Boy oh boy oh boy am I glad this election is over. I am so tired of having to answer phone calls from the likes of Al Gore, Dianne Feinstein and Jerry Brown. Doggone celebrities can't leave me alone.

And that's not all. My phone has also been buzzing because Alameda High School recently won the North Coast 3A high school baseball championship. (Philip Michaels was there). I suppose I should be happy that my fine island has produced yet another baseball success story, but my enthusiasm is a bit dampened. Partly because I attended Alameda High's main rival, Encinal High School. But mostly because of this fact: Alameda High's coach is named Ken Arnerich. And his son, Kenny Arnerich, was the winning pitcher in the championship game.

Thus, I now present the transcript to over half my telephone conversations in the past week:

"Hello?"
"Hello, may I speak to Ken?"
"This is Ken."
"Hey, wassup Ken, this is Mumblemumblemumble!"
"Who?"
"Mumblemumblemumble! Howzitgoin'?"
"Do I know you?"
"Oh, am I talking to the father or the son?"
"You have the wrong number, dude."
"Oh, sorry."

I suppose I should not be so annoyed. Perhaps I should respond to this celebrity intrusion with more enthusiasm, like how Annika responded to an email she received from Robert Redford about gas prices:

Dear Mr. Redford,

Oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god OMG OMG OMG!!!!

I can't believe I got an e-mail from you!

...[snip]...

Okay lemme see. All the President's Men was an awesome movie too. I liked that one. What else? The Natural! That movie kicked ass so much more than the one with Kevin Costner, which was too weird. I don't know what the point of that one was. Like why would he build that baseball field? What was the deal with that? I liked that you made your own bat in The Natural, even though it ended up breaking, but you still hit a bunch of home runs with it.

Did you notice that in The Natural you started out as a pitcher, but then you switched to a home run hitter -- just like Babe Ruth did! That was the cool part. Well, one of the many cool parts. The whole movie was cool, for a baseball movie. My favorite baseball movie of all time was Bull Durham, which you weren't in. But Kevin Costner was in it, which is funny because he also did that one where he built the baseball field, which was kind of sucky as I said before.

That's so great. Now I'm totally regretting not responding that one time I got an email from Britney Spears. Not some mass-market email, or spam email faking Britney Spears, but an actual honest-to-goodness email from Britney herself. I happen to own a domain name whose name is perilously close to that of a music label. Until I blocked them, I used to constantly get emails from people who misspelled that domain name, asking if they've received the CDs or sheet music, informing me of meetings, upcoming sessions, inviting me to release parties, and so many other mundane details of the music business. I've thought it might be fun to show up at one of these meetings sometime, but unfortunately, most of them were in New York City.

Anyhoo, the day before some special she had on HBO, Britney herself made this oh-so-common spelling error in JC Chasez's email address, and his invitation to a party (along with Justin Timberlake, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone, and others) on "FIRDAY, NOVEMBER 30 AT THE TIMBERLAKE/SPEARS ESTATE" (yes the entire email was in ALL CAPS) reached my inbox instead.

I guess I just wasn't in a snarky mood that day. Oh well, opportunity wasted. I wish I had had Annika's response as a model. What are the odds that those email addresses I possess still work?

SORRY BRITNEY JEAN I MISSED THAT PARTY THAT YOU AND BOBBEE PLANNED FOR CHRIS AND DANI WHO ARE (WERE?) FINALLY TOGETHER ONCE AGAIN...BUT OMG OMG OMG OMG I *TOTALLY* WISH I COULD HAVE BEEN THERE!

But too late, I guess. But, hmm, maybe it's not too late for...well, time to go. I gotta replace my answering machine message with a recording of "We Are The Champions".