What's the Next New Phrase to Enter Your Wheelhouse?

English officers on bridge of destroyer in World War II (User: W.wolny)

Catchphrases are like epidemics and very contagious. “Sounds like a plan” is so ubiquitous it’s almost replaces “and” and “the” in frequency of use. “Being on the same page” is another expression for which there is as yet no known vaccine, along with “at the end of the day.” “At the end of the day” is "spot on"(yet another popular one) since it introduces a visual and temporal element into the monotony of cliché. The end of the day is sunset; it’s also literally then end of a 24 hour period. It took seven days for God to create the heavens and earth (including a day of rest) so there's a spiritual element tagged on to an expression which means basically “when all is said and done”— a catchphrase that's not as frequently used. When someone is stupid, you say they’re not the sharpest tack, but this is another catchphrase which seems to have gone into remission. But what has put “wheelhouse” in our wheelhouses? “Wheelhouse” is like the Zika virus, though it can’t be sexually transmitted; you might have heard inklings of “wheelhouse” occurring in places like LA where these kinds of expressions tend to fester, but it’s only recently that there have been a huge number of references to this or that being in his or her wheelhouse, which essentially means repertoire. When you really think about it, having the bridge of a ship connote the range of someone's abilities is a stretch. However, how such an association came about is a another story. The question is: what’s the next new catchphrase that going to find it’s way into your wheelhouse? There are more things on heaven and earth, dear Noam, then are dreamt of in your universal grammar.

Donald Trump's Universal Grammar

There has been a lot of talk about Donald Trump and why he appeals to people, but more specifically why he gets to say things that would ruin another politicians career, like the comment about Carly Fiorina’s face, or Megyn Kelly’s period, about “lyin Ted”, or “Crooked Hillary.” He loves soubriquets, but Trump’s appeal might actually be in the language. For the disenfranchised voter that Trump appeals to the assaultive language is an ineradicable bond that places Trump on the wrong side of the tracks and in cahoots against the establishment with his would be constituents. It’s like the kind of self-mutilation that motorcycle gang members practice with their tattoos and piercing and anti-social antics. Trump is constantly proving himself to the Hell’s Angels both literally (since they represent his demographic of poor whites) and metaphorically. He says what we think since there's racism, sexism and bigotry in all of us. We all want to put up walls (psychic as well as physical). We all want to demean people we disagree with and even keep them out of our communities. In the process of evolution, we gradually learn to do away with these tribal impulses. Trying to be Trump is a big mistake. You can’t be Trump unless you’re Andrew Dice Clay, or Howard Stern or someone who excels at shock jockery and it’s not something that can be taught. You are born with the genes or not. Noam Chomsky theorized about a universal grammar, a biological trait of humans, underlying the acquisition of all language. But Trump possesses a mutation of universal grammar, which allows him to speak to the pathological part of all of us. In a review the late Andrew Sarris commented, “there’s a little Hitler in all of us” (“The Controversial Das Experiment: Is There Some Hitler in All of Us?” Observer, 9/30/02)

The Peripatetesthete: Bangkok

Bangkok is, if you think of it, almost the perfect name for a city that has the reputation for permissive sexuality. One wonders if the cart came before the horse. Nothing in the early history of the name suggests that there was any onomatopoeia involved (thought the actual Thai name for Bangkok, Krung  Thep Maha, is equally suggestive). Still one of the most notorious attractions is the red light district known as Soi Cowboy and what better choice of syllables to express the intent of wanderers in this part of town than “bang” and “kok.”Many visitors to Bangkok might not be saying it, but they are thinking “BangCock” rather than Bangkok when they breeze into town. Say no more. Bang is plainly what the average Joe does when he comes to Bangkok unless he has journeyed there for foreign affairs. It would be interesting to know what Noam Chomsky, who propagated the idea of a Universal Grammar, would have to say about the suggestive sounds which compromise the Thai capital’s name. If we deconstruct the word, would he find something in the culture and in the environment which produced a thriving pornopolis and is it sexual freedom, tolerance or simply poverty that that explains a culture where the capital city actually sounds like a dirty word. If the Greeks had been as permissive then Thebes might have been named Motherfucker.