Exhilaration

The Word of the Day for April 20 is "exhilarating."

exhilarating: (adjective) Making lively and cheeful.

Synonyms: stimulating

Usage: Countless climbers flocked to the region to experience the exhilarating effects of the mystical mountain air.

Relevance to my life: There is nothing so exhilarating as that mad dash to bathroom holding a pre-puking child in my arms, praying fervently that I can make it before the spewing starts.

Parenthood
Parenthood is fraught with perils like sudden projectile vomiting, sexually precocious teens, and mass birthday parties.








My Parents are Aliens
Ha! Game shows can be addictive.








Rusty Shares a Beer with Dad
Clark means well.








Cousin Eddie and Hamburger Helper
Thanks to this movie, I laugh every time I walk past Hamburger Helper in the grocery store.








That 70s Show
Red & Kitty finally bust them in the basement.








Holy Crap!
@ 1:00 mark is my favorite Red Foreman line.

Clangor

The Word of the Day for April 17 is "clangor."

clangor: (noun)

1. A loud resonant repeating noise.


2. A loud racket; a din.

Synonyms: clanks, clash, crash

Usage: Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds.

Relevance to my life: One memorable parenting moment came when I was recovering from a triple shot of The Flu, Bronchitis and Pneumonia, only to be awoken by a terrible clangor from the laundry room. The ensuing shitstorm was legendary.

The Trumpet's Loud Clangor
A little Handel to soothe your Friday








The Trumpet Shall Sound
More trumpet, more Handel.








Hayden Trumpet Concerto, Mvt 1
The trumpet is almost bigger than the kid is, but he blows the hell out of it.








Brandenburg Concerto No. 2
More classic trumpet playing

Persona

The Word of the Day for April 16 is "persona."

persona: (noun) The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one's public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.

Synonyms: image

Usage: The singer's larger-than-life persona belied the fear and insecurity she truly felt.

Relevance to my life: At the end of the semester, my class went out for drinks and I do believe I shocked some people. I had let my Serious Student persona slip off, let my hair down and was Just Me. Although there were no beer funnels or table-dancing, I could see that my classmates weren't expecting the Real Barbara.

You Don't Know Me
I really am surprised how many times I've felt this. Maybe I'm bad about letting people see who I really am. Or, maybe people are idiots.








The Breakfast Club
Sometimes we make our personas ourselves, other times we're type-cast. Those seem to be the hardest to break.








The Doors
Larger than life, he was. For God's sake they have a memorial plaque at Barney's Beanery where he once got banned for pissing on the bar!








The Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont
This scene sets up the next one. The Marquise had a reputation, a public persona of the model lady of French nobility when in reality she was as corrupt and devious as the worst scoundrel. She was still my favorite character in both the book and the movie.








The Fall of the Marquise
Here, her persona is shot to Hell. *sniff* Nobody likes her anymore!

Peck

The Word of the Day for April 15 is "peck."

peck: (noun)

1. A large quantity; a lot.


2. A unit of dry volume or capacity in the U.S. Customary System equal to 8 quarts or approximately 537.6 cubic inches.


3. A container holding or measuring a peck.

Synonyms: good deal, hatful, lot, passel, mint, slew, spate, was, stack, raft, mountain, pile, plenty, mass, batch, heap, deal, flock, pot, mess

Usage: The class clown was sent to the principal's office, where he found himself in a peck of trouble.

Relevance to my life: One of my favorite expressions, which I heard from the s2bx one time when we were washing potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner, is "You gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die."

The Bucket List
"Eat a peck of dirt" is not on my official Bucket List, but skydiving is.








Kopi Luwak
I have laughed like this. *crosses off my list*








"You fooled 'em all."
A good scene from my favorite Jack Nicholson movie








Andy plays Mozart
One of the best scenes from my favorite Morgan Freeman movie.








Wild Bill
Another excellent movie adaptation of a Stephen King novel. That Wild Bill's a pissah.








