The Desert Sun, December 23, 2001 A Fred by any other name? by Adam Graham They’ve sang (Mercury), they’ve danced (Astaire), they’ve scared (Krueger). They’ve routinely scored under par (Couples), they’ve had Palm Desert street named after them (Waring), they’ve made plenty of teen comedies (Prince, Jr.) and they’ve hit a lot of home runs (McGriff). And still, according to a least one concerned Fred, when you think of Freds, but one name comes to mind: Fred Flintstone. “I like Fred Flintstone, he’s a good guy, he’s a loving guy, he’s funny,” says Fred Daniel, found or The FRED Society, a Palm Desert-based organization dedicated to “upholding the honorable name of Fred for all posterity, “ according to its credo, “but he runs around... yelling ‘yabba-dabba-do’ all day, so it’s not the most positive image for us Freds. And that’s the point of the club, to improve the image of Freds.” Davids, Alans, Jim and Brads don’t need such image-rebuffing; heck, even Georges have Clooney to look up to. But for Freds, the saviours are few and far between. Daniel, the self anointed Head Fred, has taken it upon himself to work damage control, all in the good name of Fred A Southern California native who has live in the Coachella Valley for most of his life, Daniel started The FRED Society in 1984. “I was working at an ad agency in L.A. at the time, and I got the idea and decided that I had to do something about it,” says Daniel, 45, who says his name was a “stumbling block” in relationships during his teen-age years. “So I designed a logo, a T-shirt and a couple of bumper stickers and I put together a little mailer.” After work every night for three months he combed the Los Angeles phone book, by hand, for Freds. He sent his mailer to more than 500 Freds. He received an overwhelming response certifying that there was a market for a FRED Society. One of the Freds who replied was an editor at the Los Angeles Times, Lynn Smith, who wrote a story about the FRED Society. The resulting publicity led him to quit his day job and become a “full-time Fred” for two years. Since then, he’s move the business to Palm Desert. Today, more than 4,000 Freds boast membership to the FRED Society. Fred on the Web In 1999, the FRED Society took to cyberspace with the launch of fredsociety.com, which is a one-stop fredquarters for all things Fred, including Fred history, trivia and stuff. The holidays and publicity from a recent write-up in Maxim magazine have swamped Daniel with orders of “Fredorabilia,” which include bumper stickers, T-shirts, notepads, coffee mugs, aprons and much more. (Notable is a bumper sticker that urges “Name your next child Fred;” part of the society’s goal is ensuring future generation will carry on the Fred legacy. The FRED Society was even immortalized by Trivial Pursuit when its Genus IV edition included the question, “What two first or middle names can make a woman eligible to join the mostly male Fred Society?” (The answer, incidentally, is Winifred of Fredericka.) If you’re not laughing yet, you should be. “This is all very funny, that’s the whole point. This is very tongue-in-cheek,” says Daniel, who has a Bob’s Big Boy statue and a series of drive-through signs posted in his backyard. He’s tried to contact a number of famous Freds (Freds McGriff, Couples and Prinze, Jr. among them) to entice them to join - to little avail. “I think that they think this is some sort of a joke, “ he say. “Which, well, I guess it is.” A rough row to hoe “In the membership application, there’s a question that asks, ‘Have you ever been ridiculed for being a Fred,’ and about 80 percent of the respondents have,” says Daniel. “That’s why we need some pride building, why we need to be shown in a positive light.” But not all is negative in the world of Fred. Dig a bit below the surface and you’ll find a glorious array of Freds who’ve made our world a better place. Asked to pick a starting five for an all-Fred basketball team, Daniel goes into reflective mode. After contemplation, he decides upon Frederic Passey, who won the first Nobel Prize ever awarded, in 1901; Frederick the Great, one-time king of Prussia; Fred Rogers, esteemed children’s TV show host; Frederick Douglass, activist and abolitionist; and, who in Daniel’s eyes is the ultimate Fred, Fred Astaire. There are other who’ve done the Fred name proud: Fred Willard stole the show as a wacked-out color commentator in the movie “Best in Show”; many a college student has overdosed on coffee in an attempt to understand the writing of Frederick Nietzche; Fred DeLuca founded the Subway sandwich chain; Fred Schneider was the frontman of the new wave music group, The B-52’s. The list goes on and on. Maybe being a Fred isn’t so bad after all. There are worse names in this world to be had, as Daniel is happy to point out. “There are other names out there that have image problems, but I’ve take on Fred because that’s my name,” he says, with a smile. “But Elmers, they’ll have to deal with that on their own.