Languages in LA

It’s taken me two years to get used to this one. My students say it all the time. It seems to mean “Wow, I’m an idiot, aren’t I? Ha ha ha!” I base this on the situations in which “Oh yeah, huh?” crops up in my classroom.

 
Situation 1. (This happens about six times a day.)

Student: Miss, it’s hot in here!! I’m hot, can’t you turn on the air conditioning?

 Me: No. I am blue with cold. Look at my goosebumps. Feel the icy, corpselike grasp of my numb and deadened fingers. I can see my breath. We are not turning on the air conditioning.

 Student: But MISS!! I’m HOT!!

 Me: Yes, you are hot. You are wearing a contraband black shirt with Tupac Shakur’s face on it, which you are covering up with a white shirt to conceal the fact that you are not in proper uniform. Over those two shirts you have your collared uniform shirt. Over that you have a blue zip-up hoodie. Over that you have a denim jacket with your little gangster tagging name spraypainted on the back so that everyone who sees you knows that you are the little monster who vandalized the side of the library last weekend. You are wearing five layers of clothing. Of course you are hot. Why don’t you take off your jacket and hoodie?

 Student: …Oh yeah, huh?

Situation 2: This happens about 20 times a day.
 

Student: MISS!!!!! I can’t find my pencil!!

 Me: On the floor behind you.

 Student: Oh yeah, huh?

Kids this age baffle me, but I am happy they have stumbled upon a phrase that they manifestly will need to employ many, many times over the next couple years, before they leave this brain-addled stage of life and blossom into real people.

I guess this is officially a model-word now. After Tyra Banks appropriated it for America’s Next Top Anorexic, it seemed like every photoshoot featured at least one “fierce” photo of a girl narrowing her eyes. Bad enough, yes.

But now, on Sunset Blvd, is an Ambercrombie & Fitch billboard featuring a naked, headless male torso placed before a rather tame but uninhabited landscape that looks vaguely like summer in Alaska. Next to the torso is the word “Fierce.”

What it is that’s fierce on that billboard, I’m not sure. We can’t see the guy’s eyes so we don’t know if he’s got them narrowed threateningly or not. The landscape certainly isn’t fierce; the mountain is the lowest, most gentle-sloped shape you can offer and still call it a mountain. And unless you have some sort of phobic reaction to pine trees, it’s simply not that alarming.

But it says Fierce, nonetheless.

This perfectly serviceable word is on its way to an ignominious end, and it’s a pity because it’s a very specific and descriptive word. It’s more dangerous than simply wild, more refined than savage… but if it keeps getting applied to people who live on diet pills and have no discernable function in the world but displaying clothing and demonstrating the most elegant way to exit a limo, the word in is trouble.

It’s already difficult to use the word without irony, and soon even those who despoiled it will shy away from it as it becomes a cliché. It’s headed for the same scrapeheap as nice. Maybe they’ll team up and a new saying will emerge: “Oh I love those boots! They’re nice and fierce!” (Which will mean spike-heels and any construction featuring leather or feather.) Word death isn’t pretty, is it?

I have noticed an odd habit amongst my students here in Los Angeles: they use the word racism to apply to actions and attitudes that have nothing to do with race. It’s basically a word they hurl whenever they wish to complain or comment on anything that they perceive as ill-treatment. 

When I ask for two volunteers to hand out books, 12 year olds will nearly jerk their arms out of the socket waving them in the air in a desperate bid for my attention. Naturally, not everyone can be chosen. But I have had several little boys exclaim, when I failed to chose them, “That’s RACIST!” 

The first time one said this, I was baffled. Since the majority of my students are Hispanic, and I had chosen two Hispanic volunteers to pass out the books, I said, “How was that racist?” 

Stoutly, the boy replied, “You never pick ME!” I mulled over this for a while. Then, as we were reading Flowers For Algernon, we came across the scene where Charlie’s co-workers mock him because he is mentally retarded. 

“Oh, that’s messed up,” said one girl, “That’s racist!” 

Then I understood: their concept of racism is a little shaky. Particularly given that they don’t hesitate to harass foreign students. (It took me several days to convince one boy that chanting “Ming wong dong! Ming wong dong!” to the pretty little Thai girl in the corner was an abysmal way to get her attention.) 

Even their concept of race seems incomplete. Upon seeing a scene from Gone With the Wind, one student noted the close-up of Scarlett’s tear-filled blue eyes. Suddenly he turned, looked at my blue eyes, and blurted with sudden comprehension, “Miss are you WHITE??” 

I still don’t know what he had thought I was up till that moment. I’m afraid to ask.

I am getting ready to leave my dusty old apartment over the 101 for a shiny new one in a quiet neighborhood in West Hollywood. As can be imagined, I am vibrating with impatience. I found myself, as I cleaned up the old place, singing a song I learned in high school choir class.

The song is an old Negro spiritual, although you aren’t supposed to say Negro anymore so I don’t know what they are calling such things today. Indeed, I think you aren’t even supposed to say they anymore. It’s undoubtedly next on the list of no-no’s now that we are afraid to say you people to anyone unless they’re white.