The Shining ending
This brings us back to Jack Nicholson. Full-circle, how lovely.

Chafe

The Word of the Day for April 14 is "chafe."

chafe: (verb)

1. To rub and cause irritation or friction.
2. To feel irritated or impatient

Synonyms: scratch, rub, fray, fret

Usage: The wool sweater chafed against my neck, and I longed to change into something more comfortable.

Relevance to my life: All through High School, I chafed at the restrictions placed on me by my parents but still managed to appear obedient because I had no choice; when I got to college, however, with no supervision but my own, I exploded.

Bluto's Advice
I know El Borracho will like this.









Shout
I actually did go to a toga party one year. I think I had purplish paisley sheets.









Paradise by the dashboard light
Speaking of songs that we used to dance to when drunk...









Twist and Shout
...and here's another one!









Shake your tailfeather
Speaking of fun dance scenes from movies...









I love to boogie
A great compilation of dance clips to an awesome T Rex song.

Derisory

The Word of the Day for April 13 is "derisory."

derisory: (adjective) Incongruous; inviting ridicule.

Synonyms: absurd, cockeyed, idiotic, laughable, ludicrous, nonsensical, preposterous, ridiculous

Usage: The shareholders dismissed the lowball offer as derisory.

Relevance to my life: The girls first viewed my changes to their favorite recipe (boxed Mac and Cheese) as derisory, but I won them over with the homemade baked mac and cheese in the end. Lucy gave me an enthusiastic two thumbs up and said, "Gee Mommy, this is the best 'smack and cheese' ever!" Damn straight, kid.

The Battle of Wits
The Sicilian certainly thought The Dread Pirate Roberts's challenge to a battle of wits to be derisory. "Inconceivable!" Too bad for him.










The Battle of Wits in Legos
I am easily amused.









Hello, My name is Inigo Montoya...
Yet another great scene from a timeless classic.










The Wedding
"Mawwige." I can't help but snicker at weddings now.









The Most Reverend Mr. Bean
One funny wedding scene deserves another.

Stilted

The Word of the Day for April 10 is "stilted."

stilted (adjective) Stiffly or artificially formal; stiff

Synonyms: artificial, contrived, hokey

Usage: She knew no other way to express her genuine feelings than the stilted language of The Family Herald.

Relevance to my life: When I attended the welcoming reception for the Soros Foundation's Teaching Fellows in Tallinn, I remember how stilted the Estonian teachers' speech was. At first I attributed it to degrees of language fluency, but after mingling and talking to them I realized that this program was one of the first to recognize Estonia's statehood on the international scene. Intense emotion and national pride, not language inadequacy or cultural differences, choked their throats and affected their speech.

The Estonian National Anthem
I learned this song fairly early on, since people played it often. I was there from 1993-1994, shortly after their independence from Moscow. While Estonians have always maintained a strong ethnic identity quite separate from Russians, you could say that just after full independence, it was fiery and fervent.







The Finnish National Anthem
Interestingly, it is exactly the same melody. Finns and Estonians and culturally, linguistically and ethnically very closely related to one another.








Onnenpyörä
I got to watch a good deal of Finnish television when I was in Estonia. My favorite show was Wheel of Fortune in Finnish.







Conan O'Brien in Finland
Conan had some segments a few years ago where talked about his similarity to the Finnish President Tarja Halonen. He later visited Finland and visited a few television shows. Hilarity ensued.









Finland
My sentiments exactly, and I'm not being facetious. I loved visiting Finland and would like to go back again some day. It's a beautiful country and I love the sound of the language.

Fortnight

The Word of the Day for April 9 is "fortnight."

fortnight: (noun) A period of fourteen consecutive days.

Synonyms: two weeks

Usage: Most major tennis tournaments last a fortnight.

Relevance to my life: Although I was taking enough medication to knock out an elephant, I can still remember the fortnight immediately after my son's death with crystal clarity. My recall of the intervening years is spotty, but nearly every hour of those 14 days is burned onto my memory.

