Caution, dear readers, this column does not exist. That’s because, according to the Los Angeles Times, I do not exist.
This all happened about a week or so ago when the Times did a huge spread on my dad, Sy Devore, The Man Who Dressed The Rat Pack.
Ahhhh, those were the days. Uncle Sammy, Uncle Dean and Uncle Frank would spend Sundays at the house, talkin’ tough guy talk or yuckin’ it up about broads and booze. I was, of course, a little young for Jim Beam and Jack Daniels, but it was exciting all the same. In those finger-snapping “Come Fly With Me” days, the air was rarefied and they were all soooo cool-especially Frank.
The Times interviewed my cousin Martie, and mentioned Sy Devore’s surviving family members-my mom and my sister, Lisa. Hey, wait a minute! What about meeeeee?
I spent the remainder of the day fielding phone calls from flabbergasted folk asking, “What’s up with the Times?” I didn’t know what to say. I was a local news anchor. I do a television show. I write a column in The Malibu Times. I can’t be that hard to find. Hmmmmm, maybe it’s my tricky last name that threw them off.
At the urging of my friend, David, I contacted the Los Angeles Times to point out the writer’s oversight. A few days later, I received a phone call from an editor called Nancy Yoshihara. She assured me that the writer, Michael Quintanilla, is very thorough and unlikely to make such a mistake.
“If he’s so thorough,” I pouted in the voice of a petulant 4-year-old, “why did he forget about meeeeee?”
I was told, according to the Los Angeles Times database, I did not exist. “Well, what about the photo you ran of me sitting on Ringo Starr’s lap?” I whined. “The one that said Sy Devore’s little girl meets the Beatles?” That, I was told, was a photo-and photos don’t count. Well, even then, I was identified in newspapers across the country as little “Kini” Devore.
Gosh, after 30-odd years, the state of fact checking remains, if nothing else, “consistent.”
So, as the New Year approaches, the Los Angeles Times has seriously sent me in search of myself. It gives new meaning to what Uncle Sammy used to say-in this case-I’ve got to be me.
But what if I’m not?
Do I have to pay my MasterCard bill? Do I care about life’s great, unanswered questions? Does it really matter if I shave my legs?
To be or not to be?
According to the Los Angeles Times, there is no … me.
Who you be, is anyone’s guess.
Why can’t this happen with the IRS?