Showing my age
I'm feeling a little old right now, and not just because TheBoy is moving into big boy pants or because I seem incapable of sleeping past 5 a.m. anymore or because all I really want to do this week is sit on the couch and watch my stories. No, this is a pop culture thing. At least, I think it is.As a reasonably successful and still relatively young newspaper type, I'm occasionally approached by my bosses to offer career advice, counseling, free meals and other useful insights to interns, prospective hires, etc. This week, I spoke to my major media outlet's summer interns. One of them -- let me preface this by saying that she's a very mature, articulate, obviously talented young women -- emailed me afterward to see if I'd go to lunch with her to talk about her professional aspirations, how to get a job, what it's like living on the West Coast, etc. Our email exchange went something like this:
Her: "Where do you want to meet? I can come to your office if that's easier. Hot."
Me: "Sure. Next Wednesday. See you there."
Her: "Actually, how about if we meet at the restaurant? Hot."
Me: "Sure. What time works for you?"
Her: "1 p.m. Hot."
Me: "OK. I can do it later if you need."
Her: "No, that's fine. Thanks for taking the time to do this. Hot."
Me, unspoken to myself because I don't want to sound like a true geezer: "What's with this "hot" thing? It's actually quite cool outside today. I'm afraid your meaning escapes me. Don't you fear you'll sound unprofessional if you keep throwing that word around that way? Are you having some sort of seizure? Are you on drugs? And having premarital sex?"
Apparently, it's a Paris Hilton thing. Or that's what my 27-year-old coworker told me that. Does anyone know if he's right? Does anyone else think this is really, really weird? Did I suddenly turn 85? Do we need to plug the rabbit ears back into our TV? What are kids coming to these days?
If someone can help me figure this out, I'd be most appreciative. Hot.
Or not.
posted by AnnaRay at 1:03 PM
6 Comments:
People are very taken with the way Paris says "hot": It comes out like "hahht" or "haaaat" or "hãot". The cognoscenti find this irrestistibly tawdry.
So maybe that is why your colleague uses it in her emails. Or maybe a prankster has installed a macro in her copy of Microsoft Outlook, in which each occurrence of "." gets expanded to ". Hot."
Who's Paris Hilton?
Paris Hilton is what Mama would call "tacky." That is a very big insult where I come from, worse than your garden variety epithets. Paris Hilton makes me think of the words of my dear friend to her daughter, "No, you can never have a Barbie. Why? Because she's too skinny and really,really dumb." That is a great argument against Barbie in my mind. "Hot" means "great." That girl needs to figure out when to use it and when not to.
I agree, anon. And my mother would too. Except she'd say, "white trash."
Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it. mulberry. I mean sure that may have started with Paris Hilton, mulberry, but to think that your intern friend couldn't take creative license, mulberry, and expand on its usage, mulberry, seems a little unfair. not mulberry.
That having been said, hot aint the mulberry thing for me these days. mulberry. But different strokes for different folks. mulberry
I sound like a Mama's girl here, but I don't care too much. Mama always says that class has little to do with money. "White trash" sums it up nicely.
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