Let’s all be like Leonardo DiCaprio

Humor Post #31 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Sometimes I like to watch these old black-and-white crime movies where the bad guy points a gun at somebody and says something like, “Touch my dame, ya’ big lug, and I’ll pump you full of lead.” And most of the guys in those movies have short names like Sam or Joe or Max — you know, cool, tough, punchy names that mean business: Ed or Jim or Roy or Al or Giovanni or Federico or… HOLD IT!! Just hold it right there, bub! Giovanni? Federico? Where’d they come from?

Europe, that’s where? Actually, Italy, to be exact. Apparently in Italy they don’t have names like we do. Their names are all foreign and fancy sounding. Like here if your name is Jake and you moved to Italy and you wanted to sound normal so people wouldn’t look at you funny when you told them your name, you’d call yourself Giacomo (ja KO mo). That’s their name for Jake.

Now I admit I’m more used to the American-type short names we always use. (And no, I’m not including “Crankenfuss.” You know that’s not my real name. It’s my nom de plume. (Don’t know that one, do you? That’s pen name in French.) I also know some people who have some pretty European sounding names, like Isabella and Olivia and Christopher. So maybe we’re changing to be more like them.

Well, I can think of someone who’s already used that tactic and it sure hasn’t hurt him. That would be Leonardo DiCaprio. He could be just good old Leo, but no, he likes being Leonardo. And you can’t argue with the results. I mean, practically everyone in the world has seen Titanic and for girls, that would be about six times each!

So I got interested in this and I did some web research to show how you can make your name turn into a really fancy sounding name by translating it into Italian. I put the European names first and made it where you can hear someone say them. (That someone is Daniel, who agreed to help me, and I said okay ’cause I didn’t know anybody else who could come even close to saying those names right. So if he says them wrong, it ain’t my fault, okay?) Then I made it so you have to guess what the American translation is for each name. I think you’ll be pretty surprised at how much cooler the European name sounds than the American one. Can’t help it, but that’s the way it is. So if you have one of those names on the right, maybe you should think about changing it. Just trying to be helpful.

This is super high tech, so I’ll tell you how it works. Read the Italian name on the left to yourself. If it’s kind of hard, just click on the name to hear how to pronounce it. Then guess what that name is in English. Click on the ???? in the English column to find out if you were right. I think you’ll be very surprised. And if you happen to have the exact name that comes up on the right, you’re in luck. Your new Italian name is all ready to go.

P.S. I know #6 (Louis la Colle) is in French. That’s because I couldn’t figure out how to translate the English name into Italian and the French translation was so cool, I used that instead.
BTW, thanks to Google Translate for helping me on this. And thanks to Maureen for setting up the source code.

FANCY  ITALIAN NAME ITALIAN NAME IN ENGLISH
Giuseppe Verdi ????
Federico Letto ????
Matteo Piatto ????
Michele Bicicletta ????
Francesco Banca ????
Louis la Colle ????
Maria Pelosa ????
Téodoro Testa ????
Milles Cocodrillo ????
Speranzina Cretine ????

So all I’m saying is if you got a name like Hairy Mary, maybe it would do you some good to change it to its Italian version, Maria Pelosa. It might even help you get a date. (Probably your first one, I would guess.)

from your I’ll-do-the-cooking-and-you-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-your-fancy-meal advisor and Truth Teller,
Dr. Crankenfuss

I’m tired of tired sports clichés

Humor Post #30 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Okay, I have a confession. One that I’m proud of. I like sports. Especially football. But I get kind of annoyed at some of the people who do the play-by-play announcing on TV and — I hate to admit it — some of the stuff the players say is kind of embarrassing. I don’t have a whole lot of time for this post since I have to do the rest of my (sigh) homework, but I’ll give it my best shot. I mean, it’ll be a war out there between the Crank and those announcers and players, but I believe in myself and I promise to leave everything on the field. This will be a marathon, not a sprint, but I know I’ll win ’cause I want it more. After all, on any given day a sixth grader can beat all those guys, can’t he? And if I play within myself, I think I can give ’em a clinic.

Have I made a good start on some of those clichés?

First I’ll go to one I’ve heard in real life, not on TV. Our P.E. teacher always likes to say, “There’s no i in team” when he’s saying we shouldn’t hog the ball. And I always want to say back, “But coach, there’s a me.” You know, like an m and an e. I haven’t done it though ’cause he might decide to sit on me and then all I’d be good for is to be tomorrow’s special at the IHOP. (I could also say, “But coach, there’s an i in win.” Of course, I haven’t done that either. Same reason.

Here’s one I didn’t figure out myself, but a friend (Rhymin’ Simon) told me about it. In basketball, if a guy shoots a thee-pointer, the announcer will say something like, “He threw up the rock from way downtown,” like downtown’s really far away. But hey, lots of the stadiums are already downtown so wouldn’t that be a close shot? Just askin’.

Just one more cliché for now. Players often say, “I’m giving it 110%.” (Actually, politicians say that a lot too, as in, “I’m 110% committed to staying in the race.”) Now everybody knows you can’t do anything more than 100%, so why stop at 110? Why not a thousand per cent? Or a million? Or to really prove you mean it, the player could say, “I’m gonna give it a million, gajillion, bazillion per cent. And that’s just in the first quarter!” (As for the Crankoid, I always give 100%, except when I’m donating blood.)

