King Dork (43 page)

dance around to oldies while doing the dishes, you have

this movie to thank for it.

bitch
(beetch): an uncooperative female. Also, a cooperative female. Additionally, among girls, a rival. Or ally.

Black Sabbath
(BLAY-ack suh-BAWTH): pentagrams, in-

verted crosses, capes, tights, drugs, de-tuned guitars, un-limited recording budgets—what could go wrong? The

eighteenth-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

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Blue Oyster Cult
(blue iced occult): maybe rock and roll music wasn’t meant to be this intellectual and sophisticated, but they’re still the twelfth-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

Boomers
(boh-OM-ers): the Most Annoying Generation.

bourgeois pigs
(bore-GOYCE pegs): what people in the sixties used to call their parents.

Brighton Rock
(BRIG-a-thon rawk): the best book ever written.

bubblegum
(BOOB leh-GYOOM): this is, in the end, more or less the Lord’s music.

Jimmy Buffett
( JUM-ee boo-FAY): a weird old hippie dude featuring Hawaiian shirts and terrible music. On special occasions, a
boomer
dad will sometimes put on a little Jimmy Buffett costume, fix drinks with umbrellas in them, and

bring them over to his “old lady,” biting his lower lip and doing this weird, slow-motion dance-walk. If there is a

more gruesome scenario on this earth, I cannot think what

it might be and do not want to know in any case.

callipygian
(CALL-ippy-DJEE-ahn), also
callipygous
: Describes a woman with large, shapely, or otherwise

lovely, remarkable, or impressive buttocks. By way of the

Greeks, those ancient, horny, clever bastards. The day I

learned there was a word for this was the day I regained my interest in living and faith in humanity.

Carrie
(CARE-ree-AY): normal students stage an elaborate
Make-Out/Fake-Out
on a shy, freaky girl, joke-electing her prom queen and then dumping a bucket of pig blood

on her head. She turns out to have special powers and

destroys them all. All proms should turn out like that. The fourth-greatest movie of all time.

The Catcher in the Rye
(KAT-sha-rin R’lyeh): don’t fight it.

Relax. Clear your mind and let the magic take hold of you.

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You’re floating, floating on air. Take the book. Go on, take it. You know you want to. That’s it. Nice and slow. Isn’t it so much easier this way? One of us, one of us, one of us . . .

Cocksparrer
(HOT-spur): working-class English punk band who could have been the Sex Pistols if they had played

their cards right. But they didn’t.

cock tease
(kok TAYCE): an attractive female whose behavior is erratic, unpredictable, or otherwise unsatisfactory.

collage
(koe-LODGE-ay): a piece of paper with things cut out from magazines glued on it in an attractive or arresting pattern. Has replaced the expository essay as the preferred means for assessing a student’s academic progress in

American public schools.

concupiscent
(con-koo-PISK-unt): wide open and up for anything.

D and D
(DAN-dee): a role-playing game played only by very cool guys.

dilettante
(dial-TAN-tay): one who can never stick with anything for more than a couple of minutes. An unjustly ma-

ligned lifestyle.

The Doors
(duh DERZ): there is an extremely well-

organized conspiracy among
boomers
to cultivate the fiction that this band doesn’t totally suck. The worst thing in the history of the universe.

Dr. Dee
(der DAY): Queen Elizabeth I’s astrologer. He put a hex on the Spanish Armada, saving England and ensuring

that, four hundred years later,
the Beatles
would end up singing in English rather than Spanish. He was also given a weird code by angelic beings he saw in a crystal, and probably needed medication that hadn’t been invented yet.

Dr. Who
(dra-WOO): a more sophisticated, English version of
Star Trek.

