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Hooray for Hollywood.

I had an errand down­town Sat­ur­day, but alas, the block I was try­ing to reach was closed off. Parked police cars with lights flash­ing sat at either end, and in between were what appeared to be either sol­diers or the baddest-ass SWAT unit in the tri-state area. Bomb scare? I thought, but only for a few sec­onds. Because lo, we are in Michi­gan, and Michi­gan is Hollywood’s sugar daddy (for the time being).

At first I thought it was more “Red Dawn,” which is seem­ingly every­where these days. The “police sta­tion” is still wear­ing its wardrobe:

police

The red star with the whatever-it-is Chi­nese char­ac­ter is a logo through­out the film. If any­one speaks the lan­guage, I’d be inter­ested in know­ing what it means. Prob­a­bly “tax incentives.”

Ah, but this is the con­quered Amer­ica of Barack Hus­sein Quis­ling Bow-down Obama, so this police sta­tion is well-fortified against the peo­ple it pro­tects and serves. Street level:

biggun

And just in case you wanted to know what city our fair one is stand­ing in for, the front door:

spokane

I tried to take a shot of the set that was work­ing Sat­ur­day, but alas, the iPhone has no tele­photo func­tion. And I don’t think it was “Red Dawn.” The Guardian build­ing is where they’ve been shoot­ing this Wes­ley Snipes actioner, “Game of Death.” Imdb synopsis:

After a botched assas­si­na­tion attempt on a Diplo­mat, every­one from the Diplo­mat and his body­guards to the group of assas­sins behind the attempt ends up at the same hos­pi­tal where they fight it out.

Some­one I know is work­ing on this pro­duc­tion. She calls it, “‘Die Hard’ in a hos­pi­tal,” which is either the ten-thousandth or ten-thousand-and-first “Die Hard”-in-a-(fill in the blank) thumb­nail. Did the peo­ple who made “Die Hard” v.1 know what they were doing? Maybe. I still stop to watch it, and all of its sequels, when I surf past them on cable, if only for a few min­utes. Wouldn’t be the movie it was with­out Bruce Willis, of course, but he was well-served by the var­i­ous British straight men they threw up against him, par­tic­u­larly Jeremy Irons. When Alan Rick­man quotes Plutarch to the Japan­ese indus­tri­al­ist before bust­ing a cap in his ass, well, that’s a moment that sticks with you, too.

But the genius of it was to sim­ply ask the ques­tion every­body with half a brain asks when suf­fer­ing through most action movies: Wouldn’t it hurt to pound some­one in the skull with your bare fist like that? Bruce Willis stops from time to time to say “ouch” — that’s the ground bro­ken by “Die Hard.” So sim­ple. So successful.

That’s about the end of the verisimil­i­tude*, how­ever, and “Die Hard” was the begin­ning of action-movie loot hyper­in­fla­tion. The first install­ment was about the theft of $600 mil­lion in bearer bonds, what­ever those are. (Bearer bonds were very big in ‘80s/‘90s action movies, and that link explains why — they’re pop­u­lar for money laun­der­ing — but I think their pop­u­lar­ity is also tied to the allit­er­a­tion of their name, as every­one from Alan Rick­man to 50 Cent can sound cool say­ing “bearer bonds.”) By the third “Die Hard,” Jeremy Irons was plot­ting to steal all the money in the world, or at least all the gold held by the Fed­eral Reserve in lower Man­hat­tan; he had to carry it away in a con­voy of dump trucks. This raises so many ques­tions in the mind of even a half-bright movie­goer — how does one laun­der a dump truck full of gold? (Bearer bonds!) Hell, how does one even get it out of North America? — you could even for­get that this is a sum­mer movie and you’re not sup­posed to think about it.

But it was too dif­fi­cult to top, and by the last “Die Hard” I don’t even remem­ber what the bad guys were after, only that Bruce brought down a heli­copter with a fire hydrant, and it was awesome.

* My per­sonal quib­ble with action-movie real­ity: The noise fac­tor. Peo­ple are always fir­ing machine guns or hav­ing explo­sions hap­pen five feet away, and no one ever stops to say, “I can’t hear you! My ears are ring­ing from that explo­sion!” I spent one measly hour on a fir­ing range Fri­day, wear­ing foam earplugs and ear­muff pro­tec­tion, and every round above .38 cal­iber still made me just about jump out of my skin.

