Unreality Bites

I remember when CD-Roms were all the rage. We'd proudly place those discs in our drives and these CDs quickly became the quintessential computer games of the 1990's. This archaic technology eventually went the way of the dinosaurs and was replaced by the Xbox, the Wii, the Playstation, and voluminous online websites for people who like to refer to themselves as "gamers."

But during the glory days of CD-Roms, one of the more popular creations was a reality game called The Sims. Essentially, you created your own family. You made decisions on their clothing, determined where they would travel, scripted conversations they would have, and even made choices on their schooling and occupations. In this world, you truly played God.

I was given The Sims as a gift once, but never really made it that far. I thought it was nothing more than a big time waster and after all, there was this really cool new dial up service called America Online that I loved exploring, but only after I waited for my dial up signal to make that explosive noise that informed me that I was connected.

So now that we've moved into the new media age, with blazing wireless download speeds, and several options for social media, a new version of The Sims-like technology has taken the world by storm. This is all courtesy of a company called Zynga. Through a relationship with Facebook they are responsible for online games such as Farmville and Cityville which have attracted a countless number of "followers." The popularity of these games moved into the forefront last week as Zynga announced that they were planning on a public stock offering. And the potential evaluation? Several billion dollars!

I asked myself how a company that creates fictitious farms and cities could be valued so high, but then I read more. Zynga made over 400 million dollars in net revenue from people buying items like seeds for their virtual farms. Let me say that again, 400 million!

So we have a shaky economy where people must spend more prudently. And between work, children's soccer and basketball games, ballet lessons, and other social commitments people still found the time and the money to pay for seeds on a farm that doesn't really exist.

For most of us, we struggle daily with just having enough time and energy to deal with the things that matter most. Time with our children, staying in touch with friends, working one or two jobs to make ends meet. While hopefully all along, feeding our hobbies, whether they be softball, fishing, tennis, pottery, dancing, creative writing or whatever drives you. At the end of every week, usually on a Sunday, we say that next week will be different and we'll actually get to these areas of our lives that will make a positive difference. But most of us simply fail again.

Is it possible that we're letting online videogames get in the way? I don't spend nearly as much time on Facebook as many of my friends; especially those who are insistent on telling me where they are all times, which kid just threw up their dinner, or which traffic jam they're immobilized in. But to think that millions of other people still find the time to build computer farms and cities and actually pay for it just blows my mind.

Maybe if we spent more time tending to our kids, our careers, our finances, friends and families, Zynga wouldn't be going public after all. They would just be a fad that would soon be replaced as easily as The Sims was all those years ago.

Sometimes I wonder which truly came first. Did we create Zynga or did they create us?

Baby Food

Do you remember the days when your were expecting your first child, and you went to Barnes and Noble to buy a countless number of baby naming books? Remember how difficult it was? You looked through thousands of names, and narrowed it down to about (5) choices on each side of the potential gender.

Then came the hard part. First, we didn't want to give our kids the same name as our friend's kids. So that knocked a few choices off the list. Next, if you already knew an adult with the same name on your list, and you didn't like them.....well.....those choices were forever doomed. And if you were Jewish, you had the added pressure of selecting a name with the same first initial of someone deceased. How's that for uplifting?

After a few disagreements, you finally settled on a name or two. And it's a lot of pressure. After all, this kid has to live with this moniker for the rest of his/her life. (Marriage can change the surname, but never the first.) Then, you had to worry about whether or not the other kids on the playground would find a way to make fun of your selection. These kids in elementary schools are literary geniuses. They can somehow twist and turn any combination of letters into something incredibly embarrassing and just like that, your kid has to live with it for at least a decade. Personally, I didn't take the brunt of this behavior. The worst I heard was "Adam Madame." I could live with that. It was my last name that fell under attack. "Rowe, Rowe, Rowe your boat...." could be heard near the monkey bars on a regular basis.

Most of us are well past the point of having another child, or perhaps having one at all. But now that I'm older, and just slightly wiser, I realized that our approach to baby naming was off course right from the beginning. We were all looking in the wrong books. We didn't need expensive, and quite heavy baby naming books, especially when we had one in our homes that could have done a more stellar job.

The Zagat book.

Think about it. Many restauranteurs also need to select a name that will be synonymous with strength, quality, and popularity. They derive from a wide variety of nationalities and have already found a positive place in our vernacular. A quick skim through the Zagat's first few pages of top restaurants by cuisine or the best restaurants by neighborhood will easily provide more than enough male and female choices to make you the envy of young parents everywhere.

I could provide endless choices, but I'm only going to highlight a few standouts for a variety of different ethnicities:

FEMALE

Avra - Greek, and somewhat angelic
Oceana - great for nature lovers
Remi - very pretty, and simple
JoJo - playful, and already sounds like a nickname
Aureole - almost has a Disney feel to it
Novita - rolls off the tongue
Pastis- anything French sounds good
Barbetta - very Hollywood

MALE

Nobu - c'mon, who doesn't like Nobu?
Veritas - strong and powerful
Bouley- a name that will get all the girls
Babbo - a little Flintstones, but original
Balthazar - already sounds like a novelist
Pylos - like a Greek God
Tabla - it doesn't rhyme with anything

Now you might ask why on earth would I want to name my kids after anything that reminds me of food, particularly places where I've eaten? But why not? When scores of people look upon these names it can only remind them of the most positive times. Great business lunches, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties, holiday parties, and other causes of celebration. How many other names have that kind of equity naturally built in?

I just don't get the same feeling from Ashley, Tiffany, Christopher, and Noah. Most likely, neither will you.