Funny Words

Does a word ever strike you as interesting to say? Just out of the blue? A word that you've said roughly 8,000 times in your life, just one day strikes you as interesting to say? You decide you like the way it rolls off your tongue. Or you decide you like the way the word is contructed?

I got caught last night on "Jaguar," because a commercial for the really expensive Fords came on, and the announcer insisted on pronouncing the word "Jag-yoo-ar."

I don't suppose there's anything wrong with that (except that I disagree to my very core with that pronunciation).

I'd just always pronounced it "Jag-war" or even "Jag-Wire."

Not "Jag-yoo-ar."

But I did say "Jag-you-ar" something like 40 times as I walked around the house.

Tom Green did this all the time. He'd find a word interesting or funny, and he'd say it a lot. He stuck to common words. Sausage was one he went on about on his first MTV show, I think, and then again in his movie.

Letterman will do it, though it's usually a name he'll find. Sometimes, it's minor. He went on all night about a guy with the last name "Schmank" one night. Then, there was his initial fascination with names Sirajul and Mujibur.

And who can forget Dick Assman? Though it's not quite the same thing.

But I bring Dick Assman up, because his name fascinated Dave (and America, to be sure) the same way I got caught on something else this morning.

I was reading an old interview in an old magazine I found. It's an article about the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and somewhere in there is the line "It's hard to who's the bigger asshole." Anthony Kiedis and Flea are, apparently, torturing each other while the interview is going on, and the interviewer comments that she doesn't know which is the bigger pest.

And for whatever reason I laughed. I don't know if it's the way the word "asshole" echoed in my mind, or whether I found comparing a person to the poop orifice all at once funny. That would be odd, because I hadn't found it funny in years.

But it finally hit me why that line is funny.

When I first read it, my mind read the contraction "who's" as "who has," instead of "who is," which is how it was intended.

I read it: It's hard to tell who has the bigger asshole.

Which, to me, would make getting interviewed a whole different animal.

Now, I've interviewed quite a bit over the course of the summer. Granted, it's a different sort of interview. But whether I'm famous and getting interviewed by Rolling Stone, or if it's just for a job, if it involves comparing poopchutes?

Not interested. No, thank you.