The Second in a Series of Reports

In Episode 521 of DARK SHADOWS a new character pops up and he's basically the devil. Anyway, a few episodes later, he says "gazebo" twice, both times with the unusual "Ga-ZAY-Bo" pronunciation. This has been the second in a series of reports on the way characters pronounce "gazebo" in DARK SHADOWS.

Words

1. Dr. Theresa and I have been watching DARK SHADOWS, the original series. Yesterday, Angelique (pictured... photo taken directly from our TV!... spoiler, she's a witch!) said the word "gazebo," only, get this: she pronounced it "Ga-ZAY-Bo." I was instantly transported to 2007, as I usually am all the time. I remembered doing a reading from my second book at A Cappella, and I was reading from a short story that had the word "gazebo" in it. Suddenly, I froze up. My brain did a thing. Foreshadowing? I was like, wait, how do I say this word? I stopped the story cold and rambled aloud to the stupefied audience about the weird thing I was experiencing. "Is it Ga-ZAY-Bo? That can't be right. But I kind of want to say Ga-ZAY-Bo." It stopped not just the story but the event - and perhaps time itself - dead. Or maybe it did the opposite. Because for once in my professional life something got people interested. They were all going, "Ga-ZEE-Bo! Ga-ZEE-Bo!" So I felt crazy. Probably the only reason I remember this so well is that I "blogged" about it at the time ("click" here. I know you won't! I hate you!). Also, this nice guy I knew back then in Atlanta, Jamie Allen, "blogged" about it too, providing more details, which selfsame details I recall, though his "link" has become a "zombie link." He found it amusing that I could think even for a split second it was pronounced "Ga-ZAY-Bo." So, yesterday, when the beauteous yet evil Angelique said it that way, I paused the show and exclaimed about it and relived the whole experience, like Proust. Dr. Theresa seemed to recall the incident as well, and speculated it might be a "Southern" way to say gazebo. (We had previously researched Angelique, or the actor Lara Parker, who played her, and found out she went to high school in Memphis.) I was thinking maybe that's just the way people said it in 1968. I was alive then! I must have heard it somewhere. Anyway, this little kid on DARK SHADOWS, David Collins, came into the room (in the same episode) and also said "gazebo" for some reason, pronouncing it just as Angelique had, with a ZAY. And he's from New Jersey. What a night! Nor had the night concluded. I went upstairs and looked in the OED, which gives both British and American pronunciations with the everyday familiar ZEE, not the mysterious and intrusive ZAY. But here's the interesting thing. Ha ha, there's not an interesting thing. Among its historical examples of usage, the OED includes the spelling "gazabo" from 1828. Now, are you trying to tell me the person who wrote down "gazabo" was pronouncing it "Ga-ZEE-Bo"? Get real! To be fair, there is the spelling "gazeebo," two e's, in a cited work from 1843. And wait, there's more! The OED provides an alternative meaning for "gazebo." It's a rude expression for a guy. An example from 1896 has some dude being called "a cheap gazabo." There's that spelling again! Oh my God. We're really uncovering some big stuff here. I'm resisting the urge to look up "gazebo" in my GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG. 2. In the past few days or weeks, I used the word "descendants" in a couple of "posts." For whatever reason, I started wondering if I had spelled it right. And I hadn't! I put an "e" where the "a" should be. And I wondered... have I been misspelling it my whole life? Further research into the "blog" revealed... yes! I have been misspelling "descendants" my whole life. I haven't corrected earlier occurrences if you want to go back and search for them and look at them and make fun of me. 3. This one is about a string of words. To be specific, "A churchyard haunter at whom the owl hoots and the ivy mocks..." A character says it in BETWEEN THE ACTS, and the context implies he is quoting from a preexisting literary work, so I poked around a little bit, wondering what he might be quoting. My flimsy research indicates it's a mash-up or scramble of quotations, or possibly a jumble, or maybe nothing. So that settles it. But while I was looking around, I came upon a wonderful "web" site in which a scholar has catalogued all of Virginia Woolf's allusions to plant life. Well, maybe not all of them. I don't know. But a lot of them! And I felt pride because it has a "blogspot" address. There are so few of us left, I assume. Her entry on ivy ("click" here) contains, incidentally, a number of asides on owls, a bird with which Woolf seems to have habitually associated ivy. Well, I think we've covered everything. Just like ivy! 4. GREEN'S DICTIONARY OF SLANG: "gazabo (also gazab, gazabe, gazaboo, gazaybo, gazeaboo, gazebo, gazebu, gazeebo, gazimbat, gazuny, gezeybo) an awkward, strange or stupid person... also any fellow." 5. Update [added May 31]: A couple of episodes later, Angelique says "gazebo" twice in quick succession, each time using the more familiar ZEE pronunciation. Who got to her?