Anyway, I was remembering as I sang, how my choir teacher, Mr. Highland, instructed us to sing it as if we were black. Well, he didn’t say it that way. He said, “Don’t sing soon I will be done with the troubles of the world, that’s how you would sing it. But you have to sing it how THEY would sing it,” (already you can imagine the trouble he’d get in today.)

“Like this,” he sang, “Soon Ah will be done wid de troubles ob de worl’… de troubles ob de worl… de troubles ob de worl’….”

I know he meant no harm. He was ardently liberal and was undoubtedly hoping to pay tribute to a tradition. Nowadays, he’d be accused of mocking and blackface, and would be… well, I suppose nothing would happen to him but a stern talking to and a tearful public apology. Then Bill O’Reilly would say something about the matter and a parody of the whole thing would turn up on YouTube and that would be it.

Still, it made me feel old to be singing in my echoing, empty apartment, soon Ah will be done wid de troubles ob de worl’, and to know my adolescence was another era.

I learned a new way to say “drunk” today! My new landlady, who was born in Cuba but raised in West Hollywood, was telling me the amusing story of her elderly mother partying on a cruise. She said, “Oh, she was just piped! Just piped! I said Ma, you’re not used to rum, you’re gonna get piped, and she was!”

This was a new one for me. I’ve heard of people being wasted, blasted, smashed, crocked, blitzed, and snockered, but never piped.

I asked her whether that was slang specific to this area and she paused to think it over. “Well, that’s what we said in high school, and I went to school here, so…” Of course, that was back in the 80s. Not to give her age away or anything. But I’m operating now on the assumption that “piped” is a local West Hollywood thing.

Now I’m trying to figure it out: why piped? At first I thought piped as in music. That’s my Navy background at work. When the Commanding Officer came aboard the ship every morning, the bo’sun would pipe them aboard, that is, give a long blast on the bo’sun’s whistle and announced over the 1MC, “USS Emory S. Land, arriving.”

But now that I look at the other slang terms for “drunk,” I’m struck—pun intended—by how violent they are. Smashed! Blitzed! Wasted! Now I’m thinking piped like: hit over the head by a lead pipe. Because that’s kind of what it feels like. Well, the next day, anyway.

So, having figured that out to my satisfaction, I now must solve the mystery of how the East Coast “anyhoo” caught on here in Hollywood. Because she says that too, and I am fairly certain it’s about as native to California as hummus.

I notice that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s nickname has changed. When he first was elected, he was The Governator, a cute little nickname meant to reference his Terminator role in the movies. It was usually said with an accent, something to pick a little at his Austrian heritage. “Oh, ya, da Gahvahnatah!”

Sometime in the last two years, however, that faded off, and now he’s “Arnie.” And I’m not hearing as many jokes about the accent now. Now it’s more biting, sneering remarks about his supposed links with Nazis. I am not deeply invested in his career, so I don’t lead or steer such conversations. I merely note that the joking has faded and people are taking him more seriously, for better or for worse.

It makes me wonder what sort of nickname our next president will have. Bush has been called Dubya for so long I’ve almost forgotten what his name really is. I remember Clinton being referred to (not with affection) as Billory, a reference to his “two for the price of one” wife, and spelled, not by accident, to resemble pillory.

If Hillary is elected, whatever nicknames she has now will change. I’m sure of that. She has a few already, Shrillery, Hitlery, that sort of thing. But as her persona comes into focus as president, new nicknames will arise. And they can’t be prescribed. Molly Ivins tried dubbing Bush “Shrub” in her ill-predicted book about his “short political life.” He outlived her, as it turned out, and is Dubya. So if Hillary wins, her nickname will have to be organic, as such things are.

If Rudy Guliani is elected, that’ll be interesting, because Rudy already sounds like a nickname. No one will be content to let that stand, however. Some of the other contenders have much more promise as far as naming goes. I mean, come on… Mitt? Barack? Huckabee? This should be interesting.

I notice there’s a specific language for referring to the California wildfires that ignite and spread every year, regularly, like a late-blooming, fast-growing, flowering ivy. People have a tendency to speak of fires the same way they speak of cancer, unconsciously ascribing a certain agency.

Fires don’t just burn, in the news. They rage. They jump highways and encircle private properties. They race up hills and devour acres of dried forest, and celebrity homes in Malibu. They are aggressive, they are uncontrollable, they are spontaneous… they sound almost playful, although it’s a kind of big-mean-cat playfulness, and we are the mouse being tortured to death for its amusement.

And every year, the story is reported in the same breathless manner. Regardez!! The plumes of smoke fill the sky! Just like last year! And the year before! I suppose this is simply the manner of journalists, although there’s an excitement in their tone that you don’t get with space shuttles launching, or the body count in Iraq, or the 30^th abandoned baby found in a dumpster this year.

