How To Spell My Name
My publicist informs me that a free daily newspaper is doing
a feature on me. Great, I say. Journalist
calls me up and asks first question. I say, "Men have a
question. Sex is fun, so why don't women-- " and she says "Hang
on." Then I listen to her typing. Then she says, "Okay,
then what after the women?" I start answering her questions like a
robot on Quaaludes while she types and keeps saying, "Hang on. So what was
it?" I asked her if she has a tape recorder. She says, 'No, I
usually do it like this." Twenty minutes to do a five minute
interview.
So she emails me the "transcript." Incomplete sentences,
sentence fragments with no punctuation, blatant mishearings of what I
said. She has to submit it to the paper by tomorrow. She says she
also has to write a "sidebar" that's funny, and she doesn't know what
to do.
I say okay. How many words do you need? I rewrite the entire
interview, rephrase her questions, write witty informative replies. I compose 3 sidebars for her to choose from. I email the whole thing back to her in 3 hours.
She emails me back. "Thanks for making my job so much
easier." I reply, "Hey, I know how it is for you guys under deadline." I pat
myself on the back, satisfied that I had controlled the article by taking work off the journalist's hands.
Paper comes out. Circulation in the millions. The whole thing is
exactly what I wrote. But my name is "Joe Quick." The only thing
the journalist wrote was the title to the side bar, which she called "Quick
Answers." The dimwit was emailing me at joequirk.com.
The article has since been syndicated in
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