I Met John Scalvi!

Posted on January 18, 2008    Posted by      308 Comments

There was a printer’s error involving the convention ribbons I’m giving out to people here at the ConFusion science fiction convention (which, for those of you who are not geeks, are ribbons that con-goers can attach to their convention badges). Thus:

Excellent. I put “John Scalvi” into Google, to see what would happen: First, Google asked “Did you mean John Scalzi,” which is nice little ego boost (hey! Google knows me!), and then all the references were to me, with my name misspelled. Which I don’t think is any sort of fun at all.

So, for today’s fiddly time-waster while I’m away from my computer: Let’s create John Scalvi! In the comments, write the following: “I met John Scalvi…” plus some interesting fact, legend or assertion you wish to communicate about the man. For example:

I met John Scalvi. He smells of cheese.
I met John Scalvi. He has arm freckles that resemble the constellation Cassiopeia.
I met John Scalvi. I heard he once ate a live toad.
I met John Scalvi. He has mystical powers over pillbugs.
I met John Scalvi. We fought who made better baked ziti: Mario Batali or Martin Heiddeger.

Don’t feel you must constrain yourself by physics, logic or by anything else anyone else has written about the man, including me.

So: Have you met John Scalvi? What can you tell me about him?

Category: Uncategorized    

308 Comments on “I Met John Scalvi!”

  1. P.S.: Yes, the convention is getting me replacement ribbons, and yes, I’m still going to give the “I met John Scalvi” ribbons away, because now they’re collector’s items.

  4. Pray you never meet John Scalvi. If you’re balding, he’ll sniff you. If you’re bald, he’ll bite you!

  5. I met John Scalvi, known to his friends as “the Scalper.” He reminisced about his past lives and wives as he combed his hair with a deer-skinner knife. He sometimes snores when he’s wide awake, but you wouldn’t want to bring that to his attention.

  6. I met John Scalvi. I know John Scalvi. John Scalvi is a friend of mine. You, sir, are no John Scalvi.

    (somebody had to go there)

  7. Oh yeah, John Scalvi. I went to college with him. We once split a case of lukewarm Miller Genuine Draft, then that bastard dared me to swim across an icy creek (IIRC it was for the last beer, which he drank while I was swimming). Afterwards we spent three hours debating which version of Magma’s Kohntarkosz is the definitive one. I don’t believe we ever resolved that one.

  8. I met John Scalvi. He cured my athlete’s foot with the mystical healing power that emanates from his palms. His hairy, hairy palms.

    Also he has a trained capybara, which baked the most mouth-wateringly perfect banoffee pie I’ve ever tasted, but refused to reveal its secret recipe and only bit me on the arm when I asked.

  10. I didn’t met John Scalvi. He’s in witness protection and that wasn’t him that I was introduced to at Starbucks (with his laptop).

  11. I met John Scalvi. He holds the distinction of being the first man booted from the US Air Guitar Championships for smashing a competitor in the head with his imaginary axe.

  12. I met John Scalvi. I would sooner carpool from Reno to Hoboken in a three-speed Nash with a pack of incontinent porcupines than repeat the experience.

  13. I met John Scalvi. The barbed wire kept him and his tarantula-poodle away from my rainbow pony. The armadillo wasn’t so lucky.

  14. Hey, John Scalvi is said to have discovered Estotiland, an imaginary tract of land near the Arctic Circle in North America!

    (No, really! It’s in the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, in the entry for “Estotiland”, on page 427. It’s apparently mentioned in “Paradise Lost”. Google Books turned it up)

  16. I knew of a guy named John Scalvi, but was never introduced to him, because he wouldn’t be caught dead in the geek circles at the university.

    He died demonstrating his masculine prowess doing pushups in the middle of the street after downing significant quantities of alchohol at a Frat party.

  17. I met John Scalvi, it was a Friday afternoon. He was a genial sort of fellow despite the rain that was falling at the time. He was at the corner of West in 25th in front of the Carhard Building trying to hail a cab. I had just come to the same corner as I walked across town. I offered him my umbrella since he was looking quite wet. He politely declined saying that he couldn’t possibly take an umbrella from a beautiful young woman such as myself. I insisted that it was a large umbrella and two could fit under it together. I further explained that since I had a rain coat and he did not that it seemed to me to only be the kindly thing to do after all.

    He finally accepted and we chatted a moment, which his how I found out has name, that I was in fact meeting the John Scalvi. John Being who he is I had only wished that I had been a bit better dressed that day. That I had worn the red mini skirt instead of long floral print that I had on, but what was done was done. I was sure that being who he was he had higher concerns than how I was dressed in any case. Still in meeting such an admirable man I did wish I might have made a better impression. Perhaps I might have found work through him had I been presented better.

    We stood on the corner trying to hail a cab together for him and having no luck. Another case perhaps where the red Mini might have been useful? Eventually a cab did stop. Upon opening the door we were asaulted with a wave of rastafarian music, not so unusual in the city, but curious given the obvious Middle Eastern look about the cabby.

    John insisted that we share the cab, however I begged off saying that I was practically where I had been going on my walk. He thanked me for the loan of the dry space under the umbrella for a time and handed me his card, maybe I would get work after all. With that he closed the door and the cab drove off down the street.

    A few days later I used the number on the card and called John. To my surprise he answered the phone himself. I explained to him who I was and that I needed work. He remembered me, and asked a single question “How do you look in a Mini or even without a skirt all?”

    And that’s how I got my job as centerfold in “Hot n’ Hard” magazine owned by John Scalvi.

  18. I never met John Scalvi but he likes cats and dogs and so do I, so he will probably see the humor in the following quote!!

    Women and cats will do as they please, and
    men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
    -Robert A. Heinlein

     

  19. Scalvi…Scalvi…Oh yeah, that guy! He’s kinda short. And I can’t imagine where a man finds a brand new pair of white and blue Adidas ROMs these days. And that blue track suit with the yellow stripes? What, does the man have a thirty year old stash of this stuff?

  20. According to the Mechanical Contrivium:
    1. If you lick John Scalvi ten times, you will consume one calorie!
    2. If the annual Australian John Scalvi crop was laid end to end, it would stretch around the world seven times!
    3. If you put a drop of liquor on John Scalvi, he will go mad and sting himself to death!
    4. A bride should wear something old, something new, something borrowed, and John Scalvi!
    5. John Scalvi has a bifurcated penis.
    6. If you toss John Scalvi 10000 times, he will not land heads 5000 times, but more like 4950, because his head weighs more and thus ends up on the bottom.
    7. Europe is the only continent that lacks John Scalvi.
    8. John Scalvi is black with white stripes, not white with black stripes.
    9. In the kingdom of Bhutan, all citizens officially become John Scalvi on New Year’s Day!
    10. Scientists have discovered that John Scalvi can smell the presence of autism in children!

  21. I had a crush on John Scalvi. It was Grade 3 and he sat behind me in class. He used to pull my hair and throw spitballs at me. He had an awesome knack for armpit farts.

  22. I met John Scalvi. He was never the same after that teleporter incident involving the T-Rex. Those tiny little arms were hard to ignore, but with the tail he had perfect balance anywhere.

  23. “the actual reference shows it with an “e” and an umlaut.”

    Huh. So it does. How is an “e” with an umlaut supposed to be pronounced, anyway?

    “I met John Scalvi. He is the only person I know who can pronounce umlauts.”

