Keep Your Tail Over the Dashboard (rebroadcast) - 21 June 2010

[This episode first aired November 21, 2010.]<br><br>This week, 'McGimpers,' 'geetus,' and other underworld lingo from the 1930s. Crime novelist James Ellroy stops by to talk slang terms and reveals his own favorite. Also, is the expression 'Hear, hear!' or 'Here, here!'? Is it 'bran-new' or 'brand-new'? The spooky, creepy story behind the flat hat called a 'tam.' And what does it mean to 'keep your tail over the dashboard'?<br><br>Grant talks about the lingo of criminals from 1930s. Here are more examples from police reporter Ben Kendall's 1931 Los Angeles Times article, 'Underworld 'Lingo' Brought Up-to-Date': <br><br>Apple-knocker: A yokel; a blunderer. 'That big apple-knocker slipped on the top step with a five gallon can of alky.'<br><br>Creeper (creep joint): A bawdy house. 'Them McGimpers around those creepers will take you every time.'<br><br>Goldfish: Third degree; a police beating. 'They took him up and showed him the goldfish, but he never squawked.'<br><br>Gow: To catch; to jail. 'Be careful when you drive because they gow you in this town if you have booze on your breath.' (Grant's note: probably a shortened form of hoosegow http://www.wordnik.com/words/hoosegow.)<br><br>Meat-wagon: Ambulance. 'If any of those mugs get tough in my join they'll take a trip in the meat wagon.'<br><br>Wing-ding: A fit; berserk. 'The sailor pulled a wing ding after the first drink and they called the meat-wagon.'<br><br>Ask a Roman! A theater student from Texas is having an argument with a friend about the word 'vomitorium.' He says that in ancient Rome, a vomitorium was a room where revelers went to purge after overindulging at the banquet table. True?<br><br>How did the term 'bisque' come to mean 'an unglazed piece of ceramic work'? Does it have anything to do with the kind of bisque that might be served in a ceramic bowl?<br><br>Martha tells the story of the creepy, spooky, surreal, and downright weird Robert Burns poem behind the name for that flat hat called a 'tam.' Read it in translatio