Wise Young Fool

by Sean Beaudoin

Elliot laughs. “Rich fuckers’ blocked skimmers won’t wait?”

  “Don’t be…” I say. “Just don’t.”

  Looper kisses me and leaves.

  Elliot doesn’t kiss me and stays.

  “Lacy couldn’t make it?”

  “Lacy split town.”

  “Wait, what?”

  He nods. “She went to LA after all.”

  “You are so totally kidding.”

  “I am so totally not.”

  “Wow. Sorry, dude.”

  “Yeah, well. Women.”

  “So does that mean El Hella is officially stag again?”

  “They don’t call me Lonesome Dove for nothing.”

  “And Chaos?”

  He shrugs. “Vanished, as far as I can tell. A ghost. It’s possible the dude never existed in the first place.”

  “So we’re a duo once more.”

  “Have been since third grade.”

  I hug him. This time he really hugs me back.

  And there we are.

  In a parking lot.

  A place with no walls.

  I look around and blink and I think

  If I’m just a little bit smarter.

  Just a little bit cooler.

  Just a little less me from here on out.

  I won’t have to do

  anything on anyone

  else’s time

  ever again.

  Except maybe Looper’s, since I have a feeling she’s going to offer me a job.

  Assistant douche, minimum wage.

  At least to start.

  Elliot opens the trunk of the Renault and hands me The Paul.

  It’s fucked up, banged up, taped up—duct and Scotch and masking and electrical—yet somehow repaired.

  I toss the strap over my shoulders.

  Plink a few notes

  and it’s like

  old home week

  It’s

  enough to make you want to

  laugh

  at how right

  it is

  I finger a G chord

  windmill my arm

  begin to strut

  and I swear, I really don’t

  even

  know how

  to explain

  how utterly pure

  I feel.

  From the desk of Gloria R. Quill, Editor

  And so, sadly, the manuscript ends there. The final page is torn in half, the rest of the notebook empty except for a few crude drawings and what appear to be test essays that were never handed in or perhaps were never intended to be. If you’ve stayed with Ritchie this far, I’m sure it’s as frustrating for you as it was to us not to continue for another hundred pages. Or more. However, over the past year I’ve come to think that perhaps this ending is for the best. Ritchie is a person not easily wrapped up. And since we do not know who he is, or where he is, or even if he ever really existed, what better way to part than mired in the same brand of confusion (or perhaps enlightenment?) that initially brought us together? We stepped briefly into a few months of his life, and it is no real surprise that he is the one who has decided where we need to step out.

  It is typically sudden, if you will allow the pun.

  And again, if you have any knowledge of Ritchie or his band, friends, or family, please contact us immediately. I can promise you that your completely confidential information will be forwarded to my desk without delay, and there may, in fact, be some sort of reward. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

  Thank you for reading.

  Keep rocking!

  Gloria R. Quill

  Executive Editor, Quality Division

  Little, Brown, Inc.

  www.suddenlyfound.com

  Sociology II Final Exam

  Essay Section

  Ritchie Sudden

  The 25 Worst Band Names Ever

  25. Vampire Weekend

  We live in a vampire world. From True Blood to Twilight, to Tom Cruise slowly draining Katie Holmes, the national vampire obsession is never-ending. Twenty years ago Vampire Weekend would have been fine, even pleasingly nonsensical, but now it’s the equivalent of naming your band the Han Solo Experience in 1978, or the Titanics in 1994, or Jeff Probst’s Safari Jacket in 2000. It’s the worst example of aural product placement since Lionel Richie’s last single, “My Toyota Drives So Fine.”

  Suggested alternatives: Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Weekend, Ring Wraith Fortnight, Thank God It’s Cannibal Friday, Tom Cruise Blew as Lestat Month.

  24. Mötley Crüe, Blue Öyster Cult, Amon Düül, Maxïmo Park, Queensrÿche, Hüsker Dü, Beowülf, The Accüsed, The Crüxshadows, Hüey Lewis and the News

  Motörhead gets a pass for being Motörhead. Otherwise, the curse of the umlaut remains an unforgivable stain.

  Suggested alternatives: Name your band Umlaut and get an automatic pass from the crucial postmodernist sales niche.

