Will it be "Mayor Bob" or "Mayor Jeff"?

As we know, Madison's Mayor is better known as Mayor Dave than Mayor Cieslewicz. I suppose fear of failure had something to do with that in the beginning. People didn't know how to pronounce Cieslewicz and they didn't want to look like dope while they insulted the new mayor, so they took the easy way out. C'mon, how hard is it to say? Sizzle-witz, right? No, wait, Chess-ell-wich? Ok, ok, it's really chess LEV ich.

A few years into his mayoralness, I noticed several people around Monona calling our Mayor Robb. Is it really that hard to say Kahl (call)? Slavic names warrant diminutives, four-letter German ones don't. Besides, Kahl is already a nickname according to ancestry.com it's the German: nickname from Middle High German kal and means ‘bald’.

If we must have nicknames for our mayors, let's be creative and imitate contemporary sports. For example, Mayor Dave could have adopted the moniker D-Sizzle and thus anticipated the American tackle football playah, T-Sizzle of the Baltimore Ravens (aka, Terrell Suggs). No doubt D-Sizzle would have had more, well, sizzle than plain old Mayor Dave.



The black helicopter crowd would have dropped their gyroscope if this t-shirt said D-Sizzle was coming for them.

 Which brings me to my point - besides wasting time until tomorrow's kickoff - what are we going to call the next mayor of Monona? I'm not asking who's going to win, I'm asking what appellation will we hang on them? Will it be Mayor Bob or Mayor Jeff? Please, no. If we're going to use their plain old names, let's stick with Miller or Wiswell - each of which is easy to say.

Here's some help.

The world of sports is robustly rich with impactful nicknames, a veritable horn o' plenty. Bob is out of the gate and ahead of the field in this regard and he seems to be angling for the one-name renown usually reserved to Brazilian futebol players. (Remember his catchy 'BOB' yard signs from 4 years ago?) At first I thought 'Bob' was too plain to qualify for one-name status. Most Brazilian players have names with little resemblance to Bob (to my ear anyway) such as Pele, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, and Cafu, but now comes Fred. Yes, there are Brazilian football players named Fred - just Fred.

So if a Brazilian footballer can be be just Fred, then heck yeah our mayor could be just Bob (not Mayor Bob, just Bob). But lookout, there's more than one Fred in Brazilian soccer! There's also this Fred. It's the other Fred, known to his mother as Frederico Chaves Guedes, who has played for the World Cup team. Holy smokes! There's another Brazilian soccer-playing Fred and he's dead at the age of 26!

We don't have any other Bob's amongst the elected officials today, but who's to say that won't change? And the city of Monona does employ another Bob (Johnson) and he is arguably more important than the mayor because he keeps stuff in working order. No, Bob is not gonna work.

Jeff prefers a more formal approach, referring to himself as Jeffrey Wiswell, Sr. This calls to mind the harrumphing amongst conservatives when Jimmy Carter was elected President. I recall the (defunct) St. Louis Globe Democrat editorializing that having won the presidency as Jimmy from Plains, Carter should be referred to by his full names: James Earl Carter. Brazilian soccer players are known by one name, serial killers are known by three-names, but not presidents or mayors.

Did you know alder Wiswell is a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Air Force Auxiliary – Civil Air Patrol (Government Relations Officer) once a Colonel always a colonel, I say. Jeff could be The Colonel, although it sounds better if you can add a modifier, like Kentucky, before you whoop out the 'colonel'. (My tongue is so far into my cheek with this post that it's poking it out the other side, but the rank of Lieutenant Colonel is impressive.)


Your turn. Make some suggestions (and don't go there, don't suggest The Whizzinator). The obvious choice for Jeff Wiswell is "Whizzer" for Byron White, a star running back in college and later a conservative US Supreme Court Justice.



(Or maybe we should just stick with Mayor Miller or Mayor Wiswell, as the case may be.)
 
