My New Favorite Person

I got this email the other day. Man, this dude is easy to please. I think this guy had been busting my chops lately via email, then,. I go and drop a "penultimate" bomb in a Mark Brunell story the other day, and he's my biggest fan. If only I'd known sooner.

Okay, so here's the email, verbatim:

Mr. La Canfora,

Perhaps about 2 weeks ago I wrote you about your mis-conjugation of the present perfect tense, thinking that maybe today's writers were more worried about the razzle dazzle storyline than the simplistic beauty of basic sentence structures. However, despite reading your work every day in the post, it was Sunday's "2 Minute Warning" article in which my opinion of you changed forever. In the 7th to last paragraph, when describing Mark Brunell's injury in the Giants game, you throw out what could be the greatest word of all time. PENULTIMATE! Wow. The excaliber of the English language. The John Lennon of words. Vocabulary's George Clinton. You get the point. Sir, I had no right to criticize your butchering of the English language. If you can work penultimate into any article, you have mastered English. You can write the same way Stuart Scott talks for all I care, you are the master! You could even fit in with your British contemporaries over there covering the EPL. Sir, you bow down to no one. But if it is possible, could you work penultimate (sounds so romantic) into another story this week? It may sound crazy, but that word could define who you are as a writer. Thank you, and keep writing with your fancy toungue!

A Sir Jason La Canfora fan,
Mike from Herndon, VA

What do you think he'd do if I worked "fortnight" into a story? How many Olde English words can one man stuff into the average football story? (How many cans of Olde English can a man drink and still write a coherent story on any topic? But I digress).

So at this point, I'm taking requests. Throw out an obscure word, and then a matching story idea, and I'll try to accommodate (let's keep it semi-clean and at least somewhat feasible). It's like playing reverse mad libs! Then, when I actually pull it off (assuming my editor Cindy doesn't work secretly behind my back to kill all such references before they get into print), the first person to point it out gets a prize. So bring on the suggestions.

By Jason La Canfora |  September 6, 2006; 4:00 PM ET
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