  26. I met John Scalvi. It was at the Whiskey A Go-Go in LA. I was actually having a beer with Andy Dick when he came running up to invite us into the back room to hang out with the band that was playing that night (he and Andy were still friends at the time). Well, long story short the female singer that I was attracted to turned out to be a skinny guy in drag, and that’s just not my thing. I never forgave John Scalvi for not telling me.

  27. I met John Scalvi in the hotel hallway, just as he was coming from a meeting with his editor. He gave me an advance reading copy of his new book, The Dreaming Android.

  29. I met John Scalvi. I heard that the Writer’s Strike is crippling the porn industry and it’s all John Scalvi’s fault.

  30. I met John Scalvi, and was lucky to escape alive. He’s wanted in five systems for slaying 21 people with a cheese grater and dehydrated brine shrimp.

  31. I met John Scalvi. He was living under an underpass in Chicago, smelling of pork, beans and Thunderbird. He told me he used to be in the stock market, then lost everything after invested it all pork bellies because he saw people taping bacon to their cats on the internet and figured it would be the next craze. He was wrong. Then he asked me for a dollar, and when I refused, he cracked me in the skull with his bindle and stole my shoes.

  33. I met John Scalvi. Now I am cursed to wander the lands under these strange stars and tell my tale to all who would listen. Woe! Woe unto all who meet John Scalvi!

  40. I’ve, like, met John Scalvi. He founded and runs that Body Electric exhibit that’s currently touring. You know, the one where they reanimate the dead bodies, like, you know, using electrical current for fun and profit. Um, there like may be some alchemy involved as well. He’s kind of a shifty character, so it’s like, um, kind of hard to know.

  42. Saw John Scalvi just once, the day he died. Seven gunshots to the back. Worst case of suicide I’d ever seen.

  44. I didn’t meet John Scalvi.

    John Scalvi met me. He’s likely writing about the experience in the comments of a blog post titled “I Met Simon Owens!”

  47. I’ve never met John Scalvi, but I know him well enough. All that time, all the effort. All the money I farted away in vain. Just trying to reach the thirteenth flatus where finally I would be at peace. Damn you Scalvi and your Cult of Flatulentolgy, my colon may never be the same.

  48. Scalvi? What can I say? What I remember most is the amazing sense of inner peace that shown on his face as he methodically garroted those platypuses. He was clearly on a holy mission for some dark god, and divine grace was glowing from is (otherwise kind of gnarly) pores.

  49. I met John Scalvi. He enjoys a pint of Guinness, but don’t buy him a second one unless you are prepared to pick up the pieces.

  52. I met John Scalvi. He was drinking half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon at the time.

  56. I met John Scalvi. His wrath was terrible as he leveled the medieval village with his awsome power of shooting boiling Coke Zero from his fingertips. Oh yeah, and he can time travel too, hence the medieval village. He never said exactly why he did it. He just mumbled something about Cyberdine and walked away.

  57. I met John Scalvi in a gay bar (Charlie’s) in Denver back in the 90s. He was singing karaoke. Badly. But his cowboy hat was excellent.

  59. I’ve seen John Scalvi, well parts of him anyway, he was hidden behind all that cat hair, except his head. It was still just a shiney as can be, even after he went to Lordes for a soak. I believe it was his animal mag…na…tiz…um that caused this.

  60. I knew John Scalvi. And he was doing just fine until this other fellow ruined his name on the intertubes with all these outlandish lies.

  62. I met John Scalvi. I walked into the bathroom of a Flying J truck stop in Haubstadt. I pulled up to a urinal and there’s this guy next to me. He says, “This is John Scalvi.” I said, “Uh, hi.” He said, “I’m running late and I need to fix my truck. Can you get me $1000?” I said, “What? I don’t even know you!”

    He turned to look at me and said, “I’m talking on my bluetooth, jerko.”

    Jerko. I never forgave him for that.

  64. I constructed a quantum portal and nipped over to an adjacent universe and met John Scalvi – he’d just sold the film rights to his book ‘The Last Baloney’, a moving and imaginative tale of interstellar sausage trading. Actually he tried to cast me in the film but I had to pass since my dimensional superposition was unstable. Nice fella though, very tall, lots of gravitas (cheap shoes, mind).

  66. I know John Scalvi. I think he wrote “Old Man’s Car”, “The Ghost Capades”, and “The Lust Colony”, among other questionable pieces of literature.

  68. I met John Scalvi in a dream last night. He brought a carful of cockroaches and rabbit pellets and was called Eric by my friend.

  69. I met John Scalvi. His hobby is throwing pennies off of tall buildings. One time, he conceived a child using only toothpicks, wood glue, and the power of love. If you throw John Scalvi against the wall, he will stick to it. Rumor has it he was born on the peak of Olympus Mons on Mars. He is seventeen feet tall and his sweat is a mild analgesic. John Scalvi is my hero.

  71. I met John Scalvi (real name Iononnes Scalvius) in BC XLIX, right after he crossed the Rubicon with Caesar and blogged it for The Times New Roman.

    (it was the ‘v’ that did it)

  72. I met John Scalvi. If you could call it a meeting- one day, he rode into the town, looked around, took a drink, shaved, and rode away again. Ever since that day, the town has been afflicted with mysterious flatulence problems…

  75. I met John Scalvi. In a brightly lit cave in the mountains behind Ohio. His faithful dromedary on his left, the deadly Temp Cat on his right. The fabulous Leacock Rhinoceros Feather extended halfway into the air from brim of his horsefeather cap. He smiled and told me to get out. I did.

  76. Forget John Scalvi; he’s nothing. The one you should be worrying about is John Scurvy, meanest pirate ever to sail the seven seas.

  78. I met John Scalvi. I think he’s a spy.

    There was that time in Rome, when he disappeared for four days and showed up at my door covered in blood and hysterical. That time he claimed to have been tortured by Ukrainian police. And all those beautiful women- how could a man get such women? He must be a spy.

    I met John Scalvi. And he must be stopped.

  80. I met John Scalvi. If you ever have the opportunity to meet him, ask him to lie down on the ground and then jump over him. It’s good luck.

  82. I met John Scalvi. No, I’m not going to tell you how to get a hold of him. You don’t want to know this guy. Ask him for one favor and you owe the guy for as long as he wants you to owe him. And the things he’ll ask you to do to pay off your “debt”? Yeah, you don’t want to know. Find another guy to do the job. Scalvi’s price is too high. Six years later and I’m still paying for directions to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts. Shoulda asked for a Starbucks, I guess…..

  84. I met John Scalvi.

    I was on my way to vote in the 2004 presidential election and saw him wearing a Howard Dean t-shirt, weeping by the door leading to the polling place.

    I would have given him a dollar, but he probably would have just used it for drugs

  86. I met John Scalvi. I’d rather not talk about it. The memory is just too painful. (whimper).

  87. (Interestingly, i went and plugged “John Scalvi” into google. Among other things, I got snippets from this thread! They catch this stuff quick!)

  89. I met John Scalvi. He was a small man with a twitchy nature about him, and he smelled of the dirty roads of everywhere like a bucket of old motor oil. The lump in his overcoat betrayed a pistol, and from the crazed look in his eyes, I could see he was a man who never paid the unfortunate prostitutes who serviced him.

    He spoke loudly of missions and madness, and as he sat beside me ordering water and applesauce, I knew this was a man too far gone to enjoy the many advances of today’s psycho-pharmacological industry.

    John Scalvi was a madman who screamed over and over, “The cake is a lie,” as he pistol-whipped me into a two-week slumber in a hospital bed.