Oh, well. Mon­day blog­gage? Sure.

Lots of blogs are read­ing “Going Rogue” so you don’t have to, but few are strik­ing the per­fect tone that Lawyers, Guns and Money is. They’re up to Chap­ter 4 now, but it’s all on the main page, still, so just scroll down and work your way up. I was inter­ested to read this note about Chap­ter 3, which calls out the She-Who/Lynn Vin­cent casu­al­ness with her chap­ter epigraphs:

So far as bun­gled epigraphs go, the third chap­ter is arguably the win­ner so far, attribut­ing this nugget of wis­dom to the renowned for­mer UCLA bas­ket­ball coach John Wooden:

Our land is every­thing to us.… I will tell you one of the things we remem­ber on our land. We remem­ber than our grand­fa­thers paid for it — with their lives.

Now, if that’s not the sort of thing you’d expect a hall of fame bas­ket­ball coach to say, that’s because, of course, he didn’t. Stu­dents of Amer­i­can Indian his­tory might rec­og­nize that pas­sage as belong­ing instead to John Wooden Legs, the post-WWII North­ern Cheyenne tribal leader who — though a con­tem­po­rary of John Wooden’s — was not the same guy.

Yes, yes — it’s absurd to expect much from Sarah Palin, but imag­ine if these sorts of gaffes had appeared in books by Hillary Clin­ton or Obama himself.

Exactly. Con­fus­ing John Wooden, the bas­ket­ball coach, with John Wooden Legs, the Indian? That’s funny.

Ah, Mon­day. Police rounds, Russ­ian les­son, fol­lowed by abs/glutes class in the evening. My life is some­times indis­tin­guish­able from Paris Hilton’s.

Which reminds me of a story I for­got to blog, about a team of teenage bur­glars in Hol­ly­wood, who broke into var­i­ous stars’ homes when they knew they’d be out par­ty­ing. Among the vic­tims was Paris Hilton, hit on mul­ti­ple occa­sions, aided by this killer detail: She keeps her house key under the mat. No kidding.

Later!

Posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
in Current events, Detroit life, Movies.

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45 responses to
“Hooray for Hollywood.”

  1. Peter said on November 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 am

    Car­ry­ing on from the pre­vi­ous blog — Happy Birth­day Moe! May you have many more, and that you feel bet­ter on sub­se­quent occasions.

  2. coozledad said on November 23rd, 2009 at 11:24 am

    Dave Noon is great. That’s pre­cisely what his­to­ri­ans are for, only he writes bet­ter than 99% of them. They slapped that book together so quickly to cap­i­tal­ize on her brief run­way walk they didn’t do any damn edit­ing. Seems like that’s sort of how she showed up on the national radar, innit.
    I read some­where that Marc Bolan knew his radar screen time was going to be short, so he opted for abject shame­less­ness. I don’t know if it was ever an option for Sarah.
    Sadly, I don’t think it will mat­ter much to the peo­ple who pur­chased it. It’ll sit beside the “Foot­prints” plaque in the famous rifles of yes­ter­year dis­play cabinet.

  3. Deborah said on November 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 am

    Happy Birth­day Moe. I really wanted to use an excla­ma­tion point at the end of that sen­tence but will refrain as they are frowned upon here. Kid­ding of course.

  4. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am

    Happy! Birth­day! Moe!

    (c’mon, some­times you gotta deploy the lit­tle suckers.)

    Vir­tual cake for everyone …

  5. Dorothy said on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Qui­etly singing Happy Birth­day to you here in Ohio, Moe, and hop­ing you’re feel­ing all right and able to have a big ol’ slice of cake today. Lots of happy returns wished for you as well!

    Deb I replied to your ques­tion about the movie/loud birds in Saturday’s com­ment section.

  6. Sue said on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm

    1. Alan Rick­man sounds cool say­ing any­thing.
    2. Indi­ana com­menters: Is it true Sarah got into a lit­tle trou­ble with those nice, polite Indi­ana fans?
    http://​www​.first​-draft​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​p​a​l​i​n​-​b​o​o​e​d​-​b​y​-​h​o​o​s​i​e​r​s.html
    3. I saw a movie this week­end called “The Broth­ers Bloom”. It was con­fus­ing and charm­ing, and all I have to say is: Nancy, when you make your next movie? Hats and lots of them.
    4. Happy Birth­day, Moe! It seems a shame that you have to spend your birth­day barf­ing, for all the wrong reasons.

