June 18, 2011 · 8:00 am

Trivia Saturday

Welcome to Trivia Saturday.

Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’ve been throwing out a question. If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Today is the last day, but it’s not too late to play. You can answer questions from Monday through Friday by going to those posts and submitting your answers in the Comments. Good luck!

Todays’ question:

What is a zeugma? Can you give me some original examples?

See you Monday!

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June 17, 2011 · 8:00 am

Trivia Friday

Welcome to Trivia Friday.

Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’ve been throwing out a question. If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Tomorrow is the last day. Good luck!

Today’s question:

Readers in some countries use double quotation marks that look “like this.” In others, quoted text is placed inside guillemets to set off certain portions of text. What do guillemets look like?

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June 16, 2011 · 8:00 am

Trivia Thursday

Welcome to Trivia Thursday.

Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’m throwing out a question. Have you been playing? If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Good luck!

Today’s question:

We know that a word that is spelled the same forward and backward is a palindrome. What is the name of a word that reads the same upside down as right side up, or the same in a mirror, when certain typography is applied? Can you provide some examples?

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June 15, 2011 · 8:00 am

Trivia Wednesday

Welcome to Trivia Wednesday.

Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’m  throwing out a question. If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Good luck!

Today’s question:

What is the typographically correct term for the pound sign, or the number sign?

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June 14, 2011 · 8:00 am

Trivia Tuesday

Welcome to Trivia Tuesday.

Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’ll throw out a question. If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Good luck!

Today’s question:

What is the term for the dot placed over the lower case i and lower case j?

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June 13, 2011 · 8:00 am

Trivia Monday

Welcome to Trivia Monday.

Word Nymph has declared this Language Trivia week. Every day of this week, Monday through Saturday, I’ll throw out a question. If you know the answer or would like to take a guess, do so as a Comment to that day’s post or simply wait until next Monday, when all answers will be revealed. Good luck!

Today’s question:

What two-letter word in English has more meanings than any other two-letter word?

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June 11, 2011 · 8:30 am

Fumez-vous?

Much has already been written about Woody Allen’s new movie, Midnight in Paris, yet all through the movie I thought of things I’d like to write about it. I loved everything about the film, and it spurred so many thoughts and reflections that I definitely plan to see it again.

Midnight in Paris is also about great writers and, because I know I’ll never be one, I’ve deemed it best to let the movie speak for itself. Pretty much.

There’s just one thing around the edges that perplexes me and it almost has nothing to do with the movie per se.

Before seeing the movie yesterday, I had read a lot of reviews, published by critics and posted by friends. I also took a glance at the synopsis in our paper’s Weekend section, just to get a refresher before I went. It was a decent recap that I found helpful. But—and, without checking, I assume this is required by the Motion Picture Association or some self governing body—the summary was followed by the obligatory caveat:  “Contains some sexual references and smoking.”

Smoking? Do we honestly need to warn viewers or the parents thereof that they might see characters smoking?

Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s a Woody Allen movie that essentially takes place in Paris in the 1920s. Do we really think some 12-year-old will see Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald puffing away while listening to Cole Porter play piano in the background, and run to 7-Eleven for her first pack of Marlboros? At twice the price of a movie and Milk Duds?

As a parent, I understand the need to regulate our adolescents’ intake of adult themes. I know there are tweens all over the world telling their parents this very day that they’re seeing Kung Fu Panda 2, when they’re really sneaking into The Hangover 2. But if my kid went to the movies and came home with Ernest Hemingway as his role model, well, maybe that’s a bad example. Let’s just say if my kid came home from Midnight in Paris inspired to be a great writer, by a writer who happened to smoke cigarettes in Paris in the 1920s, is that something that merits a warning?

Hey, I grew up watching Lucy and Ricky Ricardo light up in virtually episode and I never smoked. Jeez.

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June 10, 2011 · 5:44 am

It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad lib

When I was a kid, they didn’t make cars with DVD players in them. Even when my son was little, we never had such a thing in the car.

When we went on long trips, we played games like Twenty Questions, “I went to the supermarket” and a word game called Ghost.

Often when we got to our vacation destinations, and there was no television, we played games. I recall many seasons as a kid in Ocean City, playing Mad Libs. I cut my little word nymph teeth on Mad Libs.

For those who don’t remember, Mad Libs were–still are, I guess–short stories written with blanks in them. The blanks call for certain parts of speech to be inserted in various places in sentences within the story. The person who holds the book asks his or her play mates for nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and exclamations, and occasionally, names of body parts or famous people, which, of course, are provided arbitrarily and without context. After all the blanks are filled, the holder of the book reads the story aloud. Hilarity ensues.

