My Favorite Things Michigan

If you've been following this as casually as I've been updating it, you may or may not know that I'm a huge admirer of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabbarok's economics blog Marginal Revolution. If not, I recommend you check it out--and don't be fooled by the "economics blog" description--Tyler and Alex both have the ability to boil down the many complexities of economics into general, effective, everyday language.

Among the vast and varied number of subjects discussed, one of the best is "My Favorite Things..." a tag used by the two that covers the cultural highlights of a particular city, state, or country. And since neither of the two has gotten around to covering Michigan, my beloved home state, I figured I'd offer my own.

Favorite food: Gotta go with the obvious: Farmer's Home Cheeseburger. Behind that, Mackinac Island Fudge is overrated but still very tasty (it is fudge). There's also the pasties, which get better the farther north you are. The vineyards around the 45th parallel make a big deal about their wine, and some of it is excellent. I've found that any winery that also makes cheese can be relied on for delivering a good white.


City: Saginaw is a shell of its former self, and of the Tri-City area, I prefer Midland. Grand Rapids is nice, at least to visit, the same goes for Traverse City, and, in my experience, all of the UP. Detroit and Ann Arbor are nice, too, at least the, um, nice parts of them. While everyone focuses on the Detroit area, though, I think some of the best parts are farther north--anywhere near water is a plus.


Lake: Duh.


Author: There's a lot of local mystery writers based in the upper Lower Peninsula who've garnered much acclaim, but I'm ignorant of their work; so here's the big ones: I don't think anyone reads Theodore Roethke unless at gunpoint. I don't like Mitch Albom, and Elmore Leonard was born in Louisiana. Don't know much Joyce Carol Oates but would like to. Jeffrey Eugenides is a Nobel-Prize winner, but I didin't care much for Middlesex. Edna Ferber I haven't read. I think I'm biased against my home state. Yikes! My picks are Chris van Allsburg (born in Grand Rapids) and, though she was born in Canada, I can't not mention Isabel Patterson.


Novels: Need I mention the Michigan connection to the Nick Adams stories? The Time Traveler's Wife is set in South Haven, though I haven't read it (the book, that is, not South Haven, though I don't suppose I've "read" that either), and many of Elmore Leonard's novels take place in Michigan. Anatomy of a Murder is still a fun read.


Movie, set in: My personal favorite film, Anatomy of a Murder. I really liked Gran Torino and have a very, very soft spot for Street Boss. Never got into Grosse Pointe Blank. Beverley Hills Cop deserves mention, but the best parts take place in California. The reverse is true of Hardcore and True Romance. Tucker: The Man and His Dream is very underrated.


Director: This is a whollop of trivia. Did you know Francis Ford Coppola, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Roger Corman were all born in Detroit? Add to the natives as Sam Raimi, McG, and, of course, Michael Moore (I don't like his politics, but Roger & Me is a fantastic look at small-town life, and Moore at least is willing to put his money where his mouth is). Also, Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, also the creator of Freaks and Geeks, and he directed a plethora of Office [U.S.] episodes, Arrested Development episodes, Weeds and Parks and Recreation) was born in Royal Oak. Paul Schrader, author of Scorsese's best films Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ and director of the film Hardcore, whose scene of George C. Scott breaking down and saying "No" has become an Internet sensation) was from Grand Rapids. But the award should go to Robert Flaherty, director of Nanook of the North -- makes sense for a Yooper born in Iron Mountain.


Television program, set in: Freak and Geeks


Actor: Bruce Campbell is not really that funny on his own. Ed McMahon I appreciate more for his inspiring Hank Kingsley. Taylor Lautner, Bob Eubanks, Casey Kasem, Dave Coulier, and Tim Allen are all rote (Grand Rapids, Detroit, Flint, St. Clair Shores, and Birmingham, respectively). Give me Selma Blair in Hellboy (Southfield), Sandra Bernhard -- Season 6 of Roseanne -- (Flint) -- but, most of all, Kristen Bell in Veronica Mars. Also have Judge Mathis and Jeff Daniels, the latter of whom is a serious contender. Escanaba in da Moonlight is pretty fun.


