It does remind me of a local pizza place that was called “Belushi’s” until the estate of a Mr. John Belushi sent them an angry letter. It’s no called “Capone’s”, presumably because the Al Capone’s surviving relatives are less likely to sue (though I think the owner should be wary of people with baseball bats).

Schizophrenic mathematician John Nash had an experiment which he called “Fuck You, Jack”, based on the expectation that, when given a chance, people would always be nasty and petty with each other, but they weren’t.

By any chance, has this sentence been influenced by Adam Curtis’ remarkably unfair representation of Nash?

If a major classical piece of literature passes several ideas, or “intellectual” bits, such as nouns or adjectives over into everyday language, and other users of that language decide to not appropriate, but use those (more or less) common words in non-derogatory ways, then FFS what is their problem??

FWIW this isn’t the only Hobbit pub, but I probably ought to shut up now….

I hope the Tolkein estate is happy

The pub’s been doing business for 20 years without the Tolkien estate getting involved.  It’s the lidless eye of Hollywood that’s caused the problem.

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/12/this-shouldnt-surprise-you-one-bit.html

Both are historically proven sources of profit.

Where does this madness end?

Can we mandate, as a result, some form of treatment to mitigate these tendencies?

Not sure that’s all that different from an “unlicensed LOTR-themed pub,” to be honest.