Whence the name, Dr. Zin?

That’s the question my friend Camy asked after her first visit here. By the way, Camy’s blog is linked at the right. Go visit; she’s a wonderful writer. And go visit my niece, Plum, also a peach of a site. First, back to the question of Zin.

Camy’s question came up before I changed the text under the Dr. Zin title, so a better question might be: “Whence the name, Dr. Zin, and what on earth does he have to do with Mark Twain?” Good question. First, Dr. Zin.

It’s a story from my last birthday. In the last few years I’ve taken to celebrating birthdays with a few close friends, friends I can bribe with good whisky to buy their silence. My last birthday was something of a milestone I’m told, so I decided to gather up my brother Joe and best friend Jon for some harmless debauchery fueled by whisky.

Brother Joe, best friend Jon and I holed up in my kitchen with the door to the rest of the house closed, choking down a gallon of Jack Daniels (Sorry, did I say good whisky? My best friends aren’t that particular, which is why they’re my best friends. And, they have a tendency to blab anyway. Jack is plenty good enough for those reprobates.).

Sometime around 2:00am the conversation swerved/stumbled/swayed into the 60s TV cartoon, Johnny Quest, and our collective, trivial, alcohol induced, inspirational wellspring began to bubble.

Yeah, Dr. Quest, Race Banon, Johnny and pal Hadji, with Hadj’s magical climbing rope trick, all drowning in the noise of that annoying, constantly barking little white dog. What was his name? We worked feverishly to brand that animal. The breakthrough finally came when I decided I’d hop down to the floor, bay and bounce around, offering a bit of inspiration to my saturated pals.

At this point brother Joe, certain we’d forget all this great material by morning, began taking notes. For posterity, of course. However, either his pen malfunctioned or, more likely, the nerve synapses in his hand lost contact with his arm synapses, his shoulder and finally with his brain. By the next morning his notes and creative artwork looked like some form of hieroglyphics and was, mostly, unintelligible. Except for two items.

Apparently, we had decided that the stupid white dog’s name was Badger. I’d rather not say how we arrived at that conclusion, but at the time, we were fairly certain on the point. Secondly, no matter how many brain cells we bathed in Nectar of Jack, we simply could not recall the name of the evil genius that stalked Race and the boys every Saturday morning. The bald guy with the cool henchmen. And that’s exactly what brother Joe’s note said – “henchmen”.

In another life, I’d be that bald guy with the cool henchmen. In fact, I’m working on it in this life. If you knew brother Joe and best friend Jon a little better, you’d appreciate that I’m off to a decent start.

As for Twain, I simply believe that he’s one of America’s greatest authors and probably her finest chronicler of the human condition.

Twain has nothing to do with Dr. Zin, and the dog’s real name is Bandit. Heh, heh.