    Oh yes. I’ve met John Scalvi, and he’s a crazy bastard.

  93. John Scalvi. John Scalvi. John Scalvi. The name, hideous to my ears, and yet still I hear it, even when I lay my head down to a restless night and terrible dreams. We met, I believe, in the year 18__, when we were both medical students in Austria.

    I should tell you: I do not come from a family of means, and what little I have I have earned through hard work and dilligent application. My father was a cobbler who specialized in small wooden shoes for cats and my mother sewed pies and sold them in the streets of the city of my birth. We were poor, but happy, and my parents were able to put some small money away for my education, vowing that I would never be arrested for attempting to shod a cat.

    Scalvi, my nemesis, my bête noire, my loathsome doppelgänger, was my opposite in almost every respect. His father was an earl, or perhaps a duchess in the American colonies, and Scalvi was only forced to learn a trade because of some unspeakable scandal in his youth involving two goats and half a hock of ham.

    I remember our first meeting. I had dropped a piano on my foot and was endeavoring to get it off with a set of pliers and a ball of twine I always carried in my pocket.

    ‘Here, let me help you with that,’ he said, and smiled that wretched, loathsome, vile, noxious smile that I learned to loathe with an unspeakable fierceness in my bosom. I knew, then, that we were to be enemies, and that my peculiar obsession with and hatred for John Scalvi would ultimately result in a peculiar and unforgettable gothic tale of psychological horror and angst of an appropriate length for publication in the Southern Literary Messenger , Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine or some similar periodical receptive to submissions of grueling instant classics of suspense fiction. If you would be interested in hearing more about the depths of my terrible fascination with Mr. Scalvi and the unpleasant end of our acquaintance, please contact my cousin wife at my Baltimore residence and she will forward your query to the appropriate pub, tavern or dive.

    Sincerely yrs., etc.

  94. Do you know John Scalvi?
    John Scalvi?
    John Scalvi!
    Yes, I know John Scalvi
    He lives on Drury Lane.

  99. A writer whose name was John Scalvi
    Got arested while visiting Calvi
    The judge said with a smile
    “Don’t come back for a while
    try hanging around in Amalfi”

  101. I met John Scalvi. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you, too, can hire John Scalvi.

  104. I met John Scalvi. Worse rotten sock breath on the planet, lemme tell you. A sequoia is permanently bowed up north after he walked past it during a camping trip a couple years back.

  105. I met John Scalvi. He let Chuck Norris live, he taught Jack Bauer everything he knows (but not everything Scalvi knows, less the fool him), and he did not have sexual relations with that woman.

  106. I met John Scalvi. For some unfathomable reason, he kept going on about some little coffee shop in Manhattan. And gloves… what was with the fixation about cashmere gloves?!

  110. I met John Scalvi. He was sitting next to me, in an empty bar on a stretch of road along Route 66.

    Kept ordering shot after shot of something that looked like anti-freeze, and as he got hammered, he began to tell me horrible tales of piracy & pillaging on the seas along the Southern US Coast in the 1700s. He claimed he was Blackbeard, doomed to live forever for some offense or another, and angrily demanded I buy him rum. As the shouts for “More Ale!” and whores grew louder, the owner sighed heavily and tossed Scalvi out.

    I ignored the pile of doubloons he left as payment.

  112. I met John Scalvi – I was hitching across Nevada with a stripper I picked up in Reno (Ms Louisiana Purchess, If you please) when he pulled up his eighteen-wheeler semi’ and had us hop on up.

    He and I discussed the existential wilderness of his life while Louisiana cradled her head on my shoulder and sang, soft and low into the night-breeze as it buffeted at the open window. The Peterbilt rumbled under the stars, the highway unfolding like a extended, pretentious metaphor towards an unguessable horizon.

    Later, Scalzi made an improper suggestion about my companion. I told him to drop that shit and he pulled a 45. We wrestled briefly over the controls, and the big rig slewed off the blacktop, jacknifed through a roadside diner, double-rolled into the sage-brush. I heard the wheels spinning down, saw blood across the star-fractured windshield, felt a sluggish trickle of my own.

    The girl was dead. Nineteen, stone out of luck. Scalzi I staked out in a sink hole, not but half concious – kicked him a few broken ribs. I heard he made it.

    I’ve still got the 45.

  113. I met John Scalvi, he had a Chinese menu in his hand, walkin’ through the streets of Soho in the rain. He was lookin for the place called Lee Ho Fooks — was gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein.

  114. I met John Scalvi. Met – v. [met] 5. to beat a person or animal about the head and genitals for the purpose of extracting and ritualistically snorting their tears due to a misguided belief that they cure alcoholism.

  116. I met John Scalvi in Nantucket;
    he’d a ____ so long he could ____ it.
    He said with a grin, as he wiped off his ____;
    If his ____ were a ____ he would ____ it.

  118. I met John Scalvi. I was in a terrible car accident, lying in a pool of blood and gasoline with a VW Bus on top of my legs, crushing the bones to dust.

    Scalvi walked by and saw me there. He ran over and lifted the bus off of me with his bare hands! Then he put me over his shoulder and carried me to the emergency room.

    When they told me my legs were irreparable and I’d never walk again, John Scalvi said: “Give him my legs!”

    The surgeon objected, but Scalvi would have none of it. He grabbed a near by surgical saw, chopped off his own legs, and shouted for a nurse to bring two buckets of ice!

    “Oh Mr. Scalvi, how can I ever thank you?” I said.

    “Think nothing of it friend. Just doing my part,” he said.

    Then he winked, and walked out of the room on his hands.

    I never saw him again, but I make sure to clip his toenails every day, and only wear the best pants and shoes money can buy.

  120. I met John Scalvi. He made a sandwich for me, which was awesome, but there was a hair in it, which was less awesome. I ended up complaining to the manager and getting a coupon for a free drink.

  121. I met John Scalvi. He had hair like David Coverdale’s and was muttering incomprehensibly to himself.

  124. I met John Scalvi today. Although I asked him to slide down my rainbow and into my cellar door, he was seriously not interested in becoming my friend forevermore.

    Bastard.

  125. I met John Scalvi. We were stranded in an airport together for six hours (I was headed for London, he for Athens) and he told me all about his Greek and Roman heritage, while earnestly peddling the idea that vomitoriums should never have faded from the architectural and cultural scene. We ended up splitting a venti skinny extra-hot triple-mocha chai latte and something that purported to be a “hot dog”. I like John Scalvi. I hope we meet again.

  126. John Scalvi was my cell mate. Pray you never meet him. It took me years of therapy to get over the things the man did to me with his left big toe. I didn’t even know a toe could bend like that.

  127. So there I was…Just got into JFK in NYC. The jet lag was running thick in my head and it was all I was not looking forward to the long line to clear customs. I was tired and rubbing my eyes as I approached the customs station. And when I finally made eye contact with the Customs agent, I noticed his name badge..”John Scalvi”. He checked and stamped my U.S. passport and welcomed me back to the U.S. It was truly a moment to remember…Yes. I can honestly say. I met the REAL ORIGINAL John Scalvi.

  128. I met John Scalvi. I was excited to meet him because I had read his dissertation on the phylogenesis of modern Megalonychidae, and I wanted to quiz him on certain . . . aspects of his research that I saw as questionable. To put it another way, I had become obsessed with a central question — “But who would *do* that to sloths, even in the name of research?” — and I wanted to give him a beatdown, whetherpsychological, physical, or in terms of his professional reputation, that he wouldn’t soon forget.

