Easin' It In... Like a Gentleman

// Some words get thrown around way too often. This has been clear to me for a while. The difficult question is why? Why are some words used with so much more frequency than others? Part of the answer is sensationalism, especially on the telly. Human beings enjoy - nay - LOVE superlatives (see that there? doesn't "love" just sound more correct and normal?). We're so over inundated by hearing something is "the ultimate" this or "definitely the finest" that. It's taken its toll. The constant use of these words - words that should only be used to describe something of the highest order - has dulled our senses a bit. Our regular comparative adjectives don't do it for us anymore. They absolutely do not suffice (again, doesn't "absolutely" just roll off the tongue so easily?). In a way, it's akin to a sort of diction cocaine, no? Who still gets a nicotine buzz after doing blow every weekend? The same goes for when we use superlatives all the time. It's too boring to hear that something is "decent" or "pretty good". We prefer to hear "greatest". There's no rush when you hear someone say your favorite point guard has "fine ball handling skills". Instead, we just anoint anybody and everybody as "the best" and then argue with one another over what one thing actually is the best. By the way, I just wrote down - probably verbatim - the pitch they gave to ESPN for Around The Horn. But I digress. Let's talk superlatives. One example is the term "Offensive (or Defensive, obv) Genius". That's a phrase that I hear much more often than is warranted. It seems every time I turn on NFL Live, I have to stare at Merril Hoge's annoying face perched above his ridiculously wide shoulders and hear him say, "blahblahblah is an offensive genius." (Quick side note: since the departure of Sean Salisbury, a hot commodity in the power rankings of "ESPN Talking Head You'd Like To Slap Very Hard" is Merril Hoge. His body of work teems more and more every day in its asininity.) There's no need for Hoge to call Dick LeBeau, Rex Ryan and Ron Rivera all geniuses. His point would be nicely (and probably more correctly) made if he called all of them "very good defensive coordinators". But nobody wants to hear that noise. We want geniuses, dammit! Now! Geniuses! Again, it's like a drug and we're addicted to it.

Let's get away from superlatives. There's a point coming. Promise. There are plenty of other words that get too much airtime. My king culprit is the word "drama". This case is easy to crack. I know where it came from and how it became so widespread. As much as it pains me to say it, I point the blame at Laguna Beach. Gosh, how I enjoyed that show. I shared a bevy of yuks with my old buddy Stach while we dissected the first season game film MTV treated us to in the fall of 2004. However, it is very hard to deny that since the advent of LB (and shortly thereafter The Hills, which is about as fun as a hemorrhoid), "drama" has been used to describe roughly 95% of anything that even remotely resembles a disagreement between people. The word gets thrown around like a Nerf at 4th-grade recess. Frustrating. I'd venture to guess that there's a sentence that has been nearly phased out of existence since LB reared its (gorgeous and tan) head. When is the last time you heard - on TV or in real life - someone say, "Those two don't like each other very much." No one says it! It's as if every intricacy, every facet, every minute detail of a strained relationship between two people can simply be glossed over and adequately explained by saying, "Drama." Look, I'm all for brevity. For years, I've been shortening about half of the words I use by replacing the longer syllables with (among others*) "jeezy" or "peezy" at the end of them. Seriously, don't even ask yourself why. It just feels right. I'm just tired of hearing "drama". That's all. We need the President to go down to SoCal and give L.A. County and Orange County a mandate: stop using the word "drama" unless describing the genre of an artistic medium. Enough is enough.

* A full write-up detailing what has become affectionately known as "The Grosse Ile Vernacular" will be coming soon. The ultimate goal is to get a Wikipedia page.

Fortunately, there's a flip side to the coin. (So close to the point. Still getting there, but closer.) Some words, in this case some very superlative words, are not being beaten to death by sensationalist dummies. There is a hesitant caution before one employs certain words (although the list of those words is dwindling). It's good that this happens, though. We don't need to start throwing these around. That would be like giving Tyler from Fight Club access to a nuclear arsenal. Appropriately used words? They exist. The easy example(s): Perfect. Consummate. Immaculate. Flawless. I feel like we, as a society, are admirably careful about overusing these words. You don't often hear something is perfect. It's rare to hear, "Hey Peter. How were those muffins from Panera?" "Oh y'know... perfect." Nobody comes home from a Red Wings game and says, "Oh man. Draper's wrister in the 2nd was freakin' perfect." It doesn't happen like that. A sacred aura still exists around "perfect". That's not to say you can't use qualifiers to alter your meaning. "Dude, her body was almost perfect" is a phrase offered regularly in the throes of dudes-together-the-morning-after-a-crazy-night-out time. People also say "near perfect" quite a bit. This past summer I used "near perfect" to describe The Dark Knight. If I stand behind the claim when asked "Really?", it works, right? Right. Here comes the payoff.

So, after taking a very scenic route, we've arrived at our destination: the reason for the post. You see, there is a method to the madness. I didn't just write all that stuff to rant, although that would seem very Honerian (my name works well as an adjective!). First, I enjoy delving into etymology and philology. Language changes and (d)evolves so drastically it sometimes feels like a living thing. The patterns in everyday speech can tell a culture a lot about itself. I also wrote it because I wanted to make a clear distinction that there are many things called "the best" that aren't necessarily the best. The diatribes on language acted as a wonderful "alley" for the approaching "oop". My friends, the point needed to be made because something truly wonderful has happened to us all. My roommate Ben stumbled onto what I feel very comfortable calling The Best movie scene in the history of motion pictures (also, he found the second best). The title "Best" can be deduced because at this point I can't fathom how anyone out there has the capacity to create something more sublime than what you're about to see. The lines, the facial expressions, even the body language is, for lack of a better word, magical. A little exposition: The clips from a 1987 feature called Hard Ticket to Hawaii, a quasi-pornographic insanity romp that does to rationalized, decent thought what Vanilla Ice did to the coolness quotient of white males. !!! Probably NSFW. Better safe than sorry. Err on the side of caution. That kind of thing. !!! Make sure there's nothing around you that can fall over easily if you lose control of your limbs... and enjoy.