What are the odds against some goofball who lives 70 miles south of Hollywood and has no connection to show business having not one, but two separate one-degree-of-separation-from-Michael-Jackson interactions? And just to make it even stranger, both stories involve different doctors who cared for the King of Pop.

Those odds are pretty damn steep, I’d say. Which is what makes this story so damn unusual.

I had a good buddy who was a contractor. He was in the middle of building a home for me. One day I told him last week’s story about Michael Jackson and our receptionist.

“That’s crazy” he replied. ”In addition to your house, I’m also building a beachfront house for one of Michael Jackson’s doctors.”

That doctor was Arnie Klein, Michael Jackson’s long-time dermatologist. He was building a fabulous weekend beachfront estate in Laguna Beach, just a couple miles up the road from my far more humble new abode in Dana Point. (Although Laguna and Dana Point are only a couple miles apart geographically, they are worlds apart demographically. Laguna sits in one of the nation’s highest income zip codes, but Dana Point definitely doesn’t.)

How close were Arnie and Michael? Well, Arnie’s office manager was introduced to the world as Michael’s wife just about the time the first stories about Michael and little boys started to percolate. And rumors have always floated around that Arnie actually fathered Michael’s children via artificial insemination.

As the months passed and as both of our houses progressed, my buddy continued to tell me how incredible Arnie’s beachfront estate was turning out. ”You need to see it,” he kept saying, “And you need to meet Arnie.”

So he set up a tour. Arnie walked us through his stunning beachfront home. I’m pretty sure it’s only time I’ll ever seen a Rembrandt sketch hanging in a bathroom. He was a funny, charming, flamboyant guy so we all agreed to go to dinner at a great little Laguna Beach restaurant the following week.

“Make sure we’re seated next to each other,” I told my buddy.

There were probably ten people at the dinner. The contractor and his wife, Arnie and his significant other, me, and a handful of other people I have completely forgotten.

It was a great dinner. We all laughed. We chattered like we were longtime friends. He was quite the raconteur and told great stories about his experiences with well-known Hollywood celebrities. He was known as the Dermatologist of the Stars and the Father of Botox. Everyone who was anyone in Hollywood was one of Dr Klien’s patients. Elizabeth Taylor, Dolly Parton, Goldie Hawn, David Geffen, Dustin Hoffman, Linda Evans, Sharon Stone, Penny Marshall, and Carrie Fisher were among his devotees.

The conversation finally turned to Michael Jackson. Arnie told us that he’d once received a frantic phone call from Michael while he was on tour in Brazil.

“I’m having a skin emergency,” Michael wailed. ”I’ve already chartered a jet. You need to drop everything and fly to Rio de Janeiro to take care of me.”

”Did you go?” I asked.

”Of course, I went,” Arnie laughed. ”Do you know how much he pays me every year?”

I thought the ice had been broken and that Arnie had loosened up enough, so as dessert was being served I leaned over and said, “So, Arnie, I have a question about Michael Jackson.”

“What’s the question?”

“You’re his dermatologist. Are you the one bleaching his skin?”

”I can’t answer that,” he laughed. “Doctor-patient confidentiality.”

We’d enjoyed ourselves at dinner. We’d laughed. Everyone had had a couple glasses of wine and was in a good mood, so I continued asking him to answer the question all of American wanted answered.

“C’mon, Arnie, my lips are sealed. I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

“Can’t do it,” he replied.

“Arnie, buddy, pal. This is just between you and me. Are you the one bleaching Michael Jackson’’s skin?”

I kept this up for an hour. Arnie was amused by my persistence, but absolutely refused to answer the question. So I guess he racks up a few ethics points.

All that being said, he was clearly a very disturbed man. Vanity Fair described his descent into drugs, sex addiction, gay chubby chasing, money woes, the drug-aided death of Michael Jackson, a bitter feud with one of Jackson’s other doctors, an attempt by the California State Medical Board to revoke his license to practice medicine, and plenty of additional bizarre behavior.

Had I read this article prior to our dinner, I wouldn’t have bothered asking Arnie trivial questions about bleaching Michael Jackson’s skin. No, I would have asked questions that pulled on the loose threads of our societal fabric. I would have burrowed into the psyche and mores of the man and extrapolated their significance onto the canvas of 21st century America. Instead of asking the question America wanted answered, I would have asked the question America needed answered:

“Chubby chasing, Arnie? What’s that all about?”

Our ad agency had a very attractive receptionist. Actually, we had a series of very attractive receptionists. Call us shallow, but advertising is supposed to be a glamorous business and nothing says glamour better than being greeted by a beautiful woman. (No, I don’t buy into today’s politically-correct bullshit that says fat and ugly is just as good as athletic and gorgeous.)

