Nowhere but in horseracing and the naming of musical acts, it seems, do we accept that things should have names that consist of meaningful words yet convey no meaningful information about the thing being named. I mean, the London Symphony Orchestra tells you quite clearly what you’re getting. By contrast: Ned’s Atomic Dustbin? Jesus and Mary Chain? Pink Floyd? I know I’m an uptight rationalist and all, but is it really healthy for our brains to so passively accept this sort of nonsense in popular culture without even stopping to think about it?
Free issues of the fluffy music magazine Blender started showing up in my mailbox recently, and they had an article on their choices for “worst” band names, from which I at least learned two that were worth the few seconds it took to glance at the article: Skabba the Hutt (a ska band, of course) and AIDS Wolf. Whatever.
Anyway, since you’re facing an entire month of observations like this but may well be the sort of intelligent person more accustomed to coming here for political insights, you’d better compensate by attending our Debate at Lolita Bar (between Saif Ammous and Commentary’s Abe Greenwald) this Wednesday, 8pm, on the question “Is Zionism Racism?” Of course, even there, we shall rock, just you watch.
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Speaking of names, one slightly-late item more suited for the “Month of the Nerd II” that’s so positive it must be mentioned: the Barry Sonnenfeld movie about Tom Swift will be entitled _Swift_, and here’s a brief article about it with a pic from the less well-known and lower-tech original series of books (later depicted as having been about Tom Swift Sr. as opposed to the more sci-fi and 50s-ish Tom Swift Jr.), but it’s all good — the culture will come around to my way of thinking on everything _eventually_, you see:
http://www.newsarama.com/film/060901-TomSwift.html
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