A listener reports that the pronunciation of Novi, Michigan, is counterintuitive. It’s pronounced noh-VYE. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Novi, Michigan” You remember our conversation where I was talking about going to Vermont...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game about funny softball team names. For example, the real-life name of the Whitney Museum’s employee softball team? Why, they’re the Whitney Houstons, of course. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Funny...
To spin a brodie or pull a brodie is to spin a doughnut in a car. The term derives from the name of Steve Brodie, who allegedly jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886. To do a brodie, originally meaning to jump or fall, came to mean any kind of...
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game called “Centricity”, emphasis on the “city.” For example, “Mickey ate all the fruit, leaving Minneapolis.” And as George H.W. Bush said to George W. Bush, “You can be president Tucson.” This is part of a complete...
decimal dust n.— «The thin wires that could carry the world’s information system directly and cheaply to every house in the city is on the order of what Sup. Ross Mirkarimi likes to call “decimal dust.” Electrical conduit, which will one day be the...
city-it n.— «Some local surfers complained last week that publicity for the new surfing beach would attract a large influx of city-its (rhymes with idiots), a local term for neophyte surfers from Manhattan.» —“Sand, Surf, and Permission to Brave...