Do these moments ever happen to you out of the blue, without instigation?
I used to watch Fraggle Rock when I was younger, on which program was a character called “(Uncle) Travelling Matt”, who travelled around and sent postcards back to Fraggle Rock.
Years, and I mean years, later, I was walking down the street and all of a sudden, somewhere deep in my brain, a connection was made:
Travelling Matt = travelling matte (special effect technique)
Hey all.
Here’s the latest Smilie that I have submitted to the Request for a new Smilie thread.
Thank you all for the inspiration. I hope everyone can find a use for this one.
I know I will.
-If the Higher-ups vote it in, that is…
Wow. I always thought Travellng Matt was a twist on Welcome mat.
Sorry about that. Try this link. Request for a new Smilie. This one works in ‘Preview’ mode.
I don’t know how I screwed that up. (insert headsmack Smilie here) I usually don’t have any problems with URLs.
I, too, took a long time figuring out Sue Dunhym’s name. For the longest time I thought that it had something to do with sex (Sue Done-Him), but I couldn’t figure it out.
My older second cousin told me a joke, which I then went and repeated for the whole family (I guess I was about 5 or 6). It took me forever to figure out why my cousin got in so much trouble. Now remember this is around the height of popularity for The Six Million Dollar Man. The title character was played by Lee Majors, who was married at the time to Farrah Fawcett. The joke went:
Q: Why did the six million dollar man kill the plumber?
A: Because he screwed the wrong faucet.
I guess I was about 20 when I figured out it wasn’t just some joke about plumbing and why my cousin got in so much trouble. [SMACK]
“TRAVELLING MATTE: A process shot in which foreground action is superimposed on a separately photographed background by optical printing.”
Something with which the Muppeteers would likely be familiar, yes? I can’t believe that took me so long to get.
Slightly less long, I saw the “Lazarus Bowl” episode of the X-Files last night for the second time, in which Scully jokes to Mulder “I think Tea Leoni has a little crush on you.” Suddenly it occurs to me: aren’t/weren’t Duchovny and Leoni dating or married or something?
While watching videos on MTV or VH1 or the like, I noticed that there are a lot of people guesting on everybody else’s videos. The artist’s names would read Moby feat Gwen Stefani, or Destiny’s Child Feat Wyclef, or A B Feat C. You get the idea.
I spent a few minutes looking for this Feat person who seemed to be in every video before I realized that Feat was short for Featuring.
This reminded me of another one about me.
I’m a big fan of “ER.”
There is often a line of dialogue that says, “I’m going to turf him to Psych” or “She needs to be turfed to Cardiac Care” or whatever.
I would always wonder what “turf” had to do with moving someone to another department.
It was only after a few years that I finally made the connection: “turf” = “TRF” = “transfer.”
D’oh!
[head-slapping smilie]
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader did a feature about the genesis of fast food chains in, IIRC, the fifth or sixth edition.
In addition to the fact that Pizza Hut is so named because the founders bought a hut-shaped building and had a limited marquee (Well, “Pizza” fits, but “chamber”, “destination”, or “Place” won’t fit…hmmm…“HUT!” That fits!); they also brought up the fact that the Arby’s chain was founded by the Raffel brothers, who argued over the name of the chain. Finally, they just decided to use phonetic for RB (Raffel Brothers’) and that’s where the name came from.
In re the OP, I had a fifth grade science teacher who insisted the Ramones were asking for “date bread”…
“Twenty-twenty-four hours hours to go/
I wanna piece of date bread”
During Watergate, when they were trying to get Nixom to testify, there was a political cartoon with a young woman waiting outside the Oval Office and an aide saying to Nixon “There’s a Sue Peena here for you.”
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the “Knights of the Round Table” skit in Holy Grail. For years, Mr. Rilch thought the last line was “I have to push the broom a looooot…” When I heard him singing it that way, I explained to him what a pram was. He insisted momentarily that it was “broom”, but I reminded him that his way didn’t rhyme. Oh well. I never noticed, till he pointed it out, the shot of Sir Belvedere tying the coconut to the swallow and letting it fly free.
Two days ago I saw “O Brother Where Art Thou?” for the second time (showing on campus for two bucks). That’s when I figured out who the devil was to whom Tommy sold his soul: “The law is a human institution…”
The references to the Muppets reminded me of the most recent short-lived Muppet show, which will certainly have some people smacking their forheads in a few years.
Por ejemplo, there was an episode with Billy Crystal and they showed Miss Piggy trying out for the starring role of When Harry Met Sally. Naturally they did the famous restaurant scene.
How do you show that on a children’s show? Billy’s character said the woman he was supposed to date had backed out because of a cold. Miss Piggy argued that it was possible to convincingly fake a… sneeze. Frank Oz/Miss Piggy went on to do Sally’s entire scene. Then a old woman muppet told the waiter “I’ll have what SHE’S having, only with less pepper.”
In ten years some former kids are going to see the original movie and go “oh…”
Around here, they put a lot of emphasis on the smooth-running-board concept and are focussing their efforts toward that cause.
The smilies unfortunately, take a back seat.
Phooey.
There goes all the hooplah, the fanfare, my immortality.
Ah well, maybe one day in a smooth-running-message-board cyber-world, we will all be using a smilie or two drawn up by yours truely.
Walking through a Virgin Megastore with my mate.
Walk past a stand saying videos £8 each or three for £15.
“Why would anyone want three of the same video?” I ask.
“Uh, it means three of any video, not just three of the same,” my mate reminds me.
“Yeah, duh I was joking,” I retort.
(Oh no I wasn’t, three of the same video? thanks brain, SMACK!)