ELITE EIGHT!

 Hi folks,

JUST LIKE THAT just advanced to the Elite Eight in the Spinetingler Magazine novel tourney!

All kinds of news to report!

First, a recap of the game that advanced the JUST LIKE THAT squad to the next level. Just as we thought, Jake didn’t show up. At first, that is. The last anyone had seen him, two nights ago, he was heading out for the bar scene to celebrate his winning shot that got the team into the Sweet Sixteen. Knowing Jake, we figured that would be the last time we’d see him.

But…

With eight seconds left in the game, our intrepid coach who is NOT named Bob Knight, called time out. Tie game, the possession with the other team. Just as he’s about to send us back on the court, guess who walks in, dressed in his uni?

You guessed it!!!

Jake!!!

Coach immediately yanks Bud and has Jake report to the scorer’s table. The ref handed the ball to our opponent’s point guard and he passed it in to their big star. He drove to just under the basket where Jake was now standing and started to go up and lay it in. And that’s when Jake won the game for us! Instead of going up to try to block the shot—which any ordinary lame-o basketball player would have done—Jake pulls the genius play we all have back on the playground but were afraid to use in a “real” game. Which was… ready?... you guessed it! He yanked the star’s shorts down!

The poor guy was so flustered, he muffed the dunk, clanking it off the rim. Well, you should have seen Sandi, our intrepid head cheerleader! She screamed so loud a window in the upper levels of the gym shattered. Later, she revealed she’d seen her dreams of a botox operation sliding out of the picture. The scream froze everyone in the gym—players, refs, fans. Little kids running up and down the aisles pestering everyone. Everybody but one guy. You guessed it. Jake. Jake had heard Sandi scream so often in their past dating days that he didn’t even hear her. While everyone else froze in place, he grabbed the ball, raced—well, “raced” perhaps isn’t the right word—after all, he was hungover—he race-walked to the other end and laid it up. Well, “race-walked” perhaps isn’t the most accurate description either. He kind of stumbled to the other end…

Victory.

Pandemonium.

And now Jake’s disappeared again. Last anyone saw him, he was heading for his favorite haunt, the Gin Mill, down on State Street.

But, we’re in the Elite Eight!

So, once again we’re asking for your support. If you can tear yourself away from that Budweiser and the DVD of Debbie Does Dallas and Dallas Retaliates By Renaming Itself Fort Worth, which you’ve already watched 6,000 times, go on over to the voting polls at http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2012/03/06/tournament-of-2011-crime-fiction-ebooks-elite-8/ and cast a vote for JUST LIKE THAT.

More is at stake here than just a win for the Gipper. Well, duh… The Gipper’s dead, boobies…

But, Sandi, isn’t. As it turns out, she needs more than just that botox operation. Poor Sandi revealed to us last night at the victory party, that she has a deep, dark secret and asked for our aid in helping her overcome what is a serious disability, especially in her regular job, which is as a stripper at the Kitty-Kat Klub. As it turns out, Sandi is the victim of “Excessive Hair Gene.” Which means… again, you guessed it(!) she has lots of body hair. Especially on her back and shoulders. Some on her chest… She confessed last night—admittedly after a number of mimosas—that her weekly Bic budget alone totaled three figures a week. Plus, she has to hire a guy to shave it for her every Friday night. Which has the ancillary effect losing that guy as a member of her dating pool. She tried to put a brave face on her horrible condition, trying to paint us a upbeat picture of her on those Friday night seshes, sitting in her bathtub in tepid water, rose petals strewn about in the water, and Hank her Personal Shaver, sitting there on the side of the tub, whacking away at her mossy back with a Lady Schick. But, it was easy to see past the courageous smile she tried to create, to see the real pain in her eyes, as she trusted us with this intensely personal and tragic condition.

If we can somehow win at the next level and advance to the Final Four, our winnings will be enough that we can rescue Sandi and send her and Hank to East St. Louis to the factory for intensive and up-close-and-personal training on the NoMoHair Dipilitory Wonder Machine.

If you knew Sandi like we do, you’d drop everything you’re doing and rush out and vote. As Sandi so often says, quoting one of her heroines, Anne Frank, “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

How true!

You can do exactly that, by voting for JUST LIKE THAT. Let’s get Sandi that machine!

Thank you.

Blue skies,

Les

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/2012/03/06/tournament-of-2011-crime-fiction-ebooks-elite-8/