    Anyhoo, this was at the annual convocation of the Organization of Ranking Geniuses of the American Society of Mammalian Zoologists, which was in Boise that year. You can imagine that Scalvi was treated as a rock star, even in that august company. And given the posse of hangers-on he kept around him all the time, I had to be very cool playing my hand. (Have you ever seen Fitzgibbons, the paleontologist from Stanford? That guy could start on an NFL offensive line tomorrow. But a *total* Scalvi sychophant.) So I attended Scalvi’s sessions, edged closer to him at the white-wine receptions in the evening, that sort of thing. You know how that meeting devolves into debauch over the course of five days, so I figured if I stayed sober, I’d have my chance eventually.

    Well, it got to be the last night, which normally would be ill-attended, what with people heading back to their home institutions and all, except that Scalvi was scheduled to give the big wrap-up lecture the next morning, so of course *nobody* was leaving early. Around one o’clock in the morning, we were all hanging out in probably the only cool club in Boise. I mean, you’d have thought it was CBGB twenty years back, it was rocking so hard. I felt like I stood out in my glen plaid jacket, but then again there were quite a few academics wedged in with the Boise State kids.

    Stone Temple Pilot was playing (that tells you how long ago this was) and the crowd was insane. The band was insane. Scalvi was lapping it up and dancing like a young Mick Jagger. Sweat had plastered that trademark black silk shirt to him, which tended to remind me that the guy may dance like Mick, but he’s built (and, by reputation anyway, fights) like Bruce Lee in his prime. He’d been ducking out a side door at intervals all night, each time with a different B.S.U. coed. Who knows what went on out there, but the girls were all smiles and blushes when they walked back in.

    One a.m. rolls around, and Scott Weiland hollers, “The cops will shut this thing down at two o’clock whether we like it or not!” The crowd boos. Weiland comes back with, “That means we only have ONE HOUR to rock it like it NEEDS rocking.” Big cheers. Then Weiland points into the crowd, right at Scalvi, and says, “It’s time, John. Bring it on!”

    More cheers all around, but Scalvi’s putting up his hands and shaking his head and grinning, like he’s saying, “No, no, I couldn’t possibly.” (He wadesneck-deep in false modesty at all times.) But then the chants start, “SCAL-VI … SCAL-VI … SCAL-VI,” and he finally jumps up onto the stage. Everybody’s going crazy, but Scalvi’s just smiling like he owns the place while he straps on the Fender.

    Un. Be. Lievable. How many times have you heard “Back in Black”? Hundreds? You’ve NEVER heard it like this, and I don’t care if you were in Sydney in 1981. This was like if Prince and Jimmy Page spawned an unholy lovechild possessed by the demon spirit of Jimi Hendrix, with Stevie Ray for its fairy godfather. Swampy. Seamy. Like Old Scratch walking around bare-ass naked with the full package out there for everybody to gaze upon. GNASTY in the extreme, and unbeLIEVably fast. Joe Satriani’s never played that fast. Dick Dale weeps at his inability to play that fast.

    Right then I gave up on my quest. I gave up before Scalvi and the band went into the whole Blind Willie McTell raunchfest, which sounded like weapons-grade versions of The Who and Metallica waging a battle of the bands live at Gomorrah on Armageddon’s Eve. I gave up at that moment because at that moment I realized that the cosmos was aligned in John Scalvi’s favor, and I would never, ever stand a chance against that kind of evil.

    I hate that bastard.

  130. I met John Scalvi on a train from Marrakesh. He was slumming in the third-class car, amusing the locals with tales in an odd mix of French and Arabic while making Indian chai on a portable camp stove — the children couldn’t take their eyes off him because every now and then he would reach a hand behind a child’s ear and produce a perfectly shelled walnut or a sweet wrapped in waxed paper. He later told me, while he was smoking these disgusting cheap Turkish cigarettes in the vestibule between cars, that he was on the run after having wandered into Reno the week before and killed a man just because he could. I never saw John Salvi again, but the newspapers reported a large gold heist in Algiers two days after that train ride, so you can put two and two together yourself.

    True story.

    Dr. Phil

  132. John Scalvi sat beside me on a flight to Sweden once. When he breathed, his nose whistled, and when I began to puke from the dizzing confusion of his incessant, mousy-voice punctuated by the odd nasal chirp, John Scalvi stole my peanuts.

    There I sat for ten hours with my head in a paper bag and John Scalvi, chattering constantly, while happily eating my nuts and mocking me with his wretched, ceaselessly squeaking nose. By the time we landed in Stockholm, the urge to jab the sharp end of a broken bottle of miniature whiskey into my ears overwhelmed me.

  133. I met John Scalvi. He knocked up my girlfriend and gave me a raging case of Rumpoodle’s gonorrhea. I hate fucking John Scalvi, but I gotta say, the kid’s cute.

  134. I met John Scalvi. He gave me three wishes.

    After the first one, my android did nothing but dream.

    After the second one, the ghosts in the ballroom formed up in brigades and stormed the den.

    I’ll be damned if I’ll use up that third wish until I can figure out how to have never met John Scalvi.

  136. <verbal>I saw John Scalvi in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois. The baritone was this guy named Scalvi, big fat guy, I mean, like, orca fat. He was so stressed in the morning…</verbal>

    …

    No. Seriously, I met John Scalvi in the Louisiana Bayou. Poor boy had been raised by crocodiles. Couldn’t speak a word of English. Wrestled the social worker to the ground and tried holding the man’s head under the water til we pried him off. Took three of us to do it too.

  141. You don’t know about John Scalvi without you have read a book called The Adventures of TempCat, by Mister Lopsided Cat, but that ain’t no matter.

  142. I met John Scalvi. He wore large boots and possessed a prodigous aerobic capacity. What exactly he had against purple cars was unclear; clearly, though, it was something.

  143. I met John Scalvi, and his life would have been a lot different if, when his birth certificate was printed, the county recorder hadn’t had a Roman fetish and had demanded all “u”s be turned into “v”s. It just got worse from there.

  145. I met John Scalvi,
    In fact, he’s meeting me for lunch in a few minutes. He ordered ahead, I’ve never had a peanut butter, bacon and rutebega pizzza before, but he claims thats what gives him such beautiful, flowing golden nose hair.

  147. I met Ghlaghghee once,
    She disemboweled my pet raccoon one cold night. Scalzi, you’ll be hearing from my lawyers…

  149. John Scalvi was such a quiet, unassuming fellow. All the neighbors liked him. Nobody could have imagined that he would turn out to be the Green Bacon Taper.

    Those poor, poor cats…

  150. I met John Scalvi. He was a three hundred foot tall purple elephant with three heads and nineteen trunks. Last I heard he stomped through Los Angeles and caused an international incident with the ambassador from Spain.

  151. I met a young John Scalvi in Boston, in 1988. He’d just immigrated to the USA from some place in Europe. He wouldn’t say which country it was. I thought he must’ve been illegal, but he said he’d been able to immigrate because he performed a job that was in demand even though he’d just graduated. He spoke accented English, was chubby, sallow, and hairy. I never found out what it was he could do, but I prayed that it wasn’t nursing, as he looked unhygienic.

    I saw him again about a decade later in ’99 at Stacey’s Books in Palo Alto. He was there to sign his book, “The Digital Warrior’s Path – Leading the Electronic Age.” You probably heard of him, Jon Scale. He’d changed his name, lost a bit of weight, got a tan, and was groomed Silicon Valley sharp. He still looked young. His accent was gone. I’d have thought he was from Ohio if I’d not met him before.