Bob Dylan
(BAY-bee ZIM-er-mn): there was a time in my 336

life when I fervently wanted to be Bob Dylan. Then I real-

ized that practically everybody else in the world wanted to be Bob Dylan, too, and that if we all got our wish, being

Bob Dylan would be so common that it would be com-

pletely meaningless to be Bob Dylan, even for the actual,

original Bob Dylan, and the world would essentially end up exactly the same as it was before. The alpha Bob Dylans

would beat up the less alpha Bob Dylans, the female Bob

Dylans would confuse the hell out of the male Bob Dylans,

the teacher Bob Dylans would make the student Bob

Dylans read
The Catcher in the Rye,
the parent Bob Dylans would call continual inane family discussions with the kid Bob Dylans, and the sadistic, psychotic structure of the universe would be more or less preserved. Nature is a
bitch.

epigraph
(a-PIG-rape): an obscure quotation at the beginning of a book designed to make the author of the book

seem smarter and more well-read than its readers. An epi-

graph that doesn’t make the reader feel confused, small,

worthless, and stupid is an epigraph that has failed.

Therefore, the best epigraphs have no discernible relationship to the contents of the books they adorn.

epilogue
(EPP-ul-oh-gay): just when you think the book is over, there are suddenly like twenty more pages to go, because some writers just don’t know when to stop. Don’t

read epilogues: it will only encourage them.

epitaph
(epp-EE-toff ): an obscure quotation on a tomb-stone, designed to make the dead guy’s life seem less pointless.

Europe
(YOUR-ip): we beat these guys in World War II.

Foghat
(foe-GAT): the fifth-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

Funkadelic
(FUN-kee-assgroove-a-TELL-ick-ness): the funki-est band in the world, unless you count the Isley Brothers.

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genuflect
(g-NU-fuh-lect): sometimes, the church only requires one half of a person’s body to be kneeling.

gifted and talented
(gif-TED and tal-on-TED): gifted and talented students are those who have figured out that if you make a little effort to leave the right impression, very little will be expected of you in the end.

Gilligan’s Island
(GILL-gan SIS-land): a television show, certain episodes of which contain the secret to the meaning of existence, concealed by means of coded messages

and obscure symbolism.

Che Guevara
(chee goo-ey-VAH-ra): a Latin American revolutionary famous for his sexiness and hip T-shirts. A cross between Elvis and
Charles Manson.
An inexplicably

adored Holden Caulfield for the political-minded.

George Harrison
(GORE-jer-us ISS-un): guitar player and Siddhartha-type. The hairiest of all
the Beatles.

hemisemidemiquaver
(HEE-mee-SUM-thin-ore-UDD-er):

a sixty-fourth note. Many guitar players believe the object of the game is to play as many of these as possible, leaving as few spaces as they can for the entire song. It’s a test of endurance.

Hitler
(HIL-ter): a thoroughly evil totalitarian mass murderer from Germany. Seriously, you can’t get more evil than him.

Admirers of other totalitarian mass murderers take comfort in the notion that at least their guy’s evilness doesn’t meet this standard; plus they point out that in their guy’s dicta-torship everyone who is not murdered gets free health care and education.

Humanities
(hum-in-AN-uh-teez): the study of random things, characterized by self-admiration and extremely easy assignments.

homoeroticism
(home-AY-oh-RAW-tick-iz-um): dudes being turned on by dudes, or dudes ridiculing other dudes by 338

behaving as they believe dudes who really are turned on by dudes behave with respect to those dudes they are turned

on by, under the impression that this is hilarious or otherwise worthwhile. As irritating as this is for dudes who in fact are not turned on by dudes, it must be even worse for those who are.

horological
(whore-a-lodge-ICK-el): related to clocks or time.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(in-WAY-shun off THE

BUD-ee SNITCH-ehz): no one has yet come up with a

better hypothesis for why our society is the way it is. The third-greatest movie ever made.

The Jam
(the JIM): fake-mod dolphins from around the eleventh century. Breaks the ice at parties. The twenty-third-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

Joan Jett
(John JET-ah): guitar player for the Runaways, the fourteenth-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

Johnny Thunders
(joe NEETH-un-derz): the name of a

Kinks
song, and the guitar player for the
New York Dolls.

The Kinks
(thee KEEN-uck-ess): the third-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

KISS
(nites in SERV-iss uv SAY-tan): considering the fact that KISS is four middle-aged guys in mime makeup, it’s

extremely impressive that they somehow managed to

swing becoming the eleventh-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

Timothy Leary
(tee-MOTH-ee lee-AHR-ay): famous college professor turned drug fiend from the sixties.