One day this particular receptionist came into my office and shut the door behind her.

”Can I ask for your advice about something?” she asked.

Of course, the concept of asking me for advice about anything is relatively ludicrous, which meant this poor woman was clearly desperate.

For example, a dear friend of ours lost his wonderful wife. He began dating again a couple years later and called our house early on a Sunday morning. Jamie answered the phone. ”Can I speak to Jim,” he asked. ”I need some relationship advice.”

”Oh, my god,” she responded. ”I’m really worried about you. Anyone who needs to speak to Jim for relationship advice is really in bad shape.”

She handed me the phone and cackled all the way down the hallway.

But back to our advice-seeking receptionist. I knew she had two young boys and was recently divorced from her doctor husband.

”Did you know that my ex-husband is one of Michael Jackson’s doctors?”

”No, I didn’t,” I admitted.

”Well, my home phone rang the other night. I answered and the voice on the other end said, ’Hi, this is Michael Jackson.’ I thought it was a practical joke so I said, ’If you’re Michael Jackson, you should recognize this. And then I sang, ‘Beat it!’ and hung up.”

”That’s pretty funny,” I said appreciatively.

”I thought so, but my ex-husband called me the next day and he was furious.”

”Michael Jackson just told me that he called the house last night and you hung up on him. How dare you hang up on Michael Jackson?”

“I thought it was a practical joke. Maybe you should have warned me he was going to call the house before he did it. And besides, why was Michael Jackson calling me?”

”He wasn’t calling you. He wanted to speak to the boys.”

”Why was he calling the boys? How does he even know them?”

”He met them at my office,” he fumed. “He’s a very important patient of mine so please be nice to him and don’t hang up on him if he calls again.”

That night Michael Jackson called her house again. Our receptionist apologized to him and explained that she thought his first call has been a practical joke.

”So here’s where I need advice,” she explained to me. ”He’s invited my boys (ages approximately 7 and 10, as I recall) to spend the night at his Neverland Ranch. They’re very excited about it. Do you think I should let them go?”

Now this was long before all the stories about Michael Jackson and little boys came out, so there was no clearcut reason why they shouldn’t go, but she was feeling a bit uneasy about the situation.

”Absolutely not,” I advised. ”There’s something really wrong with that guy. For god’s sake, he took a chimpanzee named Bubbles to the Emmy Awards. That’s just not normal. If I had kids I wouldn’t leave them alone with that guy.”

She appreciated my opinion and went back to our lobby to think it over. The next day she came back into my office again to discuss the next chapter of the saga.

”Michael Jackson called again last night. He asked me again for permission to take the boys to his ranch overnight.”

”What did you say?” I asked in horror.

”I told him I would rather have him come to our house and we could all have a slumber party. Much to my surprise, he said, ‘That sounds fun.’ So Michael Jackson is spending the night at my house on Saturday.”

“Brilliant,” I told her. ”You can keep a close eye on him while he’s with your kids. Let me know how it works out.”

Bright and early Monday morning she came back into my office with a big smile on her face. ”It worked out perfectly. He got to the house about six o’clock. I cooked dinner. I’d gone out and bought onesies for the boys and a matching pair for myself. Michael and the kids and I played Monopoly and when we got tired we all slept in sleeping bags on my living room floor.”

”Genius,” I told her. ”Great solution.”

”The next morning,” she continued, ”all the neighborhood kids were out in the street playing football. Michael looked at me and said, ”Is it ok if I go out in the street to play football with the kids?”

”Sure,” I told him. ”Just don’t get hurt.

“So Michael Jackson, the biggest star in the world, went out in the street in front of my house and played football with all the neighborhood kids.”

”A limo came to pick him up a couple hours later, but before he left he came to me and said, ”Thank you so much. I’ve never played football before because I was always working when I was a kid. I never really had a childhood.”

”That’s a very sweet story,” I replied. ”Does that mean you’ll let the boys spend the night at Neverland now?”

”No way,” she said. ”There’s something really wrong with that guy.”

Good decision. It was not too much later that all the stories about Michael’s ”relationships” started coming out. Turns out he loved to play games with little boys, but none of them were Monopoly or football.

COMING NEXT WEEK: Another One Degree of Separation from Michael Jackson story.

Another artifact from that recently discovered box of ad agency memorabilia and old family photos.

This cartoon graced my office wall for years just because…well…because it was just so damn true.

My parents were particularly proud when I graduated from college, almost as if they considered it their own personal accomplishment. One day not long after graduation my dad said, “If you’re going into the business world you’re going to need a suit and tie. Go downtown and buy what you need and I’ll pay for it.”

