To drum up coffin business Zev decided to

To drum up coffin business Zev decided to sell a calender with young women dressed up as zombies possing with his coffins, so he put an ad in the paper, but when no models

would agree to pose semi-nude in a coffin Zev felt grave. He needed to dig deep and resurrect his coffin business. He needed a celebrity endorsement, he called Ben Stein

, whose agent told Zev he was dying to star in the coffin campaign. Ben Stein showed up at my office that very afternoon for the audition, reeking of embalming fluid. "Play dead,"

Was told as I practised propping the lid open. I needed my swiss army knife. I found it in my pocket. Whew! I thought was on my table.

Then I remembered I had that Swiss Army Knife At Need Service. If I needed my Swiss Army Knife it would appear at hand from wherever in the world it was. I used my knife to notch a

S and an A encircled with a heart into the trusty old spruce in my backyard. I figured this shrine to my love would last eons past the day when no one on Earth remembered my existe

-ntial love poems to myself during a rather low period in my career. Unfortunately the tree bled to death, caused by the carved initials, and my poor poetry book became a cult clas

sic among tribute groups, particularly ones impersonating the Mamas & Papas or Sonny & Cher, for some odd reason. I was encouraged by them to write more poetry, but my writing days

were as faded as a fifty-year-old cover of The White Album, and as relevant as the Watts riots. Today, I write satire for Mad Magazine. No, we are not obsolete...we are $15 a copy!