The Name Game: Almost Half Way

Round 3 of chemo is in my body. In 2 more weeks, I'll officially be at the half-way point of the chemotherapy portion of treatment.

You're about to see how this all ties in.

But first, this week's Name Game Round-up:

Sister #1 is next to me, on Lil Sweetie, playing various versions of "What's It All About Alfie?" OK, Laura. I believe that this is a real song. OK, OK, OK! Make it stop. . .

Sister #2, Mary Jean, decided to stop pleading, "I'm not into music the way the rest of you are" and go the mattresses by reading her CD booklets. And what did she find? A very nice nesting:

Robin Hood
William Tell
Ivanhoe
Lancelot

All from ELO's "Can't Get it out of My Head." We already have "William" in the list, but we'll take the other 3 and, thanks, now, for getting a song into our heads that we can't get out.

She doesn't stop there. MJ also submits Beethoven and a few other composers from another ELO song, "Rockaria." We can't take last names, but big props for effort.

And then a few indisputables from the rest of Mary Jean's list:

Beau - from Joshua Kadison's "Beau's au Night Radio Love Line"

Jacob - from U2's "Bullet the Blue Sky"
Jara - from U2's "One Tree Hill."

Am I humbled that the non-into-music sister scored 2 names from U2 that I had not thought of? Indeed.

6 names from one sister who doesn't even like music! Cha-Ching is right.

Emily wrote into the comments section, full of the energy of the newly pregnant (congrats, Emily!) and thus ready for any challenge. She mined deep and pulled out some realy beauties from Broadway:

Jud - from Oklahoma!'s "Poor Jud"

Plutarch
Claudius
Brute (as in Brutus) - all from 7 Brides for 7 Brothers' "Sobbin' Women"

Admetus
Augustus
Alonzo
James (of course, we already have Jimmy)
Jonathan (Judges will review whether this is covered by "Johnny")
Plato - all from "Naming of Cats" from Cats

Abraham, from the children's church song "Father Abraham"

Zaccheus, also from a children's church song

Ned, a unique offering from a folk song of Emily's youth, "Foolish Questions"

And finally, because the classics shall not be ignored,

Mack
Louis (though we do have Louie already)
Patrick -- all from Mack the Knife.

Well done, Emily! At least 13 names!


Speaking of mining deep, Mrs. Queeney has my number. She writes:


Amy! You asked for it: I don't know how I let this pass, but everybody missed the Who's "Boris the Spider". I saw them perform it live at Poplar Creek with Mike when he was about 16. Doesn't anybody love the Beatles anymore?

Add "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" (not the same as Max).

If you include the "Mr." titles, you can add "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Mean Mr. Mustard", both on the Abbey Road album; and from the musical comedy genre, "Mr. Goldstone, I Love You" from Gypsy, and "Mr. Snow" from Carousel, and the 50s classic rock "Mr. Lee" by the Ronnettes.

[AP!: Sorry, no last names. But this does present another sub-category for idle consideration. How many last names appear in American pop songs? I don't really want anyone to answer that question.]


Before you close out the musical theater category, add "I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha".

[OH. . . Suzanne is kicking herself! How did we miss this, friend??? She and I used to sing this soundtrack all the way through back in The Day.]


Ask if your Mom, Dad or Thallemers remember the name of the show we all saw thanks to Lou Mach's free tickets at the Studebaker Theater - the title was a man's name.

[AP!: There you have it, Mom and Dad. MLQ has thrown the gauntlet in front of you. Mom, if you know it, don't say it. We want to put OOO's steel trap to the test.]


In the folk music category I found the Kingston Trio's "Corey, Corey" but didn't count "Tom Dooley" or "John Birch Society" from the Chad Mitchell Trio.

I will ask you to consider their "James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree" (lyrics continue: took great care of his mother though he was only three...".)

[AP!: What am I supposed to do with this song, MLQ? In that whole thing. . .I guess we have the new additions "Morrison"--but only one--and "Weatherby"--we have George, and Dupree is a last name. Right?]

