I Get Mail

September 22, 2007 04:58 PM

Location: Twin Palms, Palm Springs, CA

So, I got up a couple of hours ago with a killer of a hangover. Jilly’s got a potion for this, so he’s down in the kitchen, mixing up the poison. I don’t know what’s in it, but it involves raw eggs, gun powder and garlic, along with a few other delicacies (it tastes like shit, but it straightens me out every time).

While Jilly’s at work in the lab, I pad over to my office to fire up the laptop. Holy Mother of Christ! 147 of them email things! 147 of them! I was touched at first, but then I started sifting through them. There’s some real loons out there.

Now don’t get me wrong, I got quite a few that tugged at the old ticker, you know, real fan mail prose, welcoming me back and waxing all Shakespeare poetic about my talent. The usual 2 or 3 death threats, which amuse me more than bother me (“take a number, pally” is my usual response).

But the ones that really gave me the laugin’ gas were the emails I got from people claiming to be people in my life. Here’s a rundown of some of the more popular ones:

Sammy D - 9 different people

Dino - 17 different people

Lawford (please!) - 6 different people

Skinny - 3 different people

Mia - 3 different people

Ava (I gotta’ real problem with this one) - 5 different people

Jerry Lewis - 12 different people

Ok, so the 12 from Lewis could be real. He can be a real pain in the ass like that, which is why for years, he never had my real number. He’d call all the time to either suck up or figure out if Dino was around. That guy was like a broad when it came to Dino. It bugged the shit out of Dag, so I quit telling him about it. Then it started bugging the shit out of me too. That’s how I ended up buying out a block of numbers that I never used. They were listed in my name, but there wasn’t a phone on the other end.

So Jerry would try to call a number I gave him, then figured I’d accidentally given him the wrong one when he couldn’t get through. Instead of asking me for the number again when he’d see me, he’d pay his people to go find the real number. They’d always come back with another of the bogus numbers I owned. He’d try the new one, get pissed and then fire the guys who gave him the number. It was a real side splitter, I’ll tell ya’. He fired more people that way than I ever hired in my entire career.

Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if Jerry was really nailing me with emails, but the others? Come on. I know I came back into the public eye yesterday, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Yeah, I don’t have all of this computer mumbo-jumbo worked out just yet, but I got a good run-down of the deal when I was over at the hippie factory picking up the laptop. Those guys may not bathe on a regular basis, but they got their act together in the tech department.

Jilly’s no slouch when it comes to computers either. When he walked away from the life back in the ’90’s, he became one of those silent backers in a few tech companies. True, he lost everything he had eventually (I told him he should stick with restaurants),

but he learned a thing or two about a thing or two. Smarter than he looks, that boy.

He comes back from the kitchen with the party medicine and finds me holding my head in pain, but laughing my ass off at all the duplicate wannabes. He looks over the emails and then writes down a bunch of numbers in his little notebook. Pages full. It started looking like a bookie’s track sheet.

I ask him, “What ya’ got cookin’ doc?”. He doesn’t look up from his notebook as he answers, “half of these bastards live within 30 miles of here.” Deadpan serious. I’ve seen that look 100 times if I’ve seen it once. I’m laughing, “lighten up Charlie. It’s just a couple of pranksters. Nothing to get your panties in a twist over.”

He closes up his notebook and puts it into his jacket pocket and says, “I gotta’ run out and take care of a few things. Need me to get anything while I’m out?”
“Yeah,” I say, “pick me up a block of them fake emails will ya’? I got a feeling the Telethon Jew’s gonna’ be killing me with emails."
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