What Inspired Your User Name??
 

Many ask me where my user name was from, or what it means..I have some people guess it has to do with being a dominatrix (kinky!)

others assumed it has to do with comedy...

Actually, Savage Amusement is the tenth studio album by the German heavy metal band Scorpions, released in 1988. It peaked at No. 5 in the USA,[3] where it became platinum on June 20, 1988.[4] It was also the last Scorpions record to be produced by Dieter Dierks.

The album was the follow-up to the successful Love at First Sting and had some musical differences when compared to its predecessor. The overall feel of the album shows that Scorpions wanted to experiment with some different genres, going to a more radio friendly style and incorporating more synthesized sounds. While there are still some straight hard rock songs, like "Don't Stop at the Top" and "Media Overkill", there are also progressive rock songs such as "Walking on the Edge" and "Passion Rules the Game".

I have had SavageAmusement as a handle for CB, BBS boards, and through the internet since I was 12.

So, who wants to share their user name inspiration>

:D

About 30 years ago, I was fascinated by Photon. It was the original lasertag, and better than the later "Lazertag" brand. It had a TV show and everything. I still have my Photon watch somewhere, and it was very nice (think Rolex quality, not Timex!).

But there were issues:
- home gear was not very good; arcades (lasertag arenas) had the best gear in malls
- the closest mall was 35 miles away -- about an hour in the days of 55 mph on the highway
- most of my friends did not want to play
- you could never reserve it for just your group, so others could ruin your fun

Its popularity quickly climbed, then fell, in just a few years, so I never got to play. No lasertag for me.

But paintball was close! So I played that a few times. And unlike the lasertag arenas, you could reserve the field for *just* your group. However, while I liked the wargames aspect, I didn't care for the paint. The balls were messy, and hurt like hell.

Some years later, by now the 90s, a few friends played Amtgard, a type of medieval wargame involving padded PVC pipe weapons. Now that was fun! You still got to beat the crap of each other, but without the mess and sting of paintballs. I played that, and was known as "Smurf" because I've always liked the Smurfs. I was a simple name to say on the battlefield, which was sometimes important!

I'd already been online since 1993, and had new usernames every few months, because of ISP trials (remember those?!). I went from ISP to ISP, using free trials to get online. The username I selected didn't really matter, as I never used ISP emails anyway -- and they'd disappear as soon as the trial was up. I forget what I did for mail back then.

A year later, we broke off from the official Amtgard, not happy with its asinine rules and nerdy little dictators. We wanted medieval wargames, not D&D dress-up in mom's basement. In the new system, I eventually rose to "Lord" status, and thus "Lord Smurf". (Only 3 made ever it to that level, during the years I played. I quit in my first senior year of college. Last I knew, the game was still being played!) I played a thief/assassin, and I was a good one because of my then-excellent night vision.

Around the same time, I signed up for the brand new Geocities email service, and used that as my name. It stuck. (Geocities was later bought by Yahoo. I actually have the old LS@yahoo email address, but rarely use it. Geocities email used to forward to Yahoo, though I doubt that's still the case.)

Everntually it was "LordSmurf" and then just lordsmurf.

So my username is very, very ground in the 80s. And I've had it since 1996. :)

________

Trivia A: One of the oldest traders I know is a member of this forum, Dan D, and we met in 1998 on Yahoo Auctions. I've not seen him on here for a while (or Facebook for that matter), but I'm sure he's still around. He's seen the evolution of my name, my email addresses, and much of my online life.

Trivia B: Forum member Naga was also a member of the same games years ago, and is actually how we met (through his brother, who played with us for several years). So I've known him for a long time.

I'm a musician,play keyboards,mostly synths,therefore the name synthman

There has been one thing that people have always asked me since I first took "rockman666" as my screen name in the mid 90s........."are you a Satanic Mega Man fan?" Rockman, of course, refers to the Japanese name for Mega Man in most people's eyes. However, there's no connection at all. I am a versatile studio musician playing anything from drums to guitar to keyboards to singing.....I also write and record music in my own home studio and have done so for about 20 years (and boy did some of that old 4 track crap sound god awful LOL). Anyway, one of the pieces of equipment I used to record the guitars and sometimes vocals (for the chorus effect) is called a Rockman X100, one of the many devices developed by the engineering genius Tom Scholz (some may know him as the guitarist for the rock band, Boston). The Rockman X100 was no bigger than a sandwich but produced an unbelievable sound that gave life to my songs. I did try getting RockmanX100 as a screen name on AOL way back when but it was taken so I took my favorite number which was 6 and tried both Rockman6 and Rockman66 but both were taken so I entered in one more 6 and of course, no one wanted to mess with the sign of the devil but I had no problem with controversy so I went with Rockman666. That's been my screen name ever since I could get online and will probably be my screen name until I die (and find out that Satan is pissed that I used his numbers LOL)

My user name is my name - I've used it consistently since going online in the early '90s. I actually never occurred to me to come up with something else. So, very boring. Once in a chat someone actually asked me what my "real name" was - like I'd make up "debwalsh" as a pseudonym? Yikes!

I'm enjoying this thread though - I often wonder where people come up with their interesting and often colorful handles. I find it fascinating - hope more people post!

Deb

When thinking of a user name, nothing came to me. One day, working one night at my local grocery store, it hit me.

