Word
When I was a kid, my father would constantly use slang he’d picked up from my brother, me and our friends. Slang that was, inevitably, about three years out of date.
Now in my mid-30’s, I understand. I have no organic tie to what the cool kids are saying. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up on trying to keep a finger on the pop culture language pulse. Thanks to the internet, even old white guys can figure out what words are happening right now. And with 2016 upon us, it’s a good chance to take a look at what to say – and what not to say – if you want to look like you have a clue. In other words, bae, if you’re still using ‘on fleek’, your squad is going to look pretty basic. (Equally done: YAS, I might be turnt but I can’t even with all the feels.)
To start the year off right, here are 12 words that are au courant:
1. Snatched.
The new ‘on fleek.’
“Have you seen Tina yet? Her new haircut is snatched!”
2. Lit
Awesome.
“Just made it to Tom’s house; the party is lit.”
3. Boots
An intensifier added to the end of a verb or adjective.
“I haven’t eaten all day and I’m hungry boots.”
4. Sis
The new bro.
“Sis, you going to the show tomorrow?”
5. Cancel
To reject something.
“Should I but these shoes?”
“Cancel.”
6. Keep It
The opposite of ‘cancel’: approved.
“I just updated my profile pic.”
“Keep it.”
7. Hunty
The new ‘squad.’
“Sarah’s hunties are the best.”
8. Fam
Also like squad, but singular; a member of your group.
“He forgot your birthday? Fam, you need to DTMFA.”
(Side note: DTFMA, though not new, is evergreen, thanks to the inimitable Dan Savage. ‘Dump the motherfucker already.’)
9. Savage
Hardcore.
“I think she drank the entire bottle of tequila last night. It was savage.”
10. Goals AF
Outgrowth of squad goals, plus abbreviation of ‘as fuck’, meaning something you want.
“Did you see Joe’s new car? Goals AF.”
11. Extra
Try-hard.
“She put on makeup to go to yoga. So extra.”
12. Netflix and Chill
This one’s on the cusp of tipping from new to tired, but it’s having a second life as essentially an ironic version of itself. Come over and hook up.
“Hey baby, want to Netflix and chill tonight?”
Nota bene: if your game is strong, go with “Amazon and anal” instead.
Yuletide
Despite being Jewish, I’ve always loved Christmas music. (Which I suppose makes sense, as approximately half of the 25 best-selling Christmas songs of all time were written by Jews.). At the moment, I’ve been wearing the digital grooves off this great cover, Billy Bragg and Florence and the Machine playing the Pogues “Fairytale of New York.”
An early merry Christmas (or gut yontif?) to all.
Lofty
Headed out this past weekend to Gowanus, to see LoftOpera’s final performance of The Rape of Lucretia. I always love Benjamin Britten (or, really, early 20th century British composers in general), and I’d never seen Lucretia staged, so it seemed a no-brainer choice.
The opera lived up to my expectations – not just great music, but strong singing, innovative staging, and some good ballet wedged in to boot. More broadly, I was excited and impressed by LoftOpera as a whole. The company strives to provide younger artists the opportunity to perform lead roles in paid positions, while keeping tickets affordable and performances interesting and intimate. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “LoftOpera offers a paradox: an embrace of highbrow establishment pomp as retold by riders of the G train.”
It’s the kind of thing that makes New York City great, vital and alive. Their 2016 season looks excellent: Puccini’s Tosca, Rossini’s Le Comte Ory, Mozart’s Così fan tutti and Weill’s Mahagonny. If you like opera, or even if you think you don’t, I’d strongly recommend checking them out.
Mean
Chorus
It’s amazing how big of an impact small improvements can make in your life.
Considering it’s just ten bucks, the SoundBot HD Shower Speaker sounds remarkably good, and has transformed an otherwise fairly forgettable ten minutes of my day into an off-key sing-along that invariably brightens my mood.
