all apologies

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Last night, Tim Swanson greeted me in IM by saying "holla" ...

I thought he'd said "hola" and so I responded with "que pasa" (actually, I responded by misspelling the pasa in que pasa but let's not get side-tracked here).

He pointed out that he had greeted me with the African-Americanism (and therefore the young Caucasian derivative) of holla as in holler as in "holler back, negro!" or as in "HOLLA BACK HUEY!"


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See, in the NYC of my youth, white people imitating black people was considered quite passé. What was hip was for white people to imitate Puerto Ricans.

But anyway, Mr. Swanson said, "You're so old and dusty."

I know, I know: he meant it in the nicest possible way, which was exactly how I took it, and even if he had meant it in an unkind way, it's still true. No argument here.

In fact, I'm so so old and dusty, that I don't even know who Darius Rucker is. He's Hootie of Hootie and the Blowfish. They're not exactly here-and-now, are they? They're from the 1990s. I was already old and dusty enough in the 1990s (during part of which time, I was 20-something) that I don't know who's Hootie or who are the Blowfish.

So nevermind my question about the singing black cowboy and the TV commercial. I found the answer here, at ad-rag.com.