Sometimes I wish Hunter Rawlings was still around. Mind you, I have no special regard for the man or his administration. After all, I came to the University in his last year as University President (and, yes, that is wholly a coincidence). I can't even say I've ever met him. Heck, I've even avoided chances to meet him. Remember those "Have a Bar-B-Q With the U of I President?" I wouldn't go to one of those things if they paid me, mostly out of an irrational fear of meeting the guy and having him decide, on a whim, that I should be banned from campus for life.

Or maybe it was the rancid potato salad that they always seem to serve at those things.

I should point out that I have don't have anything against current University President, Mary Sue Coleman. As a matter of fact, she has done a pretty good job with what she was handed when she came here. And from what I've read, she seems to be a very nice woman.

No, I want Hunter Rawlings back around Iowa City because he had a cool name. Say it with me: Hunter Rawlings. It was impressive just to tell your friends from other universities that the president of your university is named "Hunter," and if they didn't like it, you were gonna send him over to have them kneecapped.

And if you want to get technical, his full name is Hunter Rawlings III. Tell me that doesn't just scream "cool." (Actually, it screams "money," but that's okay. Money's cool, right?)

"Hunter Rawlings" reminds me a lot of "Wolf Blitzer," the famous CNN reporter. The only difference is that Rawlings doesn't have the name of one of Santa's reindeer for a last name.

Oh, wait... My mistake, that's "Blitzen," not "Blitzer." Still, it's not as cool as "Hunter Rawlings."

Anyway, I can't decide whether his name sounds more like an action hero ("Coming next summer: 'Decapitator,' starring Hunter Rawlings as Dakota Nixon, a tough private eye who crosses the wrong woman. With Florence "I Dated Greg Brady" Henderson as 'The Wrong Woman.'") or a soap opera character. Why not? Soap operas have this bizarre habit of naming their male characters after random masculine sounding nouns like Mace, Crash and Flog, things that no parent would name their child this side of heavy psychedelics.

So why not? I can see it: the scene is a swanky, upper-class living room. Hunter stands across from Copacabana, his rich, blond fiancee who nearly died following a bout with a particularly nasty hangnail.

Hunter: "Copa, what do you mean?"

Copacabana: "Hunter, don't you understand? When I was sick, I didn't know right from wrong! I slept with Cramp. But it wasn't really Cramp, it was his twin brother's cousin's [she takes a deep breath] dog's uncle's roommate, Rash."

Hunter: "I understand, my love, but that means you can't possibly be pregnant... Rash is infertile ever since that truck spilled toxic waste on him."

Copacabananana: "Yes, but it recently came to light that it was really Rash's dead cousin, Flagpole who was in the Ferrari when the toxic waste truck crashed into it."

Hunter: "Oh... I don't care. I love you, Copacabana. Let's get married."

Copacabanaaaaanaaaa: "Now? Don't we have to wait until our last divorce is final?"

[Suddenly, Copacbananananana's younger sister W, who had the terrible bad luck to be born with an unfortunately short name, enters. She has a penguin imbedded in her head. This worries Hunter and Copacabanananana, but W takes no notice.]

W: "Have you two seen my penguin? [Pause] What are you staring at?"

Anyway, you get the point. You know, the reason that I bring this whole thing up is that I've always thought that my name could use a little work. "Patrick Keller" just doesn't quite work for me. I plan on writing a book some day ("A Million and 1 Bad Ideas"), and I think that I should at least have a cool name for the jacket.

As a child, I'm sure that most of us had the unfortunate experience of having the other kids make fun of our names. I was lucky, only one of my names was really suitable to being made fun of. "Keller" can really only be changed to "Killer" or "Heller," neither of which seem particularly insulting. My first name, on the other hand... Well, don't get me started.

Still, when my brother Eric was a kid, he wanted to change his last name to Bronstander, for reasons that we still don't fully understand (and perhaps it is best that we don't try...). You know, maybe I could use Bronstander and people could call me "Bron" for short. Still, I would need a good first name, and not much goes well with Bronstander, especially not my first name. So, I've decided to borrow a name from Steve Martin and go with Gern Blansten. It has a nice ring to it, and it would certainly catch people's eyes at the bookstores ("Gern Blansten? Sounds like a moron!").

Or, you know, if I really wanted to have some fun, I could start calling myself Hunter Rawlings IV...

(c) 1996 Patrick Keller, Gern Blansten Productions