Getting a Handle on a LJ Handle ...

[mrdreamjeans]

The home page for Live Journal is advertising that they've conducted a purge of names that are no longer being used as LJ handles. The discarded monikers are now up for grabs. I considered looking through the names for a moment, then realized that the name I've created for myself here is perfect, unique and is an accurate reflection of me. It's now part of my identity. I like it! How could I consider changing my screen name, unless I become a completely different person? It isn't going to happen ...

Coincidentally, gayhawk reached out to me recently via email and we've begun corresponding. In today's note, he asked me how I got my LJ handle and its meaning ... Here is my answer:

mrdreamjeans is a play off of characters from a favorite childhood television show and then my belief in the power of dreaming and dreams. My original AOL screen name is an alternate spelling of The Dancing Bear from Captain Kangaroo. Dancing Bear was my nickname in college. MrDreamJeans is a riff on Mr. Green Jeans from the same show.

I was creating this journal with gotmoof's help in August 2003. He turned to me and said, "So what do ya want to call yourself? Call the journal?" I thought back to my AOL name created in 1994. The names just flowed out of me ... MrDreamJeans and DreamsinaDrawer. It felt right then and it feels right now. Thanks for asking, Randy!

I'm curious LJ friends ... How did you select your Live Journal name and does it have a special meaning?

Comments

[tbone1961.livejournal.com]

you best not change. you are THE proverbial mrdreamjeans!!!!

mine is just too obvious.

then again, I was brave and daring and set up a profile on a certain site as slidemaster. OYE!!! what was I thinking? LOL!

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

... Slidemaster? ... brave and daring and accurate? Hehehe ... I remember the day that you and Lee came into my life because of the trombone reference ... then Chip:) We've been consistent friends ever since ... HUGS!

[mncuddlecub.livejournal.com]

As you probably already know, I prefer the “Bear” part of the gay community. I like them first and foremost because the “Bear” is the type of guy I find attractive. Anyway, Kevin (my first boyfriend) gave me the nickname CuddleCub. The name breaks down pretty easily. He was the “Bear” and I was the “Cub”. I love to cuddle and from what I understand I’m pretty good at it, hence he named me, “CuddleCub” :o) The MN is added on because there were already CuddleCubs out there online, so I specified my name with the state I live in (Minnesota). After Kevin and I broke up I thought about changing the name, but by then it was pretty solidly part of my "online life", and it still means a little something to me personally, so I kept it.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

You can't change the name any more than I can MrDreamJeans. It just fits.

[macduff131.livejournal.com]

in high school, i loved reading the scottish play...but it's a theatrical superstition (as i'm sure you know) that you can't say the title inside a theatre. so i chose MacDuff, the only character able to slay Macbeth, when i was signing up for AOL when i was in college. MacDuff was taken. so i added the numbers of my birthday, 1/3. MacDuff13 was taken. so i tacked on an extra 1. AOL has since gone by the wayside, but the name has stuck.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I figured that it was a literary reference, but until you sent me the photo proofs, I kept trying to see how it related to your name. Course, now I know ... You sure looked handsome in the photos. What did you think of my choices?

[rafdfw.livejournal.com]

Mine was simple. The first three letters of my first name, and the abbreviation for where I live.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I like knowing where people are located from the get-go.

[bruinwi.livejournal.com]

I never had a nickname growing up (and I don't count the one derived from my older brother's. Who wants to be referred to as "Li'l ..." when no one in your current circle knows the original?), so I had to come up with my own.

"Bruin" is the Dutch word for "brown", and has always been associated with bears. It's also a widely popular nickname with on-line circles, so I had to attach the "WI" when setting up my first e-mail account to make the name distinctive, and to identify me as a resident of Wisconsin.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Yes ... and Now there is one and only BruinWi ... one of my favorite people! HUGS!

[pagerbear.livejournal.com]

I used to do a lot of work with a typesetting tool called Pager. Seven or eight years ago, as I was just developing an interest in the bear community and wondering whether I could pretend to be a bear*, the name occurred to me when setting up a freebie email account. It has since become such a part of my identity--profile names in so many places I've forgotten most of them, a web site, my beloved pagercub, etc.--that I couldn't possibly change it, even though I hardly ever use the typesetting software any more and few people would actually call me a bear.

