine.” “Film” he called it. He called all movies “films” and immediately began gushing about Princess Mononoke, asking me if I’d seen it (of course I had), how they achieved certain technical aspects of it, the beauty of the scenery, and so on. That’s how Barron was. Intently interested, a self-renowned conversationalist, and always optimistic about people he would meet. It didn’t matter to him that I was a minimum wage cashier hawking shit office chairs. He knew I was an animator, and regardless of whether I was working as one or not, that’s what he saw me as, another like minded soul in his “business.”
Barron was actually there on an errand and intended to buy something, I don’t recall what. When I ran his credit card the computer asked me to verify his identification, which he happily obliged, pulling an old leather wallet from his pocket, flipped it open revealing not his ID card, but a picture of himself and a few other people all posing with golden Oscar statues in hand. Clever bastard.
“Is that an Oscar?” I asked, obviously curious, not aware that I was going to hear about it regardless.
“Oh, how foolish of me, but since you asked, yes it is. I narrated the 1997 film ‘A Story of Healing,’ which won the Oscar that year for ‘Best Documentary Short Film,” he joyfully replied. I was very much impressed with this Barron fellow.
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Before taking his leave he commented that he thinks me, Kristian, and himself have much in common and he would be delighted to play host for us at his place for a round of drinks and to discuss “The Business.” How could I deny an invitation like that? Plans for that evening were made, and after a seemingly endless slog of a shift, Kristian and I drove up the hill for Barron to make good on his offer.
Barron lived on the top floor of a neglected Golden, Colorado apartment complex. Not the kind of place you’d imagine an Oscar winner would inhabit, but like most things with Barron, there was always more to the story. He greeted us at the door, and welcomed us to his “penthouse,” said without irony. The lights were warm, low, and immediately I noticed his penthouse was jam packed with all sorts of antiquities, ephemera he’d collected over his life, and framed reminders of his bygone days when he’d lived in Hollywood as an actor. It wasn’t a hoard so much as a liberally curated collection. The Museum of Barron. Keeping with his gentlemanly demeanor he kindly offered me and Kristian a choice of drinks: martinis, dry or wet. I’d later come to find out that even though he offered a choice, whichever you picked, it would always be dry.
While Barron played bartender, drying up those martinis, I looked around the eclectic surroundings: ornate lamps were the source of the dim light, casting over various fancy carpets, draped blankets, table top sculptures, and a decoratively adorned ashtray. Though Barron didn’t partake, he wanted his smoking guests to feel welcomed. On the walls hung gaudily framed pieces of art and photographs, including a series of black and white portraits of Alfred Hitchcock, the famous Playboy centerfold spread of Marlyn Monroe, and a curiously familiar headshot. Now, I’m known to delve in to the nerdy, though never fully venturing into the final frontier, I can recognize a Klingon when I see one.
“Barron, were you a Klingon?” I asked. Arriving with our drinks, he responded, “ah you noticed. Yes, I briefly appeared as a Klingon in the film ‘Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country’. I attack William Shatner on the prison planet.” And with that we’d entered story time, which Barron had an unlimited supply of. Stories of his days in Hollywood where he provided numerous walk-on roles for TV shows like “Lassie,” and “Columbo,” living a lavish, playboy lifestyle in the hills, under the roof of the old Greta Garbo mansion. He’d throw impromptu tent parties on his property which were frequented by John Lennon and other assorted famous folk of the time. Some about his many varied encounters with other actors and “business” folks over the years. Stories about his 1970’s, maroon Cadillac Eldorado that had previous been owned by Mister Burt Reynolds (with an engraved plaque from the Chryslar Corporation that proved it). Finally, his eventual arrival in Colorado after an earthquake in Los Angeles sent him seeking higher ground. This is how we became friends: meeting at Barron’s penthouse for drinks, watching weird movies, drinking dry martinis, and listening to him regale us with stories from his life as an Actor. There were so many we began to number them.
