“Who’s Harry Crumb?” is not a good movie. Let’s just get that right out of the way.
For those of you unfamiliar with the late-80s John Candy vehicle, he stars as a bumbling incompetent of a private eye hired to investigate the kidnapping of a young woman. There are hijinks and disguises and double-crosses and all manner of stupid humor. I do not remember it all that well, aside from a sophomoric visual gag that referenced pubic hair.
Like I said, not a good movie. But since I was a Young Adolescent Male when it came out, I was the perfect age to appreciate the charms of visual gags that referenced pubic hair. I think I may have watched it twice.
Anyhow, the movie also stars Annie Potts (a performer of whom I have always been fond) as the cheating, duplicitous second wife of the kidnap victim’s father. (I think.) At one point she is sitting in a car with her lover and co-conspirator (I think) and he asks her some dumb question about what’s going on somewhere outside of their range of vision. She responds with something along the lines of “What am I, a freakin’ wizard?!? How the hell should I know?”
Now, I’ve been mulling this post over for the past several days, as it my wont. (Believe it or not, I put thought into these things.) As I trotted along on my run the other day, I realized there was no way I could adequately convey why “What am I, a freakin’ wizard” struck me as so hilarious. Something about the irate contempt with which she delivers the line, plus the choice of the word “wizard.” In any case, for some reason it remains one of my favorite movie line deliveries, even though it’s not even vaguely amusing in my retelling.
But that’s not really the point. The point is that “not a freakin’ wizard” lodged itself into my psyche as shorthand for “unable to accomplish the impossible.” So tidily did that little phrase encapsulate the concept of a certain kind of powerlessness that (as I recently alluded) I have adapted it and modified it into my “I’m not a freakin’ wizard file.” This is the mental space I assign to patient-care problems I have no hope of solving. The obese family that stocks their cupboards with junk food despite numerous lengthy conversations about the health risks of obesity. The picky kid whose parents simply cannot stand the thought of his being hungry and so, when he refuses a healthy meal, swap in a bowl of Froot Loops on demand. Essentially any problem where, when the parents bring the kid back in because it didn’t improve and when I ask if they did what I suggested, I get “no” as an answer.
I am not a freakin’ wizard.
I have mentioned this mental file enough times to colleagues when we’ve groused about some intractable social situation or learned helplessness or what have you that I think I may have implanted it into others’ minds. All from a silly line in a crappy movie delivered with amusing verve by Annie Potts.
So that’s this week’s Question — is there some bit of pop cultural flotsam that has resonated with you in a weird way, such that it either still has meaning long past its relevance to everyone else or has taken on some new, personalized value? Some little meme that has planted itself firmly in your noggin and ramified into something novel? Some catchphrase or screenshot or other little bubble on the surface of the zeitgeist that stubbornly refused to pop in your brain?
My friend and I used to quote a Star Wars, Episode IV line when ever we came up against something we couldn’t do mostly because it wasn’t easy. When Luke is training in the Millenium Falcon with Obi-Wan, he’s using his light saber against that little orb that flies around and shoots little lasers. After a few times of getting his ass zapped and Obi-Wan trying to help him focus, Luke whines, “Yeah, but with the blast shield down, I can’t see a thing!” So whenever my friend and I were faced with a challenge that proved more frustrating than we thought it should have been, we would, in the whiny tone of Skywalker, spout that line.
That is a uniquely remarkable whiney tone, to boot.
Mark Hamill really nails the “whiny pissant” aspect of Luke’s character, that’s for sure.
Your comment assumes Luke has another aspect to his character.
Well, he manages to do “brooding” relatively well by “Return of the Jedi.”
Hayden Christensen’s Anakin and Natalie Portman’s Amidala, however, share the distinction of having only one, mutually-displayed quality throughout every film in which they appear — “strangle-worthy.”
Hayden Christensen was a spectacularly bad choice to play Anakin. Darth Vader’s story arc is tragic fall followed by redemption. But it never felt like a fall–it felt like he was born an insufferable little prick and was destined to forever be one. (Even in the egregious episode one, with that little kid playing him, Anakin was unbearable. I was rooting for him to get wiped out in a pod race so we could start over with a doomed hero for whom I could actually have some empathy.)
All of his heroism and greatness is communicated in unconvincing bits of blustering conversation about camaraderie and Clone War bravado with Obi-Wan. I didn’t buy it… at… all.
Luke comes by his whininess honestly.
Apparently that was a Hamill ad-lib; it wasn’t in the script. They left it in because it “fit” with the scene.
This is your irrelevant, little-known factoid for the day. Use it only for good.
It’s something a human being might actually say, so obviously George Lucas didn’t write it.
Oh god… SOOO many! I’ll focus on one that is along the same lines as what is mentioned here. On “30 Rock”, Alec Baldwin’s character is supposed to epitomize what we might call the 1%. On at least two occasions, he is found doing things that seem out-of-ordinary to the common man… one of them involved wearing a tux but I forget the other. Liz Lemon questions him on these… “Why are you in a tux?” “It’s after 6, Lemon. What am I… an Italian?” The other one is, “What am I… a farmer?” I don’t remember which one specifically was in reference to the tux, but they just struck me as really, really funny and I trot them out whenever someone calls out a supposed social faux pas on my behalf.
The tux one was “farmer”, and yeah, Baldwin killed it on that show.
