[Ads-l] television ads for SALES

[Laurence Horn]

> On Aug 30, 2021, at 2:14 PM, Marc Sacks <msacksg at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Donovan's old song
> 
> On the firefly platform on Sunny Goodge Street
> Violent hash-smoker shook a chocolate machine
> Involved in an eating scene
> 
> seems relevant here. A few decades later it would be an eating event, if he
> could get the rhyme down.
> 
> Marc Sacks

Hmmm.  I just checked the lyrics (to confirm my memory that Donovan employed the nominalization “stonedness”, which I don’t think I’ve encountered elsewhere) and discovered a mondegreen on my part.  I always thought he was referring to a “crazy-colored goddess”, but I see the line was actually something else. This is the first verse, immediately after the part Marc quoted:

Smashing into neon streets in their stonedness
Smearing their eyes on the crazy Kali goddess
Listenin' to sounds of Mingus mellow fantastic
My, my, they sigh
My, my, they sigh

I picked up on the "Mingus mellow fantastic” (a distant relative of mellow yellow?), but not the call-out to Kali. Luckily, She didn’t exact revenge on me.  


> 
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 10:03 AM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: television ads for SALES
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> A "major [sic] motion picture" is now likely to be a "[major] motion
>> picture event."
>> 
>> I also seem to remember "[multi-] part television event.'
>> 
>> JL
>> 
>> On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 5:51 PM Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>> 
>>> One almost never sees/hears an ad on TV for a "sale."  It's always a
>>> "sales event."  I suppose the word "sale" strikes Madison Avenue as
>>> declasse--like a rummage sale or a fire sale--whereas "event" implies
>>> something noteworthy and exceptional.
>>> 
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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