Friday, November 15, 2002

Study in whiteness: I'm not a fan of Run DMC, though through reading stories on the recent tragic murder of Jam Master Jay I've come to appreciate their place as the Beatles of rap and hip-hop. Fan or not, that doesn't excuse the incredible whiteness I exhibited by the way I misheard one of their most famous songs.

Mind you, I'd never actually heard the song itself, just others singing it. Usually it'd be some other very white guy like me, and most famously Matt Damon sang the lyric in question in the movie Dogma. Maybe that accounts for me thinking the line was "Whose house? Ron's house!" For years, I've wondered who the hell Ron could be.

It's only taken me since the waning days of the Reagan administration to figure out the lyric is "Run's house," and that it's by Run DMC.

I possess tragic, soul-crushing whiteness, my friends. If I ever needed confirmation of that, I've got it now.

---

"Kaput" is Friday's Merriam-Webster Word of the Day. M-W explains that "kaput" came to us from France via Germany, and started life as a term from the card game piquet. The French "capot" was used for either completely winning or completely losing a hand. The Germans, in their usual sunny Teutonic way, had a different take:

German speakers adopted "capot," but respelled it "kaputt," and used it only for losers.

Just another linguistic warm fuzzy from the folks who brought us "schadenfreude."

Posted @ 2:01 PM

---

---