What's In a Name?

Over at the Washington Post, Monica Hesse looks at one of the obstacles to Fred Thompson's presidential aspirations - namely, his, um, name: (h/t Best of the Web)

In the swampy soup of hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election, there is a man with a funny name. (No, not that one.)

We're thinking of the one named Fred (Thompson).

Say it out loud. Do it. Fred. Fred. In the South, Fray-ud.

Fur-red-duh.

It has the tonal quality of something being dropped on the floor, something heavy and damp-ish.

Waterlogged paper towel.

Fred.

The phonetics of the name seem integral to its image problem: On Urbandictionary.com, a "Fred" is defined as "a person who does stupid, annoying, or idiotic things" (Fred Flintstone, Fred Mertz). The best-case descriptors a Fred can hope for are terms like well-intentioned, predictable, benign (Fred Rogers).

Clearly, Ms. Hesse is going for the funny here, but as James Taranto points out, she might have chosen a different source, or has she looked up Urbandictionary.com's definition of her first name lately? You can find it here.

With that in mind, I decided to look up other potential presidential first names: Rudy, Mitt, Hillary, and, of course, Obama.

You know, by this yardstick, that Rudy guy might have some potential.

You can look up your name here.

On the Bookshelf

Now that I've had my Harry Potter fix, I'm re-reading William Goldman's Marathon Man, to be followed by its lesser known sequel, Brothers.

William Goldman was a huge influence on both my reading and writing back in the day. I saw the movie Harper when I was thirteen, No Way to Treat a Lady two years later (even though he didn't write the screenplay) and, like most people, I was blown away by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969. I saw Marathon Man the first day it opened and was treated to a copy of the book as a promotional tie-in.

From a writing standpoint, Goldman's real legacy - other than perhaps The Princess Bride - is his work on screenwriting: Adventures in The Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell?. Along with Stephen King's Danse Macabre (and perhaps King's On Writing), these books offer the best guide to how a writer thinks and what goes on the creative mind.

If you're a writer or just interested in how it happens, I can't recommend them highly enough.

The Ghosts of November

Not quite the romance of the Titanic, but still: (h/t The Buzz)

DETROIT — An apple farmer and his family believe they've found a life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald roughly 200 miles away from where the famed ship sank in Lake Superior 32 years ago.

Of course, there are questions and skeptics, and the whole thing may turn out to be a hoax, but tell me you didn't feel a chill when you saw the words Edmund Fitzgerald.

"In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call 'Gitche Gumee'.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early"

Did you feel it?

Soundtracks

I love movie soundtracks almost as much as I love movies themselves - I am the Movie Slut, after all - and I've recently stumbled on a website that's a soundtrack lover's wet dream. It's called StreamingSoundtracks and it's exactly what the name implies: a website devoted to nothing but movie (and TV) soundtracks.

It's free to join, although you can become a VIP member for around $50 a year, and you make requests for specific cuts from a soundtrack. As I write this, for example, a cut from the soundtrack to The Last Mimzy is playing, to be followed by one from Havana, then one from Hercules (TV) and so on.

The end result is hours of interesting music that never gets boring. While I recognize many of the cuts, I frequently find myself clicking on the queue to see what movie the music is from.

Trust me, if you love movies, you'll want to listen.

Note: You can listen through Winamp or Windows Media Player but you may have to download a plug-in to do so.

Post Potter

So, the final book has been released, read in one joyous straight-through 18-hour marathon, re-read in a more leisurely fashion, lovingly tucked into the bookcase beside books 1 - 6, and now, in the aftermath, I am left with a curious combination of satisfaction, sadness and ennui. And, of course, the inevitable question:

What's next?

Although Rowling is smart enough to never say "never", I'll be very surprised if she writes another Harry Potter story. The coda she put on the series caps things nicely and as she put it in the final chapter (before the epilogue), Harry's earned a rest. Certainly, the world of magic she created is large enough for her to set other stories in it, but will she?

It's unfortunate - and, once again, inevitable - that everything she writes from now on will be compared to the HP series and will likely, at least by some, be found wanting. No matter. Harry Potter will be read by children and adults alike for generations to come. Whatever else she writes, her legacy is secure.

For the record, I loved Deathly Hallows. Having re-read the first six books before tackling book 7, it's clear how much the series had grown from her initial imaginings. Like the children she wrote about, the books became older, wiser, deeper and darker than I suspect she ever realized they would. The kids grew up and the world she created grew with them.

Taken as a whole, the Harry Potter series is an immense achievement. It has been an enormous pleasure to be among the first to read these books and the only appropriate thing to say right now is: Thank you, J.K. Rowling. I will be forever grateful to you and your creation.

And now, onward.