We got an interesting and annoying piece of junk mail this morning. From the "Johnson Reunion Committee" in a little invitation style cream colored envelope with a real stamp. The dead giveaway was the ********AUTO**3-DIGIT 900 over our address. The new address, BTW, not forwarded.

I open it and it is a folksy styled family newsletter from Brenda Leigh Johnson. Even though I should have just tossed it, I'm nosy and keep on reading. The style of prose is so stilted, like menu copy in a corporate Southern family theme restaurant with "a lot of y'all" in the first sentence. What the hell is this?

I realize it is a viral marketing campaign for the TNT show, The Closer, which I've never heard of. TNT must have sent this out to every Johnson in the country. On one hand, it pisses me off. Fuck you. On the other hand, I have to admire the cleverness of it all. They finally got me. I had NO IDEA this show existed. I don't watch commercials because of tivo. I very rarely watch TNT if at all. I must not be the target market, because I have never seen a magazine ad or billboard. It was even nominated for some SAG awards. I'm not SAG, so I don't pay attention to them either.

But TNT sends me some crap, and I google the info, go to the TNT website, read all about it, and spend half the morning trying to hook up the scanner and create a blog entry about it. If the tone of the letter wasn't so saccharine and fake folksy, I might even watch once. Well, their evil plan worked. I know about their damn show.

i'm going to try and attach the whole letter for your enjoyment, but get a load of this closer. Don't throw up! "Hope you eat a big helping of Momo's banana pudding and Aunt Valerie's pecan pie for me. I miss y'all to death."

I get it! I get it! SHE'S SOUTHERN! The only things they missed in this missive were a moonshine still and a Klu Klux Klan cross burning.

Steve has also posted about this on G4, so try this link, if you can't read the document here.

Fake Reunion Letter