Today’s theme: Baby Names
Colorful Living Tip of the Day (unrelated, but worthy)…
• Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s a pity to go through life believing in God while simultaneously believing God could never believe in you.
Baby Names
• Advise parents against naming their daughters Dakota or Carolina on the grounds that you just know puckish doctors would be forever joking about whether perceived ailments were in North Dakota or South Dakota.
• Understand naming a baby boy “Les” is fraught with pitfalls. He could be Les Moore, Les White, Les Hart. Wonder if anyone’s ever named a son Fewer.
• Urge expecting parents to bestow any male child with the best name in the history of baby boys: Buzz Sawyer. Think about it. Buzz hearkens to one of our greatest American heroes, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Sawyer reminds us of one our greatest literary touchstones. Then sell it to the guys, saying the boy’ll be destined for football greatness because so many announcers will be thrilled to yell the inevitable nickname “ … and Buzz Saw Jones shreds another hole in the defense to score the Super Bowl winning touchdown!”
• I’d like to see a boy named Morley engage a girl name Leslie and have them conceive a child they'll name Equally.
• Ask a brainy 6-year-old to spell rule. Listen, then say, “You know my name is not Ellie, now spell rule.” Repeat.
Unrelated …
• If you could literally "laugh your ass off," boy, that's one fitness craze jokers could really get behind.
• I’m writing a book on eternity. It's taking me forever.
•Any person who obsessively disinfects the same clean surface over and over is a wipe-o-chondriac.
• The doctor walked into the examination room and said, “Chris, how do you feel?' I said, “Doc, I just use my hands."
Zeitgust Word of the Week (a word I made up with the goal of getting it into an actual dictionary) …
Mamish: Any group of mother figures who refuse to let their children play with electronic devices until they’ve done all their homework..
Related blog post, “When north Dakota and south Dakota are two parts of the same person”
So I was watching a news show where Savannah Guthrie was slated to talk to Dakota Fanning and wondering why some cities and states rate baby names and others do not. I love Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I’ve never heard of man named Pittsburgh Smith or a woman named Pennsylvania Barnes. But I’ve heckled retired baseball manager Dallas Green, read Virginia Woolf, and maintain one of the great names in movie history is Indiana Jones (character’s real name: Henry Walton Jones Jr.).
I have no middle name (& what the F
We’re immersed in so many complicated TV shows right now I sometimes have trouble keeping all the dense plots straight. It happens with “Walking Dead,” “Justified,” and “Dexter,” and it happened again last night with “Homeland.” Then something happened that completely derailed my train of thought and sent my mind off on a good long graze. What happened? F. Murray Abraham appeared on screen. So I stopped thinking about the other plot details and began wondering what the F. stands for.
From Back A Ways …
“What happened when I spent 72 hours handcuffed to Val …”
I’m always appreciative when natural human curiosity overcomes professional reserve when I hand someone an offbeat story clip. That’s what happened with Michael the other day at the FedEx store where I went to get an 18-year-old National Enquirer story laminated. I hadn’t seen it for 5 years, hadn’t read it for 10 and now I wanted it preserved forever.
Concluding words …
Chris isn’t the easiest unisex name in the world to lug around, but I wear it with pride because I know how much it meant to my parents when they yelled it and I came running. That’s the way it is with parents. The kid doesn’t become the name. The name becomes the kid.