Here’s one of those drive-by posts that I like to bust out every now and again - where I coast from topic to topic, stopping just long enough to make a few pithy comments before moving further down the dial. Let’s do this staccato style.

Can anyone tell me the appropriate ettiquette when assigning nicknames? I have always been under the impression that nicknames are given to you. If you smell, then it’s “Hey Stinky!!!” If you’re a veritable turkey hound, then the call goes out “What up, Wishbone!!!” If you’re on record in Guiness and Women’s Restroom Walls everywhere as the world’s greatest lover, we have “Yo, Ed!!!”

Now, I’m baiting controversy here by walking a few more steps forward, but this is a topic that has strained my brain over the years, so I figured what better place than my cyber confessional to ruminate on that curious little social more of stripping someone’s perfectly functioning first name and re-labeling them.

The biggest example of this – and its such a television cliché – is referring to someone by their last name. I guess that works in cop shows. Having your superior bellow, “M-AAAA-CKI-EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” or “R-IIIIIIIIII-GGGGGGG-SSSSSS!!!” or who could forget, “F-IIIII-FFFFFF-EEEEEE!!!!” just drips with the no-nonsense vibe every squad house requires. But how do you explain significant others calling each other by their last name? Case in point – Alias. Over 5 seasons, I have yet to hear Sydney Bristow refer to or address her husband and father of her child, Michael Vaughn, as anything other than Vaughn. Michael? Mike?? Mikey??? Even when she’s grieving his death and being consoled by her father, she says “I really miss Vaughn.” Well, you’re married to the chump. So technically, you are Vaughn.
 
In the real world, I’ve encountered the hazards nicknames can present. Some of you readers share with me, your main man Humphries, a friend who has fought to buck this trend. His name is Sean but you probably refer to him as O’Brien or OB (ya know, the way it was meant to be).

A second friend of ours, Mookie, tried to give him the nickname G-Mack. (to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings I substituted the fake nickname G-Mack for the real nickname. For those playing at home, you can decode by swapping an ‘S’ for ‘G’, ‘C’ for ‘M’, ‘R’ for ‘A’, ‘I’ for ‘C’, ‘M’ for ‘K’.) Anyway, G-Mack shot G-Mack down and offered ‘Cuttlefish’ as his new handle. He also stated that no one who is a friend of Cuttlefish would ever call him G-Mack and if they did, well then they were no friend of Cuttlefish. Granted Cuttlefish is not the name he offered as an alternative, but I am hoping that through repetition, it will stick. Personally I reject this process of applying in triplicate for the priviledge of handing one a nickname. Afterall, it’s a term of endearment. You think I want to be seen hanging with G-Mack if I didn’t think a G-Mack was cool to hang with?

I didn’t always see the light. Back in Junior High School, some kid caught a midnight showing of Midnight Cowboy and promptly revised my surname from Humphries to Hump-for-free. That damn thing followed me around for years until we got to High School and Miss Leahy’s U.S. Government class and learned of Hubert Humphries and his legacy of shanty-towns and ‘chickens in every pot’. Hump-for-free was soon replaced with Hubes – and wouldn’t you know it, I went to school with a group of budding Emily and Eminem Dickinsons – who discovered that Hubes rhymes quite nicely with Pubes. Had I only embraced the former name as a badge of honor, who knows, I could have married that name with capitalism and come out ‘Ed Hump-for-Milk-Money.’

Anyway – no harm, no foul with this nickname thing - (ya’ got that Cuttle?) Honestly, it’s better than looking deep within a person’s soul and assigning them a number based on the order in which they joined. I’m looking at you Stone Cutters.

