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September 27, 2006
Book/daddy's name puns on "bone daddy" and "mack daddy." Think of it as Pimp My Read.
"Bone daddy" is an old slang term for an erection. Stripped of its genital connotations, it was playfully popularized by Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) -- the head ghoul, Jack Skellington, was called "Bone Daddy." "Mack daddy," of course, is slang for "boss pimp," given world-wide currency by rappers.
My wife Sara came up with "book daddy" when we switched to DSL service and had to devise a new e-mail address because all possible variations of "Weeks" and even "weex" were taken. Such swaggeringly phallic posturing may seem uncharacteristic of such a modest fellow. Or just laughably improbable for a book columnist. To which I can only note that three women established the well-known litblogs, Bookslut, Bookbitch and Booklust, so a big, swinging masculine handle did not seem out of order.
Besides, Bookninja was already taken. And Pathetic Fallacy would only confuse most readers.
Some people have also pointed out that the puns on blues and hiphop slang combined with my name, Jerome Weeks, suggest that I'm black or some white-boy hiphop wannabe: the Eminem of litcrit. Actually, I didn't encounter the African-American association of my name while growing up in Detroit. But after I moved to Texas, many people, black and white, have told me that "Jerome Weeks" sounds like "Tyrone Washington" to them. And while working at the Houston Post and then The Dallas Morning News, I did indeed receive calls from readers inquiring about (more accurately, demanding to know) my racial identity.
To which one can only quote Fats Waller: "One never knows, do one?"
Well, it was either that or tell them to screw off and hang up.
Posted by mclennan at September 27, 2006 7:25 PM
A professional critic for more than two decades, Jerome Weeks is the arts producer-reporter for KERA, the NPR/PBS station for Dallas-Fort Worth. Before that, he was the book columnist and before that the theater critic for The Dallas Morning News ...
(Hence the slash in book/daddy.)
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