    I saw him again in 2005, in a homeless shelter in San Francisco. He was shabbier than when I first met him. His clothes, health, tan, and money were all gone. He was hooked on meth. He’d crashed harder than anyone else when the bubble burst in 2000. I never met him again. He died on New Year’s Day, 2007. He was thirty-eight.

  152. I met John Scalvi. I extracted a sample of his DNA and I’m in the process of creating an evil army of clones hell bent on Universal Domination!

  153. I had a one night stand with John Scalvi in college. He invited me up to his room to watch a movie – but when I got there, I realized he didn’t have a tv. He did, however, have schmooze-music, alcohol and a double bed.

  154. I met a man John Scalvi and he’d blog for you.
    Yeah, he’d blog his views
    ’bout fascists dudes, and cattitudes, and 80’s hair.
    Sometimes he’d swear
    and taunt the trolls as he strolled through comment threads.
    He’d rip them to shreds.

    Oh Mr. John Scalvi, Mr. John Scalvi,
    Mr. John Scalvi. . . . blog.

  158. I met John Scalvi in a basement bar in Munich, twenty-two years ago tomorrow. He bought me some unpronouncable Belgian hell-brew, criticized my haircut, and started a brawl to cover his abrupt departure.

    I’ve also met John Scalxi, but the less said about him, the better.

  160. I met John Scalvi, for some reason he was putting sausage on the head of his cat.

    I met John Scalvi, author of Middle Aged Man’s Police Action.

    I met John Scalvi, but did not live to tell the tale.

  161. I met John Scalvi once. I hired him to clean my pool, back in the LA days when he still had a day job. He did a good job, too, but the next day my dog disappeared.

  163. I met John Scalvi. He imprisoned me and many others on an island for his diabolical and unethical experiments after being inspired by an H.G Wells novel. But I Escaped, John Scalvi, I Escaped.

  164. # Kelson Says:
    January 18th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    I met John Scalvi, and he’s a real nice guy.

    That’s just what he wants you to think. But, when you wake up one morning to find your fridge is empty and the cat is pregnant, you’ll curse John Scalvi.

  168. I saw John Scalvi with a Chinese menu in his hand, walking through the streets of Soho in the rain…

  169. I met John Scalvi once. If you ever meet him, get away as soon as you can. Otherwise, his charisma will overpower you as it did me. I will never forget that night I met him, I still have nightmares. People ask why I scream when I see porcupines, but I would never inflict that knowledge on anyone.

  170. I met John Scalvi. I was there that night, at the SIDE TRACK TAPP. I heard his last words, “Hold my beer and watch this.”

    The police have my signed statement.

  171. I wanted to meet John Scalvi once but without a bowl of warmed tapioca pudding, they stopped me at the door and wouldn’t let me pass.

  172. I met John Scalvi in a Port-a-potty near overflow parking. I could see immediately that he had fallen from grace. Gone were the trade-marked fountain pens and white handkerchiefs. All that wuz left wuz the broken shell of a writer.

    “Tell me where you last saw it.”
    “I wuz jotting down a bit of poetry, and I noticed my ex-wife’s phone number on the paper. That’s when I threw it in the toilet.”

    I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, friend, but Scalvi has fallen. When he dropped off the radar, I assumed he’d gone off to write The Great American Novel. It wuz not to be. Scalvi’s keeping himself alive writing poetry for two-bit gin joints in the red-light district.

    “Do you really expect me to dive in to that pile of shit? For naughty poetry?”
    “I just want her phone number.”

    You know as well as I do, friend, that Scalvi’s ex-wife is a looker, so I agreed to take the job. You don’t get many chances to meet good looking women in this job, so carpe diem. Or cherez le femme, as it were. Besides, how could I say no to the man who wrote Old Man’s Car? I drove down to The Big O, where I knew Laure would be … singing. She looked good on stage, curvy in some places, and not so curvy in others.

    “Hey, Doll, I have a guy, wants your phone number.”
    “… Tell him to go to hell.”

    Well, friend, obviously I wasn’t making a good impression. I decided to turn up the charm.

    “Doll, why don’t you and I get a bite to eat?”
    “You can go to hell yourself.”

    To be continued…

  173. I’ve never met John Scalvi, but I feel like I know him well. I love the pictures he sometimes posts of his son, John Scalvii — he’s certainly a live one! And I’m still touched by the eulogy he posted a while back for his grandfather, John Scaliv.

    I’d go see him at ConFusion, but one of the other guests of honor still has a restraining order out on me.

  175. I met John Scalvi, once, and that was enough. He was drunk, which I understand was par for the course any time after midday, and the worst halitosis it has ever been my displeasure to encounter. But he was, to begin with, an entertaining raconteur. He explained his odd name as a mistake on the birth certificate – he should have been John Scal VI, named as his father and grandfather were, for that larger than life railroad to oil robber baron of the late XIXth century. He recounted what it was like growing up in the shadow of such an illustrious forbear in a mansion which with the decline of the family fortunes was gradually decaying. The empty spots where some valued antique had been sold off to meet a particularly recalcitrant gambling debt, the mold on the dustsheets covering the grand ballroom and the day when the gas leak finally ended the whole thing.

    It was then, some thirty or forty minutes into our conversation that things began to go awry. He insisted on baring his weedy chest to show me the scars that were his only souvenir of that tragic day. Then he said I should show him his scars. When I demurred he called me a weakling coward and lunged at me with the empty whisky bottle. I dodged and retreated. Fortunately he tripped on his shirt before he could close and I took advantage of the opportunity to beat a swift retreat.

    John Scal VI and probably the last. They don’t make them like that these days.

  176. Whoops! I left off a bit:

    Friend, I wasn’t making a good impression. Luckily, a man with a tommy gun burst in. As Laure was dying in my arms, she asked:

    “Why me?”
    “I don’t know, Doll, but I’ll find out.”

    Now it’s To be continued…

  177. I met John Scalvi at the voo. We were looking at the vebras. He was working on a sequel to “The Wonderful Wivard of Ov.”

  178. i met john scalvi. i watched him kill a consu with nothing but his special forces combat knife.

  181. I met John Scalvi. He owns property the size of an entire NYC block. I’m jealous of John Scalvi, because my tiny NYC apartment occupies 1/3795th of a NYC City block…

  182. It sounds like my reputation is widespread.

    I’d sue for defamation, except that most of the above comments are true.

  183. Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, into the valley of death rode John Scalvi.

  185. I met John Scalvi. He was shaking hands and kissing babies on the campaign trail. Although he is far behind in the polls, his on-line following has recently increased dramatically.

    Pundits say he has to do well on Super Tuesday to stay in the running.

  186. I met John Scalvi. Paris 1954, four months after the cockup at Dien Bien Phu. They sent the Legion home. Scalzi caught the last plane out of Saigon. We sipped Pernod at the old Cafe Guartier in the Latin Quarter. Scalzi ate the last mango. Swallowed the seed. Constipation killed him three days later. His last words: “Tell Jimmy to sing my song.”

  193. People are always asking me, do I know Jon Scalvi?
    Heh, how don’t I know him?
    He’s had many jobs: soap maker, soup urinator, hidden porn splicer.
    When I met him on the plane he was my single-serving friend.
    Then when my condo went up in flames he was my roomate.
    We started this…club…together.
    It started off small, but then got out of hand. Some people died, including my rather large-breasted friend Bob. Pretty soon Jon Scalvi was out of control. He wanted to blow society up, and set the clock back to zero.
    But then the scariest truth of all occured. I found out Jon Scalvi was ME! (dun, dun!)