  23. Pearl Jam

  They can deny it in interviews all they want, but we all know this is hands-down the dumbest allusion for coitus ever used by a band that sold more than six hundred albums. Oddly, all those aging hipster moms wearing Pearl Jam hoodies to Pilates don’t seem to have noticed. The Jam should give one half of their royalties to Eric Burdon for his song “Spill the Wine (Take That Pearl),” undoubtedly where they stole the name, like a bunch of sleazy Vedders in the night, in the first place.

  Suggested alternatives: Bone Sauce, Hump Wax, Lay Clay, Pork Jelly.

  22. Nickelback, Matchbox 20, blink-182, Sum41, Five For Fighting, 24-7 Spyz, 3 Doors Down, Timbuk3, Spacemen 3, Level 42, 30 Odd Foot of Grunts, Sixpence None the Richer, Sham 69, Third Eye Blind, UB40, Maroon 5, Old 97’s

  Rock and math were born to go together like peanut butter and veiled references to Leviticus. No good band has ever had a number in their name, with the possible exception(s) of Nine Inch Nails and Ten Years After. It’s the hip-quotient difference between a skull-plastered Ford Econoline and a turd-yellow Kia, between a thrashed fifties Stratocaster and an endless bassoon solo, between publicly calling your blank-eyed girlfriend “sexual napalm” and playing drums for Napalm Death.

  Suggested alternatives: Try something with hyphens, semicolons, or parentheses.

  21. Black Keys, Black Mountain, Black Eyes, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Black Nasty, Black Breath, Black Crowes, Blackfoot, Black Star, Big Black, Black Eyed Peas, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Black Cherry, James White and the Blacks, Black Suede

  The only bands that get a pass for having “black” in their name are Black Sabbath, Black Flag, and Black Uhuru. That’s it. Well, maybe Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. But that’s really it. Everyone else is just plain lazy.

  Suggested alternatives: Work out something with the criminally underutilized “azure.”

  20. Pantz Noyzee

  Somehow existing in that rare gray area where The Unfortunate Z and Creatively Dull as Spackle meet Doe-Eyed Men in Leg Warmers.

  Suggested alternatives: Pants No More.

  19. Counting Crows

  A name perfectly encapsulating the desperate, wheedling need that is the band’s musical output. Or the ability to translate maudlin lyrics into dates with the cast of Friends. And maybe a reach-around from Schwimmer. Apparently a few years ago some kid found one of Adam Duritz’s dreadlocks lying in the gutter at the corner of Sunset and La Cienega and sold it on eBay for a dollar.

  Suggested alternatives: Counting Crabs, Ignoring Calories, Crutching Crotch, Stuffing Craw, Tallying the Minutes Spent Trying to Erase the Tapeworm of a Melody that Is “Mr. Jones” From Your Brain.

  18. Hoobastank

  Our generation’s least-clever reference to toking up. Puts the listener in mind of floppy Dr. Seuss hats, microwave tamales, scented candles, relationship discussions conducted on two sleeping bags zippered together, and unidentified couch spills. I’ve never heard any of their songs and am fairly confident I never need to.

  Suggested alternatives: A job folding thongs at American Appa
rel.

  17. Live, Bush, Blur, Oasis, Lush, Rush, Low, Train, Muse, Jet, Shins, Vines, Hives, Killers, Korn, Toto

  Indistinguishable one-word band names may seem fine individually, like rogue piranhas, but as a group feel like an insidious, soul-killing, Orwellian trend. Essentially the equivalent of when everyone in a café suddenly realizes they’re wearing Che Guevara T-shirts but aren’t sure whether it’s ironically or not. Panic ensues. Fair-trade coffee spills. An abandoned laptop keeps playing The Jetsons theme. The day is saved when a barista quickly orders in a gross of Johnny Cash or Nelson Mandela XXL’s.

  Suggested alternatives: Commodify My Icons. Or maybe just Icon.

  16. Prefab Sprout

  Evocative of Uggs, incense, seitan, septum rings, cassette bootlegs, and the metric tons of cabbage-y gas scientists eventually had to pump into Biosphere 2 to fertilize the plants and aerate the research teams.

  Suggested alternatives: Smell the Tofurkey Glove.

