Lore

Since there are subscribers who know me as Steve, Stu, or RandBall's Stu, I figure I should fill in the backstory on all these names, each one less interesting than the last.

*Steve. Birth name. Full name is Steven. Mom wanted to name me after St. Stephen, who was, uh, stoned to death. Dad wanted to name me after Steve McQueen, one of the coolest sons of bitches ever born. I should be lot more goth and/or have seen Ali McGraw naked. Perhaps if I'd remained a Steve? But that was not to be.

*Stu. The second day of my freshman year in college (GOHUSKIESWOOOOO!), the guy across the dormitory hall says, "Steve Neuman? Like Stuey Newman in St. Elmo's Fire!" The unfortunate context for this is that, in the film, Rob Lowe's character questions Mare Winningham's character's virginity, asking, "What about Stuey Newman? Her response: "Would you do it with Stuey Newman?" As an 18-year-old with an avid interest in doing sex, this was an unnecessary obstacle.

(Warning: Clip contains lethal amounts of mid-'80s Rob Lowe. If you're experiencing perimenopause, exercise appropriate caution.)

The nickname stuck. Outside of immediate family, I'm Stu.

Nickname credit goes to Mike Heimer, now one of my oldest friends. Thanks, Mike. Asshole.

*A brief Steve revival, thwarted. When Minnesota Public Radio hired me, I was seated at a cubicle with my given name on the nameplate. Unfortunately, there were two Steves right next to me: Stephen Smith, an award-winning journalist (not the ESPN bozo), and Steve Nelson, creator of The Current, our legendary local radio station. If someone said, "Hey, Steve" it caused a remarkable amount of confusion. I had neither won journalism awards nor started a beloved public radio outlet. So, I was Stu once again.

*RandBall's Stu. Before many of you were born, sports blogs were a big deal. They had active comment sections that allowed bored-to-tears office drones a chance to trade one-liners, bemoan the local team's trade deadline inactivity, and make a long day shorter.

The best local one, bar none, was and is the Star Tribune's RandBall, curated by local jumpsuit enthusiast/journalist Michael Rand, to whom I owe a lot. It's where like-minded goofs like me congregated. It's where my writing was first noticed by people who would later pay me actual money to do that. And it's also where the comments we left would often push the boundaries of good taste and constantly reference the time Dino Ciccarelli hung dong while getting the morning paper.

After the 58th time Clarence Swamptown (RIP) or I got our zingers spiked by the Strib's ModeratorBot 4000, Michael said we just put our comments on Twitter, a new microblogging site for wiseasses and lonely perverts. Since the handle "Stu" was already taken, I chose "RandBall's Stu," a painfully labored reference to TV's Frank, from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Who gave a shit, how long was this Twitter thing going to last anyway, right?

And then Chrissy Teigen and other people who should've known better started following me. Had I known that, I would have put more thought into it. Maybe "Bruce Snakeskin" or "Tad Dynamite." But no. RandBall's Stu.

See you tomorrow.

NOTE: By request, I've opened the comments. In the future, that'll be a paid tier thing. Please don't be weird about it.