Placatan, Maven!

OMGanesha. I have so much to blog about, I just know that I won't remember any of it. Also, I can't promise unity of theme, by any means. Here goes:

Maven is proud, and rightly so. A Google search for the term "placatán" turns up Maven's Haven in the top ten searches. You will also notice that Old Coot's blog is a top-ten result, and as a result, your dear Poundpapi is proud, as I was the source of their Placatániness. Placatenacity? Placatenderness? Please, suggest adjectives of your liking in my comments section, how I do love audience participation.

Since Maven's use of the word on her blog, she has had a request for clarification. "What could need clarifying about this magical word?" I asked myself, but now that I'm all Jesus-like and errythang (sike) I figured sharing the love might be good for my karmic account. Surely, there is karma involved in enlightening others on PR slang.

One thing I've noticed, both growing up around PRs and traveling to Italy, is that Southern Romance languages have a rich and varied onomatopoetic vocabulary. Actually, I'm sure most languages have great vocabs in this sense, but Spanish and Italian speakers seem to be willing to use these words more often in everyday speech, when compared to English speakers. Clearly, there's a need for more color in Spanish and Italian conversations, lol.

To be honest, I'm not even sure if "placatán" counts strictly as onomatopoeia, because it has two too many syllables to describe the event. For instance, if you were going to suplex your wrestling opponent, or smack someone on the forehead with a Bible, the word "placatán" is the perfect sound effect to accompany it. Clearly, the last syllable being the accented one (btw- aigue or grave? so many linguistic considerations here) it should line up with the resulting smack/slap/suplex-ing.

I have to be honest, this word cracks me up and makes me giddy to this day because it's so....extra. For instance, the two extra syllables, when just a good...actually, I was just sitting here for about thirty seconds trying to come up with another authentic-sounding slap sound (in Spanish, of course) and drew a blank. Clearly those two extra syllables are exactly what the situation calls for, and nothing else will do. It's almost like they create a short, but powerful suspense, as we all know that a powerful ending is coming, accompanied by a slap. (Next time I go to the Chinee masseuse, I'm going to ask for a 'powerful ending' and see what I get.) 

This word in particular reminds me of my brother The Hulk, because he delights in using it almost daily. I can't express the exact joy I feel when I picture him saying it, but it's akin to watching someone get playfully clotheslined. Classic AFV-type stuff.

 A quick perusal of the internets does not easily turn up information on the etymology of this word. At one point, I wondered to myself if maybe this was just something that we used in my family/neighborhood, but I swear I've heard it in broader contexts, like on TV and in songs and such. (Madness or Lerla, can you corroborate?)

As for other instances of PR onomatopoeia, my favorite example is the word for bus, "la guagua." In the proper Spanish pronunciation of this word, the [g] is softened to the point where it almost begins to resemble an English [w]. The transformation is not complete, but close, and it causes many with PR accents in English to put slight [g]s where they don't belong. Guatever. Anywayz, I digress. As it turns out, "guagua" is a good aural representation of the sound of an old bus idling, and that's the story of why PRs usually call a bus a "guagua" instead of an "autobus" or whatever the correct Spanish term is.

This last bit of Spanish trivia is not rooted in onomatopoeia, as far as I know, although the point of this section is that I don't know where this word comes from, so maybe I'm wrong. If you have info, please pass it along.

Youngsters growing up on the West Side of Buffalo (wessai!) and in other PR enclaves had access to this wonderful treat in the summer. (Whoah- yet another sidetrack, but I just wrote "on the West Side" as opposed to "in the West Side." How did that construction come about? Is that a Buffalo thing?) These treats are called "limbers" and they consist of a little paper Dixie cup filled with frozen liquid. The 5¢ limbers were just plain old Kool-Aid in the two basic flavors: red and purple. (At least, those are the only two Kool-Aid flavors that exist in my mind.) If you were ballin' out of control that day (I learned that from "the streets" Madness. Wouldn't your little pumkin be proud of me?) you'd plop down 10¢ or even 25¢ for a "coco": sweetened coconut milk with cinnamon. These were the slamminest.