”Thanks,” I said, “But I’m never going to have a job where I need to wear a suit and tie.”

He shook his head in disgust and walked away, muttering, “God damn smart ass kid.”

Trying to look at it from his point of view, I suppose that having a son who wore a suit to work would have been considered a significant accomplishment. He was a guy who did hard physical labor every day of his life. His work clothes consisted of rubber boots, jeans, and T-shirts, and the left sleeve of each of those T-shirts was stained an ugly brown from rubbing up against a hundred shit-covered cows twice each day. Perhaps in his mind a son who wore a suit and tie was a symbol that he had succeeded as a parent.

But it was not to be. I graduated from college in the midst of the hippy revolution, and although I was not a hippy philosophically, I was definitely one sartorially.

Five years later, after I had been working for my future business partner for a few months, we landed a small chain of hip European menswear stores. “You can’t write about this stuff if you don’t understand it,” he told me. “So we’re going over to the store today and Larry and Doug are going to put you through a full fitting to help you relate to their customers.”

Larry and Doug, the owners of the store, put me in a sleek European suit, measured my inseam a little too enthusiastically, and then began putting those little chalk marks all over the suit so their tailor could make it fit me like a glove. (“Making a suit fit like a glove” is a mixed metaphor, but so be it.) They found a shirt that fit my scrawny frame perfectly. They selected matching socks and a tie. It was the mid-70s so they even put a gold chain around my neck. I have to admit that it was an interesting experience, one I had never had before, and it truly did help me understand their customers in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise.

A few days later my soon to be partner buzzed me and asked me to come to his office. When I got there he told me he was embarrassed by my casual fashion sense and the whole experience at the menswear store had been a ruse to get me fitted for a suit. “We have a big new business pitch in Philadelphia next week,” he said, ”and you need to look the part.” He proudly presented me with the suit, shirt, socks, tie and chain combo.

I realized that I had no shoes to match the brown suit, so I went out and bought a pair of brown running shoes. During our flight to the City of Brotherly Love, my boss/future partner asked me to reassure him I had brought along a pair of appropriate shoes.

“Absolutely,” I said. I pointed to my feet. ”I went out and got these brown running shoes.”

He laughed. He thought I was joking.

Just before the plane landed, he asked me again. I gave him the same answer. He was horrified when he realized I was serious.

”We’ll have to go out first thing in the morning and buy you some real shoes.” I truly did not understand what he was so upset about, but bright and early the next morning we were standing outside the nearest shoe shop when it opened its doors. We quickly bought a pair of brown leather shoes that matched the suit, and then rushed over to the client’s offices in just in time for our meeting.

All’s well that ends well, because we did the presentation and won the account. No one complained about my shoes. I’m pretty sure we would have been victorious even if I had worn the running shoes.

We met with our CPA a few days after our return to Southern California. After he congratulated us on the big win, my partner told him the story about the shoes and the CPA surprised us by saying, ”Those shoes were a business expense. So we can depreciate them.” And that’s exactly what we did. I believe we depreciated the shoes over a five year period.

That CPA later went on to great fame and fortune. I hadn’t spoken to him in many years, but I had a tax issue a few years ago, so I called him in search of some advice. He howled with laughter while recalling the only time in his career that he ever depreciated a pair of shoes.

I wore that suit no more than a handful of times over the next couple years, because it just wasn’t me. The words sleek and European just did not match my self image. I slowly reverted to the more casual look with which I felt more comfortable. I believe they call it business casual today.

As the years crawled by my business attire became increasingly more casual until it became almost slovenly. For a number of years I leaned toward jeans and colorful Hawaiian shirts. And that slowly devolved into wearing mostly mostly t-shirts emblazoned with the word ”Maui,” tattered jeans, and Mexican huarache sandals.

We were asked to pitch a big southern California entertainment company. I recall turning to my partner as we entered the client’s lobby and saying, ”I really need to start dressing better.” It was winter and I was wearing a baggy, tattered turquoise sweater over a T-shirt, worn out jeans, and running shoes. We told the receptionist we were there to see the marketing director and she said, ”How did you know today is casual day?”

“We didn’t,” my partner replied.

“Then you’re very lucky,” she said, looking directly at me. ”He’s really into fashion and would never hire anyone dressed as casually as you.” She said casually like it was a dirty word.

Here’s how one of my copywriting students at University of California Irvine described me in a writing assignment for another class:

“If you closed your eyes, you’d swear you were listening to Dr Demento on KMET Radio. deYong has a voice just like Dr Demento … Looking at him, one would never guess that deYong is a partner in a successful ad agency. He arrives each week in torn sneakers, baggy pants, and a T-shirt which often bears a catchy slogan. His most recent T-shirt was designed by one of his sympathetic employees as a get-well present. It read, ‘Death warmed over.’”

Not much has changed over the years. Now that we live in Texas I wear jeans and T-shirts for about six months a year followed by shorts and T-shirts the other six months. We had to attend a funeral service a couple weeks ago and Jamie announced, “It’s time to wear your big boy clothes.”

If forced to dress up, I’m also forced to ask, “Jamie, does this shirt go with these pants?” The most common answer is, “No,” and it’s usually accompanied by a look that says, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

In describing my own fashion choices, I’ve neglected to mention the universal truth of the cartoon at the top of this story. It’s not just me. You rarely see an ad agency writer who comprehends fashion. There must be something hardwired into the brain that dictates, “Good with words, bad with clothes.”

My second job in advertising was at the largest ad agency in Los Angeles. All the copywriters — except one — dressed just as poorly as I did. The exception was a guy who wore a suit and tie every day. The rest of us teased him unmercifully about his favored fashions. Much to our surprise, his career took off like a rocket and he eventually became the CEO of one of the world’s largest international ad agency conglomerates.

I doubt that he’s ever worn a Maui T-shirt and flipflops to work.

UPDATE: I posted this story a couple days ago. I just said, ”Jamie, have you read the latest story on the blog? I quoted you.” She said, ”You mean when we went to Joe’s funeral and I said, ’Just don’t look homeless.’” Ahhh, yes, I’m feelin’ the love.

I always told creative teams that I wanted them to include a T-shirt idea in every new ad campaign they presented to me. Why? ”Because any great ad campaign should be simple enough to be summed up on a T-shirt.”

As I mentioned in Part One of this sordid tale, I was still very ill after we got home from Fiji. I had dropped nineteen pounds almost overnight and for a month or more I was as weak as a little girl. I missed ten days of work and was still wobbly when I finally began going back into the office for a few hours each day.

In those days we had a great client named Shimano. It’s one of the biggest names in the biking and fishing industries. You’d expect a company in those businesses to be fun, and Shimano did not disappoint. It was one of my favorite clients.

One afternoon my first week back at work, I got a phone call from Toyo Shimano. ”What time are you heading home tonight?” he asked.

”Well, I’m still pretty sick so I’ll probably leave around three o’clock. Why?”

“Can you stop by the office on your way home? Dave and I heard you weren’t feeling well so we got you a present.” 

Dave was Dave Pfeiffer, the guy who ran the fishing half of the company. He and Toyo were best friends and fanatical fishermen.

I really didn’t really want any delays on my way home, but Toyo and Dave were great guys, and since they’d gone to the trouble of buying me a gift, well, the least I could do was stop by their office to accept it.

“Just tell the receptionist to buzz us when you get here. We know you’re not feeling well so we’ll make it quick.”

I did, she did, and a few seconds later I heard my name being called from the top of the stairs. Toyo and Dave were both peering down at me with silly grins on their faces. They hurried down the stairs and handed me a beautifully-wrapped gift, one they were clearly eager for me to open right there and then.

I tore the wrapping off. Inside was the T-shirt shown above. It said, ”Spawn ‘til you die.”

”We heard about your ‘girlfriend’ and your ciguatera poisoning,” Dave laughed. ”When we saw this T-shirt we thought it was perfect for you.”

It really was perfect. I wore that T-shirt proudly for many years.

Like I said at the top of this story, it’s not a great ad campaign unless it can be communicated simply enough to work on a T-shirt. But who knew it wasn’t a great vacation unless it could be summed up on a T-shirt?

NOTE: This story has been pre-approved by my lovely wife. I was a little nervous about what her reaction might be, but she read it, laughed out loud, and said, ”Sure. Go ahead and run it.”

I cannot say I am proud of everything I’ve done in my life. I may have treated a woman or two more poorly than I would have wanted them to treat me. On the other hand, I think I deserve a big ol’ pile of gentleman points for obscuring the identity of the woman in this story.

I always say that 98% of what I write here at JimandJamie.com is 99% true. So in keeping with that philosophy I feel compelled to make some minor corrections:

In Part One of this story I said the owner of the ritzy Fijian resort told me I could bring along my girlfriend in order to fully experience the romance of the island. That is not exactly true.

Rather than telling me I could bring a companion, he told me I was required to bring one. In order to enhance its romantic reputation, this resort had a very strict ”couples only” policy. They didn’t want any lone wolves interfering with any of their romantic couples. Apparently this had been a problem before the rule was implemented.

I also referred to the woman I took to Fiji as ”my girlfriend,” but a professional fact checker might take issue with that description. Please allow me to explain.

