No, not a wedding anniversary (won’t have another one of those for a long time yet). But today is the anniversary of me starting to use the name Calvero.
Ah, I remember like it was yesterday…
Well, no, not yesterday…. some things have happened since which makes it seem longer than 15 years…
I had signed up for a BBS (bulletin board system… very popular in the early days of the internet boom). I had been on the internet since January of ’95. And to signup for this BBS (ah, the days of Dynasty BBS of Orlando!) you had to create a username. Being a Chaplin fan, I tried using “Charlie”.
Drat, already taken.
So I tried a couple others. None took.
So I sat and thought. It should be a good name. One that sticks out somewhat but not to odd or too difficult for me to remember how to spell it.
What about Hynkel? The name Chaplin used for The Great Dictator? No, don’t think so. While it was a great movie, Hynkel being a wonderful parody of Adolf Hitler, I wasn’t to keen on using a mass muderer related name. Verdoux from Monsieur Verdoux, but that’s about another mass murderer.
What about Calvero from Limelight? Sounds cool, Chaplin related, and as I thought about it later, it also has a link to a couple other interests. Buster Keaton (he makes a brilliant appearance in it) and also Nigel Bruce who plays Mr. Postant. Bruce is most famous for playing Dr. Watson opposite Basil Rathbone in the popular 1940s Sherlock Holmes films (Chaplin hired Bruce for that reason, since Chaplin has a part in Holmes history.
I soon “met” many people in that BBS’s chatroom, though only one person I have stayed in contact with since those days. Others changed their name a couple times but I kept mine. I liked it, it sounded cool, and it sounded like I was a guy, so I wouldn’t be hounded by guys.
That year would bring other things, good and bad, but I just wanted to note the beginning of a beautiful, and sometimes rough, relationship (of sorts).