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You’re Out of Your Element
A few weeks ago, I was watching Young Frankenstein. About halfway through, I realized that to the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t seen it before, yet due to the sort of people I associate with, I was already aware of all the most-referenced parts. It was not the first movie I’ve seen where previous secondhand knowledge somewhat diminished my enjoyment.
On the other side of the ledger, @hankrhody referenced Bartertown at work. In a group that could be expected to have known and asking other people afterward, he was only able to find 1.5 out of 19 people that knew who run Bartertown. (The half point was for knowing the movie.)
There are a couple reasons for telling these stories. The first is to point out ways that having common reference points and in-jokes can provide to bring people into a group or have a sidebar conversation that only a few people will understand. If someone asks me a yes/no question and I respond with “Is the Space Pope reptilian?” how they respond will probably have an effect on my opinion of them.
The second reason is to discuss exactly how much of a given medium one needs to be aware of in order to participate in a given conversation. If I know, for example: that the cake is a lie, you can’t fight in the War Room, that all your base are belong to us, that five is right out, that a man’s got to know his limitations, the Buster kept me out of handcuffs, that rug really tied the room together, if the light is green, the trap is clean, that word does not mean what I think it means, or that Shaft is one bad mother…, is it necessary to have actually consumed that media, or is it enough to know why it means what it means?
This principle can be applied to more than just movie and tv references. In another post, there was a discussion of the Fry’s Electronics chain and its legendarily bad customer service, which I was aware of despite not having been to one. Even Ricochet has some examples, although those will be left open as an exercise for the reader.
That’s all I’ve got, the floor is open. Anyone else have lines that they regularly use in conversation, whether or not anyone else will understand it?
Published in Group Writing
Capital L, small a, capital F . . .
That will give me nightmares for a week.
“I’m in a transitional period.” [Pulp Fiction]
This one is greatness. There are many, many more, but for starters:
and
and
(Actually, the bold portion is really all that is required.)
“I celebrate his entire catalogue.” [Office Space]
Cannot resist one more:
Roadhouse favorites:
“Pain don’t hurt.”
“Be nice, until it’s time to not be nice.”
My whole family will frequently toss out lines to each other from What’s Up Doc?
“Well, there’s not much to see, actually, we’re inside a Chinese dragon.”
“Don’t you dare strike that brave, unbalanced woman!”
“Hello . . . hello . . . um, heh, hellooo . . Is there any um, hello?
And of course, there’s this:
Our family uses these all the time:
“Don”t look PeeWee, just don’t look”
“One time at band camp”
“Glass, who gives a S@@t about glass”
“You ride with outlaw you die with an outlaw”
Yes!
My kids and I, when we ending a phone call or need to acknowledge something in conversation, have a habit of saying “F.A.B!”
It’s a pleasant surprise how many people get it.
Don’t know if it made it into the movie, but “A glass of icewater. With Ice.”
One that I use all the time and IMO best explains being “Out of Your Element”: “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto.”
I can usually make it through a Thanksgiving dinner with these:
You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it.
If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
220, 221, whatever it takes.
Dying ain’t much of a living boy.
Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Marriage is buying a house for someone you hate.
If those little sweethearts won’t face German bullets, they’ll face French ones!
I’m going to be very sad if this thread ends without learning the go-to Mike Damone quotes of @simontemplar.
From the show business for ugly people, “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” has proven very useful.
“I love it when a plan comes together!”
“And don’t call me Shirley.”
“We could try a cold start.”
“<some stupidly literal answer to a question >, but that’s not important right now.”
(tl/dr movie quotes are for grups, the future is all remixed meme refs)
Python-wise, when someone is putting on airs or deriding something as being a bit beneath them, I say Oh! Oh! No buttered scones for me, Mater, I’m off to play the Grand Piano. No one gets it, but they get the point. If I said “ha ha, Graham Chapman suspected from wires above his desk,” I’d get a blank look.
The only Python ref that seems to persist is “No one expects the (x)”, and perhaps that’s apt – younger people may not know the original item, but they understand that there is something to which the line refers. This sort of reference-to-a-reference is popular among the Twitter folk. It signals familiarity with meme culture, which is the primary cultural lingo of the younger set. If you say “anime pigeon questioning is the new caveman Spongebob” to someone who is 20, they will know what you mean.
Tonight at dinner Daughter and a friend were discussing new slang, and the friend mentioned “Here’s the T” as her new fave. I hadn’t seen this, but suspected I knew what this meant, and said “From none of my business tea lizard Kermit?” The friend said Yes, and it all clicked: of course hot gossip would be called Tea. Kermit may not have thought it was any of his business, but the rest of us would be interested. Big bonus points for being an old guy who knew the tea-lizard twist.
It’s not always a reference to a picture; you can say “Wal-Mart yodel is kid is milkshake duck now” and it’s a ref to a vid and a verbal meme.
The speed at which the internet is redefining communication seems an unexamined phenomenon.
That movie was terrible, but if you view the whole thing as a really long setup for that one punchline it’s completely worth it.
I have never watched a single episode of the A-Team, but I use that all the time.
“English, [redacted], do you speak it?!”
My husband and his brothers do Kung Pow lines. My brother in law showed me the movie while my husband was out of town and I don’t see that family the same.
I am uncultured swine. I’ve got “Ahh, stop yer bawlin'” and that’s about it.
That’s one of the most popular, but I think there are others. One that comes immediately to mind is “It’s only a flesh wound,” which I see fairly regularly.
And then, of course, there’s the word “spam” (in its Internet sense), which isn’t even a Python reference anymore; it has entered the language as a legitimate word in its own right, by way of Python. An interesting etymology to be sure.
Grups, this is the appellation bestowed by our children on our team when we face off at “game night”. Our motto is Miri.
Proof, as my Mom used to say “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”, my kids treated us to a special screening of Monty Python and The Holy Grail followed by a Q&A with John Cleese.
On delegating authority, from A Bridge Too Far:
“This is an Ex-parrot”. Substitute whatever you choose for parrot.
Several lines from that sketch – “he’s not dead, he’s pining for the fjords”. “He’s not dead, he’s resting”. “That [Parrot] wouldn’t ‘voom’ if you put 40,000 volts through him.”
I’m not dead yet.
My husband also asks crying children “Did Timmy fall down the well again?”
My wife asks that of one of the cats.
“You’re never fully dressed without a smile”
“Its only a flesh wound”
“Tomorrow is another day”
“Don’t cry for me”
“There’s no crying in baseball”
“And now, for something completely different…”
For years I said “Shut your festering gobutit,” without knowing what a gobutit was. (I just assumed it was some very obscure British slang.)
I then obtained Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Just the Words: The Complete Unexpurgated Scripts of the Original TV Series, Volumes 1 & 2 (Yes, I’m that big a nerd). I discovered the line was “Shut your festering gob, you tit!” Well, that explains it. (“Stupid git.”)
Whenever I am asked to demonstrate one of my constructed languages* my go-to sentence is usually, “My hovercraft is full of eels.”
*Think an amateur version of Tolkien’s Elf language.