Reflections on 2006

As I sit here waiting for PWTS and his lovely wife to arrive for their weekend visit, I had the urge to write a post. This has become a little intimidating lately as DMC has pointed out, neither of us are particularly good writers and we seem to have lost all sense of what is funny.

Case in point: After an extremely stressful couple of weeks due to killer finals, a major software upgrade that I stupidly scheduled for the week of my killer finals, AND travel over Hell's Half-Acre to visit every person even remotely related to us over the holidays, we decided to rent some crap movies. We're usually pretty good at picking crap.

Our criteria was that the movies couldn't be thought-provoking, stressful or depressing in any way. We made the following selections: Beerfest, Scary Movie 4, Ultraviolet, and Clerks 2. It was quite possibly the most embarrassing Blockbuster checkout we've ever made (you know those clerks are passing judgement on your selections).

Let me be clear: I know my crap and I enjoy crap. I own GoodBurger (best homoerotic thriller EVER) on DVD for Christ's sake. But, these movies really sucked. Granted, I laughed a good bit through Beerfest and Ultraviolet had Mila Jovovich (who is totally hot and on my "Gay List") but, these were beyond our limits.

At first I thought it was the movies but then DMC pointed out that we are no longer the witty, pop-culture enthusiasts we once were. So, the problem was not the movies. It was US. How terrifying. I was feeling really good about 2006 - I actually kept all of my New Year's Resolutions (lose weight, start school and quit smoking - although I did start smoking again during Hell Week). I was thinking this was the best year ever and then discovered, through some shitty movies that somehow over the course of the year I became an old, boring, worthless human being.

Happy Fucking New Year.

Here are the Predictions for 2006. I leave it up to you to let us know which came true (for those that are not obvious):

****CAUTION: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE****

Carol gets camel toe.
Kelli and Hugh form a band (a power duo).
Tim turns gay.
J'ai tube (?) Mme. Cook.
Divorced folks will be allowed to participate with the married swingers.
George Clooney runs for office.
Carrot Top wins an Oscar.
Meghan will finally leave that loser Jeff.
Carol will not get anything on her list done.
Barnes meets his future wife.
Strickland wins, a Dem wins Treasurer. Otherwise, R's win.
Krusty the Clown dies of AIDS.
"I predict a riot" - Kaiser Chiefs (didn't know they were at the party)
Ann will take another nap.
Bad Tinker remarries.
Carol will finally get her 15 minutes of fame on TV.
Lucinda pokes his eye out.
George Bush drinks himself to death, Frist President.
Andy will NOT puke in 2005 on New Year's.
Oliver continues to be randy with the distribution of his seed. Anderson pregnant again.
Barbara gets pregnant.
Kelli and Patrick get engaged.
Jeff's wife will call him a jackass next year.
Tim will still be a cunt.
Jeff will still not quit Taco Hell.
Someone from the Rolling Stones will die.
The Atkins Diet will take a life.
2,500 dead in Iraq.
Pettigrew will not show up.
Saddam Hussein gets own sitcom.
Drunk stuffs prediction box.
George W. Bush's poll numbers plummet.
Gina will break the karaoke machine....again.

I found these to be the most depressing Predictions ever. Especially the one about Carrot Top. Try to think of something positive for this year, people.

Celebrity Death Pool

Given that we've just had Augusto Pinochet, James Brown and Gerald Ford make up a Celebrity Death Triumverate, and seeing as there will be no betting this year due to the discontinuation of the Mavis B/DMC New Year's Party, I thought it was a good time to recap the winners and losers for both 2005 and 2006. (Granted, we have 4 more days to go in 2006 but the bets are down so, we might as well see how it turns out).

Since last year was a blur, I'll remind you all of 2005's Picks. The "(d)" means they died in 2005:

DMZ - Molly Sugden, Eddie Albert (d), Al Molinaro. Power Ball: Hilary Duff
CMA - Richard Pryor (d), Pope John Paul (d), Kirk Douglas
ABB - Pope John Paul (d), Gerald Ford, James Doohan (d)
Flomax - Harry Morgan, Arthur Miller (d), Karl Malden
The Guv'nor - Don Knotts, Pope John Paul (d), Aretha Franklin
Overlord of Smoking - James Doohan (d), Max Schmeling (d), Jack LaLanne. Power Ball: Jonathan Taylor Thomas
CHW - Pope John Paul (d), Grampa Al Lewis, Augusto Pinochet
Cookie - Lady Bird Johnson, James Brown, Pope John Paul (d). Power Ball: Paris Hilton
Cheeky Monkey - Abe Vigoda, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Dick Clark
M500 - Pope John Paul (d), Augusto Pinochet, Gerald Ford. Power Ball: Ray Lewis

UPDATE: Yes, Grampa Al Lewis and Don Knotts are dead but, they died in 2006. So they don't get a "(d)" for 2005. If you notice, y'all tend to pick people the year before they actually die. That doesn't bode well for Jonathan Taylor Thomas.


These are the picks for 2006. In this case, the "(d)" means they died in 2006:

CCS - Meatloaf, Abe Vigoda, Casey Kasem
M500 - Dick Cheney, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford (d)
ABB - Gerald Ford (d), Harry Morgan, Conrad Bain
Overlord of Smoking - Jack LaLanne, Kurt Waldheim, Mitch Miller
Mavis B - Dick Clark, Kirk Douglas, Abe Vigoda. Power Ball: Jon Stewart
CMA - Kirk Douglas, Muhammad Ali, Zsa Zsa Gabor
Flomax - Harry Morgan, Karl Malden, Jack Kevorkian
Cookie - Gerald Ford (d), Abbie Hoffman, Milton Friedman (d). Power Ball: Nick Lachey

(I seem to remember there being an argument about the Abbie Hoffman selection so please follow the link on that one and you'll see that everyone was right and Cookie was wrong. )


Two things can be learned from analyzing these lists: 1) You are all very boring, predictable people but 2) when you're really drunk, you can predict the future.

