Much virtual ink has been spilled over the recent release of The Motorcycle Diaries, a motion picture biography of the young Che Guevara. (See Mark Kleiman for an exhaustive blogography.)

I have nothing substantive to add to the discussion, but I will take this opportunity to quote David Bowie in a blog-post title, and to relate an anecdote from my college days.

Back in college, I and several friends had ourselves listed in the Memphis phone directory with joke names. I was listed as “Opus, P.”; my friend Neil was listed as “Stranger, T. Phantom”; my friend Steve was listed as “Zeppelin, Led”; and my roommate Alex was listed as “Guevara, Che.” I suppose my joke name and Neil’s were too obscure to garner any recognition from the general public, but Steve did receive several late-night phone calls from drunk, outraged rednecks, and Alex did receive quite a bit of Spanish-language junk mail addressed to “Che Guevara.”

UPDATE: Reid at Moteworthy wonders whether Steve was the "Zeppelin, Led" he used to crank call back in high school. It's the right time frame (early 90s), but wrong city. Unless Reid was making long-distance crank calls to Memphis.