I Hate Everyone...Starting With Me (18 page)

There was talk.

I hate nicknames.
They’re stupid, confusing and a complete waste of time. (Not that I have anything better to do, I just enjoy complaining.) Nicknames are usually a shorter version of a formal name or a term of endearment, but not always. Sometimes nicknames don’t make sense. I hate that. For example, the nickname for Margaret is Peggy. Where does that come from? How is the nickname for William “Billy”? Where did the
B
come from? The nickname for William should be
Willy
—that makes perfect sense. And honestly, other than Rosie O’Donnell, who doesn’t like a good willy? I see why a person named Jeffrey would be called
Jeff
, or Edward would be called
Eddie
, or Elizabeth would be called
Liz
. But that doesn’t explain why my aunt Eleanor was called Cuntface.

Nicknames are nothing new. They’ve been around since the beginning of time. Little known fact: Jesus’ good friends—the ones that really knew him—always called him “Jimbo.”

Remember Vlad the Impaler? Everyone thinks he was nicknamed the Impaler because he killed people by running spears through them. Not so. He was called the Impaler because he was married to Myra, the Distended Vagina.

How about Ivan the Terrible? Why was he called “the terrible”? There are three reasons: one, he killed a million serfs; two, he was constantly interrupting his mother; and three, he liked to fart in closed spaces. Did you know that Ivan the Terrible had a stepbrother, Seth the Mildly Irritating?

Alexander the Great? He was named this by his Jewish mother, Miriam, who played favorites. Truth be told, Alexander was only great compared to his brother, Vinny, the Total Disappointment, who instead of going to medical school worked in a Korean deli.

I hate that states have nicknames and I hate even more that they’re lies.
For example, New Jersey is nicknamed “The Garden State.” Really? Have you ever smelled New Jersey? Secaucus smells like a slaughterhouse; Elizabeth smells like an oil refinery and the shore smells like JWoww.

Utah is called “The Beehive State.” Is that because the women there still dress like it’s 1962 or because they live like bees—all sleeping on top of each other in a place everyone else is afraid to enter?

Florida is called “The Sunshine State.” What a misnomer. When is the last time you saw a cheerful, smiley person in Florida? The old Jews are always complaining, the rednecks have no teeth and the immigrants are in hiding. The only person in Florida who’s even a tad sunny is David Caruso, and that’s because he films his show in California.

Arkansas is “The Natural State.” By “natural” do they mean the women don’t wax and the men sleep with their kinfolk?

Wyoming has two nicknames and they’re both wrong: “The Equality State” and “The Cowboy State.” Unless there are millions of cowboys and they’re all the exact same size, I say, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” For the sake of accuracy, Wyoming should be called “The Local-Boy Dick Cheney Likes to Shoot His Friends in the Face State.”

I could go on forever… and I will, in the States of the Union, a little later on.

I hate parochial schools with names.
I grew up in New York. Our schools didn’t have names, they had numbers, like P.S. 68… or for the slutty kids, P.S. 69. But the Catholic school in my neighborhood was called Our Lady of Perpetual Motion. It was the only school that gave scholarships for St. Vitus’s Dance.

There were other Catholic schools with names like Jesus the Savior or Christ the King. This upset me as I never saw a Jewish school named Elliott the Gonif or Schmuel the Inseam Specialist or Murray the Furrier. (I imagine they’d have a fascinating football team; the
quarterback would start calling signals, “Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-three and a half, thirty-three extra long… Lenny, do we have this with cuffs and a pleat?”)

I hate people who give themselves grandiose nicknames.
Frank Sinatra was known as the “Chairman of the Board” and “Ol’ Blue Eyes.” I think it was selfish, selfish, selfish of him to have two nicknames. Apparently he was not only a crooner but a hoarder, too. One nickname would have been enough. Frank should have stuck with “Chairman of the Board” and let Sammy Davis, Jr., and Sandy Duncan share “Ol’ Blue Eyes.”

Michael Jackson was called the “King of Pop” and Benny Goodman was called the “King of Swing” and Johnny Carson was called the “King of Late Night.” I think if you want be a king then you have to kneel down in front of a queen. Just like Carson Kressley does. Only Carson isn’t really a king and the queen he’s kneeling in front of isn’t Elizabeth, it’s Stanley.

And can I just say that the only king I actually knew was Marvin, “The Zipper King of Flushing,” and he didn’t have a career in showbiz, he had a showroom.

I hate celebrities who change their names “for show business.”
That’s the most ridiculous thing in the world to do, or my name’s not Joan Molinsky Rosenberg.

In the old days, Hollywood was run by studios and the bosses owned the stars, and they would change their
names to protect their investments. And in a way, I understand. Cary Grant’s real name was Archie Leach. “Cary Grant” sounds like a movie star. “Archie Leach” sounds like a primitive medical treatment. The great dancer Cyd Charisse was born Tula Finklea. I wouldn’t talk to anyone named Tula, let alone let them touch my Finklea. And I don’t understand why, if she was going to change her name from “Tula,” she would change it to “Cyd.” I hate names that aren’t gender specific, like “Jamie” or “Pat” or “Kelly.” “Cyd” doesn’t sound like the name of a gorgeous woman with million-dollar legs; it sounds like the name of a fifty-eight-year-old discount haberdasher from Weehawken, New Jersey.

Everyone knows that Marilyn Monroe’s real name was Norma Jean Baker, but did you know that John Wayne’s real name was Marion Morrison? Butch, huh? Sounds less like a cowboy than a librarian with a yeast infection.

Tony Curtis was born Bernie Schwartz, but the Hollywood muckety-mucks, i.e., the self-loathing Jews who ran the studios, thought it sounded too Jewish so they changed it to Tony Curtis. I don’t know if they were right or not, but the man became a huge star. Ditto with Kirk Douglas, who was born Issur Danielovitch. Kirk was feisty, though. I hear that when they asked him to change his name because it was too Jewish he wanted to change it to Kirk Lookatmybeautifulcircumcisedpenis.

And yet when Caryn Johnson becomes “Whoopi Goldberg” it isn’t too Jewish; times have changed.

A lot of rappers change their names, frequently to beverage items. Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow; Ice Cube was O’Shea Jackson; and Vanilla Ice was Robert Van Winkle. Should I ever become a rapper I would change my name to “I Asked for No Ice in My Soda.”

I hate Paris Hilton.
Not because she has no talent or because she’s a big skank ho, but because she’s named after the city of Paris. And I hate the city of Paris, which I already explained to you, in another chapter,
mes amis
. But it’s not just Paris Hilton that annoys me. I hate Savannah, Brooklyn, Austin, and Dallas, too. When Hillary Clinton said, “It takes a village,” she didn’t mean you should name your children Levittown and Kalamazoo. She meant we should collectively, as one, beat the shit out of parents who name their children Pacoima or Secaucus. If you’re going to name your kids after towns and villages then be original—“This is my son, Little Rock, and my daughter, Bangor. And I believe you know the twins, Perth and Amboy? And their bull dyke cousin, Buffalo?”

I hate babies with trendy names
like Tiffany and Britney and Heather and Noah and Blake and Justin. I’m sick of Olivia and Chloe and Eva and Madison. I hope Aiden and Jayden and Braden and Graden all suffer minor head injuries while reading Dr. Seuss. Enough already with the cutesy-poo baby names. What happened to
John
and
Dave
and
Sue
? Babies with trendy names grow up to be adults with ridiculous names.
“This is our CEO, Micah.” “You know what,
Micah
? I want my money back. I’m closing my portfolio. I’m going with Mic
hael.
He’s a grown-up.”

One day all of these trendy-named children will grow up and become parents and then grandparents, and it’s all wrong. Grandma Tori? Zayda Jared? Nana Savannah?

A lot of people think that all maniacs and murderers have three names. I hate that.
That’s soooo cliché. Yes,
some
madmen do have three names—John Wayne Gacy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman—but not all. For example, Adolf Hitler didn’t go by Adolf Terri Hitler. It wasn’t Saddam Todd Hussein. And nobody refers to Mahmoud Bobby Ahmadinejad. There are
puh
-lenty of nut jobs who only use two names, like Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Hannibal Lecter. These psychos had self-respect; they didn’t need three names to make their point. They were men! “We’re crazy and we’re proud!”

I hate black people that give their children preposterous names.
“Refrigerator” is not a name, it’s an appliance. Lashonda, Latiqua, Lakisha, Laquandra, Latrine, Lamode and Labia are not names; they’re jumble puzzles from the
Daily News
. And there are other people who don’t think those names are ethnocentric; they think they’re stupid. Don’t take my word for it: Ask Condoleezza Rice. I’ll bet even she thinks they’re bullshit.

I hate that black people can’t decide what they want to be called.
First they were “colored,” then “Negro,” then “black.” After that they became “people of color” and now they’re “African-American.” I say: Pick one! White people aren’t that smart; we can’t follow. I’ll call you ultrasuperduperstar if it makes you happy, but for God’s sake give me a final answer! The back-and-forth is giving me a migraine. And, can I just say that I don’t understand ethnocentricity? For example, where did “African-American” come from? My friend Beverly always says, “I’m African-American.” And I always say, “You’re from Massapequa Park. Exactly where in Africa is that? Is it part of the Serengeti or maybe Kenya adjacent?” Last time I checked Massapequa Park was four stops after Bellmore on the Long Island Railroad.

Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc., only refer to themselves like that when they want a big parade in their honor, so they can drink in public and get alternate side of the street parking waived. Otherwise they’re plain old Americans.

And FYI, no one has ever, in my 239 years on this planet, called me a Hebraic-American. Jew bitch? All the time, but Hebraic-American bitch? Never.

I hate people who name their children as though they’re still living in the “old country.”
The children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are big on this. I assume it’s the result of that “never again” mentality because surely they can remember
the camps without naming their kids like it’s 1939 Warsaw. I don’t want to go to my grandson’s school play and discover that Dorothy and the Wicked Witch are being played by Chava and Ruchel.

I hate Chinese names
because I can’t figure out which is the first name and which is the last name, and quite frankly, neither can the Chinese. Is it Dong Ding Ding or Ding Dong Ding or Ding Ding Dong… or are they all really just Avon ladies? I’m afraid to get Chinese names wrong because they’re a very proud people and instead of calling someone by their name I might accidentally be ordering sub gum duck. (And by “proud” I mean inherently angry and frequently armed with small explosives.)