I had broken up with my longtime girlfriend just before this Fijian project came along. We were still on good terms and I almost weakened and asked her to join me in Fiji, but I knew that would take me back into territory I no longer wanted to explore.

So I called another ex-girlfriend and asked if she’d like to accompany me. “Terrible timing,” she said. ”I’d love to go, but I just started a new job last week. I can’t ask for a week off my second week on the job.”

I began thumbing through my Rolodex in search of someone else I could take, someone I might actually want to spend a week with. I quickly flipped through all the cards from ”A” to ”F” without my interest being piqued. But I was stopped by one of the first names in the ”G” section. ”Hmmmm,” I said to myself. “She is a definite possibility.” I had never dated this woman but I recalled some heavy-duty flirting, a suggestively-raised eyebrow, and some clever but clearly-interpreted double entendres delivered while we were both dating other people.

I gave her a call and she seemed happy to hear from me. We went out that night but what she considered a date, I considered an audition. We spent a couple hours lingering over dinner at my favorite Thai restaurant. She was just as gorgeous as I remembered. She made me laugh. She had a great smile. She was blonde, which was out of my normal wheelhouse. ”Yeah,” I decided, “This could work.”

“Want to go to Fiji?” I asked over dessert.

“Yeah, right,” she said sarcastically.

“No, seriously.” I explained the situation.

“Duh,” she said. ”Of course I’d like to go.”

We spent the next week getting to know each other better. She may not have been the woman of my dreams, but she was certainly everything a man could hope for on a romantic week in Fiji. In the words of noted 20th century philosopher Stephen Stills, ”If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”

We had a great time at the resort. What was not to love? Beach front villa, private beach, romantic dinners catered for just the two of us, blah blah blah.

That being said, other than leaving our beachfront villa for meals, we spent an inordinate amount of time indoors. If you know what I mean.

Think of it as coitus non-interruptus. We banged. We boffed. We boinked. We shtupped. We shagged. We shredded the sheets and shattered the shutters and rattled the rafters. We introduced the monkey to the organ grinder. We baked the potato and churned the butter. We parallel parked. We did paradise push-ups. We did the no pants dance, the horizontal hula, and the pokie pokie polka. It sounded like an exorcism gone wrong, like the Bronx Zoo at feeding time. She may have screamed, “Wakka wakka,” and I may have answered, ”Boom chick a wow wow.”

We did some things I’d only read about and some other things I had previously believed to be anatomically impossible. There were moments when I thought she was trying to kill me. She was truly the perfect woman for a week in paradise.

And that was just the first four days. Then I got ciguatera poisoning and all that extracurricular activity came to a screeching halt. For all I know I may have been even more susceptible to the poison because I was so damn exhausted.

Let’s keep one thing in mind: I thought all the ground rules were clear upfront. This was just a fling. A little no-strings-attached fun. Nothing more. Of course, I realized that everything about this situation was unusual because instead of taking months to develop, our entire relationship had been compressed into seven days pre-Fiji followed by another seven days and nights together at the resort. But still, I thought the ground rules were clear.

And then…

One afternoon all the island’s male guests planted lawn chairs in a semi-circle on the beach, ankle deep in the incoming tide. One of the other guys reached out to shake my hand and said, ”Congratulations.”

I weakly extended my hand back in his direction. ”For what?” I asked.

“Your girlfriend told my wife that you’re getting engaged when you get home.”

I yanked my hand back so fast I almost dislocated my shoulder. I was already physically drained by the ciguatera and this unexpected piece of information damn near gave me a stroke. I wasn’t even thinking of her as a future girlfriend, yet she had already targeted me as her future husband.

There are those rare moments in each of our lives when we achieve clarity, when the sun and the moon and the planets align and when the answers to questions that were once beyond our comprehension suddenly pop into focus. That’s exactly what this moment was for me. It was 5:42 pm Fiji Standard Time and my feet were being gently caressed by a warm tropical tide when I learned a very important lesson in life, one that’s just as true where you live as it is on isolated, idyllic islands in the Pacific. It’s as universal as e equals mc squared. It’s cosmically ubiquitous and all-encompassing, an immutable law of nature.

So please hear my words and heed them. Write them down and commit them to memory. Let the following fifteen syllables be the golden rule that guides you through life:

Not all the dangerous barracudas live out on the reef.

COMING NEXT WEEK: PART THREE

As you will learn later in this story, “One man’s fish is another man’s poison” is not only an adage, it may be the most remarkably accurate headline I’ve ever written.

I was once hired to create an ad campaign for a very small, very exclusive luxury resort in Fiji. It sounded like the best gig ever.

