I’ve started a blog before, and I always get caught up with the title. My first blog, since lost in the internet ether, was entitled A Toilet Seat at Terminal Velocity, inspired by the macabre-yet-amusing fate that befell Ellen Muth’s George in the series premiere of the Showtime dramedy Dead Like Me. I think I made two or three posts and couldn’t figure out what to write about next.
Since I didn’t want to repeat myself title-wise, it was time to look elsewhere. My ideas ranged across the board: song lyrics were a popular first choice. “Louder Than God’s Revolver and Twice as Shiny”, from My Chemical Romance’s “Na Na Na”, is taken, and I’m not even fully sure what it means.
“This Is How It Works…”, from Regina Spektor’s “On the Radio”, seemed a little too pretentious, and I figure all of my traffic will just go to “How it Works”.
Obscure references, like my toilet seat title, came to mind next. The Gordian Knot Lock Company, a combination of Greek mythology and comic-book nerdiness (it’s from Alan Moore’s brilliant Watchmen…ignore Zack Snyder’s terribly, terribly shitty film and read the graphic novel), didn’t seem to work. Ozymandias, between Watchmen and poetry, works as a handle but not really as a title.
Another relatively obscure reference seemed somewhat clever, but sadly a little long and carried the unfortunate implication that I would never settle on a proper title. Among the numerous random plays I studied in my high school trivia days was one Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello.
It popped into my head and I thought, just maybe, I could alter it and call my new blog One Blogger in Search of a Title. Except it was somewhat used elsewhere, and also seemed almost too obscure.
Plus, as I thought about things further, I realized that I’d want a short, easy to say and remember name to identify my blog with…the kind of name that, if I miraculously hit it big, will actually be easy to Google. I racked my brain for a few minutes and came up with something I rather like: PopGap.
Aside from the fact that there will some confusion with online gaming company PopCap, I like the meaning I came up with: PopGap can be the stopgap for pop, if you will, filling in the gaps and blanks when you’re looking for perspective on popular culture, be it film, sports, music, video games, television, news, the Internet in general, and random observations from my own personal life.
There will be quite a few reviews but that’s certainly not all you’ll find here, as you’ll see through the first few entries. Hopefully this is something I can maintain and grow; this paragraph will therefore serve as a mission statement of sorts.
Welcome to PopGap…and thanks for stopping by.
