What's In a Name? (Or, Jenny McCarthy Wants to Be Me)

I'm not a moron: I don't think that Jenny McCarthy actually wants to be me. My life is not so much about the fame and the rock hard abs and the $20-million-a-picture boyfriend. But we have (I shudder a weensy bit when I write this) similar writing interests. She wrote this and this, and I wrote this and this. My blog title is "Louder than Words," and so is McCarthy's latest book.

Okay, hundreds, nay, thousands of women write about these topics. Jenny and I are two of many, many similarly-aged women going through marriage, childbearing, child rearing, career issues, etc. Makes sense that we'd both write about these experiences.

BUT, I have been thinking about changing the title of this blog recently, and Jenny McCarthy's new book adds fuel to the fire. I mean, what if people start to confuse the two of us? Snarf.

Jenny's book title comes from her experiences with raising a child with autism, and my blog title comes from...well, I'll be honest: I ripped it off. "Louder than Words" is from a line in Otis Redding's "Hard to Handle." Since it's one of a few dozen songs that I love to belt out in the car, I know all the lyrics. And when I started this blog and thought, "a quote from a poem or a song about words would be a cool title," and well, this song came to mind. There's no subtext. I am not a man of great experience, nor am I hard to handle. It just seemed like a good fit for a word-based medium.

So, yeah, the more I think about it, "louder than words" doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for a blog. The actual lyric is "Actions speak louder than words." Which, now that I think about it, is the same sentiment expressed by Extreme in their hit single, "More than Words."

Crap. I know all the words to that song too, which KILLS me because it is rife with bad grammar. Not only that, but I'm convinced the human brain has a limited capacity, like a bucket, and retaining these lyrics is keeping me from learning something truly important, like how to manage a stock portfolio.

What is wrong with me?

Back to the original point of this post. Which was...wait, don't tell me...oh, right: my blog title doesn't make sense.

Written words don't make any noise, unless you read them aloud. Barring that caveat, EVERYTHING is louder than words. Clearly, I've got to brainstorm new titles that (a) make sense, (b) reveal transcendent coolness (or at least semi-hip geekiness), and (c) aren't twee.

That last one isn't really important. I just like the word twee and I don't get to use it often enough.

If I stick with a shout-out to a song, though, here are songs that actually have a random significance from my childhood:

- "Brass in Pocket," Pretenders
- "One Way Or Another," Blondie
- "Back in Black," AC/DC
- "Heartbreaker," Pat Benatar
- "Another One Bites the Dust," Queen
- "Elvira," the Oak Ridge Boys
- "Never Surrender," Cory Hart

I'm going to stop there. My parents and older sibs exposed me to much, much music, and this represents just the teeniest sliver of my childhood soundtrack. You'll note that there's no Raffi or Disney. Just be glad I didn't toss in Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass...