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This column is, unofficially at present, a vocabulary builder for the
advanced learner, a social/lingual commentary via examination of words in
the news.
I want to do this column for the advanced learner (I believe there is
such an animal in China) because a regular discussion amongst, say,
graduates and career English users in general has hitherto been
nonexistent in the form of a twice-weekly column.
And in the columns, I make it a point of using many real-life examples
because, I believe, one major hindrance facing those Chinese who make a
living out of English is lack of exposure to the language despite
protestations to the otherwise I often hear from readers.
Yesterday, for example, a reader asked "In this sentence - newspaper
reports indicate Larry Brown might be one and done in New York - what's
'one and done' supposed to mean?" before adding, in typical fashion, "I've
never seen this before. Is it proper English?"
Before we decipher the meaning of one and done, I want to say this.
Don't judge, just keep reading and acquaint yourself with sayings in
varying contexts. The first times you meet some phrase or idiom, they may
look odd and impenetrable, but after a few encounters, meanings will clear
up. Keep doing this and a lot of your reading problems will actually
resolve by themselves.
Back to "one and done". In 2005, the said Brown signed a US$50 million
deal to coach the Knicks (an NBA team in New York) for five years. In his
first season, Brown, who won an NBA championship with Detroit Pistons two
years earlier, led the Knicks to matching the worst win-loss record in
club history (23 wins against 59 losses in 2005-06) despite a league-high
US$120 million payroll (salaries paid to players). Brown was fired on June
22, thus making him a one-and-done coach in New York meaning that he was
done and dismissed after one year instead of the five years stipulated by
the contract.
Here, one and done means once and once only. The chief merit of this
colloquial (informal) phrase, I assume, lies in the rhyme that's in it.
Incidentally, Knicks president Isiah Thomas, who was one of the
greatest players in the 1980s, assumed the team's coaching hot seat. A
story on June 28 from PCHpress.com was titled: NY Knicks: Dolan To Thomas,
One And Done.
Dolan - James Dolan - is the owner of the Knicks. He effectively said
that Thomas will be a one-and-done coach unless the team show immediate
improvement in the next one year, or Thomas, too, will meet Brown's fate
and be shown the door.
In another example, a medical story (November 1, 2003,
medicalmoment.org) has this title:
Hip and Knee Replacement - Getting
Closer to 'One and Done'.
Here, one and done means once and for all. In other words, advancements
(made in materials etc.) have enabled doctors to "get closer to the goal
of performing joint replacements that last a lifetime".
In Hollywood news, a defamer.com story dated December 9, 2005 has this
headline:
Chris Rock: One And Done At The Oscars
This means Rock, who hosted the 2005 Academy Awards (Oscars) ceremony,
would not repeat as host in 2006. Rock, by the way, is a standup comedian.
The New York Times, in succinct description of a standup comedian, called
him "irreverent, often profane" in its article on the same subject in the
same day (Chris Rock Will Not Return as Oscar Host).
The Chinese equivalent to a standup comedian in the West is the
traditional crosstalk （相声）comedian.
Standup comedy, as it were, is best suited for smaller audiences in
clubhouses rather than the more etiquette-sensitive big occasions. This is
probably why it took so many years for Chinese crosstalk comedian Guo
Degang to make his way to prime-time TV.
In small theaters, comedians get away with and sometimes even thrive
with blue jokes using what is called gutter language, but it's a totally
different story on TV, which is as it should be. I listened to some of
Guo's works both on TV and from the small southern Beijing theater
wherefrom he used to eke out a meager living. His performances on TV
invariably sound much more sanitized, even though I feel they could be
improved further in subject matter.
However, this is not to say that Guo does not deserve the stardom
status he's currently basking in. He does. He deserves everything coming
his way, including the financial windfall, considering that none of his
fellow craftsmen are as hard working as he is. Most star crosstalkers in
China today hibernate from winter to winter, relying on cameo appearances
on TV such as during the Lunar New Year to sustain their diminishing art.
Little wonder, then, that the wonderful crosstalk show perfected by the
Hou Baolins and the Ma Sanlis has been floundering across the
board.
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