Choosing a title for a blog is a bit like coming up with a stage or band name. Once you’ve picked something, you kind of have to stick with it or risk losing credibility. Just look at Starship, Snoop Lion, the artist once again known as Prince or Madonna’s brief flirtation with calling herself Esther.
I can’t help but wonder if any of Vancouver’s well-established bloggers ever wish they’d gone with something else. For example, I’m a big fan of the Canucks blog Pass It To Bulis but suspect that, despite its success, there must be days when creators Daniel Wagner and Harrison Mooney feel a tinge of regret for choosing a middling Czechoslovakian winger who only played one season in Vancouver a half dozen years ago as their patron saint. Or if Miss 604’s husband secretly regrets that she didn’t call it Mrs. 604, if any Straight scribes find the name Blogra as dumb as I do, or if Vancouver Is Awesome feel constrained by not being able to cover anything that doesn't qualify as "awesome."
I thought I was playing it pretty safe going with "Van Man" when Courier editor Barry Link strongly suggested staffers begin bloviating on the blogosphere. It’s short, it rhymes and it indicates having Vancouver-related topics and the gender of the person writing it. Plus it's less pretentious than my original pick Flemingway, which would’ve had the added disadvantage of drawing unwanted comparisons to a much better writer. Plus as a child of the '80s, I grew up on Van Halen albums and Van Damme movies and, for the record, am a former owner of both a Ford Econoline (see above) and a GMC Safari back in the days when I, like the late Chris Farley’s classic motivational speaker Matt Foley, used to live in a van down by the river during summer jobs as a whitewater rafting guide.I know my vans.
But it turns out some Vancouver Film School students beat me to it. A short film with the same name, about a washed-up superhero named Jake Oppenheimer who attempts a comeback during the 2011 Stanley Cup riot, was made last year by Tyler Deck and Ricardo Plaza-Rosselot. I could only find a trailer for it though, so I don’t know if they actually finished it but would love to see it if anyone has a link.