Killed it? Past tense? Is he no longer on? Or, wait, it ended, right?
Yeah, it’s over. But it went out on a high note, that final season was solid.
I think it will hold up well in syndication, the gag density rivals peak Simpsons.
There was a promo they kept running during the final season, where Baldwin is staring out his window and reminiscing in that gravelly, serious voice “I’ve been a GE man for 27 years…and a GE woman for one week of corporate espionage” and it cracked me up every time.
I have definitely used “What am I, a farmer?” multiple times.
I like that one better than the Italian one… but as someone who IS Italian, I use the latter because it is uniquely ironic.
“What am I… Italian?”
“Um… yes… you are.”
“Well… sure… but not one of THOSE Italians.”
Because I’m really *NOT* one of THOSE Italians.
Hey Russ, I’ve got two (though there are, no doubt, many more).
First, there’s a Simpson’s episode where Homer starts a vigilante group. Lisa asks, “but if you’re the police, who will police the police?” Homer’s barely intelligible response was, “I dunno, Coast Guard?” My sister and I enjoyed that, and always tended to respond “I dunno, Coast Guard” whenever we didn’t know the answer to the question.
Second, there’s a (NSFW) skit from Kids in the Hall in which Kevin McDonald convenes a business meeting, but before he starts into the business he declares, “…but first, the whores!” and then some scantily clad women run in. The episode ends with a courtroom skit where two men are tried and convicted of murder. The judge sentences them to death and then declares, “…but first, the whores.” And the same women run in and cavort with everyone in the courtroom.
My cousin and I thought this was hilarious, and when we were hanging out and someone would say we had to do something, one of us would no doubt say, “…but first…”. This peaked one Sunday morning when the minister said, “let us pray” and I whispered to my cousin, “…but first…”. He was barely able to stay composed for the rest of the church service.
That was a pretty funny sketch. Ah The Kids in the Hall…..
I am still very curious about when I hear people say they attended religious services regularly/weekly as children. My family was rather secular as where many families in my hometown. Most people just seemed to do Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur and maybe a few Shabats during the year.
I also grew up in a town that was largely Jewish. At least half.
As we’ve already discussed, mine is an extremely confusing religious history. Into the mix you can add “dedicated church service attender.” I was in that building as often as there were services growing up — Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday evenings and (if there was a revival going on) Friday and Saturday nights, too.
That’s hysterical. My friends and I used to say, “But first, the whores!” as well.
My brain has now copied that Kids in the Hall schtick onto every scene with Tyrion Lannister in it. So, thank you for that.
Maybe when I was younger but not anymore. Now I have the opposite problem of all my cultural references being in a very specific world-view. I am often a bit clueless when people at the office talk about popular culture.
Yesterday my three office mates were talking about a particular hip-hop song that came out two or three years ago. I didn’t know the artist or the song. Now if they were talking about indie bands like the Decemberists, modern dance companies like ODC, abstract art, theatre, the French New Wave, and reissues published by The New York Review of Books, I would be all in.
This post is brought to you by someone who knows the name Liz Lemon but has not seen one episode of 30 Rock. Another example is a classmate from high school made a post about applying to PhD programs while watching America’s Next Top Model. I wanted to know about the PhD program, everyone else just wanted to talk about America’s Next Top Model :/*
*This is just a random and very unscientific observation but I’ve noticed that women seem much better at balancing high and low culture than men. Women I know seem to have a love and need for both. Men I know seem to go for near exclusively high or all low. I am in the all high category a bit unrepentantly.
Also endless loops of conversation that just make pop-culture references can get tiresome.
Interesting observation about cultural consumption and gender. I would add that gay dudes seem to appreciate a mixture of both. Art museums are my #1 destination in any given city, I will gladly bore you with my reasons for loving David Foster Wallace and hating Thomas Pynchon, and I have a favorite dance company. And I would happily sit through several hours of “Pawn Stars” at one go.
See and I am the type who thinks that “Pawn Stars” is not real History.
pawn stars is very instructive, however, in what value is versus what people believe value to be. it’s not often tv teaches people something!
this is presuming the participants are not all actors and ringers, mind you. heck, even then. not too much fun to watch, however.
i reject the whole high and low culture false dichotomy myself – and double vexation to that janky abomination “middlebrow”* – but i think people are a little more complex in their tastes, the expression of their hopes and dreams, even if they’re not visceral and verbal about it. there’s a lot of buried and no so buried class/social standing back and forth in this sort of thing as well, the whole “how dare you put on airs” v. “you barbarians bore me” subtext. dangerous ground sometimes, but good practice at working on conversational skills and social navigation. someone, somewhere, generally has something to say about something, and that something is often something with some facet to which someone else can speak.
and thus understanding is born.
as to the good doctor’s question, i have an unfortunate problem where the phrase “john wayne” has been permanently poisoned by a hilarious segment from repo man, so when people mention his name i end up (mentally) completing the line every dang time. it’s distracting. and hilarious. it’s also bled into whenever my wife says something with the phrase “lots of guys…”. i gotta cut that one out because the little one has already had an adventure in cursing (not my fault) and i’d rather not
* ugh, middlebrow. it somehow manages to be worse than corp-speak like “verbiage”.
Come on, give us the Repo Man line. That was a fantastic movie (but it’s been so long, I can’t remember a John Wayne line).