The client thought it was important for me to experience the resort for myself before I attempted to create their ads — to spend a full week in one of their beachfront villas, to snorkel on their reef, to relax on the silver sands of their private beaches, to drink from their selection of fine wines, and key to this story, to dine on meals prepared by the finest chefs in the Pacific.

And just when you think it can’t get any better, he felt it was important for me to bring my girlfriend in order to fully understand the romance of his tropical island paradise.

Who was I to disagree? Sometimes one is just called upon to make sacrifices and I was prepared to do my duty.

They flew us first class to Fiji. The tropical resort was just as beautiful as advertised. Spectacular, in fact. We had our own private beachfront villa. On our own private beach. Gourmet meals were catered for just the two of us.

On night number four all the guests were invited to a special beachside barbecue. The main course was fresh barracuda, caught that afternoon on the reef that surrounded the island. It seemed a wonderful meal at the time.

Key words: “…at the time.”

One of the other guests on the island that night was Fiji’s Minister of Tourism. We got into a conversation at dinner, enjoyed each other’s company, made each other laugh, and agreed to go deep sea fishing with the owner of the resort early the next morning.

Unfortunately, I fell ill immediately after dinner. Deathly ill. It was god awful. I was up and down the rest of the night and got no sleep. None. Yet when the clock ticked over to seven o’clock in the morning, I crawled out of bed and began getting dressed.

My girlfriend looked at me through one barely open eye. She asked a reasonable question. ”What are you doing?”

“I gotta go fishing.”

“You’re too sick to go fishing. You’ve been throwing up all night and you haven’t had any sleep.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I insisted. ”This is my chance to spend time with the Minister of Tourism. Maybe I can land Fiji Tourism’s advertising account.”

”You’re a moron,” she said and then rolled over and went back to sleep.

I staggered down the beach to the dock where I was greeted by the owner of the resort. ”We’ll be leaving in about fifteen minutes,” he said. “Breakfast and coffee are ready below deck. Go down and make yourself comfortable.”

Food was the last thing I wanted, but when I went below deck I spied a cot. Well, I thought, he told me to make myself comfortable and that cot looks pretty damn comfy. So I curled up and immediately fell asleep. I was only vaguely aware a few minutes later when the boat’s dual engines roared to life and we headed out to sea.

I woke up groggy and blurry-eyed and slowly climbed the stairs back up to the deck. It felt like I was scaling Kilimanjaro. My stomach was churning and every muscle in my body ached and sweat was gushing out of every pore. I had never been this sick in my life.

The owner of the resort was standing at the aft of the boat. I did my best to pull myself together.

”Good morning, Jim,” he chirped. ”Looks like a perfect day for fishing.”

“Great,” I said, faking it. Then I looked around the empty boat and said, ”Where’s the Minister of Tourism?”

”Oh, he wasn’t feeling well this morning, so he decided to sleep in.”

Are you freakin’ kidding me? I don’t even like deep sea fishing. I was sick as the proverbial dog and I had come out here strictly to spend time with the Minister of Tourism, and now I learn the sissified son of a bitch had decided to sleep in because he wasn’t feeling well. I don’t care how sick he was, I was sicker. My girlfriend was right: I was a moron.

Well, I thought, I don’t really have much choice here. We’re out here in the middle of the ocean and I’m supposed to be experiencing the resort, and I’m with its owner, so I need to make the best of this. I can fake it for a couple hours.

The boat eventually slowed to a stop and we baited our hooks and tossed them into the water. Almost immediately, a huge albacore struck my hook. This, I thought when it made its first leap out of the water, is the biggest freakin’ fish I will ever see in my life. Sick as I was, I had to begin reeling in the monster.

If you’ve never been deep sea fishing, please believe me that catching the tuna is the easy part. Bringing it in, the duel between man and beast, is the hard part. First you need to pull the rod upward and back and then reel frantically to bring the fish closer. Then you let the fish tire itself out a bit more (and get yourself a little well-deserved rest) before you repeat the process. Over and over and over again. It’s exhausting under the best of circumstances. Every muscle in your shoulders and arms and legs eventually begins screaming in unison.

I didn’t want to show any weakness, but I thought I was going to pass out every time I had to exert myself.

The battle seemed to go on forever. In reality, it probably lasted no more than thirty minutes or so. Maybe not even that long.

With each cycle of the battle, the tuna weakened a bit more but so did I. Which one of us would outlast the other in this mano a pescado contest was definitely in question. I was slowly able to gain the upper hand, working the giant fish closer to the boat. It drew nearer and nearer, and then, just as the battle appeared won and a member of the crew was standing at the ready, about to gaffe the giant fish and hoist it aboard the boat, a huge shark came out of nowhere and, BANG!, it hit my tuna.