Musician: I'm not a huge Stevie Wonder fan, but he deserves a nod. There's also, of course, Motown, the Four Tops and The Temptations being some obvious, if not generic, choices. I love the best bits of Eminem and Madonna, as well as Iggy Pop and Sufjan Stevens. And we can't forget Bill Haley. But I think Al Green probably takes it.


Artist: Irving Couse is well known but it seems only within his own circles. He reminds me of Gerome.


Gamer: Sid Meier was born in Detroit. Civ 2 is his masterpiece.


Economist: I'm at a loss here. Though Robert Shiller was born in Detroit.


Entrepreneur: Duh. Though Herbert Doan was a wonderful and very, very intelligent man. Will Kellogg deserves mention, too.


The bottom line: When I think of cuisine I think of the UP, but the fudge and pasties don't do much for me. Michigan is a game wonderland, yet it's never embraced that fact. Pheasant, grouse, and venison should be key ingredients in the food, but they're ignored.  It seems the best people who came out of Michigan left it pretty soon, my self, my sister, my girlfriend, and one of my closest friends included. Nevertheless, if you go by the people organically grown, Michigan may be one of the greatest states, culturally speaking, out there. Charles Lindbergh (born in Detroit) belongs somewhere, too. Must be something in the waters.

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majority rules pronunciation

Russ Roberts interviews Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales:

It was also interesting to hear him pronounce the name of the web site. He calls it wi-key-pedia. I (and I think most everyone else) calls it wi--kuh-pedia. Hayek would be the first to point out that he cannot choose what it is called--the pronounciation emerges without being under anyone's control.

The full interview is here. The full post is here.

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the "aw shucks" smile

I watched P.S., I Love You Sunday night. The premise is Hilary Swank's husband dies, and, unbeknownst to her, he arranged to have a series of letters sent to her after his death.

That's pretty creepy, but what really bothered me was that every guy had that damned "Aw, Shucks" smile plastered on his face.

You know the one: head bowed, eyes looking up, grin toothy, and eyebrows playfully arched. It's the kind of look a lounge singer gives a hostile audience or conman gives his mark, but for some reason it's become very popular among handsome, dark-haired, scruffy, brogue-ish men. Bonus points if the guy's wearing jeans and a t-shirt and plays the guitar.

The idea behind it is to convey humility, but really it just makes everyone around the person wonder what the Hell he's up to.

Real men, like Harrison Ford or Batman or Judge Joe Brown, wouldn't be caught dead wearing it. In fact, the only guy who's ever flashed it without being asked to hand in his man card was George C. Scott in The Hustler...and he died years later.

So I can't recommend the movie.

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"tie one off" meaning

Despite the phrases' prepositions being the opposite of each other, "tie one off" seems to be synonymous with "tie one on," which the Urban Dictionary defines as:

• To get drunk or start drinking before the hang over from last night has worn off.
  
  Thus having something to "tie onto"
  
  To tie one drinking session to another before the effects/consequences of the last have expired.

And while we're quoting, did you know the phrase "tired and emotional" is euphemistic for "drunk"?

"Tired and emotional" is a chiefly British, Irish or Australian euphemism for "drunk". It was popularised by the British satirical magazine Private Eye in 1967 after being used in a spoof diplomatic memo to describe the state of Labour Cabinet minister George Brown, but is now used as a stock phrase: British slander and libel law makes it unwise ever to directly refer to someone as being drunk unless it has been scientifically proven (e.g. through a breathalyser test). The Guardian describes it as having joined the "phrases that are part of every journalist's vocabulary". Because of this widespread interpretation, one source cautions professional British journalists against its use as "even if the journalist ... meant it literally", it could be considered defamatory.

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thank-you notes

Christmas is nice, but we've never been comfortable writing all the "Thank-you" notes, which has been a tradition in our family at least as long as Christmas itself.

When we were younger they were especially painful because we were expected to write them if not the moment we unwrapped the gift, impossibly shortly thereafter. This tended to stink for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that instead of enjoying the gift, we had to trudge down to the basement and spend the next few hours before we left for Grandma's thanking whoever gave it to us.

