Working Title...

You know titles? A thing that you call another thing by? Difficult sometimes, aren't they? I've spent many an hour agonising over titles for novels, sitcoms, episodes, even these very blog posts. I'm rubbish at titles, which is why so many of these posts and even the title of the blog contain at least one elipsis (if not several) and extra little clauses thrown on the end. Perhaps the best, most concise title I've ever managed was for my Noel Edmonds Beat the Monkey rant - Get Your Hands Off Of Me, You Damned Dirty Ape... (and even that was far from ideal).

Titles are important, people say, they grab the readers attention and while it's true that say 'Lesbian Vampire Killers 2: Lez Harder' (thanks to James Walker for that one) would attract more attention than 'A Middle-Aged Man Assembling Ikea Furniture' (the next Coen Brothers movie), is there any correlation between quality of title and quality of content? Let's face it, there have been some shocking titles in the history of the arts. Take for instance embarrassing American dance movie You Got Served (what Mutant Reviewers referred to as the title that went up a hill and came down a national catchphrase- itself a reference to rubbishly-titled Hugh Grant measuring movie The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down A Mountain). See also Snakes on a Plane (because screenwriters' laziness knows no bounds - they should have put that on the poster...), Phffft (a case where the NY Daily News review of 'Jack and Judy go wild' would have made a better title) and Mannequin II: On the Move (this one needs no explanation). The worst movie title of all time however is probably 1969's 'Can Hiernonymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happniess?'- Firstly don't name your protagonist a cross between a Dutch painter and a pubic wig, don't name the love interest after what I can only assume is some manner of dermatological disease and don't ask a bloody long question with the title! You're the fucking movie, you tell me if he can.

Music too has been plagued by naff titles, the special mentions here going to rapper C-Murder's (who as one would imagine is a convicted murderer) 'The Truest Shit I Ever Sang' (utter nonsense and reminds me of something I forgot to mention yesterday- I'll whack it on the end of this post) and Fiona Apple's 'When the Pawn Hits the Conflict He Thinks Like A King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth is the Greatest of Heights and if You Know Where You Stand, Then You'll Know When to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You Know that You're Right' (A bit like a John Hegley poem... if John Hegley had tried to be serious and was really shit at poetry. This is utterly pretentious, un-punctuated bollocks and wasted a good 10 mintues of my life typing it out).

There's already a perfectly serviceable list of Worst Book Titles Ever, featuring every Stephanie Meyer book and various others, so I don't feel the urge to try and top it. Why exactly titles are so hard I don't think we'll ever know, but there's far more bad than good out there in the world of naming, that's for sure.

Onto the thing I forgot to mention yesterday and it's the story of how the last embers of hope that I had left for the human race were extinguished in one fell swoop - As I left the station to come home a youth (complete with a hoody and everything) yelled "Right, where's the fucking pussy at?" I was as stunned as the other commuters. Swaggering, the youth strolled off with his friend before I had time to approach him and say either "excuse me, could you say that again, only, you know, even louder?" or "excuse me, do you mind, you know, being more of a cunt?"