Some things you take for granted.

Some things you should NOT take for granted.

Hal Holbrook will perform his solo performance "Mark Twain Tonight!" on Friday, Jan. 26 at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza (www.civicartsplaza.com).

"Oh, right," you say, "THAT old thing that comes around every couple of years or so."

A perennial, perhaps. But consider...

Hal Holbrook first performed this role in 1954. He won the Tony award for Best Actor for the Twain in 1966. In January 2004, he notched his 2,000th performance. Yeah, that's a lot of Twains. Samuel Langhorne Clemens died in 1910 at the age of 74. A few weeks after his Thousand Oaks engagement, Holbrook will turn 81.

Ask anybody you know who has ever fronted a "Look at Me! Look at Me!" (That's Julia Sweeney's term for a one man or one woman show) and he or she will _ or should _ mention Holbrook as a man who helped shape the genre.

I've seen Holbrook play King Lear and Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice" ... both brilliantly. I missed his turn in David Mamet's "A Life in the Theatre" at the Pasadena Playhouse and wish I hadn't. I have interviewed him twice. The man is one of the kindest, most gracious individuals _ as well as one of the greatest storytellers _ I have ever met. And he's a legend.

Holbrook. "Twain Tonigh.t" Thousand Oaks. Jan. 26.

Nuff Said.