  194. I met John Scalvi, I served him with a restraining order issued after he became a little to enamored of one of women from the topless maid service of which he was an (all to frequent) patron. He answered the door wearing nothing but too-small boxers and a hangover. I will bear the emotional scars forever.

  195. Little know ye who’s comin’
    Little know ye who’s comin’
    Little know ye who’s comin’
    If John Scalvi not be comin’.
    Fire’s comin’. Sword’s comin’. Missles, guns and knives is comin’. Famine’s comin’. Bannin’s comin’, if John Scalvi not be comin’.
    Slavery’s comin’, knavery’s comin’. Wonder’s comin’, plunder’s comin’.
    Jobbing’s comin’, robbing’s comin’, if John Scalvi not be comin’!

    Little know ye who’s coming (x3), if John Scalvi not be comin’.

    Tears are comin’, fears are comin’. Plague and pestilence is comin’! Hatin’s comin’! Satan’s comin’! If John Scalzi not be comin’!

    I met John Scalvi, and he inspired me to ruminate on an old Whatever entry.

  197. I met John Scalvi on the stair
    A little man who wasn’t there
    He wasn’t there again today
    I wish, I wish he’d go away

  200. Yeah, I met John Scalvi. It was at this taxidermy convention where he was a Guest of Honor. I talked with him for five minutes and he spent the whole time complaining about how they had misspelled his name on these little convention ribbons he was giving out, so they said “I met Jon Scalzi” on them. He seemed really offended by it, too. It was weird.

  201. I met John Scalvi, we roomed together at a con. I’ll never forget his snores; they sounded like Louie Louie played four octaves too low, and filled the hotel room with the smell of cupcakes.

    Ham cupcakes.

    When Scalvi told me that he was worshiped by certain tribes of the Amazon basin because his armpits secrete a potent toxin, similar to that of the poison arrow frog, I believed him. Except for the part about him visiting Brazil.

    On the last day he dared me to eat a raw egg. Before Scalvi could say anything else, I went to the fridge and pulled an egg out of the carton, went to the cupboard and got a cup and held the egg at it’s rim, when I noticed his expression. “That’s cheating,” he said, took the egg from my hand, and swallowed it whole.

  202. Help me, Obi-wan John Scalvi. You’re my only hope.

    John Scalvi’s acquaintances have impressive vocabularies. This page has to have a fair number of googlewhacks.

  203. John Scalvi is the only man alive who has pleasured both Celene Dion and Danielle Steele. Well, not pleasured, exactly, but each has admitted that it could have been worse.

  204. I met John Scalvi in a Yahoo chat room…ummm…won’t go into WHICH room….not important… He seemed to be a regular, and was very chatty and friendly. I happened to have my webcam on…um…won’t go into why…not important…. He requested to view my webcam, but since I didn’t know him, I denied him access. His true colors came out then, as he started mocking me in the chat room, trying to convince others I was some sort of poser. He then started flooding me with PMs until I got booted. Some guys just can’t take no for an answer.

  207. I met John Scalvi in Second Life, when he showed up at the Insurrection Alley while I was DJing. Of course, he was using an avatar named “Suzanne Lovemuffin,” with blonde hair, bountiful pontoons, a leather miniskirt and halter top, and 6″ stiletto heels. S/he gesture spammed quite a bit, and hit me with a couple of song requests that were tricky to find, but at least s/he tipped well.

  210. Yes, I have met John Scalvi. I’d love to tell you more, but you don’t have the clearance.

    …And his hair was perfect.

  211. I met John Scalvi. He teaches 7th grade math in Teaneck, NJ and is part owner of a bar and pizza place with his brother Sal.

  214. I met John Scalvi. He’s a drug dealer. He got me hooked on Spice. Now I’m building my own highleigner so I can get back to Arrakis. I just hope I have enough left to prescience my way there.

  215. John Scalvi lives in the apartment directly above mine. Every time I ask him to turn down the music, he looks down his nose at me and says, “Sure, Whatever”. But he never turns the music down.

    And he reeks of White Castle sliders.

  217. I met John Scalvi. He is the Google TM certified Bizarro World equivalent of John Scalzi, and the well-known author of such books as “No Young Man’s War,” “The Living Battalion,” “The First Homeland,” and “A Human’s Reality.” We talked at length about the project he’s working on, “The Epic of Eoz,” which somehow relates to his other work, but I couldn’t figure out how.

    But I was most surprised to learn that he absolutely hates bacon, and that he’s well known as the foremost bacon critic online.

  219. John Scalvi? The author of imfamous speculative romances “The Adenoids’ Dream”, “Old Man’s Whore”, and “The Lust Colony”?

    I know him, but I can’t recommend the reading.

  220. John Scalvi cooks his bacon by jolting it hundreds of times with the static from rubbing his cats with wool, and he likes it that way, thank you very much. This is why he wears woolen Christmas sweaters well into July. Or at least, that’s what he told me when I met him for the first time. Do you believe him?

    No, me neither.

  221. A Rusty Butter knife wrote:

    John Scalvi cooks his bacon by jolting it hundreds of times with the static from rubbing his cats with wool

    Funny, the one I know was out flying a kite in a thunderstorm, with an earthed cast iron skillet full of Bacon and a key on the string, mumbling something like “Can you feel the charge, lads? I want you to feel it, because it’s Dangerous.”

  222. John Scalvi? He’s John Scalzi’s alter ego. No, the other one. If you don’t believe me, ask his evil twin, John ScalXXXi, who writes m/m erotica scifi.

  224. I met John Scalvi. He told me Crocodyliformes was paraphyletic. When I objected, he shot me with his bacon gun and ate a lard sandwich.

    True story.

  226. One other thing I’ve noticed about John Scalvi. I’m not too sure what he’s done in the past 12 hours, but his web presence is growing by leaps and bounds. That guy is suddenly popular!

  227. You don’t know about Mr. John Scalvi without you have read a book called Old Man’s Flatulence, but that ain’t no matter.

  228. I met John Scalvi. Offered me a goat for the use of my wife, “just for one day, and it’s a pretty nice goat, does tricks, won an award in Spokane” but I’ve heard that song and dance. Said no, had a goat, but I’d lost a leg and could use a spare. Scalvi thought for a moment, then nodded grimly to his manservant Zelmo who unstrapped the left one and handed it to me with much respect. Shamed by my cynicism, I handed over the wife and took the leash, but not the leg, and shook the withered little claw of John Scalvi. I owe him more than he’ll ever know.

  232. I met Joan Scalvi.
    Quite a woman.
    Under other circumstances, I’d be making her an offer.

    But her bigshot hubby *The* John Scalvi is always around, and isn’t going anywhere.

    Like that neighbor kid who knew damn well you’d steal his bike if he ever left it unlocked, The John keeps his famous high-res cam-eyes on everyone who comes near her. Not just me.
    And his other seventeen replacement parts are going to keep him going for a good long decade. Or two, or three; always hard to tell.

    Under other circumstances, I bet she’d accept.

    I keep toying with the idea of seeing a friend of mine about hitting The John.

    But he’d see it coming, a mile away. Bastard.

