The Second Person Problem

Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,

This weekend I was going to comment on the 40th anniversary of the debut of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and ask for your favorite clean jokes...but then, I came across THIS story (hat tip to good brother D over at LGM).

Seems that Toledo, Ohio has a new arena football team and was looking for a name. The original idea was the Woodpeckers. Yes, I do believe that the arena naming rights were to be secured by Viagra. But it gets better...the Toledo Woodpeckers just didn't seem hip enough, so they also sought copyright protection for the name, the Toledo Peckerheads.

"If we could push rewind, we would not have registered 'Peckers' and 'Peckerheads.' I don't think 'Woodpeckers' would've raised an eyebrow. Given that we did [register 'Peckers' and 'Peckerheads'], people focused on those two names."

Ya think?

You just gotta wonder what the helmets would have looked like. "Hey, that one's Jewish!" At the start of every game, they come out of the locker room, up the tunnel and burst through a giant diaphragm with the team insignia onto the field as Woody Woodpecker's laugh rings out through the arena.

Now, we've all had bad ideas, things that really did seem reasonable, even desirable, at the time, but most of us eventually come to our senses or have someone, a second person to check or work, to give that subtle little head shake no, the gentle words "maybe there's a different way to do that," or a simple dopesmack to the back of your head and "what are you smoking?" It is reminiscent of H.L. Mencken's quotation, "A man can be fool and not know it, but not if he's married." What gets me about decisions like this is that there is always that second person there. There is a person whose job it is to say, "Not so good of an idea, Ralph," and in this case THAT person thought Peckerheads was a swell name for the town's team, too.

Maybe the second person stood to make money off of the merchandising. The Toledo Peckerheads would replace the University of South Carolina's Gamecocks and the University of Southern California's Trojans as the most juvenile giggle-launching name in sports.

So, your worst idea or the worst idea you've ever seen carried through despite the obvious train wreck in the offing?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve