Every Word Of This Is Reprinted Without Permission, And If That Offends You, I'm Truly Sorry

Really. I am.

Let's float back to Friday night. I had a rather odd occurrence on my Friday Chill Night. I was all in twos. Watched two movies, drank two martinis, drank two cups of coffee. Went to bed two late. OK, I know it's too late, I was just trying to be cute. I think I failed.

Anyway, somehow when I hit the bed as it was rounding 3am, although wouldn't it have been even more cute had it been 2am, suddenly all of the above there caused my ears to go into massive overdrive. I could hear everything. I could hear my heat pump. I could hear radios of passing cars, whether they were blasting their music or not. I could hear my heart pounding, and I swear I could hear the grass growing outside. Or maybe that was my flowers dying, I'm not familiar enough with the Sounds of Nature to distinguish one from another.

Another thing I could hear was people, and I think those people were walking around my house. I could hear footsteps in the grass, and people breathing. I didn't hear any voices, but at one point I heard a distinct metal thud, just like someone was banging on the side of my metal outbuilding there in the backyard. Was someone trying to break into my building? No idea, if they were, there didn't seem to be any leftover signs of such when I checked it the next day. Also if they were, boy, wouldn't they have been surprised had they succeeded and found that my outbuilding contains nothing more than a few empty cardboard boxes, a few half-used paint cans, and probably a lot of spiders.

Who knows, though. Maybe it wasn't even people, maybe it was a squirrel or raccoon, although I would suppose their breathing and footsteps would vary from a human's, and with my hearing the way it was, I probably could have detected it.

Anyway, it all made me quite hinky, and I didn't fall asleep till the sun was coming up, but it did afford me the opportunity to turn on my TV and watch "What's My Line," where Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were the Mystery Guests and signed the big chalkboard as "Huntley and Brinkley."

But earlier on Friday night I set about a task that sorely needed tending. I cleaned out my e-mail inbox. I'm terrible about this particular task, and I think when I started on Friday I had an astounding 269 e-mails in my inbox. It's one of those things I'm always going to do but never get around to. Sure, there are certain things that I delete right off the bat, the occasional spam which I thankfully don't get much of, and letters from the rabid fans on the Glenn Tilbrook mailing list, who I'm sure are fine people but they produce some of the most boring mail in history. I don't care what Glenn Tilbrook song just got played on a TV program, or what color his underwear is, or if he's now sporting velcro tennis shoes instead of lace-ups on his latest tour. So I just normally delete those right as they appear without even reading them, and, OK, maybe I'll miss the golden e-mail that announces he's playing the backyard of the Poderosa, but I guess that's my loss. Maybe that was him pounding on my metal building the other night.

The things I'm worst about, e-mail-wise, are the Amazon and Ebay confirmations. I always save those until after I've received my items, then tell myself I'll delete them immediately. Yeah. I had e-mails in there from items I'd had for months. I'm also bad about e-mails I think I just liked, and although there's not a thing I can do with them, I say, "Well, I'll keep that for later reading," then never read them nor delete them, and they just lay in my inbox like so much dust. And I'm also not so good with the Community Band's weekly newsletter, keeping it for fear I might God Help Me miss a concert, which I never do anyway because it's always pounded into our heads at rehearsals, and so they linger on way too long as well.

I've got e-mails from over 2 years ago, like the one from Dutchie telling me my essays had been accepted for reading on the radio, and the one from my early 80s TV hero Bill Tush, and the one from Mr M sent the night before my surgery telling me I was his hero. I'll never get rid of those, I guess.

But Friday night, I got right to it and started deleting stuff. And in deleting stuff I of course had to read it, well, most of it, and you know, some of my friends and compatriots send me e-mails that just make me laugh out loud. So I thought I'd tell you about some of the best.

Like the one from Mike, Man of Mystery and Movies. It was a simple two-line note sent for no reason at all, except maybe as a helpful life lesson. It read: "Here's something that might come in handy someday. If you've committed a murder, and Nick and Nora Charles are around, when he invites you and all of the other suspects over, DON'T GO." I'm going to remember that one.

Later, Mike also, when giving me a movie recommendation, said about the movie "Kikujiro": "Again, Japanese kid, some crying, a strange middle section where some guy runs around naked." I hope that movie's in my Blockbuster queue; if not, I'd better get it there pronto.

This one-line e-mail comes courtesy of Stennie, who was I'm sure commenting on myway.com's Pet of the Day. As we often do. "'Mr Noodles likes to be held and rubbed all over.' Hey, so do I!" And well, who doesn't, really? Lucky Mr Noodles, anyway.

Stennie also gave us this statement of distinction, in regards to our podcast topic of the "Eight Is Enough" theme song: "By the way, I'm almost positive now that the line is, 'There's a plate of home-made wishes on the kitchen window sill,' but I'm not willing to watch an episode of 'Eight Is Enough' to double-check it." Neither am I, Stenns - I'll defer to you no matter what lyric you come up with.

