Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Euphemizing With The Stars

At the urging of some friends, I finally relented and watched an episode of Dancing With The Stars. The show is hosted by the somewhat smug Tom Bergeron (who has nothing on Justin Timberlake and Neil Patrick Harris for smugness — they are the sultans of smug). Tom’s co-host is a woman named Brooke. Last night she was wearing a rather revealing dress. More on that later.

There were twelve dance teams made up each of one professional dancer and one "star". Now I don't doubt that these participants are celebrated in some form or another of endeavor. But it just seemed curious that of the twelve "stars" I had only heard of half of them  — Gladys Knight, Martina Navratilova, Sherri Shepherd, Donald Driver, Jaleel White, and Melissa Gilbert. I'm a football fan so I knew who Donald Driver was. My wife is no sports lover, so that brought her list of recognizable "stars" down to five.

Wikipedia lists the "stars" and their occupations. It's no surprise that I had never heard of the Disney Channel star, the Telenovela star, and the television hostess. And it's certainly no mystery that I had no clue as to who the "classical crossover singer" was. I don't even know what a classical crossover singer is. Is it someone who hums Chopin's Polonaise in G minor while driving a Dodge Journey? If she sings opera, then why don't they just call her an opera singer? Perhaps her style of singing is something new in pop culture. I’m mighty proud to say that I know nothing of pop culture.

Some of the dancing was pretty good, and some of it reminded me of the way I move after downing a couple of bottles of hooch at a Minikin hoedown. The judges weren’t too harsh however and generally gave scores of seven or eight (out of ten). By the way, if you ever want to know how the middle judge (Len) scored, just take the score of either of the two other judges (since they always score the same) and subtract one. You will come up with Len’s score 99% of the time.

I noticed that viewers could go to the Dancing With The Stars Twitter page and tweet while watching the show (a common practice these days known as mulit-tasking. Most young people can Skype, tweet, text, watch TV, listen to music, play video games, and (if they knew what it was) could probably also hum Chopin’s Polonaise in G minor all at the same time). I was reading a few of the Twitter posts and wanted to go on there myself and tweet, "Check out the bus wheels on Brooke!"

For those of you who are not aware of it, “bus wheels” is a new Canadian euphemism for breasts. It originated with the Wildrose party of Alberta. More specifically, it originated with an image of party leader Danielle Smith on her campaign bus. Here is a picture of the bus:



Considering the publicity that Ms. Smith has acquired from this inadvertent stunt, we should soon see other party leaders doing something similar. Ontario's Dalton McGuinty could shed some of his stuffy image by having a picture of himself on the back of a bus strategically placed over the tailpipe. Not that it's something that hasn't been seen before:



I think the first guy might be happier with his "tailpipe".

2 comments:

  1. Hilarious! I am glad I am now up to snuff on the true meaning of "bus wheels". As for your reference to the multi-tasking abilities of the younger generation, I was wondering, do you think they ever actually speak on the phone? The phone is becoming an antique before our eyes. On a totally unrelated note, I read your post from when you first took up headquarters in Miniken and I'm gaining an affinity for the booming metropolis. Am I correct in concluding that a "Miniken minute" would be on par with a "New York minute"? Enquiring minds want to know.

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    1. I agree that phones (especially land lines) are going the way of the Victrola. I’m afraid this may even affect the speech of the younger generation as they will undoubtedly want to phonetically vocalize what they’re so used to texting; “Double yew tee eff" “Ell oh ell"

      Although not as quick as a New York minute, the term Minikin minute refers to an old tourist slogan around these parts which said, “Take a minute to see Minikin”. It takes considerably less than a minute.

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