I glanced up at the aisle I was in and Aisle3 was born.

When I was in high school, a friend of mine decided that I needed a nickname. He decided to call me Big K because my name starts with a K and I'm kinda big because of my gut. When coming up with a new user name for my AOL account after my previous account got hacked several years ago, I decided to use bigk. That username was already taken, so I added 18 to it since I was 18 at the time. I tried using bigk18 for the email I use for trading but that user name was already taken. One of the suggested user names was bigk181, so I went with that. I decided to use that for this forum so that it would match the email I use for trading.

Nothing too thought out for my user name. It's just my initials. First name, last name, and 3 is because I'm the third person in my family with that name.

Since I'm on so many wrestling sites a lot of people think that I'm a fan of WEW which is this philly women's promotion from the early 2000s called either Women's Erotic Wrestling or Women's Extreme Wrestling. They actually had some pretty good wrestlers on occasion mixed in with the lesbian and porn stars they used to draw in a more adult crowd. I think WEW was also a hardcore wrestling promotion in Japan with the blood and the barbed wire which I've never been a fan of.

My username came from the show power rangers, I added the 1 to show it was the very first green ranger the green Mighty Morphin Power Ranger. Not to hard to figure out if you know me.

Another music related one.
I've been a huge fan of the band the Grass Roots since I was a freshman in high school...and had a crush on the lead singer Rob Grill. Unfortunately, I was never able to see them in concert 'back in the day' but about 12 years ago was able to see them for the first time. Rob was still the lead and still gorgeous! The timing was right and free concerts at festivals were plentiful and the Grass Roots were in big demand in the Chicago area so I was able to see them a lot! When you hang around enough they start to recognize the face--they may not know your name but they know the face. My daughter and I meet with some friends very early for a show on a very cold and rainy day. When the band arrived we were are huddled together in the front of a very tall stage--we could basically rest our chins on it. The guys started sound check and suddenly the drummer saw all these heads atop the edge of the stage. He jumped up and said "Hey! It's the GOILS! The Goils is here!" and he came over to talk with us. Hence, we became the Goils. Since Rob Grill is my favorite (and I was fortunate enough to become friends with him before his passing...R.I.P., Rob) the grill is in his honor. I'm a Grill Goil...and the 43 is the year he was born.

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Back in about '95 or so, my girlfriend wanted to drag me to a Gary Puckett concert. I wouldn't have walked three feet for Gary Puckett tickets if they were free and came with a ham sandwich. I had nearly won the debate and was ready for a quiet night at home when she happened to mention that the opening act was the Grass Roots. Before she could draw her next breath I was in the car revving the engine and honking the horn for her to hurry up.

They were spectacular. I had never seen them live, and I never will again, but that night made it all worth it. The singer told us how much the band appreciated our enthusiastic response to them still after all those years, and they played their hearts out for us.

Then Gary Puckett, one hit wonder, came out with a huge bright yellow helmet-like wig and started yammering about how he had a new album coming out and started singing a couple things I didn't recognize. The audience response was weak leaning toward nonexistant, and he got impatient and told us to clap. "Cmon, clap! Clap! Clap!" ... I'm serious. A few people clapped a few claps; what Dave Letterman would call a smattering of applause. Desperate to wake us up, he went into Young Girl and a few people got behind him on that one. During the next song I could literally feel the audience's excitement dying. My girlfriend said "I'm ready to go if you are" and was I ever. When we turned into the aisle we could see, all over the hall, there were a dozen or more couples walking out at the same time. I felt bad for the guy but I just couldn't endure his performance. Any longer and he would have killed my Grass Roots buzz and that was a risk I wasn't willing to take.

Where was I? Oh yeah, how I got my nick. I've always liked comic books, but growing up we called them funnybooks. When I joined a trading newsgroup several years ago I saw that nobody in the neighborhood was using Funnybook, so I did. It stuck, and came here to the forum with me.

Next time ask me about my avatar.

Ive always wondered about your avatar!

My avatar is one of the very few traces that remain of my number one most wanted show, The Old Sourdough and Wachikanoka:

http://www.uhfnocturne.com/KEMO_OldSourdough.html

It irks me that the above page has Wachikanoka spelled wrong. There's no T. Here's the proof, sent to me by the son of the guy that played him:

http://www.tvpast.org/forum/images/cache/2013/12/1.gif

I watched this as a kid and I miss it ever so badly. It was sold all across the country; cheap late-night TV for small stations that didn't have much to offer. The owner of the station where it originated destroyed the master tapes (out of spite) and this was before the days of the VCR, so unless someone with a studio deck at a remote TV station recorded it back then, it's gone forever.

http://www.tvpast.org/forum/images/cache/2013/12/1.jpg

Gary Ferry, who died a few years back, played Wachikanoka and even his own son has never been able to find a single second of footage. (See ga3ry.com - the 3 is silent.) Andy Moore played The Old Sourdough and I've swapped a couple mails with him; he too has never seen any of the video since he left the show. Forty years ago. There are a couple brief audio clips accompanied by stills like those above floating around Youtube, but No. Video. At. All.

It makes me so sad. I'd trade a thousand to one and kick in a hundred dollars to boot for just one episode, but I don't think I'll ever get the chance. However, as The Old Sourdough used to sometimes say out of the blue as he looked off into space...

Chinese!