Category Archives: Movies, Television and Radio

July 19, 2010 · 7:52 am

Two-fer

Once again, where have I been? 

Over the weekend I was so tickled to learn a new language term, only to find out everyone is already talking about it.

The portmanteau.  It’s been around for years, or at least as long as smog.

There are hundreds of portmanteaus (portmanteaux?) in circulation today, and the booming trend of blending two words into one continues to spread.  I just didn’t know there was a name for it until a friend sent me a Groupon (that’s another one) that used the term in a marketing promotion.

A celebrity couple can’t be mentioned as separate individuals any more, but rather, by their portmanteaus—Brangelina, Tomkat, Bennifer.  Does the First Couple go by Barelle or Michak?

A large share of the high tech vernacular is composed of portmanteaus.  WiFi, for example, as well as modem and even Internet.  Almost anything with “aholic” added on the end is a portmanteau:  chocoholic, workaholic, shopaholic.  And who can forget the Manssiere?

Can you come up with an original portmanteau or two?  Or maybe tell a story?

Billy had a dreambition of becoming a televangelist.  After school, he would go into the cafegymitorium and practice giving a sermily.

One day, in walked Isabella, looking fantabulous in her jeggings.  Billy loved how she ate Gogurt with a spork.

They began talking on their iPhones, with their conversations full of insinuendo.  They became frienefits and starting sexting in Spanglish.

When their parents found out, Billy and Isabella were forbidden to see each other.  But one day, as they were chillaxing in front of the cineplex, a photographer with the local ragazine exposed their relationship.  Billabella was busted.

Horrific, I know.  Try it?

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July 14, 2010 · 8:19 am

Toy with me

Last weekend my husband and I, sans child, went to see Toy Story 3.

Somehow I managed to miss 1 and 2, even though our son was six when the first one came out; perhaps these were part of a guys’ night out.

Friends and family members who remember what an awful time I had when our son left for college in 2006 made sure I saw Toy Story 3 and that I brought along plenty of Kleenex.  Used every last one.

We weren’t the only childless adults in the theater, which is a testament to this particular series of Pixar animated films and, I dare say, to the therapeutic effect of being surrounded by toys for two hours.

Until we got to the heartbreaking part where Boy leaves Mom, I enjoyed re-living my own childhood through the animated toys. 

I had practically every one of those classic toys.  Those I did not, my brothers or cousins or friends did.  Someone in our family, perhaps grandparents, had the old cymbal-slapping monkey.  My brothers had the See ‘n Say The Farmer Says, as did our son.  I like to think of that one as onomatopoeia machine.  I loved the telephone on wheels that googled its eyes when you pulled it along on its string.  I also had a doll in about as good of shape as Big Baby, abused by love.  I had a few Barbies, but not Metrosexual Ken.  Oh, and who can forget Slinky Dog?

After seeing the movie, I went up to our attic, where a few of our son’s old toys have retired, and to the basement, where the old books and games are, to apologize for sending them there.  I pulled some fire engines off the shelf and rolled them to a make believe emergency–big pileup of Matchbox cars–and paid overdue homage to some other old friends.

One fellow who was never banished to Floors 3 or B was Pippo, a sock monkey named for the series of Helen Oxenbury books we enjoyed so much.  He still lies on our son’s bed, mainly to keep alive the childhood spirit of the room in the absence of our boy, now grown and living out of state.  I suppose Pippo is our Woody.

I think I’ll see if my husband wants to play Candyland tonight.  We can call it a playdate with destiny.

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July 13, 2010 · 7:33 am

Spywear

Here in the nation’s capital, just as it seems things can’t get any weirder than our weather dominating headlines, we’ve busted open a ring of Russian spies and, over the weekend, began trading Russia theirs for a couple of our own.

As this was happening, I had the same gut reaction I had last summer when our government was battling Somali pirates.  Pirates?  Really? 

Russian Spies?  The Cold War ended 20 years ago, so I confess, I haven’t given spies much thought since.  Except, of course, during the arrest of Robert Hanssen, who sold U.S. secrets to the Russians for diamonds and cash.  That was fun.

Before that, though, I had not given Russian spies any thought since, oh, the last time I watched Bullwinkle.  Or Get Smart.  I was a child of the 1960s but never experienced firsthand an air raid drill.  In essence, I never felt the threat of potential communist attack personally.