  7. Jolene said on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    1. Alan Rick­man sounds cool say­ing anything.

    I sec­ond that.

  8. brian stouder said on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    1. Happy birth­day Moe!!!!

    2. I always credit James Garner/Rockford Files for giv­ing us an action hero who hurts him­self when he gets into fist-fights, and who wakes up sore in the morn­ing, and who has bills to pay, etc.

    3. There was an old Super­man tv show (circa 1955) wherein the Evil Vil­lain makes a threat that S-Man finds cred­i­ble — unleash­ing his super destruc­tive weapon upon Metrop­o­lis, or some such — unless he is imme­di­ately paid Four hun­dred fifty thou­sand dol­lars! It struck me as humor­ously low — when­ever I heard it (1977 — or there­abouts?) Any­one who ever watched Dr Strangelove knows that such an evil genius would sim­ply get hired by the Depart­ment of Defense, and make more money than he could ever count — instead of extort­ing peanuts out of the mayor of Metropolis.

    4. We saw about 20 min­utes of what­ever award show was on last night, and I saw Lady Ga Ga. If you squinted a lit­tle bit, her stage show reminded me of noth­ing so much as a 1960’s era blonde singer-dancer; Ann Mar­garet or Con­nie Stevens; and her dri­ving music reminded me of “These boots were made for walk­ing” (etc). Every­thing old is new again, and all that.

  9. ROgirl said on November 23rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    If Alan Rick­man and Jeremy Irons were in the same movie together, their plummy accents and deli­ciously evil line read­ings would blow every­one else in it off the screen. Absolutely cool and flam­ing hot.

  10. MarkH said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    ROgirl, other than Die Hard With A Vengeance (Die Hard 3), with Rickman’s archival footage, this is as close as you’ll get:

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​4​21968/

    Sounds inter­est­ing; don’t know if you could rent it, though.

    For all you pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion haters, I found this while trolling through Die Hard 3 at imdb. Guess who actu­ally had a role in this film? Anyone?

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​n​a​m​e​/​n​m​0​1​55515/

  11. mark said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    Bearer bonds are bonds payable, typ­i­cally on demand, to whomever the holder (or “bearer”) hap­pens to be. Sort of like a check that has been endorsed but has a blank space for the payee. Not as good as cash, since there is a record of pay­ment, but much eas­ier to carry.

    Gold is the ulti­mate for ease in laun­der­ing. Com­pletely untrace­able and accepted every­where. Impos­si­ble to coun­ter­feit, easy to hide (unless you man­age to steal a dump truck full).

    Oh that silly Sarah Palin. Con­fus­ing John Wooden for John Wooden Legg? I can defend her no longer as this val­i­dates the worst that has been imag­ined. Her exit from the national scene is now immi­nent. But alas, but alas, smart peo­ple don’t make silly mistakes.

    As I recall, the Austin Pow­ers movies raised the extor­tion infla­tion issue by hav­ing Dr. Evil’s son ridicule him for a far too low demand. He also ridiculed him for not killing Pow­ers imme­di­ately and instead prepar­ing a more con­trived death from which Pow­ers will invari­ably escape.

  12. Jolene said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    Jeremy Irons recorded Lolita. A great record­ing to bring on a long trip. Lis­ten­ing to Nabokov’s prose in Irons’s voice, you’ll be at Grandma’s house before you know it.

  13. 4dbirds said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:32 pm

    Happy birth­day Moe.

  14. paddyo' said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    On the other hand, Brian S., one of those value-of-the-dollar cal­cu­la­tors says that $450K back in 1955 would be worth any­where from $3.6 mil to $15.7 mil today, depend­ing on your index of choice (CPI to GDP, etc.).

    And hey, it was even up to $1 mil to $2.2 mil in 1977, when it first struck you as humor­ously low …

    Either way, I’d take the $450K, I’m not choosy …

    P.S., another vote here for Alan Rick­man in the villain-with-the-best-voice poll …

  15. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    Rick­man is the one redeem­ing qual­ity in the oth­er­wise unwatch­able Kevin Cost­ner “Robin Hood,” and i feel dis­loyal to Mor­gan Free­man say­ing that.

