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Word Origins: Meet Your New Words

The Oxford English Dictionary is the de facto official record of the English language. Like every living language, English is constantly evolving, with new words seemingly entering the vernacular everyday—most of them slang phrases, computer and Internet terms, or portmanteaus, which are new words combined out two or more existing words.

Whenever the OED is updated, usually each June, editors announce the newest words added to the 800,000 word-plus dictionary. They’re not super-new—they’re generally words that have been around for about 10 years and are still common. This year, OED editors added more than 1,200 new words to the dictionary, and, by extension, officially to English. Here are some notable additions.

Giant Rubber Duck News: Power to the People

In May, we told you about a public art event very close to our hearts here at the BRI: Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s unveiling of a 54-foot-tall giant rubber duck in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor. It looks just like the rubber ducky seen on the covers of all of our books…only much, much bigger. On June 4, 2013, the duck made news in China—and around the world—again.

June 4^th is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In 1989, thousands of protestors occupied Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, protesting China’s Communist government. The government responded by sending in 300,000 troops to quell the protests. Six thousand protestors were killed. The tragedy spawned a lasting, powerful image: a single, Chinese man, standing in front of a row of tanks.

In China, publicly commemorating the massacre (officially known as “The June 4^th Incident”) is forbidden, so many people protest online. But criticizing the government online is also illegal in China. So what do protesters do? This year they made pictures.

One person recreated the famous photo (the original of which is illegal to distribute in China) entirely with Lego blocks. Another person doctored the photo and replaced the tanks with images of the Giant Floating Duck.

Once the Internet-regulating authorities figured out what was going on, the Giant Floating Duck-as-tank photo was banned. Nevertheless, the duck is now a symbol of quiet protest in China.

The real duck, fully inflated, is scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh in September.

3 Real-Life Statues Commemorating Fictional Characters

Robocop. Detroit has had some hard times lately, but there’s one bright spot on the horizon: construction and placement are nearly completed for a statue of Robocop. The original 1987 film, Robocop, was about the half-man, half-robot, all-violent policeman saving a futuristic, crime-destroyed version of the city. The kooky project was dreamt up by a group called Imagination Station Detroit. In 2011, they raised $57,000 via Kickstarter to make the 10 foot-tall statue honoring a favorite son a reality.

Optimus Prime. A 32-foot tall, 21-ton statue of the leader of the Transformers stands proudly in a square in Shenyang City, China. And, like how Transformers are vehicles that can rapidly transform into giant robots, “transforming” parts from 21 abandoned cars and trucks created this Optimus Prime statue. It’s the biggest Optimus Prime model on Earth…which means it’s not the only one. There’s another Optimus Prime statue in Beijing.

Rocky and Bullwinkle. And now here’s something we hope you’ll really like: This 15-foot tall fiberglass statue of the cartoon “moose and squirrel” was constructed in 1961 to promote the premiere of The Bullwinkle Show on NBC. Actress Jayne Mansfield presided over the unveiling, which took place along the Sunset Strip in LA and drew 5,000 spectators. The statue can be found at 8218 Sunset Boulevard in front of Hollywood Hounds, a grooming salon for pets.

Bruce Willis Sings ‘Devil Woman’

We did not know that Bruce Willis could sing – actually really well. And play some mean blues harp, too. Wow. Genuinely impressed.

Check it out:

P.S.

E.T.: The Long-Awaited Follow-Up! (Sort Of)

Atari’s 1982 E.T. video game, based on the smash hit movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is probably the most spectacular failure in video game history.

Here’s what happened. E.T. the movie was released in June 1982. The tender story of a lonely boy befriended by a lost alien creature was an unexpectedly massive hit, spending its first six weeks at #1 at the box office. It was late July by the time Atari, the most popular video game brand in the world at the time, secured the rights to make an E.T. video game. However, the company gave designer Howard Warshaw just six weeks to create the product, so it could be on store shelves by Christmas. End result: a terrible, nonsensical game, even by early 1980s standards. Bearing little resemblance to the movie, players had to control a thing that sort of looked like E.T. as it collected pieces of a phone to “phone home.” E.T. mostly fell in holes, or encountered one of the game’s many bugs.

