Is that a woody in your hoody?

When I was growing up, the article of clothing now universally referred to as a hoodie (or possibly hoody) was simply called a sweatshirt, just like it's non-hooded relative. I'm not complaining about this neologism at all; I think hoodie is a fine addition to the English language. Now we have a way to differentiate the hooded item from the non-hooded one.

Because I didn't grow up using the term hoodie, though, whenever I hear it I react in a way I don't when I hear the names of other articles of clothing. Specifically, I immediately get a snatch of song lyrics in my head. More specifically, lyrics from "Pop Goes the Weasel"--not the children's song, mind you, but the anti-Vanilla Ice diatribe from erstwhile rappers 3rd Bass. "In the hoody with the woody/Buy a disco tape at Sam Goody," says Pete Nice.

Except he doesn't. Turns out what he actually says is, "Buy a disc or tape at Sam Goody." For some reason this is incredibly disappointing to me. It's like, the way I thought it was written sets up this great image of hopeless unhipness--buying crappy music (yes, DISCO STILL SUCKS, with the noted exception of KC and the Sunshine Band) in an obsolete format from a shopping mall chain store--that supports the song's overall theme, which is that Vanilla Ice is hopelessly unhip. But the way it's actually written, it seems like it's just a cute rhyme.

The only other time this phenomenon occurs--the Instantly-Getting-Rap-Lyrics-in-my-Head-When-I-Hear-a-Certain-Word Phenomenon--is when someome mentions UPS, which my boss does sometimes because he worked there when he was younger. Then I get a stanza from (the awesome) Biz Markie's (awesome) "The Vapors", in which Biz gets back at all the losers who dissed him and his crew before they were famous, in this case a girl who wouldn't go out with his friend T.J. Swan: "The type of female with fly Gucci wear/With big trunk jewelry and extensions in her hair/When Swan tried to kick it, she always fessed/Talkin' about 'nigga, please, you work for UPS.'"

There's a related phenomenon, the Instantly-Getting-Rap-Lyrics-in-my-Head-When-I-See-Someone's-Face Phenomenon, which only happens with John McEnroe. Then, of course, it's this (immortal) couplet from House of Pain's (immortal) "Jump Around": "I'll serve your ass like John McEnroe/If your girl steps up I'm smackin' the ho." I have to say, that line is stoopid and misogynistic and I hope Everlast regrets it, but come on: he rhymes "McEnroe" with "SMACKIN' THE HO." That's pure genius.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Of werewolves and cranberries

This is the kind of thing I usually annoy Amy with by email, but since no one reads this except Amy and maybe three other people, why not just put it here?

There’s this (great) Throwing Muses song called "Garoux des Larmes". Somewhere on the internets, I can’t remember where, I encountered someone who translated this as "Werewolves of the Tears", which: not exactly. The French word for werewolf is loup-garou (pl. loups-garoux), loup being the word for wolf. Garou, on the other hand, is not the word for anything. (At least, not the French word for anything; I researched it once [me = tremendous dork] and found that it’s a Provençal word for a type of shrub. I don’t think that’s relevant in this context.) It appears that garou is an example of what linguists call a cranberry morpheme. If you can’t be arsed following that link, and you’re not Amy, I’ll tell you, briefly, that a cranberry morpheme is a unit of language that transmits meaning in a compound word but has no meaning on its own. Everyone knows that a cranberry is different from a blueberry or a strawberry, and that they are all berries, so "cran" transmits meaning in that it distinguishes one type of berry from another, yet divorced from its partner, "cran" is meaningless. Likewise, garou is meaningless outside of the compound loup-garou.

Just today I realized something that is doubtless coincidental yet utterly fascinating: the "were" of English "werewolf" is also a cranberry morpheme! How kooky is that? I realized this, by the way, while learning that the "were" in werewolf comes from an Indo-European root meaning "man" (hence "manwolf": makes total sense), which you can also see in the Latin cognate vir.

Cranberry morphemes are generally free to form other compounds, which is why we can have words like cranapple and wererabbit (though these are often hyphenated, which would seem to indicate that the neologists who invent them aren’t totally convinced that it’s kosher). I wondered if, in France, Wallace and Gromit had to deal with un lapin-garou, and heeeeeeeee: they did!

I love language.

And the award for Most Oxymoronic Album Title Ever goes to:

The Essential Michael Bolton.

This is the sportiest I will ever be.

I am not, generally speaking, a sports fan—most of the popular American sports just don’t hold any interest for me. I know baseball is the national pastime and all, but its languid pace has always seemed to me almost antithetical to the whole idea of sports. I mean, there’s more action in croquet. Plus all the gross spitting. Basketball strikes me as unchallenging, because everyone playing it is like eight feet tall. Shouldn’t they raise the baskets or something? Also their shorts are goofy. I do recall a time, somewhere in the eighties, when the New York Giants won some Super Bowls, and I was very aware of the whole thing and probably could even have identified some of the players, but when it comes to American football in general, I tend to find the level of violence disturbing. And I realize that I’m probably displaying a tremendous ignorance of the nuances and sublimity of these games, but I don’t care, because I? Am not a sports fan.