My Dream About Horses

Dang! I have to clean up my filthy office because next ADVENTURE TIME meeting, Kent will be here LIVE! I don't want him to see the kind of squalor I live in. Mostly it's shoes and wine corks and cat hair and "scrap paper" and library books about cigarette lighters and the prehistory of fire stacked on a scratched-up ottoman and a bunch of coats just thrown over the door and piles of old comic books that have fallen down and an old TWIN PEAKS soundtrack CD I use as a coaster. There, I said it! And now I see some wool hats that are almost falling off a table. And some curling-up pictures of Jerry Lewis I haven't figured out what to do with yet. (Kelly Hogan gave me this one YEARS AGO!) During the meetings, the camera on this computer is carefully angled away from the worst of the mess. Kent and I have vowed to eat Gus's fried chicken all through the meeting, much to the very apparent dismay of Ashly Burch and Adam Muto, who DON'T EVEN REALLY KNOW WHAT GUS'S FRIED CHICKEN IS. I guess they think we're just gross and probably eat chicken in a gross way that will be horrible to witness during a video conference. Or maybe it's just plain unprofessional to eat fried chicken in a business meeting! WHO CARES. Anyway, at lunch the other day with Melissa we were talking about dreams and I was saying I LIKE hearing people's dreams, counter to the popular affectation of whining that other people's dreams aren't interesting. And then I told Melissa four or five boring dreams that were probably humiliatingly revealing. What a jerk! So anyway, last night I dreamed that somebody gave me a horse for a present. I was okay with it! But I didn't know how to take care of it. So the guy who delivered the horse said he'd show me an instructional video. And the "instructional video" was just a feature length film he had spent all of his own money to write, direct, and produce, about a group of young friends who are trying to make it in show biz. Ha ha! It was a wacky comedy. There was one scene during a wedding rehearsal when across the way from the gazebo where the wedding was being rehearsed there were a bunch of horses going for a swim! And the young rowdies decided to play a trick on the guy who was taking the horses for a swim. And SOMEONE WAS ACCIDENTALLY SHOT. But luckily the victim was wearing a mascot costume and though his baseball head was mostly shot off, he was okay inside there. And I kept looking at this guy like, "When am I going to find out what to feed my horse?" AND I NEVER DID. He just packed up his stuff when the movie was over and left me with the horse. As he left he said, "Maybe you'll want to keep this press packet with a full-color pull-out poster!" And he laughed warmly like he was doing me a big favor. And now that I think of it, he resembled a serial killer.

This Is What I Look Like

This (pictured) is what I look like according to the people at Jamie Allen's "blog." Kind of like Max Von Sydow in one of his more harrowing performances for Ingmar Bergman! The fellow who sketched me also provides a report on my reading last night. It seems more or less accurate, except for the fact that I would ask everyone to "lie down," not "lay down," which is not very grammatical. As for my pronunciation of gazebo, the whole point of that little hiccup was that my brain suddenly went blank. Hasn't that ever happened to you? You see a word you have been saying for your entire life (although I do go for long stretches without saying "gazebo" out loud) and suddenly it seems unfamiliar and strange? Right? As for my exhortation to the "gentlemen" in the audience, I am not sure the reporter makes it clear that there were many women required to stand while men sat at their leisure (I'm looking at you, Phil Oppenheim!). Finally, on the subject of Helicopter Island (another reference in that report on Jamie Allen's "blog"): one attendee believed that my fictional character who mentions Helicopter Island was making an oblique reference to the TV show LOST. Not true! I wrote that story a long time before I had even seen an episode of LOST, perhaps before LOST was even on the air, and certainly before a ********* almost reached the island, which occurred only a few weeks ago. I hope this clears everything up! Thanks to everyone who came out to my reading. I will try to do better in the future!