The Ghost of Dom Deluise

It was about six years ago, almost to this very day, when after a night of dinner and wine and lovely company, we decided to make a weiji board and get down to some strange business.

After having written out all the letters, written in little squares that said "Yes" and "No", we realized there were two letter "P"s on the weiji board, which might have been what got our summoning off to such a rocky start.

The overhead lights crackled with electricity as my friends and I fought to put our hands on an old jelly jar lid, which was moving around the board in a hunt for Red October, or a friendly peanut butter lid to pal around with--whichever came first.

"Whose spirit are we going to conjure?" someone asked, "And what shall we ask them?"

Almost as if possessed, and in a low and haunting whisper, I answered for us all, "We would like to speak to the ghost of Dom Deluise...and we are going to ask him which was his favorite Cannonball Run...We are going to ask him what it was like to work with Burt Reynolds...We are going to question, 'Are Lonnie Anderson's breasts real, Dom?--Tell us, for we MUST KNOW!' We are going to see if he still gets hungry from the Great Beyond, and we are going to try to find out what his favorite kind of sandwich is....Now hush!"

As the jelly lid whizzed around from one letter to another, spelling out crazy bullshit things we cried, "What are you trying to tell us Dom? What is it that you're struggling to say?"

Suddenly, in a dazzling feat of magic and pseudo-science, The Ghost of Dom Deluise began to speak through me...And out of my mouth, Dom said in a painful, droning wail, "Givvve meee a sandwiccchhhh... Givvve MEEE A SANDWICHHHH! GIMME A SANDWICH!!!! GIMME A SANDWICH!"

To make things easier on the poor fella we made another short-answer box next to the ones saying "Yes" and "No" that simply said, "Gimme a Sammich". The lid kept moving over to this spot--Eerie stuff!

We figured out all sorts of things that night. We moved through time and space to solve ancient riddles, etcetera.

CUT TO:

Having forgotten all about that night's dark work, I was sitting at my office desk maybe two or three days later, probably typing up a memo to the Board of Trustees or some such thing...Out of nowhere every one of the people who had been at the seance for The Ghost of Dom Deluise began calling and emailing me--all within the course of about five minutes.

Apparently some one had realized that Dom Deluise wasn't actually dead and had called or emailed the rest of the party to alert them to my 'fraud'.

I'm not sure why, but everyone decided that they felt a little gypped, a little cheated--they had seen the man behind the curtain and it was me. They all wanted to know why? Why had I done it? Had I known he wasn't dead yet? What was I thinking?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I told everyone. Right. Dom Deluise is not fucking dead, but I had some serious questions for him, we all did, and I didn't have his phone number.

Then I sang a teary-eyed and slowed-down rendition of That's Entertainment.

Dom Deluise, You Big Happy Fella, You'll be missed!
Happy Cinco De Mayo, Dom. Valla Con Huevos.