Apologies to my dogs who are forced to hear it, but there’s nothing like belting terrible, terrible Top 50 pop to start the day on the right foot. Selena Gomez, look out.
Some People Call Me Maurice
While all the cool kids have, for years, been streaming rather than purchasing music, and though I’ve long had a Spotify subscription that I occasionally used to find tracks that popped to mind, I’d long listened primarily to the overly large collection of music I actually owned – much of it dating back to ripping MP3s of my now-retired CD collection back in the later 90’s and early 00’s – rather than stuff from the cloud.
With the launch of Apple Music, however, I’ve been listening to streaming music first and foremost. And though it’s occasionally led me to repeat plays of some rather suspect choices (no, seriously, “Trap Queen” is an excellent song!), it’s also allowed me to wander through a bunch of choices – some of which I’d even owned – that I might otherwise have ignored or missed.
Today, I spent six hours and seventeen minutes straight listening to John William’s soundtracks for all three original Star Wars films, sequentially. And, holy crap, is that some awesome music.
I mean, sure, it’s basically Holst repurposed, with a Wagnerian leitmotif structure and a liberal pulling from E. W. Korngold. But, seriously, that’s some compelling, magical stuff.
In particular, and in a way that you rarely hear in scores recorded one-off with a studio orchestra, the London Symphony is so amazingly tight, in tune and synchronized across articulation and volume. Above it all floats Maurice Murphy’s principal trumpet – alternatively soaring majestically and cutting incisively. It’s everything an amateur classical trumpeter might aspire to be.
If you haven’t listened to those scores – and, ideally, to all of them one after another – take advantage of the power of streaming music to do so. If that doesn’t make you fired up to vacuum, sort files or clean your bathroom, nothing will.
Final One
One last jazz story:
Back in the early 1980’s, Dizzy Gillespie played a concert on Yale’s campus. Thomas Duffy, who now runs all of Yale University’s bands, and who previously served as Dean of the Yale School of Music, was then a young professor. And, at the time, he was teaching an undergrad class on jazz. So, after the concert, he approached Dizzy.
“Mr. Gillespie! Mr. Gillespie!” he said. “I know you’re very busy, but I’m teaching a jazz class tomorrow, and I wanted to see if there was any way you might be willing to come by to talk to the students. I’m sure it would mean so much to them.”
“Sure,” said Dizzy. “What time the class?”
“Ten o’clock,” Duffy replied.
To which Dizzy responded, “Ten o’clock? In the morning? Sheeeeeit. I ain’t even finished throwing up by then.”
The Doctor’s In
Headed to Smoke last night, to see the great trumpeter Eddie Henderson play Wayne Shorter tunes with his quintet (which includes the equally legendary Gary Bartz on saxophones, and Billy Drummond on drums).
I’ve always admired Henderson, a Miles Davis protege who played for substantial stretches with both Herbie Hancock and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
But, before he did, he also went to med school. And, the whole time he was building one of the most admired trumpet careers in jazz, he worked as a family physician in San Francisco. It’s a good reminder that having jazz as just one of the things you do is no excuse for falling short of the top.
Time to practice.
Savoir-Faire
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been intermittently binge-watching prior seasons of Hannibal. Mads Mikkelsen is amazing as the titular character, and though he may be cooking up people, he does so with aplomb; the finished dishes are presented as some of the best on-screen food porn since Big Night and Babette’s Feast.
In the show, Hannibal eats in Continental style – fork permanently in left hand, knife permanently in right – rather than in the American, zig-zag style – switching the fork back and forth for cutting and eating. It seemed a touch of daily class, an appealingly small yet snotty marker of good taste. So, for the past few days, I’ve been trying to eat Continental myself.
Much like with a Dvorak keyboard, it turns out there’s a gap between theoretical efficiency and practical incompetence. Normally, I can get the food from plate to mouth without conscious thought; now, it takes all kinds of concentration, and still ends a bit of a mess. But for the next week or two at least, I think I’m sticking with it. Hannibal would be proud.