Why Is It So Hard For Famous People to Give Their Kids Normal Names?
Plus a bit of news, The Last Dance Episodes 5 + 6, and This Week in Consumption.
Hey all you normally named people,
Some news to address:
First of all, Pitchfork’s July festival was canceled, so our abandoned deep dive from March - Should You Go To Pitchfork This Summer? - is officially moot.
FWIW: the answer was, “just get a one-day pass to Saturday”, anyways.
Second, this AP article caught my eye yesterday:
I can’t for the life of me remember who spoke at my high school graduation, only that my own submission - “Brown, White, and Blue: How Everyone in Our Class Can Embody the Spirit of Olympic Figure Skater/Hometown Hero Jason Brown, and Overcome Their Personal Obstacles Like Brown Did With His Elusive Quad Jump” - was vehemently rejected by the committee. So I’m a bit envious of the guest speakers.
Funnily enough, if you doll up the full speaker list a bit, and add in The Chainsmokers (because is any lineup really a lineup without The Chainsmokers?), this star-studded bill is probably better than what Pitchfork’s would have been:
I’ll probably end up watching the ceremony, mainly because I’m curious to see:
a) if the Jonas Brothers all quarantined together at the Jonas Parents’ house, and
b) if they perform their song “Year 3000” in a way that better reflects the current times:
[CHORUS]
He said I've been to the Year 2020
Not much has changed except they’ve run out of money
And your grandkids can’t be bothered
To Zoom at 5 (Zoom at fiiiiveeeee)
Whatever this ends up being, let’s just hope they cut any additional celebrity renditions of Imagine at the dress rehearsal. Here’s to you, Class of 2020!
Lastly, Elon Musk and Grimes’ newborn son is supposedly called X Æ A-12:
Initial Reaction: 1) Why did I read that tweet to the tune of the Doe, A Deer song from The Sound of Music? and 2) We need a Pronunciation Manual video on this ASAP:
My second instinct was to consult my copy of Freakonomics (written by the “Fourth and Fifth Stevens/Stephens”, Levitt and Dubner, respectively), and share a few excerpts from a chapter called, Would A Roshanda By Any Other Name Smell As Sweet?:
Considering the relationship between income and names, and given the fact that income and education are strongly correlated, it is not surprising to find a similarly strong link between the parents’ level of education and the name they give their baby.
Here are the Top 20 names of white male babies born in California most strongly correlated with high income/education households in the Year 2000:
Elon Musk has a B.S. in Economics from UPenn Wharton, an additional B.A. in physics, and is the world’s 31st richest person (Forbes). His other children are named Griffin, Xavier, Kai, Entropy, and Saxon, and I only made one of those up.
However, this dataset specifically drew from # of years from the mother’s education:
Grimes is a McGill University dropout who was double majoring in Neuroscience and Russian. Considering her stage name supposedly originates from when she first created a MySpace account and accidentally selected “Grime” for all three genres that a musician could choose from, without knowing what it meant, we’ll call that a wash.
It’s no Nick, Kevin, or Joe, but is X Æ A-12 really that much more absurd of a name than Florian (13) or Ashkon (17)?
(Thinking…) No, yeah. It definitely is. The Freakonomics chapter’s conclusion:
Obviously, a variety of motives are at work when parents consider a name for their child … It would be an overstatement to suggest that all parents are looking - whether consciously or not - for a “smart” name or a “high-end” name.
But they are all trying to signal something with a name, whether the name is Winner or Loser, DeShawn or Jake, [Stephen or Steven], [Finnegan or X Æ A-12]. What the data suggest is that an overwhelming number of parents use a name to signal their own expectations of how successful their children will be.
Whatever it is that Elon and Grimes are trying to signal by naming their kid X Æ A-12, I think it’s being picked up by my printer…
On the very next page, Dubner and Levitt identify the Most Popular Black Boy Names in California in 1990 and 2000.
Hmm… I wonder what could have possibly contributed to #1 in 1990, as well as #2 and #4 in 2000…
(talk about a transition!)
Episodes 5 and 6 of The Last Dance were easily my favorite sequence so far.
We saw Magic begrudgingly pass the NBA’s Alpha Dog torch at one of the Dream Team’s practice scrimmages, got multiple unflattering glimpses of Jordan’s ruthless competitiveness, became sympathetic to how MJ could only find peace in empty hotel rooms, and discovered exactly how many ways Kukoč can be mispronounced.
I was familiar with the drama of Isiah Thomas being left off the Dream Team because of his relationship with Jordan, but two things I hadn’t explicitly thought about before:
Isiah also had major beef with Bird and Magic for completely separate reasons
Chuck Daly, the Dream Team Head Coach, was Thomas’ head coach in Detroit
…that’d be like Steve Kerr coaching the 2020 Olympic team, but leaving Steph Curry off the team because LeBron, KD, and Kawhi all didn’t want to play with him!
Oh wait I forgot, current American All Stars are too cool for the Olympics these days…
This would’ve been like Kerr coaching the 2020 team, but leaving Andrew Wiggins off because Zach LaVine and D’Angelo Russell didn’t want to play with him. The nerve!
Can’t wait to see how they address Jordan’s retirement announcement, and if they cover his brief return to form in the 1994 Pippen All Star Classic, the last game ever played at the old Chicago Stadium, and something I only learned about this week.
Line of the Night: Jordan, when the Bulls are celebrating their championship win and Jerry Krause asks him for one of his victory cigars:
“You can’t smoke it. It’ll stunt your growth.”
Literal Highlight of the Night:
This Week in Consumption:
Bulls-Related:
Sam Smith’s controversial and much-alluded-to book, The Jordan Rules. Could make for a great companion piece to the doc. Feel free to order it on Amaz-
Are you serious?? $153.20 for a single hardcover?!? Didn’t this site used to be a bookstore? Friendly reminder that Amazon’s vision statement is:
“to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices…”
…endeavor a little harder, Bezos!
ESPN’s Zach Lowe: How Toni Kukoc went from Dream Team nemesis to '90s Bulls hero
Comedy Special: Tom Walker: Very Very (available on Amazon Prime)
Those debating whether or not to watch the self-described “tribute to comedy’s dirtiest four-letter word” (mime) are encouraged to use the first minute and 30 seconds of the below clip of Tom as a litmus test for your likelihood of enjoying the special:
If that made you laugh, I think you’ll be more than entertained by Very Very. If you watched that and feel more like the guy who gave this 2/5 star review on Letterboxd:
…then your results may vary.
Until next time,