Dusting off my word collection

I learned a new word this week: breweriana. Say it with me now … brew-er-i-a-na. Doesn’t exactly dance off the tongue, does it?

The word is not listed at Dictionary.com, but it is on eBay, where I first discovered it. My husband found an old – I mean antique – collection of beer cans and liquor decanters in the garage and decided to list them for sale. Now our ragtag items are keeping company with some 24,313 other listings for beer-related signs, tins, drinkware and steins. 24,313 pieces of breweriana – all poised to take up space on shelves, in drawers and under beds!

I would just as soon purge my whole house of collectibles – knickknacks, sundries, tchotchkes and all. Here’s the logic: I collect collectibles. Collectibles collect dust. I hate dust. Therefore, A + B + C = I hate collectibles.

So instead I’m going to start a collection of words … perhaps with a corkboard, some pushpins and index cards with my fave words scrawled on them. I’ll choose words with a rhythmic sound and/or an intriguing meaning – words like mystery, cattywampus, bailiwick, drum, verge, covenant and, for that matter, intrigue.

Dorky? Of course! But I’ve got company, because at least one Web site is devoted to favorite words: http://www.myfavoriteword.com/. According to the site, James Joyce had a soft spot for “cuspidor,” a fancy name for spittoon. For Dorothy Parker, it was “check enclosed” (to which all freelance writers can relate).

But, alas, you can’t sell antique word collections on eBay, so I’ll adjourn now to check the status of my breweriana.

TV titles are so much pun!

June is running out of steam and summer is in full swing. Naturally, the time is ripe for TV networks to begin promoting their fall programming.

One fresh entry offers a new take on the common-as-air police procedural drama. Fox’s “New Amsterdam” chronicles the life of John Amsterdam, a New York City homicide detective “cursed with immortality because he stopped the murder of a Native Indian schoolgirl in 1642 by stepping in front of a sword.”

This show is the latest in a string wherein the main character’s name appears in the title as part of a cliché or idiom. Other prime(time) examples: “Grey’s Anatomy” (Dr. Meredith Grey), “Saving Grace” (Det. Grace Hanadarko), “Crossing Jordan” (Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh) and “King of the Hill” (Hank Hill).

I haven’t decided whether this convention is clever and catchy – or indulgent and irritating ... just like newspaper and magazine articles with gaggingly cute headlines. (So help me, if I see another environmentally friendly piece titled “It’s easy bein’ green,” I can only pray I’m close to a defibrillator.)

Nevertheless, I understand why TV scriptwriters do this, because the daily pressure to join old words in new ways can be grueling. And it’s a surprisingly easy approach to developing concepts.

Play along at home by brainstorming a list of popular phrases and then imagining how each one could play out on the small screen. Consider, if you will, my humble contributions:

• “Pike’s Peak,” with Julia Pike as an overachieving businesswoman whose just-as-she-likes-it life is upended by the arrival of her estranged sister’s precocious teenage daughter (as if there’s any other kind of teenage daughter on TV).
  
• “Lame Duck,” featuring James ‘The Duck’ Duckworth as a cutthroat, jerky-but-genius litigator who juggles intense career pressures while dealing with a mangled right leg. (Think “House” in a courtroom.)
  
• “Robert’s Rules of Order,” about U.S. Sen. Robert T. McAllister, a political heavyweight who is being groomed for the presidency – but whose personal life is secretly in shambles. (You see, the title is ironic.)

Like ’em? Have your people call my people …. We’ll do lunch.

The Hyatt's kinda mellow, but Radisson totally rocks ....

Hyatt Hotels & Resorts announced this spring it will feature “unique music collections that reflect local music flavor for guests to enjoy on property and at home.” It’s something like a soundtrack – or an auditory scrapbook – of your vacation.

The firm is piloting the program in two Southwest locations, with handpicked playlists subtly transmitted in common areas, spas and eateries. The music is available online, too, so enchanted guests can download, listen and evoke fond memories of the Hyatt long after their suntans have faded.

The program makes spectacular sense considering the heavy-gauge link that connects music and memories. Research studies have demonstrated that music stimulates certain parts of the brain – most notably the tiny cranial shoebox where our memories are stored.

Consider your own experience for further evidence. Exhibit A? Your first real kiss. Ten bucks says you remember the song playing in the background (assuming you weren’t snogging in silence). For me, it was Sir Jon Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” – way, way, way before Blake Lewis reinvented it. (Sadly, the title had not even a micron of irony.)

It’s amazing, really, the way a song can evoke a memory as vividly as any photograph can:

• Take “Swingtown” by Steve Miller Band. A couple of beats into it, and I’m on the backseat hump of my parents’ yellow Subaru, wedged between my brother and sister, on some drumstick-straight Midwestern highway, bound for adventure in the Rockies.
• Cue up “I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls, and I’m in my freshman-year dorm room with my best friends, cackling to the point of incontinence.
• “Jumpin’ Jumpin’” by Destiny’s Child carries me to Grand Cayman Island, close enough to the Caribbean to feel its salty spray and breathe in bougainvillea. Sigh ….

Words, music, memories – all are intangible elements that, when joined, become beautifully indelible.