  15. Mudhoney, Faster Pussycat, Spiderbaby, Motorpsycho, Vixen

  Having one band named after a Russ Meyer movie? Fine, we’ll let it slide. But two is unforgivable, and five is a sign of the D-cup Rapture, during which the saved will ascend to heaven while listening to the free-verse poetry of Kitten Natividad.

  Suggested alternatives: Roddy Bottum and the Mondo Topless, Beyond the Valley of the Anatomically Accurate Doll Parts, The Immortal Mr. Teas Experience.

  14. Asia, Europe, Chicago, Boston, Berlin, Beirut, Kansas, Bay City Rollers, Utah Saints, Manhattan Transfer, The Bronx, Ankgor Wat, Hanoi Rocks, Alabama, L.A. Guns, Georgia Satellites, Black Oak Arkansas, Of Montreal, Frankie Goes to Hollywood

  Taking some sort of subtextual cred from a location seems just plain lazy, the same way that naming your son Brooklyn or your heiress Paris dooms them to an early-twenties paparazzi-and-Vicodin tailspin. Like British Intelligence finally getting their hands on the Enigma Machine, the fact that a high percentage of these bands are keyboard-and-mullet-driven supergroups should begin to crack the code.

  Suggested alternatives: Stick with thieving from Greek mythology.

  13. Thelonious Monster

  Never make fun of, or trade in on, the man who wrote “Crepuscule with Nellie.” Monk is musical truth and Monster is a downtown junkie giggle. The totality of the karmic shit-hammer due to descend upon this band is frightening.

  Suggested alternatives: Immediately put on an iceberg with Puddle of Mudd and the Blow Monkeys and then shove into the frozen North Atlantic.

  12. Collective Soul, Soul Asylum, Soul II Soul, Soul Coughing, De La Soul, Warrior Soul, Liquid Soul

  If you have to announce you got it, you don’t.

  Suggested alternatives: Collective Arrhythmia, Arrhythmia Asylum, Arrhythmia II Arrhythmia, Liquid Arrhythmia.

  11. Hawkwind

  It’s true there are many similar names that qualify at this spot, but there’s just something so sadly acid-torched, suede-fringed, and homemade-yogurt-sounding about Hawkwind that it manages to transcend an entire subgenre. The noble hawk. The whisper of a gentle wind. Separately, these ideas epitomize creative honesty and musical rigor. Unified, they represent a commitment to recycling. The Hawkwind concept is the sum of everything wrong with seventies guitar extravagance: Middle Earth lyrics, forty-minute solos, sixty-piece drum sets, leg bandannas, foam Stonehenge, etc.

  Suggested alternatives: Emerson Lake and Duritz, Chawking Crowswind, Hawking Lungchunk, Breaking Fatwind.

  10. Limp Bizkit

  The deep scars from the dawn of rap-metal will never truly heal. A true nadir in American culture—that brief insidious moment in which this band, and the dyed goatee movement in general, was granted a semblance of musical legitimacy. “Pulling a Bizkit” is now street slang for that sense of regret that sets in before your new tattoo of a strip of Velcro is even dry. “No, dude, it’s cool. It looks just like… a strip of Velcro.”

  Suggested alternatives: D’urst, Fred’s Limp Speedwagon, Flaccid Bizkit Overdrive.

  9. Whitesnake

  Ah, David Coverdale. You sort of have to love his willingness to embrace his stature as the walking romance-novel cover of rock. But here he’s just gone too far. The beyond-dimwitted sexual allusion is deserving of ridicule enough. Especially considering the neutered brand of hair metal they larded the nineties airwaves with. Throw in Tawny Kitaen air-buffing a Jaguar with her lingeried fanny, plus David’s creepy, permed-uncle vibe, and you’ve got a solid number 9 on any self-respecting list.

  Suggested alternatives: My Caucasian Genital Metaphor, Such Crude Caucasian Genital Metaphor As Is Mine Reserves the Right to be Used in Reptile Metaphors As Well, the Queasy Leather-Pants Smell of My Backstage Genital Metaphor, There’s a Party in the Groupie Van and Me and My Snake Are Coming.

  8. Edie Brickell & New Bohemians

  We still haven’t recovered from the old self-anointed bohemians, have we? I mean the people who couldn’t get into the back room at Max’s Kansas City. The people who actually bought Basquiat paintings. The people even GG Allin wouldn’t throw his excrement at. Who says we need new ones? The naïveté of Edie’s lyrics combined with the band’s Industrial Cappuccino sound is a snapshot of a particular strain of nineties dot-com malaise.

