Monday, January 4, 2010

Volume 1, Number 3: Tiger Stadium's Last Days, and Made-up Words From Out of Nowhere

(Note: This was originally posted in 2006 on a blog I created on GeoCities earlier that year.)

The other day, Mayor Kilpatrick announced that Tiger Stadium will be coming down, and none too soon. It only took about six and a half years to make that decision, whereas it took 15 for the Hudson's Department Store building to come down (during which time it grew incredibly derelict; for example, moss was growing on some of the upper floors). Tiger Stadium itself had been getting ugly; trees were growing out of the seats in there.

Wishful thinking from years ago: I had hoped, after the Tigers vacated Michigan and Trumbull, that the Lions would build their new stadium there. Why? For heaven's sake, I-75 and the Lodge were built AROUND Tiger Stadium, so Michigan and Trumbull was the perfect site for a stadium. Not to mention that there was already plenty of parking at the stadium (not 10 blocks away like you have to do at Comerica Park or Ford Field). Sure, it would have meant that the Lions might have had to play at the Silverdome for another year or two, but so what? Corktown (the section of Detroit where Tiger Stadium stands) took a blow to its economy; the Lions' failure to move there meant Corktown stood the risk of becoming a ghost town.

I was just thinking about times when I have a hard time coming up with words and I come up with totally new ones:

Devastational - Back around 1987, while watching the World Wrestling Federation show "Superstars of Wrestling," I saw the Ultimate Warrior deliver this awesome clothesline to the King, Harley Race, and since it both devastated Race and looked sensational, I just blended both words together to describe anything that involves devastation of some sort, especially on a sensational scale.

Testosterocentric - I word I invented when describing why a woman should never have to change her name upon being married to a man--"There's the red tape involved with getting a new Social Security card, changing the name on various documents, and it's so testosterocentric to begin with!" You might say chauvinstic is the appropriate word, and you're probably right, but there's another instance where I'd rather use testosterocentric: I argue that society still expects men to be breadwinners when they are losing jobs to women and/or computers, and that's testosterocentric, but definitely not chauvinistic.

Attitudinal - Synonymous with "copping an attitude," as in "When I slowed down on a rough spot of road, some asshole behind me in a Jeep got all attitudinal with me for slowing down on a bumpy part of the road, when we were approaching a red light anyway so what difference would it have made for me to go faster and mess up my suspension?!?"

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