Along those same lines, Stennie was waxing poetic about her cat Boo's days as an actor. (Did you know Stennie's cat Boo used to an actor? Stennie's cat Boo used to be an actor. That is why he is irretrievably fucked-up and is now on Prozac.) In reference to his most famous role, Stennie says, "Sometimes I'm tempted to watch 'Nash Bridges' just to see if I can find my little Boo. Fortunately, the temptation always passes rather quickly."

Oh, here's another good Stennie e-mail. It says simply, "Well, screw you then! Who wants your stinkin' autograph?" Sadly, the answer to this question is "no one," my dear Niblet.

Finally on the Stennie front, I would be remiss in my duties as your blogger if I didn't include this one, which still makes me laugh. "'Judgement at Nuremberg' was on today. How fucking hot is Maximillian Schell? I'd do him dead, and he's still alive." I couldn't agree with you more, as I had the same thought the first time I saw J at N. Unfortunately, I just sat there and panted and didn't send such an eloquent missive to anyone over the internet.

I found the e-mail from my friend, fellow Sauerkraut Band member, and all-around Renaissance Man Seth. It read only: "Ice cream lasagna? May the Holy Mother of God and all the saints preserve us!" I guess Sethie had been looking at the recipe du jour. I hope so, anyway. I hope he didn't, totally independent of me, have the thought of ice cream lasagna lurking in his head.

Speaking of the Sauerkraut Band, here's a little exchange between Seth and Mr M in an e-mail sent to the whole SKB, regarding our invitation by some unknown hoo-hah to play an Oktoberfest celebration in, of all places, Malaysia:

Seth: Isn't this the country that arrests you for something as minor as merely chewing gum or drinking a beer on the streets? Hell, they'd arrest Eddie and Russell before we even left the airport, just on principle...
Mr M: Eddie and Russell should be arrested HERE, just on principle. We do incarcerate people for "crimes against nature" here too, don't we?
Seth: It would be a shame if the band were the focus of an international incident. I picture a number of governments in a bidding war. Only they'd be offering a ransom to get the kidnappers to return us to some other country.
Mr M: I say that, if we get kidnapped, we need to trick the kidnappers into feeding hot wings to Eddie and Russell. We'd be on the street in no time.

I don't think the Sauerkraut Band will be playing that Malaysia gig anyway. After all, the first letter of request stated that the country was trying to put on a "respectable Oktoberfest." To quote Seth himself, may the Holy Mother of God and all the saints preserve us.

I also, since I was on a deleting roll, went into my hotmail account to get rid of my current inbox. It's a little different with hotmail. I only have this account to use when signing up for and ordering things, so it's just one big spamfest. As I'm sure all of your hotmails are as well. So I didn't read witty repartee from my buddies there, though I can't say I didn't laugh once or twice at the subject titles of the e-mails.

There was mail from someone called "Rhondas" (I'm not sure exactly how many Rhondas were involved), and the mail's title was "I Send You The Sweet Music." Well, that was awfully nice of the Rhondas, and I thank them the very much. Charles sent me an e-mail entitled, "Sweeeeeeeeet Watches." Charles apparently 1) really likes the letter e, 2) heard the 15th week of the Hucklebug podcast where we mentioned watches would be a fine anniversary gift, or 3) both. Or 4) neither, he's just kind of dumb and 5) really wants to sell me some watches.

I had about 17 e-mails from the Red Cross, somewhat similar to the number of e-mails I get from the Humane Society, because I contributed to both during Hurricane Katrina and they apparently think I'm such a nice person I'm going to give them some more money even though nothing much is going on right now. Guys, I like you and you do good work. I'll tell my friends. Now send them some e-mails instead of me, OK?

Of course, hotmail is just a hotbed of sexual activity, and I got a lovely, lovely e-mail from some nice girl named BarbaraAnn23 with the request, "Let's Screw Our Brains Out." I'm afraid I'm going to have to take a pass on that one, BarbaraAnn, mainly because it appears you already have screwed your brains out, simply by virtue of the fact that you sent this e-mail to me. Anyway, why don't you let me introduce you to Sandra28, who sent me the e-mail with the subject title, "Nice Shoes, Wanna Fuck?" Well, Sandra28, to you I say, "Geez, They're Only Keds, No."

Maybe Mike would enjoy a forward of the e-mail I received from HotChik, who can't spell and is "Looking For Hot Crazy Sex No Strings Attached." Well, I don't know. Are ropes considered strings? Sorry, Mike. I'll let you decide if you're interested; if you are, please try and convince her to add a "c" to her moniker.

And finally, I had an e-mail in there of a type I don't normally find. It was from Costa Rica. The whole country, apparently, and was advertising that I could "Control 60K of Costa Rican Land!" I'm not quite sure what to make of that one. First of all, how does Costa Rica know I even exist, and this land - do I get to own it, or just control it? Because unless I also got control of some people to work on it, it wouldn't be of much use. "I control this land!" I could say to myself, standing there with arms akimbo and a foot planted firmly on a Costa Rican tree stump.

And a blade of grass would answer quietly, "Do not." And I'd hear it. I hear things like that lately.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Again, no acro this week due to the impending holiday. The acrobasket will be occupied, as will I, as will all of you. Enjoy the fireworks and be safe driving home.