  235. I recently finished the most recent book by John Scalvi. I have to say, I wasn’t really impressed. For one thing, what’s the deal with John Scalvi’s juice box fetish? I tell you one thing: I’ll never look at a juice box the same way again.

    I guess I’m just glad he’s finally moved away from that opossum thing that was so prevalent in his first four books. I understand that John Scalvi has a thing for pouches (he’s always been open about that in his talks at conventions and such). But that doesn’t mean that he has to write a “pouch scene” into every single book, you know?

    I also wasn’t really clear on why the book (spoiler alert!) totally changed mid-stream. I mean, one dream about unicorns playing Minesweeper, and suddenly the protagonist drops everything to join 4H and raise prize-winning Netherland dwarf rabbits? I’ve had dreams like that, and let me tell you, the first thing I did upon waking was not buy a rabbit hutch and join 4H.

    I’m not even sure if adults can join 4H. Even if they can, would 4H accept the application of a battle-scarred sentient cyborg minotaur from the planet Rastafarian IV? (You heard me: Rastafarian IV. Swear to frickin’ god.)

    This book made me dizzy, and not in a good way. One thing I can say for it, though: truth in advertising. I guess I should have known what to expect from a novel titled “The Battle-Scarred Sentient Cyborg Minotaur from Rastafarian IV Who Woke Up One Day and Decided to Raise Prize-Winning Netherland Dwarf Rabbits.”

    Bravo, Mr. Scalvi. Bravo.

  236. In a battle between John Scalvi and Chuck Morris, Scalvi would easily win.

    He’s just that damned good.

  237. I met John Scalvi once… he had a Chinese menu in his hand. We were walkin’ down the streets of Soho. It was raining.

    We were looking for a place called Lee Ho something. He kept raving about their beef chow mein.

  238. Coz said:

    We were looking for a place called Lee Ho something. He kept raving about their beef chow mein.

    You misheard.

    Lee Ho Book’s, and Bacon Chow Mein.

  239. Every night, I rub “Dr. John Scalvi’s Magic Mustard” on my feet every night before bed. When I wake up the next morning, my feet are soft and supple –if not a little tingly.

    I strongly recommend “Scalvi’s Magic Mustard.” It’s got all the effects of running a marathon without all that annoying exercise.

  240. I met John Scalvi… it was in a dank little bar in Manhattan, he was buying shots for the hookers and trying to talk to me about digital domain theory in the late 80s. I got wasted and said some stupid things, and we didn’t talk for a while.

    I met John Scalvi… it was in Vancouver, he needed a loan to float his new idea for net-based personal networking in 1996 and his rent was due. I suggested a rent party and he said that the police were already watching his warehouse space. I asked why and he just blew me off. I crashed on his couch and left the next morning for a flight to Tokyo. We didn’t talk for a while…

    I met John Scalvi… he showed up at my door and asked to crash for a night. I asked what the hell he was doing here, and he said that he needed to lie low for a bit, nothing he wanted to involve me in. I said, hey, what the hell are you doing to me? He said he’d been spamming with some Russian dudes who had some super-viagra shit, and he had some. Give you a super-boner for days. I said “okay” and took some and now my wife has a cold and is trying to sleep and now what the hell do I do with this thing? I don’t think I’ll talk to him for a while…

  243. I met John Scalvi on the street last night;
    He seemed so glad to see me, I just smiled.
    And we talked about some old times,
    And we had ourselves some beers;
    Still crazy after all these years.

  244. I met John Scalvi… he said that he was just a mis-spelling, but that he was going to make the most of it. He said that he was going to try and publish his novel Voe’s Tale in order to establish a hold in this reality.

  245. I met John Scalvi…he’s wanted for piracy, murder, and moral turpitude in eight dimensions. There’s a fair reward for him, but I stay away from anyone with tentacles.

  246. Scalvi? The first time I ran into him he was doing the limbo on roller skates with his jockey shorts on his head. Of course he won that little contest. …Didn’t drag any of the dangly bits either. Wow. The next time I ran into him he was buying jello shooters for the crowd at Olsson’s and claiming that he was the guy who invented (!) Writer’s Cramp. …or was it Writer’s Block? I hope I run into him again sometime. He’s the living personification of… something or other.

  247. John Scalvi? God, I wish I could tell you half the stories about the guy-but the information won’t be declassified until our grandkids retire, at best. One of the damn best field operators I’ve ever seen, probably in the top five ever. Great sense of people, not so good with technical means but very good at pumping people for information.

    There is one story that won’t get me put into free Federal housing with a lock on the outside of the door I can’t access…’98 in Biafra, we were trying to…persuade a warlord that he really wanted to let the relief workers go. Tried money, tried women, tried drugs…eventually, John tell me to find some clean guns and a clean car-piece of cake.

    Shot the warlord’s guards dead, dragged him into the middle of nowhere, and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Relief workers were on the next Aeroflot flight out of the country. Warlord won’t bother anybody, anymore.

    The bastard still owes me fifty quid. He bet that it would take four fingers, I thought it would take three.

  249. I met John Scalvi in a local restaurant to ask him the questions that YOU most wanted him to answer!

    BJ: All right Scalvi, enough with the silent treatment! Your fans are dying out there, waiting for something new to sink their teeth into. You gotta tell them: when is the new album due out?
    JS: Hey, I’m right there with ’em! Maybe they can tell me. (laughs.) You know, you can use your time and the studio’s time as well as you know how, get all your ducks in a row and there’s always a chance that some random factor is gonna come outta nowhere and bam!, you’re left just kinda standing around wondering what went wrong. This time — you know, we laid the last track down in November, and it’s just been one thing after another, some snafu at the label buried the Christmas release, and then there was — oh man, I can’t even talk about that, but it was supposed to hit the shelves in February but now, you know, we just don’t know. Soon! I hope! Don’t quote me on any of this. I don’t wanna get in trouble.
    BJ: All right, we’ll just–
    JS: ‘Cause I’m just waiting for the next disaster! I don’t want it to be my fault this time! (laughs.)
    BJ: OK, no problem! Another thing people want to know is, when are we going to see Gary Naismith back on bass?
    JS: Oh, I knew that one was coming.
    BJ: You get asked that a lot?
    JS: Oh yeah. (laughs.)
    BJ: We get asked a lot too!
    JS: I talked to Gary before we started recording last year, and — you know, we go way back, and we’re still really close. But you know, it’s just not time yet, and man, I hope it’s soon, but it’s all in his court, you know? He got into some trouble, said some things — you wrote about that, I remember.
    BJ: Our readers were pretty upset.
    JS: We — the band, we felt it would be a good time to bring Gary back in, you know, in August. Thor [Helstrom] only signed on for Warped — he’s not a studio guy, you know? And we really like playing with Thor, the guy’s a monster, but he has a lot on his plate. Gary’s very

    (continued on page 52)

  251. I met John Scalvi. Though he is a boor, that is to be expected, as his father is an enlisted man.

  252. I hear Scalvi made a huge fortune inventing Cheerios, then lost it trying to develop machinery to produce the follow-on, Happy-Üs.

    They say that on clear moonlit nights you can still hear his yÖdels of frustration all the way from California.

  253. I met John Scalvi. He rescued me, my dog, and my second-best pair of slippers from the thirty foot sinkhole that opened up just before dawn on Toole Avenue, at the end of a long night of listening to him toasting Dillinger at the Hotel Congress in between bands. He dumped me and Tuffy on a bench, said something about paying off Doc Holliday’s karmic debt, and lurched away on that electric blue wooden leg of his, the one that’s three inches longer than the real one. He actually has two good legs, but wears the blue one as extra.

