I use “No wonder I’m so well paid!” which is from a TV commercial for a cheesy RETS type proprietary school from the '80s. Obscure.
“You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.”
- Francis Urquhart, House of Cards
“Pretty soon i’ll make Assistant Manager, and that’s when the BIG BUCKS start rolling in!”
Used a plenty in my younger years with co-workers to make fun of our managers in retail/food service.
Whenever anyone asks me what something is, if I’m in a smart-alleck-y mood (80% of the time), the response is, (from Blade Runner) “Know what a turtle is? Same thing.”
Of course, the funny incident that came out of this- at GenCon a number of years back, I was taking a ‘battery of tests’ at a merchant’s booth that included a ‘psych evaluation’. First question was the infamous tortise in the desert question. The minute the guy started mentioning the tortise, I said, “What’s a tortise?” He just looked at me, grinned, marked that I’d passed the entire exam (even though that was the first question) and moved me down the line.
Whenever anyone asks me what something is, if I’m in a smart-alleck-y mood (80% of the time), the response is, (from Blade Runner) “Know what a turtle is? Same thing.”
Of course, the funny incident that came out of this- at GenCon a number of years back, I was taking a ‘battery of tests’ at a merchant’s booth that included a ‘psych evaluation’. First question was the infamous tortise in the desert question. The minute the guy started mentioning the tortise, I said, “What’s a tortise?” He just looked at me, grinned, marked that I’d passed the entire exam (even though that was the first question) and moved me down the line.
Whenever anyone asks me what something is, if I’m in a smart-alleck-y mood (80% of the time), the response is, (from Blade Runner) “Know what a turtle is? Same thing.”
Of course, the funny incident that came out of this- at GenCon a number of years back, I was taking a ‘battery of tests’ at a merchant’s booth that included a ‘psych evaluation’. First question was the infamous tortise in the desert question. The minute the guy started mentioning the tortise, I said, “What’s a tortise?” He just looked at me, grinned, marked that I’d passed the entire exam (even though that was the first question) and moved me down the line.
Here comes another one.
“FanTABulous!”
“Cake or Death?”
“Do you have a flag?”
(Eddie Izzard)
I like to paraphrase a line from Early M.A.S.H.
Hawkeye, looking at Henry’s young girlfriend: “I’m a doctor, you can believe me. That’s a nice leg.” Substitute photographer for doctor.
Also, “It’s not really a rule, it’s more of a guideline” from Ghostbusters and also used by Pratchett on more than one appropriate occasion. (Generally said by Ridcully)
Good lord, I still say things like, “That’s all there is—there isn’t any more,” “T’aint funny, McGee” and " . . . and that little girl grew up to be Charlotte Cushman."
A confession: years ago I worked freelance for a stock-photo agency here in NY. We’d get in old film stills and portraits and I’d identify, label and file them. We got in a whole cache once of unidentified starlets from the 1930s. No clue as to who they were. So I put them all into one file, marked “Thelma Jordan.”
Real Genius is just so good for these. When someone cancels plans or says they can’t make it, always respond snappily with, “And we were going to make you king of the winter carnival.”
“Are my eyes really brown?”
Especially confusing since I have blue eyes.
I like that I am not the only one who sounds like a weirdo using old, obscure lines.
Dopers give me hope.
What is really funny is when there are lines you use that EVEN YOU can’t recall the source material!
Between all the bad movies I’ve seen and a rich childhood of cartoons (especially looney tunes), I filled full of stupid things to say.
Sadly, over the years, the source has escaped memory and I am forced to accept the credit/blame myself.
One I recently uncovered was:
“With even minor surgery, there is a chance of death!”
Sometimes when I am frustrated I will exclaim,
“These pretzels are making me thirsty!”
or
“Serenity now!”
Do Simpson or Seinfeld lines count? I use those all the time and with some regularity I get “busted”…
“Soon, the super karate monkey death car would park in my space.”
I do this all the time. Half the time I don’t even realize I’m quoting anymore. As a friend of mine said recently, “Eventually I’ll be able to speak in nothing but quotes from Buffy and The Simpsons!”
“I should know. I’m a medical doctor. I own a mansion and a yacht.”
“Next stop, rocket science.” (Jerry Horne from Twin Peaks to a bartender who gets his order right)
“Of course, you know, this means war.”
Not exactly the same thing, but since Firefly I’ve been using “gorram” as an all-purpose curse word.
–Cliffy
I often describe something as a ‘Moose moment’ or a ‘Moose head moment’, and although everyone I know has seen The Germans episode of Fawlty Towers at least twice, nobody ever seems to recognise the reference. It comes from when Basil is struggling to put the Moose’s head up on the wall, and he has to stop and put it down to go and answer the phone call from Sybil telling him to make sure he puts the Moose’s head up.
It’s actually quite a handy figure of speech, for when someone interrupts your progress with task X precisely to tell you to get on with task X. I used to work in the IT industry (I must have been evil in a previous life) and this sort of thing happened on an almost daily basis. There was always some ‘Manager’ with not enough to do who would phone just to ask me to go into his/her office, just so that they could remind how important it was get on with task X, and I’d explain that that’s what I was doing before I had to stop to come into their office to be told this. I would remark that this was a bit of a Moose Head event, and just got blank looks all round.
Another one I often refer to comes from the Python Holy Grail movie. The Kind safely gets across the bridge by answering an obscure question about swallows and air/weight ratios. When someone asks him how he knew that, he says ‘Oh, you have to know these things when you’re a King’, which is a deliciously silly answer explaining nothing. Well, likewise, someone in the office had once written a witty article for the company magazine which mentioned a ‘ouija’ board, except thay hadn’t a clue how to spell ‘ouija’. I explained that it’s easy to remember, because it’s just the French and German words for ‘Yes’ put together. He asked me how I knew this, and I said, in my best Python / Graham Chapman voice, ‘Oh, you have to know these things when you’re a technical writer’, which I meant in a purely silly, jokey way. The guy just nodded, said, ‘Oh I see’ and wandered off.