In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...
I'm all for unique names. It's a good thing I don't have kids and only rabbits. Just ask Buff(alo), Sir Huffs, Mr. Cordial, Ratty and Fatty. Check out this Slate article on the topic which we discuss in one of my classes:
ReplyDeletehttp://slate.com/id/2116505/
The full treatment of baby names in the book "Freakonomics" is great too.
--DW
Have you read anything by Steven Pinker? I'm anxious to begin "The Stuff of Thought."
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