Sometimes after hearing a bit of memorable spoken dialogue, I’ll have it in my head all day. Always the most ridiculous things, however, and generally inexplicable.
Last night I caught a bit of Tim Burton’s second Batman movie, with Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer and Christopher Walken. Two things stuck with me from the scene where the DeVito’s Penguin is on a rooftop, coming on to Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. He offers champagne and says in a low, grinding voice: “Touch of the bubbly?” A moment later she retorts: “I wouldn’t touch you to scratch you.”
All day those two bits of dialogue have been randomly popping up in my mind. Open a spreadsheet and the Penguin growls, “Touch of the bubbly?” I might as well make it my ringtone or something.
All the freaking time. If it’s not music it’ll be a quote, or sometimes just a single word. After rewatching Dark Knight I had that mixed up with Jeff Dunham–
“Where is Dent?”
“Over there, over there, and up there.”
When JFK Jr’s plane went down, Dan Rather ended his broadcast by saying “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, [here his voice cracked] for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.”
A friend quickly and casually ordered carne guisada in a Mexican food place thirty years ago, and to this day any mention of that dish has me hearing his voice saying “Carnegie salad” for the rest of the day.
“Why so serious?” and “Let’s put a smile on that face” (in an angry, growly voice) from The Dark Knight have been going through my head for the last few days.
You know you’ve been lurking the Dope for too long when…
This happens to me now and then with weird usernames or phrases I see in thread titles. I can’t think of one off the top of my head right now, and I’m rather pleased by that so I won’t go searching…
“Kif!”
“Yes, c–ugh. Yes, captain?”
“I have made it with a woman. Inform the men.”
This little sound byte resides both on my comuter hard drive and in the back of my brain.
Sorry to resurrect this, but today I have a non-musical earworm. A friend’s kid was at a playground that had one of those metal geodesic domes. Not a bright kid, he got his tongue stuck to the frozen metal.
Anyway, it reminded me of when I was a kid and one summer a pack of girls had turned the dome in the playground into their own club house. They were all standing on it chanting “No boys allowed! No boys allowed!” and any boy who tried to climb it got the snot beat out of him.
So when I heard about my friend’s kid stuck to the dome, I thought “Gee, he’s lucky no girls had taken it over.” And I have ever since been sitting here at my work desk, mentally chanting:
“No boys allowed! No boys allowed! No boys allowed!”
My mom and I both have a running gag involving the way the King of Hyrule says “My boy…” in the oft-mocked-online opening to the CD-I game Link: The Faces of Evil.
I have a (partially) non-musical earworm. Last weekend my partner and I watched Burn After Reading. There was a scene in which Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand are going to call John Malkovich to blackmail him and Brad Pitt dances across the kitchen going: “I got his NUMbah! I got his NUMbah!”
I have been doing a version of that on a daily basis ever since. For instance I had to feed the minions. dancing “I got the CAT food! I got the CAT food!” Next day I had to take her dog for a walk and put salt-proof dog boots on his paws. dancing “I got the BOOties! I got the BOOties!”
Am I allowed to resurrect this? 'Cause all day in my mind Missy Elliott has been insisting, “Range rover, bitch move over. Wear more ice than the bears in the polar.” And I had to tell somebody.