Led Zeppelin
(leads a-PEEL-in): hey, gang! Let’s all get stoned and head down to the Mississippi Delta and watch

four goofy-ass English guys in wizards’ hats and girls’

blouses play “the blues” and teach us everything there is to know about elfin princesses; gossamer wings; the tooth

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fairy; the land of Winken, Blinken, and Nod; the wise and

dark and mystic pilgrim brooding in the mist; and Puff the Magic Dragon. Come on, it’ll be magical.

Lemmy
(let-me): “singer” of
Motorhead.

libidinous
(LI-bid-IGH-ness): one of the many fancy-pants ways to say “horny.”

magnanimous
(MAG-na-MIN-ee-us): if you are generous and kind of full of yourself, this word is for you.

Make-out/Fake-out
(MACK-it FACK-it): a public humiliation technique that owes its power to the reliably universal desire to possess what one is not allowed to touch.

Analogous to the game called keep-away, the object of

which is to take possession of a ball that is held just beyond one’s grasp, or tantalizingly offered only to be tossed to another player at the last moment.

Mamelukes
(maym-LUCK-ayce): mounted warriors re-

cruited from slaves, who dominated Egypt for several cen-

turies till they were destroyed by Mehemet Ali Pasha in

1811. And a great fucking band name.

Charles Manson
(CHAR-less mon-SOON): the world’s

most famous
Beatles
fan, the ultimate
boomer,
and the Voice of his Generation.

Mao Tse-tung
(Meow TAY-zee-tongue): a Chinese communist revolutionary who managed to thin out the Chinese

population considerably, earning him the admiration and

gratitude of a small but irritating segment of
The Most
Annoying Generation
. Author of
The Little Red Book,
about which the best that can be said is: well, at least it’s not a big red book.

George Michael
(YORE-gay Mich-elle): there’s lots to say about this guy, perhaps, but the shorts alone are bad

enough.

Monty Python
(MIN-tee PITH-ee): short for Monty Python’s 340

Flying Circus. A documentary series on everyday life in

Great Britain.

Most Annoying Generation, The:
see
Boomers

Motorhead
(MELT-er red): the seventh-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

multiple personality disorder
(em-py-DEE): a feminine courtship strategy.

The New York Dolls
(the NEW-ark DOY-leez): a New York transvestite version of the
Rolling Stones.
The fifteenth-greatest rock and roll band of all time.

normal
(nor-MAL): lacking in taste, compassion, understanding, kindness, and ordinary human decency.

obsequious
(ob-see-CUE-ee-us): a fancy-pants way to describe a suck-up.

orgasmic
(or-JAZZ-um-ick): of, like, or pertaining to being glad all over.

partner
(pard-NAIR): a euphemism for spouse or significant other. When a woman reaches the age where everyone

starts to giggle whenever she refers to her “boyfriend,” and if the dude won’t marry her or if she doesn’t think “husband” sounds special enough, and possibly if she wants to

preserve ambiguity as to whether or not she is a lesbian, she will usually settle on “partner.” I have no idea why guys use this word, unless it’s because their girlfriends or wives are a little touchy and they’d rather not get into it. This situation could be worse, however, as there are misguided parents

out there who, I kid you not, like to introduce each other by saying things like “this is my lover, Don,” which can be quite a bit more nauseating.

PE
(pay: as in, you will): “physical education.” I believe the Nazis used to make people dress in gay outfits and play tennis and do exercises in school, too.

Suzy Quatro
(SOO-zee cue): hot rock and roll chick devel-341

oped by the same guys who masterminded
the Sweet.
She was also in this TV show called
Happy Days
about people in the fifties who had seventies clothes and hairstyles.

The Ramones
(duh rah-MOAN-ayz): if you can pull off the juvenile delinquent style when you are in your thirties and beyond, you are doing all right. The eighth-greatest rock

and roll band of all time.

ramoning
(ra-MAWN-in): a form of the verb “to ramone”