*To that point I had stuck to the chub/chaser community. I don't know if there was less crossover between the bear and the chub/chaser communities then, or if I just didn't know about it.

[pagerbear.livejournal.com]

But I did create an alternative identity on Biggercity once--I called myself Hugh Jass.

[reslbear.livejournal.com]

In high school, I wrestled. In fact, I was the Indiana State Champion in 1976 in the heavyweight class. I also won the gold medal in the heavyweight class at Gay Games 1 in 1982. That was about the time I first heard the term bear and was looked upon as desireable (as opposed to the then popular young, thin, hairless boys).

I think it was in 1996 or so when I was choosing a yahoo profile name. I have a thing for spelling things out phonetically without using silent letters (it's less typing). Thus I came up with reslbear. I'm reslbear on all my online profiles.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I think it's good, if a name is strong and well-suited to you, to use it across the board. It does become uniquely yours. Yours certainly fits you.

1982 - I was on tour with "Fiddler on the Roof" and 12 years from my first computer:)

Funny enough ... I almost began a post a couple of days ago with a bastardization of a John Wayne line ... one I think you would appreciate ... "I'm gonna wrestle me a grizzly and kiss me a furry guy." (He said pretty girl. I like my version better:)

[bootedintexas.livejournal.com]

Well, i love boots. Boots on Me. Boots on other men. Hell, boots of a good man that plan to be put back on after i shine them up nicely. I like boots firmly planted in the middle of my..(wait is this a PG or R blog)....

when i lived in california i was OCLABOOT, becuase i was bootblack for Orange Coast Leather Assembly.

when i lived in denver, i became bootmanco.

so it was just the way of the world, that now i live in Houston, Tex Ass. i am BOOTEDINTEXAS.

and it just rings that right touch of butchness. (preparing for snide comments).

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Why would there be snide remarks? Certainly, not from me. You may change your screen handles to reflect your location, but they all have a common theme - your appreciation for boots. It is part of who you are, all the validity you need and it does convey a certain masculinity and appreciation of it.

(Remind me some day to share a story with you of a night I spent in Memphis with a married man with three children and what happened to my tan cowboy boots. It was 1981, but the tale's a doozy. :)

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Because I have absolutely no talent, creativity, or imagination when picking names for myself.

Ask me to come up with a nomenclature for a computer network server farm, and I'll start rattling off possibilities.

Ask me to name a server that does thus-and-such, and I'll immediately snap back with a perfect name that alludes (somehow) to the server's function.

But pick my own handle? You've gotta be kidding!

So for LJ, I chose "allanh" (first name, last initial), because it would allow people who knew me from other systems to find me easily, and because it was one less account name to have to remember. (My LJ password, however, is unique from all of my other various "allanh" accounts elsewhere.)

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I've always liked it that I knew that I was speaking with "Allan" from the first time our paths crossed. There have been some folks that I've had exchanges with for months or years and I still don't know their first name because it isn't in their profile or they go by their LJ handle. Come to think of it, I may be one of those .... *going to go to my user info and look* ... LOL!

[elfkat.livejournal.com]

I knew there were many reasons I liked you but I loved Mr Green Jeans as a kid and his battles with bad Bunny Rabbit.

My name is what people in the Temple of Isis called me because there was another person named Cat/Kat and because when I get excited I pull my ears back and they get more pointed than just the Darwin's tubercle I already have, hence the elf prefix.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

The Bad Bunny reference makes me think of the Ninja Bunny who was whooping up on that crow:)

My ears aren't pointy, but I can wiggle them. Does that count? :)

elfkat is a perfect name for you. I do wonder when we (or others) select a name ... and that name becomes a strong identifier, if we are subconsciously living up to the name ... or is the name living up to us?

In your case, elfkat is a magically delicious fit! Hehehe

[texwriterbear.livejournal.com]

I was trying to find a cool name as an alias for myself. I had been in Texas a few years and had also been writing as a hobby for some time at that point. The bear part just happened to stick since it's the community I tended to be more attracted to plus the hairy part of me helped :-)

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

texwriterbear, Big Bear in the City correspondent par excellent! :)

... plus the hairy part of me helped ... Do tell:)

It is a cool name, appropo and well-known. The perfect moniker for you!

