Mmmmm, could be, shiteyes.
–Cliffy
I seem to remember a scene in the first City Slickers, where Daniel Stern’s character gets a little googly-eyed at Helen Slater’s single hottie character and Bruno Kirby tells him to walk up to her and tell her that he’d like to wear her ass for a hat - or something thereabouts…
I first heard the phrase “asshat” back in 2002 on the new Twilight Zone series.
“Romeo and Juliet killed themselves because they were asshats.”
So no, I don’t think it’s an invention of this board, though I do get a kick out of the username Ass for a Hat.
I had a good chuckle last night thinking about this thread. I couldn’t sleep so I was watching some TV. The only thing on was a That 70s Show marathon on FX.
I was watching an episode and saw in the credits that the show has a producer named Cecily Adams!
I laughed and thought, “AHA! CECIL has infilitrated the operation in drag in order to insert the phrase ASSHAT!”
But alas, her IMDB BIO reveals she is the late Don Adams daughter.
Earlier cite: The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). The exchange is near the beginning of the film, as I recall: the Union soldiers are trying to organize the Rebels they had captured. The Rebels are fractious and the Union soldier’s rejoinder is, “You’d best be (can’t remember), else you’ll be wearin’ your ass for a hat.”
When I was a kid, I read a story by a World War 2 vintage author (I think Robert Heinlein) in which the phrase “brass-hatted stupidity” was used. If this was a case of a writer using an innocuous term that sounded almost like an obscene term, then I think the phrase is probably much older.