I’ve interviewed both of Rex’s sons, Noel and Carey, for my new book on Kay Kendall. Today I got an E-mail from Noel (remember him from “The Girl from UNCLE?”) with that urban legend about forwarding E-mails so Microsoft will send you a check.
I promptly forwarded him the pertinent link from Snopes, and just got a message back from him calling the original message “a load of bollocks” that his wife was sending out, adding, “Thanks for the reference, an invaluable ally in the reinforcement of husbandly skepticism.”
HAR! Noel just sent me the followinmg, which was his daughter Chloe’s response to the original E-mail:
"Hello, my name is Basmati Kasaar. I am suffering from rare and deadly diseases, poor scores on final exams, extreme virginity, fear of being kidnapped and executed by anal electrocution, and guilt for not forwarding out 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, then that poor 6 year old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck
parents sell her off to the travelling freak show.
Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give you and everyone you send “his” email to $1000? How stupid are you? Ooooh, lookyhere! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I’ll get laid by every Playboy model in the magazine!
What a bunch of bullshit. So basically, this message is a big FUCK YOU To all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to send me stupid chain mail forwards. Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my apartment and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing the chain which was started by Jesus in 5 A.D. and was brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower and if it makes it to the year 2002, it’ll be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest continuous streak of blatant stupidity. Fuck them. If you’re going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I’ve seen all the “send this to 50 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched
excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being” forwards about 90 times.
I don’t fucking care.
Show a little intelligence and think about what you’re actually contributing to by sending out forwards. Chances are it’s your own unpopularity."
—I told him his daughter is a treasure, and that somewhere, Kay Kendall is beaming down approvingly at her.
Shit, I almost had a crush on him! If you bring him in, I promise not to sing “Suzanne” (still my favorite song, though MAYBE not his rendition. But he has a greater range than his dad and excellent taste in material and got me into Leonard Cohen).
Especially: “aybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my apartment and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing the chain which was started by Jesus in 5 A.D. and was brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower and if it makes it to the year 2002, it’ll be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest continuous streak of blatant stupidity.”
[sub]ummmmm, it might not be original. Dagan saw it and said “Yeah, I downloaded the whole thing once and have it someplace. She cut off part.”[/sub]
But that is neither here nor there–I believe Chloe has demonstrated a taste in rant that can be nurtured and brought to full flower when in the correct environment. And rants are a family tradition; who can imagine the role of Henry Higgins, which consists of a sequence of rants, played by anyone but her granddad?
Most of the sites that carry the letter attribute it to Dennis Leary, but no one knows exactly from whence it came. It certainly originated more than a year or so ago, probably more. Maybe Chloe has it in her genes. The fact that she knows enough to send it, makes her one of us.