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5 annoying buzzwords that Dallas definitely needs to let go of in 2021

There's sandwich and there's sando, and one of them has to go.

Sandoitchi

There are five phrases that have become hot buzzwords in the past year or so, and they absolutely must be wiped out.

These are words and phrases that have snuck into the vernacular, and they should all be repelled by anyone who loves the English language. Nevermind what they say about English being a living thing that grows and changes. Or that an ill-used word or phrase doesn't mean society is declining. They're wrong.

These 5 words are absolutely a threat to society, and the only course of action is to promise to never use them again.

Curate
Once upon a time — for centuries, really — curate was used only in the rarified world of art galleries and museums, where it belonged.

Then a bad thing happened. People who market restaurants and department stores and real estate discovered curate and started using it to pass off their pedestrian output as "art."

In Dallas, it first surfaced in 2013, when developer Mark Masinter said he was "trying to curate Henderson Avenue." How do you curate a $&%! street?

Since then, CultureMap has seen 603 people trying to curate things across an absurd range of topics: Clothes being curated at JC Penney. Website Axios laughably curating content. "Talent" being curated for a society event.

Curate is particularly popular these days among restaurants (well, really, restaurant PR people). Every press release about a new restaurant promises a "curated" menu. No. Chefs are creative, but food is fricking food.

Sandos
The problem here is not the trendy, twee sandwiches known as "katsu sandos." Katsu sandos being a sandwich from Japan made with slices of white bread and sold in child-like little packages. (Sando is an abbreviation of "sandoitchi," which means sandwich.)

The problem is that people are starting to call regular sandwiches "sandos." Which is idiotic. Sando has two syllables, just like sandwich. It's not like you're saving any time. Saying "sando" takes exactly the same amount of time as "sandwich." I timed it.

Here's a few examples of things that are not "sandos":

BLT
tuna salad sandwich
grilled cheese

Next time you hear someone saying "sando" to sound hip, one-up them by reminding them that sandos started out in Japan being sold at, ugh, convenience stores. Who's hip now?

Repeat after me: sandwich.

Do Better
"Do better" are two very average words. But combined together and deployed on social media, they've become a polite, passive-aggressive way to say F.U., especially on Twitter.

Saying "do better" is a way to have a tantrum and seem powerful — but in a pretend-civilized manner. For example:

"Do better" is what you say to the guy who wasn't wearing his mask properly and sneezed in your direction but you want to look like you're taking the high road
"Do better" is what you say when you're whining at an airline for making you wait but want to pretend you're giving them valuable business advice
"Do better" is what you say to the people who still eat at Chick Fil-A and you don't want to outright call them names

The fact that "do better" is so very vague, with no metrics, makes it all the more ineffective. It's not even a superlative. It's not "do best" — it's "improve slightly in an unmeasurable way." What kind of goal is that.

Comedian Sarah Silverman is the only exception:

@SarahKSilverman
underserved and undeserved look too much alike. Do better, language.
9:33 PM · Dec 27, 2021

Rest in power
For more than a century, if you died, the thing people said was Rest In Peace. RIP. But for a certain kind of online hipster, Rest In Peace is no longer cool enough. It has to be Rest In Power. Even when it's your Granny or a neighbor you liked or The Cars' singer Rick Ocasek.

Rest In Power started out as a social justice phrase, to eulogize victims who suffered inequality or discrimination, or else game-changing public figures.

Now it's become a virtue signaling thing, showing how down you are.

LoveToKnow.com wisely suggests you should only be using the phrase if you're prepared to perpetrate some social justice of your own.

Cohort
This one is still new, but it's a super-buzzy word right now, and unfortunately being tossed about in all sorts of ways that sound wrong.

Cohort used to mean your buddies. You and your cohorts went to the club. This is the correct context.

But Silicon Valley started using it in strange new ways, and this has set off a chain reaction of dumb and dumber usages. For example:

One site talks about grouping people into cohorts. Using "groups" didn't sound technical enough?
A business is graduating its second cohort of companies. Using "round" was too '90s?
Vox just welcomed its new cohort of fellows. Using "class" seemed too academic?

It's really just people trying to sound smarter than they are, and so the time has come: We must organize a cohort of people against this flagrantly wrong use of cohort.

trends

Movie Review

The End of Oak Street can't live up to its Spielberg inspirations

Photo by Daniel McFadden

Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway in The End of Oak Street.

Steven Spielberg is the iconic director of the last 50 years, so it’s no surprise that many other filmmakers have borrowed from his classic films. But most of the time those come in the form of references or homages, not straight up theft, which is what it feels like watching The End of Oak Street play out in front of your eyes.

Set in the early 1980s in an idyllic suburban neighborhood of an unnamed city, Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) are parents to two teenagers, Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). They’re also possibly heading toward divorce, as Audrey is secretly writing a novel with a thinly-veiled plot about their life, and Brian is cagey about having to earn extra money with a pizza delivery job.

That all gets put on the backburner when a mysterious event takes their entire neighborhood back to the time of dinosaurs. Armed with little more than a shotgun and sledgehammer, Audrey and Brian do their best to keep the family safe in their house. But the longer the ordeal goes on, circumstances force them out onto the streets and into the increasing danger that’s all around them.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the film tries immensely hard to be like the Spielberg movies its filmmaker clearly adores, but fails at almost every turn. It never earns the broken family in ‘80s suburbia vibes that were prevalent in E.T., going all in right away in the opening scene with a neighborhood block party that feels forced. Other elements like a bully who has it out for Brian, the family dog that disappears, and an angry neighbor come across as the tropes they are and not as organic parts of the plot.

When it finally gets to its dinosaur sequences, they pale in comparison to those found in Jurassic Park. The strange manner in which the dinosaurs appear is a big part of that, but the action involving them forgoes ominous moments that could build tension for those that play up gore in an unexpected way for a PG-13 movie. Many of the attacks have so little emotional meaning that they come off as comical, which is entertaining but in a hollow way.

As if those weren’t enough, Mitchell - perhaps at the behest of producer J.J. Abrams (who made his own Spielbergian film, Super 8) - tries to honor Spielberg in other ways. Just like in Jaws, he employs the use of a split diopter lens, which keeps characters in both the foreground and background in focus. But instead of using it judiciously, it’s brought out in three separate scenes, including a laughable one with the four family members where it turns into overkill.

Hathaway, coming off of a role in The Odyssey that could earn her an Oscar nomination, is the best part of this film. But even her evident skills are dragged down by the ridiculousness of the story, which requires hysterics that even she can’t sell. McGregor can normally be counted on for a good performance, but he gives several line readings with strange cadences that make his already-underwritten character come off worse. Stella and Convery are okay, but their roles are unmemorable overall.

Mitchell and his team can never settle on exactly what type of film they were trying to make, and so even though The End of Oak Street has a few moments that work, they’re surrounded by many others that don’t. In trying to emulate Spielberg - there’s even a blatant Back to the Future (produced by Spielberg) rip-off towards the end - all Mitchell has done is show how difficult it is to be the master.

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The End of Oak Street opens in theaters on August 14.