"Where might a kid, hot, dirty and sweaty from playing kickball all day find such a rare, incomparable treat," you ask? From the streets. PRs in the 'hood are very quick to sell various foods out of their homes in order to supplement what might be a very meager income. In fact, considering where I grew up, it was definitely a very meager income. In your own 'hood, you knew all the limber spots, and in case you didn't, your friends did, and if all else failed, these folks would often put up a cardboard sign on their front porch proclaiming, "Se venden limbers." (To be honest, I'm surprised any of them could get the spelling right, considering that PRs pronounce this word as "LEEM-behlls" or "LEEM-beds". For those who had never seen the word spelled, and didn't have a clue what the fuck people were calling them, you [meaning me] would frequently just leave off the last consonant, resulting in "LEEM-behs" and call it a day while sucking down on that shit. People would also sell more substantial fare from home, such as pasteles, acapurrias, tembleque, budín, etc. I'll explain what these are later, these parenthetical shits are getting unwieldy.)

Each Limber House had it's own protocol. On some, you'd walk up to the front door. On others, you'd have to venture into the backyard, hoping that there was no dog there to eat you. My favorite setup was when they'd have a chest freezer right underneath or next to a side window in their alley, and you'd knock at the window, and complete the transaction. It made for the least intrusion of personal space for both parties, and you could also watch them pull the limber out of the freezer, thereby ensuring a sanitary exchange. (Sike.)

In any case, you'd knock at the entryway of choice, and after hearing the day's menu, you'd make your choice and give the Limber Mistress your change. After receiving the tender morsel, you'd get to flexing your Limber Technique. First, you warm all the way around the cup with your hands, thereby releasing the Limber Innards from its icy grip. The tricky part comes next, and it's where you squeeze the cup, forcing the Limber up, and then get it to flip over so that it was inverted in the cup, and thereby easier to eat. Real pros could do this without sullying their hands, using physics and the occasional tongue action to complete the flip.

So there you go. Fancy PR Pops. If you ever get the hankering, I'd suggest you try them out this summer- especially the coconut/cinnamon flavor. After leaving the West Side, I was surprised that this basic combination is not very well known to the rest of the world, and it made me somewhat sad.

In completely unrelated blogging, I know that I promised music recently. I'm going to sort of fulfill that promise, although today's selection will not be the Latin music that I spoke of before. Instead, I present you with a selection from The Roots recently released album, Rising Down.

Those of you who know me personally already know that The Roots are important to me, and they are important to many of you. I not only like them for purely aural/sensory reasons, but also for what they represent in hip-hop: a breath of fresh air.

If I'm honest, I'll say that Rising Down does not measure up to the perfection that was Game Theory. There is only one track on Game Theory that I skip regularly, and it's not even because it's bad, but because it's a super heroin-y downer. The rest of that album is amazing not only for it's individual songs, but because the group decided to make it one long continuous album with maybe just one or two gaps between the songs, and they achieved a very organic, unforced result. But I digress...

Rising Down is not Game Theory, and I'm glad, because they try to cover new ground with each release. In this case, several different musical genres are used to inform various tracks. Today's selection incorporates a genre native to Washington, D.C. called Go-Go. While I was unaware of Go-Go as a distinct regional genre and culture, I was familiar with it in practice. Two examples of Go-Go music that the broader public would be familiar with are Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love," and Amerie's "One Thing."

As you can hear for yourself, Go-Go music features an extensive percussion section including congas, and a swung rhythm. Apparently, if you go to a Go-Go club in D.C., you'll hear lots of covers of R&B hits with a Go-Go twist. I've even heard it described as the black D.C. version of Jam Bands. Interesting.

Anyway, the Roots took this style, and came up with this infectious gem, called "Rising Up". It features a D.C. rapper named Wale and a great singer named Chrisette. The above link is an mp3 for your pleasure. If you like it, support The Roots and buy their shit. If you don't feel like buying their shit, but like them anyway, I can guarantee that their live show is worth the money. Here's their performance of "Rising Down" on Letterman- definitely worth watching, if only to see Tuba Gooding Jr. rock a sousaphone.

That's all for today, y'alls. I gotta go rest up so I can go to the club later tonight.

So download this shit, and get to jammin. Be careful when driving- you're likely to speed uncontrollably when the drums come in.