"BONER" Has a Posse and Why Dean Cameron Hates Me

Way back in my college days, during the relative infancy of the "internet" that we've all come to know and depend on, a good friend of mine shared the fact that he'd stumbled upon Dean Cameron's email address.

Perhaps even if you've clicked on the above link, you're wondering, "Who the fuck is Dean Cameron...?"

He played one of the horror-geeks in SUMMER SCHOOL and one of the suicide-cases in BAD DREAMS.

In 1990, Dean Cameron and Stuart Fratkin starred in a sit-com called "They Came from Outer Space". From Wikipedia's description, the series was about "two teenage fraternal twin aliens from the planet Crouton" who "travel throughout California... to pick up women and to learn more about life on Earth..."

In 1991, Cameron and Fratkin starred in the beloved Damian Lee sex-comedy SKI SCHOOL.

No doubt, Dean Cameron and Stuart Fratkin were being groomed to be the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby for Generation X.

In 1996, when my friend Dave told me about how he'd stumbled upon Dean Cameron's email address, Mr. Cameron's career had stalled and he was about to have a guest-starring role in an episode of the hot NBC drama "E.R." He was using his email address to connect with his ardent fan-base and get them to petition NBC to make him a recurring character on E.R.

I mistakenly assumed that Dean Cameron had a sense of humor about this plea to his fans—as well as his offbeat filmography—and I wrote him a tongue-in-cheek email that was basically about how much I genuinely liked his work, including his alien tv show with "Boner from Growing Pains".

Kids, back in 1996 IMDB was not the universal go-to for cast-clarifications. So I did not realize that Dean Cameron never starred in ANYTHING with "Boner" from Growing Pains. The character of "Richard 'Boner' Stabone" was played by Andrew Koenig.

As you may know by now... "BONER" HAS A POSSE.

Stuart Fratkin was NOT "Boner". (Though from the above picture comparison, you can understand my confusion.) Dean Cameron never worked with "Boner". And thus, Dean Cameron proceeded to write me a vicious email in response to the email I'd sent him, dismissing me as some shitty NYU film student and questioning, "BONER?? What are you TALKING about?!??"

Fact of the matter is, I did not realize that Andrew Koenig and Stuart Fratkin were two different people until I heard the news that Andrew Koenig was found dead Thursday night.

Dean Cameron + Stuart Fratkin
Kirk Cameron + Andrew Koenig

Honest mistake.

That said, maybe someone should be asking where Stuart Fratkin is right now...

[Programming note: I bumped an entry to have this posted on Friday, so don't forget to check back here for the weekend updates, true believers!!!]