The Many Names of JJB.

When I was four years old, I honestly believed I was Mighty Mouse.

Mighty Mouse was my hero.  He had his own theme song.  Other heroes had catchphrases or leitmotifs, but Mighty Mouse had a full blown theme song.

We're not worrying at all,

We're just listening for his call...

HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY!

That means that Mighty Mouse is on the way!

Yes sir, when there is a wrong to right,

Mighty Mouse will join the fight!

On the sea, or on the land,

He has the situation well in hand!

On my way to nursery school, I would try to leave the house with a red towel trailing from my neck.   My mom would gently remove it despite my pouting and shoo me away to school.

Other kids would pretend to be other superheroes, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America, The Flash.  I would proudly say, "I'M MIGHTY MOUSE!"  The other kids would groan, roll their eyes, and leave me alone.

That didn't matter to me.  Mighty Mouse protected the downtrodden mice (I didn't know they were pests) from the predatory cats (I didn't know they were natural agents of pest control).  I guess because I was at the bottom of the schoolhouse pecking order, I chose the lowliest animal to be my champion.

Time went on, and I cast aside childish things.  By the time I was five, I knew for a fact that I was Rocky Balboa.

I tried every costume, every persona I could, up until I was seven.  Finally, I embraced the reality that I was Boba Fett.

Come age nine, I knew I was John Joyce Baker.  I wasn't happy with the name.  My mother told me that my middle name, Joyce, was chosen by my father to commemorate his favorite author, James Joyce.

The only Joyce I knew in real life was my mother's friend Joyce.  Joyce is a woman.  Every kid in school recognized Joyce as a female name.  When they found out my middle name, they tore into me mercilessly.  I mean, who was James Joyce to them?  What did they care about Irish novelists?  So, I had to suffer the indignity of being called "Joyce" or "Joyce-y" until the mob found a new kid to pick on.

Such is life.

In my college years, I took up the search for a proper pseudonym which I could use for my paintings, sketches, writing, and as media personality.  My idea of being a media personality was appearing on Public Access.

A few years prior to that, a friend of mine came up with the name Skippy McGillicuddy to embody the stereotypical white suburban kid.   We laughed hysterically when he came up with it.  Over time, I appropriated the name as he had no use for it.  So I appeared as a guest on a few public access shows using that name.  I did some outrageous things under that name.  I even wore a costume to conceal my identity.   Whose business was it to know who I really was?

Time went on, and I was working at an independent video production company.  We were putting together a commercial that featured the boy band N'Sync.  While going through the material, I came across the name of one of the members of the group:  Justin Timberlake.

I chuckled at the last name.  "Timber," I thought.  That's nice and phallic.  Good for a kid enchanting tween girls with his boyish, bird of paradise masculine charm.

But you know?  It's just not phallic enough.

I brainstormed on how I could make Timberlake sound more aggressively phallic.  I thought of beams of wood, planks of wood... shafts of wood.

Timber-shaft.  Timbershaft.  Much better.

Then I considered a masculine first name to go with Timbershaft.  Again, something aggressive and phallic.  Buck Timbershaft?   No.  Too phallic.  Too ridiculously phallic.  It sounded like a porn name.

So I thought of other creatures in nature that had a masculine edge to the name.  Now what is a male duck called?

A drake.

Drake Timbershaft.

Perfect.

And it would be my name.  For any project I believed required a pseudonym.

A friend of mine at the job started a podcast called GorillawireTV.  He was looking for a movie critic for the show.  He knew that I was an aficionado of all things cinematic.  Indie, big budget, numerous genres, and a perception of what was good and bad... I was the man for the job!

So I immediately became Drake Timbershaft, the movie maven.  I reviewed films with the irreverence of a syndicated radio shock jock, but I was erudite at the same time.  My friend loved it.  The problem was that a large enough audience had been cultivated, and I was impatient.  I left the podcast after a few months.

