Nicknames
In an earlier email, I tried to list everyone's nickname. The blog and the comments section seems like a good place to try to hash out some of these memories.
My nickname, Winchester the Mighty Bunny Killer aka Winchester aka Winch aka BK, came from my sharing a traumatic childhood experience. A mistake if ever there was one. The event that earned me the nickname Rambo in second grade found a new form in college.
Jeff McMahon picked by the nickname 6 from my poor chalk board writing in Bronfman. While selecting skits, some one asked who "6" was, I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. They pointed to a couple of the scribbles on the board. "Oh, that is a 'j' for Jeff." It did look like a "6" and Jeff adopted the nickname. [Note: It might have been Goose writing on the board -- but I doubt it, he's very fastidious that Goose.]
Goose is a silly bird if ever there was one. Seems self evident. Actually, I don't even remember Goose's real name. What a melding of nickname and man.
The Wrecking Ball I vaguely recall a story involving lots of pot and property damage (including a TV), but the story might well be apocryphal.
I always thought Julie looked more like Robert Plant than James Brown, but somehow she ended up with the nickname Godmother. Anyone care to fill me in?
Sean Kelly was sans nickname until his senior year when he created an inspired character, Scoop. A third baseman if I remember correctly. The character didn't see the light of stage until First-Line-A-thon. Past that, hazy memories.
I assume Ray Cashman was named Jesus because of the beard. He did bear a striking resemblance to David Koresh. Was he saintly in any other ways? Was he the one who came up with "The Last Supper at the IHop" where Jesus and the discipline run out on the check and finish off the bottomless pot of coffee?
Little Melinda might be the most under utilized nickname in Za history. Sure Fagan had great stories about Timmy Prudente (probably a topic for a future post). Yeah, he drew people eating their own brains. All the more reason to knock him down a peg by calling him Little Melinda.
Ragin' Keith Faigin? Is there more to it that his inner hatred of poorly planned openings? Sure it rhymes, but there must be something deeper. I demand subtext!
Goose gave the group many glorious things over the years, such as "Jeeter and Cleetus" and "This Big Dude", but I have a soft spot for Doorboy. We were practicing guessing skits in Bronfman and the guessers consistently forgot to close the door behind them (thereby annoying the nearby math study groups). So a dutiful young freshman named Jon Kravis kept closing the door for the guessers. At one point during the evening, Goose pointed towards Kravis and said "Doorboy, close the door." Kravis was later destined for comedic, debate, and legal greatness, but we never let Doorboy forget his humble upbringing.
Enough of my typing ... what are the new nicknames? Why does Toby not have a nickname? We was Randy the Despot? Surely, there was a particularly dictatorial moment that spawned the nickname. Did Carsten have a nickname? Why was Heather The General? When did the tradition of nicknames start (or is this some broader sociological function of close knit groups)?
My nickname, Winchester the Mighty Bunny Killer aka Winchester aka Winch aka BK, came from my sharing a traumatic childhood experience. A mistake if ever there was one. The event that earned me the nickname Rambo in second grade found a new form in college.
Jeff McMahon picked by the nickname 6 from my poor chalk board writing in Bronfman. While selecting skits, some one asked who "6" was, I didn't know what the hell they were talking about. They pointed to a couple of the scribbles on the board. "Oh, that is a 'j' for Jeff." It did look like a "6" and Jeff adopted the nickname. [Note: It might have been Goose writing on the board -- but I doubt it, he's very fastidious that Goose.]
Goose is a silly bird if ever there was one. Seems self evident. Actually, I don't even remember Goose's real name. What a melding of nickname and man.
The Wrecking Ball I vaguely recall a story involving lots of pot and property damage (including a TV), but the story might well be apocryphal.
I always thought Julie looked more like Robert Plant than James Brown, but somehow she ended up with the nickname Godmother. Anyone care to fill me in?
Sean Kelly was sans nickname until his senior year when he created an inspired character, Scoop. A third baseman if I remember correctly. The character didn't see the light of stage until First-Line-A-thon. Past that, hazy memories.