 
Here are some nicknames from the world of sport:


1. "The Splendid Splinter" (Ted Williams)


2. "The Sultan of Swat" (George Herman "Babe" Ruth)

3. Willie "Hit 'em Where They Ain't" Keeler

4. "Hammerin' " Hank Aaron

5. "The Big Unit" (Randy Johnson)

6. "The Georgia Peach" (Ty Cobb)

7. Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown

8. "The Yankee Clipper" ("Joltin' Joe" DiMaggio)

9. Fred "Bonehead" Merkle

10. Walter "Big Train" Johnson

Honorable Mention: "Big Mac" (Mark McGwire), "The Say Hey Kid" (Willie Mays), "Double X" (Jimmy Foxx), Paul "Poison" Waner and Lloyd "Little Poison" Waner, "Dizzy" and "Daffy" Dean, "Donny Baseball" (Don Mattingly), "Rapid" Robert Feller, "The Chairman of the Board" (Whitey Ford), Willie "Pops" Stargell, "Junior" (Ken Griffey), Roger "The Rocket" Clemens, "Dr. K" (Dwight Gooden).



Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames

Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames- 1880-1899

Old Hoss--Charles Radbourn (1880-1891)


Bid--John McPhee (1882-1899)

The Hoosier Thunderbolt--Amos Rusie (1889-1901)

The Cyclone--Cy Young (1890-1911)

Little Napoleon--John McGraw (1891-1906)

Old Fox--Clark Griffith (1891-1914)

Wee Willie--Willie Keeler (1892-1910)

The Flying Dutchman--Honus Wagner (1897-1917)

Happy Jack--John Chesbro (1899-1909)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1900-1909

Three Fingered--Mordecai Brown (1903-1916)

The Mighty Mite--Miller Huggins (1904-1916)

Mahatma--Branch Rickey (1905-1914)

The Georgia Peach--Ty Cobb (1905-1928)

The Big Train--Walter Johnson (1907-1927)

Home Run--Frank Baker (1908-1922)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1910-1919

The Ole Professor--Casey Stengel(1912-1925)

Rabbit--Walter Maranville (1912-1935)

Slug--Harry Heilman (1914-1932)

The Sultan of Swat--Babe Ruth (1914-1935)

Dazzy--Clarence Vance (1915-1935)

Old Stubblebeard--Burleigh Grimes (1916-1934)

The Fordham Flash--Frankie Frisch (1919-1937)



Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1920-1929

The Iron Horse--Lou Gehrig (1923-1939)

Hack--Lewis Robert Wilson (1923-1934)

The Mechanical Man--Charlie Gehringer (1924-1942)

The Beast--Jimmie Fox (1925-1945)

The Lip--Leo Durocher (1925-1945)

The Meal Ticket--Carl Hubble (1928-1943)

The Hoosier Hammer--Chuck Klein (1928-1944)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1930-1939


Dizzy--Jay Hanna Dean (1930-1947)

Old Aches and Pains or Fumblefoot--Luke Appling (1930-1950)

Arky--Joseph Vaughn (1932-1948)

Joltin' Joe--Joe DiMaggio (1936-1951)

Country--Enos Slaughter (1938-1959)

The Splendid Splinter--Ted Williams (1939-1960)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1940-1949

Pee Wee--Henry Reese (1940-1958)

Duke--Edwin Snider (1947-1964)
Stan the Man--Stan Musial (1941-1963)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1950-1959

The Say Hey Kid--Willie Mays (1951-1973)

Killer--Harmon Killebrew (1954-1975)

The Vacuum Cleaner--Brooks Robinson (1955-1977)

Hoot--Bob Gibson (1959-1975)

Stretch--Willie McCovey (1959-1980)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1960-1969

Knucksie--Phil Niekro (1964-1987)

Catfish--Jim Hunter (1965-1979)

Cakes--Jim Palmer (1965-1984)

The Ryan Express--Nolan Ryan (1966-1993)

Mr. October--Reggie Jackson (1967-1987)


Baseball Hall of Fame Nicknames-1970-1979

The Wave--Dave Winfiled (1973-1995)

The Wizard of Oz--Ozzie Smith (1978-1996)

The Ignitor--Paul Molitor (1978-1998)

Need more names? Jeezus, what are you an insomniac? Go here for roughly a jillion nicknames.

