Primo portmanteau

Dear Hipster:

Please pass along these cat name suggestions to Tyler from this last week’s column. Remember, he was torn between human names and nouns. He can have both by using your suggestion of descriptive nonsense words. So Dennis + Chicken = “Denkens”, or my personal favorite Ralph + Advil = “Radvil” Actually, isn’t this name listed in the hipster dictionary? Could it be that it is so hip that it’s actually turned the corner to un-hip? Stay cool.

— Michele

Yes. This. Totally this. I’m not even mad that I missed the opportunity to suggest such a marvelous portmanteau solution myself, because these are the moments when I feel as if my labors have not been in vain. Week in, week out, I strive to educate the masses on the art and science of all that is hipster. Too often, in the depths of my conceitedness, I wonder if my teachings will ever take root, then burst into magnificent flower, and eventually bear delicious but obscure fruit. And then I receive a letter like this, where one of my fantastic readers wildly exceeds my hopes, dreams, and expectations. Truly, the students have become like the master.

As for Radvil, other than being plumb near the dopest name for a kitty cat one could imagine, a quick survey of the world as we know it turns up only one historical mention of “Radvil,” in connection with an obscure dynasty of Hasidic Jews in 19th-century Ukraine. I guess since even I’ve never heard of that, it counts as hipster. For the sake of completeness here, I’m willing to stretch my knowledge of 19th-century Ukrainian pronunciation way beyond its limits and conclude “Radvil” was probably pronounced more like rad-VEEL. However, take that with a grain of salt, since I’m trying to stretch knowledge that, if you want to get technical about it, doesn’t really exist in the first place.

It’s actually more impressive to find something that has shown up exactly once in all of history than it would be to think of something that had never shown up at all. After all, lots of things don’t exist. Take grinterstism for example. That’s not a thing. The same goes for planderschnatz, fontillity, and kwillipers. None of those are things, either — but I have to say that kwillipers would be a pretty cool name for a cat, although not as cool as Denkens or Radvil. Either way, I don’t think it’s actually listed in the hipster dictionary, or at least it wasn’t until you brought it up, so now it’s definitely going in there.

But perhaps you were thinking of Radwood, which is an annual event celebrating the 1980s and 1990s generally — and the cars and fashion of those hipsterest of times in particular. Radwood is the one place where people who simultaneously qualify as both hipsters and gearheads (admittedly a pretty darn narrow and specialist clique) can feel truly at home. If you’ve been looking for an opportunity to dust off your collection of vintage B.U.M. Equipment windbreakers and put a few miles on your otherwise pristine 38,000-mile 1991 Honda Prelude, this would be the get together for you. As a bonus, if you can consider it a bonus, attendees probably have a roughly 10/10 chance of hearing “Whoomp! (There It Is)” at some point.