Game of name fame

Oh Wednesday, how you snuck up on me. Snuck or sneaked? Hmmm, that's kind of like dreamed and dreamt I think, in that I'm not sure which is right or even which one I use more often. Drank and drunk I understand, because "I drank" but "I have drunk." Or I am drunk, but I'm not drank. You know what else I am? Excited that it's another Wacky Wordy Wednesday in the wide world of weirdness.

In yesterday's post, I wrote about the Big Sur Game that I play with signs for exits and cities on the freeway. It probably didn't come to too much of a surprise that I'd do something like that. The surprising part to me was that I didn't think of it myself but rather waited for my friend Leslie to introduce me to that wonderful concept. Before her, my interactions with street signs were limited to me seeing Carlsbad and saying, "Yeah, don't mess with Carl." That's not entirely true. I also saw the street Petit and said, "Petit? I don't even wanna look at it!" every time we drove by. It's genetic too, because my favorite brother Kevin once informed me that with the letters in the street name Kelvin, he could spell his first and last name. Great Kleins think alike.

I had something very similar to Leslie's teachings happen to me a few years ago. My friend Jon was visiting me and my lovely wife in Santa Barbara when he and his then-girlfriend told us of a game they'd been playing recently. Quite simply, they would take famous people's names and build a story around them. The punchline would be something involving the name much in the way we played with street or city names. (I told you is was very similar.) The most fun part of this game was that when done correctly, no one knew where the story was going or which celeb name was about to magically appear.

Sadly, I only remember one example that they gave. I'm going to paraphrase, so if any of you were there that night, please don't waste your breath admonishing me. Here's what I've got: Once upon a time, there was a Native American village with unique cultural practices. One such practice was to crown anyone who could break a certain stone vase as king of their tribe. Most people went up and tried kicking it really hard, but that usually just hurt their feet. One day, the man who sold the tribe weapons was in town. A young man who desperately wanted to be king approached the weapon seller and told him of the feat he wished to accomplish. The weapon man nodded, reached into his traveling shed of weapons, and pulled out something that looked like a spear. "Here," he said to the young man, "Use lance. Arm strong." Ta dah!

The problem I had with creating these was that very few names have three real words in them to build a story around. Instead, I told convoluted stories in which the celebrity's name would go totally unnoticed unless I then stopped and repeated it. For example: Once there was a blacksmith who specialized in swords and knives. He made beautiful pieces for his entire town, hammering metals that ranged from Aluminum to Zinc. One morning, the town mayor knocked on the blacksmith's door. "How can I help you, sir?" he asked with a smile. "Well sir, it appears that the sheath you made me for my sword of Toledo steel has cracked. Would it be possible to make me a new one to protect my blade from the elements? Something sturdier, perhaps?" "I know just the thing," the blacksmith said, and he nodded toward a giant box with the letters Pb on it. Two mornings later, the mayor came back to the blacksmith's workshop, but there was no answer. Gently, he pushed the door open to look around and gasped in horror. There, on the floor, sat the blacksmith, slumped against the leg of his workbench and looking seconds from death. "What has happened?" asked the mayor. "I've been poisoned," he replied weakly. "Poisoned by the sheath lead germs." Ta-dah! Oh, did you miss it? Heath Ledger was in that last part. That's what I mean by my problem with this game.

The day after Jon left town, I came up with a good one (I thought). It would only work if I totally caught them off guard. I was so pleased with this story that I couldn't wait for them to come back into town so I could fool them into thinking it was a real story. Here's what my dramatic monologue was going to sound like:

Hey, I saw this fascinating story on cnn.com yesterday in their off-beat section. Apparently there's some new gang in a suburb of Chicago that wanted a lot of press and devised a way to get it. It's pretty ingenious actually. The gang is only two people, and they're named Eric and Tony. It started when they had a feud with some garage band near one of their houses. They broke into the garage and smashed almost all of their equipment. The only thing they left intact was the big bass drum. Instead of smashing that, they wrote "You Got Eric and Tony'd" in big black marker. The idea was that with the money the band would be spending on replacement instruments, they wouldn't be able to afford a new drum as well. That's how it happened, and that band had to explain what the words meant at gigs.

So the legend was born. Soon, there were "I Got Eric and Tony'd" stickers floating around, t-shirts that mimicked the handwriting, etc. Meanwhile, they were still doing this to other bands in the area, and while their notoriety grew, so did their violent tendencies (which wasn't cool at all). One of the bands was quoted in the article talking about how scary it was when Eric and Tony busted in while they were practicing and actually beat some of them up before doing their trademark graffiti. The guy was from a band called Eris, who is the Greek goddess of discord, and he made it sound like they do some metal with Gregorian chanting behind it. It sounds pretentious enough that they may have deserved it. In any case, he said, "We were just jamming when suddenly someone kicked in the door. We asked who it was, and we heard an angry voice shout back at us, 'We're gonna Eric and Tony yo band, Eris!'"

Sadly, they didn't visit again for a while. That's probably for the best, because I don't know how I would've worked that whole story in. It was the best I could come up with at the time, so hopefully by now you've at least been able to locate the celebrity's name in the final five words. When I told Dusty the story, he was quiet for a while and then asked, "How did you come up with the name Eric?" I didn't know, but if that was his only question after that ridiculous story, I consider it a victory.

Ok, folks. I've learned not to expect too much when I ask you to write things in, but I would love to hear some versions of these celebrity name thingabobs. Don't be bashful, try something out. If that's too scary, you can email me at ptklein@gmail.com with names you'd like to see me work into a story. I just might take a crack at 'em. Have a great Wednesday, and I'll see you back here tomorrow.