Joke’s On Me

Dear Readers,

Over the holiday weekend, a saboteur called in and changed my voicemail greeting to something rather offensive, along the lines of “uhhh…this is Jason Harper…uhh…f*ck all y’all.” I didn’t find out until someone called my boss to complain. I don’t yet know who the perp is, but once I find out and exact my revenge, he or she will have a new outlook on life, believe you me. In the meantime, I’m doing a bit of damage control, emailing people in the industry to apologize if they heard the message, which, by the way, was really stupid-sounding. I mean, the culprit could have at least done me the service of not sounding like a concussed drunk. But I suppose one cannot chose the exact method by which one is screwed.

I’m already receiving sympathetic calls and emails from publicists and friends. In fact, I just got a call from Maria Ferrero at Adrenaline PR, a firm that promotes metal bands. She and I had a laugh because, not long ago, I sent an email to some other music editors in the Village Voice network stating that I no longer had the will to answer calls from the industrious Adrenaline because they were calling, like, every day. That email got forwarded to Maria, who then contacted me to give me a bit of friendly what-for. So, to her, it’s just deserts that this happened to me, but she’s still been great and sympathetic. After all, the unleashing of bad karma — of which I’ve built up plenty of late, as anyone who reads this blog knows — can sure be a bitch.

But I guess the ultimate result is that while some people were offended and others may be rejoicing at my misfortune, this little prank is affording me the opportunity to get closer to people in my vast network. Sometimes it’s good to be brought down a couple notches.