Friday, August 29, 2003

Everybody Sing Along with Primus: "I'm Goin' Down to South Park Garland???"

OK, now I've seen everything. There's a neighborhood in Garland where all the streets are named after South Park characters.

I'd watched this new neighborhood being built over the past year or so, and I noticed that its entrance street was called Garrison. For some reason, when I saw that name, it reminded me of Mr. Garrison, the fruity teacher on South Park. Little did I know, that was exactly what the developers had in mind! So today, I drove through the neighborhood (I always like looking at new houses), and I started to see a pattern: In addition to Garrison, they had Crabtree (the shrieking bus driver lady), McCormick (Kenny's last name, except they spell it McKormick in the series), Mackey (the school counselor known for saying "mmm-kay?"), and--believe it or not--Cartman. It was when I got to the corner of Cartman and Mackey that I realized this was no coincidence.

So I guess there's nothing wrong with naming a whole neighborhood's worth of streets after cartoon characters; using numbers, letters, trees and Presidents will only get you so far. It must, however, be somewhat awkward to move your small kids onto a street named after someone on a show that they're way too young to watch! But I have to say, if you're gonna do cartoon characters, an all-Simpsons neighborhood should be next. Wouldn't you like to live on Bart Boulevard, Lisa Lane, Krusty Kove or Santa's Little Helper Street?

(UPDATE: It occurred to me on Sunday night, while watching my favorite Fox lineup, that there's another cartoon show that needs a Garland neighborhood named after it: King of the Hill, since Garland is at least the nominal inspiration for the fictional town of "Arlen" where the Hill family resides. Of course, series creator Mike Judge, who used to live in neighboring Richardson, says that the cultural inspiration for Arlen came more from also-neighboring Mesquite. A King neighborhood could be fun, giving us the likes of Peggy Place, Boomhauer Boulevard and (Bill) Dauterive Drive. OK, I'll stop now...)

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