Band Names

If you were to ask me, which of my friends would I want to see as the subject of a documentary film, one would definitely be my friend Shelton from Antarctica. The second, without a doubt, would be my 16-year-old (Cooler-Than-He-Knows) brother.

Maybe I have a really childish sense of humor, or maybe I'm just easily amused, but I swear... the things that go on in that kid's everyday-life just cracks my shit up. I haven't been in Pullman for more than 6 hours before he blindsides me...

"Hey Tim," he starts off, "did I tell you about our band?" He's an alarmingly good musician. Of course I'm biased because he's my baby brother, and I think he's perfect, but objectively speaking... I don't think it would be wrong to call him one of those kids that are "naturals" at these sorts of things... music, I mean. It's really annoying.

"No man," I say, "last you told me, you were jamming with your buddies Joe and... and... who were the others?"

"Joe, Ian and Ephram. Yeah, we recorded some stuff... it's not very good, but you can hear it if you want."

"Yeah... I'd love to hear you guys." I really would. "Who plays what?"

"Joe plays drums for us and sometimes guitar. Ephram plays the bass, and I play guitar."

"What about Ian?"

"Ian sings."

"Which one is Ian again?"

"He's the one who wears the dark-rimmed glasses and dresses funny with scarves and stuff. Everyone thinks he's gay, but he's not... he's just kind of eccentric. He watches that show Gilmore Girls, and we're always like 'Dude! What the hell do you watch that crap for?!? It's a chick-show!' and he's like [makes his voice kind of squeaky] 'It's a really good show guys... you should really check it out.' We give him a lot of crap for watching Gilmore Girls."

"Okay... now I remember Ian."

"Oh, so yeah... when we started playing together we had to come up with a band name. I came up with The Dudesons [as in Dude-sons], and we went with that for a while."

"Okay," I follow along.

"We jam after school, you know, and during our jams Ian starts calling us Follow Us To The Edge Of The Desert. The new name kind of grows on us, and we all start calling ourselves Follow Us To The Edge Of The Desert."

"That's cool. Kind of a long name, but it's original," I say.

"So last week, our friend Joel is like, 'You guys know where Follow Us To The Edge Of The Desert came from, don't you?' We're like, 'No, what'd you mean? Ian made it up during our jams.' And Joel's like, 'It's from the Gilmore Girls you guys. It's the name of the band that the kids on Gilmore Girls start.' And we're like, 'What. The. FUCK!'..."

"Are you kidding me?!?" I stammer, bug-eyed and doubled-over with laughter.

"Yeah, as it turns out Ian named us after the band on the Gilmore Girls. We were going to kill him, but first we were freaking out. We were like, 'Ah fuck... what do we do? What do we do? We've already played two shows as Follow Us To The Edge Of The Desert... ah fuck, ah fuck... the girls at our concerts must have known... they all watch the Gilmore Girls... ah fuck, ah fuck... why didn't they say anything? We look so stupid! Shit, maybe we can be an acronym band... F.U.T.T.E.O.T.D.... futt-eot'd? Fuck. That'll never work.'"

"Oh my God," me laughing, "What'd you guys do?"

"Nothing... we still haven't figured out what we're going to do. Ian, man... he must have known how pissed we'd be when we found out. We were going to find out. He was like, 'I'm sorry guys... but I don't see what's the big deal.' The whole time we were getting ready for our shows... he knew how fucked up this was going to be, and he didn't say anything!"

"This is awesome!" I laugh.

"This is not awesome. We're screwed." He buries his face in his hands, over-dramatically.