Yea Emma!

It's official. We have a new champ! Emma is the most popular baby name this year. Displacing that soggy old has-been, Emily. See ya Emily! Don't let the screen door slam on your way out.

We told Jonah that Emma was the most popular name in the country. He said: "Yeah, cause Emma is so crazy." Being from the U of C, I thought about the historical significance of this, and I think we can safely say the Red Scare is over. Welcome back Emma!

Message to Emmas everywhere: Don't get too confident. Eliana is coming up fast behind you. Eliana has jumped 100 places in the past 3 years. That's momentum. That's unstoppable.

Shhhh! Santa is sleeping.

You know what I love about Santa? He gives and gives and gives. Yeah, I know, he can be horribly judgmental. This whole naughty or nice thing? No way should one old guy be able to make that determination on his own, without a full consideration of the context and all the facts. But still, I think he means well. His toy supply has to be finite. He has to make good choices about who gets them. Why waste perfectly good toys on spoiled little brats? Sure the elves slave away day after day after day making toys. But they have to rest sometime. They can't make en endless supply of toys. Hey! I wonder if they have a union? A health plan? Paid vacation? If you think about it, the North Pole is a sweatshop operation. Except it's cold, so there may not be much sweating. But still. Geez. I bet it's like any other off-shore production facility, designed to avoid OSHA rules and EPA oversight. Scratch what I said. Turns out Santa is a greedy creep.

But not Aash. Here's a guy who really does give and give. He is one-hundred and ten percent Scav. He stays up all night preparing lime green Chinese lanterns. Dozes. Wakes up. Checks his email to see if anyone has found a dog he can put a swimsuit on. Gets to work rewiring his cell phone so it emits an aroma when someone calls.

Spring? Ha! Did they tell you Spring would come?

Welcome to Spring Quarter. It may be 34 degrees outside. But with the sunshine, and the lake breeze, it feels like...well, 34 degrees. But it's not gray all the time! And it's not dark when you leave class! C'mon! Put on a sweater. A couple of sweaters. And a parka. You'll be fine. You won't need that hat. Put that phone down. Do not call your family in South Carolina! It was not a mistake coming here. The chill will leave your bones.

Consider this a tip o' the hat to our new e-business. Tell your friends. Tell your mom in South Carolina. Your Grandma in Albuquerque. They can buy our Hell Does Freeze Over t-shirts on-line now, for a limited time. Just use the convenient Pay Pal button right here on the Hooverlove blog. Remember how unbelievably cold it was in January? And how you never thought the quarter would end? Even though it had just begun? And the work - ugh! - how could anyone handle that much work? How is it possible to have a mid-term EVERY WEEK!

Well, now you can share that feeling with a loved one, by giving the shirt that captures all of that in a few icy words.

Friends

Friends. I never liked that show. Ross? No way that guy could be a college professor. For one thing, he was dopey. And, while he wasn't that good looking, he was still better looking than any college professors I have seen. Phoebe? No one in New York is that mystical and flaky. It's a feet-on-the-ground city. That free gypsy soul act is so much more Laurel Canyon than Manhattan. Sorry Californians. And who buys that that group of people would be friends? And that they would have the jobs they have? Chef, actor, professor, guitar-playing masseuse, some type of gig with Ralph Lauren? Only Chandler had a real job, full of boring nonsense and stupid responsibilities, like the rest of us. But I hated the irritating and demeaning "is Chandler gay?" jokes that popped up all the time. Hey, Friends writers: it would be okay if he was.

But, geez, I've wandered away. Here's my point. Hoover friends are a good thing. We always see Hooverites coming together to take care of a friend who is sick or down in the dumps. As Phoebe might say: it's a groovy thing.

Hoover ≠ suck

Look. I can't edit everyone's essays and blog postings. But can't we have a Manual of Style or something that makes this clear: Hoover isn't a verb. It's a proper noun. And a brand name. And the first two syllables of the the word Hooverlove. But not a verb. And it never, never, never should be used as a synonym for suck.

I was passing time as I do during my lunch break, reading different things on the web. Downloading some songs by the Cheetah Girls. Freaking out that Filth and Wisdom was denied an Oscar nod. Then I came across this on Slate.com:

Slumdog Millionaire, with 10 nominations (second only to Benjamin Button's 13), seems positioned to Hoover up every award in sight by virtue of being the cute, inoffensive crowd pleaser that no one hates.

Grrrrrrr. I hate that! Why couldn't this essayist just use the word "suck." Why Hoover? Why not "vacuum" or even, in this context, "grab." Look, nothing wrong with being linked with Slumdog Millionaire. Hooverites have told me how much they like the movie. It seems like a great underdog story. And the movie being nominated for Best Picture? Heckabagosh! That's a feel-good story too. A little movie that could, going nose to nose with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which cost $150 million to make, has two studios behind it, and stars tabloid heart-throb Brad Pitt. What's not to love? Go Slumdog! But that's not the point. Can I say this one more time? Maybe in a way you math-heads will get: Hoover ≠ suck.

A parking lot full of Czars

Hoover, like a lot of houses in the housing system, has a bunch of Czars doing lots of different things. We have Birthday Czarinas. A Kitchen Czar. A Condom Czar. Lounge Czars. We are so surrounded by Czars it has reshaped how Ellie and Jonah view the world. The other day I heard Jonah correct one of his classmates. Here is the actual verbatim dialogue:

Jonah's classmate, Gus: "Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I..."

Jonah (interrupting): "No, no. It goes like this - Twinkle, twinkle little czar, how I wonder what you are."

Anyway, until I moved into Hoover, I always thought of czar as an especially tricky crossword puzzle answer. Those fiends who create crossword puzzles love the word because they can give the same clue, "A Romanov, for example," and one time the answer can be "tsar" and another time the answer can be "czar." Make the wrong guess - especially when you are doing the puzzle in pen - and it haunts you. So you wait until you fill in some other answers so you can see which spelling makes sense in the specific context of the puzzle you are working on. But that is aggravating because, gosh darn it!, you want the satisfaction of filling in the answer and moving on. Will Shortz! Why do you taunt me!

Greetings from the Overlook

We have to admit it, Max Palevsky begins to feel a little bit like the Overlook Hotel when everyone is away. Now that below-zero temperatures have kept us locked in over the last several days, Jonah has been forced to roam the hallways on his tricycle. Ellie has taken over Jonah's older sit-n-scoot®, and follows behind. So far they haven't reported any paranormal encounters.

We want to send out holiday wishes to all of our Hoover friends. Have a great break and we look forward to seeing you with the start of the New Year.