[mikiedoggie.livejournal.com]

Well, the current reason is that I love dogs, so 'mikiedoggie' seemed appropriate.

The real reason? Back in 1992, I spent a summer subletting with friends and one of the people there was from Thailand and had a very thick Thai accent. He came from a wealthy family (I think he may have had a manservant growing up) and was very bossy.

One day I was in the living room and he was in the kitchen. He called to me, "Hey Mikie! Go get me a Coke!" even though he was mere feet from the fridge.

I replied, "What, am I your bitch?"

He said, "No, you are like my pet to be obeyed. Mikie... doggie... Mikiedoggie!"

This was all in a thick very lyrical Thai accent. At that point, my other friend cracked up, and since then... "Mikiedoggie!"

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Just think if you had told him to put the Coke where the sun don't shine ... Geez .. the handle opportunities boogle the mind.

I like mikiedoggie because it conveys a man who is warm, friendly, cuddly and loyal to his friends. I've always attributed such qualities to you, though we've never met. However, we do have friends in common. think they would say that the name fits you in a very good way! :)

[gotmoof.livejournal.com]

I pulled mine out of the air. :-)

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Uh huh! I always thought it was a take off on "Got Milk" and your passion for cows. Hmmm... Didn't you tell me that "moof" is an Apple Computer term?

I always think of you as Barak since it was an important identifier for you for so long. I believe you told me that it comes from a character in one of your favorite Sci-Fi books ... Didn't you serve as Prime Minister of Israel for a short time under that name too?

HUGS!

[drella69.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge Andy Warhol buff and he had a nickname given to him when he first became big in NYC and that was Drella. Because he could be as mean as DRacula and as nice as cinderELLA, hence DRELLA! The 69 portion is self explanatory. My journal is named SX-70 Musings because when I first started looking at LJ and decided to start a journal here, I was really big into SX-70 photography. If you click on the photoseen link at the bottom of my journal, it will take you to a site where I have some of my work posted. Click on the Joseph Davis gallery and then look for the SX Rants gallery. It's at the bottom of the first page.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I will check out the link! I was just wondering yesterday from whence your screen derived. Now, I know! Thanks for sharing!

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

A coupl'a years back Sue won a trip to Hawaii, and while she and Chris were gone I house sat. One of the things they brought back for me was of those springy huladancer guys wearing a pink grass skirt (now we know where Easter grass goes in the off season...), and the base had "Hula Bob" stamped on it.

Anyway, when I finally decided to set up online service I went for 'hulabob' thinking that no one'd have gone for that one.

Ha!

And 'huladavid' was taken as well.

Side note: Two or three years back, before I went up to visit my sister in Winnipeg, I signed up on a gay board located there. I was also mulling over immagrating, and mentioned that in my first post. Got a responce back that was a bit too... "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" for my taste, but the guy also asked why in the world would I move to the lower part of Canada when I was already located in paradise.

???

Turns out the guy thought the 'hula' bit was a reference to my location...

He did seem to be a bit of a feeb.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Interesting ... If you had used HulaBob, everyone would have thought you were Robert from Hawaii. However, one clarification ... If huladavid was taken, then how did you wind up with it?

[tonethbone.livejournal.com]

See the firsst few paragraphs of my profile on my user info page

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I will do so! Thanks!

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

I thought it was because of all those men who dream about getting into your jeans?

Mine is just an old joke with a couple of friends - one summer holiday in Turkey we all started running each other's first and middle names together as a joke (probably drunk at the time) Jennybetts, SandyBob, LeselyMegs, Mikeybill...

i am never called Mike or Mikey anywhere except online - I'm a Michael.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I wish! LOL! ... An odd joke, perhaps, but look at how you framed it ... One summer holiday in Turkey ... ... right there, it's special ... Most of us will never have that opportunity to use that phrase in conversation:)

I just thought you were being Southern ... Joe Bob or Peggy Sue ... Yes ...You are Michael and I like Michael. *smiling*

[deanosota.livejournal.com]

Many of us have fond memories of Captain Kangaroo. I found out how short Bob Keeshan was when he appeared on the Sonny and Cher show and that cut into the fantasy a bit.

