Heard on The Judges: neither gone nor forgotten
Wilson Gray
hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Oct 28 15:18:39 UTC 2008
Judge Greg:
"Damn, man! You laid to the bone! Step out from behind that lectern
and let me smoke them kicks over! I know you must be wearing some kind
of skin!" [...] "Yeah, that's what I thought! Man, you *wearing* them
lizards!"
Defendant:
"Thank you, your honor! They _*Stacy-Adams*_!"
For those who haven't read or have forgotten earlier posts:
_laid_ "sharply-dressed"
_ to the bone_ roughly, "[so sharply dressed that] the sharpness is
more than skin-deep; rather, it pierces to the bone"
_smoke over NP / smoke NP over_ "look at"
_skin_ in this case, shoes made from some exotic or unusual form of leather
SUBJ _*wearing*_ that / them OBJ! roughly: "SUBJ knows how to accessorize!"
_Stacy-Adams_ the brand-name of a shoe company
Finally, the point: in an earlier post, I noted that, when I lived in
Saint Louis and in Los Angeles during the '40's, '50's, and '60's,
though other brands of shoes - Florsheims, Allen-Edmonds, Whitehouse &
Hardy, Johnston & Murphy (my personal choice) - were hip, the brand of
brands was Stacy-Adams, nicknamed "States." Given that our speaker
above is moved to brag that his shoes are not only "skins," but that
they are also _*Stacy-Adams*_ shows that, after a half-century,
Stacy-Adams has retained its cachet as the Air Jordans of dress shoes.
Or, given the timeline, perhaps I should say that Air Jordans are the
Stacy-Adams of tennis shoes.
-Wilson
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list