Definitive opinions on band names.

In case anyone was unaware, The Boy and I are indisputably experts on everything and our opinions are law. There are a lot of things everyone else is wrong about, including what does and does not constitute a kickass band name. We have our disagreements on this subject, but we do not disagree that we are obviously the ultimate authorities on this and today we're going to share our arbitrary judgments these absolute truths with you. (Note that these are independent of any judgments on the given band/artist's actual musical value, because a good name does not a good band make, and some great bands have managed to overcome stunningly awful names.)

Truly Excellent Band Names:

• Fitz and the Tantrums (This is the best name. End of story.)
• Iron Maiden
• The Black Keys
• Daft Punk
• Panic(!) at the Disco (Divided opinions re: use of exclamation point.)
• Queen
• OK Go
• The Dandy Warhols
• Fleet Foxes
• Bombay Bicycle Club
• Franz Ferdinand
• Interpol
• The Lumineers
• Florence + The Machine
• The Decemberists
• Summer Fiction
• Explosions in the Sky
• McFly (Reluctantly.)
• AC/DC
• Lupe Fiasco
• Lemon Demon (Okay, this one's a little silly, but it's fun to look at and to say.)
• Radiohead
• We Are Scientists
• Red Hot Chili Peppers
• Box Car Racer
• Capital Cities

Band Names That Suck, Let Us Never Speak Of Them Again:

• My Chemical Romance
• fun. (Sorry, Nate Ruess, but you can do better than that. Also, too hard to Google.)
• Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
• The Kooks/The Kinks (Too short. Too similar. Too many Ks.)
• Goo Goo Dolls
• The Killers
• Maroon 5
• Hoobastank (Why? Why??)
• HAIM
• Band of Horses
• Margot & the Nuclear So and So's
• The Shins (The Boy is unimpressed. He says, "It's just a part of the body.")
• Jack's Mannequin (This feels like a betrayal, but it must be said.)
• The Young Veins
• The Academy Is...
• The Foo Fighters
• Lynyrd Skynyrd (Seriously, what the hell.)
• Hot Chip
• U2
• Starfucker (Blanket disapproval of any band with obscenities in their name.)
• Imagine Dragons
• The Fratellis (The Ramones did it first. Negative points for lack of originality.)
• Horse Feathers
• Dog is Dead
• Five for Fighting
• Smashmouth
• Jimmy Eat World
• Busted
• Sum 41
• Bowling for Soup
• Fountains of Wayne (Breaks my New Jersey heart to say so, though.)
• The Black Eyed Peas
• Insane Clown Posse
• Korn
• The Lovin' Spoonful
• The Scene Aesthetic
• Blind Melon
• Nine Inch Nails
• Squirrel Nut Zippers

Controversial (R denotes my support for it, H denotes The Boy's; feel free to take sides):

• Hadouken! (H)
• Bright Eyes (R: Come on, this is great. I wish my imaginary musical project were called Bright Eyes.)
• Sea Wolf (R)
• Dashboard Confessional (R)
• Eagles of Death Metal (H)
• The Darkness (H)
• Boots Electric (H)
• Iron & Wine (R)
• Arcade Fire (R)
• Tesla Boy (H)
• Paramore (We both think this could've been an excellent name, if not for the infuriating intentional misspelling of the word "paramour.")
• Vampire Weekend (I like it, but H dislikes names that consist of two arbitrary words making up a meaningless phrase; see also Cobra Starship, Arctic Monkeys, etc.)
• Muse (H)
• DeVotchKa (H)
• The Tallest Man on Earth (R: Great name for a solo act.)
• The Flaming Lips (H)
• The Rolling Stones (R: They gather no moss!)
• Hellogoodbye (R)
• Vitamin String Quartet (H)
• The Sugar Hill Gang (H)
• Run DMC (H)
• Steppenwolf (H)
• LCD Soundsystem (R; H insists that "liquid crystal display sound system" is nonsense.)
• The Pixies (R)
• Queens of the Stone Age (H says, "Mainly for the acronym. QOTSA!")
• Snoopzilla > Snoop Lion > Snoop Dogg (I asked for clarification that Snoopzilla was the best of the three; H responded, "Fuckin' yeah!")
• The Yeah Yeah Yeahs (H)
• Hoodie Allen (R: He probably didn't know that the reference would become tainted.)
• The Midwest Indies (R)

Agree? Disagree? Are we missing any particularly great/egregiously bad ones? Let's argue about it in the comments.

Microaggressions: A Brief Play in Three Acts

Dedicated to all my brown friends.