It was also a great soundtrack. Occasionally, if someone references Picasso, I’ll want to say “Pablo Picasso was never called an a$$hole.”
man youtube can hook you up with the string repo man john wayne. it is nsfw and the slur invoked is ahem insulting out of context.
dang repo man is just a great movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4QKiYar9pI
Perhaps I’ll wait till I get home to check it out.
Like pale. Or shrimp. Or plate of shrimp.
The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.
Jaybird likes a lot of both low and high. Of course, I’m not sure that’s a counter-example as I consider it to be one of his rare and appealing qualities.
However, there are plenty of women who only like one or the other, rather than balancing between the two. Quite possibly more who go one way or the other than who balance. So, I’m not so sure about your generalization.
Fair points and I was exaggerating, yes.
“Donuts, is there anything they can’t do?” (Said in conjunction with nearly every run to Tim H0rton’s.)
The Tim Horton’s answer is… “be made fresh.”
Oh, then American Tim Hortons are better than Canadian ones, eh? 😉 It’s not too uncommon for me to get them right as they come out of the kitchen.
Although Timmy’s has, IMO, ruined itself by adding the ice cream shop. At least for ours it resulted in fewer donut varieties and, worst of all, the elimination of the onion bagel, which has no substitute.
From what I understand, Timmy’s manages to make quality uniform across all shoppes by having the dough made off-site and shipped, frozen, to each individual store where it is then eased into existence.
I have had conversations with Canadians that were (and, presumably, still are) exceptionally touchy about this.
Well, they beat the hell out of Krispy Kreme, regardless of how much attention those tasteless little cracker donuts get.
JB is absolutely correct. The frozen donut story hit maybe ten years ago or so. Seriously, it was a major news story and there was a lot of outrage. There’s still some animosity.
Still, there is a consistent quality of donuts at TH. I wouldn’t say they’re great, but they’re definitely not bad.
In Canada (it seems), the reduction of selection has been going for some time. Basically, they decided to become a coffee shop rather than a donut shop, and the donut selection suffered. Recently when I’ve been in one, it seems like that trend might be reversing (though I haven’t been in one with an ice cream shop).
How can people who live for ice hockey be against freezing stuff?
Have you ever tasted a hockey puck?
Have you ever tasted a hockey puck?
It is only natural to ask… what is its flavor?
Like a basketball, with a K. On ice.
“Things are coming up, Milhouse!”
This and many others are the types of seemingly non-sequitur pop culture references I drop and then use to evaluate people’s best friend potential. If someone follows up with the next line or otherwise indicates an awareness and appreciation for the reference, they get bonus Kazzy points. Trust me… you want bonus Kazzy points.
Will bonus Kazzy points get me donuts?
I covet them openly.
Sadly, while I obviously know the character and have a vague sense of the episode, my “Simpsons”-fu is not strong enough to land the next line. However, the Better Half has learned that whenever I mutter a completely random line that seems to come from nowhere, it’s almost certainly a “Simpsons” reference.
Unfortunately, one of my favorites (“Lord, I know I should not eat thee…. mmmmm, sacrelicious.”) springs to mind in all kinds of inappropriate situations.
I’m convinced that every real-life situation can be related to either the Simpsons or Seinfeld, if not both, with much stretching.
Likewise, at least 50% of my vernacular are either quotes from or references to one of those two shows.
I have one friend who, every time there is a storm or severe weather event coming, tells me he has to go stock up on creamed eels.
Meh. It’s not nearly as tasty as wadded beef.
My sister and I used to speak in Simpson quotes all the time, and it kind of drove my mother batty. One day she complained that her generation knew Shakespeare but our generation only knew Simpsons quotes.
I pointed out that I had never heard her and her friends reference Shakespeare (though, to be fair, she probably could have as a form English major and high school English teacher).
Haven’t we reached a point where it’s basically impossible to converse in English without using lines from Shakespeare?
Reference, to whatever extent you believe this is true: http://www.pathguy.com/shakeswo.htm
Point taken – that’s a pretty cool link.
I think my mom meant extended, deliberate quotations, so her hubris is still mockable.
I also used to hate my flood pants.
Nailed it.
Question, are referencing ‘Andy’ from The Office?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M67E9mpwBpM
It really is funny for SO many reasons…
No, I totally got the Milhouse thing. It’s the “Nailed it” that reminds me of the office (he’d sing a high note or something and then say, ‘nailed it’… or maybe I’m thinking of something else).
Ohhh… yes, I know to which you refer. I wasn’t specifically going for that… more just showing the type of response that would engender a person to me and earn the points.
Though, at this point, I have no idea where Kazzy ends and pop culture references begin…
it’s very choice, but isn’t the quote “everything’s coming up milhouse!”?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M67E9mpwBpM
(sorry to be that guy)
Yes… it is…
Thanks, That Guy. And I see we just posted the same link.
From the Coen Brothers movie Millers Crossing “I’m just speculatin’ on a hypotenuse” This is trotted out whenever my wife and I realise we just said something completely inane to the other.
“I think we should shave the cat’s.”
“??”
“I was just …”
“What’s the rumpus?”
“Dangle.”
“Because if you told me and I killed you and you were lying I wouldn’t get to kill you then. “
Myoon Sugar…
Also: Magic Smiling Cat.
