Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 410 of the podcast that never ends.
This week: name change; let’s get to the bottom of this; nervous making; pet guilt; winter is coming; comediennes; Phyllis Diller and her unsupportive husband; Batman villains are all made up; storyboards; low-key tiger; animated movies diss; sexy rodents; Canadianisms; political relief; where would you live; back to schooldays; sandwich travel; defensiveness; swearing in context; confronting Dave’s past; Seventies humour; satire of the sacrosanct; and, finally, cringing at old art.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the Week: What impersonations can you do?
Sub-question: Where you live, is there any regional slang?
We keep mentioning it and here, at last, is the link to some delicious Eggs Dedrick!
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Hi guys. Oddly enough, we don’t have any regional slang here in North Central Washington, but I used to work in Zig Zag Oregon, where they had a few great slang words for tourists…”Touron” which is a portmanteau of “Tourist” and “Moron”, and also they were called “Gapers”, which refers to the fact that tourists walk around with their mouth agape.
I once knew a person from Wisconsin who said that they called tourists from Illinois “FIBS”, which was an acronym for Fucking Illinois Bastards. I’ve been trying to rally our locals into coming up with some derogatory term for tourists, but I guess people here are just too nice.
I used to be able to do a dead-on Roger Rabbit, complete with the flapping air in my cheeks, but age has robbed me of the accuracy I once had for Roger. My runners-up include Jar Jar Binks, Mutley the Dog, George Jetson’s computer, J.Jonah Jameson and Marvin the Martian (David already stole that thunder from me). I have a friend who is a stand-up impersonator and will do YOU, but not in front of you. So you get to hear him impersonate everyone you both know except you if it’s just the two of you in a room. Speaking of impersonators, remember as kids when Rich Little cornered that market? I remember watching his TV Special, “Rich Little’s Robin Hood” where he played all the parts. I was especially pleased because he picked Groucho Marx in the Robin Hood role, here’s a link to jog the ‘ol noggin:
https://youtu.be/Z2cnhuTHtLU
Regional slang? In Texas??!! It’s more of a problem with the “twangy” inflection on words that was the problem when we moved here from Chicago as a kid. My Dad was mostly affected in his attempts to communicate with local co-workers. He thought they were saying “war” when they meant “wire”, “pin” when they meant “pen” and instead of phrasing that you were “going to do something” it was usually substituted with “I’m fixing’ to…..” He learned to adapt over time and settled in. Years later Dad was entertained all over again when the New Jersey plant closed and they all were transferred to Dallas….and Jersey folks didn’t exactly have the same patience with the local twang as my Dad did.
My personal favorite though was when Texas girls back in High School didn’t understand you or something you said. Instead of a simple, “Excuse me?” or “I’m sorry?” this was usually substituted by a hillbilly-like, “Do Whaaaat?” which sucked all of the sexy right out of the goddamned room.
We have three languages in Scotland – English, Scots (which derives largely from the same root as English but is a distinct language and not a dialect), and Gaelic (pronounced gah-lik, not gae-lik) which came from Ireland (where they pronounce it the other way). Plus we have a whole load of varied dialects to season the linguistic stew.
For reasons that escape me, there’s a particularly rich vocabulary for lousy weather and states of extreme drunkenness.
Dreich (the ‘ch’ is like a hard ‘h’, as in ‘Loch Ness’) is probably our best known weather word. A dreich day is cold, damp and grey, there’s cloud everywhere, and rain is always threatening to fall, but never quite does. I once asked a Gaelic-speaking friend what she called ‘dreich’ in her language. She thought it over for a few seconds. ‘Depends which kind of dreich you mean’. This tells you everything you need to know about our west coast weather. Forget 50 words for snow, we have 100 for rainfall.
Haar is a beautiful word to me, both the sound of it and the way it looks on the page. Haar is that sea-borne mist that settles over coastal areas and can stay put for days at a time.
Smir is a light rainfall or drizzle, the kind you might hardly notice at first but can soak you to the skin in seconds.
As to drunkenness, oh so many words to choose. Steamin’… Steamboats… Blootered… Puggled… Minced… Pished… Trollied… Aff yer nut. Usually, these are said with a degree of pride or admiration, depending on whether you’re describing your own experience or someone else’s.
The one I like best, though, is the Glasgow term, ‘moroculous’. To my ears, this carries a sense of happiness and pleasantly altered perception that the others lack.
Outstanding show this week, fellas. Ian, your Phyllis Diller / Joan Rivers bit was priceless.