In need of a good laugh, I decided to kick it old-school and stream Beavis and Butthead from Netflix. There was an episode where Beavis goes to the ER after getting bit by a dog, and they tell the doctor Beavis's name is Rod Munch. It got me thinking back to a conversation I had with two guys I worked with - Michael Jackson and Brandt Dubey. Dubey said "everyone's gotta be called something."
Here's a few real people I've met over the years -
Amnat Chittapong - pronounced I'm not shittapong Hiram D!cksh!t - customer of my father Richard Kumm - Substitute a C for the K in his last name - S&K salesman Harry Dunn - Jeff Daniels's charecter's name in Dumb & Dumber - my mother's doctor Aswad Insurance Company - drove past it everyday when I lived in Niagara Falls - owned by the Aswad family Dick Funk - classmate in college The best one by far - Mike Hunt. A basketball coach I used to work with. He'd go by Michael, but no one would call him that. He got tormented by fans when we were on the road. Announcers would ignore his request to be announced as Michael. How much fun do you think the fans at Maryland had with that once he was announced as Mike Hunt?
We had a sign in our store that said "control with every click". The C and the L were really close together, so ... it looked like it said "control with every d!ck". We had these all over the store.
I'm moving to Stamford, CT at the end of the month. Greenwich borders it, with a section called Mianus. I told my wife about it in the past, but she figured I was intentionally mispronouncing it. Then she saw the sign.
Exit 6 on I95 - Mianus
I wanted to find an apartment there for the sole reason that I could tell people I live in Mianus. Appearently, no one wants to rent out their Mianus home.
The show Jackass stopped by there a while back, asking locals things like 'Are there any good delis in Mianus?'
I tried to paste a link but the naughtyness police won't allow the url. If you replace the "!" in the link below with an "i" and then paste it in your browser, you'll see why.
I told a friend that the Thai island of Phuket was destroyed by the tsunami, not knowing how to pronounce it properly. My friend chuckled and said "it is now"
the Cambodian names tend to sound not right in US. Cuk Say Ung was someone I knew.