  Suggested alternatives: Mort Susskind and the Old Napkins, Pathet Lao and the New Communards, Ear Pain and the Delivery Vehicle.

  7. T’Pau

  When you name your band after a character from the “Amok Time” episode of Star Trek you’re pretty much screwed from jump. The intersection of arcane Trek knowledge and eighties synth pop would seem like a natural, but only if that intersection occurs in the corner of the rec room where the Commodore 64 is stashed.

  Suggested alternatives: Th’pent, D’sposible, A’tLeastNoVocorder.

  6. The Goo Goo Dolls

  Pretty much saddling a decade with the unwanted mental image of a vinegary baby crap.

  Suggested alternatives: Steel Leather Fist, Muscle Wrestle Chainsaw, Golf Golf Beer.

  5. Chumbawamba, Scritti Politti, Oingo Boingo, Bananarama, Kajagoogoo, Dishwalla, Milli Vanilli, Linkin Park, Ebn Ozn, Nitzer Ebb, Mr. Mister, Enuff Z’nuff

  Alliteration + unnecessary rhyming + neon overalls = a sophomore year of rampant forehead acne.

  Suggested alternatives: The By, the At, the On, the Up.

  4. Weezer

  Quick, you have two choices: 1. You’re backstage at The View, trapped somewhere between a ravenous Joy Behar and the craft services table, wearing nothing but a falafel Speedo. 2. You’re at a party, you’ve just met someone you’re really attracted to, and you have to work Weezer into the conversation three times.

  Suggested alternatives: Blather, Chancre, Bleeder, Shafter, Cheeze-It

  3. … And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, We Were Promised Jetpacks, Neutral Milk Hotel, My Morning Jacket, They Might Be Giants, Death Cab for Cutie, Everybody Was in the French Resistance… NOW, the Verve Pipe.

  There was a while after Raymond Carver’s story collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? came out when almost every other book title tried to emulate his genius sense of off-beat rhythm and unexpected tension. Suddenly arty commas were everywhere, irony abounded, and a cribbed sense of post-modernism ruled the day. It still hasn’t completely dissipated. So it should come as no surprise that Ray’s stylistic blip has crossed over into music. These are the sort of bands whose name-defenders always say, “But they got it from the first season of Doctor Who!” or, “But they got it from Breakfast at Tiffany’s!” neglecting the fact that no matter how hip the source (yes, that means you, Toad the Wet Sprocket), coolness is not automatically conferred. Hey, Steely Dan is the name of a vibrating personal massager in Naked Lunch, but it still manages to work nicely context-free.

  Suggested alternatives: They Might Be Turgid and Unlistenable, And You Shall Know Us by Our Trail of Pretension, We Were Promised Relevance, Remainder Bin You Plodding Emperor, Death Stab for the Aggressively T
wee, the Corn Cob Pipe.

  2. The Darkness

  Very, very scary. Like the screen name of a serial killer who also collects Hello Kitty. Like the musical equivalent of failing out of art school. Like soaking in a pentagram-shaped hot tub and then having your bedroom haunted by a pale, Depression-era child only you and Morgan Freeman can see. Dare you listen to this band? Are you willing to risk exposure to solos that may cause you to crawl on the ceiling and suddenly speak fluent Aramaic?

  Suggested alternatives: The Comfy Sofa, the Lite Mayonnaise, the Customized Huffy Ten-Speed, the Newly Febrezed Turtleneck.

  1. Hootie & the Blowfish

  Without question the worst band name ever. It absolutely owns each of the Four Hallmarks of Aural Misery: 1. Unforgivably cutesy. 2. Ultimately meaningless. 3. Unwarranted self-satisfaction. 4. Unmistakable hints of dorm-room horseplay. It evokes the smell of someone else’s pizza. It says, “I once broke up with an otherwise terrific girl because she kept whining ‘But I love Hootie!’ every time I ripped the disc out of the changer and tried to Frisbee it across the quad.”

  Suggested alternatives: A Merciful Slide into Cultural Oblivion, the same dark, forgotten crease where Poi Dog Pondering nurses the Dandy Warhols at its milkless teat.