With a couple of exceptions. One of them is tennis, specifically women’s tennis, which I have been following for about twenty years now. My favorite player back then, and during the whole length of her brilliant career until her retirement, was Steffi Graf, who was one of the greatest ever to play the game (only Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova won more matches). A little later it was Jennifer Capriati during her comeback in the early aughts, as she disproved (to my great satisfaction) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous dictum that there are no second acts in American lives. Currently I root for Amélie Mauresmo for several reasons: 1) she’s the only out lesbian in professional tennis, 2) she’s French, et j’aime la France et les français, and 3) her game is gorgeous. She’s currently ranked the number one player in the world, but has a long history of choking at the major tournaments, finally winning the Australian Open this year when Justin Henin-Hardenne had to retire from the match. Said history only makes me root harder for her. As I write this she has advanced to the third round at Wimbledon, which began earlier this week.

Also going on right now, which you surely know unless you live under the biggest rock on the planet, is the World Cup, which brings us to my second exception: soccer, or football, as the rest of the world quite sensibly calls it. When the WUSA (the women’s professional league in the US) was extant, I enjoyed watching their games, and while I don’t always follow international football, I love the World Cup. Like a dutiful citizen I rooted for the US until they were eliminated, but now: allez les Bleus! See above re: j’aime la France. Tomorrow France plays Brazil in a rematch of the 1998 final, and I plan on busting out some vin de pays and fromage while I watch. All of this brings me to the title of this entry: as I am currently involved in watching not one but two major sporting events, this is doubtless the sportiest I have ever been or ever will be.

The Coolest Song in the World

"Can you honestly tell me you forgot? Forgot the magnetism of Robin Zander, and the charisma of Rick Nielsen? And what about the tunes? 'I want you to want me'…'The dream police, da-na-na-na-na-na-na!'." That may not be one of the more famous quotes from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but it is one of my personal favorite bits: ticket scalper Mike Damone trying to pawn Cheap Trick tickets off on some poor girl*, complete with bad singing and spazzy air guitar. Fast Times is one of my favorite movies, and the character of Damone, the sleazy, Gremlin-driving, turned-up-collar-wearing, bad-dating-advice-giving "conceited little prick" (as Phoebe Cates's Linda Barrett terms him) is, in a word, awesome. So when I saw a poster last month advertising a show by a band called Damone, I immediately surmised that they must have named themselves after the Damone, and, based solely on that, further surmised that they must in fact be awesome as well.

Unfortunately I had to miss their Portland gig due to the fact that it was the same night that my band practices. (Priorities, people.) But man, am I sorry I did. I picked up their recently-released major-label debut, entitled Out Here All Night, and repeated listening, as well as viewing of live clips on YouTube, has amply proved that Damone the band is indeed awesome. One review I read summed them up as "Juliana Hatfield fronting Cheap Trick", which could be read as dismissive, but actually captures their appeal nicely, I think, as their sound mixes power pop, ‘70s hard rock, and ‘80s hair metal into a redolent rock ‘n’ roll stew that’s topped beautifully by singer/guitarist Noelle Leblanc’s sweet-but-tough snarl. Noelle is one of the better female rock singers I’ve heard recently, and she looks totally fucking cool, coming on like a grittier, less glam-rock Joan Jett, or maybe a metal-fied Chrissie Hynde. See the picture at right, which currently adorns my desktop as well.

If you’ve ever listened to Little Steven’s Underground Garage on the radio (and if you haven’t, it’s worth seeking out), you know that Steve always plays what he considers to be The Coolest Song in the World that week. I’m starting my own Coolest Song in the World feature (which assuredly will not be updated every week), and right now The Coolest Song in the World is the title track from Damone’s new record, "Out Here All Night". With Noelle’s dark-tinted vocal over a wicked Judas Priest-like riff and a hooky-but-haunting chorus, it’s three minutes of pure rock ‘n’ roll heaven. Check out the band’s MySpace page for a listen, and check out their website for other fun stuff.


*Actually, not just some poor girl—the character of Dina was played by Pamela Springsteen, sister of Bruce. I think she had a grand total of two lines, but that still beats the zero of Nicolas Cage in his first screen appearance.

Oh right. I had sort of forgotten about this.

So anyway, I've been playing music with a couple of guys, a guitarist and a drummer, playing the guitarist's three-chord garage-type songs. I'm not sure whether it's going anywhere, but it's fun for now. My last band had really well-crafted songs that allowed me to write interesting, melodic basslines, but we didn't rock out all that much. This is pretty much the opposite.

Now, one thing you should know about me as a musician is that I play hard. I mean, I can play with finesse if the situation calls for it, but I'm happiest when I can bang the shit out of my instrument. Back when I played guitar, I broke like, three times as many strings as anyone else. As a bassist, it's the primary reason I play with a pick: you just can't pluck a string nearly as hard as you can slam it with a tortoiseshell extra heavy, like the ones I just bought.

So after practice last Tuesday, I was packing up my gear when I realized that my hand hurt. I looked at it and realized that, while I was playing, I had managed to remove a dime-sized patch of skin from the heel by repeatedly banging it against my low E string. Ow. And also, awesome. It's been a while since I rocked so hard that it literally hurt.