Is it just me, or can some gags get way out of control?
Every so often, an old hobby of mine comes back from my subconscious mind to haunt me for another few days - this time, I get to inflict it on you. The game is a combination of stream-of-consciousness thought, quick wit, and a decent amount of knowledge about a chosen subject area. (For those not familiar with stream-of-consciousness ramblings, here's a generic sample: "psychiatrist's couch potato Chippendale Carnegie Hall of Fame I want to live Forever Knight of the Round Table of Contents may have been damage in transitory existence is futile, you will be assimilated." The end of one phrase flows into the beginning of another, and so on and so forth.) Basically, you have to take one name in a particular area and link it to another name in the same general area, continuing as long as possible. In a sense, this is a close cousin to the ever-popular pun war, as immortalized in Spider Robinson's Callahan's books.
I usually start off with simple musical tributes, such as Barry Whitesnake, Elton John Cougar Mellencamp or Garth Brooks & Dunn. As you get into the idea of the game, more complex chains come to mind, like Traci Lords of Acid House or Boy George Michael Jackson Browne. Of course, devotion to the rules is good form, but sometimes bending a couple of rules results in worthy new (and frightening) combinations. For instance, there is some dissent about whether names should be linked phonetically or alphabetically; the former allows such monstrosities as My Life With the Thrill Kill Kulture Club, while the latter lets you do things like Tony Toni Toné-Loc. Some degree of slippage is generally okay, such as with Billy Joel Royal or Milli Vanilli Ice-T. Style points are usually given for relating extremely different fields, such as Al Green Jellÿ.
Of course, eventually the subject walls get breached, whether by linking to a related field (as in Bananaramalamadingdong) or by using a name from outside the field to link two names inside the field (such as Bob Dylan Thomas [Tom] Petty). There's really nothing wrong with that approach, especially as it's really closer to true stream-of-consciousness while the restricted subject is more like a pun war. Some examples include Madonna Reed Richards (crossing from music through television to comic books), Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lake, and Arnold Palmer Cortlandt (combining philosophy, golf, and soap operas through music), Melissa Gilbert Gottfried, and even paying a visit to Uncle Tom Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cabin. As long as we're discussing literature, I might as well wonder if Moe Howard Phillips [H.P.] Lovecraft would have written about The Case of Sugar Ray Charles Dexter Ward Cleaver, which might have been read by Upton Sinclair Lewis Carroll or the nefarious "Springheel Jack" London.
There's another variant to this which relies more on switching places; instead of chaining last names to first names, you take people with the same first or last names and place one in the other's role. This often works well in groups, such as casting the role of Batman a bit differently by using Herbert West, Reanimator in the 1960s TV series, Michael J. Fox (or his alter ego from Family Ties, Alex P. Keaton) in the first two modern movies, and perhaps topping it off with George Carlin in the most recent movie. How much different would James Bond be if portrayed by Sean Penn, Demi Moore, George Harrison, and Timothy Leary, with a special substitution of Star Trek's "Q" for Bond's gadgeteer "Q"? Speaking of George Harrison, what if the Beatles were John Cleese, Paul ["Pee-Wee Herman"] Reubens, George Orwell, and Blaze Starr? How about if we'd seen Tim Allen as Frank, Barry White as Brad, Susan Lucci as Janet, Conan O'Brien as Riff Raff, Peter Cushing as Rocky, and "Not-So-Little Nell" Carter as Columbia in The Rocky Horror Picture Show? (If nothing else, the floor show would have been much more...interesting, to say the least. Perhaps Frank might have suggested taking in a Christopher Reeves movie?)
Politics also provide excellent fodder for this variation. For instance, imagine the shape the country would be in if our Presidents since 1960 had been (in order) Jack Nicholson, "Magic" Johnson, Richard ["Riff Raff"] O'Brien, Harrison Ford, Randolph [H.P. Lovecraft protagonist] Carter, Ronald McDonald, George ["Norm!"] Wendt, and Bill Murray (talk about The Man Who Knew Too Little!). We can also work with other positions, such as replacing Bob Dole and Elizabeth Dole with "Bob" Dobbs and Elizabeth Taylor, imagining Chelsea or Hillary Clinton replaced with George Clinton of the P-Funk All Stars, or replacing ultra-communist Karl Marx not with Groucho Marx (too clichéd), but with his ultra-capitalist brother Chico. There's no reason to exclude lobbyists from the fun; imagine Lou Reed as the former politico of the Christian Coalition, with Ralph Reed as a singer! What might the Gulf War have been like as led by "Stormin'" Norman Bates?
Some combinations just don't fit anywhere, such as wondering what might have happened had Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Joseph McCarthy raised Jesus Jones as the Son of God. Almost as sacrilegious might be William S. Burroughs writing plays, or Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver as the Unabomber. Picture Walt Whitman as the inventor of Mickey Mouse. Imagine Kristy McNichol or Sarah Jessica Parker playing Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Picture Shemp Howard writing the Conan books while Robert E. Howard played a Stooge. What if Bud Bundy and Elvis Costello had formed a popular radio comedy duo, rivaled only by Stanley Kubrick and Ollie North? What might the Jackson Five have sounded like with Jesse and Samuel L. Jackson? Henry Rollins would make a good Fonz, but would Henry Winkler do well singing white male hate rock?
Sometimes, you can get peculiar results by combining one person's first name with someone else's last name to get a third person's full name. Examples include:
If you made it this far without going insane, you've probably got some ideas of your own. Send 'em my way, and if I get enough, I may write a follow-up page later to show off the best (or, in some eyes, the worst). For the final bad combination, which is sheer terror and wrongness on too many levels, I'm just going to let you wonder what might happen if Fifth Dimension Films presented Cthulhu: The Musical. Talk about pure insanity....