I’ve been studying Latin for a really long time. So I’ve seen lots of people screw it up in various ways when they try to get cutesy and clever and insert Latin into their English sentences. One of the things people screw up all the time is forming the plurals of Latin nouns which have passed into English usage. There’s probably a dozen different rules for forming Latin plurals, but people will think everything just ends in i. Those people would be wrong. Continue reading ‘incorrect latin plurals’
Monthly Archive for January, 2010
I’ve been asking people who they thought was the MVP of last night’s Saints win. Walking out of the Dome, my parents were uncertain. My friends at school opted for Drew Brees—3 TDs, no picks, a QB rating over 100—and Tracy Porter—who forced a fumble and made the crucial interception late in the game to keep the Vikes from having a chance at a long field goal attempt to win the game. My facebook friends chimed in with a number of other suggestions: Vilma, for a forced fumble, fumble recovery, and interception; Hartley, for the game-clincher; Pierre Thomas, with 99 yards from scrimmage, two TDs, and a crucial 40-yard kickoff return in overtime when he filled in for the injured Courtney Roby; and the entire d-line for the pressuring Favre. If I had to pick one of those guys, I’d probably go with Pierre Thomas or Jonathan Vilma. Brees wasn’t as accurate as he usually is—and I give the Vikings defensive line a great deal of credit for that. They didn’t sack him, but they kept him uncomfortable. Porter was picked on and gave up a pass interference penalty in the end zone. But there’s one guy who stood out above all the rest on a day when the Vikings outgained the Saints by a huge margin. One person tipped him as an “unsung hero,” then misspelled his name. That man? Thomas Morstead. He is, without a doubt, the MVP of the Saints’ victory. And though he may be considered an “unsung hero,” in this post I will sing of legs and the man. Continue reading ‘not giving Morstead enough credit’
There was much joy in New Orleans last night. The city’s beloved and long-beleaguered football team, the Saints, made history by reaching their first ever Super Bowl. After a giddy ride home through streets filled with cars and buses blaring their horns in celebration, past sidewalks crowded with revelers standing in their pickup trucks, past people waving and screaming from their doorways, I turned on the TV to see what the national media had to say about the game. The one thing they talked about most? Brett Favre! How on earth does the losing quarterback get so much airtime? Well, because he’s an attention whore who has the media eating out of his hand, hanging on his every word, and fawning over his every move. This had been pissing me off for a while, but last night was the last straw. Continue reading ‘the media’s brett favre obsession’
Think back, for a moment, to your 4th grade music class, when you learned to play the recorder. Yeah, it was a colossal waste of time. But you probably learned “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and “F-A-C-E.” Those are the notes of the treble clef. Pretty easy to remember, right? But, as you probably realized, it takes a lot of practice to get used to it, and most people probably gave up on that stupid interest and lost any interest in playing music. But there are certainly a great many music-literate musicians and singers out there, and they know that it takes time to learn something like this. And it turns out that there’s a whole host of different clefs. Any clef (there’s actually a whole bunch of them) takes some time to learn. Continue reading ‘the bass clef’
The other night I went out for a post-rehearsal bite to eat with some of my fellow Footloose cast members.* We stopped at City Diner, which seemed like a pretty decent place for the most part. It’s on the I-10 Service Road by Causeway, next to the LaQuinta, where Denny’s used to be. And given the location, it’s only natural that it serves up lots of the diner fare, albeit with a lot of New Orleans twists. One of my friends had shrimp remoulade(!) and liked a lot. Another had some onion rings; I tried one and it was quite good. I myself had pancakes, and they were fine. (Not as good as IHOP’s, I suppose, but not bad.) But that wasn’t the problem. Continue reading ‘restaurants that serve fake chocolate milk’
Not too long ago a TV show premiered, and within a few hours my facebook news feed was filled with people expressing their love for this television sensation. What show? Jersey Shore, of course. So after a while I got around to checking it out, and I made it through about an hour and a half before I had to turn it off. Otherwise I’d probably have thrown something through my TV. It was deplorable on about a thousand different levels. Continue reading ‘jersey shore’
Not too long ago, facebook came up with the idea of fan pages. People can follow their favorite bands or sports teams or movie stars. Good idea, right? Well, people decided to create fan pages for lots of other things. Most of which are completely and utterly pointless. People think up some observational humor, find a semi-related picture, and then hope it goes viral. But even if it does, what the hell do these people get out of it? Continue reading ‘stupid facebook fan pages’
Democracy may be the best political system we have, but the notion of majority rule has often failed miserably when applied to various other subjects—for example, reality TV. With American Idol kicking off its new season this week, I’d like to look back at the travesty that was last year’s voting. How on earth did Adam Lambert lose? Continue reading ‘adam lambert’s loss’
Since my post on suburb bashing drew lots of attention, I figured I’d return to a topic I’d said I would cover: bashing New Orleans residents who aren’t natives. This strikes me as downright inhospitable. Continue reading ‘bashing New Orleans transplants’
Life was tough in the old days. To learn something new, you’d have to—gasp!—read a book! So you’d have to actually have the book with you, open it up, and find the information you needed. The last two steps were easy enough, but the first was a doozy. You might have to go to the library or something. These days, though, you can find pretty much any imaginable fact right away. You should never have to ask a stupid question ever again when you’re at you’re computer. And if you have an iPhone or Blackberry or whatever, you’ve got the Internet with you all the time. So you should NEVER have to ask a stupid question. You simply go to google, type in some information about your question, and presto, you’ve got your answer. Continue reading ‘stupid questions’