JonahKeri.com

I’m a big fan of nonsense words, as well as portmanteaux. So when my buddy Seth first uttered the word “Crizazlebeans” to me, I was hooked.

The word can be defined this way: “So utterly, ridiculously crazy as to leave one’s brainpower equivalent to that of a bowl of beans.”

Having my own blog with no editor providing oversight means I can use awesome words like crizazlebeans as I see fit. Last week in a links post, I used the word as one of my tags, summing up a New York Times story about brides who make their bridesmaids get boob jobs for the wedding with the tag “Brides who are crizazlebeans.” A couple days later, I was delighted to find that in the stats section of JonahKeri.com, which shows how people found the site, one person had found it through the search term “Brides who are crizazlebeans.”

Yesterday, I decided to try out the word for the first time in a more public forum, for a legitimate publication that’s edited by someone other than me. Writing for Minneapolis City Pages about the Minnesota Twins’ mishandling of starting pitcher Francisco Liriano, I wrote:

So wait, are we to believe that a pitcher who was the dominant force in the game two years ago, who then returned to Triple-A this year and made grown men beg for mercy at the plate for the past two months, would give the Twins a better chance of winning than the pitcher who’s given up more runs and hits than anyone in the game this year, who believes that allowing two baserunners an inning is the gold standard for pitching in today’s game?

Forgive the sarcasm, but the way Twins management handled this whole situation has driven me completely insane, and I’m not even a Twins fan. To wait until August 3 to slot Liriano into the rotation and (presumably) dump Hernandez is so, so… myopic? Dumb? The best word to describe it may be…crizazlebeans.

I was happy enough that the word made it into that article, even granting that the guy who edits Minneapolis City Pages is actually my buddy Jeff, who’s every bit as whimsical as I am and not one to censor silly words.

Then, something magical happened. Every day, a column called The Daily Fix runs through the blogosphere and sums up some of the more notable sports stories being covered. The Daily Fix picked up my Liriano piece. Not only did they comment on it, but they pulled out some choice quotes too:

Not to spoil the party, but in the Minneapolis City Pages, Jonah Keri wants to know what took the Twins so long. While Mr. Liriano was striking out 113 and allowing just 102 hits in 118 minor-league innings, retread Livan Hernandez was pitching 139.2 big-league innings for the Twins, during which time he allowed 199 hits and 93 runs, both the most in the majors.

“The way Twins management handled this whole situation has driven me completely insane, and I’m not even a Twins fan,” Mr. Keri writes. “To wait until August 3 to slot Liriano into the rotation and (presumably) dump Hernandez is so, so… myopic? Dumb? The best word to describe it may be…crizazlebeans. … Stay tuned for other realizations by Twins management, including the groundbreaking discovery that uranium is delicious, but also deadly.”

Oh, did I mention which publication runs The Daily Fix? The Wall Street Journal, that’s who.

So to review…a ridiculous little word invented by a buddy and used as occasional conversation fodder has now been legitimized by…THE WALL STREET F’ING JOURNAL.

I mean that’s just…just…well, you know.

Now I want to see how far we can take this. In the next 24 hours, I’ve got a radio gig, a podcast appearance and a TV hit all on tap. It may be tough to sneak the word onto TV, but I think I’ve got a good shot elsewhere.

If a year from now we find that Webster’s Dictionary has accepted the word the way it did for Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”, you’ll know when the tipping point occurred.

At that point, this phenomenon will truly have become…crizazlebeans.