It was dishonest, too. How could we describe our appreciation for something we hadn't even used yet? If we said we enjoyed the gift, we were liars; if we didn’t, we risked offending our benefactor.

And what if the gift were really crappy? Insincere gratitude led your gifter to keep on giving similarly crappy gifts. And what if there were something wrong with the gift? You wouldn’t pay for a car you hadn’t test-driven; if your gift had a gas leak or a fault in the brake line, you’d look like an idiot if you thanked someone for it.

Thank-you notes were also mentally exhausting: When you're between five and 12 years old, your range of prose -- especially at lying about how you absolutely adore something that's spent only a few seconds in your hands -- is excruciatingly limited. And Jesus didn’t do us any favors either, being born the week after our birthday, so by the time Christmas rolled around we’d already used up all our A-material writing birthday thank-yous.

But most of all, they were cruel. They were cruel because it's cruel to tease children with just opening a present and not giving them the chance to play with whatever was inside -– children who had stayed up all night, quivering like Michael J. Fox at the prospect of playing with their Christmas toys; children who, for the past several months, had been anticipating the moment they’d be holding that one great toy in their hands ever since they saw it in the toystore window; children who Christmas presents are for -– what cruel heart would you have to snatch their toys up, thrust a pen and stationary into their trembling hands, and point to the basement?

Now it’s nice to be appreciated, but this trend of a quick turnaround for thank-you notes –- if not the trend of notes themselves -- is deeply flawed. The purpose of gift-giving, at least according to all those strange and terrible Holiday specials and claynimations, is as a gesture of good will. But that friendly pat on the head quickly becomes a vicious backhand to the testicles when every gift comes with a thank-you-note invoice.

And as we said, it’s specious: The kid doesn’t know yet whether he actually likes the gift or not; as a gifter, we’d much rather hear his honest opinion than some slapdash response -– not just because we appreciate honesty, but what kind of person would we be if we habitually went around buying presents for dishonest children? Likewise that feedback could ensure our future purchase of gifts the child would truly appreciate.

Now a critic may say that thank-you notes are written for the thought, rather than the gift. That may be well-intended, but it's still a cretinous argument.

For one, it’s not the thought that counts – we think about how attractive Patricia Heaton is every time we watch Everybody Loves Raymond, but we doubt she appreciates our doing so. Just thinking about someone doesn't impress them, and if you don't believe us, see your loved ones' reactions when you tell them that this year, instead of getting them a gift, you spent 30 minutes "thinking" about them.

People don't like thinking; they like action! Our friend Bob, for example, collects wooden pigs from South America, and he'd appreciate a wooden pig we went all the way to Guatemala to buy rather than the more expensive Columbian one we picked up at the local wooden pig depot. Wedding rings are useless trinkets, but we pay big heaping gobs of cash for them and willingly put our limbs at risk when they fall down the garbage disposal. Obviously what really counts in a gift is how much our loved ones are willing to suffer for us.

Therefore, we owe it to ourselves to at least sample the source of their anguish, which is why we’ve resolved to not send a thank-you note for any gift until we've read some of it, watched some of it, cashed some of it, tasted some of it, or made some other similarly appropriate use of it. And just as they suffered acquiring the gift, we’d like to suffer in composing a creative thank-you note -- specifically, thank-you haikus, or, as we call them, "Thainkyus."

So far, we’ve found this approach successful, and we're happier for doing it -- which presumably was many of our gifters' intent. It’s honest, pleasing, and fun –- and we suggest you try it for yourself.

You can thank us later.

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What the Hell's in a Name?

Le-a--how do you pronounce it?

Leah?

Lay - a?

How about "Ledasha"?

This child attends a school in Livingston Parish, LA. Her mother is irate because everyone is getting her name wrong. When the mother was asked about the pronunciation of the name, she said, "the dash don't be silent."