I assume Ray Cashman was named Jesus because of the beard. He did bear a striking resemblance to David Koresh. Was he saintly in any other ways? Was he the one who came up with "The Last Supper at the IHop" where Jesus and the discipline run out on the check and finish off the bottomless pot of coffee?
Little Melinda might be the most under utilized nickname in Za history. Sure Fagan had great stories about Timmy Prudente (probably a topic for a future post). Yeah, he drew people eating their own brains. All the more reason to knock him down a peg by calling him Little Melinda.
Ragin' Keith Faigin? Is there more to it that his inner hatred of poorly planned openings? Sure it rhymes, but there must be something deeper. I demand subtext!
Goose gave the group many glorious things over the years, such as "Jeeter and Cleetus" and "This Big Dude", but I have a soft spot for Doorboy. We were practicing guessing skits in Bronfman and the guessers consistently forgot to close the door behind them (thereby annoying the nearby math study groups). So a dutiful young freshman named Jon Kravis kept closing the door for the guessers. At one point during the evening, Goose pointed towards Kravis and said "Doorboy, close the door." Kravis was later destined for comedic, debate, and legal greatness, but we never let Doorboy forget his humble upbringing.
Enough of my typing ... what are the new nicknames? Why does Toby not have a nickname? We was Randy the Despot? Surely, there was a particularly dictatorial moment that spawned the nickname. Did Carsten have a nickname? Why was Heather The General? When did the tradition of nicknames start (or is this some broader sociological function of close knit groups)?
posted by (d)avid at 11/16/2004 09:45:00 PM
19 Comments:
Nicknames began with the Currier show (see comment on previous post). Godmother of Soul (euphoniously shortened to GoMoO'So) did indeed come from her initials. What about 'JJ' for Fagan (though I never knew why)? Will let Keith and Chris tell their own stories. Will also defer to Chris to fill us in on the source of Steve Scoville's nickname 'Pavel' (assuming it's a Pavel Chekhov reference...but why that?) As for me, the comment about my nicknamelessness has been made enough that it seems "The Guy with no Nickname" should be my nickname.
I forgot one of the best nicknames, Tron. Za went up to an improv comedy festival featuring Del Close (I believe). Del was teaching the good folks how to build up scenes. The game being played was a building block game: "I am a frog;" "I am the log the frog is sitting on;" "I am a wart on the frog;" ... . Well, some lame-o started out with "I am an atom," which was then followed up with "I am an electron" and "I am a neutron" and "I am a proton." Rich then jumped in and added "I am the wildly unsuccessful 80s Disney movie Tron." The laughter of the audience soon quieted by Del yelling, "You ruined that skit. No one can build on that. You ruined the skit for a cheap laugh." Hence, Tron was born.
I can only ever imagine it being said by you, Ice, but I'll go with the flow if it's gets picked up...If it rains outside you can take a quick train, go downtown and pick out a nickname, I said a nickname...
Chris, you were pretty energetic back in the day. The ol' Silver Backed Ape was spry and leaping from tree to tree. Must have been pre-child, huh?
How was it that you picked up two nicknames and Toby gathered none? Ah, wait, Jason's answer is now clear: you can't give yourself a nickname and Toby is the giver of nicknames. An excellent example of Bertrand Russell's Barber Paradox (thank you, thank you, I will be here all week and have gratuitous references to spare).
By the way, I apologize for impugning your clean lifestyle. I recall one story involving you and pot and The Breeder's "Cannonball" and a Space Chase cartoon, but that is it. (Well, I thought there were two stories, but it turns out that Carlo Rossi was the culprit in the Wreckin' Ball incident). My other reference to reefer was trying to determine what sort of whack-jobs would put a Fleetwood Mac song on repeat for hours on end. Past experience suggests that marijuana makes repetition of songs more palatable, so my question about euphymistic uses of "Fleetwood Mac" was a guess not an accusation.
The Silver Backed Ape is an upstanding member of the community as far as I am concerned.
Ben, what was your nickname? What were the nicknames of the younger folks like Sadru, Magary and all those other people I don't know?
