Rick Koster: Rick's List -- Many Ways to be Rick Edition

Rick Koster, The Day, New London, Conn.
·3 min read

May 7—Is it legally possible to have more than one identity?

I don't ask this in the spirit of criminality although, now that I think about it, that's intriguing. For example:

1. I'd need to call it something besides "Rick's Drug Cartel." Y'see, "Rick's Drug Cartel" — however vicious it will be (and, yes, I've read Don Winslow's border trilogy, so I know from vicious) — doesn't SOUND vicious. "Rick's Drug Cartel" has a cutesy quality, like an apothecary in Sausalito owned by some hipster just out of pharm school — or possibly it could be the name of a legal marijuana dispensary in Boulder.

On the other hand, you'd be petrified of a cartel known as Los Mad Dogs or Saints of Death or The Buy Our Dope Or We'll Pop Your Eyes Out With A Screwdriver Brothers — even though Rick would be the Drug Lord behind any or all of these blood-soaked operations.

2. Rick's Ponzi Scheme doesn't really work, either, although, in that context, Rick's Bitcoin Shop has a certain folksy charm belying the sinister pyramid scam underneath.

3. I suppose I could legally change my name to Al Capone and develop a complex criminal organization and no one would be the wiser because who would try to engineer a felony network behind the name "Al Capone"?

Anyway, yes: I'd like to have a few other legal identities besides "Rick Koster" just to sort of help a few of my side projects along.

This occurred to me this morning when I read a wire story about "Mainstream," a new film by a woman named Gia Coppola. That's a remarkable coincidence because she has the same last name as Francis Ford Coppola, who has made a great movie or two, as well as the same last name as Sofia Coppola, who, from what I understand, is also in the movie business! No telling what might have happened if her name had been Gia Spuggmold. I mean, I'm sure she'd have gotten the film made, but ...

1. I can't help but think that, if one of my legal other identities was "Rick Coppola," my screenplay "Dr. Fauci, Vampyre," might get a little more attention from Hollywood.

2. Or maybe if one of my legal personae is "Rick Hawke." That occurs to me because one of the stars of the Gia Spuggmold — er, Coppola — movie "Mainstream" is a woman named Maya Hawke. And — I'll be damned! — that's the same surname as the famous actor Ethan Hawke. What are the odds?! Maybe if I was "Rick Hawke," I could have played Freddie Krueger instead of Daniel Day-Lewis.

3. "Hi, my name is Rick Lovecraft. My grandfather, H.P., said your literary agency would probably be happy to look at my novel, "Rudy Giuliani, Zombie."

4. "Please welcome the last of our guest hosts on 'Jeopardy,' RICK TREBEK!"

"Thank you, Johnny Gilbert. I'm not sure how I got this opportunity, but I'm proud to be here."

To be clear, I don't want anyone to think I'm not perfectly happy with my station in life. I'm incredibly lucky and, frankly, who wants fame and the perks thereof? Not me!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Starting next week, "Rick's List" will be called "A List by Rick Kardashian-West."