***

One last thing. About that link to http://chicago.sbnation.com/chicago-bears/2011/1/17/1939880/nfc-championship-game-chicago-bears-vs-green-bay-packers-soldier-field-of-dreams apparently the author thinks grizzly bears reside in Wisconsin:
 

The Number One Threat To Wisconsin? BEARS!: Two grizzly bears from the Brookfield Zoo feasted on a football and a Cheesehead with the Green Bay Packers logo. They were filled with meat and vegetables. The reason that the cheesehead wasn't sitting on top of a Packers fan's head at the time, is because the zoo doesn't like for the bears to have a lot of 'empty calories'.

Ok, the line about empty calories is pretty fuuny, but don't they have any black bears at the Brookfield Zoo? Maybe the black bears peed themselves and ran for cover when they saw the Cheesehead.

***

Addendum: Somehow the Deep Thinkers compiling the above lists of sports nicknames left out Stan the Man Musial! Stan Musial. I am adding him to the 1940's list of great Hall of Famer nicknames.

To see an even more complete HOF nickname list go to the Baseball Almanac.

Vote in the Poll or Kiss Guinness Bye Bye

Hey, wake up! Vote in the poll thingy over to the left. Pick a word. Four lousy ittle votes? For shame Monona. We are not making the Guinness record book if only two of us shout:

"antidisestablishmentarianism!"

Monona, Pick a Word

OK, here's my idea. We (i.e.,  my fellow Mononans) choose a word (from my list of suggested words below) and then we all shout it in unison at 8:40 PM on Sunday evening, July 4th. If we pick the right word (from my list of suggested words below), we should be a cinch for the Guinness Book of World Records.

eponymous - I like the word eponymous because it sounds so freaking edumacated, but it just means "Of, relating to, or being the person after which something is named" as in "the eponymous Monona Doug."

cornhole (that link - to the left - is the YouTube video of the eponymous cornhole song - I offer this option merely to recognize the evil creative genius of the Monona Community Festival organizers. However, a group of people shouting 'cornhole' could be misconstrued as disorderly conduct. Section 947.01 of our very own Wisconsin statutes provides thusly: "Whoever, in a public or private place, engages in violent, abusive, indecent, profane, boisterous, unreasonably loud, or otherwise disorderly conduct under circumstances in which the conduct tends to cause or provoke a disturbance is guilty of a Class B misdemeanor." Shout 'cornhole!' at your own risk.



Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Some question whether this is a real word, but it is included on the web site of the National Institutes of Health, Department of Health & Human Services). By its roots the word id defined as follows: super- "above", cali- "beauty", fragilistic- "delicate", expiali- "to atone", and docious- "educable", with the sum of these parts signifying roughly "Atoning for educability through delicate beauty." http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.ogg And now you have that stupid tune in your head for the rest of the looooong weekend.

dociousaliexpiisticfragicalirupus (The sound of the word Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious pronounced backwards). This one is just trying too hard and someone is bound to get hurt shouting dociousaliexpiisticfragicalirupus.

feuilleton - The Wikster says feuilleton was "originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles. The feuilleton may be described as a 'talk of the town', and a contemporary English-language example of the form is the Talk of the Town section of The New Yorker." I'm partial to feuilleton because I use it in my header for the blog, but it really better describes The Monona Rag and besides it's French (the word not the Rag) and therefore prone to internal backbiting, racial & religious division, and running away and falling down over (Pick your French joke here). Even their bulldogs look wimpy.

antidisestablishmentarianism  - this one is my favorite and the leader in the clubhouse. It's really long (but NOT the longest word in the English language), it has an actual meaning (opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England as the official Established church), and it relates to historical events. And, now it turns out it shows yet again the full extent of the anti-Obama whack jobs (Like this fellow who claims there are more than twice as many worshipping Muslims in England as Anglicans! There are actually some 25 million Anglicans of whom about 1.7M are church regulars and there are only about 2.4M Muslims in England in total). The longest non-sciency word is floccinaucinihilipilification (the categorizing of something as worthless or trivial).