This one was hard, not because it's a difficult word, but because it is such a completely British word. Perhaps it's common in Australia, New Zealand and Canada as well, but it is not at all the norm in the US. It's hard not to feel pretentiously Anglophilic using it, and I'm something of an Anglophile.

In honour of our sister tongue, here are a bunch of thoroughly British clips.




Do you speak English?
Damned foreigners!








Four Yorkshiremen
This could easily be Four (Crotchety Old) Yankees.








Eddy Izzard on the differences between British and American English
One question: is he wearing pajamas?








Britain's Got Baton Twirling
The Billy Elliotness of this clip always makes me tear up.

Unswerving

The Word of the Day for March 8 is "unswerving."

unswerving: (adjective) Firm and dependable especially in loyalty.

Synonyms: staunch, steadfast, constant, steady

Usage: Such characters do not elicit the joyous and unswerving devotion which Lavalle commanded throughout life.

Relevance to my life: I never expected unswerving allegiance from all of our joint friends, but I did not anticipate his gaining sole custody of most of them.

"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius"
Even as a slave, he garnered unswerving devotion. That's charisma, baby.








King Arthur on the Ice
Arthur, whether he was real or just a legend, also laid claim to charisma and loyalty. In "King Arthur," the battle on the ice against the Saxons is eerily similar to the scene in Eisenstein's "Aleksandr Nevsky" where the Teutoninc Knights fell through the ice.
Nevsky is a masterful bit of anti-German propaganda, and Kind Arthur is worth watching for Stellan Skarsgard as Cerdic the Saxon king..








"Arise, riders of Theoden!
This scene always gets me.
Of course, by the time I've reached this spot, I've been in a dark room, watching 8 hours of Lord of the Rings, so I'm already kind of shell-shocked and weepy. lol








And Justice for All
Not all epic battles require swords. This is one of the top endings of any film.

Whine

The Word of the Day for April 7 is "whine."

whine: (verb)

1. To produce a sustained noise of relatively high pitch.
2. To utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint.
   
3. To complain or protest in a childish fashion.

Synonyms: creak, screech, squeak

Usage: As I merged onto the highway, the car engine began to whine, and I quickly pulled onto the shoulder.

Relevance to my life: My scariest airline experience came on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Odessa. Many of the seat backs flopped down, only half of the seats had seat belts, and the inner window next to me had a massive crack spidering in the glass. By far the scariest moment came when we were circling endlessly over the Black Sea, in concentric circles drifting lower and lower, listening to the whine of the ancient, shaking engines. My friends and I dubbed the airline "Scare-o-flot."

Beagle Puppies Whining
Whining is cute only when it's puppies, and even then I have a limit.








Cute Kid Whining
Classic, though subdued, whining technique with gratuitous tossing of the menu at the end. The judges award him a 7.5. He'll come in to his own in about a year or so.







Brat in full meltdown
Technically this is screaming and screeching, not whining, but it's pretty funny!








Why waste a temper tantrum?
This just proves that kids throw tantrums for the attention.

Formulary

The Word of the Day for April 6 is "formulary."

formulary: (noun) A book containing a list of pharmaceutical substances along with their formulas, uses, and methods of preparation.

Synonym: pharmacopeia

Usage: The doctor consulted his formulary before writing out a prescription for his patient.

Relevance to my life: At one point I was so overmedicated I felt as though I needed to check a formulary before taking an Ibuprofen, cold medicine or even grapefruit juice for fear of drug interactions.

Brian Regan Going to the Doctor
Don't you love going to the doctor?







Brian Regan Going to the ER Pt 1
He asks a good question: why don't they have valet parking at the ER?!








Brian Regan Going to the ER Pt 2
The cracked femur bit slays me!







House Bloopers
Would you want these people treating you?!







Hugh Laurie and British vs. American slang
Who knew?