CAST

ROMA: 22 years old, can look younger. Dark hair, tan skin, black glasses.
TAXI DRIVER (TD): Old white guy, whatever.

SETTING

York, England. Interior of a taxi, slightly dusty. Outside: clear and bright, flowers in full bloom, shorts weather if you’re a northerner.

ACT I: “POLYNESIA”

ROMA enters the cab, states her destination. Car starts.

TAXI DRIVER: Where’re you from, then?
ROMA: (brightly) New Jersey.
TD: Ah. (pause) Originally…?
ROMA: (beat) (more emphatically) New Jersey.
TD: You look…Polynesian, a bit. Like maybe, ah…Filipino, maybe.
ROMA: (resigned) Yeah, well, my parents are.
TD: (triumphantly) Now how did I know that? You tell me, how did I guess that one?

ROMA: I really don’t know.
TD: You know what else you look like?
ROMA: No…
TD: If you press your nose in a little bit, like this (presses in own nose with left thumb while driving), you look like you could be…
ROMA: (horrified) I…don’t know.

TD: I’ll give you a hint: the capital is Hong Kong.
ROMA: Ah.
TD: Your nose has a little bump in it, but you look like you could be from there.

ACT II: “THAILAND”

ROMA is still trapped in the car with the racist TAXI DRIVER. She considers asking him to stop at the next light, but doesn’t have time to walk. They converse about the weather.
TAXI DRIVER: You know, I’ve been to Thailand. Six times!
ROMA: (feigning politeness) Oh?
TD: Yep. A month each time, so I’ve spent six months of my life in Thailand! (laughs)
ROMA: That’s a long time.
TD: Have you ever been?
ROMA: I haven’t.
TD: It’s great there. You know why I go, though?
ROMA: (feigning ignorance) I couldn’t guess.
TD: Well, I’m a single guy! (laughs) Those Thai girls are beautiful. If I won the lottery, I’d pick up and move there, probably even before the money got to the bank! Ahh.

ACT III: “BUDDHISM”
ROMA cannot wait to get out of the car.
TAXI DRIVER: All these stone churches here, all cold and grey…I don’t like them, I like Buddhist temples. All that gold everywhere, and flowers. Much nicer.
ROMA: (silence)
TD: You don’t know anything about Buddhism?
ROMA: (facing to the side, looking out the window) No. Nothing about Buddhism.
TD: You see, they have these spirit sticks. (mimes holding a stick) They shake them like this, and… (drifts into a complicated explanation of Buddhist spiritual practices)
ROMA: (silence)

Reader Response Questions:
1) Why is the play called “Microaggressions?” What are some examples of microaggressions?

2) On a scale from one to fuck you, how racist was the taxi driver?

3) If you were Roma, what would you have done in this situation?
4) What other taxi company in York lets you book online so I don’t have to talk to anyone on the phone?

The Greatest (Most Racist) Show on Earth.

I learned something today!

P. T. Barnum bought an African-American slave woman named Joice Heth, fabricated a backstory for her, and exhibited her for enormous profit as an allegedly 161-year-old "freak." When she died, he sold 1500 tickets to her public dissection. Formerly a nobody shop assistant, Barnum built his reputation for putting on the "Greatest Show on Earth" on the exploitation of a black woman he owned as property, as well as other exhibits like the male slaves he claimed were "wild men from Borneo" who were actually kidnapped Africans, again, treated like possessions.

Today, we remember him as "an American showman, businessman, prankster, and entertainer," " an author, publisher, philanthropist, and a politician" -- but not as a racist. His extensively detailed Wikipedia page uses the word "racist" only once, in a passage assuring the reader that although Barnum's shoes were "replete with racist stereotypes," they ACTUALLY "satirized white racial attitudes"...by putting white men in blackface. In a Connecticut legislature debate on the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, he declared, "A human soul, ‘that God has created and Christ died for,’ is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot – it is still an immortal spirit" -- using a derogatory term for African people coined by Europeans. He later apologized only for having owned slaves, not for his unique history of human rights violations. Until his death, he continued to exhibit people of color as "living curiosities." His name is still promoted by the Ringling Brothers / Barnum & Bailey circus company.

P. T. Barnum was a piece of shit, and old-school circuses were for assholes. That's what I learned today.

My Harry Potter/Doctor Who crossover conspiracy theory.

