Benched for the Name Game

October 21, 1997

Benched for the Name Game
By Bob Coskrey

When it came time to name the publication, no one, not even Jeff Schwaner, asked for my input, but perhaps as you read o, you may appreciate his wisdom.

Nevertheless, to begin with, it would seem logical to name it “Upwith Herald” again, but apparently that’s legally prohibited now, so why not just use one or two of the three words from the old name, thereby reducing the amount of the lawsuit by one or two thirds? Hey, we need to reduce our operating costs as much as possible in the beginning.

Then again, the name should deliver the message of the paper. Just what is it that we want to say and to whom do we want to say it?

If we came out with a defiant “who cares if you read us, we’re the best” attitude, we could call ourselves “Up Yours Herald.” In fact, we could dedicate each issue to a special person every week, by changing the word, e.g. “Up Yours, Gilliam” (local), “Up Yours, Beasley” (state), or “Up Yours, Camilla” (international). But then that’s really a bit too negative.

We could signal a proclivity for self-deprecating humor with the “Up Ours Herald” or even project an “it’s them, not us” perspective with the “Up Theirs Herald.”

Then again, maybe we should eschew the attack mode altogether with the “Upwith Herald Angels Sing.” We could all acquire that “Upwith People” look—freshly scrubbed v-neck sweaters and white shirts. We could write about nothing but superlative examples of human behavior.

E.g. “Ecstatically happy postal worker runs through post office hugging and kissing fellow employees and thanking his supervisors for the chance to work with such a great bunch of people.”

Or, “Driver in bumper to bumper traffic jam shoots self out of fear of being mistaken for a tailgater.”

But let’s be candid. If we wrote only about examples of exemplary human behavior, we would quickly be out of business. Who would read a two page paper?

We could try to expand our reader base by going after the hip-hop community with the “Downwith Herald,” but I doubt they’ll be down with no bunch of line-dancin’ white guys with closets full of Vanilla Ice CDs.

We could sell all our advertising to one client, Food Lion, by shamelessly naming ourselves the “What’s Upwith Harold,” transcending the now hackneyed “Where’s Harold,” but then we’d probably be inviting ABC to surreptitiously through our news stands for papers with expired dates.

Maybe the “Upchuck Herald” would catch on, in which we would devote our writing to the grosser aspects of life such as “Mr. Ed’s Revenge: Horses’ Diaper Explodes Onto Carraige-Load of Overweight, Hot Dog Gorging Tourists in 98 Degree Heat” or “Nude Hot Tubbing With Dan Moon.”

But despite all these splendid, if not always tactful ideas, they decided upon “the Current,” which certainly is very good, though “Hip” would have been just as effective in my book (which incidentally looks a lot like the one Jack Nicholson’s character was typing away in “The Shining”), though maybe not quite as with it as “Now” or “Happenin’.”

“Au Courant” would give us a nice Euro flavor, but how they could have possibly rejected “Alternating Current” completely befuddles me. And along that line, “AC-DC” wouldn’t be bad, except that we might be forced to fill our pages with personal ads of a certain bent.

“Current,” “Current.” As I said the words I got a mental picture of a swift moving river roaring down King Street filled with interesting people from all walks of life and writers struggling to write about them as they bob between whitecaps. It’s the swiftest Current I’ve ever seen, and then suddenly I overheard my fourth grade teacher saying to my mother, “Mrs. Coskrey, your son, I , uh, don’t really know how to say this, but he’s, you know, NOT TOO SWIFT!”

I looked at “The Current” again. To be or not to be.

Riding this Current is going to be an exciting trip. I figure as long as I keep writing I can stay afloat.