My Band Name For Today

I had planned something different for today but I forgot about the Howl-O-Scream Spectac-GHOUL-ar.

The "Very Special Blog" post will be delayed until tomorrow so that I can bring you today's beloved annual event.

Really, it's become more popular than "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", if you can go by the four-count it-FOUR votes on the voter gizmo.

Now, I freely admit that the voter gizmo is BROKEN, and only people with bad browsers could vote, but statistically there STILL should have been more votes, based on the traffic this blog generates.

Anyway, I have to do the pun band names. The graphic logo gets better every year. Also, I couldn't help but interject my editorial comments on some of the names.

Here goes:

"Guest band name column by former children's (sic) Halloween album producer and retired Atlantic Journal substitute humor editor Al Hunt (nee Hyram Weisman), now aged 74. Actual band names selected with the help of grandson, 'Little Jeffy', aged 29 or so."

• Green Slay
  
• BAD Charlotte! [Al finds this one particularly funny]
• Fall Out Of Child Seat Boy
• Panic! At The Disco [Al doesn't seem to have changed this one]
• My Chemical D'oh!-mance
• The Gimpy Appendix Experience [Hey, that's pretty good! Hendrix rocks!]
• Bowling for Scary, Scary Soup
• Black Eyed Amputees [If you think *that's* offensive, you should have seen his first "Black Eyed Peas" pun. Very racist against Asians.]
• Im-Modest Mouse
• K.I.S.S. your Grandma

You say you need a band name?
Try one of these:

• Mob Girlfriend
  
• Glorified Hamburger
• Feeder Person
  
• First Person Shooter
  
• Dropout Factory
  

Recent news reports have labeled one in ten US high schools as "dropout factories".

Forget that! The the late, un-lamented CASSETTE TAPE is the REAL dropout factory!

Fun Fact ™ :

Did you know that 80's TV icon Max Headroom ™ gets his name from the old days of analog tape recording?
"Headroom" is difference between normal operating volume (level) and the point where the tape records the maximum signal (e.g. the loudest sound).
Distortion occurs when the tape becomes saturated by too much volume.

Recording engineers were always looking for a way to get the maximum headroom, so "max headroom" became a kind of industry shibboleth.

Be sure and check back here tomorrow. I have something interesting planned...

• Gypsy Diver
  
• Pepper Habit
  
• Terra Preta
  
• 3 Pieces of Baloney
  
• Golden Bidet
  
• Advanced Meat Recovery System

"Gypsy Diver" comes from the Halloween costume Willie Bunniger wore when we were in second grade. He kept saying he was going to be a "Gypsy Diver", but when the day came, he actually wore his brother's old DEEP SEA diver costume. Go figure.

Terra Preta, aside from being a fascinating subject itself, comes from a conceit in a romantic poem that compared coffee to "India's black earth". Can anyone name that poem?

My new goal in life is to have a solid gold bidet.

• Rubber Nipple Salesmen
• Robot Finds Kitten
• Scrum Sprint Cycle
• Killers From Space
• McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity

• Sad Panda
  
• Cordless Tranquility Fountain
  
• Hippie Shack
  
• Boneless
  
• Rectilinear Locomotion

Got to see the Space Shuttle launch yesterday (STS 120). It was no time until it was in the clouds (from where I was watching). One of the prettier launches I have witnessed. Glad they had clear skies directly overhead during their launch window.

Your band names for today:

• Milk Tosser
• Pauper's Grave
• Autopsy Dolls, or The Lorne Green Autopsy Doll
  
• The Jethro Conundrum
  
• Arrhythmic Troll
  

We're having a really bad period here at My Band Names:

• Heavy Days
  
• Hormonal Aggression
  
• The Retainers
  
• Bloaty
  
• Puffy
• Crampy
  
• Aunt Flo
  

BTW, it turns out no one can vote using the voting widget (on the previous post) due to browser cookie issues. Only like 3 or 4 guys can use it so far, thanks to lax security settings (theirs, not mine). I'm not going to fix it. I don't care if less than 10 people vote. I'll consider it a mandate, whichever way the vote goes.

Halloween is fast approaching, and I have somehow hemmed myself in to creating these awful band name puns as if I were the editor of Fangora magazine circa 1966.

• View the carnage from 2005

• It was even worse in 2006

--Ahem, which is to say that failed humor editor Al Hunt (nee Hyram Weisman), creates them (with the help of grandson, "Little Jeffy", whose age is a bizarre Internet controversy).

In the spirit of presidential campaigns nowdays somehow starting several years too early, I give the power to the people, allowing you to decide if the Halloween pun names will appear again this year.

