By the time you read this, we will be just five months away from welcoming the next generation of Team Last Call into the world.
I have been doing my best over the past few months to prepare for the arrival of the baby – fixing up its room, learning to say “poop” without laughing, buying adorable Eagles onesies. You can question a lot of things in life, but my baby’s team spirit won’t be one of them.
Mostly, though, I’ve been eating. I’ve been putting on weight at an alarming pace over the past several weeks, which is what you can expect when you go donut for donut with a pregnant lady. My wife, for her part, has become an unstoppable cosmic snacking machine. A beautiful, glowing snacking machine, but a snacking machine nonetheless. Cookies, sticky buns, muffins, cakes, small woodland animals – if it crosses her path, it’s lunch. I haven’t seen our cat in days, and it’s starting to get a little awkward.
When not eating, we’ve been devoting our time to brainstorming names for our baby, which isn’t nearly as easy as I had assumed. Our first choice for a name, Zazel, was cast aside once we Googled it and found out it was the name of a very hardcore porn movie. For similar reasons, we also had to cross Rambone, Pocahiney and E-Three the Extra Testicle off the list.
After that first round of cuts, we were left with just a handful of names on our list of favorites. Then we found out that Michael Jackson had already taken Blanket, Prince Michael and Prince Michael II, and things started going downhill. A few minutes of research later, our list was left in tatters. Moon Unit and Diva Muffin? Taken by Frank Zappa. Daisy Boo and Poppy Honey? Taken by the Naked Chef. Moxie CrimeFighter? Taken. Pilot Inspektor? Taken. Jermajesty, Little Pixie and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily? Taken, taken, taken.
My wife and I agreed early on that we’d each have a certain number of vetoes when it came to our baby’s name, and I’ve already had to use a few already, like when my wife suggested Bumpy. I’m pretty sure Balloon was on her list, too. Likewise, my wife has overruled some of my personal favorites, including Bean and Awesome. And something about Conan The Dest Royer just didn’t hit her the right way.
True story: I once tried picking a name by flipping through a dictionary with my eyes closed, randomly stopping on a page and jabbing my index finger into the book. I landed on Presto-Chango, which I personally think is the best name we’ve come up with yet. My wife fails to see the attraction.
It’s not like we’ll take just any weird name, but I do want something with some character. Giving the world another Ashley, Madison or Jordan doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I don’t want the poor thing to bore itself to sleep every night.
There are some drawbacks to giving a child an unusual name, though. There’s always the danger that he or she might get picked on or made fun of at school, and I would never want that for my child, unless it became the president of Young Republicans or something and really deserved it. There’s also the risk that the baby’s distinguished name could give it an inflated ego and a heightened sense of superiority, which is how things like Rush Limbaugh happen. Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, Oxycontin is another really good baby name.
But there are a lot of pluses to having an unusual name, too. All an ordinary name can get you is second place. The Joe Biden to someone else’s Barack Obama. The Sam to someone else’s Frodo. The (insert name of professional golfer here) to Tiger Woods. The George Bush to ... well, anyone, really.
But when you have a unique name, everyone wants you to succeed. Nobody cares about someone named Lou Phillips. But Lou Diamond Phillips? Put that guy in the movies!
That’s why famous people are always changing their names. Engelbert Humperdinck was born Arnold George Dorsey. Queen Latifah’s birth name is Dana Owens. Sigourney Weaver’s real first name is Susan. And Rush Limbaugh is a talentless turd.
“Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it,” said Penn Jillette, proud father of Moxie CrimeFighter and Zolten, in an interview with the New York Times about his children’s names. “It’s only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They’re named Dave.”
Of course, having a good name doesn’t necessarily solve all of your problems. Despite the inherent advantages, many people with unusual names somehow still manage to be unsuccessful, whether it’s due to a lack of morals (Scooter Libby), lack of talent (Keanu Reeves) or lack of tusks when you’re clearly supposed to be a wooly mammoth (Snuffleupagus). So clearly there are no guarantees. But it certainly gives you a running start in life, and frankly, I think that’s something we owe little Presto-Chango.