It was too hard to nickname Sadru, any nickname would simply bead up on his surface and fall to the ground, oily foreigner that he is.
Magary, on the other hand, took on the nickname "Fatty" thanks to his weight gain after his freshman year.
Let us not also forget Rob "Caveman" Trumbull, thanks to his prominent brow, I think, and the short-lived Jason "Bogie" Greenberg, due to his odd Bogartish voice and not to his predilection for banging girls at Skidmore indiscriminately.
"Chow mein coming through!" I remember hearing the story at the 2000 reunion. I also remember that y'all made group t-shirts that said "Chow mein coming through!" and that Keith Faigin and I paid for said shirts. Sadly, Rich Leimsider never sent the shirts. I saw him a couple of years later and RIch burst out laughing -- explaining that he just pocketed the money and it seemed to much a hassle to actually mail the shirts.
Since I am rooming with him at this reunion, I will extract my measure of vengence. "Chow mein coming through!" indeed.
I think it's only appropriate to tell the "Chow Mein" story in full. We were at Skidmore on a cold wintry night in '99, probably, and stopped at a pizza place after the show to get slices for everyone. For some sad reason we were neither at a party nor inebriated nor anything.
The place was small and as we waited in line, a guy with that destitute look was leaving the place with some pizza in hand and didn't care for how we were pretty much blocking the exit. He thus burst out with "Chow mein, coming through, fucking beeee-ware" to get us out of his way.
David Taylor immediately came back to the guy, "Yo yo yo!" for some reason, as if to say, "I recognize the truth of your complaint, pardon us.". It was the perfect non sequiter cherry to the weird little scene.
The post-script of "Chow Mein" as it relates to the t-shirts, then. It had been four or five years since the group had made t-shirts so we thought '99 was the right time, and we were all tickled by "Chow Mein" to make it the centerpiece of the shirt. I remember especially liking how perversly insular the reference was.
Anyway, we put "Chow Mein" on the center of the back. On the lower back we put, in small type, "If you can read this you're too close to my ass."
In front we wanted to put a graphic of some kind to replace the old Za crest with the rubber chicken and the pizza. Sadru had done a random marker sketch of a lion and a farmer that, again perversely, we thought was amusing enough to put on the shirt. I sent the design in to the t-shirt place and they came back with a finely rendered clip art lion and farmer. The guy's response when we complained was "Jeff never told me not to use clip art"
The end.
OR IS IT? I remembered another couple of details:
the guy in the pizza place was drunk and smelly, and after the chow mein line he told Dave Taylor, "that's a real bad place you're standing there, man". This was the point at which DT did some weird hip-hop hand gesture and said "yo yo yo!" to defuse the situation.
So what is with the new logo?
http://wso.williams.edu/orgs/comboza/
Looks vaguely professional, but it also looks like a 70s soccer team logo.
Dave Taylor was dubbed Harpo by Goose. That didn't stick? I mean jjez, what higher compliment could there be. Harpo is one of the all time greats.
We still haven't heard about Ragin' Keith Faigin.
Steve, did Peter have a nickname? I can recall many monickers, but Pete gave htem to himself and that doesn't count. Steve was dubbed Ernie by Goose. That stuck for a while. But I much prefered the name I gave Steve senior year: Old Shit Foot. You might wonder why Steve got named Old Shit Foot. Well, let me tell you. We were playing frisbee on the lawn in front of Spencer. Steve went running for a slightly errant frisbee and stepp in a big pile of dog poop. He slipped a little, but generally stopped on the spot and had a look of pure disgust on his face. Did I mention that he was barefoot at the time -- that is kind of important to the visual image. At any rate, Steve decided to be a quitter, stop throwing the frisbee, and go inside to wash off his nasty-ass foot. Thus was Old Shit Foot born.
Of course, I think I might be the only person on the planet to have ever call him that. I tried to get a girlfriend of his to call him that, but she was so disgusted by the story that she broke up with him because she could stand the idea of being with him barefoot (and he has creepy prehensile toes in any case). Was that too much information? Probably. Sorry.
