Dave Maass

More in my ongoing war against doppelgangers, copycats, plagiarists, imposters and homonymous villains.

I have a vague kidhood memory of a trip to Smitty’s grocery story where I come across a calendar of mallard duck paintings by a guy named David Maass. In the memory, I become intensely jealous.  My name is hard enough to spell in the first place; surely the one benefit is that it makes me one of a kind. Who the hell does this duck dude think he is?

Well, I thought about it for months and the answer was obvious. He thought he was THE David Maass, that is his name, he had it first. The question then became: Who the hell did I think I was?

After many years of consideration and frustration with Duck David Maass, I decided to start going by Dave Maass. As my Internet persona developed and expanded, that actually worked out for the best. Me and David Maass had come to an unspoken agreement: Google “David Maass” and you get the duck painter. Google “Dave Maass” and you get pages and pages of me.  I’m unique, he’s unique. Yay!

Decades later, Smitty’s ain’t around anymore, but they’re still making David Maass duck calendars–except, now they’re David A. Maass duck calendars.

There’s a new DM on the block, a South Milwaukee School Board member who has started garnering attention from the Wisconsin political blogs. He goes by both David Maass and Dave Maass.  Apparently people like him. He was reelected this year with 1,277 votes (more than any of the four other candidates).

This is of grave concern to me.  I really don’t want to start using my middle initial. I guess the question is whether–if it came to a vote–I could round up 1,278 people to pick me as THE official Dave Maass.

Don’t push me, Mr. School Board Member DAVID Maass. I’m so close to launching a Facebook campaign,  you don’t even know.

UPDATE 04/08/2010: Oh crap! Using my middle initial won’t help either. He’s also a David J. Maass. See his comment on this post.