After decades of looking for it, and finally (when YouTube came along) finding just the theme song and a short clip… I found a “complete season” in a Barnes & Noble! But it wasn’t in my usual budget range of “Dirt Cheap”, so I’m currently saving up for it.
Damn, this has nothing to do with the topic, does it? Well, if I walk outside into bright sunlight after being sound asleep I sometimes mutter “Who…am I?”
Sometimes followed by "Can’t remember anything, 'cept two words… Get… Newspaper…"
My wife is sick of this one:
I have a beard/moustache that I keep trimmed up to the jawline. If I’m not leaving the house for a few days (it happens) I neglect to shave my neck. When it’s time to go somewhere, I’ll say, “Gee, I’d better shave!” grab the corner of the 'stache, and make a Pop sound as I pretend to pull it off. Like this:
If ever David Coperfield comes up I have to mention I am referring to Coperfield with one “p” by Edmund Wells.
I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one back in the day going:
“I can’t believe I ate the whooooooolllllllllllle thing.”
When someone pours me something:
“Oh fill it to the rim - with Brim!”
REMINDER: Usage of beloved catchphrases in public will not gain you the respect of friends and strangers.
Sure, if someone says “Let’s Go!” in French, and you can’t help but reply “Allez-y come, allez-y go!”*, one in a thousand will reply "Ahhh, Canadian…", but the other 999 will think "Thet lad ain’t quite right in the haid…"
My wife would agree wholeheartedly. She’s learned to ignore any presumably random utterance of mine. I’m sure she long ago decided in advance: “Well, it’s from SOME movie that no one but digs thinks is funny.”
.
*Hemlock Stones (“the great defective”)
…in The Giant Rat of Sumatra
(excellent Holmes parody by the Firesign Theatre)
I saw Penn and Teller live better than 30 years ago; small venue but packed, almost intimate. Penn was all over the place and he had a non-stop list of quotes, catchphrases and references and probably 80% of them hit the mark at the time – it was amazing!
Oh, and Teller was almost dumped head first onto a platform of 2-foot spikes. It was a great night. 
I’m probably the king of obscure references.
When I’m stressed, I’ll quiet shout: "Jyo Yin! The name is my favorite Taiwanese actress, Wong Jyo Yin / Wang Tsu Hsien best known for the A Chinese Ghost Story trilogy. The line is inspired from one of her last movies, Ming Ghost, a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. Joey plays Ah Ying, who after being assaulted, tells a different story than the three men, her husband, a merchant, and a wanderer who witnessed the assault.
Initially it’s unclear if Ah Ying is a alive or not, but when the merchant who is jailed, repeatedly calls our her name because he’s so enthralled by her, she suddenly appears in his cell and suffocates him with her hair.
Another stress induced word is Gashina, a play on words when I say “Gosh” to myself and extend it to Gashina. Gashina is a Korean song by Sunmi about her boyfriend leaving her.
Gashina has three meanings in Korean, two are directly referenced in the song.
The first meaning is why/are you leaving [me]. This best fits the tone of the song. The second is thorns/thorny. She refers to herself as a flower and she makes thorns with her hands in her live performance. She’s grown thorns out of anger. The third is [little] girl, but can also mean bitch in certain Southern dialects. This may be a reference to calling her boyfriend a bitch for leaving her. Sunmi denies this. NEVER call someone gashina!
When I say it to myself, I’m thinking of the thorns reference and also a twist on “What a bitch!” this is!
It has occurred to me recently just how often I trot out the phrase “I’m gonna eat this…but I am highly offended by it.”
Surprisingly applicable.
In our house, many of these come from the move “Rat Race”:
If we’re playing a game, “I hope I weeeen…” (Rowan Atkinson faux-Italian accent). If it’s the type of game in which the end is essentially a race (e.g., backgammon) it might be prefaced with “It’s a race! It’s a race!”
If I or my wife make a decision of some sort, the other of us might say, “I trust your judgement”, the way Paul Rodriguez’s cabbie says it to Cuba Gooding Jr’s character.
“Prairie doggin’ it” is a phrase we learned from that movie that we use a bit as well.
I blame this Pamolive commercial for two triggers - the first happening when I’ve had to submerge burnt fingers in a bowl of ice water and gone “Madge you’re soaking in it,” or, this spice-wimp negotiating something potentially spicy: “it’s more than just mild.”
(missed edit)
When I’ve reached my destination:
THIS.
IS.
IT.
Same at our place.
One that has been appropriate so many times during the pandemic: when Rowan Atkinson makes a pun that Wayne Knight doesn’t get…
I made a joke, to distract you from how screwed you are …!
I usually don’t discuss medical problems, but when I do, I often follow up with an impression of John Astin’s character in Night Court: “But I’m feeling much better now!”
Maybe not a catchphrase exactly, but whenever I hear a news story about a celebrity death (of which there have been several recently), I end of singing the chorus of “People Who Died” in my head.
And to hopefully not derail too much - an unfriendly response to Mr. Carroll:
Forgot two more Blue Velvet triggers:
I just hit the lights - “Now it’s dark.”
If I’m offered a Hieneken (which I actually don’t mind) - Really? Do I really need to say?
Watching Bonanza just now, a woman opened a music box that started playing “Those Endearing Young Charms.” I immediately said in my best Yosemite Sam voice “No, no, no, dagnabbit! That ain’t right! Start over!”
As with my aforementioned Madge/Palmolive commercial, I also blame Zep’s “Battle of Evermore” for saddling me with a “double-trigger”.
If there’s a returned restaurant dish, or any unacceptable purchased retail item, or a disallowed hockey or footy goal, I’ll go “bring it back!”.
Initially a Canadian sport, any mention of Ringette will get me repeating that word, thanks to when Plant, at the end of “BoE”, repeats “bring it, bring it, bring it, bring it”, despite the game still being quite obscure-as-eff to me.
It’s long been a catchphrase in our family that if someone tries something and doesn’t quite pull it off, we quote the brusque candy tycoon from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: “Had your chance; muffed it. Good morning!”
With a smile, of course.
Two from Holy Grail whenever someone asks how I am or says “Haven’t heard from you in a while”:
“I was sick.” Pause. “But I got better.”
and
“I’m not dead yet.”
With my wife and I, if one of us says something that’s a little too sharp, or rude, we add, “in the parlance of our time,” from the Big Lebowski.
Wife: “that’s a dumb idea,” (realizes she crossed a line), “in the parlance of our time.”
Me: “oh, ok then.”