The line suddenly went slack and I staggered backward, almost falling to the deck.

I continued frantically reeling but there was no resistance left on the other end of the line. When my monster fish finally popped up out of the water, the crew began laughing. In the battle between me and the tuna, the only winner was the shark. There was nothing left on my hook but the head of the tuna. The shark had taken the rest in one giant gulp. As big as the tuna was, the shark must have been immense to take it all in one bite.

I held myself together long enough for a crew member to take the photo at the top of this post, then I turned to the owner of the resort and said, ”Screw this. I’m sick. I’m going below deck to get some sleep.”

He laughed. The crew laughed. They all thought it was hilarious.

I slept until we got back to the resort and tied up to the dock. ”You don’t look so good,” the owner of the resort said as he awakened me. “Maybe you should go back to your villa and get some sleep.”

I slept for twenty-four hours. When I finally woke up and joined my girlfriend and the other guests for lunch, I learned that the Minister of Tourism and I were not the only ones who had fallen ill. Half the guests had been incapacitated to one degree or another.

For the next few days I was so sick that I literally thought I might be dying. And as if this illness wasn’t bad enough, I was simultaneously experiencing another problem — all my teeth had suddenly come loose. When I ran my tongue around inside my mouth, I could feel them fluttering around like sheets on a clothesline.

“If I survive this,” I told my girlfriend, “I’ll need to see an orthodontist.”

I spent most of the next three days in bed, but there was no island romance involved. I was too sick to do more than sleep and occasionally stagger out for a bit of food.

A group of Australians arrived at the resort just in time for dinner on our last night on the island. When told about the symptoms running rampant through the guests, one of them said, ”Sounds like ciguatera poisoning. Did you eat any reef fish?” He seemed to know what he was talking about. ”You get ciguatera from eating certain kinds of fish, especially barracuda, in the wrong season. You have to make sure you don’t eat any meat from near the head of the fish because that’s where the poison builds up.”

I thought back to the beachside barbecue from our fourth night on the island and remembered that my girlfriend had been in front of me as we moved down the dinner buffet line. She had been served the last piece of meat from one barracuda so I had to wait briefly until they rushed out another one fresh off the grill. They sliced a thick slab of meat from right behind the head and put it on my plate.

It was delicious and I thought nothing of it at the time, but it all made sense now that the Aussies had explained the source of ciguatera. Guests who were served meat from near the tail were fine, those who were served from the middle had mild symptoms, and those unlucky few who were served from near the head — like me, for example — became very ill.

I was still so sick the next day that I slept all the way across the Pacific on the flight home. As soon as we landed I went directly from the airport to my doctor’s office. I described my symptoms — itching, tingling, numbness of my lips and tongue, stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, chills, muscle weakness, muscle pain, dizziness, blurred vision, and achy joints — and mentioned the word ”ciguatera.”

He had never heard of it so he left me in the examination room while he went off to look it up. He returned a few minutes later with a medical dictionary in hand.

”I think the Aussies were right,” he said. ”Sounds like you have ciguatera poisoning.”

Here’s what he found:

Ciguatera fish poisoning is a rare disorder that occurs because of the ingestion of certain contaminated tropical and subtropical fish. When ingested, the toxin (ciguatoxin), which is present at high levels in these contaminated fish, may affect the digestive, muscular, and/or neurological systems. 

“It also calls out two more very strange symptoms you didn’t mention,” he noted. ”Hot and cold temperature reversal.”

“Exactly,” I said. ”Hot water seems cold, cold water seems hot. I thought I was going crazy.”

”There’s one more very odd symptom,” he said. ”The illusion that all your teeth are loose.”

What a great doctor.

He confirmed what was wrong with me, and saved me a trip to the orthodontist at the same time.

However, I lost nineteen pounds and didn’t fully completely recuperate for several months.

Here’s the kicker: I had agreed to create the resort’s advertising in exchange for three future weeks at the resort. The resort got its ad campaign and I received certificates for future stays, but I’ve never used them. Somehow getting poisoned because the chef served out of season fish had soured me on the island paradise.

I still have those certificates tucked away in a drawer.

What are the odds they’ll still honor them thirty years later?

COMING NEXT WEEK: PART TWO

An alternate title for this post might be ”Why Jim is no longer allowed to speak to high school students.”

My business partner Dan was asked to speak at Career Day at a local high school. Something came up at the last minute and he couldn’t make it so he asked me to fill in for him. A week later he received a student evaluation form from the teacher who had invited him to speak. He immediately scurried down to the copy room where he made a copy for each of our employees and distributed them — cackling all the way — with this yellow stick-em attached.

