Millionaire Matchmaker

[Wilson Gray]

On Sat, Nov 6, 2010 at 7:24 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Millionaire Matchmaker
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In the spirit of the Bad Girls Club, I present the following items from
> Bravo's higher-class reality series. Â Shrewd Matchmaker Patti is our first
> speaker:
>
> "David looks like a pasty manorexic who fell out of a Tim Burton movie."
> [Male anorexic.]
>
> "You are a punk! A Brooklyn no-name f****n' punk!" ["No-name" means
> contemptible.]
>
> "If they're not perfect, they're not going to live in your world." [Be fully
> acceptable to you.]
>
> "New York women don't bring the feminine." Â [They don't show or convey it
> prominently - unlike LA women.]
>

That's true on so many levels.

> "Getting a guy like him to get rid of his bromance is the hardest thing."
> [His overly close friendship with his bros.]
>

She should quit while she's ahead. The guys that I've known who'd drop
anything, including time spent with their girlfriends, in order to
give a brother a break have turned out to be serious abusers, like my
old buddy, Earl, who gave me his girlfriend's phone number, so that,
even if he wasn't at home, I could still catch up with him, if I
needed anything. He'd jump into her car and, like Amos & Andy's
friend, Lightnin', he'd "whiz right over."

> "[Prominent millionaires] always attract the girl who's the fame whore."
> [She fawns on and puts out for famous people.]
>
> Here's a Brooklyn Jewish lady, age about 25:
>
> "He looks like a shikse, but he's really a Jew." Â [A gentile guy.]
>

Well, you know. How often does _shegets_ occur in casual conversation?
This is one of the few instances in which the male is of greater
importance than the male. It's for that reason that the English stem
is _hetEro-_ and not _*hetAro_. Older Greek _hetAros_ "male
companion," vs. _hetAIra_ "female companion," > _hetatairos_ "male
companion" > scientific-Latin _ hetAEro-_ > _hetEro-_ .

> And a thirty-year-old, white male Brooklyn millionaire:
>
> "I like to really blow it out, have a good time, get drunk." [He likes to
> "get down."]
>
Nice commentary, Jon!


> "What's your scene when you're not working?" [Your preferences, usual
> activities, "bag" as we once said.]
>

Ditto!

> "I wanna do some sake bombs." Â ["Depth charges" but with sake.]
>
> "We crush it everywhere we go." [Make a big impression.]
>
> "I'm lookin' for a girl with junk in her trunk, Kardashian-style." [Large
> posteriors, from a long-celebrated hip-hop song.]
>

Strictly speaking, the phrase is older than the song. BTW, didn't
_posterior_ once lack a plural, in a case like this?

> "They're my _peoples_ [sic], and I want her to meet them." Â [His bros.]
>

Supports my long-ago claim that "colloquial" BE, even in the North, is
based upon rural-Southern speech patterns. Once upon a time, only hix
from the stix used forms like "peoples" as their primary form.
Nowadays, it's downright hip to talk that way. A bit of
semi-remembered conversation (i.e. I can't recall a specific instance
in which anyone said exactly this, but speech-patterns *like* this are
used all the time):

'Ey, mein! Ah wonts t' aks you a kwurshtun. Did you hear what I said?
I said, " 'Ey, mein! Ah wonts t' aks you a quershtun."

That is to say, "Notice that I'm speaking to you in a manner like unto
that in which 'peoples from out in the country,' our grandparents and
our great-grandparents, speak. Hence, you know that I speak to you
quite seriously, as one black man to another black man, without any
veneer of pswaydo-sophistication. I keeps it real! Therefore, even
though you may suspect that, under other circumstances, I couldn't be
handling the natural truth, please feel free to speak with all candor.
I can handle it."

> Thirtyish gay guy:
>
> "Greenpoint is a really cute area." Â [Pleasant. In the late '70s I heard a
> gay guy say, "It's really a cute day out.']
>
> BONUS SOPHISTICATION INDICATOR:
>
> The show featured a commercial for something expensive whose score included
> a guy crooning, "You got me circling like the moon around the sun!"
>
>
> JL
>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-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

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