A deceptively Asian exterior belies the fact that I am far better with words than I am with numbers. I was the Spelling Bee Champion in elementary school. A+ 100% scrawled across my vocabulary tests were my pride and joy. I dorked out by reading the dictionary, by choice, when every other girl in school was living out their high school fantasy with Sweet Valley High. I flashed SAT vocabulary words at myself with a vengeance and crushed the verbal section into college. I get all tingly when I get the Word of the Day in my Inbox. Playing Scrabble with you gets me hot in all the wrong places. Winning at Scrabble, well…
I love words. I love language. I’m a word geek.
I am also thirty *cough* something *cough* years old and contrary to my supposed maturity, I have reduced my language – the vocabulary I have tried all my life in such earnest to build, the wordplay at which I used to be a g*dd*mned gold medalist – reduced my language to the IM-inspired urban TLA slang of teenagers.
I hate myself, first, for relying so heavily on IM to communicate, but I will have to do a master’s dissertation on that another day. I also hate myself because my pathetic pseudo-socialization via IM “conversations” is littered with omg, lol, and wtf. There’s an occasional “teh,” but be not ye mistaken. That’s just a typo.
Why can’t I communicate like a normal person? Because my three favorite “words” are so rich in meaning! Let me spell it out for you.
OMG
Stands for: “Oh, my God!” If you are shy about taking the Lord’s name in vain, then “Oh, my gosh!”
Definition: An exclamation that can be used to express a myriad of emotions, including but not limited to surprise, fear, or empathy. It can also be used to introduce any sentiment that is very strongly felt.
Suggested Synonym: Holy shit! (notice both associations with religion)
Example: “OMG, I’m starving,” is the same as, “I’m really starving.”
LOL
Stands for: “Laughing out loud.”
Definition: Response to anything funny, even if you are not actually laughing out loud. Sometimes, it is attached to the end of a statement as a way to indicate sarcasm in the preceding.
Suggested Synonym: GBM (“Giggling by myself,” which is a term that my sister made up when she first started using IM last week and didn’t realize that LOL was a standard term and that no one would fucking understamd GBM if she ever used it. Uh, don’t ever use GBM.)
Example: You: “I just snorted.” Me: “lol!”
WTF
Stands for: “What the fuck?” or the PG-13, “What the frack?”
Definition: Basically the same as “What the fuck?” which, when used in different contexts, has different underlying emotions ranging from love to disappointment to utter disgust.
Example: “We’re eating at CPK? WTF?”
CPK
Stands for: California Pizza Kitchen
Definition: A chain of restaurants that is often mistaken as the originator of “California-style” pizzas because it raped Wolfgang Puck of his original concept and bastardized it into such bweilderments of Indi-talian f*ew*sion as Tandoori Mango Pizza, then in an attempt to maintain its business through expansion not only by Starbuxing itself onto every street corner in America, but expansion of the menu, changed its name from California Pizza Kitchen to CPK so it could guiltlessly serve Shanghai Garlic Noodles, the same way Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC in order to avoid being pigeon-blackholed into a fatty, deep-fried non-existence and now serves what I call “Cheesecake Factory Lite,” not because CPK is healthier and lighter than Cheesecake Factory, but because the menus are very similar, but CPK’s is not 37 pages long.
Example: “omg, wtf are we doing at cpk? lol!”
After spending a sweltering seven to eight minutes traisping around the UCLA campus for no other reason than to stalk Govind Armstrong, I was understandably tired and cranky. Seven to eight minutes of walking is a lot for shamefully out-of-shape, bloggy "little" me, so I needed food and drink, and by drink, I don’t mean bottled water. Options in Westwood for food are plenty, but options for good food are limited, and options for good food with drinks that do more bodily harm than mental harm are none. We ended up at CPK for lunch because somewhere in my long-term memory, there was a flash of Kendall-Jackson. Classy. The Sweet and Spicy Italian Sausage Pizza was exactly as expected: unremarkable except that the spicy Italian sausage were not very spicy.
I know it isn’t fair to be so harsh about CPK. I did, at one time, applaud a friend’s concerted effort to re-create one of their original pizzas, and for some reason known only to the Devil w
ho continues to punish me with my own hypocrisy, I find myself dining there more often than is comfortable for a distinguished food blogger like myself. If this lady doth protest too much, wtf do I keep eating there? (In this context, the “w” of "wtf" equates to “why.”) Why, lady, why?!
Because I’m a hypocrite, that’s why!
Besides, I’m not a fucking lady.
CPK also happens to meet the 3Cs which, for the sake of argument, are different from both the 3Cs of Marketing which change based on the marketer, and Famima’s Three Cs. CPK was convenient, casual, and they had Champagne. Technically, the tiny bottles of Korbel were sparkling wine, but saying “2Cs + S” is not as powerful, though I suppose I could have said "California sparkling wine.” They also have Chardonnay, but you know. Chardonnay. Kendall-Jackson. Not that I’m a wine snob or anything.
GBM!
California Pizza Kitchen (aka CPK)
1001 Broxton Ave
Westwood, CA 90024
310.209.9197
www.cpk.com
** a year ago today, we celebrated our anniversary with whole wheat banana pancakes **
tags :: food : and drink : american : italian : restaurants : reviews : los angeles
SteamyKitchen says
thats better than:
i (heart) CPK
SteamyKitchen says
thats better than:
i (heart) CPK
joanh says
LOL. i like cpk, especially when there's ONLY chinese food to eat. sausalito pizza. bbq chix salad. i even liked the tandoori chix pizza.
it's scary how i totally saw myself in your description of your word-geekiness. city spelling bee champion in the 4th grade. higher verbal than math on the SATs. and yes, scrabble... at least you are not up nights playing online, right? hahaha
sarah says
jaden: oooh, but i say that i {heart} lots of things all the time!
joanh: not up all night, but is it just ridiculous that i want the scrabble dictionary?!?!
U says
ZOMG the language!
I like CPK. I had a memorable meal at one once, many years ago. Le sigh.
e d b m says
That's funny. I was a big word dork too. I was in 3 spelling bees. Best I did was 2nd place in elementary school comepetition. I've been scarred since. I envy those kids on the Spellbound movie.
e d b m says
That's funny. I was a big word dork too. I was in 3 spelling bees. Best I did was 2nd place in elementary school comepetition. I've been scarred since. I envy those kids on the Spellbound movie.