Another stretch of time went by, and I was hanging out with a few friends winter of 2016.   We were challenging each other to start and pursue a project of our own making and to see how far we could go.  I was at a loss.  What did I have to create?  I hadn't done anything in the longest time.

Then, I looked at my iPad and realized I must have written damn near one hundred comedy skits.  Some centered around my mythological character of choice:  Inanna.

Inanna at Rest, John Joyce Baker

Yes, I have the basic material to shoot a short film.  I could put together a small cast and crew, find a location, shoot the footage, edit it and post it on YouTube.

But who could I get involved in this project?  I had no money, no camera or audio equipment, no cast or crew.  Who would work for free?

Then I thought of a few friends who worked with amateur comedy improv groups.  Two men.  Two men to play two female characters:  Ninshubar, the high priestess, and Nikkal, goddess of the orchards.

But who would play the main character?  Who would play Inanna?

Well, I thought, it's my story.  It might as well be me!

Throughout the early spring, I got my friends together, who out of the milk of human kindness, agreed to work for free.  We had pooled together a digital video camera, a microphone, a tripod, and a location at Inspiration Point in Fort Tryon Park.  Inspiration Point is a colonnade of Doric pillars.  They are more Greek than Sumerian, but they would serve just fine.  

We went to a costume store as it was essentially a period piece.  Susan would provide the makeup.  Props, last minute preparations, and we set a shooting date:  Memorial Day.

Come Memorial Day, the day of the shoot, I was sweating out a cold in a heat that was more appropriate for July or August.  I was afraid there would be a friction of egos and conflict.  I catastrophized as usual, preparing for the worst but not thinking of the best.

The shoot went almost perfectly, no ego clashes, just near perfect co-operation.  The day was rewarding for all of us.  We celebrated with an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant in The Heights.  We gathered our gear, congratulated each other and went our way.

The director of the shoot, Tym, arrived a week later with all the footage on his digital camera.  We uploaded it to my MacBook and edited it on my iMovie program.  Again, no ego clashes, just cooperation and good humor all around.

Finally, I thought it ship shape enough for uploading to You Tube, all that remained was the credit roll.  Then I paused and considered something:  Should I use my name?

I was working at the police department at the time.  I was worried that if they got wind of my drag performance, it could compromise my integrity at the department.

So again, I chose a pseudonym:  Kittie N. Studd.

For anyone not familiar with Sylvester Stallone's early career, he appeared in a soft core porn film called The Party at Kitty and Stud's (Better known as Italian Stallion).  Well, it took no great stretch of the imagination to put together the name.

So in place of John Joyce Baker, Kittie N. Studd went in the credit roll.  That was that.

Another Inanna video was made in July.  Kittie N. Studd appeared in the credits again.

A year later, things had changed.  I had resigned from the department and Suze and I had moved to Westchester.  Up there, I had the inspiration for a third Inanna video.

As usual, we gathered a cast, crew, equipment, props, costume, make up, and we used Inspiration Point in the city again as a location.  Another successful shoot.  Now for post production.

At the laptop, I edited the footage, and again I had gotten to the credit roll.  I paused.

I answered to no one anymore.  I had staked out my own destiny.  I was out to fulfill my own ambitions.  Do I really need a pseudonym?

I recalled an old David Cronenberg film called Videodrome.  There was a character named Brian O'Blivion, a self styled media prophet.

In an interview within the story, O'Blivion said, "Naturally, [Brian O'Blivion] is not my real name.  It is my television name.  Soon we will all have television names."

The only thing O'Blivion was wrong about was which medium the people of the world would use pseudonyms.  It was the internet which gave people the opportunity to come up with online names.  Names that would conceal their identity as they went about creating content, cyberbullying, or trolling.

I had used pseudonyms for years.  I was getting tired of it.

Did I really want to invent a new online name?

In the credit roll, I typed out my real name.  John Joyce Baker.

Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Baker.

- JJB