Re: the logo. It looks like Za wants to host the Winter Olympics.
At least some things never change, like the fact that, when you click on the logo, you're directed to a page that does not exist.
Re: the logo. It looks like Za wants to host the Winter Olympics.
At least some things never change, like the fact that, when you click on the logo, you're directed to a page that does not exist.
Ah, the irony of complaining about somebody else's inability to do internet stuff as I double-post the board.
I've been reading your blogs for years, but I never thought anything like this could happen to me...
Nicknames... I don't know whether I can add much to this discussion, except to confirm the Wreckin' Ball's account (Rossi, not reefer). I believe Pavel was a Trek reference, though the details are murky.
I'll offer a possible account for Ragin'... might this have come from discussions of renaming the group? At one point during my career, we gave serious consideration to ditching the name Combo Za, probably in hopes of further confusing and alienating our fledgeling audience. The only suggestion of merit was "Raging Bull," playing as it did on the school's unofficial mascot (I also remember a brief discussion of "Hey, Who BEphed?"). Keith was, I believe, a strong supporter of Raging Bull. Here it drifts into an opium-like fog composed of dim recollection and pure conjecture... might someone have suggested that Keith only liked the name because "Ragin'" sounded like "Faigin"? Didn't someone mockingly suggest "Blazin' Raisins" for the same reason? Or did the nickname pre-date the discussion?
While we're at it, I'll take the blame for "Jesus at the IHOP," though the idea came to fruition in a Basement Tapes after my time. It arose from an opening idea, an award-show style "Brief Videotape Retrospective of the Life of Christ." The miracle of finishing the bottomless pot of coffee, arguably the only portion with significant comic merit, was added on by some successor.
I suppose we should include Dave "Pastey" Allen in a discussion of nicknames, though the nickname was not Za related, and its origin painfully obvious to anyone who set eyes on the man.
I'll echo your praises for Tron. I hope none of you would dream of ruining a cheap laugh for the sake of a skit- I still think that's what set Za apart from other groups I've seen.
The logo is gruesome- sorry if any of you designed it- appropriate for the Bulgarian National Airline or an athletic shoe.
It may not be true, but the "I am a comedy warrior" story is awesome. We shoudl make it true. If Gore claimed to have invented the internet and Kerry never went to Cambodia, then Keith Faigin bloodied his nose before auditions listening to Visionquest and came in muttering, "I am a comedy warrior."
I definitely did not do away with nicknames. I gave Jeff and Steve nicknames and will keep calling Kravis "Doorboy" until he gets appointed to the Supreme Court or Solicitor General (at which point he will be "Justice Doorboy" or "Solicitor General Doorboy"). That was the younger generation. What a disruptive force. They did away with philosophy jokes, nicknames, and started saying "cum on my titties."
Any particularly Despotic stories for Randy or was this a cumulative events type of nickname?
Too bad that Scoop wasn't around before we were playing frisbee, huh? Shit Foot.
Brief explanation, the Smurf sketch was performed at Basement Tapes and was inspired by an event at a competition at Hamilton College. We were put up in one of the old, closed frat houses that refused to sell the building to the school even though it was at the center of the campus. The group discovered a Penthouse in the room. Magary started to read the Penthouse Letters (Forum?) only replacing objectionable terms with the word "smurf." For example, "She got down and started to smurf my growing smurf."
For Basement Tapes, John painted his face blue and wore a white baseball hat. He then proceeded to read the letter replacing all objectionable words with "Smurf." In practice it worked great, but in the actualy performance john slipped and used the word "snatch." The magazine dropped briefly, Magary looked up quickly, and then proceeded to continue reading. If it was possible to blush underneath all the blue face paint, John managed. Of course, using the word "snatch" while reading the letter ruined the punchline. After reading the smurf-filled story, John put down the magazine, stepped forward and announced "and that was the best fuck of my life!" Unfortunately, the vulgarity didn't have much shock value when John had already uttered one a few sentences before. At least it made Sadru happy.
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