off the wall

[Mark A. Mandel]

Wilson Gray writes:
        >>>

I assume that you're not familiar with the movie, "The Hook-Up," given
that this is a hip-hop movie about telephones. In fact, the movie's
protagonist uses the phrase, "I got the hook-up," as the slogan for his
business of selling cellular telephones that had "fallen off a truck."

        <<<

Indeed, I am not. Perhaps if you had mentioned it I would have gotten your
point.

        >>>

And weren't we discussing only the fact that the derivation of  "off
the hook" in hip-hop slang is different from the derivation of the
standard English locution "(get) off the hook"? I was, in any case.

        <<<

On this list, as on others I subscribe to, conversation flows in many
directions. It isn't always easy to see, or to guess, which of the possible
or apparent directions of a particular post is the one the writer intended,
and that's assuming that s/he meant only one, which is not a safe
assumption.


-- Mark A. Mandel, Research Administrator
   Information Extraction from the Biomedical Literature
   University of Pennsylvania