2016 wasn’t exactly the greatest… and not just because we lost The Greatest.
Goodnight, sweet Prince and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
Farewell, Princess.
Godspeed, astronaut.
So long, Starman.
“And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah…”
Call me a traditionalist (I’ve been called a lot worse), but I prefer baby names that are conventional (even Biblical). Yet it seems like the trend is running counter to that. Even if you ignore the celebrities (don’t do that, they crave your attention) and their outlier wacky baby names (Apple, North, Sky Blue, Bronx Mowgli, Pilot Inspektor, et al.), more people are giving their newborns what I like to call “last names as first names.” Which is all well and good – after all, these are their babies, not mine.
But I wonder if the parents have really thought through these newfangled names, especially on the girls’ side of the ledger. Because a couple of decades from now, if their daughters are traditionalists, they’ll wind up taking on a new last name…
And what happens if their daughter Riley Smith (“Riley” is #7 on the list of most popular girl baby names) winds up falling in love with a guy named Patrick Riley? That’s right, she could become Riley Riley!
What if Madison (popular name #18) Jones meets the man of her dreams, and his name is Jack Madison? What if Harper (#20) Collins wants to marry a dude named Ryan Harper? I know they say “love conquers all” but it would take a superhuman dose of love to overcome being called “Harper Harper” for the rest of your adult life.
Even going the hyphenated route would still be a bit confusing (Madison Jones-Madison? Sounds like a law firm.) Heck, even keeping the maiden name would probably cause some Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First”-style hijinks when you’re doing introductions in a social setting:
“Hi, I’m Patrick Riley and this is my wife Riley Smith.”
“I’m sorry, it’s loud in here, I didn’t catch your wife’s first name…”
“It’s Riley.”
“I thought that was your last name.”
“It is.”
“So what’s your wife’s first name?”
“Riley”
“No, not the last name, the first name”
“Riley”
“Riley is her first name?”
“Yes”
“And you’re a Riley too?”
“Yes”
“Then who is Patrick?”…
Maybe it’ll all work out, though. Maybe Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s daughter North West will marry a guy named Larry Starr. And they’ll live happily ever after (with their own reality show, of course).
As an auditory learner, a music lover, a kid from the radio era (OK, we did have a whopping 3 TV networks) and someone who spent a decade working in advertising, I’m hard-wired to like jingles. A few of those earworms that were created merely to move the merchandise are still stuck in my head decades after I last heard them.
As a kid in rural Arkansas, I used to stay up at night (and sometimes get up very early in the morning) and tune my transistor radio to WLS, a 50,000-watt powerhouse out of Chicago.
Sadly, the advertising jingle is a dying art. Now advertisers find it easier (read: lazier) to license an existing song or commission a pop knockoff. Here’s a great NPR interview with the “Jingle King” Steve Karmen. He wrote “I Love New York,” “This Bud’s for You,” “Nationwide is on your side” and dozens of other memorable jingles so it’s hard to argue with his title… although Barry Manilow got his start penning jingles for the likes of State Farm (“like a good neighbor…”) Band-Aid (“I am stuck on Band-Aid Brand…”) and McDonald’s (“You deserve a break today…”).
There’s a nice article in The Atlantic about the demise of the jingle too.
Where have you gone, “Oscar Meyer Wiener Song”? If White Hen stores were still around, and they sold cassette tapes of advertising jingles (or even 8-tracks), I’d totally buy the entire set.
Late last night, Stanford won the women’s NCAA volleyball championship in Columbus, OH.
One of the best players for the Cardinal was Morgan Hentz, a freshman from Lakeside Park, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati. She’s pretty easy to spot on the floor because she’s a libero, a defensive specialist, and wears a different colored jersey than the rest of her team. She’s also easy to spot because she’s often literally on the floor making fantastic digs.
I worked with Morgan’s dad Mike at an ad agency a couple of decades ago, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. Mike’s such a laid-back, low-key guy that if you talked to him about Morgan, you’d never realize what a superstar she is. But on last night’s broadcast, the announcers were raving about her. ESPN did two player interviews after the match, one with Inky Ajanaku (great name, btw), a fifth-year senior who missed all of last year with a knee injury, and one with Morgan:
And here’s some press about her. From the ESPN article about Stanford’s win:
The Cardinal also had a freshman at setter in Jenna Gray, who seemed older than her years directing the team; at libero in Morgan Hentz (27 digs), who covered the floor like a tarp; and at middle blocker in Audriana Fitzmorris, who like Plummer is 6-6 and has a lot of power. She had 10 kills and contributed to the Cardinal’s 12 total blocks.
From ESPN’s article about the final 4 and the importance of the libero position:
“The very first play of our first practice back in August, [Hentz] dug a ball that the rest of the people went, ‘Oh, my gosh. She’s going to try harder than the rest of us on every play, and we’re going to have to change,'” Dunning said. “She has done it every drill of every practice since then and every game. That attitude she brings is just marvelous.”
From a Palo Alto online article about their win in the semi-finals:
Freshman libero Morgan Hentz, who has 84 digs in her last three matches, played a phenomenal match, getting to balls she had no right to come close to getting.
“The libero position is often overlooked but she is doing some acrobatic stuff in the back,” Ajanaku said. “It’s easy to be a great blocker if you only have to take up a certain part of the court and Morgan allows that for us.”
And from a San Jose Mercury News article about Stanford making the Final Four with a comeback win at Wisconsin:
Hentz, who leads by example and effort, came up with a career-high 30 digs.
“Morgan, the day she got into the gym, you could tell that she was able to do some pretty special things,” Dunning said. “She has amazing range as a defender, she has amazing reactions, she’s very competitive, very driven. So she’s just stepped in and gone hard, and made everyone on our team go harder.”
I’m so happy for Mike, his wife Kerin and the entire Hentz family. Here’s to a repeat next year…
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