Reason contrasts the most popular child names of 1950 with 2007 and tosses in a bizarre baby-name anecdote:

My favorite, probably misheard, baby name: In the late 1990s, in a park in Huntsville, Texas I swear I heard a mother call her son Darvon. Given that Huntsville is a prison town (indeed, a death-chamber town) filled with a large substance-abuse community, that made some sense to me.

Here are two of our bizarre-name anecdotes:

1) A friend was walking the streets of Chicago when he came upon a mother and her unruly kid. Fed up, the mother yelled at her daughter, "Spatula! I got two words for you: Be-HAVE!"

2) Another friend, also a Chicago-ite, teaches in the rough part of town. With the new school year beginning, she was calling out the names on the roster when she came to one pronounced "Absidee," -- spelled "A-B-C-D-E."

Anyone reading this have any to contribute?

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Dream On

Why do people hang dreamcatchers from their rear-view mirrors? To us that connotes one of two things:

Either

1) The person is sleeping in their car.

Or

2) The person does not know what a dreamcatcher is for.

Assuming it's the former, then either

1) The person sleeps while driving.

Or

2) The person lives in their car.

We don't know why anyone would want to flaunt 1), and 2) would seem to indicate that the person is a bum--and one with a very odd value scale at that.

If the person simply doesn't know what a dreamcatcher is for, well, why buy one? And really: Who doesn't know what a dreamcatcher's for? The definition's in the freakin' name!

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Stiff One-Upper Lip

We've spent a lot of time in England, and when you do, you can't help but pick up the merry slang and laugh at someone willing to fight to the death at being called something so innocent-sounding as Minger.

But one thing we noticed about the slang, really the whole terminology, is that it tries to one-up us. What we mean is that whenever the British and the Americans have two different terms to describe the same thing, The British word always has one more syllable than the American word. For example, your typical American will say acclimate while your Brit says acclimatize. In the U.S. it's airplane, in the UK, aeroplane. American terms as simple as baby carriage become monsters such as perambulator; vacationers mutate into holidaymakers; and we don't even know how to pronounce their word for Tylenol: para-SET-a-mol? paraKEET-a-mol? pare-a-CAMel? No matter how you say it, it sounds like some animal's getting hurt.

They're even so petty as to discard the soft and call it a fizzy drink, and even their obscure '30s-cartoonist pop-culture references have to one-up ours: We say Rube Goldberg machine, they say Heath Robinson contraption.

Nevertheless, the revelation of Britain's syllabic one-up-manship should come as no surprise--they've been at this sort of thing for quite a while now, as evidenced by their flagrant inclusion and overuse of the vowel U in every word: colour, honour, flouur, Tuupauc Shaukuuruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu, and so on.

"But We!" You're probably saying, "What about lifts and crisps and cheers and all that? Those words are all one syllable!"

"No they're not!" We write back...sharply...because if you've ever heard any Brit pronounce a monosyllabic, you'll immediately pick up on a slight aspiration following each word--Crisps-suh, Lifts-suh, Cheers-suh--much in the manner of how our Southern Baptists have turned the name Jesus into a rather violent-sounding three-syllable word: JE-SUS-SUH. It's subtle, but it's there.

Now, whatever reasons they may have for trying to top us, well we don't have an answer--so in lieu of that, here's some more ridiculous British terms and phrases and their American equivalents, courtesy of Wikipedia.org:

UK: plimsoll
U.S.: sneaker

UK: Glandular fever
U.S.: mono

UK: builder's cleavage
U.S.: plumber's butt

UK: courgette
U.S.: zucchini

UK: toffee-nosed
U.S.: stuck up

UK: through-pennies
U.S.: breasts

UK: Oi!
U.S.: ???

UK: lollipop man
U.S.: crossing guard

UK: Belisha beacon
U.S.: orange ball containing a flashing light mounted on a post at each end of a zebra crossing. (Even after reading the definition, we're still not sure what the Hell this means.)

UK: compulsory purchase
U.S.: eminent domain

UK:building society
U.S.: savings and loan

UK: Cor blimey!
U.S.: Golly!

UK: Fancy a snog and slash from a red gaffer, love?
U.S.: Would you care to engage in excessive kissing followed by urination with an old Manchester United fan, darling?

