My blog sponsor “Wilco” and his wife Christi are currently fostering three very cute puppies (or as Wilco sees them, three very cute poo production machines). Christi named the girl “Puck” with the footnote “i know, puck isn’t really a girls name, but don’t tell her that”; and named the two boys “Cujo” and “Marleau.”

I asked Christi where the puppies got their unusual names. She replied, “They are named after my favorite hockey players. Cujo = Curtis Joseph, who played on a handful of teams, but who I will always know and love as a Maple Leaf. Marleau = Patrick Marleau, the beloved captain of the San Jose Sharks. I was trying to pick names that would be universally recognizable, but I guess I failed.”

I don’t think it’s so much that Christi failed, as I’m sure people like Flat Coke & Flies and Bat got the reference right away, but seeing as how I only went to my very first hockey game a couple of weeks ago over Thanksgiving break, and that being also the very first hockey game I’d ever watched, I was thinking “Puck” – a tribute to the playfully mischievous sprite, Puck, in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; “Cujo” – the antagonist killer dog in Stephen King’s novel by the same name; “Marleau” – a cute French way of spelling the last name of famed early literature genius Christopher Marlowe.

:/

I suppose the money spent on acquiring an English Lit degree at UCLA wasn’t a total waste…