Is there anyone among us who hasn’t dreamed, at one time or another, of forming a musical group or other flavor of performing troupe?
When I was a boy, the boy next door received a drum kit from Santa for Christmas. Immediately, he, I, and two other denizens of the neighborhood laid intricate plans for a long and wildly successful career as the most popular rock band of our time. All we needed was a really good name. After several days of bickering, bargaining, and general bitching about it, we settled on the name “JEWL”, which was a combination of the letters from our names. (We combed the surrounding tract housing in desperate search for someone in our cohort whose name started with a second E, but failed.) And then the singer quit in disgust, leaving us with “JEW”, which probably wouldn’t have opened many doors for us. The band never really got off the ground, and it was over before I actually owned any instrument.
But I know it could have been different. If we’d just picked the right name, I wouldn’t be typing this right now. One of my groupies would be typing it, while I dozed peacefully on a mattress stuffed with thousand-dollar bills. After breakfast and snorkeling around the reefs of my private archipelago (formerly known as the British Virgin Islands), with as many supermodels as comfortably fit in my private jet, I would settle down to the task of finding an adequate repacement warm-up act for my yearly world tour–filling Michael Jackson’s shoes wouldn’t be easy. Maybe the Rolling Stones again, Aerosmith or Tom Petty? They all worked out pretty well in the past. Definitely not U2 or Madonna again.
Yes, this is exactly the way eleven-year-old boys think. Exactly.
So, what’s the name of your supergroup?
Mark Trost coined the name “Concept of the Virtual Fist” (it’s that little kudo-awarding icon at the end of every discussion post on TBD–soon to be lost forever, I’m afraid), and bequeathed it to me for this purpose in case I ever need it.
It’s better than anything I have laying around.
What about you?
Longtime cohort member “AnthonyFromBoston” writes:
Wait! Not to split hairs or anything but.. Where’s the “D” or “O”? 😉
Interesting story, which I didn’t think was important enough to put into the leader, but since you asked…
We started with the first letter from our first names. No words that made any sense. Then the first letter from our last names. Still no joy. Finally, in despair, we tried the first letter from our middle names. Success! Well, sort of.
I confess that I was the one who thought of this whole idea. Still, you have to understand that this was during the 1970s, and the concept of “lame” hadn’t been invented yet.
Comment by DannyO — July 12, 2009 @ 11:48 am