What's in a name

Not that anyone has ever asked, but I thought I would drop a quick missive about where the name Paulzuzu came from.

If you ever look at my Facebook or MySpace profiles, you'll see that I do a little drawing in addition to my video work. Most of the stuff that I draw is very horror based. I love horror movies, and in fact, my wife and I collect them. Also, for a while there my wife and I ran an organization called the International Order of Horror Professionals. It was very successful for a time, but it just got to be too big for us to manage. The point is, before I start to ramble too much, that, although I'm a pretty mellow, nice guy, I like the darker side of entertainment.

Now, have you ever noticed that there are those folks out there on the web who have those really cool web names? Well, I wanted a cool web name, but try as I might I just couldn't come up with one. Every thing that I tried just made me feel like a complete poser. That's because I was being a poser; I'm not some cool, brooding goth type, I'm a nerdy guy who loves horror movies and who loves horror art.

I decided that what I should do instead is pick a web name that sort of exemplified that idea. It had to have a horror reference, but in the end still needed to sound goofy.

In the movie "The Exorcist", the statue that father Merrin stands opposite of in the Iraqi dessert is a representation of Pazuzu, a wind demon that appears in Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. The demon is not, however, named in the movie, though if I remember correctly it might be mentioned in the book by William Peter Blatty. The demon IS mentioned in the sequel though, so I was sure that people would get the reference.


This should be a lesson to me. Things that seem so obvious to me just aren't that obvious to lots of other people. Almost nobody gets the reference so I spend a great deal of time explaining it to everyone. It occurs to me though, that this is part of the joke.


In the comic book "The Tick" there is a character that is a speedster (runs really fast) and the emblem on his chest is a palm tree that looks like it's caught in a strong wind. The joke here is that he has to take the time to explain the emblem to people, that he runs so fast that he creates that kind of wind effect.


So that's where I got the name Paulzuzu from. It was an attempt to come to terms with my own goofy nature, and maybe it's a commentary on the concept of web acceptance and our desire to put on airs to impress other webizens. Finally, It has become almost a sort of performance art; an online inside joke that I keep having to explain to blank staring faces who just don't get it, and that's part of the fun.