Attorney McDershowitz Joins a Band

My son plays in a band.

I hadn't anticipated that this would happen so early in the course of things.  But he goes for clarinet lessons, to a music school built into the basement of an otherwise-thriving Protestant church.  The school is very ambitious - full of eager, hungry, passionate musicians-teachers, and they're very innovative in finding ways of luring very middle-class New Hampshireites into musical engagements.  So they have a "band" for youngsters - basically a half-hour-weekly session where kids who play different instruments get together and play under the guidance of a tall, geeky, pleasant teacher.

Ian plays the "vocals" - on clarinet - for "Love Me Do," - definitely one of the very worst Beatles songs ever produced (who told those Liverpool lads they could possibly go "country")???  But I'm glad he's doing it.

This teacher took me aside a few weeks ago, and told me that he had worked through a dilemma.  He had asked the band what their band-name should be, and the collective consensus was "Kickin' It."  [I didn't ask *what*...]  But Ian had raised to him the concern that the Disney Channel has a program called "Kickin' It," and they didn't want to risk being sued.  The teacher, for whatever reason, was very tickled by this concern. So the band-leader developed a clever workaround:  They would still be kickin' it, so to speak, but the spelling would be CICEN It.  This is because CICEN spells out the first initials of each member of the band.

I didn't point out to him that in most languages that aren't Latin-as-taught-in-Germanic-countries, the "c" is soft before an I or an E, which would render the band name Sissen It.  I just let sleeping dogs lie.  After all, it's better than a lawsuit.

(October, 2013)