Hail poetry
The charming Hank Williams song "Rootie Tootie" begins,
Met my future wife today
And her name is Kathy Mae
Rootie tootie, rootie tootie
Rootie tootie, rootie tootie
Rootie tootie, she's my Sunday gal
In later stanzas the Lonesome Cowboy sings his beloved's praises with more pairs of rhyming or euphonic trochees: "hotsie totsie," "super duper," "upsy daisy," "wicky wacky," "bouncy bouncy" (giggle) and so on.
I've always thought that if I ever perform the song, it will be incumbent upon me to update these with new trochee pairs that reflect our modern times. What I've come up with so far:
multi culti
freeky deeky
must-see TV
Okay, that last one is spondees, not trochees, but you see what I mean. Can you think of more?
Friday, January 30, 2004
Thursday, January 29, 2004
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Worlds collide, or don't
I was in the neighborhood, so last night I stopped by Copps supermarket on S. Park St. for a little grocery shopping. Park St., for those of you who don't know, runs the length of Madison's South Side, where many of our city's Latinos live.
I was wryly amused to note that this particular Copps now has two sections of Mexican food. One, near the canned tomatoes and green beans, has the Tex-Mex brands familiar to American supermarket shoppers for at least a generation or two: El Paso, La Preferida.
The other section is altogether harder to find. It's on the opposite side of the store, stuck on the blunt end of an aisle somewhere between the Lysol and the bottled water. This section has things that, I imagine, recent arrivals to Madison remember fondly from home, things like Jarritos soda and canned menudo. There also are tr�s chic glass bottles of Coca-Cola, imported from Mexico; I paused over these but, at $1.50 per, decided to forego them this time.
I was in the neighborhood, so last night I stopped by Copps supermarket on S. Park St. for a little grocery shopping. Park St., for those of you who don't know, runs the length of Madison's South Side, where many of our city's Latinos live.
I was wryly amused to note that this particular Copps now has two sections of Mexican food. One, near the canned tomatoes and green beans, has the Tex-Mex brands familiar to American supermarket shoppers for at least a generation or two: El Paso, La Preferida.
The other section is altogether harder to find. It's on the opposite side of the store, stuck on the blunt end of an aisle somewhere between the Lysol and the bottled water. This section has things that, I imagine, recent arrivals to Madison remember fondly from home, things like Jarritos soda and canned menudo. There also are tr�s chic glass bottles of Coca-Cola, imported from Mexico; I paused over these but, at $1.50 per, decided to forego them this time.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Never mind, maybe
Last Friday I raved about the episode I caught of "Two And A Half Men," the new CBS sitcom starring Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer. And I hoped the show would continue to be strong.
Well, I hoped wrong. Perhaps. The episode I saw last night was strictly boilerplate mediocre sitcom shtick, with a teleplay that did not fail to omit a good joke when a so-so one would do. Oh well.
Last Friday I raved about the episode I caught of "Two And A Half Men," the new CBS sitcom starring Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer. And I hoped the show would continue to be strong.
Well, I hoped wrong. Perhaps. The episode I saw last night was strictly boilerplate mediocre sitcom shtick, with a teleplay that did not fail to omit a good joke when a so-so one would do. Oh well.
Monday, January 26, 2004
Because I'm a geek, that's why
Here are the fronts and backs of my collection of arcade tokens from the early 1980s. I used to have many more, but this is what's left. The O'Hare token says 1992 not because it's from that year (it's more likely from around 1983), but because Chicago at one time was supposed to have a world's fair in 1992, back when American cities still had world's fairs.
Here are the fronts and backs of my collection of arcade tokens from the early 1980s. I used to have many more, but this is what's left. The O'Hare token says 1992 not because it's from that year (it's more likely from around 1983), but because Chicago at one time was supposed to have a world's fair in 1992, back when American cities still had world's fairs.
Hey hey, we're the Monkees
John Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 may have been historic and all that, but I have a theory: if he grows that glorious shag back, he may successfully woo a few votes in the hotly contested trucker-cap segment.
John Kerry's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 may have been historic and all that, but I have a theory: if he grows that glorious shag back, he may successfully woo a few votes in the hotly contested trucker-cap segment.
�Soy caliente?
If you wondered, my AIM handle, ChicaCalienteTX, is a tribute to "Caliente," the sex-drenched dance party that airs on Univision, the Spanish-language TV network.
We don't get Univision--we don't get any Spanish-language television over the airwaves in our cable-free household, and this kind of surprises me--so I no longer watch "Caliente." But time was that most Saturday afternoons found me in my Chicago apartment, probably hung over, and probably watching "Caliente," which features nearly naked boys and girls who dance and writhe on a beach in a different tropical locale each week. Sometimes they dance around a pool.
I may not have understood the language, but I understood plenty.
Aside from the dance sequences, "Caliente" features breakaway segments that typically involve either lame sketch comedy (lame sketch comedy is indeed lame in any language) or a spotlight on some model, who cavorts by the sea and chitchats about this and that. The name of the latter feature is, yes, Chica Caliente.
If you wondered, my AIM handle, ChicaCalienteTX, is a tribute to "Caliente," the sex-drenched dance party that airs on Univision, the Spanish-language TV network.
We don't get Univision--we don't get any Spanish-language television over the airwaves in our cable-free household, and this kind of surprises me--so I no longer watch "Caliente." But time was that most Saturday afternoons found me in my Chicago apartment, probably hung over, and probably watching "Caliente," which features nearly naked boys and girls who dance and writhe on a beach in a different tropical locale each week. Sometimes they dance around a pool.
I may not have understood the language, but I understood plenty.
Aside from the dance sequences, "Caliente" features breakaway segments that typically involve either lame sketch comedy (lame sketch comedy is indeed lame in any language) or a spotlight on some model, who cavorts by the sea and chitchats about this and that. The name of the latter feature is, yes, Chica Caliente.
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