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Meat and Candy

Stay Free!, by edict of the Board of Directors, is by and large a sports-free zone. That leaves me little reason to link to Gerard Cosloy's Can't Stop the Bleeding as I don't get any of his indie rock references. And then, out of nowhere, it became a trademark blog. Here's what I learned.

1) Meat Loaf sued songwriter Jim Steinman for the rights to the trademark "Bat out of Hell." Steinman wrote the songs on the album that Meat Loaf made famous so it isn't clear to me who should be able to claim the rights to the trademark. Meat Loaf wants it so that he can release yet another album bearing that title, which is reason enough to oppose it -- but for the fact that even if he doesn't get the title back he will still release the album.

2) It was common knowledge among nerds like me that the Baby Ruth candy bar was not named for Babe Ruth but rather for "Baby Ruth" Cleveland, daughter of President Grover Cleveland. It turns out that "common knowledge" is better described as PR bullshit.

Now that the candy company wants to be affiliated with Major League Baseball it has essentially admitted that the Ruth Cleveland story was a ruse to avoid having to pay Babe Ruth to use his name. Now that money can be made by both sides, everyone is friends again.