At a young age, my frame of reference came from bumbling television spies.  Agents 86 and 99 were the good guys, fighting the fictitious enemy, KAOS, an international organization of evil.  And the real reason I rooted for the good guys was that, at age of seven, I wanted to be Barbara Feldon.

Back then, the enemy could be pretty sexy as well.  Take Natasha Fatale, for example.  Natasha’s character on the Bullwinkle cartoon was svelte and always wore a clingy cartoon cocktail dress.  She and Boris were wily spies from the fictitious nation of Pottsylvania, trying to outsmart a stupid moose.  We didn’t know where Pottsylvania was but its spies spoke with Eastern European accents.  

This summer, as the recent spy-busting events unfolded, national attention zoomed in on one particular accused Russian spy, 28-year-old Anna Chapman, nickname, Lady in Red.  Va-va-va-voom!  When she wasn’t collecting secrets she was posing for suggestive photographs (the most famous of which looks like she’s wearing Natasha’s cocktail dress), working as a real estate agent in New York City and living a seemingly normal life on Facebook.

Apparently, she let her guard down one time too many and, before she knew it, her cover was blown, along with the covers of her compatriots.  Whoops. 

Obviously, I am not the first to make the Anna-Natasha connection.  You can’t ignore the parallels.

But I am betting Natasha never came out of that red cartoon cocktail dress.  It was the 1960s after all, people had their modesty.  Plus, Facebook hadn’t been invented yet.

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July 10, 2010 · 8:57 am

Another land

It’s Saturday.  Time to take a rest from the heady grammar issues and get a little shallow.  And I can be quite shallow.

The truth is, I love TV sitcoms. 

My favorite are the old sitcoms of the 1960s and 70s.  I now confess to being a closet viewer of the TV Land network.  I got hooked early on.  TV Land started off playing the classic comedies I grew up with.  Actually, my parents placed fairly strict limits on our TV viewing, so I usually had to sneak off to a neighbor’s for I Love Lucy or Dick Van Dyke.

My husband jokes that, if there were a channel that aired all Everybody Loves Raymond all the time, I’d watch no other.  He’s right.  And now, on TV Land, for two hours every weeknight—Raymond.

Until recently, TV Land has been a place to which losers slink off to forget their problems and the fact that they are losers.  My time spent in TV Land is clouded by tremendous guilt.  I go when no one is home and always remember to change the channel to CNN before turning off the TV, so the next person doesn’t know where I’ve been.  A shameful addict always covers her tracks.

But things have changed.

TV Land has become home to some intelligent—or at least socially accepted—programming , namely, Hot in Cleveland.  By now, it’s almost cliché to rave about Hot.  It’s really a modern-day Golden Girls, another classic (Psst, Hallmark channel).  Let’s hope its popularity gives rise to more clever new shows in the fall.  

Personally, I think what makes the show successful is timing.  Timing in featuring a hot cast, led by Betty White and Valerie Bertinelli, both at the height of their hotness.  The other two co-stars, Jane Leeves and Wendie Malick, no slouches themselves, fill in nicely, though I’m disappointed they have Malick playing the same character she played on Just Shoot Me.

And what a brilliant move to have Carl Reiner, one of television’s most acclaimed comedic geniuses, on the show.

The writing is also based on timing–timing of the jokes, one right after the other with barely a chance for the viewer to catch her breath (my husband has come in to ask me if I’m OK) and the agile timing of the sight gags. 

Timing is also a big part of the acting.  The lines are delivered with a soft build and a one-two punch, while the actresses’ facial expressions, some extremely subtle, add beautiful texture to the humor.

OK, so maybe I am shallow.  But I am certain of two things.  One, that laughter is good for me and I know where to go to get it, and two, that there are smart people in TV Land who know their target demographic and are going to do very well capitalizing on it.

Now if you’ll allow me to skulk out of here, I’ll try and have something smart to write about next week.

Please remember, Word Nymph doesn’t post on Sundays.  They’ve got to be airing some kind of marathon.

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July 3, 2010 · 7:46 am

Two if by sea

As we approach our country’s 234th birthday, it’s appropriate to reflect on the significance of Independence Day. 