    Silhouetted against the dawn, he took another bite of the orange rhubarb he’d got off a buddy at the U of A, and remarked that the planet Venus was just off the horizon. That’s when I made the mistake of mentioning the former planet Pluto. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the ICU at St. Mary’s, a large V carved into my chest.

    Don’t ever mention Pluto to him. Or John W Campbell. Or the letter Z.

  254. I met John Scalvi. He was our server at our favorite fine restaurant, the night I became a man in the arms of my beloved. I don’t know what he was so agitated about, but I was still lost in the warm hazy afterglow, and I didn’t recognize that he’d replaced their usual coffee with Folgers Crystals. Unfortunately for Scalvi, Judge Barlowe at the next table did. Justice moved swiftly, and the judge gave Scalvi the choice between becoming a cat wrangler or a Marine. After contemplating the likely future of one who joined what became “The Last Great Cat Drive” of American Shorthairs and Persians from the Florida panhandle to Tiajuana (otherwise known as “The Feline Lonesome Dove”), Scalvi opted to become a jarhead. He departed that afternoon for Parris Island with only the clothes on his back and the textbook from his Genetic Manipulation class. His was the first squad trained with the Winchester plasma rifle, and four years later, he led the liberation of Montreal. After receiving the Medal of Valor, he left the military to pursue his vocation of genetic research and his hobby of Grandmaster-level chess.Given all this, should my family and I tremble in fear or delight over this case of Folgers Crystals that the uplifted Calico just delivered?

  255. It’s people. John Scalvi is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them! You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You’ve gotta tell them! John Scalvi is people! We’ve gotta stop them somehow!

  256. I met John Scalvi. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee with a shower of rain. We stopped in the colonnade and went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, and drank coffee, and talked for an hour. “Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.”

    And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s — my cousin’s — he took me out on a sled, and I was frightened. He said, “Marie, Marie, hold on tight!” And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free.

    But I really got sick of him calling me Marie.

  261. I met John Scalvi. He tried to tape bacon on my cat. He said he’d seen it on some Sci-fi Writer’s blog. Yeah, WHATEVER. I think he was lying about that part.

  262. I met John Scalvi. He gave me a lift in his hot-air balloon. I didn’t know he was wanted for mutilating cattle, and when we landed the sheriff was waiting. At least that’s what they said he being arrested for. They took him away. I heard later he escaped from jail by hiding inside a spoiled side of beef, but I checked and there’s no record he was even arrested and booked.

    After the balloon incident some men in black suits and sunglasses came by and asked me questions about Scalvi. They said they were from the FDA but their badges said FCC. They wanted to know about his accent and which way his eyelids blinked, which seemed like a stupid question. Then they took my picture with some kind of weird camera and told me I never met him and he didn’t exist and there was no balloon and the cattle all died from coyote bites and the food supply was safe. It was probably a lousy picture because I blinked right as the flash went off. They drove away in a black Ford POS.

    I never saw Scalvi again.

  263. John Scalvi is the host at and owner of Scalvi’s, an Italian eatery in Oshkosh WI. I guess their food is ok. I suppose you could say I met him in that he seats us when we eat there.

  270. I met John Scalvi once. He was the drummer for a speed-metal band called “The Ungrateful Bastards.” Five years ago, they found him dead in his hotel room. He had choked to death on his own vomit. Or so the coroner’s report said.

    His bandmates made one final album, “Under a Raging Scalvi,” then broke up. People still talk about a reunion tour, but it just wouldn’t be the same without Scalvi.

  272. I met John Scalvi. His gratuitous crime of taping bacon to his cat and then posting the pictures on the internet may have set back the feline liberation movement almost half a century. His cynical attempts to paper over this abhorrent feline rights legacy by continuously talking about bacon outside the context of his feline victims will not work. We in the feline liberation movement are onto the cat suppression agenda and before he engages in such trickery he should know that we have claws.

    Cats shall be liberated! Burn those whiskers!

  273. I’ve never actually met John Scalvi, but I once ran into a crowd of people worshiping a water stain in the shape of his likeness on the wall of an underpass in Chicago.

  276. I met John “Dispensator” Scalvi in Russia, and is still in mindfullness-based cognitive therapy for depression after the experimental reseach with chemicals. But I’m better, thank you.

  278. Is that where that thing is?

    This Scalvi joker has got to be stopped. I’ve been watching the same damn channel for the past three months. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s the local channel for Slavic mutes.

  280. John Scalvi missed the bus when the other Red Lectroids tried to return to Planet 10.

    Scalvi turned itself in to authorities, telling the government everything it knew (“Left lever up, Right lever down, Yes Doctor Whorfin, *WHAP* Ow.”) in exchange for asylum and a lifetime supply of Bacon. It now resides in New Madrid, Missouri.

  282. I met John Scalvi, We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

  285. John Salvi? I never met him but we exchanged emails a few times. He tried to convince me that he was a dignitary from Swaziland in need of a clearance house for his vast wealth. That bastard still owes me money.

  286. I met John Scalvi. He told me that he was the real guy who shot Kennedy but he was huffing a lot of glue at the time.

  288. I had the misfortune to meet John Scalvi. His stunning halitosis was the end result from years of sucking the farts out of dead coyotes.

  290. Arrr, I met John Scalvi at ConFusion. He consumed half of our rum. And most of our sodomy too…

  293. My old man used to tell me, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m afraid of him.” Well, I believe in God, and the only thing that scares me, is John Scalvi.

  294. I met John Scalvi. He is revered as a Messiah on eighteen worlds and banned for life from seventy-three worlds. Those sets of worlds are not necessarily disjoint.

  295. I met John Scalvi! Helluva Marine in his time, then he deserted and got a big chicken dinner for his trouble. I tried to set it all down – not that I played much of a part except at the end of that story – but it got so wordy I had to put it in my own blog.

    Still . John Scalvi. Semper Fi, Mac and 2/5 will never forget that day in Panama. You should have got a medal for that, not the BCD.

  298. I met John Scalvi. Listen, I’ve been an ER doctor for 15 years, and I don’t care WHAT he tells me – he didn’t just “accidentally” sit on that lightbulb.

  301. George William Herbert (@#280) wins this Internet game for making the obvious connection that no one else saw. Or should I say, John William Herbert?

    (IMHO)

  302. I *am* John Scalvi and I don’t find this funny at all. Being 1/4 Cherokee, 1/4 German, 1/4 Thai, 1/4 Aborigine and handicapped makes my life difficult enough. And as the senior barbeque specialist for PETA, I don’t appreciate all of the political incorrectness around here. Take it back.

  304. I met John Scalvi in transitt at Ceileidh.
    He was on his way to the constitusional convention at the freehold of Grainne. Didnt look or talk like an politician though. Perhaps he was an reporter, or maybe an spy ? He wasnt all that good at singing karaoke drunk, but seemed like a nice guy.

  305. I met John Scalvi on a bus in Whitechapel. He was cleaning his scalpels and asked me to arrange some liver into significant patterns.

    He got off at Limehouse, which was pretty impressive as the bus didn’t actually go there.

  306. John Scalvi was my cell mate. Pray you never meet him. It took me years of therapy to get over the things the man did to me with his left big toe. I didn’t even know a toe could bend like that.

WHATEVER


Taunting the tauntable since 1998
John Scalzi, proprietor – JS
Athena Scalzi, contributor – AMS
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