When I can’t seem to string two sensible words together and I need to stop and start again: “Aha! Pronoun trouble!” from one of the trio of Daffy Duck-Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd hunting cartoons.
Actually, I have a whole string of them from old Warner Brothers cartoons. For instance: when I think I’ve solved a problem that instead blows up in my face, “Well waddaya know, one bullet left.” And I’m getting my back up about something, I’ll mutter to myself “Stop steaming up my tail.”
The most obscure is derived from a line from the old kids Saturday morning tv show The Kids from CAPER. “Now I remember!” said in exactly the same intonation as in the show. My sister and I use this regularly when we’ve been racking our brains about something.
“Waddya tryin’ to do? Wrinkle it?”
I think you’re only the second person not related to me who has ever been able to quote that back to me.
Dude, I love classic Warner Bros. cartoons. LOVE them. And that one is one of the all-time greatest.
Don’t get me started. I could go on for days quoting Warner Bros. cartoons.
I have to share just one more: whenever someone in my family asks what’s for dinner, the answer is always “spider goulash.”
To my mind, there is no more hilarious faux magical phrase than “Newport News.”
“I knew I should have made a left turn at Albuquerque.”
“I may be a coward. But I’m a greeeeeeeeedy little coward.”
And who among us doesn’t know the tune to “kill the wabbit”?
I would guess that more people know that as what Elmer Fudd sings than know what opera it’s from.
Spider Goulash is from the one with the big red hair monster with the sneakers. I can’t remember the name, I’m not gonna google it.
I can totally do that mad scientist voice.
Then you can do one of my favorites: “Goooood niiiiight yoooou raaaaa—-bit.”
But my favorite from that one has always been, “If an iiiiiiiiintersting monster can’t have an iiiiiiiiiiinterseting hairdo, what’s the world coming to, I always say.”
And for the record, I can totally do the Matian’s voice.
Oh! I can also do the puma that keeps saying he wants a lot of lumps of sugar.
@RTod – I’m so hoping this comes up at LeagueFest Part Deux.
Dude. It’s not “big red hair monster with the sneakers”. It’s “Gossamer”.
What’s the world coming to?
If I wasn’t late to this thread, you’d have three.
You can tell the real Bugs aficionados because they know the difference between Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck, Rabbit, Duck!
“If You’re Looking For Fun”
“You Don’t Need A Reason”
“All You Need Is A Gun”
…
No more for me, thanks, I’m drivin’!
“It’s Rabbit Season!”
I’m a fiddler crab! Why don’t you shoot me? It’s FIDDLER CRAB SEASON!!!
When someone say something silly/inane, I tend to say, “What a maroon.”
What an ultra-maroon. What a nin-cow-poop
What a gulli-bull.
My 3-yr-old daughter has maybe never seen any of the classic Looney Tunes episodes, not because I’m keeping them from her, but because we just haven’t gotten around to it.
Well, just last week she and I got into an argument, probably about how something is pronounced. It devolved into “Is too!” “Is not!” Is too!” “Is not!”. Suddenly I switched a la “Rabbit Season” and it totally worked. She said the opposite of what she wanted to say twice before she caught it, and she was actually amused at herself. Perfect resolution to the argument!
This is my favorite story of the week.
I’m not sure it counts, since the movie has been totally and completely meme-ified into the broader nerd culture, but two lines from the Big Lebowski recur for me all the time:
1. “The goddamn plane has crashed into the mountain!” (any time anything of any severity goes wrong)
2. “You want a toe, I can get you a toe.” (useful in two situations: any time someone wants something, any time someone says it’s not possible to get something)
“Calmer than you are…” from the Big Lebowski is also a classic.
I’m not even a huge Lebowski fan, and I often find myself saying “That (x) really tied the (y) together”.
Yeah, I mean, there are TONS. Those are my big two, but I use plenty of others:
– “Phone’s ringing, dude.”
– the lady friend/special lady distinction
– “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism…”
– “We believe in nothing.”
– “That rug really tied the room together.”
– “Your revolution is over… The bums lost.”
– “the parlance of our times”
– “I sure as shit don’t roll on Shabbas.”
– “This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass.”
– “He treats objects like women, man!”
– “I hate the fucking Eagles.”
I could probably do this all day.
“The Supreme Court has roundly rejected prior restraint!”
It is not possible for me to hear an Eagles song on the radio without stating “I hate the fucking Eagles.”
“Say what you will….”
I also have my own utterly meme-ified answer from another deeply-absorbed classic, “Airplane.” Anytime things seem to pile up (generally at work), I find myself muttering “I guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.”
Man, I hadn’t thought about that one. There’s a million in there:
1) Excuse me ma’am, I speak jive.
2) Billy, you ever seen a grown man naked?
3) Anytime somebody asks what I can make of something, I’m tempted to go with, “I can make a hat, or a broach, or a pterydactl.”
4) “The fog is getting thicker.”…”And Leon is getting laaaarrrrger.”
5) Or the two little white kids sitting next to each other and the boy asks the girl how she likes her coffee and she says something to the effect of “I like my coffee like I like my men…black.”
6) The two television pundits arguing with each other and the one says in a whiny eastern accent, “They bought their tickets…they knew what they were getting into. I say..let ’em crash!”
That movie has a million of them.
Not to be weird, but my mom says “You ever seen a grown man naked?”, like, all the time.