UK: Bob's your uncle! (Sometimes extended to Robert's your mother's brother!)
U.S.: Looks like we're related! Good thing we didn't snog!

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A great reminder of how words can often fail us. We don't think it's an inherently bad thing.

HT to Megan McArdle

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Copywrong

We [Pointing to a pull quote in a recent article]: Should “X-ray” be capitalized?

Boss2: I always capitalize it when it’s a noun; lowercase when it’s a verb.

We: Ah, like “Xerox”: Named after a company, but lowercased when it’s a verb.

Boss2: Yeah, like “Thermos.”

We: “Thermos” is a verb?

Boss2: No, but it’s been in usage for so long that it’s always spelled lowercase. It refers to a vacuum-sealed jug.

We: Ah. So how long will it take “Googled it” and “Photoshopped it” to become lowercase verbs?

Who doesn't enjoy verbing words? Especially when the verbed nouns are something you especially enjoy using, such as Google or Photoshop--one would think it's very high praise.

Which is why we were surprised to read that many companies are against verbualizing their products. Take, for example, this entry on Wikipedia.org's page on Xerox:

"...the company does not condone such uses of its trademark, and is particularly concerned about the ongoing use of Xerox as a verb as this places the trademark in danger of being declared a generic word by the courts. The company is engaged in an ongoing advertising and media campaign to convince the public that Xerox should not be used as a verb."

Google isn't happy with their name being verbed either:

"Search engine giant Google, known for its mantra "don't be evil", has fired off a series of legal letters to media organisations, warning them against using its name as a verb. "

"In June, Google won a place in the Oxford English Dictionary, while "to google", with a lower case "g", was included last month in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, America's leading reference book." --The Independent

Adobe even has its own page on regarding the proper and improper uses of "photoshopped."

On the one hand, it must be nice to have such brand recognition; on the other, too much popularity can kill the brand?

Copyrights can have some pretty bizarre consequences. No one, save, maybe, an employee of Adobe Systems or some moron who believes it his civic duty, is going to stop using "photoshopped," so campaigning for everyone to do so seems pretty futile. What would everyone gain? If it were more convenient to say, "The image was enhanced using Adobe® Photoshop® software" instead of, "The image was photoshopped," people would be saying the former. (And how would one say, "®"?) And certainly no one is going to do so purely out of goodwill--when has the mass ever felt charitable toward a powerful corporation?

Dually interesting is how some brands have tried to avoid genericide--one response is coining their own verbs to describe an action performed by/with the brand-named product. We're not sure how successful this method of advertising has been (what do you do if someone steals your verb?), but we do recall an example of it being the "Are you 'jellin''?" ads put out by that shoe (inner-sole?) company.

Like it or not, language is going to win this battle. No corporation has the resources to police the use of their brand names. For Heaven's sake, when was the last time (or ever time) someone was busted for recording a television show? And speaking is much easier than fiddling with the VCR.

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10,000 Myriads

Are we crazy, or has "myriad" been resurrected as the go-to faux-sophisticate buzzword? You know, smart-sounding words that stupid people use to make themselves sound, you know, smart. Like "proactive" and "paradigm" were years ago.

When we first noticed people using the term, it was a noun: "A myriad of issues plagues the Middle East," "Single mothers not only face the myriad of concerns all parents must face, but also a myriad of others" "The tasks entailed with embalming a small child are no small myriad."

Now it's more popular as an adjective: "Myriad issues plague the Middle East," "Single mothers not only face the myriad concerns all parents must face, but also myriad others," "The myriad tasks entailed with finding a small child to embalm."

We view this trend favorably, as it's more concise to say "myriad x" than "a myriad of x," but we wonder how much further "myriad" will develop. Will it mutate into a verb? Will people tire of its use and leave it to languish?

Our guess is that will follow "decimate": Once it came into popular use, it became cooler to get all etymological in people's faces. In decimate's case this meant pointing out that "decimate" means "reduce by one tenth"; with myriad we should expect a lot of smart-alecks sneering, "Oh? Exactly ten thousand issues plague the Middle East?"

It's a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad word.

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