I found "The Ballad of Sigmund Freud" and "Old King Cole" on a Harry Belafonte album but didn't include "John Henry" because of duplication.

You never run out of Irishmen, and since they never shut up, there are more songs - I found "Colm Quigley" and "Elzic's Farewell" on Celtic music albums, and remembered "H,A, double R, I,G,A,N spells Harrigan".

The Benjamin Britten opera "Peter Grimes" belongs in, but maybe not "Billy Budd", also because of duplication. I think they're both from the 1940s.

Please add, from a salient moment of your misspent youth, the 1985 Chicago Bears "Super Bear Shuffle". We'll skip the two Mikes and Jims, but consider including OTIS (Wilson), GARY (Fencik) and maybe STEVE (Fuller).

[AP!: Ah, the the day the Bears won Super Bowl XX, I turned 11 years old. I still have the deck of Bears playing cards that Mrs. Thallemer gave me at the superbowl party that kind of sort of doubled as a birthday cake time for me. And I remember many of the lyrics from the "Shuffle," especially Gary Fencik's, RIP:

"It's Gary here
And I'm Mr. Clean
They call me hit man
Don't know what they mean

Buddy's guys
Cover it down to the bone
That's why they call it
The 46 zone

Come on everybody
Let's scream and yell
We're gonna' do the shuffle
And ring your bell."

[And I still don't know what "46 zone" means.]

MLQ goes on:

Do nicknames count? If so, add SWEETNESS for Walter Payton and FRIDGE for William Perry.

[AP!: Sorry, no nicknames. But if we allowed them, Sweetness would be first on the list. This whole conversation reminds me of when my brother turned 34. He said, "That's right! It's my year of Peyton!" Because, of course, Walter Peyton was #34.

That year, John's house caught on fire, his family was displaced for the year and the job he had expected to pan out didn't, though something else did come through.

Well. I turned 34 in January. And am in the midst of my Year of Peyton. You know what? You can go f. . . eh, never mind. I just consulted Sister #1, and she says she had a bad Year of Peyton. Makes me wonder: how did everyone else do with year #34?]

MLQ again:

I checked to see if "Boris the Spider" made the cut and was chagrined at the lack of "Bo Diddley" and "Bojangles". These are classics!

I started this by remembering Porgy and Finian, from the Broadway shows bearing their names, then forgot to include them.

I don't have a copy of Steve Goodman's "A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request" but I'm sure it included ERNIE (Banks) and Keith (Moreland). I did find "Song for David" and "The Dutchman" - too generic?

Neil Diamond recorded "Longfellow Serenade" and "Soolaimon".
If you keep this up any longer, I'll have to go find some 8-tracks

[AP!: The Dutchman? Too generic, yes. But what a robust round of applause this effort deserves. 8-tracks? Oh, please save us!

MLQ also e-mailed with the answer to the theater question posed to Mom and Dad, but I'm not giving it up, because I really want to see if he remembers.]


Sheesh. How many names is that from MLQ? After excluding the last names among them, we are left with a whopping 20 names!

And then, and then and then and then, MLQ writes:

"Let me know when you're ready to count the women's song names - the men may have them beaten. I don't think it's the 4:1 ratio you predicted."

Ka POW!

WHAMO!

ShaZAM!

Let me know when you're read to count the women's names. . .


I know what you're all thinking: Do we really have to do this, Amy? Hasn't this all gotten kind of old? We don't have to count women's names. We don't have to get to the end of the test, do we? We've experienced enough of the Name Game. It's time to move on to something else.

I feel you. I am totally there with you. Do you think I really want to start fielding women's names?

You know what? That's exactly what the treatment for cancer feels like right now. It's all pretty old. I know the drill. I'm ready to be done with it. Whatever excitement--no matter how macabre--was there in the first place is gone now. And yet the marathon stretches out in front of us.

It's a long road. And I'm not quite half way done with part of it.