  16. Julie Robinson said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    What a relief to know that Cheney’s Starme­ter is up 2% this week. Thank you, Mark H & IMDB; I was con­cerned about his lack of self-esteem and confidence.

  17. Chris said on November 23rd, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    Hi, every­one:

    I am an almost daily lurker on this site, but not a reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor, so please for­give me for ask­ing a ques­tion that has noth­ing to do with any­thing being dis­cussed today.

    But you’re such an eru­dite bunch that I’d like to know which is cor­rect:
    1. The pedi­atric depart­ment of the hos­pi­tal should feel rightly embar­rassed about the posters in THEIR wait­ing room.
    2. The pedi­atric depart­ment of the hos­pi­tal should feel rightly embar­rassed about the posters in ITS wait­ing room.

    If you’re bet­ter at dia­gram­ming sen­tences than I am — and actu­ally know why some­thing is gram­mat­i­cally cor­rect and not just if it is cor­rect or incor­rect — please pass along an expla­na­tion for your answer.

    Thank you

  18. mark said on November 23rd, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    I don’t claim to know much about writ­ing, but I was taught that it is incor­rect to attribute char­ac­ter­is­tics of ani­mate, think­ing objects to inan­i­mate objects. Is a “depart­ment” capa­ble of embarass­ment? Yes, if you are rer­fer­ring to the peo­ple who com­pose the depart­ment or the man­age­ment of the depart­ment who decide things like posters. To me, using “its” is a ref­er­ence to the inan­i­mate depart­ment, which is not capa­ble of embarassment.

    Per­haps you should add “the staff” or “the man­age­ment” to your sentence?

  19. jcburns said on November 23rd, 2009 at 2:25 pm

    The proof of Alan Rickman’s ver­sa­til­ity and verisimil­i­tude: Galaxy Quest, I tell ya. Happy birth­day, ‘Moe’, if that ‘is’ your ‘real’ name, and happy-almost-your-birthday to the blogger-in-chief.

  20. LAMary said on November 23rd, 2009 at 2:39 pm

    Chris, I work in a hos­pi­tal, so I think of the depart­ments as the peo­ple who work there as in, the Pedi­atric Depart­ment is hav­ing their Christ­mas Party this week. Maybe it’s wrong. I’m sure I’ll get cor­rected if it is.

  21. MarkH said on November 23rd, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    Indeed, Julie, I was wor­ried, too. Nice to know he has some­thing to fall back on when the money runs out. Maybe not good news for the rest of us, though.

    And, yes, Happy Birth­day to Moe; lots of prayers and other good thoughts mas­sively head­ing your way. And, birth­day wishes to Nance (the 25th?)!!

  22. moe99 said on November 23rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    Thank you all.

    Here is an inter­est­ing take on roads in Detroit:

    http://​www​.sweet​-juniper​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​s​t​r​e​e​t​s​-​w​i​t​h​-​n​o​-​n​a​m​e.html

  23. Dorothy said on November 23rd, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    Chris — from my daugh­ter the copy edi­tor, a reply to your question:

    the pro­noun is a ref­er­ence to “the department” — so “its” would be cor­rect.
    Depart­ment is a sin­gu­lar noun so it would take “its.”

    If it said “The pedi­atric doc­tors should feel rightly embar­rassed,” then
    “their” would be correct.

  24. Sue said on November 23rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm

    Actu­ally, the real ques­tion is:
    What exactly is on the posters in the Pedi­atric Wait­ing Room that is so embarrassing?

  25. Scout said on November 23rd, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Happy Birth­day, Moe!!!!! I made sure to use the excla­ma­tion points some of the oth­ers left behind earlier.

    I love Alan Rickman’s voice too. We have a client who sounds just like him. When he speaks at a meet­ing in our con­fer­ence room you could swear he’s plot­ting some­thing wicked instead of bro­ker­ing golf course devel­op­ment deals. Although, I guess one could argue that bro­ker­ing golf course deals is a form of evil…

    I heard there were some pretty pissed off Hoosiers on Fri­day. This site had the best cov­er­age: http://​www​.rumproast​.com/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​/​s​i​t​e​/​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​s​/​v​i​d​e​o​_​o​f​_​a​n​g​r​y​_​w​i​n​g​n​u​t​s​_​b​o​o​i​n​g​_​s​a​r​a​h​_​p​a​l​i​n​_​c​a​l​l​i​n​g​_​h​e​r​_​a​_​q​u​i​t​t​e​r​_​c​h​antin/

  26. brian stouder said on November 23rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm

    Our land is every­thing to us.… I will tell you one of the things we remem­ber on our land. We remem­ber than our grand­fa­thers paid for it  —  with their lives.

