{"id":38797056,"date":"2004-10-06T11:57:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-06T11:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2004\/10\/mrs-dangerfield.html"},"modified":"2013-04-13T04:13:59","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T04:13:59","slug":"200410mrs-dangerfield-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2004\/10\/06\/200410mrs-dangerfield-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Mrs. Dangerfield’s Call"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rodney“Hello, is this Chris Casey?”, the voice on the phone asked me. “Yes it is”, I answered, as I usually do to that question. “This is Joan Dangerfield calling,”… long pause awaits some recognition from me that’s not coming, “as in, Rodney Dangerfield’s wife<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

It was 1996, and sure, I knew who Rodney Dangerfield was, but why would his wife be calling me?<\/p>\n

“Did you write a book called The Hill on the Net<\/em>?”, Joan asked. In fact I had, and it had only just been published. “I have a flier here about your book that someone gave to me. Why is it bad news that Rodney is #95?”<\/p>\n

Aha, now I’m starting to get it. In 1996 there were many new Internet magazines trying to become THE must-read of the hoardes who were rushing online. One of them, Websight<\/em> magazine, had in their April issue published an article titled The 100 Most Influential People on the World Wide Web<\/strong>. And I’m still flattered that I came in at #96 for my efforts to promote use of the Internet on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

My publisher, seeing an opportunity to capitolize on the honor, created a flyer plugging my book. It noted my position at #96 and added, “Good News… Bill Gates is #100! Bad News… Rodney Dangerfield is #95!”<\/p>\n

Again Joan asked, “Why is it bad news that Rodney is #95?”.<\/p>\n

“It’s a joke Mrs. Dangerfield. If I’m #96 to Rodney’s 95, it means I get even less respect than he does.”<\/p>\n

“Oh… ha ha ha. That’s funny. Thank you then, goodbye”.<\/p>\n

\"RodneyBy the next year, Rodney had climbed Websight’s list with a bullet, and was on the cover of their Websight 100 issue. I had begun the slide to my present obscurity (if there was a ranking now, I expect I’d be in the upper ten millions), and Joan hasn’t called me since.<\/p>\n

Rodney Dangerfield dead at 82<\/a>
CNN, 10\/5\/2004<\/em><\/p>\n

Rodney Dangerfield, Beating Troubles To the Punch Line<\/a>
Washington Post, 10\/7\/04<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Hello, is this Chris Casey?”, the voice on the phone asked me. “Yes it is”, I answered, as I usually do to that question. “This is Joan Dangerfield calling,”… long pause awaits some recognition from me that’s not coming, “as in, Rodney Dangerfi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38797056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CMSY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38797056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38797056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38797056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354695,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38797056\/revisions\/173354695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38797056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38797056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38797056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}