Why, who on earth could possibly think that’s the slightest bit weird?
You ever spend time in a Turkish prison?
Do you like movies about gladiators?
More to the point…Can you believe we ever made movies in which pedophile jokes were A-OK?
Glyph,
I can’t believe someone got the greenlight to make a game where your characters are:
1) a cannibal who eats children
2) a pedophile
3) an innocent child
… also, space vaginas.
(Okay, that game can be considered sanity scarring)
A substitute for #1 is, “OUR PETS HEADS ARE FALLING OFF!!!”
Two examples come to mind; each always requires me to stop and explain.
1. When I was right out of college I would occasionally cook dishes with crab meat – except that I didn’t, because I couldn’t afford crab. So I bought Krab, an imitation crab meat they sold at Safeway – or, as we used to call it, “Crab With a K.” I now use “- With a K” whenever I talk about something that is a very poor imitation of what it’s trying to be. So, for example, a pre-made (and totally gross) bottle of mojito you can buy at your grocery store is a “Mojito With a K.” Kenny G plays “Jazz with a K.” Victoria, BC is “England With a K.”
2. In junior high when having a big sleep-over with a bunch of friends, we watched the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. In his monologue, he did that signature (and since ubiquitous) thing where he would say “it was so ____” and the audience would reply, “how ____ was it?!” Anyway, the joke went like this:
Carson: It was so hot today…
Audience: How hot was it???!!!
Carson: It was so hot that the Tidy-Bowl man wore a hat.
It was such a terrible joke – on every level – that it became the stock answer in my circle of friends for any quantitative question asked when telling a story. I still find myself doing this from time to time.
Me: … anyway, so then I realized I’d missed the target by a lot –
My kids: How badly did you miss it?
Me: I missed it so badly that that the Tidy-Bowl man wore a hat.
My kids: Huh?
My friends from college and I have a very similar “with a K”-type thing. I’m not sure if it came from the fact that Chicken of the Sea is much grosser than actual chicken (because canned tuna is horrifying) or the fact that Aquaman is the Superman of the sea, but “of the sea” became the way to denote something is like something else but way worse. Mojito of the sea, jazz of the sea, etc.
I’ve never been to Victoria, but everyone I met on my trips to Vancouver fell all over themselves talking about how charming it is. No?
I am totes stealing “With a K.”
It is charming, in a Brit-Only Epcot Center kind of way.
Victoria’s gorgeous (I’m from there, so – bias!), and it’s largely dropped the faux-Britain thing these days, except insofar as it still has some gorgeous landscaped gardens and some historic buildings (in west coast terms, which means late 19th/early 20th century – in other words, nothing whatsoever to someone from the east. But I firmly believe we have the best legislative building in all Canada). Along with equally-or-more gorgeous wildflowers…walks along the sea where you can see the mountains on a clear day…parks all over the place…really good restaurants…
Yeah, I miss it.
Victoria probably does have the nicest legislative building (not that I’ve really examined them all).
I have a friend living there now, and I seem to recall him mentioning that at some point in the fall all the flower pedals come off and cover the streets. From the picture I saw, it’s gorgeous.
I went there for a day (on a ferry from vancouver. then off to port angeles).
Awesome, awesome hostel you’ve got there.
There was a Monty Python sketch where someone has a speech impediment where he pronounces C’s as B’s. The speech therapist recommends he try pronouncing them as K’s, like the word “color.” (or since it’s British, “colour”) The response: “Bolour with a K? Silly bunt!”
“Bolour with K?” in an incredulous voice is another one I use when somene asks me to do something that makes no sense to me. 🙂
“NOBODY expects Stupid Tuesday Questions” (or whatever thing seems to have been unexpected to someone).
“Wafer thin” from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life is always a reliable reference.
Like you and Glyph, I have several Python lines that make their way into conversations.
“Let’s not bicker about who killed who.”
“We found this spoon!”
“Did you see him oppressing me? You saw it, didn’t you?”
“Is there someone else up there we can talk to?”
And of course, I used “splunge!” a lot at work.
“NOW we see the violence inherent in the system…”
Long ago I read an article in the New York Times about a dangerous and environmentally unfriendly food fad in China — restaurants serving exotic, often endangered animals.
There were at the time many different restaurants catering to this taste, and I understand that China remains the center of the illicit trade in rhino horns, tiger penises, and the like, in part for reasons of folk medicine that are readily guessed.
But that certainly wasn’t all that there was to the fad. There was also the outrageous novelty of it all, the sense of adventure. And there was something to that which we found frankly appealing despite all the risk and stupidity and illegality.
The Times asked one diner why he he would ever visit a restaurant like this, and he answered, “When you see a strange animal, it is only natural to ask, ‘What is its flavor?'”
Ever since then, Boegiboe and I have been asking “What is its flavor?” about all manner of improbable items, edible and inedible alike. Points are awarded for randomness, improbability, and sheer perversity.
Huh. This reminds me a lot of an adventure game, where one of the options was lick.
so, naturally, whenever you got stuck, you started licking everything in sight…
That’s pretty great… just don’t let the other parents overhear it when you’re on playdates.
I swiped the term “fucko” from Johnny Rotten; though actually, I think this may be more of a thickly-accented “fuckhole” in his usage.
Works for me.
You asked.
