off the wall

[Wilson Gray]

Had I been able to predict the kind of response that my message would
elicit from you, I would have made a greater effort to clarify my
remarks. Unfortunately, I could not. Therefore, I ask only that you
accept my sincerest apologies. I regret the error.
On the other hand, I found your remarks re telephony quite informative.

-Wilson Gray

On Jun 2, 2004, at 8:12 AM, Mark A. Mandel wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: off the wall
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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
>