This past Monday, Leonard Stern, co-creator of Mad Libs, died at the age of 88. Amusingly, his Washington Post obituary was written in Mad Lib form:

“As a writer, director and producer, Leonard Stern was a legendary (noun) in show business. He had an (adjective) career that took him to (geographic place) with (celebrity name). Fond of (article of clothing), standing (a number) feet tall with a gray (body part), he (verb) more than a share of (noun), including (liquid).”

I was interested to learn also that Stern was a writer and producer of “The Honeymooners,”  “Get Smart” and a few other classic sitcoms. Apparently, Stern got the idea for Mad Libs when looking for an adjective for a Honeymooners script. He and a friend then began writing stories with blanks in them and took them to cocktail parties; the rest is history.

Yesterday I discovered a website that allows you to play Mad Libs online.*

Maybe on your next family trip to the shore—or at your next cocktail party—you can pull out your iPhone, log in and have a rip-roaring good time.

Rest in peace, Leonard Stern. You were a (adjective) (noun).

*By the way, I tested the Mad Lib-generating website. You can only imagine what I did to Hamlet’s third soliloquy.

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June 9, 2011 · 8:57 am

Drill baby

Who would have thought I’d wake up today with a fat lip? Not I, but my endodontist did.

Yesterday I had a bit of dental surgery. I didn’t know it was surgery until I was being sewn up and given a set of post-surgical instructions.

I knew I was to have two root canals. And I knew one would entail entry from the gumline, or apicoectomy/periradicular surgery. I just didn’t think enough about it to build any expectation.

In 51 years, I’ve never had so much as a cavity, so dental work is alien to me. I did have a root canal 24 years ago; I remember it vaguely, with no major trauma associated. Then, eight years ago, while in Arizona, I broke off a front tooth and had it repaired by a hack in Tucson. It turns out shabby work was done to both teeth, numbers 9 and 10 or, as I affectionately call them, the gray one and the brown one. As a result, both had to be re-done.

To sum it up in numbers, I had five shots of Novocaine, two root canals during which three x-rays were taken, six stitches in my gum and, after a $500 discount, a bill of $2,125.00.

To sum it up in words would require some illustrative excerpts.

Not realizing the air conditioning had gone out in the dental office on a 100-degree day, I thought my blazing body and projectile perspiration were symptoms of an anxiety attack. The endodontist brought in a fan and apologized for the heat. I said, “Oh, good, I thought it was just me,” to which he replied, “It’s not that I don’t think you’re hot…” I took his attempt at humor as a compliment.

When the whole procedure was over, the Novocaine had gone to my head, my vision was blurred and, as Bill Cosby once observed, my face was sliding off of my skull and my bottom lip was in my lap.

After receiving my post-operative instructions and a prescription for pain pills, the doctor pronounced me free to go. I asked the nurse, “Would you please hand me my glasses,” to which the doctor replied, “You’re wearing them.”

What? You don’t know the Cosby routine? Have a listen. I finally understand what he was talking about.

By the way, did you know that, when your face is swollen, your wrinkles disappear?

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June 8, 2011 · 7:56 am

School’s out

In about a week, the schools in our area will close for the summer. Where you live, kids might already been out. Here, it’s always the latter half of June.

I no longer have a kid in school, so I don’t keep track any longer; yet, the fact that the last day of school is just around the corner is acutely evident, for two reasons. One, the ice cream truck is coming around in the afternoon. Two, Alice Cooper is on the radio. A lot.

It was the summer of 1972; I was in my final days of elementary school, when “School’s Out” hit the charts.

Don’t pretend you don’t know it. I bet you can tell me exactly where you were on your life’s road or where the song takes you when you hear it today.

For me it was Annandale, Virginia. I felt so grown up, saying good-bye to the school with the little chairs, and facing junior high with excitement and anxiety. Mostly, “School’s Out” meant spending seven days a week at the Wakefield Chapel pool and having sleepovers where we listened to music and called our requests in to WPGC radio.

By 1972, I had outgrown David Cassidy; Alice Cooper was a real rocker. He sang rebelliously about the fantasied obliteration of school (not such a realistically dangerous notion back then) and we could relate to it. I understand that, in 2004, Rolling Stone named “School’s Out” one of the 500 greatest songs of all time. I never owned an Alice Cooper record, but if I had it to do over, I would have snapped one up at Rainbow Tree.

I confess, when that song comes on the radio, I still crank it up and sing along. Belted it out it just yesterday, as I pulled out of the grocery store parking lot, after stopping for Activia.

To this day, while far from poetic, my favorite verse is:

Well we got no class
And we got no principles [play on words, perhaps?]
And we got no innocence
We can’t even think of a word that rhymes

Please don’t think less of me.

So, where were you when you first grooved to this song? And hearing it on American Idol doesn’t count.

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