The nightmare is over. Thankfully, most of you neglected to notice as the third installment in the American Pie series (American Wedding) sputtered, wheezed and ground to a much-needed halt within days of hitting the box office. With any luck, the studio will spare us American Pie 4 (a number far too high for their target audience to comprehend). I say this not out of literary snobbishness: my deep-seated grievances against the American Pie franchise are much more, well, deep-seated.
Those movies ruined my life.
Before those movies my name had few connotations. What does an Eliot Sherman make you think of anyway? Sherman is vaguely stuffy, perhaps bringing to mind a pipe and tweed image that I can't say bothers me. My nicknames reflected this ambiguity: I was E, or El, or L-Dog. (Really. No, not really.) But once American Pie came along, everything changed.
You know what I'm talking about. Since then, I have been associated with the Shermanator, that abominable geek-without-brains whose idea of being suave is to spike his hair in a vague approximation of current fashion and do a terrible impression of Arnold circa Terminator 2. Of all the names they could have picked! I would have rather been ANYONE but that guy -- hell, even Stifler. Hell, even Jim's dad gets to do that cool dance at the end of AP1. Anyone but the Shermanator!
In the wake of that Godforsaken movie franchise, my friends turned on me, calling me "Sherm" or some variation on it. Freshman year in college, upon learning my last name people would invariably laugh and say "Oh -- like the Shermanator!" Yes, like the Shermanator, and you're obviously the first person to make that connection.
Look, there are plenty of things to ridicule me about. Millions even! In moments of extreme vulnerability, I rock out to Journey. I have an extreme phobia of sunlight. I got busted freshman year when an English House RA looked through my open window and saw a handle of Malibu displayed prominently on my desk. There's material here, people, but please, for the love of all that is holy, lay off the Shermanator gags.
Because it can always get worse, it has recently been brought to my attention that NBC's show Scrubs features a character named Eliot who is funny, is a doctor, and is also... female.
I have no other option but to change my name. Meet Sir Speedo Stein-DeGerwinnicus, freedom fighter! Now no one'll be able to make fun of me.
