It is with sadness that I recall a time when I was not yet a blogger full-grown, but was a blogger in larval form, cocooned in skidoo suits and footie pjs against that great day still in the future when the industry I was fated to dominate (work with me here, okay?) would be born. Sad those days were, indeed, not so much because of the lack of blogs (but kinda) but rather because of the presence of vast herds of easily-influenced, lowbrow trend sheep: back then, we called them white trash.
Remember those divine triple avatars of conflicted feminism, the Angels of Charlie? (ZOMG, I am channeling the Olo of the Man!) Somewhere towards the death throes of that show, perhaps the definitive television program of adolescent 70′s femininity (Mary Tyler Moore was just too damn chipper, and she didn’t get to toss her hair and yell “Freeze!” like wicked-cool Kate Jackson or, come to think of it, Angie Dickinson) they leapt the ferocious, fanged fish as badly as Fonzie. Verily, they pulled a Cousin Oliver! They started subbing in any old wannabe and trying to pass them off as Angels.
Remember “Tiffany?” The year after she appeared on the show (“replacing” Kate Jackson, oh please, as if anyone could!) Tiffany was the most popular girl’s name in the United States. Whatever the merits of the no-doubt-charming-and-intelligent little girls in question, it’s hard to go through life with a name that forever marks your parents as appallingly tacky, unoriginal people who get their best ideas off dying sexploitation tv.
I had hoped that this trend would vanish along with dashikis for white guys and nylon bodysuits for girls (the 70′s Chastity Belt). I was wrong.
They are with us even now.
Jayden, my friends, is a sweet-looking, apparently quiet and happy little boy. Britney’s youngest child, he and his brother have been photographed relentlessly since birth, as if they were some kind of miracle pandas: sometimes demonstrating gravity to Mommy and the ‘razzi, sometimes enjoying fine dining en famille, sometimes roving free within the confines of the moving convertible, sometimes playing with Mommy’s lighter and Marlboros. Oh, life is a carnival for the Federtots, constantly in the spotlight.
I wish to make it clear that I have nothing whatsoever against Jayden personally. I’m sure he’s a fine young man. I even have nothing against Britney, who is, after all, called Britney, and who could hardly be expected to name her offspring after the more popular 4th Century BC philosophers. I wish only to complain about the tens of thousands of people who have named their sons Jayden, after someone they have never met, who was saddled with a hickster name at birth he’ll probably hate his whole life (still better than Kal-El I guess) and who hadn’t even mastered bowel control when this sad-sack immortality by proxy was foisted upon him.
Last year, Jayden became the 18th most popular baby name in the United States of America. #2 in New York (which tells you something about New Yorkers that I did not know).
