The Luvitt household is cold as all hell. The space heaters are in the garage, keeping the band warm. In the living room, there’s very little for Mom and Dad to do but curl up next to the fire and read yesterday’s paper. They exchange a silent smile. The quiet coming from the hallway amuses them. Why aren’t they playing?

It’s called the band because there’s nothing else to call it. The four man ensemble only formed yesterday, in Mrs. Repp’s fourth hour study hall, where four young men who shared tabs got talking. Tonight is the first of, hopefully, a thousand practices, and the first order of business is this: pick a name. Because, as they saying goes, a band without a name isn’t a band. It’s just a bunch of kids playing in tune.

“Turn that music down. I’m going to read what we got so far.”

A scrawny kid named Luke taps the space bar on his computer and swivels his desk chair to face Quinn, the baby-faced lead guitarist. Seated on the ground is the rest of the band, two Hispanic brothers named Ronald and B.J. Quinn clears his throat. “Joanna Dark. Wakka Wakka. Mr. Grimm…”

“Can’t do Mr. Grimm,” says Ronald. “My brother’s friend saw them at the county fair.”

“What’s Mr. Grimm?”

“He’s the motorcycle skeleton from Twisted Metal.”

“Oh. That’s funny. I like that. Screw the other guys. Let’s just do that,” BK says.

“No, dude. We can’t take someone else’s name. Let me just list off all of them,” Quinn asks, being as polite as he can be. “Bullet Bill. The Runaway Five…”

“Runaway Five is on Myspace,” says Ronald. “They even dress like them.”

“What’s the Runaway Five?”

“It’s a band in Earthbound. Have you even ever played a video game, BJ?” BJ says nothing. He returns to tuning his bass. Quinn returns to the list, looking over it silently with a shamed look on his face.

Scenes like this one are happening all over the country. Newly-formed bands composed entirely of junior high students are finding themselves stuffed away in heated and cramped chambers, where they sip hot cider and rack their brains for the few remaining video game references that have not yet been taken by other bands.

Those remaining references are few and oblique. Last week, junior high bands took on the names Raid Wipe, Dom Santiago, Project Purity, Freedom Star, Turtwig, Sinclair Solutions, of Rivia, and The Nihilanth.

The pressure to have a clever name that can be traced back to a well-known cultural artifact is extremely strong in the junior high music scene. And now, with that resource dwindling every day due to an onslaught of repetitive titles and unnecessary sequels, these groups are breaking up prematurely and depriving young girls of their first musician crushes and young men of their first dabblings in marijuana.

The foursome in the Luvitt household eventually decide on Gravemind, which they think pretty much shoehorns them into playing only screamo thrasher music. They know nothing about the genre, but the name is so cool, and evokes such a knowing nod from Ronald’s older brother that they know it’s the only way to go.