Hung. A Review.

We were on the couch, elbows touching (touching touching as they now always always must be), watching the pilot of Hung.

Kenny Bania from Seinfeld.When you watch the pilot, and you sit around for five minutes with the TiVo paused trying to remember who is playing the guy giving the entrepreneurship seminar: it's Bania. (Ovaltene. Soup <> Dinner.) You are welcome. Oh, and she's Fraiser's brother's second wife, but that was easy.

I Learn About Coaching. In an early scene, the lead, who plays a high school coach, uses profanity in front of his team. "Oh, he's going to be fired," I second-guessed, always a good test of a new show.

"Are you serious?" Gary looked appalled. "He's a coach."

Come to find out, it's coaches, not artists, who live by different rules. Even back in the day ('70-74) Gary's high school coaches cursed routinely at the team. I never played a sport (or even finished the rope climb) so I didn't know. Does the free cursing pass apply to girl teams as well?

The Ick Factor. There were a few scenes with the lead determinedly hammering on the female lead and she screams "You are sooo big!" To be honest, my Kegels clenched right up. Not just because of their delicate state (what with the WEEPING OF THE BLOOD) but also because they got a scare Saturday. A friend's 19 year old daughter has a new job selling knives, and she came by and practiced her demonstration. At one point she was talking about the warranty and what it covers. She said, "Sometime we can abuse knives, use them as a lover, for example."

My head snapped right up. I began to say, "What?" just as Gary screamed:

"A LOVER? SOME PEOPLE USE THEIR KNIVES AS LOVERS? THAT'S DANGEROUS!"

The 19 year old said, horrified, "Lover? No, I said LOVER. Lover!"

Gary was on the verge of cautioning her to not use the pointy end, when she clarified:

"You know! A lover! You put one end under something you want to pry up!"

Ahhhhh. A Leeeeeeeeeeeever. We taught her how to pronounce lever and then we bought an arsenal of knives from her.

So. Hung. Yeah, I'll see it again.

Comments

[Tami]

2 questions:

1) What kind of knives are they?
2) What 19 year old doesn't know the word "lever"? How does that happen?

[TheQueen]

1) Um, Cutco? Heres an article:
http://tinyurl.com/l4fopl
2) Well she was just pronouncing it "leh-ver." And we have filthy minds.

[Big Dot]

So do you really say leever, like English English-speakers, or levver, like the Americans on TV? No value judgements here, of course...

[Tami]

Oh! I say it with the short "e", too. I might have also confused you.

I speak like the Americans on TV, apparently.

[TheQueen]

Big Dot / Tami - I say "lehver" - the girl said "luhver" It's the schwa. Gets you every time. (I have no idea if I am spelling or using that word correctly. An old college neuron sparked.)

[Big Dot]

No, the schwa is in the second syllable - I did linguistics too. It's unaccented. Whereas, if you're saying lehver/levver, then that is undeniably an accent. American, oddly enough.

[TheQueen]

Big Dot - Wikipedia begs to differ ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa
Perhaps it means something different in your hemisphere.

[TheQueen]

Big Dot - Oh, of course, in NZ they just have the "ih" vowel. I can picture your linguisics teacher trying to make you all speak the schwa.

[Big Dot]

OK, if you're going to run with that Aussie insult, I'M allowed to get anal:
"An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. Such vowels are often transcribed with the symbol , regardless of their actual phonetic value."
So the second e in, let's see, Ellen, is schwa.

[TheQueen]

Big Dot - I could go online and hunt for words that start with a schwa, but I will concede the point to you. But you still call me "Ell-iyn."