There’s something about fire. The images fill the news with a September 11^th like urgency. The devastation, even in the areas where humans are likely to be little affected, fills people with the sort of awe I imagine accompanied the sinking of the Titanic. It’s just so … BIG. And fast! And hypnotic.

I just got a new apartment, and it has a fireplace. I know I’ll spend my winter evenings curled on the couch, staring into it. I’ll ascribe it agency, too, in my head. It’s cheerful. It’s dancing. It’s the sweet little niece of the monstrous dragon consuming Malibu. I’ll feed it like a pet… like my cat, which is one thing to a person, and another to a mouse. Fire’s great when you’re not the mouse.

While cruising the L.A. Craigslist hunting for this week’s four writing gigs that will be fought over by 20,000 frustrated screenwriters, I encountered a highlife-observing newsletter/website called Pocket Change. This glittering piece of frivolity is spreading, herpes-like, into Los Angeles via New York (oh, where else??) and features the biting commentary of a smirking fop known as Richard Nouveau.

Richard isn’t a real person, he’s a caricature who comments on “the finer things” in L.A., such as where to get good chutney, or a facial, or a spa where they put the chutney right on your face.

I should like this character, this Richard. Whoever is doing the writing manages to make every sentence count. Commenting on L.A.’s most expensive personal trainer, he writes:

You know, it’s a terrible shame that high-end breeding and bear-like musculature and athleticism seldom go hand-in-hand. Those of us born with a fashion acumen draped over a consumptive frame are fortunate enough, however, to be able to hire someone to do the pushups for you.

Clearly, this is Saki’s Reginald reincarnated. In an earlier paragraph he even simperingly mentions haemophilia and asthma… what clearer references to English noble blood can there be?

Yes, I should like him. But I already don’t, and I know why.

I can be a wee bit snippy but this fellow fairly oozes snark. I imagine him gliding along Melrose Avenue, perilously close to the Pacific Design Center, smirking at Urth Café and the incense-wafting bookstore nearby. He seems downright cruel, and I don’t like the current notion that wit equals sadism. There’s a difference. Witty people have cats. Sadistic people do too, but they refuse to have them spayed because distressed cats in heat amuse them. That’s how this Pocket Change Richard comes across to me. Oh, he’s funny. But I don’t like him.

Many people complain that political correctness curtails speech, but I’ve come to the conclusion that they are wrong: there is nothing you can’t say in America today. You just have to say it the right way.

I learned this in college and it’s come in very handy in the Los Angeles Public School system. You see, even if you are working with the least promising, most difficult children this side of open savagery, it is strictly verboten to confess that they seem hopeless and you have just about had it. You cannot say that.

But you can indicate that the students you are working with present a unique challenge.

You don’t say Gabriel is so hyper and uncontrollable that you would need a staple gun to keep him in his chair. You say he is a kinetic learner who is working to improve his impulse control, but is unfortunately suffering from ADHD. (Never mind that Gabriel isn’t the one suffering, you are.) Speak of his energy in an admiring voice, and all the other teachers in earshot know exactly what you really mean. “Oh yes,” they agree knowingly, “Gabriel has difficulty focusing during direct instruction.”

You cannot say that Jessica is the dimmest child you’ve ever seen. But you can indicate concern that she has difficulty processing auditory input, is dyslexic, and struggles with spatial relationships. In other words, she doesn’t understand anything she hears, reads, or sees. Add that she would benefit from learning compensating skills for her weak motor coordination and you can hint that she walks into walls as well.

Finally, do not say that you are barely holding on till the weekend. Smile and say that you look forward to coming back rested and restored on Monday, eager to seek new solutions and fresh strategies.

Then go home and quietly collapse.

When I lived in Virginia, I-64 was a pertinent fact of life. I knew every exit on 64, east and west, between Norfolk and Williamsburg. If I had to give directions, I gave them by that interstate. “You take 64 West toward Yorktown…”

In Michigan it was I-69 that cut through my small town, and it was common to give directions beginning with, “Well, you know I-69?”.

But in L.A., for some reason, highways are prefaced with the. I don’t know why this is, but it doesn’t take newcomers long to catch on. “You take the 101.” Or rather, you don’t take the 101 if you can avoid it. Better to limp down Vermont on crutches than take the 101. It’s awful. But why are the highways here all “the 405,” and “the 110”?

What’s particularly odd is that I didn’t even notice this little quirk until I referred to the 101 as simply “avoiding 101” and my neighbor from New York, said, “Oh, you haven’t started calling it the 101 yet? You’ve been here for a year!”

Even on the local news, “the 101 is backed up from exits 6A to 3B” (again. Still.) And “if you can, take the 405.”

Maybe it’s an unconscious distancing mechanism to avoid the familiarity of naming. Or maybe it’s a statement about driving on them; our freeways aren’t a place, like “Los Feliz” or “Inglewood.” They’re an experience, like “the accident” and “the tax audit” or “the pothole that nearly broke my car’s frame on Wilshire, near 3rd,” or “the time I got arrested in Turkey.” Okay, they aren’t quite that bad. But they’re close. They’re the clogged arteries of a frantic heart.