KEYS TO CELEBRITY

It’s time for Jose Melendez’s KEYS TO CELEBRITY.

1. Now that Jose is a celebrity, having received a link on ESPN.com’s Page 2 (Note: Acronym for "Entertainment!!!! Sports programming? Nah.") by arch enemy and secret friend Eric Kneel, a lot of people have asked "Jose, now that you’re a celebrity will you remember the little people who made you?" (Note: For those of you just stumbling across this page, a look at the August archives will give you the why and how of Jose Melendez’s rise to superstardom and complete loss of humility.)

This is a great question, and deserves a great answer. Perhaps Jose’s publicist will address it. No, Jose is just kidding,… he fired his publicist after she failed to call him with news of the link. But seriously, who are you to question the great Jose Melendez? Do you think you’re Walter Cronkite? Or perhaps Jim Lehrer? (Note: Yes, Jose is about to watch the debate.) Well, you are nothing but a Pat O’Brien, at best. (Note: Jose actually has no opinion of Pat O’Brien, as he does not watch schlocky entertainment gossip shows, but celebrities seem to care a great deal about him, and perhaps as a celebrity, Jose should too.) If Jose wasn’t so full of foie gras, caviar and truffles prepared by his personal iron chef, he would get up and give you a thrashing. Now crawl out of Jose’s sight on your knees backwards and be thankful that Jose doesn’t call the local constabulary or better yet the sanitation department.

No, no, relax. Jose is just kidding. He loves the little people, or "marks" as he affectionately calls them. But seriously, who are you and how dare you look directly at Jose.

2. The weird thing about being a celebrity is that Jose can’t go anywhere without being recognized now. For instance, Jose was in Pittsfield, MA, the birthplace of baseball , for a meeting today, and before he’d walked in the front door, Jose had probably signed 5,000 autographs, and had to leave a crowd of about 3,000 waiting, many of them children with debilitating diseases. Now all of these people are going to start calling sports radio (Note: Or blogger radio, whatever people use) and saying "You know what? Jose Melendez is such an *sshole. I waited like 45 minutes to meet him and then he wouldn’t even acknowledge my nine year old kid? What kind of person won’t sign an autograph for a kid?"

In keeping with our President’s doctrine of preemption, Jose offers the following preemptive riposte. "Why should Jose sign your freakin’ KEYS T-shirt? So you can go sell it on Ebay for $500, so Jose can make you money and you can tell all of your friends how you swindled Jose Melendez? All Jose has ever done is entertain you for free, and you keep taking and taking and taking. You bother Jose in restaurants; you approach him at the opera; you harass him when he is trying to do something as simple and personal as shoot an advertisement for TGI Friday’s. Why don’t you ever ask "What can I do for Jose?" rather than "What can Jose do for me?" You know what you can do for Jose? You can get him some mohntorte and several gold bars. Is that so much to ask? Now out of Jose’s way, he’s trying to get to his Bentley (Note: or possibly to Bentley college in Waltham, it gets confusing.)

3. In all seriousness, Jose’s biggest fear is that as he becomes more and more prominent, the real Jose Melendez wherever he is, will emerge from hiding, overcome the shame of blowing the 1994 World series in a Sports Illustrated fiction piece, find out that someone is posing as him and file a lawsuit.

Jose’s original theory was that this would be a "good problem," like having six quality starting pitchers or three versions of London Calling. Jose figured that if it ever got to the point that he was sued, he’d already be such a smashing success that it wouldn’t matter. But if someone were to sue Jose right now… well…let’s put it this way…Jose would have to sell about 1,500,000 additional T-shirts before he could hire Johnny Cochran or Alan Derschowitz or David Souter or Matlock or whoever to defend him in a suit over royalties. So Jose Melendez the pitcher if you’re out there, know this. The name Jose Melendez was completely uninspired by you and has nothing to do with the fact that Jose was crushed when the Red Sox traded Phil Plantier for you. As best Jose knows, there is not and never was a pitcher named Jose Melendez. Jose came up with the name because it was a mellifluous group of syllables; as a tribute to his friends Jose, Mel and Dez; or with the help of the "Wu Tang name generator." Crap…is ODB going to sue Jose now?

I’m…do you know who I am? I’m Jose Freaking Melendez, and those are my KEYS TO CELEBRITY.