Weird attracts weird and soon our meetings expanded to include my dear friend and artistic collaborator, Will Tooker, Barron’s then neighbor, the long haired, beared enjoyer of perverse humor, Aaron Long, and various other comers and goers, including once a butcher who allowed us to shoot an extremely amateurish movie in his meat shop and douse his pretty white tiled floor with copious amounts of homemade Karo Syrup blood. “The Alchemists Club” Barron christened us. A byproduct of these gatherings of artistically inclined weirdos was that eventually we all began to collaborate on various projects. Musical endeavors, comic books, Ill advised movies, and animations, Barron providing the acting work, naturally, all of which he treated as though he were working on a billion dollar Hollywood movie set, a consummate professional. He constantly encouraged our undertakings with enthusiasm and praise as we would inevitably end up back under the dim lights of his penthouse for the Barron special: dry martinis and story time.
New tales began to get added to the repertoire, like defamed criminal music producer Phil Spector shooting Barron in the knee cap with a pellet gun on a dare, because, I guess that’s the kind of sordid trouble you get up to in Hollywood when you’re hobnobbing with the rich and famous.
My personal favorite collection of his yarns involved him, dawning golden boots, which he spoke of with such admiration, galavanting around famous 90’s Denver dive bars. Though he refused to show us the boots, despite his claims that he still had them, the golden boots grew into legend amongst the Alchemists. Almost poetically so.
A time came when Kristian decided he’d be returning to his home state of Iowa to kickstart what would become a long career in film and television production. Soon after that Will would return to his stomping grounds in Ohio, thus ending the meetings of the Alchemists Club, but we all continued to collaborate with each other for years to come. Me and Kris spent a hot, sticky, Iowa summer together fucking about with random musical experiments and trying to finish up an animated project of mine. Another summer Barron and myself both traveled to Iowa to work on a self-financed independent movie written and directed by Kristian, which, when not descending into drunken shenanigans, was interrupted by a 500 year flood. The following summer Barron returned again to act in a new film by Kristian. I was in Chicago on unrelated business, so on my way back to Denver, I swung by to pick up Barron, and spent an 8 hour car ride through that flat, desolate sprawl of America between Denver and Des Moines listening to story after story from Barron’s life, about his boyhood, his time at private school, his first sexual encounter, his favorite kinds of cars, only stopping to tell me my selection of carefully curated heavy metal CDs weren’t to his liking and asking if I had any “Cradle of Filth,” the English, eccentrically theatrical black metal band, which was, according to Barron, “his kind of metal.”
Barron was fond of gift giving. Any time I moved to a new apartment he’d scrounge up some item from his “collection” and present it to me with a story attached. Once it was a framed watercolor painting of a panda bear because he thought it had a beard similar to mine. Another time it was a carved wooden cat he claimed was from Indonesia. At my wedding he gifted us a 12 hour clock with a different bird noise that would sound each hour. When my wife and I moved into our first purchased property together Barron handed me a crumpled up plastic bag, oddly hanging and misshapen by the contents within. A little concerned, yet curious, I peered in to see the infamous golden boots from his Denver clubbing days. They were resplendent in gold glitter, damn near knee high, with long, spiked high heels. After all this time spent pondering about Barron and these mythical boots, they were all I was hoping they would be.
Barron died on February 17th, 2025, after a long battle with thyroid cancer, and various ailments that plagued him most of his older life. As his age advanced, and health began to deteriorate, he’d still have a smile when he welcomed me to his home, convinced that his ailments were but minor setbacks, and that he’d be restoring his acting career once they were resolved. Still a charmer, still presenting himself as gentlemanly as he could, never wanting to be seen as succumbing to life’s cruel whims, primed with a story to tell.
He was one of a kind. King Weirdo. He chose, long ago, the kind of life he wanted to live and went for it fully, some might say to his own detriment, but I don’t think he for one second ever had any regrets. While this world is now a less vibrant place without his eccentricities in it, everybody who’s ever met Barron has stories of their own to tell about him, and I’ve got enough for a lifetime.
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