Another couple great ones come from WarGames with Matthew Broderick. I’ll sometimes use it when someone is skeptical about the efficacy of a certain course of action. When they’re trying to figure out how to get the defense system from playing Global Thermonuclear War and David is in the Norad Center, David asks if he can try to shut it down. They all look at General Beringer (Barry Corbin) for permission. He says, in his colloquial drawl, “Hell, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good. Let the boy in there!”
The second one comes later when they’ve figured out that the computers aren’t going to let them stop the countdown. Beringer looks over at McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) and says, “Mr. McKittrick, after careful analysis, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks.” And McKittrick follows up with, “I don’t have to take that from you, you pig-eyed, sack of shit!” I like to use Beringer’s line when someone else is doing something that is clearly not working. I like to use the McKittrick line when someone is criticizing me.
Argh, sorry, this is so gauche, but… it’s “Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks”
You nailed Dabney’s response, though.
“I was hopin’ for a little better than that from you, sir… a man of your education”.
Barry Corbin is awesome in that movie.
I pondered whether he said “analysis” or “consideration,” even after I’d posted it. It was in the car yesterday afternoon I decided it was “consideration”. Oh well.
This comes from work rather than TV or movies. My first job out of college was doing computer monitoring for Chevron. The usual job was going to a plant that wasn’t currently computerized, figuring out what value the computer could add, hooking up various inputs into the computer, and writing the software to read them and display the data usefully.
One one job I was working with this guy who was very ambitious and gung-ho, and always liked to put the best face on things. He’d recently moved over from another group, and wasn’t prepared for what happens when you’re combining brand-new hardware with brand-new software, which is that at first nothing works and it’ll probably be a few days before you have anything close to a working system. So, we installed the new system and brought up a display, on which everything read 0.0 . Complete flatline. I cursed a bit, and we were starting to look into it when the phone rang. It was our boss wanting to know how things were going, and he answered “It’s all great, except that Mike’s not completely satisfied with some of the data.” All the rest of us within earshot just looked at each other.
So, for years after that, whenever something was a complete clusterfish it was usually described as “Mike’s not completely satisfied.”
And that man, was Michael D. Brown.
So now you know…the rest of the story.
And following a description of something horrifying with “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Or a description of something ridiculous but true with “I am not making this up.”
I was tempted to use that very phrase in the post before this one.
Or in response to an assertion that X has never done anything good in his life “There is the aqueduct.”
Movie quotes and Simpsons/South Park quotes make up roughly 50% of the language I use in every day life, so picking something here is hard. But since we’re talking specifically about cultural flotsam and jetsam, the field is drastically narrowed (for instance, the fact that I wish my wife goodbye every morning by saying “Have fun stormin’ the castle” is disqualified since Princess Bride is hardly flotsam).
With those restrictions, my answer has to be just about anything from the movie Puddle Cruiser, which was an indie film that the Broken Lizard crew (SuperTroopers, Beerfest, etc.) put out back in the mid to late ’90s. It was filmed at Colgate University (my alma mater, and theirs) and is essentially a comedy about dating life at Colgate. I have always found it hilarious, but I also assume there is only a small subset of the population likely to agree. In any event, I still find myself quoting this movie several times a week:
“So not only is he a firsty-firsty, he’s a firsty-firsty girly-girly…that’s tough.” -Whenever I see an article involving my governor, even though it’s technically not applicable.
“Maybe your bait’s just not tasty enough.” “Oh, I’ll show you tasty bait.” – Whenever either The Wife or I are having trouble convincing someone to do something.
“No bookbag, no deal!” – Useful for whenever I’m describing a demand that cannot be compromised.
“Just a bunch of old white men legislatin’ my uterus.” – Useful for describing apathy towards politics (this line is uttered by Jay Chandresekar’s character in Puddle Cruiser. To my knowledge, Mr. Chandresekar does not have a uterus).
I could go on.
Even though everyone on earth has seen that movie thirteen times, and thus you are correct that it technically isn’t in the true spirit of this week’s Question, I am utterly charmed to know you and the Wife wish each other good day with “Have fun stormin’ the castle!”
But relatively few have read the book. To them I say “Read the book!”
Hell, no. Either Peter Falk reads it to me or it doesn’t get read.
I don’t know about you, but I’d let Robin Wright read it to me too.
I have the same problem Mark does with this one. We’re old enough now that we have to face the fact that The Six Million Dollar man kind of has turned into flotsam.
Maybe.
I do bit actor lines a lot. So quotes from movies, but you’d have to have seen them a million times or really love that bit actor to know it.
“Sir! Here’s a nice stick, to beat the lovely lady”
“I have peripheral vision, it’s a gift. I can see my ears.”
“The four horse is a joke, Trotter!”
Oh! Here’s a good one. The Double McGuffin, nobody’s seen it. You type it into IMDB it doesn’t even auto-complete. My siblings and I use it as shorthand all the time.
“So much for Geometry!” “With two hands.” “Maybe a whole bunch of killers and hand-cutter-offers” “But whyyyy Arthur Honeycutt!?!?” “Then it starts. There’s nothing I can do about it from here!” “But no Kaburians. Or whatever you call them.”
http://overcompensating.com/posts/20051104.html
… this is what happens when you create a meme.
There’s also a Japanese Catbank (we’ve got the prototype at home)…
http://www.strapya-world.com/categories/2331_6740_5311.html
[Warning: do not buy if you have real cats. they Will Break It].
