REFRESHER COURSE - TOOBWORLD TERMINOLOGY

I've covered today's topic in the past, but there are always new members in Team Toobworld, new readers of the blog, so I thought it would be convenient for them to rerun some of the terminology I use.
So here''s my splainin to do...

There are two Toobworld terms I’ve coined which denote certain people in Earth Prime-Time who are somewhat aware that they live in the television universe.

SERLINGUIST, SERLINGUISM

This is the most common of the two terms.  A serlinguist is someone who knows there’s another universe out there and who then addresses the people of that universe directly.  Within the reality of Toobworld, perhaps the earliest known serlinguist might be the televersion of George Burns. 

However, because of the “lingua” root word, the term gets its name from another famous multiversal conversationalist – Rod Serling, who hosted the greatest anthology series of all time, ‘The Twilight Zone’.  The televersion of Serling is not the same man from the Trueniverse.  Not only could he speak directly to the audience at home, but he had cosmic powers – he could expand his size to match that of a mountain woman on the alien planet of Brobdingnagia (the name derived from Swift’s Brobdingnag); he could materialize anywhere in the world, even foreign countries which don’t exist in the Real World; and he could not be seen by others in the vicinity when he began addressing the Trueniverse audience.  In Toobworld, he also hosted the televersion of the TV show ‘The Twilight Zone’ and was friends with Los Angeles lawyer Perry Mason.  Playwright Gregory West knew the real Rod Serling and may even have “created” him, thanks to his powerful imagination and his tape recorder.  At one point West destroyed the snippet of tape which cemented Serling’s existence, but he O’Bviously made a new one since we continued to see Serling talking to us with each episode of the show.  (Serling was inducted into the TV Crossover Hall of Fame in October of 2009.)

Other serlinguists include characters in TV commercials in which they suddenly pull out of the situation to address us in the Trueniverse.  (Actual commercial spokesmen, anchormen, and talk show hosts may not be applicable.)
But here's a question I put to you, Dear Readers: Do you consider the family members in 'Modern Family' to be serlinguists, or just people talking into the cameras of a documentary camera crew as was the case with the staff in 'The Office'?  My brother and I were arguing this point while I was writing it.  (I say camera crew.)  Let me know what you think!

As for the other Toobworld term….

TELE-COGNIZANCE, TELE-COGNIZANTS

Tele-cognizants are those people in Toobworld who know they are living in TV Universe.  But they’re not necessarily serlinguists.  There’s a couple of them on TV now in a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial in which they are aware of the captions appearing in front of their midsections.

Perhaps the most famous of TV characters who was tele-cognizant was David Addison from ‘Moonlighting’….

Maddie Hayes:
You are eye crust!
David Addison:
The better to see you with, my dear.
Maddie Hayes:
You are navel lint!
David Addison:
Expensive navel lint.
Maddie Hayes:
You are...
David Addison:
Don't go much lower, they'll take us off the air.

Man:
You can't just burst in here like that.
David Addison:
Oh yeah? Tell that to the writers.

David:
Get serious? Maddie, I just touched your rear end, if I get any more serious they're gonna move us to cable!  

And apparently they weren’t the only ones on that show with the power of tele-cognizance…..

Clara DiPesto:
Where's Dave and Maddie?
Agnes DiPesto:
They're not in this episode.

Here endeth the lesson.

BCnU!