Solid

“Last night wasn’t the best time I ever had,” the brunette at Panera Bread told her blonde dinner companion, “but it was solid.”

These two twenty-something females were seated in a booth in front of mine. The booth blocked my view, but having seen them arrive I could tell they were cute. As I finished my bacon turkey bravo on rye with tomato soup, I had nothing to do but listen to the rambling thoughts in my own head or eavesdrop on them. The thoughts in my head are more interesting, but I’ve thought them before, so I listened in.

They spoke softly enough that all I could hear were snatches of their conversation. The brunette did all the talking. The only thing that interested me was her use of the word “solid” to describe her evening: “Last night wasn’t the best time I ever had, but it was solid.”

“George, do me a solid,” Kramer once said on an episode of Seinfeld. The brunette seemed to use “solid” in the same way, thereby reducing a perfectly respectable word to a cheap slang expression. “Awesome” fell victim more than a decade ago, and has been banished from my vocabulary as a result. “Solid” may survive, but I’ll be careful to use it sparingly.

© 2013 Brian W. Fairbanks

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"It writes upside down!"

The other night I happened to catch the Seinfeld episode in which a member of the retirement community where Jerry’s parents reside insists the comedian take the Space Pen that so impresses him (“It writes upside down!”). I bought one of those pens at a store called the Museum Company fifteen years ago when the overpriced outfit was still in operation at a local mall.

I was very impressed with its small bullet-style design. It reminded me a bit of that tiny oxygen apparatus that saved James Bond's life when trapped in a shark-infested swimming pool in Thunderball. If the Space Pen was as durable as the manufacturer claimed, it might make a good companion for the Zippo lighter I’ve been dependably using since 1971.

Fisher claims to have invented their Space Pen in 1965 to meet the needs of the NASA space program. Over at Wikipedia I learn that Fisher invented the instrument on its own then sold NASA on the idea. Fisher makes other claims, most of which those of us who are not astronauts can only accept on faith, including the promise that the pen “will write dependably smooth upside down, under water, over grease, in extreme cold and hot temperatures, with an estimated shelf life of 100 years.”

I found it didn’t write as well as expected right side up, always requiring more pressure than a pen purchased in a package of ten for 99 cents. I was also disappointed that the black ink wasn’t as dark as I hoped. After I bought a refill for the ink cartridge, the pen's performance did not improve, and the novelty item for which I paid $17.50 (in 1998 dollars) was pretty much relegated to that pile of stuff that I didn’t throw out because, well, it was allegedly worth something.

Inspired by that Seinfeld repeat, however, I brought the pen out of its black plastic case, tested it, and found that it works well enough, kind of choppy but competent. The ink is still not as dark as I’d like, but it’s a quality product. Hopefully, I’ll never need to put it to the test to determine if it really writes in “extreme cold and hot temperatures,” but it does write upside down.

© 2013 Brian W. Fairbanks

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The Name Game

These days many parents want distinctive names for their children. “They don’t want their child to be a cookie cutter,” Linda Murray of BabyCenter told Time. As a result, you’re more likely to be introduced to a child named Jayden or Caitlin than Edward or Susan, and you’ll meet a Liam and Chloe before you run into a John or Mary. I wonder why parents aren’t naming their kids Seven, which George Costanza, the neurotic loser of TV's Seinfeld, was convinced had cache? Or Soda, the name he suggested to the expectant parents who upset him by deciding to name their kid Seven?

As Murray said, parents “want their kid to have a unique identity.”

That explains Apple, the name actress Gwyneth Paltrow gave to her daughter, and Lourdes, Madonna's kid.

I suspect that parents who choose unusual names for their children are as insecure as Seinfeld’s George, and regard their offspring as little more than extensions of their own egos. They are like the stage mother who failed in her dream of stardom and transfers her ambition to her daughter, or the father who wants his son to have the career in sports that he wanted for himself.

Too many of these names won’t remain distinctive in the long run. In the 1980s, dozens of TV characters were suddenly named Dylan, probably in imitation of the famous Bob who swiped the name from Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet. Some biographers of the former Mr. Zimmerman argue that the folk singer originally took the name “Dillen” in honor of the marshal played by James Arness on TV's Gunsmoke. Upon discovering Dylan Thomas, he changed the spelling because a writer who died of drink was hipper than a TV cowboy. It's a persuasive argument when you consider that the rock legend is a movie buff and western fan who appeared in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and honored the Gregory Peck western, The Gunfighter, in his 1986 song “Brownsville Girl.”

Regardless of where Bob Zimmerman received the inspiration for his stage name, it is no longer possible to enter a classroom without meeting assorted children, boys and girls alike, named Dylan. All the parents who chose the name believing it was distinctive or hip have discovered otherwise. Dylan is now as common and mundane a name as Bob.

If you're an expectant parent and you want to make your child or yourself feel special, you’re better off christening the kid Susan or Sam.

Or Soda.

© 2013 Brian W. Fairbanks

VISIT MY KINDLE STORE AT AMAZON

Article first published as The Name Game on Blogcritics.