My educational frame of reference for American independence centers chiefly around a film we were shown in grade school.  I have been trying to remember the name so I can dig up a copy.  The film was black and white and grainy, but it painted a pretty vivid picture of the events leading up to the formation of the United States as an independent nation.  So when this holiday rolls around, that film rolls in my head.

The Fourth of July is also my younger brother’s birthday.  When he was little he used to sing, “A real live Matthew of my Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July,” while watching fireworks at the neighborhood celebration he thought was being thrown in his honor.

Living in the nation’s capital, the Fourth used to mean hearing the Beach Boys playing on the National Mall, and a long, crowded Metro ride home.  Sometimes it’s a crab feast or a pool party or a visit to the National Archives.  Fireworks?  Don’t hate me, but I could take ’em or leave ’em. 

Even though our nation might at times seem like it’s going somewhere in one big hand-basket, with oil spills and wars and political infighting over the freedoms we hold dear, my holiday wish is that for one day we Americans can cool off with a Good Humor Bomb Pop, sing Kumbaya and appreciate how good we have it.

As I trust the Founding Fathers would have intended, I’ll be at the Jersey shore.

Word Nymph doesn’t post on Sundays, but she wishes you a Happy Independence Day.

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June 29, 2010 · 7:28 am

What’s your line?

One of my readers requested I write a piece on memorable lines from movies.  Initially I loved the idea.  We all have our favorites.  The reader kicked off her request with a classic line, uttered by Olympia Dukakis in Steel Magnolias: “The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize.”  From that same movie I always liked:  “If you can’t say anything nice about anybody, come sit by me.”

As I developed the piece I broke out in hives because I didn’t know where to stop.  I would love to know yours but please, don’t break out in hives.

First, let’s eliminate all the obvious ones:  “Go ahead, make my day.”  “You can’t handle the truth.”  “Frankly my dear…”  And let’s clear away this one that’s going around now, from Get Him to the Greek, “When the world slips you a Jeffrey, stroke the furry wall.”  I already got some great quotes from Princess Bride and Monty Python movies on my June 2 post on bdelygmias.

I’ll throw out a few and let’s see where they take us. Perhaps you’d like to respond either by identifying the movie or, better yet, giving me another line from the same movie.  Be forewarned, there might be multiple quotes from the same movie.  Or, feel free to post one or more of your own, with or without the movie cited.

  1. Don’t much excite you except whores…and biscuits.
  2. Does this proposition entail my dressing up as Little Bo Peep?
  3. The Zen philosopher Basho once wrote, ‘A flute with no holes is not a flute. A donut with no hole is a Danish.’
  4. We consider ourselves bi-coastal if you consider the Mississippi River one of the coasts.
  5. I got off that boat with nothing but my dancer’s belt and a tube of ChapStick.
  6. We have so much in common.  We both love soup.  And snow peas.
  7. There’s what’s right and there’s what’s right and never the twain shall meet.
  8. Now you take that diaper off your head and you put it back on your sister!
  9. I found myself driving past convenience stores…that weren’t on the way home.
  10. Value this time in your life kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices, and it goes by so quickly. When you’re a teenager you think you can do anything, and you do. Your twenties are a blur. Your thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money and you think to yourself, “What happened to my twenties?”  Your forties, you grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud and one of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother.  Your fifties, you have a minor surgery. You’ll call it a procedure, but it’s a surgery. Your sixties, you have a major surgery, the music is still loud but it doesn’t matter because you can’t hear it anyway.  Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale, you start eating dinner at two, lunch around ten, breakfast the night before.  And you spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate in soft yogurt and muttering “how come the kids don’t call?” By your eighties, you’ve had a major stroke, and you end up babbling to some Jamaican nurse who your wife can’t stand but who you call mama.  Any questions?

Oh, no, we didn’t even touch Young Frankenstein.  Or any Woody Allen.  Hives.

Hint:  If you are totally stumped, check the tags below for clues.

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June 24, 2010 · 7:50 am

Modern maturity

I have gotten used to the notion of a United States president who is younger than I am.  I sat through many Back-to-School Night presentations by 22-year-old teachers, without judging.  I am even okay with being older than Supreme Court justice nominee Elena Kagan.

