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.

If there is one fashion trend that began in the gutter and then started digging, it’s these jogging pants girls wear with writing on the buttocks. I still recoil at wearing a t-shirt with writing on it, because I don’t want strangers staring at my chest. When girls started appearing on the scene with JUICY written across their butt cheeks, I nearly fainted. Especially as one of the first places I saw it was across the behinds of several of my 12 year old students.

“Miss, it’s just the brand name!” The girls assured me sweetly. Uh huh.

After JUICY came PINK, which was no improvement. Really, it wouldn’t matter what was written. Words on the butt make people look at the butt, and men’s eyes have never needed help finding girls’ butts.

Truly, whoever came up with this idea should go straight to hell. Encouraging teenage girls to walk around with slogans of any nature on their butts is bad enough, but JUICY and PINK? Why be so coy? Why not just put “Sodomize me!” on your butt? Maybe with a little target underneath?

Bad as this was, time turns it uglier. Yesterday on my walk up Doheny, I saw a woman with thin, clinging white jogging pants on, across whose butt was written 2002. Apparently now you can tell people when you graduated college, using your butt.

But this was not the problem. The problem was, this is 2007, and she had apparently put on about 7 lbs a year since graduating. I’ll let you do the math.

Don’t get me wrong, my butt’s no better. That’s why I’m out on long walks. That’s also why there is nothing written on my butt.

Someone actually said this in my hearing the other day, and without the slightest trace of irony or playfulness. She just said it like a normal person would say “Great!”

 
It was at the Coffee Bean on Robertson, where I had been hanging out like a seal on a rock because their internet was free. I was standing in line, having just ordered my mocha latte, and to my left was a young woman not of this world. She had apparently just stepped off of a billboard, and was still all shiny from the finishing touches of the hairdresser, make-up artist, and artificial suntan spray-on technician who hover just off camera.

 She was wearing black spandex leggings, because she could, having the butt and legs of a 12 year old boy. Said leggings and legs were tucked into black suede boots with heels so pointed and high they looked like spikes. Under her perfectly tanned skin, her breasts sat on her ribs like two plastic bowls on a xylophone.

 
Her hair was bouncy at the crown,  fluffy at the forehead, tendrilly at the neck, a cascade down her back, thick as a horse’s tail and blonde as some lisping clothesrack in a salon could make it. Her lips were pouty and her sunglasses were expensive.

 
The Coffee Bean barrister, obviously recognizing her, cooed, “How have you BEEEEEN???”

 
“Fantabulous!” She replied, her perfect white teeth flashing, her perfect French manicure touching the counter.  “I was at a party last night, and I had SO much fun…”

 
So that’s what fantabulous looks like, I thought, walking away. No wonder I just say “Fine.”

I might as well just come out and admit that I hate slang. All slang. I have no use for slang. Its very short shelf-life marks it as being of low quality. Anything that steadily depreciates from the minute you drive it off the lot is obviously a piece of mass-produced junk. Slang is that way. The minute it loses that new-car smell, it’s kitchy.

 
This does not stop people from using it, however. They keep using it. But now they smirk when they use it. I hate the smirk too.

 
I recently undertook a project that I am being rather secretive about so as not to jinx myself or alert any possible competitors. My friend Peter, who knows about it, asked me “Is it still on the DL?”

 
For the longest moment, I stared at him thinking “What fresh hell is this?” because I know that smirk. I like Peter, so I didn’t snarl “Oh, just speak English for God’s sake!” I processed it for a minute and finally remembered that when something is on the DL it means it’s on the down-low which was the cool way to say secret about six months ago.

 
You know, like “Most people party, just keep it on the down-low.” In LA, this means “Don’t snort coke in the living room. Do it in the bathroom where it can’t be seen from the front door.” All of this makes me shudder, from the lifestyle to the slang it creates.

 
In reaction, I retreat in despair, once again, to the finest book I’ve ever read, House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I now know what I should have said to Peter:

 
“If you take pleasure in annoying me by mysterious insinuations,” I should have said coldly, “you might at least have chosen a more suitable time than just as I am recovering from the strain of a very large dinner.”

Every job has its lingo. I spent yesterday on the set of the TV show “The Journeyman,” which airs Monday nights after “Heroes.” It’s a new show, and seems to be reminiscent of “Quantum Leap.” I was working as an extra in the background, because I like doing something fun on vacation from teaching. And I thought this would be fun.

 
Fun, however, is not necessarily how I would describe extra work, now that I’ve done it. However, I did at least learn what a martini shot is.

 
The scenes I participated in all take place at an office Christmas party in 1979. I was assigned a slinky black dress and some heavy gold jewelry, and the hairdresser transformed my short shag into a stiff, feathered do with flipped-up wings. The make-up artist went after my cheeks and lips with enough fire-engine red to set off the smoke detector. I was given a pair of shoes that immediately cut into my feet and caused a haze of pain to settle over me, clouding the entire day.

