Lexicon. From Galaxy Quest. Sometimes re-worked to, “Does the {x} help?” where x is something odd.
“Does the rolling help?”
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Category Archives: Lexicon
“Push the button, Max!”
From Blake Edwards’ other great movie, The Great Race. Lexicon, obvs.
Kitty Roca
Lexicon. A two-word portmanteau, referring to the candy Almond Roca, and to how our dogs will root around in our cats’ litter boxes, looking for cat turds to eat.
Verbing weirds language
Lexicon, but usually misquoted as, “Verbing weirds nouns.” Close reading shows Watterson tosses in adjectives as well.
“It’s my manner, sir.”
Lexicon. Only mine. From the movie Lawrence of Arabia:
Lawrence: Good morning, sir.
General Murray: Salute! (Lawrence salutes, in an offhand gesture) If you’re insubordinate of me, Lawrence, I shall put you under arrest!
Lawrence: It’s my manner, sir.
General Murray: (flatly) Your what?
Lawrence: My manner, sir. It looks insubordinate, but it isn’t, really.
General Murray: You know, I can’t make out whether you’re bloody bad-mannered or just half-witted.
Lawrence: I have the same problem, sir.
“Of all the gin joints in all the world…”
Lexicon. From the movie Casablanca. Once, I would have thought this was such a widely seen film I wouldn’t need to explain, but as the years go by, even societal memory fades.
Like many quotes from this movie, somewhat mangled. It should be, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world… she walks into mine.” The towns, alas, get dumped.
Usage: Something incredibly rare and unexpected happens.
“My god!”
”What?”
”That car that just cut us off, like an asshole?”
”Yeah?”
”It’s a Bugatti Veyron.”
(respectful pause) “Of all the gin joints, in all the world…”
Rhino snot pie
Lexicon. Mildly derivative of Bill Cosby’s routine of having a rhino for a pet. This takes it one step further, and refers to how servers sometimes get stuck with specials they know are dubious, but they have to flack to the diners anyway.
“Tonight we have artisanal, free-range rhino snot pie as our special dessert…”
By extension, anything hoisted on service people as something they have to enthuse over:
“Well, they seem all-in for the 7-cylinder hybrid sports wagon.”
”Rhino snot pie. I just loooove this car!”
Asps
Borrowed from our friends David Levine and Kate Yule. It’s a line from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Indy: Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?
Sallah (peering into the tomb): Asps. Very dangerous. (pause) You go first.
Usage:
“That rhino snot pie on the menu looks interesting.”
”Asps.”
(Kate died in 2016. We miss her a lot.)
Gruff and lovable
Lexicon. No real context, just oft cited. It’s from Trout Fishing in the Reflecting Pool, or The Fireside Watergate. A mass market paperback, Nicholas von Hoffman wrote the text, and Garry Trudeau did single-panel, editorial page style cartoons. One shows senator Sam Ervin saying,
Ah am not bein’ harassin’ towards the witness. Ahm bein’ gruff, and lovable, and yew know it.
The book also has the only drawings I know of Nixon by Trudeau. (Nixon was always shown speaking without being seen, in Doonesbury.)
Your rudder is too small
Lexicon. From the movie Titanic:
“(Captain Smith) figures anything big enough to sink the ship they’re going to see in time to turn. But the ship’s too big, with too small a rudder… it can’t corner worth shit. Everything he knows is wrong.”
Not so much a misquote, as a paraphrase. “Your rudder is too small,” means you don’t have enough resources for the task at hand. Thus:
“I really think I can learn general relativity from this Mandarin textbook in six weeks.”
”Your rudder is too small.”