Friday, October 27, 2006

Why I Should Listen to Radio More Often

My son had to go to the doctor today, which was unfortunate (though they love him there and lavish attention on him. I swear, random nurses stopped in to smile and wave at my son...kids not even one and already a player....), but he survived getting shots.
He's been really sick lately, which is unfortunate, but a part of life.
So I'm driving to the appointment listening to Don Shelby and Jeff McKinny (or "The McSkinny" as they called it) on
WCCO. One of them, I believe it was McKinny, was reading out of the recent issue of "Entertainment Weekly" (which made for thrilling radio). The subject was Sascha Baron Cohen's upcoming film Borat, which is getting hammered by some critics who don't have a sense of humor (oops, my real feelings popped out there for a second...sorry folks). So they are reading his interview to the audience when Shelby starts talking about how people think, even though Cohen is Jewish, that he is an Anti-Semite.
Except Shelby doesn't say, "Anti-Semite." Nope. He says (changed for pronounciation), "Anti-[See-mite]."
Thus begins a banter about See-mite versus Semite. As McKinny and Shelby banter, Shelby suddenly says (again for pronounciation), "You ever been in [See-men]?"
The air goes dead. I was chortling, because I had this vision of Don Shelby as the Peter Graves character (Captain Oveur) in
Airplane.
Imagine Don Shelby saying, "You ever seen a...grown man naked, Billy?"
Yet the radio remained dead. It was at least five seconds before McKinny said, "Uh, no (Quick laughter). What else is on the list?"
This is why I should be listening to the radio more often. Where else but here can you get "Entertainment Weekly" read to you and have an Emmy-winning news anchor turn an ethnic slur into porno.
Good stuff.

1 comment:

Admin Worm said...

Another blogger recently wrote of news anchors/reports changing pronunciations of words seemingly overnight. It's as if they all have fax machines in their bedrooms with that day's pronunciation changes.

Probably just ensuring they stay one step removed from the Proletariat.