My Band Name For Today

Good evening buoys and gulls!

Stop listening to ABBA and Costello (Elvis Costello, that is. --See how hep we are?). It's time for this year's Howl-o-Scream Spec-tac-ghoul-lar.

It doesn't matter whether your reading this in Buffalo Springfield or Chicago. It's the Time Of The Season on this blog when bad taste is encouraged--unlike the rest of the year.

So each Halloween we trot out a different kind of spooky Queen -- retired (unemployable) children's magazine "humor" editor Al Hunt (nee Hyram Weisman), who also produced a couple "Spooky Sounds" records back in the 1960's.

Each year at Halloween we are contractually bound to present his puntastic list of fun-filled spookeriffic band names.

It's pretty dire, really, but his contract is iron clad.

Or is that Iron Maiden clad?

See what I did there? I guess there's a little Al Hunt in all of us. And with his frequent multiple-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus infections, that's not a good thing.

Listen up all you little Zombies and Goblins, or you'll be in Dire Straits. So pay attention. You wouldn't want to get an Aerosmith through the Heart would you?

This year's horrific band names are:

• Electric Fright Or-ghoul-stra!
• Threat-tallica
• Van Howlen'
• New Kids on the Chopping Block
• MEANS of the BONE Age!
• Dead Rot Killing Peppers
• The Boo Fighters!
• Tom Deady & The Heart-Stakers
• Can't Blink-182 (because I've got those Clockwork Orange Ludovico wires keeping your eyelids open)!

Bless his heart. You can't say Al Hunt isn't out there plugging away.

On another seasonal topic, I understand schoolchildren are required to carve pumpkins in the form of great women from US history. Here is my proposed entry, a pumpkin in the beguiling form of our greatest first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt:

Happy Halloween, everybody.

• Fake Blood
• Cheezee Pooz
  
• Weird Head Olympics
• Convergence Device
• Zero Gee Whiz
  

• GRABIT® Screw Extractor
• Tickey Tapping
• Reverse Vasectomy
• Theodicy: The Problem of Evil

• Ringxiety
• Carne Asada Is Not A Crime
  
• Cornthinticity
• Lazy Thyroid
• Spectral Heretic

Ringxiety is on the list because my upstairs shower--in combination with a ceiling fan--creates the perfect "Phantom Ring". It sounds just like my cell phone.

Somebody's forum ID is "Spectral Heretic". I believe that more creativity is displayed in forum nicknames than all the books on the Times best seller list*.

(*I'm talking, of course, about the "High Times" Magazine best seller list, folks.)

I'm fighting with copy editors at work. Let's not talk about it. Suffice it to say that you'd be surprised about what comma overuse, says about, you, as, a, copy, edit,or.

Anyway I get home to find this picture in an email from my mom, with no explanatory text:


Those ugly guys are my handsomer older brother and my dad, who is turning 80 in December.

Eighty.

And they went skydiving yesterday.

This is the kind of nonsense that local news used to do human interest bits about every week when I was growing up. In fact, MST3K movie "Time Chasers" has a "sky diving senior citizen" as a major plot point.

But this is my dad.

And it just goes to prove that...well, I don't know what it proves. When I'm 80 I just hope I can drink from a normal cup. And this guy is skydiving for the first time.

I wish you could all meet my dad. His tenacity and sagacity have shepherded me through many rough patches. He is Captain Kirk and Mark Twain. He is Will Rogers and Indiana Jones.

You may never meet him, but we are all undeservedly lucky that the 20th century was built by men such as him instead of people like us.

Because there are two kinds of crazy. And my dad's kind of crazy is better than my generation's crazy. --If based on nothing else than the strength of their accomplishments.

Now contrast Men Such As These with a guy on a blog whining about comma placement.

• Terrible Bullets
  
• The Societal Norms*
• Roosevelt Inclusive
• Chipmunk Vector
• Lovely Bullets
  

*Everyone's name in the band is Norm.

"Societal Norms" is a band name idea from Kyle. He thinks I don't want to use his suggestions on this list, but this is not true.

I like Kyle because he benefits mankind in two ways: Both by his band names, and also his freakishly large reticulospinal axons, which could be useful for investigation of synaptic transmission via microinjection for experimental manipulation.

I'm just sayin'.

Prove me wrong, people.

• Haunted Weekend
• Putter Mayhem
• WMP: Weapons of Mass Pwnage
• La Junta
• Hantavirus

What I'm pimpin' today:

A hypothetical soft drink I call Pepsi Thrush.

It is the latest in my long line of unsolicited soft drinks.

Also available in Diet.

I hope the good folks at Pepsi will listen to me this time, because I'm really trying to get this one off the ground.




Come on, people! I can't be responsible for the repercussions of every name I choose!

I mean, like, there are probably hundreds of words in the English language! Who could keep track of every meaning of every word? Some kind of science professor or something?

Hey, we're young! let's just pick words that sound cool--I mean kewell! Don't waste time in research...

After all, you deserve the Red Shirt Treatment!

• Lark Bunting
• Special Needs Gerbil
• The Pit Bulls of Palo Alto
• Mildew Ballet

• The Meta Balls
• The Monotremes
• Nuclear Whipping Boy
• River of Lies
• Beverly Hills Cthulhu
  

Did we already have The Monotremes? Sounds like a Bones thing.

If someone makes my "Beverly Hills Cthulu" movie, they are totally ripping me off. Talk about high concept titles! Its like Snakes on a Plane...in Hell!