Abe Vigoda is never going to die.

You can check here for updates or to verify over the next couple days. It already has James Brown and Gerald Ford updated. Tomorrow I'll enlighten you with your predictions.

I'll Have a Blue Christmas without You

While my wife talked to her parents on the phone, I jumped online to check my e-mail and saw that James Brown died early this morning. Celebrity deaths seldom trouble me--I don't think I was even upset when John Lennon was assassinated--but Brown's passing saddens me, even if he had reached the rather ripe old age of 73, considering his Keith Richard-like excesses.

I'm mostly sad for those who will only know him from Saturday Night Live and Mad TV skits and other imitations, from oldies radio stations, and from (grand)parents' record/CD collections, much like Elvis is for me and others from my generation or younger. They'll never truly know the dynamism, soul, and joy he brought to the world during his time on this earth.

I'm very happy, though, I did get to see him perform years ago in Knoxville. Maybe he wasn't up to his early 1960s exuberance, but he put on a hell of a dynamic show for a man in his sixties, or for a man of any age, for that matter. The concert was outside in the rain, but no one seemed to care, we were having so much fun.

So I now listen to my Brown CDs with a bit of poignancy but thankfulness, too. Here's hoping that future generations not only enjoy his artistry but also exhibit the good will and generosity to forgive future James Browns who early (or even late) in life get into a bit of trouble so that they may blossom and offer their gifts to the world.

Eddie Murphy is Dead to Me

How dare he do this to Scary.

The Grunt of the Human Hog

The title of this post is how slang was described by Ambrose Bierce. The great thing about blogging, and wanting to provide links, is that you learn interesting things - like Bierce is from Meigs County, Ohio. I will need to look into him further.

The point of this post though, was to follow up on a drunken promise to discuss the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang in greater detail.

The dictionary only has two volumes available. Volume 1 is A to G and it weighs 6 lbs. That means it includes bookoodles of words, beginning with A-G. The first entry is "A", as a Noun, partial euphemism for "ass". Each entry includes several documented uses of the word. (I think Lighter required a certain number before a word could be included in the book.) An example in this entry is "1991 G. Trudeau Doonesbury (synd. cartoon strip) (Apr. 29): Ray! Time to haul A, man! We're moving out in ten minutes!" Six pages are dedicated to the word, "fuck".

Volume 2 is H to O. As I pointed out in a previous post, that spells Ho, which is slang for whore. HO only weighs 4 lbs. My copy is signed "To Mavis and DMC - Best Wishes, J. E. Lighter". Aj very good friend got it for me as a gift. This one starts with "H" for Hell. (Didn't see that coming, did you?) The Project Editor on this edition, Jesse Sheidlower, is also the editor of a dictionary called "The F Word" which was a best seller. Sheidlower is now the Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Lighter refused to finish the dictionaries because he supposedly felt his work was being taken too lightly. He didn't want his work to be trivialized and reduced to just lists of dirty words for shits and giggles. I don't blame him a bit.

I was devastated when I found out Lighter had no intention of completing the dictionary for Random House. However, while researching this post I discovered that Lighter's Oxford Historical Dictionary of American Slang, which will be the next volume in this set, was due out late 2006. So, if this is true, I will be a very happy woman.

You can read a really good interview with J. E. Lighter here. The man is a genius. PWTS will need to decide whether or not he wants to reveal any details of what it was like to actually work with Lighter on one of these dictionaries. I can only say that his dictionaries truly are the best of any I've seen.

"A truly unexpurgated collection of slang reminds us that the world of discourse, like the world of sense, is savage as well as sublime." —J. E. Lighter, American lexicographer and slanguist, Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, 1994

Chevy Chase *updated*

Anyone who knows me well knows I love slang. Particularly foul, sexually explicit slang. It just cracks me up. And "felch" is always a favorite. It's so shocking! So few people know what it is!

This week it came up at work. My coworker asked if someone was "filching" and I misheard it. I said, "Did you just say, "felching"? No one knew what I was talking about. They became curious. They pressed the issue.

Being somewhat modest due to a strict Protestant upbringing (we only have sex, we don't talk about it), I couldn't tell them the definition. I made them look it up on that new-fangled Internet thingy. Turns out, it's on Wikipedia (also home to a very nice definition of Mad Dog). No where near the quality of the Random House Dictionary of American Slang - of which I am reportedly a contributor, thanks to PWTS - but pretty decent nonetheless.

The best thing about the Wikipedia entry is that it has the "Cultural References" section. However, this one neglected the "Family Guy" reference - a marquee for Chevy Chase in "Felch". That was a play on "Fletch". Get it?

While we're at it, if anyone knows the definition of "donkey punching" (not in terms of logging), please share. It's a current research question.

I will discuss the Random House Dictionary of American Slang tomorrow, at greater length. You will find that if you Google it, you find it is not complete. That is disturbing as it is the best, most well researched dictionary of slang I've ever found. It's a shame (and yet fitting) that it was never published past the H-O volume. Which, for those who are completely stupid, spells HO. As in whore or prostitute.

UPDATE: I took the 2 minutes or less it requires to Google "donkey punch". That's on Wikipedia too! My parents are going to start thinking Wikipedia is the Antichrist if they keep this up! Some people think Wikipedia is all lies but personally, I believe every single word.

I would also like to note that, as an MBA candidate, I may at some point be required to write a paper where I can use the phrase "donkey punch" since it was apparently used to refer to some Enron dealings.

Sex, business and politics. So much in common.