This was no ordinary high school. No, no, no, no, no. It wasn’t as much a school as a warehouse where these kids were stored until their shelf lives expired. You couldn’t get on campus without passing through a metal detector.

This was the school of last resort for cold-blooded killers who hadn’t been prosecuted because they were minors when they committed their horrific crimes. For wannabe pimps looking to conscript their first drug-addled teenage girls. For local gang wannabes hoping to work their way up into membership in a Mexican cartel. For drug dealers who had been booted from their neighborhood high schools after blowing their second, third, fourth and fifth chances. For the psychotic and the neurotic, the overdosed underachievers who had been banned from ”regular” schools. For neer-do-wells of every stripe and every color.

Most of these kids had no interest in school and even less interest in the advertising yahoo standing before them. I’m going to guess that their average reading comprehension scores fell far below their grade levels, and that their IQs hovered somewhere near their body temperatures. They were like a pig in a python — they were being pushed through a system they didn’t really want to be part of.

I remembered how boring Career Day was back when I was in school. So I was working my ass off to be funny and interesting, to keep their attention, and if miracles were possible, to find the single lump of coal that could be transformed into a diamond in the middle of this open pit disaster.

Apparently, I impressed one kid, but not in a good way. The students were asked to evaluate each speaker. This is the form the kid did about me, the one Dan distributed to all our employees.

I do not dispute the kid’s evaluation. It is generally accurate. It’s true that I told him to fuck off, but a little context is necessary. This kid had been a problem since the moment he entered the classroom. He interrupted other students, made inappropriate comments, disrupted the session as much as he possibly could. He was a loud, abrasive troublemaker who sat in the back of the room making smart ass comments throughout my little talk.

Despite his annoying behavior, things were going better than I expected and I was pleased that a few students actually seemed interested. I completed my prepared comments and announced that we would use the rest of my allotted time to address any students’ questions. I saw the troublemaker waving his raised hand, but intentionally ignored him until his was the only hand still dangling in the air. As I recall, my interaction with the problem child went something like this:

Jim: Any more questions? Anyone? You in the back. You have a question?

Kid: Yeah, I have a question about marketing.

Jim: (Relieved, thinking that something I said may have actually penetrated this loser’s thick skull) Go ahead.

Kid: How do they get the cream inside the Twinkies?

Jim: (Pissed off at myself for giving this kid the benefit of the doubt) They hire a dickhead like you to blow it in. Now fuck off.

Yeah, I know. I probably shouldn’t have said it. I may have expressed myself inelegantly. I may have crossed a line. I may have expected too much of this callow youth. Jamie, the family child psychology expert, would undoubtedly have handled it better than I did. I know Dan would have.

Needless to say, I have never been invited back to Career Day in that school district. Nor has Dan. I suspect that this was a case of guilt by association and that he was also issued a districtwide super secret lifetime ban just for knowing me and asking me to substitute for him.

That being said, I’m willing to bet that this kid is now serving twenty to life in San Quentin.

If so, it ain’t Twinkies he’s now blowing.

%$&*!

One additional comment: I have no idea what ”He made me want to go to Switzerland and get pregnant” means. My presentation had included no comments about Switzerland nor pregnancy, so your guess is as good as mine. I would not be surprised if some highly-illegal yet readily-available hallucinogenic substances were involved. The really odd thing about this evaluation is that it sounds like he was actually paying attention and heard what I had to say despite his disruptive behavior.

Everyone thinks Jamie is so damn sweet. Well, I am here to tell you that she has a mean streak lurking just barely beneath the very thinnest of saccharine veneers.

She read the last blog post about doppelgängers and said, ”You left out a few.”

”What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

Damn it. I do know. The woman has access to the cardboard boxes and plastic crates in the shed and knows that I have a few additional show biz doppelgängers. Ones I’m not as eager to speak about as I was with Peter Fonda and John Lithgow.

First, here’s baby Jimmy and his doppelganger.

That is one happy baby. That being said, I did have a big ol’ Charlie Brown head when I was born. In fact, the first time my dad saw me in the hospital he said words no loving father should ever have uttered. ”God damn it, Helen, I think the kid’s a mongoloid.” Nice.

And now here’s second grade Jimmy and his doppelganger.

That is one butt ugly kid.

Jamie said, ”You should get a childhood photo of Peter Fonda and see if you looked alike as kids.” No such luck. I did. He was a particulary good-looking lad. I’m willing to bet that no one ever compared him to Howdy Doody.

Let’s do an informal poll: Which set of doppelgangers looks the most alike: Jim and Peter Fonda, Jim and John Lithgow, baby Jimmy and Charlie Brown or second-grade Jimmy and Howdy Doody? Leave your answers in the comments or email them to me.