Von Trapper Keeper: Cease and Desist

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Cease and Desist

7 comments:

grandma said...: Oh no they di'nt! !

Hmmm...
1. Maria Von Trapp is Austrian, not American.

2. "we were deeply unsettled by the obscene connection of our products to the anatomy of the courageous American heroine, Maria Von Trapp"

Did I miss something on this blog? Or should we be asking Reggie Luchetti to take his mind outta the gutter. I'm confused.; 9:07 PM
Duffless said...: No Defeat, No Surrender!; 11:35 PM
Dan Nolan said...: This is the letter that was waiting for me at my new apartment when I stopped by this afternoon to drop off a couple things and use the secure network. I didn’t know who would be writing to me at that address yet, but the postmark was from Cleveland, OH. Needless to say I was both shocked and suspicious of this letter. I got on the phone with my new roommate and he wasn’t sure, but pointed out that post-9/11, you can’t get the USPS to send letters from different postmarks. So I analyzed the letter and emailed it to my two lawyers to a. see if it was a joke from one of them, and b. see what they thought about it’s authenticity and viability. One concluded that it was fake, the other that it was real.

I was leaning fake so I decided to post it and try to flush the prankster out. If it’s not fake, I need to consider my options. My dad worked for Mead for 30 years and probably wouldn’t be too pleased to hear from his friends and co-workers that his former company and pension provider was in litigation against his son and his off-color blog. So, is it fake? Here are the things that make me think it’s a fake:

1. dated April 11th, sent to an address that it would be impossible for anyone other than my friends and family to know that I was moving to. (Not listed on the blog anywhere, not changed with the USPS yet, and all accounts list the old address)
2. stamped with a 37 cent stamp and 2 one cent stamps - not very corporate.
3. printed on dubious letterhead – like a b&w printout of an email on regular printer paper.
4. MeadWesvaco logo is pixelated as if it were copy/pasted off the internet. The pixelated logo says "MeadWestvaco", but Reggie refers to it as "MeadWestVaco" in the body of the letter. The Assistant Vice President for Legal Advocacy wouldn't make that mistake.
5. No telephone, email, or other contact information for Reggie included, which is standard operating procedure with cease and desist letters.
6. The phrasing of the following sentence: "we were deeply unsettled by the obscene connection of our products to the anatomy of the courageous American heroine, Maria Von Trapp". I just can’t believe that a lawyer for Mead would write that. Plus, there is no specific mention of MVT's anatomy. or anything obscene. (though the phrase “Maria Von Trapp’s Meadow” is certainly suggestive)
7. Google and Technorati searches for "trapper keeper" do not yield my site in the first 10 pages of searces.
8. Theres no Reginald G. Luchetti to be found in either a google search or a search of the MeadWestvaco website.
8. Many of my friends know Reggie Jackson was my hero, so that got me thinking that might be a clue.

yet, despite all this, on the strength of the Cleveland postmark, the lawyerly text (enough to dupe one of my lawyers), and the question of who would do this, I still was not 100% confident that it was fake. Convinced that my lawyers were not behind it, I put out a few feelers to the 3 next people on my shortlist: a highschool friend who was the subject of a couple of my pranks, a college friend who may have had extended family in Cleveland, and a certain clever principal, who might be flushed out via his baby’s momma. The first two feelers went nowhere, but after a couple emails of some concern to the principal’s wife, the principal came a knocking, and fessed up after a moderate demonstration of concern. It’s a fake. He had a colleague that was going to Cleveland so he took advantage of the opportunity.

And so, in honor of the best executed prank I’ve been a subject of in a long, long time, I’ll grant the good principal his wish and call him:

"the all-high-holy superb Class AAA prankster, aka, you fucker"

Well played, all-high-holy superb Class AAA prankster, aka, you fucker. And for the record, you were right about Maria Von Trapp's Meadow. It's as dirty as a Catskill Game Farm rabbit house.; 11:37 PM
Dearest Cupcake said...: Brilliant.; 1:57 PM
Dewy24 said...: This is indeed a very clever prank that I wish I had thought of. It also explains your unsolicited email asking about my Ohio relatives. I will ask you now to cease and desist implying that anyone of the Wright clan is from the shithole of Dayton.; 2:40 PM
Dan Nolan said...: Is it your suggestion that The Wright Brothers were not from Dayton? Wilbur moved there when he was a toddler and Orville was born there. Why are you denying your family lineage?; 3:02 PM
shayne said...: i cannot believe you were bested by a principal.; 5:10 PM

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