There’s little more flattering than receiving a letter, call or e-mail from a reader in a “gotcha” moment. “I caught a typo in your last column. You were supposed to have spelled it ‘proofreader,’ not ‘poofreader.’”

Well, yes, the first spelling is what you’ll find in the dictionary. The second — done for effect, honest — usually appears in this column.

I once read a list of disclaimers for aging, one that when people reach my age, they’ve earned the right to be eccentric, as in “nobody should argue with me for that’s the way I do things.” In addition, many attribute to us extreme forgetfulness. Just look at most of the senior-based jokes and cartoons in the popular media.

But I’m not pleading any of these. It’s a cop-out to blame our eccentricities on age. Haven’t we seen some of the same quirks that afflict the elderly manifested in the young? How many students one-third my age have used the excuse, “I forgot to bring my term paper”?

As an unrepentant language cop, I chase words and commas. I’ve written entire columns on single words, and this column might shape up to be one of those. Continue reading →

My dad, who lived almost 95 years and who passed away in 1998, might have believed that he and his own father invented the Spanish language. The few times I watched him become passionate about an issue often dealt with the language he so loved, usually a lament about the deterioration and especially adulteration of Spanish.

Let me explain:

J.D. Trujillo once quoted his father, Severino Trujillo, as having said, “If I knew English as well as I know Spanish, I’d be difficult to get along with.” I pondered that bit of braggadocio: Is that what it comes down to? Does that mean the goal in acquiring languages is to reduce one’s circle of friends? Polyglots then earn the right to become hermits?

Any abuse of Spanish caused my father to enter his sardonic mode and quote imaginary abusers by saying something like, “Wachate, ese” (“watch yourself,” as Zeus said to Narcissus), or “Tengo un typewriter, vato,” instead of the seven-syllable maquina de escribir.

As a youngster, I’d ask him how anyone could prevent the proliferation of Spanglish, whereby we simply put a Spanish-type ending on an English word for a new coinage. For example, a dime would become “un daime,” a quarter a “cuatta.” A penny? Don’t go there. Continue reading →

As one with entirely too much time on my hands, I concocted a series of unusual movie, book and TV titles, usually with a letter or two altered to create an entirely different scenario.

I received three e-mails from readers, Steve and Yolanda Jensen from Springer, Richard Lindeborg from Las Vegas, and Ben Trujillo, who lives in Albuquerque.

We can dispense with Ben’s contributions in just a few words because 1) he answered only three of the 25; 2) he justified his failure to attempt the other 22 “because,” he said, “they were too easy”; and 3) he’s my son.

What impressed me was the way the participants came up with answers radically different from mine, or one another’s, and yet, well, still had some good submissions. Some were better than mine.

For example, one item read: In this J.K. Rowling’s flick, a diner in the cafeteria ingests a turkey morsel soaked in jalapeño juice. My answer was Harry Potter and the Giblet of Fire. The Jensens and Lindeborg chose Gobbler of Fire. Continue reading →

In reading this week’s column, you might get the impression the poofreader is on vacation. That’s a common enough assumption but a rare occurrence. But look carefully. Your job is to figure out that we mean by these cryptic titles to books, movies, plays and TV programs.

But be warned: Some of the puns and plays on words are atrocious; there’s bilinguality, far-fetchedness and even a few titles made to fit the local scene. Most titles involve changing a single letter; occasionally, you may need to make two changes or even divide a word.

Example: Arnold Schwarzenegger works as a remorseless, opinionated and efficient hairdresser. Answer: The Perminator (The Terminator). Example: George Clooney and his crew go on an expedition to locate absolutely the best bird, even if it spends its life delivering babies. (The Perfect Stork, The Perfect Storm)

Readers’ answers will appear in the Nov. 4 Work of Art. Please e-mail or snail mail your answers. Continue reading →

On a recent talk show, a caller said the radio guest had “hit the nail on the head.” Wow, what perception!

