I used to think that people in Michigan didn't have an accent. Someone once told me that news casters tried to imitate a Michigan accent on national television.

I'm sure that this can't be true. The Michigan accent could be described as "Wisconsin-light". It's not something that one would want to imitate (unless they came from New York or Boston, and then anything is better).

Plus we have our own vocabulary. The classic example is "pop" for soda. We also have city-specific jargon. All freeways need to be referred to by their names and not number, so that anyone stupid enough to visit Detroit has no idea what we are talking about. Unfortunately, I think this is going away. I-96 is rarely called the Jeffries anymore. At least the Southfield is never, ever referred to as I-39.

Another thing I noticed recently is the emphasis that we put on words. When Eight Mile - the movie came out, the announcer called it eight MILE.  In Detroit, it is known as EIGHT mile in order to distinguish it from SEVEN mile, SIX mile, etc.  It seemed very inauthentic to pronounce it that way.  In a similar incident that has no relation to pronunciation, my brother in law discovered that the short lived cartoon "God, the Devil and Bob" (die, French Stewart, die)  they showed high occupancy vehicle lanes in Detroit.  The very idea of having HOV lanes in Detroit is ridiculous.  Of course, the series was drawn in LA where the probably do such things.  It was supposed to be set in Detroit but the only authentic thing about the series was the premise that the devil lives here. 

In other news, I found out yesterday that our new admin will be Rose.  Rose has been an employee since before I was born.  She has jet black Diana Ross hair and wears bright red lipstick.  Not that it's really important, but she is the only person I have ever met that has no discernable race.  She could be white, black or asian.  It's a good thing that everyone knows her, she would be hard to describe to someone.  She is on either heavy psychological medication or she has some sort of mental problem or both.  

BTW, it's Leo's birthday.  He's 27.  I remember 27, it seems like 2 years ago...