    Exactly. Con­fus­ing John Wooden, the bas­ket­ball coach, with John Wooden Legs, the Indian? That’s funny.

    You know — it IS funny; Tina Fey her­self couldn’t top it. The com­pound silli­ness — con­fus­ing a per­son, and in so doing, com­pletely under­min­ing (and indeed con­tra­dict­ing) her orig­i­nal point — makes it the very essence of Palin­ean ‘thinking’.

    And I am count­ing the days until she offers as a defense that her darned ghost writer took lib­er­ties with the text; that her ghost went rogue on her

  27. a different Connie said on November 23rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    Die Hard is one of the Christ­mas movies we make a point to watch every year.

    Also, in the final (most recent) Die Hard movie, I thought Bruce blew up the heli­copter by dri­ving a car into it.

  28. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    What Dorothy AND Sue said. It’s a depart­ment, so it’s got to be “its,” doesn’t it? But what is it? It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing question.

  29. Jolene said on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:15 pm

    Dorothy’s daugh­ter is cor­rect re the pro­noun ques­tion. Give that girl a raise!

  30. Hexdecimal said on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:19 pm

    Have any of you writ­ers for pub­li­ca­tion ever used NFP: in the mid­dle of a story as a note to the copy edi­tors let­ting them know a name is spelled cor­rectly? NFP means “not for publication.”

    Did it ever come back to bite you in the ass like it did this guy?
    http://​sports​.yahoo​.com/​m​l​b​/​b​l​o​g​/​b​i​g​_​l​e​a​g​u​e​_​s​t​e​w​/​p​o​s​t​/​-​I​d​i​o​t​-​p​a​p​e​r​-​n​o​t​e​s​-​u​n​u​s​u​a​l​-​s​p​e​l​l​i​n​g​-​o​f​-​P​h​i​l​l​i​e​s​?​u​r​n​=​m​l​b​,​203523

  31. Sue said on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:23 pm

    Die Hard as a ded­i­cated Christ­mas movie. Now that’s a great idea, come Christ­mas Eve. Break out the eggnog, I think I’ve got a new tradition.

  32. coozledad said on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    Brian: From the LGM thread, what John Wooden would have been more likely to say:
    “The key is every­thing to us.… I will tell you one of the things we remem­ber in the key. We remem­ber than our starters paid for it — with fla­grant fouls.“
    –Mike Schilling.

  33. Scout said on November 23rd, 2009 at 6:59 pm

    She Who Must Not Be Named keeps using the word “rogue.” I don’t think it means what she thinks it means:

    rogue (rg)
    n.
    1. An unprin­ci­pled, deceit­ful, and unre­li­able per­son; a scoundrel or ras­cal.
    2. One who is play­fully mis­chie­vous; a scamp.
    3. A wan­der­ing beg­gar; a vagrant.
    4. A vicious and soli­tary ani­mal, espe­cially an ele­phant that has sep­a­rated itself from its herd.
    5. An organ­ism, espe­cially a plant, that shows an unde­sir­able vari­a­tion from a stan­dard.
    adj.
    1. Vicious and soli­tary. Used of an ani­mal, espe­cially an ele­phant.
    2. Large, destruc­tive, and anom­alous or unpre­dictable: a rogue wave; a rogue tor­nado.
    3. Oper­at­ing out­side nor­mal or desir­able con­trols: “How could a sin­gle rogue trader bring down an oth­er­wise prof­itable and well-regarded insti­tu­tion?” (Saul Hansell).

  34. LAMary said on November 23rd, 2009 at 8:07 pm

    The teenage bling bur­glars were from Cal­abasas High School, the alma mater of the Menen­dez brothers.

  35. Dorothy said on November 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm

    “Die Hard” is my 24 year-old son’s favorite Christ­mas movie. Mine is “Love Actually.”

    Happy Birth­day (early) to our pro­pri­etress. My brother Jim’s is tomor­row (day before Nancy). He was born on Thanks­giv­ing Day 49 years ago. Hell, happy birth­day everybody!!!