The most exciting email I've ever gotten from my editor, after the very first one I received over a year ago accepting me for a position as a Mental_Floss intern, came in just a few hours ago with the opening line, "You're a HP nerd, right?" I've worn my Harry Potter colors proudly for years, sometimes on this very blog, so of course I jumped at the opportunity to write a piece summarizing all the information J. K. Rowling has shared about Harry Potter & friends in interviews post-Deathly Hallows, because if there is any way in which I am like Hermione, it's in the nearly obscene pleasure I take in first knowing something someone else doesn't know, then being able to teach it to them. So that article should be coming out tomorrow, and I hope I do it justice, although I don't look forward to the inevitable firestorm from fans attempting to correct my meticulously researched facts. (I have no qualms about insisting on this point: I do meticulous research. I'm not saying I don't make mistakes, but you know, I'm no slob about this kind of thing.)

While poring through the Harry Potter Wiki page on Aurors and lamenting not having the full set of seven books with me to use for reference, I found this observation about the films:

"In the films, Aurors tend to wear brown trench coats, possibly as a uniform. Kingsley Shacklebolt is the only Auror seen on-duty without one."

There's an accompanying image:

But hang on, that brown trench coat looks familiar. Have I seen it, or some similar article of clothing, before?

The Tenth Doctor was an Auror and I refuse to hear otherwise. The end.

Don't argue with me. Argue with THIS.

#NotYourAsianSidekick

Sometime earlier today, writer/artist/organizer Suey Park started a trending topic on Twitter using the hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick. As I understand it, the phrase originated in a discussion specific to the issues surrounding Asian/Asian-American women's lack of a voice in mainstream feminism; as the hashtag took off, the online conversation has expanded to general issues of oppression, misrepresentation, and microaggressions experienced by AAPIs (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders). It's not an easy topic to discuss with any nuance in 140-character blocks, but it's provided an incredible opportunity for an ad-hoc community to form and, if nothing else, air shared grievances and receive support for them in the form of retweets and favorites. (The less Twitter-literate might not appreciate the significance of this, but suffice it to say that it's a lot like sharing an opinion and have someone nod along vigorously, or like getting a high-five from a friendly stranger.)

For 10+ hours now, it's been an affirming space for some of us -- and here, I'm claiming my membership in the community -- to feel that we aren't alone in facing any form of oppression based on the color of our skin, the size of our eyes, our ability or lack thereof to do math, etc. There are a lot of experiences that I now take for granted, among them being pressed for where I'm really from (is New Jersey not real enough?), being asked if a horrible mispronunciation of my last name is "good enough" (no, it's not, but you'll move on anyway), being complimented on my amaaazing tan (thanks; I was born with it). By seeing those aspects of my experience as an Asian-American woman reflected back at me from utter strangers on Twitter, I've been reminded, jarringly, that they're really not okay at all. To be reminded of your oppression isn't a pleasurable experience in the least, but the solidarity is cathartic.

Of course, as soon as people of color start having any semblance of fun or dare to feel comfortable, someone has to step in and ruin the party. Today's White Savior came in the form of a "Neo-Libertarian" with a fancy college degree who happens to know a LOT more about oppression than I do, and he didn't hesitate to tell me all about it. I shouldn't have responded, but I'm a sucker for a good argument with someone who needs to lose.

The header for the Storify doesn't appear here, but it should read: "The hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick has been trending on Twitter for hours. It's mostly filled with expressions of everyday oppression/discrimination/misrepresentation experienced by Asians/Asian-Americans and corresponding messages of support -- and some jerks. This is what happened when I responded."

If anyone wants to use this as a case study in derailment and the willful blindness conferred by overwhelming privilege, please do. Make sure to note his condescending tone, his flaunting of questionable academic credentials (and implied assumption that I have none of my own that might equal or surpass his), and his refusal to respect my desire to end the conversation civilly. Note that he continued to tweet at me, at one point telling me to "Hahaha Go to school, before you rant about topics too sophisticated for you" -- like my own life, I guess? Good thing Twitter reinstated the block function, because what a gross white guy.

(Incidentally, if this is still not clear to any acquaintances/complete strangers reading this who don't know me well enough to give me the benefit of the doubt, I understand that there are non-gross white guys. I salute them.)

More than this kind of all-too-common ignorance, though, I want to highlight the positive responses that have come out of this. I've compiled some of my favorite responses here, with mine included -- not because they're the "best," but because they're mine and it seems only appropriate to share them here.

[Suggested listening: "Concrete Wall," or any other song, really, by Zee Avi, an incredible Malaysian singer-songwriter more people should know about because...just listen to her.]