Let me start with a confession: I don’t really watch local news all that often. Mostly this is because I don’t watch much TV. I should clarify. I’m not trying to culture-whip you by implying I’m too good for TV and that I spend my time reading books about arctophily and practicing my calligraphy. No. What I’m saying is I have a sub-garbage cable package and so I spend most of my screen time watching Netflix.
But the other night I was actually on a broadcast channel, watching the Mavs game to see the Tony Romo hijinks, and I happened upon a news team that was new to me:
Ken Molestina and Kaley O’Kelley.
[extremely Jack Horner in Boogie Nights voice] Those are some great names.
OK, first off — and I’m going to start with the one that initially grabbed my attention — we have Kaley O’Kelley. I ran it by a leprechaun and he thought the name was “a bit much.” It’s like if the St. Patrick’s Day parade could transform into a human name. “Kaley O’Kelley’s” is the full name of the bar where the gang from a failed CBS workplace sitcom hung out at. “Kaley O’Kelley” is the secret identity of a Marvel Comics villain who battled against Spider-man and Daredevil in 1984. Kaley O’Kelley. Sounding like she makes a tragic appearance in an Irish folk ballad set during the Great Potato Famine.
I was so struck by the ouroboros that is “Kaley O’Kelley” that I didn’t, at first, notice the moniker of her partner. It hit my ear as Ken Something. Then I looked again and saw it: Ken Molestina. There have been soldiers stationed on the front lines of wars who don’t have the bravery of someone whose surname begins with “Molest” and yet still sought out a job where he would have to say that name very publicly and very often, while that name was prominently displayed on a chyron below him. Most people would have pulled the ripcord on “Molestina” somewhere around eighth grade, and certainly when they decided to go into TV news. And yet, my dude has seemingly embraced it, “A Boy Named Sue”-style, turning it into a stare-off, like, “If you want to give me the business because my last name, if read in the right way, is essentially a command to commit aggravated assault against some unsuspecting woman named Tina, well, friend, that is your right, as an American, but it is only serving to unmask your own immaturity.”
Which, fair.
Ken Molestina and Kaley O’Kelley. It is, without question, the best-named (or at least the most interestingly named) local news team I can recall.
