I have gotten a lot of nicknames in my lifetime, most of them positive, but none has stuck to me more than “The Ultimate Rabbit” has. It has stayed with me for so long to where I decided to name my website after it. Many people have asked me time and time again what “The Ultimate Rabbit” means and why I named my site as such. I am more than happy to share with you how this all came about.

Back in the summer of 1998, I was an apprentice at the Powerhouse Theatre Program at Vassar College in upstate New York. I was (expletive deleted) years old at the time, aspiring to be a great actor, and we performed Shakespeare’s plays outdoors in humidity which was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. This was also in the town of Poughkeepsie and, as you can imagine, I picked my feet whenever I got the opportunity. Besides, I ended up getting some terrible blisters on them, and they needed to be popped sooner rather than later.

Anyway, one evening when we apprentices were at a party celebrating the premiere of a new play written by, of all people, John Patrick Shanley, we got into a conversation about Chinese Zodiac signs. When I told my friends which year I was born in, which was (expletive deleted), they said I was born in the Year of the Rabbit. This sounded cool to me, but then one of my friends said this meant I was very shy, sensitive as people born in this year tend to keep to themselves a lot. Upon hearing this, I was bummed because, from my perspective, I was all of those things at the time. Instead of being born in a year where I was said to be brave and guaranteed with the greatest of successes in life, I was stuck with this. A moment later, I ended up blurting out:

“Oh, great. In that case I am the ultimate rabbit because that’s where my life is at.”

To this, everybody laughed out loud, and before I knew it, it became my nickname for the rest of the summer. Other apprentices even encouraged me to go up to others at the party and say, “Hi, I’m the Ultimate Rabbit!” When I went up to young women and told them this, they ended up giving me a hug. Of course, they all had boyfriends, so don’t me too impressed.

In addition, we apprentices had acting classes to go to in classrooms which were in serious need of air conditioning, and we did Meisner Technique exercises. These exercises involved us repeating the same phrases over and over in a way which allowed us to get to a deeper meaning about what we were saying. During one particular class, I could not help but bring up the new nickname I had just been blessed with:

“I’m the Ultimate Rabbit!”

“You’re the Ultimate Rabbit!”

“I’m the Ultimate Rabbit!”

“You’re the Ultimate Rabbit!”

“I’m the Ultimate Rabbit!”

“You’re the Ultimate Rabbit!”

The class kept laughing hysterically whenever I said this, and the actress I was doing this exercise with could not keep a straight face after a while. It is always great fun when you get to make everyone laugh around you, and with you, and it is nice to have a laugh every now and then to cope with this incredibly insane world we all live in.

Years later, “The Ultimate Rabbit” nickname stayed with me, and I used it as my MySpace page for a time when I was blogging about and reviewing movies endlessly. When then time came to create my own website, which came about after several of the “content mills” I wrote for like Associated Content (later the Yahoo Contributor Network) and Examiner.com got shut down, I had the hardest time coming up with a name for it. After a while, I figured “The Ultimate Rabbit” would work as it was a name I could claim a deep meaning to more than other people ever could. Granted, I have gotten a lot of quizzical looks when I bring my website name up during interviews as it seems like such an odd name, and many often ask why I call it that. Then again, it is unlike the names of other websites which are mostly dedicated to reviewing or talking about motion pictures.

If it were up to me actually, I would have called this website “The Ultimate Eeyore” as anyone who knows me best knows what an enormous fan I am of the depressed donkey from the “Winnie-the-Pooh” stories. Then again, I imagine the Walt Disney corporation would come up to me at some point, urging me to reconsider this name as if to say, “Look, we are this close to owning everything…” Besides, Mickey Mouse might come to my door under the guise of being all friendly, but once the door was closed behind him, I imagine he would go all Wings Hauser from “Vice Squad” on me to where he would drop that famous smile of his and say, “Where’s my money bitch?”

So, “The Ultimate Rabbit” it is, and it has remained the case for several years now. Hopefully, this nickname will eventually lead to me making a healthy living in this day and age even though corporations keeping finding new ways to eliminate the human equation in pursuit of even bigger profits.