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 12, 2010 · 7:40 am

Less is more

You probably have gathered that I enjoy digging into grammar and usage issues that are either arcane or funny.

I really could not care less about the mundane ones, and my readers have shown that they prefer the complex over the mundane–such as “I could care less.”  We’ve all known since the third grade that this is incorrect, if the intent is that one doesn’t care at all.  

I doubt anyone reading this blog wants or needs a lesson in “I couldn’t care less.”  But perhaps you know someone who does.

Let’s hope those who are rearing children are passing the lesson on to them, so the misuse of such a descriptive comment as “I couldn’t care less” isn’t perpetuated.  After all, once these children become teenagers, they will likely express the sentiment quite often, so let’s be sure they at least express it correctly.

A fellow wordie made me aware of this pre-packaged primer on the subject.  You might want to watch it with your child or view it as an amusing refresher. 

You might find yourself caring more about caring less.

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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 9, 2010 · 7:55 am

In a perfectly tense mood

While we are on a grammar roll, here’s another one. 

My interest comes about, as it often does, as a result of an aural assault by a well-meaning speaker.  Typically, once the bristle passes, I look up the pertinent rule to be sure I understand it.

This one has to do with a mishmash of subjunctive mood and conditional perfect and past perfect tenses and the errors people are prone to making with regard to these verb uses.

For whatever reason, I never fully appreciated things like mood versus tense  until I studied foreign languages.  And still, I know them more intuitively than by the rules themselves.

If the following phrases make you bristle, then you don’t need the review.  If they sound perfectly fine, read on.

  1. “I wish I would have kept the appointment.”
  2. “If I would have known you were going, I’d have offered you a ride.”
  3. “If I was in your shoes, I’d be worried.”
  4. “If I would have went to the party, I would have had a good time.” 

You could drive yourself crazy reading all the rules.  But feel free.  They are long and involved and I’d probably miss some nuance in explaining it anyway.  I’ve included the relevant Wikipedia links above because they are the simplest and most accessible online sources for this purpose, in my opinion.

Or, you could simply train your ear to pick up on the errors and correct them before you speak.  Often, it simply means taking out “would” or changing “was” to “were,” but not always.  Here are some tricks you might use to keep it straight.  Maybe you have some of your own.

If you are tempted to say “I wish I would have . . .,” think about The Rolling Stones’ “I Wish I’d Never Met You” and remember to say, “I wish I had . . .”   No would.

If you are tempted to say “If I would have known . . .,” think of the 1950 song, “If I Knew You Were Comin’, I’d’ve Baked a Cake,” then say, “If I knew” or “If I had known…”   For you younger readers, the song was also sung on Sesame Street, so you’ve probably heard it.  Just try to get past the double contraction.

If you are tempted to say “If I was,” think of Fiddler on the Roof and the song, “If I Were a Rich Man.”  It’s were, not was.  Subjunctive mood, conditional perfect tense.  Or some might call it imperfect past subjunctive.

Finally, if you are tempted to utter the double whammy, “If I would have went,” then you are probably not reading this blog anyway.

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July 8, 2010 · 7:54 am

Collective consciousness

Does anyone else lie awake at night fretting over collective nouns?

At my current stage of life, I often find myself wide awake in the wee hours, teeth clenched, eyes wide open, brain ticking away like an electricity meter on overload.  It’s 3:00 a.m. when little things become big things.

Last night it was collective nouns and why, even though they are singular, they often precede plural verbs.   You too, eh?

Example:  The couple were on their honeymoon.  Couple, singular; were, plural.  Even as I type this, my computer’s grammar checker flags it as an error.

A collective noun, also called a mass noun or non-count noun, is a noun that represents more than one thing:  couple, team, group, herd and countless more.

The most recent 3:00 a.m. over-analysis was precipitated by a lead sentence I read yesterday in The Washington Post:  “A handful of federal lawmakers are seeking to vastly expand the number of long-distance flights at Reagan National Airport . . .”   If “handful” is the subject, then why isn’t the verb “is?”  “Of lawmakers” shouldn’t matter; it’s just a prepositional phrase of sorts.

Bleary-eyed, I stumbled into my office and consulted two trusted sources.

The Associated Press Stylebook says that “nouns that denote a unit take singular verbs and pronouns.”  For example, “The committee is meeting.”

The Chicago Manual of Style says that a collective noun “takes a plural verb when it refers to the members of the group considered as individuals.”

Are they both correct?

I then scanned about a dozen word blogs for some practical interpretation.