My name on here is not the first. I decided to choose a name that fit me better, the Deano part being bestowed on me by high school friends, and the sota part to remind everyone that I was born and raised here.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Who knew Captain Kangaroo was a pocket bear?! :)

Deanosota is perfect for you. It lets people know your first name and tells them where you are ...

Hmm

[arkanjil.livejournal.com]

Call it a weakness, je?
there was nothing else I could think of that was so fitting, so to speak.
Je Suis le Tenebreux, indeed...

heh.

I couldn't say for sure, save thit was as close to a full identity as i had, at the time

Re: Hmm

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

If it is fitting, then it should be so, je?

I had a dream last night that I was back on tour with a musical and I had adopted an abandoned child. I was so happy ... singing again ... and being a Dad. You and Richard must have been in my thoughts on the latter.

[scottokc.livejournal.com]

My first name is Scott and I live in Oklahoma City. The airport code for Oklahoma City is OKC. I call my journal "Rhinoceros Kitchen". Back in the days of BBS, I posted on a few echoes. One of my online friends at the time posted from a BBS called "Rhinoceros Kitchen" and I liked the name.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I've always like that I knew exactly who I was speaking with and where you were.

[use2bshy.livejournal.com]

Always considered myself a bit on the shy side, when shytx didn't pan out (people got the wrong impression for that nick) and I was more and more exposed to the internet many would say your don't look shy (ICUII) I came up with use2b

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

After reading your journal, I always thought that use2byshy was a clever reference to you being in the closet for so long. ShyTx is too close to shyster for my tastes. I think that your screen name works for you ... It tells people that you are moving forward in life and emerging ... Thanks for sharing!

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad you just like him. I don't want you jumping out of any windows ... though, I can see you passionate about saving your soul. I knew your name was a literary reference; I've read Mrs. Dalloway, but it was so long ago, I couldn't quite put it into context. (mental-pause)

Ed Harris? (spitting on ground:) I prefer Brett as septimuswarren! There's only one for me.

HUGS!

[mightyrunt.livejournal.com]

My original name on LJ was RRTRR2005. It’s my business ID on AOL. It’s a great business name but I hated it for LJ. So I gave it some thought what name would represent the real me. Like you I had a favorite childhood TV show on Sat mornings. It was Mighty Mouse. He was a li’l guy who kicked ass while singing at the top of his lungs about it. Then I wanted to personalize it further and runt seemed to come naturally. I may be a bear of sorts and nicely proportioned just compact.

Mightyrunt suits me.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

:) When I first read that long line of letters and the year, I thought it was a way of saying rotor-rooter 2005. My Oh My! I remember when you selected mightyrunt. My only concern was that you were putting yourself down when it came to using the term "runt". I now know that not to be the case. I think it suits you very well! I watched Mighty Mouse all the time when I was a kid and could sing the theme song word for word ..(just like I could the Hercules theme song:)

we have no secrets, we tell each other everything...

[tkn1114.livejournal.com]

...about the lovers that we had, and how we named them "bad"! LOL

Well, you know mine: initials + dob. See, I wasn't planning to stay on. It was a tourist thing. But I've created recently a name perfect for this site. Stay tuned for update.

Re: we have no secrets, we tell each other everything...

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

I'm happy that you are going to stay on ... I look forward to your tourism turning into habitation .. or at least habit:)

[designerotter.livejournal.com]

I had been introduced to LJ by bruinwi and it took me some time to finally join in the blog. Meanwhile, I had become a reader and fan of "Bear With Me"... it was through this comic strip that I discovered that I qualify for membership in a group known as "otters."
So I took my profession and linked it with my body-type ... and luckily nobody had already appropriated the name.

I really like your LJ handle...it's catchy, poetic, and can be read in a number of ways - *wink*

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

*blush* Umm ... Thanks:)

Having met you, I know you've created a name for Live Journal to which you are prefectly suited and does you justice. It was great chatting with you on the phone this morning. HUGS!