College Majors of the Rich and Famous

It’s graduation season, but if you can’t find a job in your field, don’t worry—you could always just shift gears and be a movie star. Here are some celebrities who got a college degree before they became famous for doing something else. Still, it’s nice to have a “fall back.”

Doughnuts or Bacon? Why Decide? Happy National Donut Day!

Are you the kind of person who grabs breakfast on the way to work? And do you hate having to agonize over which mostly-unhealthy choice to reach for—a donut or an egg-and-cheese sandwich? Well, here’s good news: Dunkin’ Donuts recently introduced the Bacon & Egg Donut Sandwich. That’s a fried egg patty and two slices of bacon…between two glazed doughnuts. It’s the national chain’s way of celebrating June 7, which is “National Donut Day.”

The new sandwich sounds like a gut-buster…but it’s actually not that bad. Glazed doughnuts pack less fat than thickly-frosted cake varieties; two of them, even with eggs and bacon inside, amount to only 360 calories. Meanwhile, Dunkin’ Donuts offers a breakfast sandwich made with eggs and turkey sausage, and that health-conscious item has 390 calories—30 more than the one made with two glazed doughnuts.

This isn’t the first time doughnuts have joined with bacon. Voodoo Doughnuts, a small chain based in Portland, Oregon, introduced the Bacon-Maple Bar in 2003—it’s a Long John (a bar-shaped doughnut), covered in maple frosting and topped with two pieces of crispy bacon. After it was featured on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, the style caught on and can now be found at doughnut stores around the country.

A Weird But Great App: No More Spoilers on Twitter!

Tired of spoilers on online? What you need is a ‘No More Spoilers on Twitter’ app! Gone are the days of watching a TV show on the channel it airs at the time it. Most American homes now have some form of “time shifting” solution when it comes to TV, from the good old VCR to digital video recorders like TiVo to watching the shows online, either a couple days later via Hulu or a couple of months (or years) later in season-long viewing binges on Netflix.

A diehard fan of a show will watch it as soon as possible—when it airs—and many of those fans like to share their thoughts online, while it airs. So if you’re not going to get around to watching Mad Men the night it first airs, you’d better not go anywhere near Twitter. Mad Men fans will discuss plot points, twists, and, to use the parlance of the Internet, “spoil it.”

Boston teenager Jennie Lamere loves to use Twitter to connect with her friends and follow celebrities, but she hated how she would often inadvertently find out the results of her favorite show before she watched—the reality program Dance Moms. So for a student-computer-programming contest, she designed a Twitter application called Twivo. The program works like this: You install it and tell it what shows you don’t want to know anything about. Twivo then blocks all references to the show on your Twitter feed—the text is blacked out—no more spoilers on Twitter. Lamere won the contest; the app may be available to the general public in just a couple of months…hopefully before Breaking Bad starts up again.

Parents Just Don’t Understand: Celebrity Emancipated Minors

Recently, actor Will Smith told the British newspaper The Sun that his 14-year-old son Jaden, star of movies like The Karate Kid and the upcoming Will Smith movie After Earth, was looking into joining the ranks of other celebrity emancipated minors. It’s usually used to declare minors legal adults to either help teenagers escape abusive homes, protect financial assets or, as we’re guessing is the case with Smith, be able to work long hours on movie sets without violating child labor laws. The elder Smith seems cool with this. After all, he’s a guy who used to win Grammys for complaining about his parents.

The New Fall TV Shows You Will and Won’t Be Seeing

Last week in New York, the big 5 broadcast networks (and some of the cable networks) held their annual “upfronts.” What is that? NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and the CW unveil their new fall TV shows and introduce the new schedule they’ll be airing, all so advertisers can decide whether or not they want to buy commercial space.

There look to be some surefire hits on the way—ABC’s spinoff of The Avengers called Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and NBC’s The Michael J. Fox show both got a positive response. But you’ll be seeing those soon enough—what about the rest? Here are some of the more “out there” shows that were up for a spot on the fall schedule. Most of these didn’t make it…but some did!