Oh. Once, a very long time ago, my husband’s parents bought him a tuna can. He’s… allergic to tuna. They know that. It has resided in four different apartments, and also a house.
here it is sailing off to the moon:
http://shirt.woot.com/offers/going-to-a-cheesier-place
[Am I doing this question wrong?]
Oh so many to choose from:
Whenever my wife asks me something like, “%MY_NAME%, are you in there?”, I have to reply:
“There is no %MY_NAME%, only Zuul!” In my best demon voice (I& I have a very good demon voice).
After 18 years, she doesn’t find it so funny, but I can’t not do it…
Also, Blazing Saddles & SpaceBalls
I am sneaky. Very, very sneaky, sir.
Every year when we drive to Montana, we pass the town of Drummond on the way to Polson.
I always, always have to say, “Whatchoo talkin’ about, Mister Drummond!?!?!”
I can’t stop myself.
Oh, every once in a while, I do “You asked for it. You GOT it. To YO tah.” in the voice of the senile father in law from Forget Paris.
That’s great.
Now with my wife discussing this with me, here’s a few that always come up in our household. I’m assuming most of you can name the source.
“These go to 11.”
“Her womb was a rocky place, where my seed could find no purchase.”
“Well, it just came to me. Stampede!”
And, just to toot my own horn about how earth-shatteringly handsome I am, she likes to say, “It’s that damn Hanley. He’s so hot right now.”
The first two are super-easy, particularly as the second is from one of my all-time favorite movies. (A hint for next week’s STQ — the ending never, ever fails to make me cry.)
The last two? Hmmmmmm….
That last one is Zoolander. I’m totally ashamed of myself for knowing that.
Are you like me in knowing it primarily because your wife loves it?
Pretty sure my wife has never even seen it. My major problem may be the sheer number of stupid friends I have (which likely says something about me).
Oh, man, I was trying to give you an out from being ashamed, but…no, no, you totally should be.
Wait… what is your beef with Zoolander?
I’ll admit to not finding it at all funny when I first saw it. But at BC, we had an on-campus movie channel that would rotate through the same 15 or so movies everyday for a month. One month, Zoolander was on. It got funnier each and every time. By the end of the month, we all loved it. Perhaps it was some sort of collective delusion, but we enjoyed it.
I also later learned that one of my graduate school professors was in the movie and apparently still collects royalties… I think a few bucks a year.
Zoolander is great. I had a friend who would always do “Blue Steel” for photos.
My experience with Zoolander is not unlike Kazzy’s.
It took you guys that long to get it? Only one thing can be said about that.
The “stampede” one is from Tremors.
Bingo. Which movie also gave us the immortal line,
“Be advised, however, that there are two more, repeat, two more motherhumpers.”
Runnin’? Runnin’s not a plan, runnin’s what you do when a plan fails!
A few household chemicals in the proper proportions.
I do NOT need to spend the night out here!
Broke into the wrong goddam rec room, didn’t ya!
That’s how they git ya… they’re under the damn ground.
“This valley is just one long smorgasbord.”
I vote for outer space. No way these are local boys.
Hey! Check this out. I found the ass end.
I did breakfast. It was eggs. Over easy.
Jason had a mix tape long ago with a Leonard Cohen song on it–I don’t remember the name, or even much else about it–that describes a woman who “mixes 7-Up with wine and calls it champagne. A chemist.” So now when presented with a dubious mixture of food and/or drink, I’ll just say “A chemist.” Jason has been known to confirm my opinion by referencing a certain xkcd comic.
I’ll sometimes say “I have a cunning plan, sir,” but Blackadder doesn’t meet the flotsam requirement.
Oh, and you’ll like this one from Infinite Jest, even though it’s also not flotsam; upon finding anything large and revolting, I will pick it up with both hands, show it to Jason, and say “I ate this!”
Any reference to Infinite Jest that is even vaguely relevant is given special dispensation as an answer to any and all Questions posed on this blog.
The song was “Earth to Doris” by Was (Not Was). The tape had some Leonard Cohen on it too though.
Ty Cobb!
Explanation: Playing Trivial Pursuit as a preteen/teenager and for the sports category the answer to unknown questions was Ty Cobb like four times in this game. I got a sports question I did not know and just answered “Ty Cobb” wouldn’t you know it I got it right. Now Ty Cobb is the answer for questions where you have no clue what the answer is
Far too many to list, but a couple of favorites:
1) “ok, no cream!”
2) “commander Powell would have named it.”
Another Looney Tunes one: Anybody else remember Pete the Puma? He wasn’t a frequent Bugs antagonist, but he was a funny one. In the episode I remember, a running gag is that Bugs stops the chase by distracting Pete with the question “Coffee, or tea?” to which Pete always replies “Tea.” Bugs delicately pours a cup and then asks “a-one lump, or two?” to which Pete says “Two.” Bugs then smashes him twice over the head with a gigantic hammer, raising two lumps on Pete’s head. The last time Bugs asks “Coffee or tea?” Pete says “Coffee! Tea gives me a headache!”
I will deliver that last line in Pete’s voice whenever it pops into my head, which is sometimes when I have a headache, sometimes when we’re playing tea party with Alice, sometimes when I see sugar lumps (well, pretty much every time I see sugar lumps), and sometimes apropos to nothing. In fact, if I didn’t restrain myself on this one, I would probably end up in an insane asylum in an endless dopamine-driven loop of saying that line to myself and giggling.
