Jim Zulevic, 40, will no longer make me laugh. Jim Zulevic will no longer direct my long-time friends from GayCo or Steve Scholz or pull a random stopby at the Schadenfreude office. I will no longer be able to make Jim laugh with an obscure reference to a Batman villain from the 60's tv show or, in the case of the last time I made him laugh out loud, a reference to an obscure porn actor.
When we were all working our way through Second City, you could always catch the last twenty minutes of the mainstage show Paradigm Lost after class ended. We'd all sneak up to the mainstage and take up the last couple seats in the back to see Tina Fey, Scott Adsit, Jenna Jolovitz, Rachel Dratch, Kevin Dorff, and Jim perform the same last few sketches of the show every week. The last sketch of this night, "Granpa's Records", will live on forever in the Second City archives was pure Jim, We must have seen it 100 times. I feel a particular affinity for the crew that was on mainstage while we went through the system doing a show I had watched be put together through many many late night walks down Clark street to catch the only show I could afford at the time, the free improv set. I also feel an affinity for the first person from that cast who ever talked to me, Jim.
The first sketch that I ever saw Jim in never made it to Paradigm. It was worked many times in the free sets and had Jim and Jenna in a car riding through the "it's a small world" ride at Disneyland with the annoying song played over and over while a geeky Jim recounts infinite details about the creation of the ride in detail to a bored co-worker Jenna who's trying to have an intevention. Fed up with his yammering Jenna screams out loud, "Nobody likes you Jim!" And then they sit silent for a full minute while "it's a small world" plays. I always found that funny.
Later Jim would help us craft our 2002 show at the Wing & Groove, the closest this group of control-freaks ever came to having a director. If anyone who never had the pleasure is curious of what it was like being around Jim, I have hours of documentary footage from putting that show together, laughing til our guts hurt while talking about local car pitchmen and Jonathan Brandmeier. Later than that he would just be a great guy to grab a beer with at Carol's on Clark.
The last time we drank with Jim it was just me and Sandy and we did something we hadn't done in all the time we'd known him, we told him how much Paradigm meant to us as students at the time. I'm glad we got to say that.
I couldn't claim to be a good friend of Jim's, those slots belong to many many others, and I think that speaks the most of Jim, that those slots belong to many many many others.
In a final note, as a superhero fan on a blog that frequently talks about live action superhero events, I realize there's one I've overlooked all this time. Before the Spideman's and X-Men's there was The Specials (2000) about a group of fuckup Superheroes with soap-opera-like inner struggles. In it he plays Mr. Smart, the world' smartest man. He's great. Rent it. And listen to the praise they lavish on Jim in the commentary track.
Bye Jim. Thanks for everything. You take care.
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