Slab rat

In a perfect world, every former intern of mine would have a blog. Dizzyhead Martin's latest post on Today Your Hair Is Very Nice is entitled "The Slabs of Clinton Hill." Here's some etymology:

‘Slab’ is a slang term applied to any full-sized luxury General Motors automobile predating 1980 —primarily Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs. It is an acronym that stands for “Slow Low And Bangin’”.

Then comes a really wonderful digression, the end of which has something Portisian to it:

Slab is one of those really splendid kind of acronyms where the word formed by the collection of letters also very much achieves its own unique descriptive quality of the object in question. I am short on examples, now that I think about it. The San Francisco-based Theater Group, ACT (American Conservatory Theater) qualifies. The semi-esoteric baseball pitching statistic, WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched) might qualify. I want to say Wu Tang’s ‘Cream’ (Cash Rules Everything Around Me), but I know that isn’t right. Laser (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) is probably something different entirely because the ‘Zherr’ sound of its second syllable is onomatopoeiatic. But so is the word ‘whip’ in its derivation, probably. But Slab is better than all of these. Maybe tied with Laser.

Pure Mulkeen!

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Over at S/FJ, Luc Sante has a charming anecdote about a James Brown concert he attended:

"Yes, it's an unused ticket. October 1974. My date elected to go see Fairport Convention instead. But I went! [...] I remember thinking, "Damn! The guy can still move! And he's so old!" He was 41, I guess. [...]"

Also: Dizzyhead Douglas on WNYC's Soundcheck, talking about James Brown and Live at the Apollo.

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WORD ON THE STREET: Dizzyhead Arlo saw Ron Sexsmith perform a few songs at a Buffalo record store, to a sparse crowd.....Arlo managed to snap a pic of RS chatting with a fan—none other than local hero Ani DiFranco! Am negotiating to see if I'll be allowed to post the picture........Dizzyhead Jorge has some insight into the Gabriel García Márquez/Mario Vargas Llosa spat.......stay tuned.....It's rumored that a Dizzyhead was recently a talking head on a nationally broadcast entertainment show......Dizzyhead Jenny D has a great post about William Boyd, hailing his new novel Restless and an earlier book, Brazzaville Beach—this is good news, as we regard Any Human Heart as one of our favorite novels of the last five years, and have not read more WB for fear that his other books will be not as good....Whenever we accidentally hit "Party Mix" on iTunes we get a dialogue box with a long explanation....We still don't understand it....Topic for future discussion, the crazy clothes descriptions in PKD's Ubik......also we came across the interesting fact that Dick received early encouragement from editor/reviewer extraordinaire Anthony Boucher, who also was a champion of......Keeler!.......Strange dream last night involving mammoths and large dachshunds the size of trucks.....