I said this above, but not only do I remember Pete, I can also do a passable Pet voice.
For years now when the kids ask me what I’m drinking, I say, “KAWFEE!” in the Pete Puma voice.
Jack and I spent about an hour the other day talking about Mel Blanc.
My brother does a great Pete Puma. It’s actually a little disturbing….he’s a big guy, normally really intense, but you ask him if he wants tea or coffee and he’ll break out into a perfect Pete Puma.
I realized today that I regularly say “I might, Rabbit, I might” when someone asks me if I’m going to do something. My friends expect me to sound like a nutjob, so I guess they don’t take exception to me quoting cartoons, even when they don’t recognize the source.
I blame a nasty head cold for not remembering some I use from one of the best movies eeeevvver
“It’s not my goddamn planet. Understand, monkeyboy?”
“no matter where you go… there you are”
“The future begins tomorrow”
Tell him ‘yes’ on one and ‘no’ on two.
Why is there a watermelon there?
Jes’ as soon kill you as go fishin’.
We often use “laugh while you can, monkeyboy”
When the spousal unit and I first saw this in the theater, it was very surreal, because we kept laughing really loudly, and no one else did. It was like we were the only two who got the jokes. I tried to get the kids to watch a few years ago. Same effect.
You’ve seen Robocop, right?
So you know the scene where the hapless midlevel executive gets shot like a gazillion times by the ED-209, and goes flying back to land on the table that has the model of Delta City on it? I think they used about 60 squibs in that scene. It happens before Murphy gets killed, it’s shockingly violent in the context of the movie, up until that point.
As the ED-209 is standing there, guns smoking, one of the other assembled executives says, “Will somebody call a goddamn paramedic?”
I saw that in the theater with one of my best buds at the time and the two of us laughed our asses off. Everyone else in the theater looked at us like we were monsters.
That was a great movie.
I remember thinking “why not get a bandaid- that will be as useful”
There were 2 scenes in that movie that really got to me why I saw it the first time:
-When they started killing / torturing Murphy by shooting his hand off.
-When the bad guy gets hit by the truck after the acid bath, and his body goes *mush* rather than having any impact with the truck.
Those two situations just seem an order of magnitude more horrible than the crazy violence.
“Somewhat, but not entirely, unlike X.”
“Brain the size of a planet.”
“Share and enjoy.”
“This is a use of the word X that I wasn’t previously aware of.”
“No, the monkey’s right.”
I use “This is a use of the word X that I wasn’t previously aware of” ALL THE TIME.
Also, I got a thing from Dave Barry (I think?) of formulating sentences conjoining two negative, complementary qualities as though they were contrasting or negating to each other.
“This sofa is hideous, yet uncomfortable!”
The Wife came up with a good one that she uses regularly last night. Whenever someone throws an unreasonable task at her despite the knowledge that she’s already swamped, she replies with “Right on top of it, Rose!”
That would be a line from the early ’90s Christina Applegate classic “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead.”
I am understandably proud to be able to say that I saw that film (in the theater!), and still remember its major plot points!
This is why it is so imperative that you come to Leaguefest- The Wife and you may have actually been separated at birth.
Oh, man!! I’m both delighted and bummed to hear that, the latter because it’s looking iffy at best if we’ll be able to come. Between our upcoming plans to Make Things Legal and figuring out where we’d stash the Critter and Squirrel, I fear this year’s Leaguefest will likely be sans Russell.
Might I tempt you Maine-ward? Shall I mention the lobsters I can get right off the boat by walking five minutes from my house?
[drools]
the lobsters I can get right off the boat by walking five minutes from my house?
Quit rubbing it in, dammit!
Maine, eh? That seems doable. And delicious. I will need to find a way to make this happen.
While back east last weekend, I had crabcakes. With, like, crab and not just breading and crab flavoring. It was magnificent.
Our chances of being able to go to Leaguefest have gone mildly up, but are still unfortunately pretty low. That Russell won’t be there makes it sting a little bit less.
Mark — Oh, please do! I’d be truly delighted to meet you both. And I should note that The Wife’s answer to this week’s Question from “DTMTBD” just totally nailed it.
Will — Likewise on my end. Though I’m still super-bummed I will likely miss a chance to see some good friends from last year and meet some new ones.
‘The Ocho” and “The 5 D’s”
I have a number of “Rocky Horror” lines which have become ingrained in my vocabulary.
Audience comments or actual lines?
Both.
+1
“Lucky him!”
“You’re lucky, he’s lucky, I’m lucky… THE BANNISTER’S LUCKY!”
From The Wire, McNulty’s line (and the inflection of the line) “What the f*$# did I do?” has helped us laugh through some of Clancy’s discomfort at her work environment. I’m not sure if that counts because The Wire is still awesome.
“What sorcery is this?” from Gargoyles is something I say from time to time. Gargoyles isn’t bad, but it doesn’t hold the resonance it did when the show first came on.
The guy who played Wallace stars in the last two seasons of Friday Night Lights. The guy who played D’Angelo guest-stars in one episode. [1] As far as I can tell, every single review of that episode starts “Where’s Wallace?”
1. If lie were a lot fairer, they’d both be household names and we’d never have heard of the Kardashians.