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Authors: John Bemelmans Marciano
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damaged statue of a warrior thought to have decorated the Circus Agonalis (as the stadium was also known) came unearthed in 1501 when a street was dug up for the rebuilding of the Palazzo Orsini. Although such fragments were a dime a dozen in the Eternal City, the elderly cardinal overseeing the work was so charmed by the marble torso that he had it erected on the corner of the palazzo where it had been found.
Almost immediately, signs began appearing around the neck of the statue, who acquired the nickname Pasquino after maybe a tailor or barber who lived in the neighborhood. These nocturnally affixed placards contained bitingly sarcastic verses attacking the most powerful men of Rome, most often the ruling pope, at least one of whom tried to have Pasquino hurled into the Tiber. Not that it would’ve mattered, as statues all across the city had begun “talking,” a custom that continues to this day.
pi·la·tes n. A very expensive form of exercise.
Life was tough growing up in 1880s Germany with a name like Pilates. Pontius Pilate, Killer of Christ! was the sort of taunt little Joseph Pilates had to put up with from kids in the school yard, made worse by the fact he was the classic sickly child, burdened with a plethora of diseases, both medieval (rickets, rheumatic fever) and modern (asthma). But Joseph turned it all around like the ninety-pound weakling in a Charles Atlas ad by throwing himself into bodybuilding, yoga, gymnastics, and boxing, coming up with his own system to strengthen and develop key muscles. Pilates came to America in the 1920s and soon opened a studio in New York. His “Contrology” method first caught on in the dance community, attracting such luminaries as Martha Graham and George Balanchine. It would take more than half a century, however, for Pilates to hit the mainstream (assuming, of course, that you consider status-conscious bougie housewives the mainstream). Once it did, the method became so popular that competing schools went to court over whether Pilates was a brand or pilates was a word.
A generic term for a product cannot be trademarked; in fact, a trademark can be invalidated if a product is so successful that its name becomes generic. This was enshrined into law when Judge Learned Hand stripped the German company Bayer of its exclusive right to the word aspirin, which it had trademarked in 1899. Brands whose parent companies have long had to fight against genericide are Coke, Kleenex, and Xerox, while nowadays Google works to stop the media from using google to mean doing an Internet search. Otherwise their brands might go the way of zipper , called “hookless fasteners” until B. F. Goodrich came out with Zipper galoshes in 1923; heroin , a morphine substitute trademarked by Bayer the year before it came out with aspirin (so-called because taking it made you feel like a hero); and pilates , which in 2000 was ruled by the courts to be free for anyone to use. At least, those of us who can afford it. *
pom·pa·dour n. A coiffure in which the hair is brushed high off the forehead and turned back in a roll.
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was a hot number around Paris in the 1740s, no matter that she was saddled with a kid and husband. Seeing her stock on the rise, Jeanne’s “uncle,” the powerful Le Normant de Tournehem, proposed her for the position of royal mistress, going behind the back of her husband, whose marriage to Jeanne de Tournehem had arranged in the first place. As hoped, Louis XV fell hard for her; in quick succession, the king bought Jeanne the estate of Pompadour, made her a marquise, and had her legally separated from her fuming husband. Louis also let her run the country’s foreign policy: She favored a shift in allegiance from the tiresome Prussians to the more stylish Hapsburgs, a move that resulted in the Seven Years’ War, a conflict which was, even by French standards, an utter disaster. (The days of Martinet were, sadly for the French, long gone.)
Almost immediately, signs began appearing around the neck of the statue, who acquired the nickname Pasquino after maybe a tailor or barber who lived in the neighborhood. These nocturnally affixed placards contained bitingly sarcastic verses attacking the most powerful men of Rome, most often the ruling pope, at least one of whom tried to have Pasquino hurled into the Tiber. Not that it would’ve mattered, as statues all across the city had begun “talking,” a custom that continues to this day.
pi·la·tes n. A very expensive form of exercise.
Life was tough growing up in 1880s Germany with a name like Pilates. Pontius Pilate, Killer of Christ! was the sort of taunt little Joseph Pilates had to put up with from kids in the school yard, made worse by the fact he was the classic sickly child, burdened with a plethora of diseases, both medieval (rickets, rheumatic fever) and modern (asthma). But Joseph turned it all around like the ninety-pound weakling in a Charles Atlas ad by throwing himself into bodybuilding, yoga, gymnastics, and boxing, coming up with his own system to strengthen and develop key muscles. Pilates came to America in the 1920s and soon opened a studio in New York. His “Contrology” method first caught on in the dance community, attracting such luminaries as Martha Graham and George Balanchine. It would take more than half a century, however, for Pilates to hit the mainstream (assuming, of course, that you consider status-conscious bougie housewives the mainstream). Once it did, the method became so popular that competing schools went to court over whether Pilates was a brand or pilates was a word.
A generic term for a product cannot be trademarked; in fact, a trademark can be invalidated if a product is so successful that its name becomes generic. This was enshrined into law when Judge Learned Hand stripped the German company Bayer of its exclusive right to the word aspirin, which it had trademarked in 1899. Brands whose parent companies have long had to fight against genericide are Coke, Kleenex, and Xerox, while nowadays Google works to stop the media from using google to mean doing an Internet search. Otherwise their brands might go the way of zipper , called “hookless fasteners” until B. F. Goodrich came out with Zipper galoshes in 1923; heroin , a morphine substitute trademarked by Bayer the year before it came out with aspirin (so-called because taking it made you feel like a hero); and pilates , which in 2000 was ruled by the courts to be free for anyone to use. At least, those of us who can afford it. *
pom·pa·dour n. A coiffure in which the hair is brushed high off the forehead and turned back in a roll.
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was a hot number around Paris in the 1740s, no matter that she was saddled with a kid and husband. Seeing her stock on the rise, Jeanne’s “uncle,” the powerful Le Normant de Tournehem, proposed her for the position of royal mistress, going behind the back of her husband, whose marriage to Jeanne de Tournehem had arranged in the first place. As hoped, Louis XV fell hard for her; in quick succession, the king bought Jeanne the estate of Pompadour, made her a marquise, and had her legally separated from her fuming husband. Louis also let her run the country’s foreign policy: She favored a shift in allegiance from the tiresome Prussians to the more stylish Hapsburgs, a move that resulted in the Seven Years’ War, a conflict which was, even by French standards, an utter disaster. (The days of Martinet were, sadly for the French, long gone.)
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