Piss Poor

Things you can learn from listening to DVD commentaries of Simpsons episodes: There once existed a movie theater in Los Angeles, the Pikfair. It was surrounded by Indian restaurants and was known for playing Bollywood films, at least until it burned down in the riots. Anyway, the theater got its name because it existed near the intersection of Pico and Fairfax. Because of its location, it was originally known as the Picfair, but they had to change it because some Indian people tended to pronounce the “C” softly — the “Pissfair.” Which is hilarious.

Anyway, I just thought it was cool.

In case you’re wondering, the episode was the 138th Episode Spectacular. It shows a deleted scene (from the one where Apu moves in with the Simpsons) in which Apu makes the family watch a Bollywood musical that “made every Indian critic’s top 400 list.” Homer: “It’s funny! Their clothes are different from my clothes!”

Rich Man’s Hockey

I attended a match at the Santa Barbara Polo Club on Sunday — my first ever, in fact. And despite preconceived notions of the stands being populated solely by upper-crusties, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it all. Horses, yelling, the regular thwack of mallets striking hard surfaces — and, because I did it in Santa Barbara, the strangeness of being able to see mountains, grass, the 101, and the Pacific Ocean all in one quick turn of the head.

I did my best to capture the thrill of horseback sport with my phone camera, but the results were somewhat lacking.

I had better luck photographing things just a few feet away.

Because those photos were mostly unsatisfying, I’ll interpret the event the best way I know how.

The word polo arrives in English from Balti, a language that, while spoken in India, is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family and not the Indo-European one that includes, for example, Hindi and English and about all the languages spoken in the lands between. In its original form, pulu, the word just meant “ball.” I can’t help noticing similarities between pulu and words like pellet and pelota and others that descend from the Latin pila, also meaning “ball.” Unless I’m mistaken, there’s not too much reason that the pulu and pila would be related, given their divergent histories. (It’s usually at this point that I’d check this on the American Heritage Dictionary, but I’ve found that its online hideout, Bartleby, no longer seems to feature it or anything dictionaries.)

By sitting through Sunday’s match, I also learned that polo’s six seven-minute periods of play are called chukkers or chukkas. (The same pair of terms can also refer to the boots polo players wear, however.) Unlike polo itself, chukker does descend from Hindi, going back to the Sanskrit cakra meaning “circle” or “wheel.” The same Sanskrit word also gives us chakra, which should be familiar to even the most yogically challenged and which are explained and often even represented as round, wheel-like things. Again, I’ve got nothing to back this up, but I wonder if chukker’s etymological connection to wheels could work along the same lines as the English round in the sense of a bout of play or even a setting of drinks. You know, wheels being round and all.

Further links (per recommendation by Zemanta, which I am not quite sure about)

• Jai Ho! English lexicon hits million-word milestone (ctv.ca)
• It literally still has meaning (mendicantbug.com)
• Enamored With Words? You'll Love Wordnik (readwriteweb.com)

Elegant Nightwear for Large Felines

Much in the way Dina concluded that the Wikipedia page for cooties would fascinate me — it did and this fascination resulted in the preceding post — Spencer also recently pointed me toward the Wikipedia page for pajamas. Only he did so through a direct link to the below image.

In the end, I was a little disappointed. I was immediately drawn to the cheetahs and their little cheetah blankets, which I assume constituted some form of feline pajamas. (Or, as the term is often written in the article, pyjamas, which I have to admit is a far more charming way to spell it.) Cheetahs do not wear pajamas, it turns out, either in nature or while in captivity. The image’s caption explains that the pajamas are actually being worn by the men attending to the cheetahs — and, also, that the technical term for these loose trousers tied around the waist is paijama. At least according to Wikipedia, the word came into English by way of Hindustani but ultimately from the Persian word payjama, meaning “leg garment.”

But wouldn’t it just be so much better if cheetahs wore pajamas or however you spell it?

Monsoon + Fire

Home, as good as it possibly can be.

Please ignore the fact that the pictured Monsoon Wedding subtitle is “motherfucker.”