When I’m wandering around the house and not being able to find what I’m looking for, I go to one of the dogs and say “What have you done with Professor Millmoss???” (from a James Thurber cartoon.)
I come from a family of quoters. We quote everthing: movies, TV, songs, comics, what have you. Figured they paid the writers; perhaps they’ve come up with better lines than we’re capable of. However, there are a few we use with regularity:
Whenever we’re about to do something with gusto, I pull out the “we’re goin’ in, we’re goin’ in full throttle, that oughta keep those fighters off our backs.” (Star Wars)
If someone says something like “Where’d he go?” the proper response is “Where’d who go?” (Top Gun, emphasis on the “who”).
And I’ve used a different quote from the Rhubarb commercial noted on page 1: “It’s a plant.”
Lately I’ve been using “Whoo hoo, Jester’s dead” whenever something good or notable happens. (Top Gun)
“I have absolutely no responsibility here whatsoever” is frighteningly useful. (A Few Good Men)
I also say “Yesh” a lot, especially to Mr. Snicks, from the comic Mutts.
And anything Izzard is good. “I like my women like I like my coffee: in a paper cup.”
There’s lots more, but the brain is short today.
Snicks
Ah, Coming To America. I like to use “Its a damn shame what they did to that dog.” whenever something goes wrong.
Though my current fave is “It picked meh up with its mind pahwers an’ shook meh like a dawg!”
Nutty Bunny, I use that commercial too! Except I prefer to use it when I ask if someone wants to join me for something. “I bet you do! I’m so pretty! I’m…so…pretty!”
From the episode in Boston, where he tried to make some random kid at BU famous, “The Bah is wicked bizzare!” (“The Bah”, is of course, Matt “The Bar” Hirsch).
Also, any time I’m at taco bell, I manage to use “They’re all out of Tack-oh’s”, from when Dave used to send Larry “Bud” Melman and Biff out to harrass people while Dave told them what to say.
And, I’ve kept alive his 1997 effort to make “Something from the meat case, Linda?” into a nationally known catch-phrase. Because, it’s just way too genius to not keep alive.
Um, it’s gotta be 'cause all the pre-1970’s referencs aren’t obscure anymore, right? I mean, who doesn’t get, I AM big; it’s the pictures that got small?
Am I completely mistaken, or does the entire bit go “Origami! The Japanese art of paper-folding! Look, a pterodactyl: caw caw!” Of course, it should be said very quickly. And then, if the listener doesn’t get it, repeat it a couple of times… That’s comedy gold.
“Mass hysteria!” I use this one a lot… Actually, a coworker said it to me a couple of weeks ago, which was pleasantly surprising, as she isn’t one of “those people” like myself (ie, a big geek with a head full of nonsensical trivia). Other favorites which I’ve managed to get my coworkers to use are “What did you do, Ray?” and “I’m fuzzy on the whole good-bad thing.” But my favorite moment was when someone came over the PA looking for my coworker “Scott,” asking “is Scott there?” His response, in a basso profondo, was “There is no Scott, there is only ZUUL!” Laughter from some, total blanks from others.
And I feel like I should rise to Eve’s challenge for pre-1970 phrases, but all that I can think of are the Groucho Marx “I certainly hope so, I certainly hope so” with accompanying eyebrow waggle. I also have used quotes from “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” but I am by no means proud of that. Oh, and at dinner, I have repeatedly passed food to my friends or family with a campy “Have a po-TAY-to” courtesy of Earnest Thesiger in “The Old Dark House.”
The less said about “The Simpsons” and how they have ruined my ability to construct my own sentences, the better.
It seems about once a week I’ll be watching some sort of motion picture and one of the characters will say something which will tickle me just so and I’ll vow to remember it to use later. And in my 29 years of life pretty much the only one that I remembered long enough to use was that one. Although my life is pretty bereft of conversation at the moment and whatever lines I try to recall tends to go bad before I can use them.
Actually I do occaisionally say “Look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls.” Obscure enough for my generation I suppose.
)