Don't like my offerings? Tough Then try this excellent web site.

OK, name your word. Otherwise convinced otherwise, I'm going with antidisestablishmentarianism. We get three people shouting that at once and we are in the record book - in like Flint.

Mottoes and Maps and Cheese

While rigorously researching the new phrase thingy in my blog's header (yeah, it's up there at the top), I was reminded of Tony Earl's 'Eat Cheese or Die' campaign (discussed on the Cheese Underground). Which led me to the blog Strange Maps' post about state mottoes including this great map of state slogans.


As it says there: The USA mottoes map itself can be found on the Two Eyeballs website, where the artist Emily Wick showcases her work.


Strange Maps has some other great maps, including one of the undiscovered, nonexistent island of Buss (sorry, no 'e'). You really should visit the Strange Maps blog. OK, just try this map with a Beer Garden of Bohemianism...

Oh Jeez or Is That Geez

What about dem Packers, eh?

You may have noticed that people around Wisconsin talk about the Packers as if they are each one of our personal friends. And not just Brett, either. Hell, we even call his wife by her first name (it's Deanna, duh.). And his oldest daughter (Brittany, you dolt.).

Well, natives talk funny in other ways too. Here are some examples. Remember, natives up here think ice sailing boats are dangerous because they might hit an ice shanty. Note: There is no way the bikini photo isn't seriously photo shopped. That never really happened.

Check out this hilarious web page. http://www.bratwurstpages.com/dialect.html

Well, as a supposed long-ago Flatlander, I find it hilarious. (actually I come from so far down in Southern Illinois it aint even flat; for one thing we got all those hills from leftover coal mines and those nice swimmin' holes - "coal holes" - but I digress.)

Saying: "we"

Meaning: the Green Bay Packers

Saying: up nort'
Meaning: To a flatlander, north of the south Wisconsin state line. To a Wisconsinite, at least 100 miles north of home (at least we agree on something, in a relative sort of way)

Saying: "Ahm ganna pahk thah cah in Hahvahd yahd."

Meaning: Wisconsinite imitating a Bostonian.

Saying: "Why don't you come with?"

Meaning: An example of typical Wisconsinite syntax The sentence ends with a preposition. You linguists know there's a German influence working here, eh?

Saying: "yah yah"

Meaning: I heard you the first time (said to nagging spouse)

Here's another source at Gilly's Glen: http://isee.iwarp.com/Home/Wisconsinisms.html

*Ain-a OR Ain-a-hey: Placed at the end of a profound statement; as in "isn't it?"

*Blaze orange: What deer hunters and cold-weather Packers fans wear at Lambeau.

*Borrow: Used in place of "lend," as in, "Could youse borrow me a couple two-tree bucks?"

*Budge: To merge without permission; cut in, as in "Don't you budge in line for a brat, I was here first!"

Come-hear-once: A beckoning call to another Cheddarhead.

Couple-two-tree: More than one; as in "Delmer and I drank a couple-two-tree beers."

*Cripes: A Wisconsin expletive
*Cripes-sake: A mild Wisconsin expletive.

*Crymany-cripes-sake: A wild Wisconsin expletive.

D: A substitute for words beginning with "TH"; as in "Dat guy over dere in dah Bears shirt is a FIB."

*Geeez!: Another Wisconsin expletive.

*Hey: Placed at the beginning or end of phrases for emphasis, as in "Hey, how 'bout them Packers?" or "How 'bout them Packers, hey?"

*M'walkey: Wisconsin's largest city; located just down the lake from Trivers and Mantwoc.
N'so?: A word inseted at the end of a statement; used as a substitute for "right?" or "correct?"

*Oh, yah: Depending on emphasis, it's either used as acknowledgement (as "That's correct.") or skepticism (That's bull!).

