Zihuatanejo

On January 31st, 2009 at around 8:20PM my brother, Brian Murray, welcomed his son Andrew Thomas to the world. His initials ATM, are a pretty obvious reference to my brother's first passion - cash. However, the name Andrew - Andy as he will be called by most, but I, the stubborn, contrary prick that I am will probably call him Drew to annoy everyone - was a bit of enigma.

With no Andy's of note in either bloodline , how did he and his wife decide upon the name? I asked and was shocked at the answer: "Shawshank. I named him after Andy Dufresne from Shawshank."

No. Shit. After spending the better part of my life being ridiculed by this person for loving both movies and Stephen King, he turned around and named the fruit of his looms after a character in the best film ever adapted from one of King's stories.

Note the similarity in the hats as well.

The easy joke to throw in at this point would be, that he was named Andy, because like his namesake, he crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine.

And I guess, yeah, I said it.

My apologies to those who came to this party ill prepared for a joke about the birthing process and my sister-in-law's vagina.

Wait! I take that back, if you came to this party at all, you should have seen that coming before I did. That's basically how I roll.

I guess, if the kid doesn't like the name he can blame TNT, which played the movie non-stop for 10 years straight, basically making it everyone's favorite movie of all time. Don't believe me? Check the IMDB. However, I suspect that my brother might have liked it a bit before all of that, like when I first brought a VHS copy home from Sam Goody in 1995 and made the whole family watch it -- but he never would have admitted it then. So, cheers to Brian for coming out of the movie geek closet. Even a little bit. All these years later. I'm not sure it makes up for the years of psychological torture he subjected me to, but it's a step.

So, on to the point I should be making, away from whining about the past and toward the less obvious joke. Ultimately it might be a "you had to be there" kind of thing, or a "that's funny if you know Brian" joke, and as 99% of you don't know him or weren't there, I hope that you think it's funny anyway... I hope that you laugh or chuckle even a little... I hope...

Now, even though he made me feel like crap for liking the movies I liked, there were a handful of films that I know Brian enjoyed, still loves or watched a lot at various points in his life. If Andy really doesn't like his name, here's a list of names that he possibly could have been called based on my brother's taste in film. (Take 'em or leave 'em, kid) :

Top 10 Alternative Names for Andy Thomas Murray
(Click the name to go to the movie it's from, if it's not obvious already)

10. Eddie Barsoom Murray
9. Dr. Mark Sloan Murray (Yeah it's TV, but it's one for his wife)
8. Bruce LeRoy Murray
7. Bodahi
6. Captain Oveur Murray
5. Bill Ray Valentine Murray
4. Liberate Tutame Murray
3. McKenzie Hoser Murray
2. Simon MacCorkindale Murray (TV again, but had to chart never-the-less)
1. Jake Elwood Murray

Either way congrats to the Murrays of Long Island! Eagerly looking forward to the eventual arrival of Jessica Fletcher Murray (again probably his wife's choice, she has the tastes of a 90 year-old alzheimer's patient)...

Andy and Brian Murray, 1/31/09