 
For the next six hours, I and 40 other extras were assigned to silently mingle and cross in front of the cameras as the actors moved among us and said their lines. We did this over and over and over and over and over. In painful shoes. For six hours. With no break and no refreshments.

 After lunch, we did it again… until 9pm. We filmed four different scenes, and by seven in the evening, we were too beat to even complain. Finally, the word came around that this was “the martini shot.” Apparently, the last scene of the day is called the martini shot, probably to cheer everyone up and remind them that once you’ve turned in your wardrobe and gotten your voucher, you can go home and have a drink. Which I did.

It’s funny the way the word adult is used as a euphemism. If you see it on a movie, adult themes, you know this means sex. An adult video store is porn, an adult toy store is sex toys… but this is only half of the story.

I have decided to put my cats on a diet. It’s not that I thrill to the sight of slender felines, it’s just that once they reach a certain stage of complacent rotundity, they have a hard time completing their grooming. If that was put too delicately for comprehension, let me explain: if they can’t wash under their tails, the results can be truly appalling.

I suppose that was clear enough.

I currently have a cat who is a winsome, pink nosed, green-eyed delight at one end and a shuddering brown mess at the other, and if I liked using baby wipes, I’d have had babies. So I have begun to pay attention to what kinds of cat food I buy and how much I put down.

The euphemism for fat pets is, guess what? Adult. I now buy adult cat food, which I ration out as if we were under occupation. The cats are not happy, and are at this moment reclining on various perches in flat-eared, tail-twitching aggravation.

I am left contemplating the wonder of a world in which the two things adult stands for are sex and fat. I should have noticed it before, when clothing for females was sorted into Miss and Women’s sizes. If the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes, it seems the only things adult in life are sex and weight gain.

Does this mean that if I abstain from both, I’ll never grow old?

It’s funny the ejaculations we punctuate our speech with. “God, I can’t stand this!” or “Man, you should have seen him run.” Then there’s “Boy, I’d hate to be there right now.”

 
Sometimes it’s hard to tell when someone is being addressed and when it’s merely an emphatic start. It can be a little tricky sometimes. I remember once in the military saying to a co-worker (who was black), “Boy, those stairs look awful.”

 
He snapped “Who you callin’ boy?”

I said, “Huh?” (witty comebacks are my specialty.)

He said, “You better look again!”

 
Once I figured out what was going on, I said with my characteristic grace and good nature, “Oh Christ, if I’d said God, these stairs are a mess would you have thought I was praying to you??”

 
So we didn’t become friends. But it’s something that came floating up from my memory bank the other day when a young co-worker said to me, “Dude, I was so drunk last night.”

 
I thought “Dude?? Am I that flat-chested?” But I didn’t react outwardly. I’m pretty sure she knows I’m female. Now I’m just left to wonder, is dude the new guy or the new boy?

 
See, guy has become standard, already, even when addressing an all-female group. “Come on, you guys, we’re missing the previews!” is perfectly acceptable to hurl at your female friends now as they dawdle in the parking garage. But it’s actually an address.

 
Then there’s the non-address exclamation, boy, as in (and my own sainted mother used to mutter it to me after parent-teacher conference night) “Boy, if I ever see another report card like that again, you’re gonna be sorry!”

So. Is dude a guy or a boy? Or is my co-worker just weird?

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 trying to learn the lingo of the Hollywood screenwriting community. Quickly. Before I embarrass myself again. My first red-faced moment was a year ago, when I told my apartment manager I was writing a screenplay. She said I should talk to my downstairs neighbor, who already had an agent.

I summoned my nerve and asked my neighbor if he had any advice for me. Instantly he asked, “Is your script in final draft?”

I thought he meant Are you on your final draft, i.e., Is it done? I nodded.

He offered to look at it. “But this is in Microsoft Word!” He said.

Yes, it was. So? Ah, my first blunder. Final Draft is formatting software. Later, listening to him chuckle to his writing partner on the phone, “She thought Final Draft meant…” I vowed to learn more.

Since then I’ve picked up a few terms. “Pitch” is when you try to dazzle someone with a 30 second rendition of your story. Specifically, trying to dazzle someone who might be induced to give you money.

Now comes “hip-pocketed.” My first script has found itself an independent producer, and for a year he and I have milled about, trying to dazzle a studio who might be induced to give us money. However, most of them want “attachments”. That is, a director or well-known actor who has promised to participate… once we have the money.

I finally found a director at the L.A. Film Festival. My neighbor is now advising me that since I don’t have an agent, the director’s agent will represent me if it actually gets as far as money being involved (rather than the current flurry of emails and occasional meetings over coffee.) Should we get to this point, my temporary representation by the director’s agent is known as “hip-pocketing.”

“Oh, don’t worry, he’ll hip-pocket you for this project.” Who ever would have thought this is a good thing? I’m glad I learned that in advance, so I don’t huff “I beg your pardon?!” when he offers to put me in his pocket.

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.