Monday, August 4, 2008

Here's a New Phrase for You, Mr. Blow:

Dear Lord Baby Jesus. I sat down Saturday to read your column, because I didn't have a bag of hammers to hit myself with, and the upper left hand corner of the Metro section seemed like an acceptable substitute. I guess I should be glad that you've gone back to your raison d'etre, the "golly gee" column, but this giant pile of Jenny poo just about made me spew my Cheerios, old-school Rodrigue style. I can only imagine you sitting at your desk, after coming back from a long lunch somewhere downtown, where you clutched Steve Harris' hand tightly all the way there and all the way back, so you wouldn't get lost. "Holy smokes!" you thought. "I've got to write a column, and it's almost 1:30. How will I ever make it back to Sunnyvale by 3:30 at this rate?" So then you scrambled for that special pad you keep in your right desk drawer, the Lisa Frank one with the unicorn on it and "Steve's Column Ideas: Don't Touch!" written in purple sparkle pen on the front. You thumb through it... "Screw Angela Hunt over with an elephant column...No, did that already. Write about the doo-dads on the traffic lights....no, shoot, did that, too. Oh, oh..OH - here it is - the DOOZY - words my grandpa uses, and how I miss them." "How'd I miss that?" you wondered aloud. Indeed, how did you? I mean, it was written in bold letters in red Sharpie across two pages, with "Best Idea EVER" next to it. And then you sat down at your computer, bemoaning the fact that it's not an IBM Selectric, I'm sure, and proceeded to pen an homage to the words "whatchamacallit," "doodad," "dealybob," "doojigger" and "doohickey." And then came this graph:
We should resurrect "right smart," too. It has nothing to do with intelligence. It's a useful measure of quantity – more than "picayunish" but not quite "boocoos."
Boocoos? Seriously? Boocoos. Boocoos. Boocoos. I'm gonna let you all ponder that for a second. Steve, the word is French. Yes, it maybe bastardized in the South as the way you spelled it, but it's still a French word. It's
beaucoup, or beaucoups. It means an abundance, or wealth of. You can still hear it said - in France. Maybe, possibly in Louisiana, too. And Quebec, eh? Or in any high school French class. In other words, there are beaucoup places to learn that beacoup is a French word that is still used around the world, wherever the French language is spoken. Alan Peppard, I would've saved some of this for you, but Uncle Barky already got to you. But to the GuideLive editors: Really? Nearly 3/4 of the front page, and all of the back - for that? Really?