*Sconsin: The state where Cheeseheads are from.

*Start wit me last: To forfeit your turn, "Go ahead of me," or "you go first."

*Stop-and-go lights: What everyone else refers to as traffic signals.

Tirdy: Same as "thirty," and used on all numbers from 30 thru 39. Exception to the "D" rule, similar to "tink" and "tousand."

*Un-thaw: To defrost.

*Where-bouts: Locality; proximity; as in, "where-bouts are youse guys from?"

*You-betcha: Affirmative; as in "yah-hey."

Youse: Pronounced "YOOS"; it means "you" as in "are youse guys goin' up nort?"

*Youper: Someone from even further upnort than you.

Book Talks

Last weekend brought to town a multitude of authors for the 2007 Wisconsin Book Festival - and some who were already here. I also snatched up some bargains at the Friends of the UW Library and the Friends of the Monona Public Library book sales [the controversial The Origins of The Second World War by A.J.P. Taylor, the aforementioned History and Hope - Collected Essays by CV Wedgwood, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson and Felix in the Underworld by John Mortimer - one of my favorites and author the Rumpole books The First Rumpole Omnibus (Rumpole)] .

On Friday evening I attended Voices from a Changing Africa: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zakes Mda.

Each author gave readings from their most recent books. Zakes Mda is a native of South Africa who teaches creative writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and read from Cion: A Novel . The reading centered on a the story of a town in SE Ohio that was established by runaway slaves, Native Americans, and immigrant Irish.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie read about a young Nigerian entering the employ of a white man on the cusp of the Biafran War (1967-1970) from Half of a Yellow Sun.



On Saturday I caught the talk by UW professor (and long-time friend) Jim Baughman on his excellent book, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948--1961 on the early days of television.



I also attended the speech given by Christopher Hitchens at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. convention. It was vintage Hitchens in that he made some very smart arguments, some very unfair characterizations, and intentionally 'pissed off' (his phrase) the audience by launching into a hateful tirade about the Bush's Iraq War and why he wants to obliterate Iran. I sort of knew what to expect and found it mostly entertaining in a train wreck kind of way, but there were a bunch of gobsmacked atheists in the crowd!

Finally, at the invite of fellow Monona Alder Bob Miller on Wednesday I attended The Ralph O. & Monona H. Nafziger Lecture "Iraq’s Elusive Peace: A Reporter’s View from Inside the Green Zone" presented by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post National Editor and award-winning author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City. The event is sponsored by the UW J-School. Alder Miller is on the school's Board of Visitors and in 2007 was awarded The Distinguished Service to Journalism Award (See, Robert Miller). And yes, the woman's name really was "Monona" - in fact here's a link to her obit madison.com.

From the UW web site:

"Rajiv Chandrasekaran is the National Editor of The Washington Post and the author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a best-selling account of the bungled American effort to reconstruct Iraq. The book, which provides a firsthand view of life inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, won the Overseas Press Club book award, the Ron Ridenhour Prize and Britain’s Samuel Johnson Prize. It also was a finalist for the National Book Award."

Making Mom Proud in Monona

Did you catch this story in the Cap Times about grifting in Monona? (Grifting is a form of a con game or swindle.)

The part that I liked was that the criminal grifter is a "very thin" white woman in her mid- to late 20s and "has a tattoo on her upper right arm of a heart with the word 'Mom' inside of it." Ahh, the criminal class - their stupidity is one reason the jails and prisons are overflowing (another reason is society's stupidity for locking up hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders for long periods on our dime).

Word of the Day - Lecanomancy

According to Wikepedia:

'Lecanomancy' is a form of divination in which a diviner uses stones, oil, or meditation, coupled with a basin of water. Stones are dropped in the basin and the sound of the dropping along with the ripples formed are interpreted. When oil is used, the oil is poured into the water and the shapes it forms are interpreted. For meditation, the water is gazed upon, invoking a
self-hypnotic state for divination.

And I thought I was just skippin' stones when I was a kid.