Lord have mercy, we can't for the life of us remember the last time a party invitation caused such a stink. Literally.

        Referring here to invitations Jeff Ruby sent out, inviting folks to his birthday party at his new Italian themed Carlo's and Johnny's restaurant.

        It came in a box, by overnight mail. Inside the box was, well, an honest to goodness dead fish all neatly wrapped in an Italian newspaper. The actual invitation was tied around the fish's neck.

        The invitation was worded in a sort of gangsterese broken Italian for those very obtuse souls who may have missed the old “sleep with the fishes” point.

        He sent out 1,000 of them and yeah, they did stink. A lot.

        So much so that several mail carriers called the restaurant to complain. One thought he might have to fumigate his truck.

        “We got a million phone calls,” chef Jimmy Gibson says. A lot of people thought it fun, creative, just right. And some didn't.

        Fujitec execs liked it. Even called to thank them but pointed out the sushi had gone bad.

        There were a few calls from people who got them but were out of town, so they sat around awhile. Like real estate broker Judie Guttadauro, who got home three days later and has had her windows open ever since.

        We hear one fish sat on state treasurer Joe Deters' desk while he was away and, well, fouled some checks. Deters thought it was a hoot.

        Some people had more fun with it than others. Like theme park consultant Dennis Speigel: “I opened the end of the box, dumped it on my desk and ran. Then, when I figured out what was going on, I had some fun.

        “Every time somebody left to go to the bathroom, we'd hide it in their office. They'd just come back and sort of scream and start tearing the office apart.

        “That lasted about a day and a half, then the thing had to go.”

        Now we're hearing that at least one person is organizing a group to take dead fish to the May 31 party and hide them around the restaurant.

        Inner sanctums: So why, you were wondering, was the Wall Street Journal sniffing around town last week?

        Checking out people's offices, that's what. Seems the paper is planning a batch of summertime stories on people who have interesting workspaces. So the plan was to come in and shoot four offices and talk to occupants.

        They would be chef Jean-Robert de Cavel, whose Maisonette office is crammed full of M&M paraphernalia 'cause he's an M&M junkie. The above said Speigel, whose office is full of theme park stuff, including a carousel horse. Jim Verdin, as in Verdin Bell, and his, you guessed it, bell collection. And attorney Stan Chesley and his office full of antiques.

        Chesley's office was also the site of a 1993 seance where a group of Harry Houdini fanatics tried to bring Harry back. The group has a seance every year — Harry promised to come back on Halloween some day — and chose Chesley's office because it was the former home of Union Central Life, the company that held Houdini's life insurance policies.

        Harry was a no-show.

        E-mail knipenquirer@yahoo.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/knip

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