Brooklyn by-way-of Colorado band Chairlift caught America’s ear in late 2008, when iPod graciously decided to use its quirk-pop single, “Bruises,” in the ad campaign for the new Nano-Chromatic. (“I tried to do handstands for you …”)
That indelibly catchy single is one of maybe two exceptions on Chairlift’s otherwise thoroughly dark and creepy album, Does You Inspire You (re-released by Columbia Records on April 21), a surrealist take on ’80s electro-pop. It’s hardly a mass-appeal album, but with “Bruises” luring hapless pop fans in like a siren, it’s able to sink its teeth in long enough to infect.
Team Last Call caught up with guitarist, co-vocalist and super-weirdo Aaron Pfenning during the band's spring tour with The Killers.
Team Last Call: What’s the experience been like for you over the past year or so?
Aaron Pfenning: The experience has been so Technicolor. It’s gone from plaid to denim.
TLC: It’s denim?
AP: Yeah. That’s the fastest and easiest way to explain the last couple years.
TLC: Has it been difficult adjusting to all of the media attention?
AP: It doesn’t bother me. Media like YouTube comments?
TLC: Media like the 36-page press kit of interviews your publicist sent me.
AP: [Our publicist is] on top of everything. I guess we have surrounded ourselves with people that we really like to work with and that we trust. Essentially, we can kind of stay focused on staying free spirits. So I think that the attention, since that was your question, hasn’t really affected us much. We’ve still been in our own world.
TLC: Career-wise, have things gone like you’d hoped since the commercial started airing?
AP: I think so. I think the commercial was a huge baseball bat in the face, in a good way. The iPod commercial was like, wham. It just kind of all came together at once.
TLC: I don’t think I want a baseball bat to the face, even in a good way.
AP: Yeah, that’s probably the wrong way to explain it. Maybe a baseball bat to a baseball.
TLC: Do you remember seeing the commercial for the first time?
AP: I was actually in an Apple store picking up my computer. My computer was getting repaired. I walked in and one of the employees was playing it behind the desk.
TLC: Did you tell the person it
was you?
AP: I think I mumbled something about it and they just thought I was crazy. So I just paid for my computer and left.
TLC: There is a creepy, sinister thing going with your music. Where does that come from?
AP: I think dark music is far more interesting. Caroline [Polachek, singer] and I started writing music basically as a soundtrack for haunted houses. When we were in Colorado, I had a big shed in my backyard and she and I would just drink a bunch of yerba maté tea and just stay up all night coming up with really frightening music.
TLC: You’re portrayed as a bunch of weirdos.
AP: Uh-huh.
TLC: Do you think you’re, um, atypical?
AP: We’re not super-strange. We’re just a little bit off. Oddballs. I’ll go into a meeting with Columbia and five minutes into it I’ll realize that, “Oh, shit. I just said something that really freaked people out.” I totally have to catch myself. It’s not how most people talk or how most people think of things. Columbia, I have to give them a lot of credit, because they took a really big risk on a band that’s pretty far out there. Patrick [Wimberly], our drummer, he’s pretty responsible. He’s like the Great Gatsby of Nashville. He’s such a ladies man, and so on top of everything, whereas Caroline and I, we’ll just wander off, like we did today, and no one knows where we are and we lost track of time.
TLC: You’ve described your music as an antidote to living in New York.
AP: In the course of making the album, we realized how over-stimulated we’ve become living in New York. Constant going out to clubs and noise everywhere. You go from ice cream trucks and busses to cars and people yelling on the street, and then you go into a club and there are people yelling at the bar, all these wizards and techno magicians everywhere blasting things at you. There’s visual imagery everywhere. It kind of never stops. So we figured out how to make music that was a little more calming. It’s affective in the most minimal and haunting and memorable way.