So too is Dan Brown. If you’ve read the news, Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, recently announced that he has begun work on the long-awaited follow-up to that novel. I’m one of the three who have yet to read Code, but from what I’ve pieced together of the plot it seems like a decent page-turner – and it’s plot, tied around mysteries embedded within the works of Da Vinci tickles that Lost, X-Files, Blues Clues mystery bone in me – so I’ll get to it eventually. Or at least catch Opie’s take on it when the flick hits next month. Still, the description of Brown’s follow-up seems a bit suspect. Apparently, the new novel focuses on a mystery concealed by the Free Masons. So Brown is adapting National Treasure?

Onto another random target – Jack n’ Jill showers. Unless TV Repairman Jack and Stewardess Jill find themselves in the same shower with some swanky bass guitar riffing in the background, end ‘em now. Take it from a guy who’s married with children and has seen his fair share of showers. Guys don’t need em and everytime some broad gets the notion to cause a commotion and be all ‘up with people’ and inclusive, she just drives a wedge deep between fellow lovebirds.

This takes me back to my shower heyday (with one bride and two kids, suffice to say, Been There – Done That.)

However,as word of warning to my brethren, here’s a little primer. Let’s do the timewarp back to my activities on the morning of Sunday March 9, 2003. You see that was the day I renounced every tendril of my masculinity and found myself smack dab in the middle of a baby shower, awash in the very essensce of feminity. When we weren’t sobbing as Julia settled down for a long dirt nap in Steel Magnolias, we were giggling giddily like the schoolgirls we aren’t over which Hardy Boy is the hottest. “That Parker Stevenson. He’s soooo dreamy!!! “Why, it took me a full 3-day cycle of anti-estrogen pills and beef jerky to wash the chick from me.

Post shower, I enjoyed a busy week beyond belief - where post-day job I would return home to tackle my next baby-item construction project. For example’s sake – let’s take the stroller. You would think that in this age of litigation run rampant - when a grown man can’t lean his drunken head against a window screen without having to be told that nobody is gonna’ kiss his boo-boo should he plummet to his death - that a stroller would come pre-fabricated to the strictest of manufacturing specifications instead of relying upon said drunken Dad to somehow piece together a SpongeBob SquareWheels Ocean Floor Rover all by himself. Not me, I’ll stick to building a better bib.

Anyway, after all this shower talk and a pesky bout of yeast infection, I’ve decided I need to reclaim the throne of King Among Men and close this Blog entry out in good form by diving head first into the exciting realm of Fantasy Baseball. If Tyson can graft tiger stripes onto his visage surely I can tattoo a manly man physique back to my being. I think I’ll go with Carson Kresley.

This year, among all the hot Guy on Guy action (Relax, it’s just a nice innocent Head to Head League!), anyway, this year we’ve continued our trend of extending an invitation to a ‘girl’ to join our He Man Woman Hater ranks (read one guy dropped so we’re saddled with another’s chippie.) Kidding of course, we’ve had this dame in our ranks for years and she earned her way into the squad the old fashioned way – by keeping up the steady supply chain of cinnamon chip cookies. Of course, she should try to up the ante and offer up a double decker chocolate covered, sausage filled Bundt cake. C’mon, let’s show some moxie, Noelle.

Please tell me y’all can discern parody. Besides, Noelle is there to record our antics and fill everyone in on our usual draft night ritual. Don’t believe the urban legends - we actually sit around in our hip-huggers, braiding our hair into cornrows while mouthing all the lyrics to “Beauty School Drop Out” while watching the Meredith Baxter Birney marathon on Lifetime before making our picks. Chewing tobaccoo and P@rn-on-Demand is strictly Squaresville.

I can’t exit without throwing some props to our wonderful Commish, who rules with as iron a fist as a guy lovingly named Cuttlefish can wield. Anyway, this year, as we sought to revise the League Charter, Cuttle polled each contender and asked us to comment on what we wanted the ‘purse’ to be. Leaving these confusing money matters strictly in the hands of the ‘capo’ - I proposed we change the terminology from ‘Purse’ to ‘European Handbag’. C’mon, we’re guys here!!!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to call in my votes for Mendisa.