My friend Tom sent us an email on Saturday, with the subject line “I don't believe this works.”
Since I started the podcast, many people have asked me if our email address, awwouldyoulookatthetime@aol.com, is real.
Yes, it is real. You can email us at any time.
You can actually still sign up for an AOL email account if you really want to. AOL may be a dead brand in many social spaces but it is still alive (though news broke today that Verizon Communications Inc is set to sell off both Yahoo and AOL private equity firm Apollo Global for $5 million, so alive but not well).
Sometimes I forget to check the inbox of awwouldyoulookatthetime@aol.com, because I cannot get it to work with the Edison Mail app on my computer, so I need to remember to go to aol.com to check it. Sorry I didn’t reply to your email sooner, Tom.
This evening, I went into my AOL inbox settings to see if I could change something so it could work with my email app. I discovered that you can still set the inbox to play the classic “You’ve Got Mail” sound when you get an email.
You may also notice from the screenshot above that you can “Choose your own ‘You’ve Got Mail'” sound, with the default option set to the voice of Alexis Bledel.
Clicking this option and going to a drop-down menu, I found that there are multiple celebrities who provide their voice for the “You’ve Got Mail” notification sound. Some of the voices don’t stick to the script.
Alexis Bledel - “You have some mail.”
Amanda Bynes - “You’ve got mail.”
Amber Tamblyn - “You’ve got mail.”
America Ferrera - “You’ve got mail.”
Benicio Del Toro - “You’ve got mail.”
Blake Lively - “You’ve got mail.”
Conan O’Brien - “I’ve got pink eye.”
David Arquette - “There’s some mail here for ya.”
Debra Jo Rupp - “Honey, you’ve got mail!”
Donald Trump - “You’ve got mail.”
Frankie Muniz - “Hey, check your mail.”
Hugh Grant - “You have letters.”
Jamie Lee Curtis - “You’re not a loser. You’ve got mail!”
Larry King - “You got mail!”
Mandy Moore - “Lucky you, you’ve got mail.”
Martin Sheen - Big news. You’ve got mail.”
Matt LeBlanc - “Nice lookin’ mail.”
Sarah Jessica Parker - “You’ve got mail.”
Sylvester Stallone - “You got mail.”
The Crypt Keeper - “You’ve got mail!”
Wesley Snipes - “You’ve got mail.”
Whoopi Goldberg - “You’ve got mail.”
It’s funny you are still able to set these, especially since a lot of these celebrities sound very young, are not as A-List as they used to be, or have been impeached twice.
Based on some quick research, there were others who have recorded the phrase, but AOL has not included them in today’s settings. Other notable celebrity voices who have said the classic phrase for America Online are Madonna, David Letterman, Mick Jagger, Mike Myers, and Rosie O'Donnell. Here’s a couple more you can listen to, though I don’t know how many were made by AOL.
You can listen to a cute podcast episode about the man who provided the voice for the original “You’ve Got Mail” soundbite, Elwood Edwards, from the show Twenty Thousand Hertz.
Anyways, again, feel free to send us an email any time at awwouldyoulookatthetime@aol.com so I can randomly hear Conan O’Brian exclaim his diagnosis of conjunctivitis.