Well, I said that was my last one, but I have to finish this post with the tiredest sports cliché of them all — Dick Vitale. That guy makes my ears hurt. He’s like a circus clown who stole the mic from the MC.
“PTP, baby!”
“He dishes the rock.”
“He’s a diaper dandy!”
“I’m-a gonna be sick!”
(That last line isn’t his. It’s mine when he’s announcing a game.) The words are bad enough, but his voice is like an eight-year-old learning violin.

I better stop. I was feeling OK when I started this, but now I’m about to have a CCC (a cantankerous cranky conniption). Oh, no!! I’m sounding like Dick Vitale!

from your soon-to-be-recovered (he hopes) truth teller,
Dr. Crankenfuss

A New & Improved Crankenfuss? NOT!!

Humor Post #29 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

Well, not to sound like all those Twitterheads who let everyone know what they’re having for lunch or whether they need to go to the bathroom, Dr. Crankenfuss was in the grocery store yesterday. And Crankenfuss discovered something interesting. He saw six — count ’em, six — products that had “New and Improved” written on them. And he didn’t even try very hard to find them. It’s just that their announcements were in such bold print he couldn’t miss them.

So Crankenfuss decided seven can play that game. He went home and within half an hour he had these two new prototypes for his brand. Pretty cool, huh? (Note: If you can’t see them yet, you need to look down. No, no, not down at the floor. Down this page.)

But then Crankenfuss started thinking. Always a fascinating (and scary) activity especially if you have all those secret passages and cobwebs in your head like Crankenfuss does. And he thought, Why did that clothes detergent (or whatever) need to be improved? What was it like before? And Crankenfuss, utilizing that muscular noodle of his, came up with the logical answer. Well, before, it must have sucked. That’s why it needed newing and improving. After all, improvement is one thing. But “New and Improved” sounds like they totally got rid of the old way it was — the old sucky, useless way it was, the old this-thing-should-be-shot-for-its-own-good way it was. For detergent, that probably meant it didn’t clean clothes too well. After all, clothes can turn out only one of two ways: clean or not clean. And not clean basically means kinda dirty, doesn’t it?

After all that thinking, Crankenfuss decided to ixnay his new “New and Improved” label. I don’t need a new me, he thought. My crank is just right. And you can trust my fuss. But Crankenfuss still wanted to improve his brand, you know, so he came up with the perfect solution. Take a look below to see the realest and most accurate description of the Dr. Crankenfuss who’ll be at your service in the future.
From your humble and awesome progenitor of 21st century thinking,
Dr. Crankenfuss
P.S. You impressed by that cool word in the closing? So am I.

Beware – Malicious Mind Masher – posted January 8, 2012

For once, our brain teaser is actually not that hard. About one in three people we tested it on got it right. See, we gave it to nine people and three got it right. (We know how to reduce our fractions.) Of course two of them said they’d heard it before, but at least they’d remembered it.

So without further ado — whatever that means– here’s the Mind Masher.

Two women are applying for a passport at the passport office. They look just like each other. When the passport officer looks at their applications, she notices that they have the same father and mother, they were born in the same city, and their birth dates are the same. “Oh,” the officer says to them, “you must be twins.”

“No,” the two women say together.

How is this possible?

Click here to see the result of your intense brain work.

Which Names are Hot and Which Are Not?

Humor Post #28 from Middle School’s Crankiest Curmudgeon’s Blog (and probably the awesomest YA blog too) –

El Cranko has been on the move again. You know, you can’t keep a good Crank down. Or is it up? Aw, who cares? What matters is that I have something good for you. See, I was noticing some of the cool names the people in my classes have and I decided to do some research. I looked up the most popular names from a hundred years ago and the most popular names today. OMG! I’m surprised some people left their houses back then. Seems like they would’ve been laughed out of their schools. But maybe I’m looking at it all wrong. ‘Cause some of those names are still popular. So I put together this quiz for you. You can either write down your answers or you can print out the test and circle them. (Sorry, I don’t know enough code to make an online test.) Be honest now. Write down what you think. Then at the bottom of the test, I’ll put a link that’ll take you to the answers. (Hey, I do know that much code.) So here goes. (You’ll notice I gave the test an appropriate title.)

DR. CRANKENFUSS’S AWESOME NAME GAME

Important Warning: Some of these have more than one answer
            so you have to get all answers right to get credit.

1. Which of these names was in the top 100 names in 1910?
A. Samantha      B. Brandon     C. Gertrude

2. Which of these names was in the top 100 names in 2010?
A. Viola      B. Ashley      C. Elmer

3. Which of these names was in the top 100 names in both 1910 and 2010?
A. Emma      B. Alexis      C. Kesha

4. Which of these names was in the top 10 boys’ names in 2010?
A. Andrew      B. Ethan      C. Joshua

5. Which of these names was in the top 10 girls’ names in 2010?
A. Abigail      B. Hannah      C. Olivia

Think you did well? Click here to find out.

So there you go. Don’t you feel smarter and cooler than you were a few minutes ago? Sure you do. Thanks to yours truly, middle school’s awesomest blogger (even though the guy can get in sort of a snit sometimes),

Dr. Crankenfuss