Garth Brooks: Country Star, Failed Filmmaker, Defendant

Name the bestselling solo male musician of all time. Elvis Presley? Bing Crosby? Elton John? Nope. It’s country superstar Garth Brooks, who has sold more than 128 million albums in the U.S., which is especially remarkable because unlike those other guys, he didn’t have a recording career that lasted decades. His first record came out in 1989 and his last one in 2001. Why’d he retire? He wanted to try new things, particularly starring in and making movies.

Brooks is one of the most popular musicians of all time, and if a new lawsuit filed by a former business partner is to be believed, one of the prickliest. Former business partner Lisa Sanderson is taking Brooks to court because his bad behavior and pattern of bridge-burning resulted in a number of movie projects that never saw the light of day, and thus prevented Sanderson from earning a great deal of money.

Here are some of the movies Sanderson alleges she and Brooks worked on that never made it to the big screen:

Giant Duck in Hong Kong Harbor!

Though it does closely resemble our ducky mascot, we swear that we are not behind this.

For the past few weeks, a gigantic, inflatable rubber duck has sat in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour and drawn thousands of onlookers. How big is it? Pretty big—16.5 meters tall, or 54 feet of inflatable ducky goodness.

The Misappropriation of Lauryn Hill

Lauryn Hill was one of the most promising singers of the late ’90s. As part of the Fugees, she sang on a smash hit cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and then in 1998 released her solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Hill wrote and produced most of the album, which sold 19 million copies and won five Grammys, including Best New Artist and Album of the Year.

It looked like Hill would be one of the biggest pop stars of the new millennium…but then almost nothing happened. The only album she’s released since was a live performance in 2002, which was marked by emotional breakdowns and bizarre stage banter. After that she retired from music to raise her five children.

The Real Marge Simpson

In late April in Portland, Oregon, the real Marge Simpson passed away at age 94.

Allow us to explain. Margaret Groening was the mother of Matt Groening, the cartoonist who created the comic strip Life in Hell, and later, when he didn’t want to sell the TV rights to Life in Hell, an animated family sitcom called The Simpsons, which you may know as one of the longest-running and universally beloved entertainments of all time.

Iron Man vs. The Mandarin vs. Racism

Surefire blockbuster Iron Man 3 gets the summer movie season going when it’s released tonight. The villain who will try to take down Tony Stark this time: The Mandarin, an original character from comic books of the 1960s. Fortunately, the blatantly racist, stereotypically Asian elements of the character have been toned down for the movies (and he’s played by Sir Ben Kingsley).

Here are couple other questionable—and offensive—comic book characters.

Bad Ads You Might Have Missed

Last month, Ford Motors landed in hot water after a series of sexist advertisements it ran in India.

The three ads feature illustrations of Paris Hilton, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and German racecar driver Michael Schumacher each sitting in the front seat of a Ford Figo. In each ad, the celebrity had their “enemies” tied up in the trunk (to demonstrate how big it was). Hilton had paparrazi bound and gaggedl Schumaker had rival drivers. Berlusconi had a bunch of scantily clad models in his trunk.

Of course, this isn’t the first time an ad campaign has courted controversy. Last year, the makers of Pop Chips thought it would be hilarious to dress actor Ashton Kutcher up as “Raj,” a sleazy, thick-accented Bollywood producer and stick him in a commercial. Following an outcry on the Internet, the company yanked the ad. But here it is!

RIP Roger Ebert

Aw, rotten news:

Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70.

His death was announced by The Chicago Sun-Times, where he had worked for many years.

Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer, starting in 2002, gave him an altogether different public image — as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his chin, and he was fed through a tube) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook he had started, on meals that could be made with a rice cooker.

Much more at the paper he wrote for for decades, The Chicago Sun-Times.

And he had a very funny and wise FaceBook presence, and the same on Twitter – where he was posting up until very recently.

Oh – just saw this: just two days ago Ebert announced that his cancer had returned – and that he was taking a “A Leave of Presence“:

Some Not So Egg-cellent Easter Products

It’s the hoppiest day of the year! Here are four egg-citing Easter products.

1. Funny Bunny. This wind-up toy rabbit distributed by a candy company called Treat Street dispenses jelly beans as it waddles across any flat surface…by pooping them out. As the packaging notes, “Wind him up and watch him GO!”