I don’t mean to appear haughty, but I find it hard — always have — to commend such a caller for profundity. “Hit the nail on the head” is a metaphor meaning that what the guest said was absolutely correct. Up to that time, I’d never met-a-phor I didn’t like.

How is it possible to comment further without carting out the vitriol and sarcasm? I’ll try.

Years ago, before I developed a fear of heights, I’d climb the barn roof at my father-in-law’s farm near Springer to help with repairs. We used corrugated sheets of tin, secured with nails that contained a rubber grommet to make a seal, or else a soft head that covered the hole we just made. Continue reading →

One can almost see and hear them now: Louella, Patsy, Angela, Louise, Dolores and Julie leading a cheer. These cheerleaders for Immaculate Conception School went through the motions as they shouted:

“Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar. All for the Colts, stand up and holler.” They chanted that way back in the ‘50s.

Much is implied in that shout. First, you may have surmised that if eight bits equal a dollar, a “bit” is 12-1/2 cents and that the Colts are either a basketball or a football team. And you may already know the school no longer exists.

I was drawn to the argument someone made a few years back about how inadequate coins and currency are. If we’d all been born with only eight fingers, we wouldn’t have the dime or the half-dollar, or, for that matter, any other current currency or coins. Continue reading →

A couple of nights last week might have been the coldest of the season. Whether it froze or snowed depends on whom you talk to. Regardless, many people needed to crank up their thermostats.

There appears to be no time of the year when there’s such a range in temperature variation. I’m a cool-weather fan myself, and autumn is by far my favorite season. Any temperature above 75, regardless of season, makes me feverish. It’s fitting and perhaps ironic that many summers I spent in hellholes, which make Las Vegas seem frigid, even though Las Vegas itself is warming (but that’s a topic for another column).

I do not consider myself a hothouse plant. My mom, the late Marie Trujillo, had the middle name “Remijia,” but it should have been “Triple Bagger,” in that she dispatched all five of us siblings to school dressed not to the nines but to the tons. “That’s so you won’t get cold, Hijito,” Mom would explain, as she placed another layer of clothes on me. She could have performed special effects for Dante’s Inferno. Continue reading →

Panhandling used to be the exception; now it’s epidemic. Sure, we all get used to seeing the occasional person holding up a building, or at a traffic light, holding up a cardboard sign containing a plea and a blessing. But it seems to have become big business.

Three weeks ago, we stopped for a red light as we entered Albuquerque’s Paseo del Norte from Interstate 25. It’s not merely a series of lights that manage traffic trying to get on to that street but another bank of lights that greets motorists as soon as they get on to the ramp. There may be as many as a dozen sets of traffic lights in that area.

The red lights we faced held up traffic for a full two minutes, enough time for a scantily clad woman of about 17 to ask for money. One stopped driver honked and beckoned her. He gave her some cash; she performed a five-second shake of the upper regions, waited for the next honk, and did the same for Driver No. 2. Continue reading →

“I  demand an immediate apology!”

“Awwright, I apologize.”

“Well that’s more like it.”

Have there ever been any more meaningless words than those surrounding a call for an immediate apology? Not likely.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) heckled President Obama last week by blurting out, “You lie!” when Obama referred to non-coverage of illegal immigrants in regard to the new health reform he’s pushing. By any measure, the congressman was wrong: You don’t heckle the president. The address was the president’s time slot, not the congressman’s. Wilson was wrong.

Wilson had to have known the repercussions of his heckling. Others in the hall surely did, judging from the derisive sounds directed at him. Had the same thing happened, for example, when George W. Bush was speaking, an outburst by a Democratic member of Congress, the disapproval would be just as strong. The speech was Obama’s — not Wilson’s — opportunity to address the joint session and the American public. Wilson’s outburst was more like the highly choreographed Town Hall disruptions, which possess all the pomp and decorum of the Rush Limbaugh talk show shout-‘em-down policy. Continue reading →