I think I had a dream when I was about 10 that "they will call me Maestro". I think I had seen Dune about 200 too many times ("They will call me Muad'Dib").

It started there. I had the first Maestro on AOL in the early 90s (maybe earlier?) up until my parents cancelled the account.

After going through all the iterations of Maestro093n4k2, I finally settled on 007 as an affix because, well, you know why I chose it...

The trouble came with Seinfeld. "He wants to be called the Maestro", "Elaine, call me Maestro!", "Oh sure, Leonard Bernstein gets to be called Maestro!".

No, wait, back up. The problem started with international chat rooms. People assumed I was an Italian teacher. I didn't know the first thing about the origins of the word Maestro. I went with it. "Sure, grazi, I am the Maestro!!" Crazy, pretentious youth that I was...

I was on a hockey team where people called me Zorro. I think it was because I was some sort of swashbuckling, elitist jerk. It didn't help when I said "you guys, could y'all just call me Maestro?" Painful, painful memories, resulting in my eventual demotion to goalie* (w/o padding).

Long story short, the name Maestro has fallen out of favor in the past few years. Tack on the ultimate delusion of grandeur (007), and we're talking an uphill battle to gain respect anywhere on the Internet.

"Why Maestro_007, why wouldn't you change your handle of ill repute, and call yourself something else? Even your middle name fer goodness sake!" My middle name is Ralph! Stigmatized by Happy Days forever! I can just hear the Breakfast Club now: "Your middle name is Ralph, as in puke!"

MM

* Goalie is fine for some people, but not when you're short, ungraceful, and your eyesight is less than optimal.