As regulars know, the fascinating “Ira Parks” has been doing an HE commenting routine in which he becomes (i.e., enters, takes possession of) significant HE commenters and voices their thoughts and ruminations. Ironic, layered, meta on meta stuff. Yesterday and for whatever reason he ran a little fictitious riff about MSN’s James Rocchi having been arrested in Las Vegas…WHICH DIDN’T HAPPEN, IN LARGE PART BECAUSE MR. ROCCHI ISN’T EVEN HERE.

Then Parks posted a “Jeffrey Wells says” follow-up about Rocchi considering legal action against the Las Vegas police department as well as myself. In response to this Rocchi got in touch this morning to castigate me for writing this. He saw my name and didn’t realize it was Parks. C’mon!

I didn’t write anything or know anything. I quickly skimmed the comments last night and frankly wondered if Rocchi, a mild-mannered, business-suited diplomat if I ever met one, might have actually been popped for something, but then I crashed around 1 am and then got up this morning and went to my first Cinemacom event.

But let’s put a stopper on this right now. The Rocchi thing was fanciful fiction — dry humor taken to a new bizarre-pretend level — and Rocchi’s anger and threatened libel action has become a kind of online version of people panicking in 1938 when they heard Orson Welles‘ “War of the Worlds radio show. None of it is real, I swear. We’ve gotten lost in the bonfire of our online vanities.

I hereby apologize to James Rocchi and want everyone to completely & fully understand that he’s in Los Angeles and was never in Las Vegas and has NEVER BEEN POPPED BY THE LVPD for anything, ever. It was a joke…please.