The consensus among observers appears to be that collective nouns are singular and call for a singular verb, except when the members of a group are acting as individuals, in which case the collective noun is plural and requires plural verbs and pronouns.  So, yes, AP and Chicago are both correct.

Which brings me back to the couple on its/their honeymoon.  Are they acting as individuals and if so, is the honeymoon then over?

Tonight I’ll try counting the imaginary flock of sheep that are jumping over a fence.  It is “are,” right?   Oh, never mind.

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July 7, 2010 · 7:53 am

Feed your pig

Many years ago, my Uncle Buddy gave me a ceramic piggy bank.  It’s pretty small, as piggy banks go, so it doesn’t take long to fill it up.  Still, it takes me about a year, as often as I remember to feed it.

I usually empty it this time of year, take the coins to one of those coin machines and get a nice little piece of cash.  It’s found money after all, so I try and spend it as frivolously as possible.

About four years ago, the accounting industry launched a public awareness campaign called “Feed the Pig.”  In partnership with the Ad Council, the accounting profession’s national association developed the campaign in an effort to encourage personal saving.  At the time of the launch, while working on a financial literacy project, I became acquainted with spokespig Benjamin Banks (get it?) and decided to start feeding my own little oinker.

Check out Feed the Pig – It’s still chock full of good information, including a Habit-Breaking Help section that addresses, among other dangers, Shoe Addiction.  Be sure to click on Benjamin’s face when you arrive, but also take some time to take the Beat Your Brain quiz.  You’ll get to know your financial self a little better.

After all this evangelizing, I am going to take a taste of my own slop and try to save more.   Charging for purchases, even shoes, doesn’t warm the heart the way saving does. 

And thanks, Uncle Buddy, wherever you are.  I just came home with $33.34  in free money.

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July 6, 2010 · 7:43 am

Dirty minds

There are some really sick people out there.  I know because they are stumbling onto my blog.

As I’ve noted before, my blog platform’s back end allows me to see how visitors come in.  Never fear, I don’t know who they are, but I know if they have entered words into a search engine that led them to my site.  I am always pleased when someone finds me by Googling a word usage question.

The obvious referrals come from searches on various forms of “nymph.”  Some are innocent and some are quite obviously not.

Don’t look for me to cite examples of sordid searches, because they are really dirty.  Suffice it to say there are plenty of innocuous strings of words that have filthy connotations.  And these phrases, when searched, lead a seamy trail to my innocent blog–even before my post about Mrs. Warren’s Profession. 

I hope the pervs aren’t too disappointed when they find me.  And I do hope they come back for legitimate reasons, such as a word usage question.

I wonder if my colleague over at The Sticky Egg has noticed anything untoward on her back end.

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July 5, 2010 · 8:11 am

The Boss

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. 

(Belmar, actually, but I wanted to open with the name of the album.)

It’s been many years since I’ve been to this stretch of the Jersey Shore.  Some good friends were kind enough to invite us to join them for the holiday weekend.  We are thrilled to see them and to be back “down the shore,” in that order.

This is hallowed ground for fans of Bruce Springsteen.  And I am definitely one.

In the summer of 1975, having never heard of him, I saw Springsteen perform at a concert hall in Norfolk, Va., and my life was forever changed.  The Born to Run album had just come out and, to a girl of fifteen, Bruce’s energy and stage presence were electrifying.  Once I knew what he was actually singing, I was inspired. 

It can be hard to understand Bruce when he sings but, within no time after the concert, I had the album and was reading and memorizing the lyrics.  That, boys and girls, was back when an album cover was large enough to print all the lyrics in readable type.

At fifteen, I was already disillusioned with the sappy pop music of Top 40 radio.  The Captain and Tennille just didn’t capture the pain and angst that kids my age were feeling.

But Bruce?  No candy coating there, his songs were real.  They were life in the streets and broken hearts and hard knocks.  They ripped your heart out and offered hope at the same time.

I’ve always considered Bruce Springsteen a modern poet.  On this occasion of my visit here, I’d like to share some of my favorite of his lyrics.

From the song, “For You”

We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar
of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore

From “Growin’ Up”

I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch
I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched

From “Thunder Road” 

There were ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away
They haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets
They scream your name at night in the street, your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn, you hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch they’re gone, on the wind, so Mary climb in
It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win

From “Jungleland”

In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners desperate as the night moves on
Just one look and a whisper, and they’re gone. 

I’m going to sign off now.  I have a lump in my throat.

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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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