  36. Deborah said on November 23rd, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    Dor­thy,

    Yes that was in the movie Sneak­ers, but when I saw that Sneak­ers I felt like I had seen some­thing like that some­where before, and it was geese the first time. It was a long time ago, I may have been in high school (in the 60s), and I thought it may have been a Hitch­cock movie? For some rea­son I keep pic­tur­ing Gre­gory Peck as the one who was kid­napped and blind­folded. But I must be mis­re­mem­ber­ing again.

  37. Bruce Fields said on November 23rd, 2009 at 11:44 pm

    Under the Movie Con­nec­tions page for Sneak­ers, imdb​.com says that idea was taken from Blind­fold. Which doesn’t credit Gre­gory Peck. But at least the date (1965) looks closer.…

  38. Denice B. said on November 24th, 2009 at 1:39 am

    Happy Birth­day, Moe! It hap­pens to be mine today too. Woo-Hoo!

  39. Rana said on November 24th, 2009 at 2:01 am

    Happy Birth­day moe! And Denice!

    I sup­pose it’s my aca­d­e­mic back­ground, but I’m used to think­ing of “depart­ment” as a col­lec­tive noun for a group of peo­ple, and thus would find “their” to be per­fectly acceptable.

  40. Dexter said on November 24th, 2009 at 2:02 am

    We who have cable TV will be treated to an alter­na­tive Christ­mas marathon movie, repeated show­ings of “Dirty Danc­ing”, all day long. Why. TV Guide chan­nel? Why?
    http://​www​.tvsquad​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​1​1​/​2​2​/​t​h​e​-​p​e​r​f​e​c​t​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​m​a​s​-​m​o​v​i​e​-​m​a​r​a​t​h​o​n​-​d​i​r​t​y​-​d​a​ncing/

    Hope you had a per­fect day, Moe, on your birth­day. Many more.

    Heidi Klum was on with Kim­mel. I have only seen his show a few times for a few min­utes, but tonight it was time to pause and watch a lit­tle bit. She just had her fourth child six weeks ago and she attrib­utes her good con­di­tion­ing to con­stant exer­cise from chas­ing kids around. Her plan is working.

  41. Jolene said on November 24th, 2009 at 2:22 am

    I sup­pose it’s my aca­d­e­mic back­ground, but I’m used to think­ing of “depart­ment” as a col­lec­tive noun for a group of peo­ple, and thus would find “their” to be per­fectly acceptable.

    But in Amer­i­can Eng­lish, col­lec­tive nouns are gen­er­ally treated as sin­gu­lar – in for­mal prose, if not in every­day speech. Exam­ple: The fam­ily next door is from China. Here’s a one-page les­son on what to do when re col­lec­tive nouns.

    In British Eng­lish, col­lec­tive nouns are gen­er­ally treated as plural. Exam­ple: The gov­ern­ment have issued a new pol­icy. Here’s a one-paragraph usage note that sums it all up nicely.

  42. Dexter said on November 24th, 2009 at 3:02 am

    John Wooden and John Wooden Legs? Unforgettable.

  43. alex said on November 24th, 2009 at 9:00 am

    Must be a Brit thing, the col­lec­tive noun. “If you love some­body set them free.” —Sting ;)

  44. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on November 24th, 2009 at 9:12 am

    It sounds as if Nancy is hop­ing for bearer bonds for her birth­day. They are easy to wrap, i’d think — or just use one of those grandma cards with a win­dow for the president’s engraved face? (And how do those work now with the off­set, over­sized Jack­sons and Lincolns?)

  45. brian stouder said on November 24th, 2009 at 9:33 am

    Ol’ Sting was just uti­liz­ing his Poetic License, there.

    With all this talk about birth­days and such, and just to show how ancient I’m becom­ing, back in 7th grade (or there­abouts) I recall the teacher bring­ing in a big glossy cig­a­rette ad from the Sun­day paper (and the youngs folks say “but, cig­a­rettes don’t adver­tise in the paper!”**) and con­duct­ing a les­son based on the (gram­mat­i­cally faulty) catch-phrase “Win­ston tastes good, like a cig­a­rette should”

    **I think one short-term stim­u­lous pack­age the gov­ern­ment could grant the printed-newspaper indus­try would be to grant them the a waiver, so that they could accept adver­tis­ing from the big tobacco com­pa­nies. The money would begin arriv­ing in armored trucks

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