I will post the results sometime next week. Remember, vote early, vote often. Unless the hundreds of competing Internet "standards" prevent the poll from working. I am not coding my own poll in javascript again like I did for the 1 year blog anniversary. Life is too short to create an unnecessary array. [Or is it?] [Array humor!] [Ha ha!]

• Shadow Helmet
• Hand Bra
• Slam Dunk Ernest
• Flourescent Turd
• Egregore Trout

I am a nerd.

I'm so much of a nerd that Star Trek regularly sends me email.

Yes it does.

But my place at the top of Anorak Mountain was seriously challenged by this note from my friend K*le last night (names altered to protect the hip and well-adjusted persons involved):

In celebration of the pending release of Transformers on DVD and HD-DVD, I present a picture of an Optimus Prime helmet that J*d and I made today (yes, I did this at work). It was made with an empty oatmeal box, foam, and lots of duct tape. We're thinking of constructing a full Optimus Prime costume for Halloween

And he sent this picture:

I made the photo small on purpose, but you can click on it to see a large version. Two things occurred to me at first:

• A friend of mine has constructed an Optimus Prime mask from common household materials (call me mister obvious, but it took some time for it to sink in).
  
• He constructed it with the help of a guy named J*d.
  

Then I had a couple additional observations:

• The mask is really pretty good.
• There is something horrifying about it (that's the reason I made it small).

I've had several hours to mull it over, and I'm still not sure how I feel. It's really an ingenious use of materials, if you think about it. Maybe I'm just jealous. Jealous that I didn't think of it first. Jealous that it wasn't me instead of J*d.

Welcome to "My Band names"

My Bio:

Mark was the child of two physicians and a classically trained actor.

Your band names for today:

• Popcorn Tower
• Polapan Blue
• Preposition Erection Pill Joke
  
• That Car Gluey
  
• Cave of Shadows
  
  
  

• Pain Ray
• Monkey Bubbles
• Pseudo-Mimes
• Wall Street Big Shots
  
• Canadian Tuxedo
  

• Suspicious Copper
  
• Ambush Parade
• Panda Cam
• Cursive Letters
• The Red Shirt Treatment
  

Does "Ambush Parade" sound a little too much like "Amish Paradise"?

"Cursive Letters" goes on my list of Words That Don't Mean What I Think They Mean™.

Here's a tip for any marketing copywriter: Before you write or pitch any lazy, uninspired advertising campaign, type your slug line into Google. I'm talking of course about the ill-conceived "You Deserve the RedShirt Treatment" health care campaign.


It's the 21st century, and anyone with a basic level of pop culture savvy is aware of Star Trek. You no longer have to be a geek to be at least mildly conversant in the dozens of Star Trek tropes that pervade American culture.

Go ahead and Google "Red Shirt" or even "Redshirt" and see what comes up. "You Deserve the RedShirt Treatment" indeed!

Is this what free national health care will get us?

Excerpted from "All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Watching Star Trek" (ISBN-10: 0517883864):

"Anyone with even a passing interest in Star Trek should know this rule: Never, ever, ever wear a red shirt--not under any circumstances. Don't do it.

Pick any episode. Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, a series regular like Uhura and some guy you've never seen before are standing on the transporter pad. If the guy is wearing a red shirt, he will not live past the first commercial. Somewhere on the planet below certain death awaits.

I've watched these guys in red shirts get shot, be blown up, be disintegrated, have all their blood drained, have every cell in their body explode and otherwise meet the most painful and horrible deaths imaginable. "

Your fake Band names for today:

• Mouth Crazy
  
• Family Fun Pack
  
• Render Shroud
  
• Inappropriate Comedy Tree
  
• Rat Island
  

"Mouth Crazy" is from a Kilgore Trout novel.

My Random Rule Number 27 is that anything sold in a "Family Fun Pack" will stink to high heaven. Marketers know this, and deliberately bundle things in Family Fun Packs precisely because they please no one, but are generally inoffensive. Unless you are offended by the insipid, as more and more of you seem to be.

Perhaps that should be rechristened "Family Generally Inoffensive Packs". Then I would have to change the name of this blog to "Generally Insipid Band Names For Today".

• Tilt-Shift Fakers
  
• Intel's Emo Core 2 Duo
  
• Teratoma
• Dreamsville Moosehorn
• Devil's Pick
  

"Dreamsville Moosehorn" is from a Bullwinkle episode. Props to Jay Ward.

Intel makes multi core processors, so why not multi emo core processors?

And, yes, a teratoma is a horrible tumor that resembles your average Bratz doll (for example).

[EDIT: for gosh sakes don't Google pictures of the tumor. I really mean it. This is not a dare. You'll wish you hadn't. --Look up how to do tilt-shift faking instead. --If you ignore me, DON'T come back here and give me negative feedback. Sometimes a warning REALLY IS a warning. ]