Where The Mermaids Live...

I'm up near Cape Cod where my mother now lives about 12 miles from the bridge that takes us over to the other side. The "other side" is really a great way to think of it because whenever I go over that bridge I seem to regress back to the days of jumping out of windows to go meet boys, buying gallons of peach Reunite illegally and skinnydipping at the Kennedy compound. Summers of pure chaos, fun and more chaos. And Amy is one of the most talented chaos creators in the history of the Cape....just ask her brothers.

Anyway, this is where the true mermaids live. Although we now reside in Florida, Bertha came about because of the New England marine influence (basically drunk and scurvied sailors would hallucinate and see beautiful creatures that were half woman and half fish). Wishful thinking but it created this wonderful fantasy that has lived with us for hundreds of years. It also created many a lustful sailor to go overboard where he may have remained on his ship.

So why Bertha?

It's almost as if she just Was! When we decided to start Modern Mermaids there was hardly a question of the name or what our girl would look like. She's sweet and cool, has the earth in her hands and the only thing missing, according to men, are bigger boobs....not everyone has implants these days, guys!

Now I guess it's time to talk about why our mermaid is called Bertha and if anyone has a loved one in their lives' with this name, I will apologize now. Here's the story. Amy and I hired a self proclaimed pre-menopausal woman to draw our vision of the MM logo. Our first encounter with her went well, our second did, too. The third, however, brought about this wave of anxiety as we stared at what had to be the chubbiest, most manly looking sea maiden possible. I'm not sure which one of us said it but when we got back to Amy's house and were studying our new logo it was said...."she looks like Big Bertha!" and not only that she had Spock ears, no eyelashes and a slash for lips....UGALY!

So we redrew her. She got lipo, an ear reduction, false eyelashes, collagen in her lips and Voila! suddenly resembled something we could use! However, now the Bertha thing had been ingrained in us and we couldn't let it go. We tried, as Amy's son was truly disturbed and vocal about how awful it was to call her that, but the name stuck.

It doesn't matter, though, as every day regardless of her name she is called pretty, cute, perfect and clever by anyone who sees her. And she claims that she has forgiven us but plans to change her name as soon as she turns eighteen....and get implants, too! Oh Bertha....