Et-ymology… Cor-ner! Ep-isode! Three of Wonder-ful!
I was very excited to hear Rachel mention pretzels. My first linguistics professor was from Germany and she loved to happen about how we mispronounced “brezel”. Obviously pretzels came to the English world through German immigrants, but the root isn’t Germanic, but Latin.
Etymology corner time! *`\_^u^_/`* for Wonderful! episode two.
I was gonna do bar, because the first half of the episode today was basically just Griffin saying the word bar in various ways, but that’s a pretty boring etymology. Instead, let’s talk about one half of the components for that strong strong butt!
Whoa, it’s been over a year since I’ve posted here! Most of my stuff has been on hiatus and I’ve been doing other things like podcasting and not dying and you can find all of that on my newly updated about page but for now I’d like to dump a weekly article I’ve been releasing in the Facebook group for the podcast Wonderful! Wonderful! is a podcast where Griffin and Rachel McElroy talk about their favorite things. (Almost) every week I choose something they discussed and write something up on the history and origins of the word. Here’s the etymology corner for the first episode of Wonderful!
One of my favorite things is etymology, so I loved hearing Rachel talk about the spread of “no worries”. With that in mind, I’m gonna post an etymological fact every episode maybe?
Poor little Henry has pinkeye! Pinkeye is an example of a direct translation, since the Dutch term “pinck oogen” just means pink eye. BUT! This is not due to the color of conjunctivitis! The Dutch “pinck” actually means “small”. We get the color term from a tiny lil cute flower because the Dutch are all about flowers. A lot of colors are named after flowers. Since pinkeye makes the eye crusty and half closed, it all makes sense! That’s also why your smallest and usually not especially pink finger is called a pinky!
After moving and getting sick and maybe a bit of procrastination, I’m back with another MISS review. Since this is the only one I’ll be doing for black history month, I figured I’d choose a movie with lots of black actors. Well, technically the Primer review came out on the first, but that movie had no black people in it. Huh. Anyway, I chose a movie that barely has any non-black characters to compensate. Let’s watch The Color Purple.
Stuff I know about this movie beforehand:
-This is Whoopi Goldberg’s first movie
That’s basically it. The credits have a few more familiar names like Danny Glover (should I put Lethal Weapon on my MISS list?), Quincy Jones, Oprah and- oh hey, Steven Spielberg? He’s on this list a few times. Alright, see y’all under the cut.
Things I know about this movie before watching it.
– It’s a low-budget ($7,000!) indie film.
-It’s about time travel, and apparently super complex. Of course, people told me Inception was hard to follow and mind-blowing and it wasn’t. So maybe this movie is deceptively easy to follow but just has a reputation.
Post-watch note: this movie was so weird that I’m not sure it’s possible to give spoilers. In fact, I’m not going to talk about the plot much in this review at all.
Mel and Smith gasped for air as water poured through the large gap in the barrel. Of course it wasn’t airtight; why would it be if it was meant to be a guest room? The river had swirled in through the cracks in the hull and only a tiny amount of air remained by the time Mel had the good sense to crack the glass window floating above water level. The leaks continued, but breaking the glass any further meant being showered with the shards and perhaps even tipping their makeshift vessel fully underwater.
Before I start, let me note the reason I didn’t review this movie last weekend. I looked everywhere- brick and mortar stores, streaming services, b
ack-alley pirate markets, everywhere– and I still couldn’t find a version of this movie that is in the original Chinese with subtitles. I had to watch the English dub. I hope that’s an okay thing? In the case of foreign language stuff, I usually prefer to watch it with subtitles but I really had no choice.
After resigning myself to watch the dub, my Internet cut out for a couple of days. I decided to just wait until tonight to post the review. Anywho-
Things I knew about this movie beforehand:
–
Huh? Nothing! I knew nothing about this movie! Check out what I found out under the cut. If you don’t want any spoilers but just my general opinion of the movie, go to the very last paragraph.
Time for the first entry in my MISS list, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Jack Nicholson makes his first appearance in this series, finally playing a crazy guy. Was this before he got typecast into that role? Either way, I guess I should start by listing what I do know about the movie before actually watching it.
-there’s a creepy mental hospital with a mean nurse lady
-a big Native American dude smashes a window with a chair
That’s it. So I guess any spoilers and parts I write after watching will appear below the cut. Here goes!
Alright. So. A few weeks back I was thinking about fiction and media and common knowledge because I’m that kind of weird nerd and I realized that, while I’ve seen a good amount of movies, I’ve not seen even more. A lot of capital-F Films are missing from my experiences, as are tons of those movies that “everyone” has seen. And at this point, I’m wondering why I haven’t gotten around to it. I mean, I’ve got access to the largest archive of human creative achievement in the history of the species!
So why haven’t I ever sat down and watched a John Wayne movie? Why do I only pretend to know Sigourney Weaver from Alien when really she’ll always be that lady from Galaxy Quest in my mind? I mean, I’ve never even seen a Coen Brothers movie, even though I know that they’re supposed to be works of art. I don’t even have an excuse, really. But what I do have is an opportunity.
I’ve compiled a list of movies that I should’ve seen by now. It’s not a perfect list, nor a complete one. Mostly it’s a mad scramble of stuff my friends, coworkers and I brainstormed every now and then. Some genres, like Westerns and Dramas and Horror, are entirely foreign to me, so the choices there are sort of placeholders for whatever fits as the best-of for that category. But with the help of whoever reads this, I’d like to expand and refine the list and watch one of these quote-unquote classic films every week in semi-random order, starting on the first day of 2016. And then, of course, I’ll write up a sort of first-timer’s review and post it here.
So without further ado, the list. Suggestions for additions and removals are encouraged by anybody. I can’t possibly say every movie I have seen, but I’m game to respond to any feedback given.
Robin Garcia 