But I got a kick-in-the-gut blow as I pulled the AARP Magazine out of the mailbox and saw on the cover Valerie Bertinelli, who happens to be four months and 10 days younger than I.  By the way, she’s five days older than Elena Kagan.

AARP The Magazine comes addressed to my husband, though I am AARP-eligible.  I never had the guts to peel back the cover until yesterday—had to read about Valerie.   After all, her 1970s TV character, Barbara Cooper, and I were practically sisters.

The reason I never ventured inside the magazine?  I just knew there’d be articles about all sorts of scary aging topics, and the ads – nothing I’d need, to be sure.

I was surprised.  There’s an article on Sex and the City’s Cynthia Nixon and her work in promoting cancer research.  She’s 44, in case you were wondering.  A big picture of George Clooney appears just inside the front cover.  What for?  Does it really matter?  There’s a nice piece on microbreweries around the country and a funny interview with Dave Barry.  I also learned that Sean Penn, a famed member of Hollywood’s Brat Pack, will turn 50 this summer.

The writing is pretty edgy too.

The ads?  No Depends, or Metamucil or Geritol (do they even make Geritol anymore?).   It’s no surprise that there are plenty of ads for AARP products and services, including motorcycle insurance.  There’s an ad for an AARP-sponsored concert featuring Gladys Knight, B.B. King, Los Lobos, Gloria Gaynor, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Richie Havens.  There’s also an ad for Dr. Scholl’s.  I know firsthand that those feel really good on 50-year-old feet but then I also wore their exercise sandals when I was 14.

The magazine’s featured recipe is for tandoori chicken, whereas I expected any recipe offered by AARP would involve smothering something in cream of mushroom soup.

And guess what else?  A big fat crossword puzzle!

I’m thinking I might need my own subscription.

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June 11, 2010 · 7:19 am

It’s time

This week I have been spending a fair amount of time in the air. 

I don’t travel as often as George Clooney in Up in the Air but, like George’s character, I am robotic in my process.  I go through security like a zombie—that’s the best way to do it, actually—and seldom get rattled.  I often rent cars on the other end and that too has become rhythmic.

I don’t even travel as often as many of my colleagues.  I have one client who flies out of Philly so often she’s been offered the airport employees’ discount at Auntie Anne’s.

Erma Bombeck wrote a popular book entitled, When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home.

While, sadly, I haven’t used my passport in quite some time, Erma’s book title swooshes through my head during some of my busiest domestic travel weeks.  In fact, during time spent recently in a boarding area (no, not that time), I drew up a list of it’s-time-to-go-home triggers.

It’s time to go home when:

  • you check the Departures monitor for your gate and have to look at your boarding pass to remember where you are going
  • you and the US Airways flight attendants recognize each other–and smile fondly
  • you use your travel toiletries more than the ones at home
  • you sit down in a restaurant and look for the seat belt
  • you achieve frequent shopper status at Taxco Sterling and HMS Newsstand (and Auntie Anne’s).  The woman at the Taxco counter at National Airport knows which pieces I already have.
  • you spot the same set of identically dressed adult twins twice (not yet, but it’s bound to happen!)

How about you?  When is it time for you to go home?

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June 7, 2010 · 7:53 am

Bee proud

You can have your baseball.   You can have your American Idol.  I’ll take a good spelling competition any day.

The National Spelling Bee.  That’s entertainment.  And it takes place right here in town.

Bee Week is my World Series.  And Bee 2010 did not disappoint.  At least that’s what I read.  Instead of watching the final round Friday night I was at, ahem, a baseball game.

How can you not love a spelling bee?  There are no drunk spectators, it’s a civilized show of preparation and skill and you just want to hug the contestants.  The person giving the words is called the pronouncer, reason enough to love this sport.  And if they broadcast it on ESPN, it’s a sport, no?

This year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee boasted a record 273 spellers ranging in age from 8 to 15 years.

This year’s winner was 14-year-old Anamika Veeramani, from Ohio, who correctly spelled “stromuhr” in the final round.  Just to get to the final, she and other youngsters had to correctly spell words like confiserie, ochidore and leishmanic—and do so with poise and composure under the pressure of live television, bright lights and the presence of fierce competition for a national prize.

These kids today.

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