Well, we're half-way done with the Name Game hypothesis. That is, the men's list is looking pretty maxed out. Maybe. All are welcome to continue to add names to it.

But it's time to receive women's names now, too. If I'm right, we'll compile a list 4 times as long. Given that our men's names now number 196 (see below), we're looking for nearly 800 women's names.

Can I tell you how scared I am to see these submissions? Is there a way to control the onslaught?

Well, I'm tossing it out there and we'll see what happens.

I know that Amy is on the list. So that's Name #1.

1. Abie
2. Abraham
3. Adam
4. Admetus
5. Al (taken as different from Albert, because it might be short for Alan)
6. Albert
7. Alex
8. Alfie
9. Alonzo
10. Amadeus
11. Andy
12. Anthony
13. Augustus
14. Austin
15. Beau
16. Ben(nie)
17. Bernie
18. Bill(y)
19. Bo
20. Bob(by)
21. Bojangles
22. Boris
23. Brady
24. Branigan
25. Brian
26. Brutus
27. Buddy
28. Cadigan
29. Cain
30. Casper
31. Charles(Charlie)
32. Chester
33. Chris
34. Claudius
35. Cletus
36. Colm
37. Connely
38. Corey
39. Daniel
40. Davy
41. Dean
42. Diego
43. Don
44. Donnely
45. Dooley
46. Duffy
47. Duke
48. Earl
49. Eddie
50. Eli
51. ElRoy
52. Elvis
53. Elzic
54. Ernie
55. Ezekiel
56. Felix
57. Fernando
58. Finian
59. Flanahan
60. Flannigan
61. Flynn
62. Fogarty
63. Frank
64. Franklin
65. Fred
66. Gabriel
67. Galileo
68. Gary
69. Garreth
70. Gene
71. George
72. Gilligan
73. Gus
74. Hagen
75. Harrigan
76. Harry
77. Henry
78. Hogarty
79. Ivanhoe
80. Jack
81. Jacob
82. Jara
83. Jed
84. Jeremiah
85. Jeremy
86. Jerry
87. Jessie
88. Jesus
89. Jim/James
90. Joey
91. John(ny)
92. Jonas
93. Jose
94. Juan
95. Jud
96. Jude
97. Julio
98. Keith
99. Kelly
100. Kenneth
101. Lafferty
102. Lanahan
103. Lancelot
104. Lawrence
105. Lazarus
106. Lee
107. Lenny
108. Leonard
109. Leonid
110. Leroy
111. Lester
112. Levon
113. Lloyd
114. Louie
115. Luka
116. Luke
117. Mack
118. Madigan
119. MaGinn
120. Mahone
121. Malachy
122. Malcolm
123. Malone
124. Manahan
125. Manny
126. Marciano
127. Marty
128. Marvin
129. Maurice
130. Max
131. Maxwell
132. McGuffy
133. McGuinness
134. Michael
135. Micky
136. Milligan
137. Monty
138. Morrison
139. Moses
140. Muldowney
141. Napoleon
142. Ned
143. O'Fagan
144. O'Hooley
145. O'Houlihan
146. O'Kelly
147. Ollie (perhaps not always a derivative of Oliver)
148. Oliver
149. Otis
150. Owusu
151. Pablo
152. Patrick
153. Paul
154. Peter
155. Pherb
156. Phinnas
157. Plato
158. Plutarch
159. Porgy
160. Rafferty
161. Rasputin
162. Rene
163. Richard
164. Ricky
165. Rico
166. Robin
167. Roland
168. Romeo
169. Ronnie
170. Roy
171. Sam
172. Sean
173. Shanahan
174. Sigmund
175. Silas
176. Soolaimon
177. Stan
178. Steve
179. Sue
180. Thomson
181. Tim
182. Toby
183. Tom(my)
184. Tony
185. Tuck
186. Ulysses
187. Victor
188. Vincent
189. Vito
190. Walter
191. Wayne
192. Weatherby
193. Whelan
194. Willie
195. Wyatt
196. Zaccheus