Phonetic Alphabet

A friend of mine challenged me to learn the Phonetic Alphabet. You know the one--it's what soldiers are busy saying in all the old war movies: "Roger Home Base, this is Echo One. Our location is Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Awaiting instructions. Over." I was initially unconvinced of its value to a civilian in the 21st century except as an engagingly eccentric interest/ability; of which some would say that I perhaps already have an overflowing cupful.

Yet, I was recently doing that thing where some business has established a convenient voice recognition system to aide you in your inquiry, but, woefully, it only speaks a sub-dialect of Russian, so when it inquires, "What movie would you like to see?" and you respond, "Zombieland" it says, "You have selected 'Maid in Manhattan;' is this correct?" Except I was actually using United's phone booking system and the automated woman and I were facing some early relationship jitters as she consistently misheard my boarding code, which was something intuitive like XGFCHLMT. After the third failed attempt she says, "We appear to be having difficulty understanding each other." I reflexively brace myself for the "It's not you it's me" speech, but then she says, "Let's try something else. Say the name of something that begins with each letter. For example 'Alice' for 'A' or 'Bob' for 'B.' Please repeat your boarding code this way now." Too late I realize the utility of the Phonetic Alphabet, which would have gotten me quickly to my flight departure information and made me look impossibly cool at the same time. Instead, I made up wild silent letter and other fantastical associations for my own amusement--"X as in Xylophone, G as in Gila Monster, F as in Fenestrate." She was less than amused. I gave up on our burgeoning love (hey, a sense of humor matters) and pressed "O" for a live human being.

Don't get caught out this way. Immediately, as I now have, memorize the following alliterative alphabetic mantra:

ALPHA
BRAVO
CHARLIE
DELTA
ECHO
FOXTROT
GOLF
HOTEL
INDIA
JULIET
KILO
LIMA
MIKE
NOVEMBER
OSCAR
PAPA
QUEBEC
ROMEO
SIERRA
TANGO
UNIFORM
VICTOR
WHISKEY
X-RAY
YANKEE
ZULU

PS - Have you noticed that Joss Whedon is using the Phonetic Alphabet to name the "actives" in his underwhelming new tee-vee show, "Dollhouse"? Oh, and "I am Trying to Break Your Heart" by Wilco is Golf Oscar Oscar Delta; now playing on iTunes.

5-4-Fri: Horrifying Things

Tomorrow is Halloween, so this week you get a list of five woefully ghoulish, terrible, horrifying things:

1. Blue Jeans Shorts. There is never, repeat after me, never any excuse for wearing blue jeans shorts. Hemming them only adds several centuries in purgatory. One exception: short cutoffs on hot girls in the 1980s; if this does not apply to you gender-wise or temporally then don't even think about it.

2. Tramp Stamp. As Chris Rock noted, any girl working the pole is a living symbol of parental failure. Don't extend the discussion to include shaming your parents with a lower back billboard. What one might refer to as the buttal philtrum should be bare--not covered with a butterfly that will just metamorphose into a bat as you age.

3. Barbed Wire Tattoo. For guys with no sense of shame, there is the barbed wire tattoo around the biceps. Dudes, see supra. Don't do it. You don't look like a super hero. You don't look like a football player. You don't look cool. You look like a dork. You look like someone who doesn't realize that your tattoo will be an ironic Abu Ghraib-like fence around your arm waddle when you're 70. Also, ladies, if Pam can't pull this one off, neither can you.

4. Mullet. This hairstyle has been much ridiculed elsewhere, so I'll leave it at simply shivering with repulsion and warning you off it; but beware its modern iterations. WHAT are the producers of the otherwise charming "Castle" thinking by giving the easy-on-the-eyes Stana Katic a girl mullet this season?!

5. The White Hemp Choker with Sea Shell Accents. Ever meet some tool who has been to a surfing lesson once on Spring Break and now obsessively wears brown leather flip flops and board shorts topped by a white rope surf choker? Me, too. Sporting these brotastic necklaces is a fashion nightmare for the turtle-shell-ribbed belly-baring boy toys of Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs and it ain't gonna work any better for you. Please--and I am begging America here--please stop it.

PS - I am not a close follower of Billy Ray Cyrus' career, but I think it is possible that he has been a combo-platter offender on all fronts here. And he's busy plowing new ground. I stumbled across the Disney juggernaut "Hannah Montana" on cable television the other day and daymn if Billy didn't show up playing Miley's fake-life dad and sporting blond highlights, a soul patch, a spin art Bonnaroo tee, some kind of dominatrix-like leather watch band the width of a WWE trophy belt. Maybe I'll go as him for Halloween this year. Spooky! (Sorry, Bill, but you put it out there.) Oh, and "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and the Del Tones is scary good; now playing on iTunes.

Crisis of Credit

Annnnnnd, we're back. Thank you caller. We were talking about the messed up US economy and how such a thing happens and who is to blame. Well, as Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." Oh, and also the enemy is the sickening and woefully insatiable gluttony of Wall Street...Pogo forgot to mention that part.

To date, the best explanation of what the heck is going on with the Great Recession that I have seen is "Crisis of Credit Visualized"--an animated primer on how the American economy went belly up based on credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, sub-prime mortgages, credit crunches, and other highly jargonable phrases uttered on NPR that you might not have fully grasped when they first smooched your ear with their authoritative yet somehow incomprehensible syllabic combinations.

Enjoy. (For a while I had this thing parked on my Bookmarks toolbar; that's how good it is.)

PS - I am loving the idea that Greenspan seems to be saying, "Uh, about that whole self-regulation thing, I might, uh, have been wrong." Well, maybe the economy can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of boneheaded, unregulated greed. Oh, and "1901" by Phoenix is on fire; now playing on iTunes.