February 4, 1997

From AK to young G

Do you need a translator to understand popular music these days? The Entertainment Monitor magazine thinks you do. And they’ve graciously offered to be your guide through the “hybrid labyrinth” of slang words like “weed,” “boom box,” and “D.J.”

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The Entertainment Monitor is a bimonthly magazine which covers film, music, television, and the Internet in an attempt to inform concerned parents about “the content of popular entertainment today.”

As part of this mission, they have compiled a growing slang dictionary called “Pop Talk,” which begins with a warning to parents:

“Beware, those of you who think you’re hip to what your kids are saying, you may have a false sense of security. I was familiar with slang in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, but the language of the 90’s is changing at lightening [sic] speed.”

—Entertainment Monitor, May/June ’96

Are you down* with the latest 90’s-speak? See if you can guess the meaning of the following slang terms (according to the Entertainment Monitor definitions, of course):

  • Or skip the quiz and take a look right now at some excerpts from the Entertainment Monitor‘s slang dictionary.

*be down – in compliance or in synch with

1. tootsee roll

A dance rolling a person’s buttocks
Candy
Having sex

2. hit me on the hip

Have sex with me
Loan me some money
Page me

3. rub-a-dub

Kill someone (“rub” them out)
Have sex
A massage

4. locs

Locals
Imitation Docs (Doc Martens)
Sunglasses

5. flossin’

Being attentive to oral hygiene
Hanging out
Wearing a thong bikini

6. wasted

Exhausted
Someone who has been killed (i.e. “He got wasted”)
Being intoxicated on drugs or alcohol

7. sister stone

Marijuana
The crack pipe
The bench a homeless person sleeps on

8. props

Drug paraphrenalia
Dramatic accessories
Proper respect

9. four deep

Four people in a car
Four people having sex
Dead and buried (the cheap way)

10. buckle bunnies

The replacement for Hush Puppies
A particular breed of rabbit
Country slang for groupies

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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