F.A.Q.
Q: Where did the name “MelloMoose” come from?
Q: What tools did/do you use to build/maintain the site?
Answers…
Where did the name “MelloMoose” come from?
A: The short answer: I got the name from a mix tape.
The longer answer…
MelloMoose, originally Mellow Moose, like many things I’m responsible for, began with beer. Specifically, Moosehead beer. Moosehead was the beverage of choice when my friends and I would venture over the hill to Santa Cruz for summertime beach outings in the late 80s and early 90s.
My friend, Stuart, compiled a mix tape to accompany our adventures. It was mostly classic rock songs — Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, the Beatles, Neil Young — with about two-thirds of the Cocktail soundtrack filling in most of the second side. He called the masterpiece, Moose Tunes.
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Some time later, I threw together a tape with slower songs and called it Mellow Moose. The playlist included Enya, Chris Isaak, Art of Noise and other more ambient artists. It wasn’t a tape for the beach — for listening to with the guys. It was more for, um… intimate, uh, situations… Anyway, I made a custom insert for the cassette with a picture of a moose, similar to the site’s current logo, who looked contemplative… soulful… probably a little stoned.
Some time laterer, I was in a scriptwriting class. One assignment was to write a short script, complete with a cover page, on which we would make up a production company name. I wanted something cool and memorable, but despite attacking the problem with unbeered thinking, my ideas were neither cool nor memorable (though a couple might have been memorable because of how uncool they were).
Frustrated, I thought some soothing background music might aid in said thinking and I grabbed Mellow Moose. When I stared into those thoughtful moose pupils, I had an epiphany — Mellow Moose was cool and memorable.
It felt like it needed another “mah” though, so I added “Media” for Mellow Moose Media. Then it sounded right, but visually, there was still a problem — it was off balance. “Moose” and “media” both have five letters, but “mellow” has six. I tossed the “w”.
The missing “w’ was a bit of an issue until I acquired the domain, mellowmoose.com. Parking the new domain meant people could spell the name wrong (er, right), but they still got to where they were supposed to go.
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What tools did/do you use to build/maintain the site?
A: MelloMoose is a WordPress site with Comic Easel. I use/d the following tools to customize/update/maintain my theme:
I would like permission to use content from your site in a way that goes beyond the scope of your Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. How do I go about getting said permission?
A: Probably start with an email to info@mellomoose.com, letting me know what you want to use, plus how and why. I’m pretty happy to have my art out there for the world to see, as long as I get credit for it. Also, I’m usually willing to help a good cause.
If you’re going to use it to make money, I’m going to want to make money too. It’s only fair, right? Depending on the “how” you want to use it, we can work out something, I’m sure.
