My mother

My mother was a local entertainer. She would appear on the public access channel in five different shows, all under the same moniker: Gorgeous Gina. Her looks were moderately attractive, but her forceful pride and diva-like attitude radiated a sense of beauty so great, you didn’t focus too much attention on the grape-sized beauty marks on her forehead. The show she felt she made her greatest impact with was the psychiatry program. People would call in with their problems under a pseudonym, and Gorgeous Gina would offer advice. Eventually, she started actually having people come live on the show. If you watch the tapes of that show and watch tapes of Dr. Phil, you’ll notice a lot of similarities. My mother believes that Dr. Phil must have been in the tri-city area and saw the program.

Brown Rice Burroughs

My father, Herman Jacoby, is now the mayor of Old England, which is purely a ceremonial position, kind of like the queen of Older England, Elizabeth II. He has an office in our city hall/youth center that looks on our biggest street and the local high school. The view actually bothers him quite a bit. As a person who was born in Old England, and will most likely die there, he hates the fact that the high school is named Gerald Jennings Municipal High School. Jennings was mayor of Albany. If my father had it his way, it would be named Herman Jacoby Municipal High School, a name he shared with his father, my grandfather.

My grandfather was named Herman by his parents because of the famous author Herman Melville. Of course, it was a mistake. My great-grandparents thought that Melville was the creator of the character, Tarzan. However, that honor belongs to Edgar Rice Burroughs. An interesting fact about Burroughs: when he got back from his 1910 vacation to Haiti, he was so tanned that people called him Brown Rice Burroughs. He thought it was a clever joke and repeated it later at several intellectual gatherings.

The person who didn't write "Tarzan": Herman Melville


Where Burroughs told people his new nickname: intellectual gatherings

Maps: Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

I was raised in a small town outside the city of Albany, New York. The name of the town is Old England, and on many updated maps, does not show. Why? The answer is politics. As you may or may not know, the foremost map-making corporation in the world is Rand McNally. When the company first started back in 1856, they wanted their world-wide headquarters to be in Old England. The town mayor, Herbert Blimpton, and his council rejected the map company’s desire to set up shop within town limits. Rand McNally had no choice but to leave the area, and ultimately started their long domain of the industry in Chicago.

As a sort of vengeance, Old England is not featured on their maps. And if you look at the way the hills are drawn around Albany on topographic maps, you will notice they come together in a frowny face. The sad thing is that other map companies obviously just use the statistics and surveyors’ findings that Rand McNally uses. Therefore, Old England only appears on maps created before 1856. Most people think we’re just a small neighborhood in Albany. Just spend a few moments with any of us Old Englanders, though, and you’ll see that we don’t have the same cynicism and bravado of those who live in our state’s capital.

The mayor of Old England, 1856: Herbert Blimpton

The mayor of Old England, present: Herman Jacoby

Welcome

My name is Ian Jacoby, and I am 28 years old. I don’t have a middle name, a trait that every male member of the Jacoby lineage shares. The female Jacobys, like my Aunt Helen, all have two middle names as a sort of way of evening it out. The odd thing about that is they all have the same two middle names, Helen and Jane. Aunt Helen of course has bitterly complained (after one too many hits of the ol' drinky drink) about the redundancy that is her name, but family tradition and the threat of becoming a black sheep has prevented her from any kind of name change. Thus, Helen Helen Jane Jacoby has always been her name and will always continue to be.

I have decided to use the interweb, or information superhighway (a phrase I coined and NOT Nam June Paik) to post my biography since nobody has accepted my manuscript.


Aunt Helen Helen Jane's Vice: Too many sips of the drinky-drink.



My Vice: Repeated listening of books on tape, usually Tolstoy, and in his native Russian. I hope one day to understand what is being read to me.