So I’m upstairs with the wife and the sister-in-law, chatting. The TV’s on mute. And, suddenly, I see someone I know appear on the screen—Mitch Jacobs.
Mitch and I went to Mahopac High School together. Both graduated in 1990, both worked on the student newspaper, Chieftain. Mitch was a nice guy; extremely ambitious and motivated; the sort to join every club and hold student government positions. That’s not really an insult—I sorta did the same thing, though to a lesser degree (and I never won a student government position … despite five elections. Doh).
Anyhow, turns out Mitch and his wife Samantha were on a new show, Pregnant in Heels, that debuted on Bravo tonight. I don’t actually know the premise of the program—and, well, I don’t really care. All I know is that Mitch and Samantha hired a woman to help them pick a name for their third child. Read that again, please: They hired someone to pick a name for their third child.
This, from a child blog:
Take Mitch and Samantha, who are getting set to welcome their 3rd child. Now, we all know how tough it can be to pick the perfect baby name. But whereas you and I may have pored through a few books and web sites, Mitch and Samantha wanted “to go above and beyond the normal process,” so they had Rosie set up a focus group of pop culture experts and linguistics scholars. This “brain trust” then set about finding an ideal name (but not before hearing the ground rules from mom: “Easy to spell, but not too popular. No decorative names. We don’t want the first name having a J. We don’t want an E or an R. We don’t want the first name to end in an S because we feel like it sounds a little… strange.”).
Their goal, it seemed, was to pick a name that would help the kid get into an Ivy League school. Seriously.
I’ve got 0% beef with Mitch. Hell, I always liked Mitch. But since he chose to go on a TV show, I’ll choose to say this: Lame. Lame, lame, lame. You know why the wife and I picked “Casey” and “Emmett” for our children? Because we liked them. Period. End of story. And if my kids wind up going to Westchester Community College or Pace or … whatever—if they’re happy and whole, I’ll be happy and whole.
Done.
PS: The kid’s name is Bowen Asher Jacobs. Which is nice.
