I was calling Ibiza, Ib-itha, way before you shitheads even realized the proper pronunciation of Ibiza is Ib-itha. Same goes for Buda-pesht, Mumbai, and Munchen, bitches. Back in the eighties, when I was working at WTVJ Miami and putting the other hunked-out weather adonises to shame, I perfected the whole “I’ll be speaking in English until I run across a Spanish name, and then I will momentarily transform from being an English speaker into a Spanish speaker and then back to English speaker all in the blink of an eye” vibe. It just kind of happened one day. One minute I’m just your run-of-the-mill sex god barking about high-pressure systems, and the next, I’m the new Wittgenstein—rocking culturally sensitive linguistic philosophies all to ease the self-depreciating burden of a minority class. Normally I would have been like:
“So we got this mass of moisture moving it’s way down from around Punta Verde.”
But that day, I was all like,
“So we got this mass of moisture moving it’s way down from around PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNTTTTTTTTTTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA VVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
It felt good. Felt damn good. Next thing you know Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons are trying to jump aboard and Latinize the shit out of everything. But then one day, while I was plugging this groupie in the back alleyway of a Miami Subs franchise, some 9 year old kid from Burkina Faso comes up to me and asks me why, when I mention Burkina Faso in my weather reports, I don’t pronounce its capital, Ouagadougou, the way it is pronounced in the Burkinabe dialect of the Sudanic African tongue? I took a break from the pumps, spun on my heel and looked him dead in the eye and said, “Kid, when Burkina Faso starts producing talent like Jose Feliciano, then and only then, will dudes start taking that backwater African shithole seriously. Catch my flow youngster?” He started in with the crying and saying shit like, “But the ancient peoples of Burkina Faso we were the first to develop clay granaries!” And because I am a cultural relativist, I didn’t have the heart to finish my pumping. Ever since then, I can’t bring myself to fuck strangers behind fast food sandwich shops. And all this time I’ve been carrying around a lot of guilt for the way I behaved. That’s why when the drug and alcohol counselors here told me as part of step 6, I’d have to call up those people whom I once wronged in my past, I hit the Lexus Nexus and tracked young Sukwaba down at his home (a bottomed out house boat mired in a remote area of Everglade national park) and had my boys set up a satellite uplink so I could ask for his forgiveness. Here’s the transcript of said conversation:
Johnson: Yo, Sukwaba. What’s shaking?
Sukwaba: It is I who is shaking. I have been dying of typhoid fever for over a year now. I live in the everglades and rely on lichen and bat guano for sustenance.
Johnson: That shit sucks balls home-slice.
Sukwaba: It is my destiny. What is it you want from me?
Johnson: Sorry, brah.
Sukwaba: For what are you sorry?
Johnson: You know, all that shit I was talking back in the day about Burkina Faso when I was making love to that trick behind the Miami Subs.
Sukwaba: You were quite cruel then.
Johnson: Yeah, whatever. Sorry, brah.
Sukwaba: Your genuine and heartfelt apology has made my miserable existence less so. Thank you.
Johnson: Whatevs…
On apology down, six trill to go.
