Hype & Glory

GEORGE KALOGERAKIS

"Prince" and the revelation: waiting for the word on how to pronounce ???'s new name

In the beginning was the word, and in the end the symbol. Between packaging his hits and touring, ??? kept his . . . whatever in the news by announcing, not altogether convincingly, that he would never again set his tiny booted foot inside a recording studio, and that, by the way, he was officially changing his name from the cumbersome "Prince." Paisley Park Records has even supplied publications with the symbol on a bright-yellow floppy disk. (That way, art departments everywhere can print ??? by just pushing a button, instead of having to resort to the laborious, copy-by-copy hand-stenciling of olden days.) Very helpful. But so many questions about ???'s intentions and motivation remained that a call to Paisley Park seemed necessary.

Do you think eventually the name ' 'Prince ' ' won 7 appear at all?

The only way it appears now is when people refer to him as "the former Prince."

What about around the office?

Around here we don't—I mean, we don't necessarily worry about what we call him, because when he calls us we know his voice. We know who we're talking to.

You mean he doesn 7 even identify himself?

Well, it's like when you call a friend, and you always speak to this friend, and you don't say—you just start talking and you automatically know who it is.

Is there a way to pronounce the symbol?

He hasn't revealed how the symbol should be pronounced.

What about alphabetically? Where would he go in record stores?

That would be up to the record-store people.

You know how when you fill out forms and it'll say, "Initial here"? What would he do about that? Draw a tiny little piece of the symbol?

I have no idea. That would be a question that would be asked to him.

Will he ever perform "My Name Is Prince " again?

I don't know. I mean, that—

Maybe he could change the lyric to ' 'My name was Prince / And I am funky. ' ' Anything more you can tell us about the symbol?

I can't give you a definite date as far as when he'll release the pronunciation of his name. I'm sure in due time. You know, everything he does is well thought out. I'm sure he'll be revealing it to everyone, what everyone wants to know: the pronunciation. He knows. And he knows when he'll do it.

Unable to wait that long to have it revealed unto us, we decided to treat the symbol as a rare Minneapolis hieroglyphic, and ran it past some curators from the Egyptian and Greek-and-Roman departments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They weren't willing to speculate on the pronunciation—can you tell a Babylonian accent from a Mesopotamian with certainty?—but did shed a little more light on the symbol ??? itself.

"What you've got is a combination of four different symbols here,'' said a Met spokeswoman. Apart from the male and female ones, which ??? has acknowledged, there is apparently a suggestion, in the curl on the left, of the Eye of Horus, and, more significant, a close resemblance overall to the ankh ("onk"), the ancient Egyptian symbol of life.

His name is Onk, and he is funky?

Naked Hunch

Update from the Nixon Papers: Actually, it seemed at first glance to be an addendum to the summer's scandals. With brain cells standing ready to receive late-breaking Michael or Heidi factoids (while taking care not to neglect vital new information on Anthony Quinn's love child, the reported pornography ring involving Marines at Camp Pendleton in California, and the brutal allegations from the Burt Reynolds camp about Loni Anderson's cruel allpasta menu), it's no wonder that the phrase "removing Mr. Kissinger's clothes'' fairly leapt off the page in the Labor Day edition of The New York Times. Nude former secretaries of state? Sure, why not, at this point. Prurience may or may not be in the eye of the beholder, but it's certainly in the reader of the tabloid and in the watcher of the tube—and that takes in most of us.

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Of course, it turned out that we were just overexcited. There weren't any nude Kissinger pix at all, and no clever REGARDING HENRY headlines were necessary. The Times article was actually about how a suspect in the plot to bomb targets in New York City talked to an informer about kidnapping Kissinger and Richard Nixon. Reported the paper: "Mr. Siddig Ali also discussed removing Mr. Kissinger's clothes, fearing that they might contain a secret homing device that would make it easier for authorities to locate him if he were kidnaped.'' (Note that the men were disinclined even to contemplate stripping Nixon.)

Well, Mr. Siddig Ali would have been wasting his time. As long ago as 1970, Kissinger had anticipated his own kidnapping; he was ready. A sealed memo nestled in the Nixon Papers reveals a fearless Kissinger unwilling to let anyone put a price on his head. The memo, dated December 4, 1970, on White House stationery (Kissinger was national-security adviser at the time), is printed here in its entirety. (Note: for maximum entertainment value, read aloud in a deep Germanic accent.)

Respectfully, Henry A. Kissinger

Dear Mr. President:

In view of the news stories about possible plots of kidnapping, I would like to state my position in the extraordinary event that this should occur.

If such an attempt should succeed, I would like to ask you to meet no demands of the kidnappers, however trivial. I would assume that any demand that is met would establish a precedent which is against the national interest.

If you should receive any communication from me to the contrary, you should assume that it was made under duress.