Moriarty's sign-off line archive (Part 1 of 9)
Jeff Meyer
annual posting of my entire archive of signoff lines to rec.games.trivia. I
post it here because a) I've provided sources for all the various quotes,
thus allowing you to use them in your own quizes, and b) if I posted them in
alt.fusion, everyone would be quite upset.
If you have any corrections to make, either to the quotes or to the sources,
I welcome them. Please, however, specify whether you *think* the quote or
the attribution is wrong, or whether you *know* it is -- helps me figure out
if I need to go back into the sources myself and check it out.
See you next year...
"Is this heaven?"
"No... it's Iowa."
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: mori...@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, hplsla, thebes, microsoft}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>
----
"Anxiety and conscience are a powerful pair of
dynamos. Between them, they have ensured that one
shall work hard, but they cannot ensure that one
will work at anything worthwhile."
-- Arnold Toynbee
----
"It is overdoing the thing to die of love."
-- French proverb
----
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping
it will eat him last."
-- Winston Churchill
----
"The thing that impresses me most about America is
the way parents obey their children."
-- Duke of Windsor
----
"Lean too much on the approval of people, and it
becomes a bed of thorns."
-- Tehyi Hsieh
----
"The best thing about animals is that they don't
talk much."
-- Thorton Wilder
----
"I am beginning to repel
people I am trying to
seduce."
"He must have been
great-looking, right?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because nobody invites a
*bad*-looking idiot to
their bedroom."
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"Wouldn't this be a great
world if insecurity and
desperation made us more
attractive?"
"Call if you get weird."
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"Couldn't they all come through the same window?"
[The SWAT team through Maddie's window in MOONLIGHTING]
----
"You think anyone who's
proud of the work we do
is an ass-kisser."
"No... I think anyone who
*puckers* up their lips,
and *presses* it against
their boss's buttocks
and then *smootchs* is
an ass-kisser."
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"You're just absolutely
right, and I'm absolutely
wrong. It must be NICE
to always believe you
know better... to always
think you're the smartest
person in the room."
"No, it's *awful*."-
[BROADCAST NEWS]
---
"What d'you do when your
real life exceeds your
dreams?"
"Keep it to yourself!"
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"I like you as much as I can like anyone who things
I'm an asshole."
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"Now, is there anything I
can do for you?"
"Well, I certainly hope
you die soon."
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"Take this creature, for
example: he does not
exhibit any DNA
structure."
"Look who's talkin'.
Man, you sound just like
my ex-wife."
[Data and a gambler from STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION]
----
"Sorry, boys, there's nothing I can do for you.
I'm all washed up; my super-hero days are over.
But as long as you're here... how about a little
stud poker?"
[THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"I've heard enough of your twaddle, Ringleader;
we'll settle this the *American* way -- with our
fists!"
[THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"There are three things I've learned not to discuss
with people: Religion, Politics, and the Great
Pumpkin."
[Linus from PEANUTS]
----
"Humphrey knows nothing about newspapers. He's a
Civil Servant. I'm a politician, I know all about
them. I have to. They can make or break me. I know
exactly who reads them. _The Times_ is read by the
people who run the country. The _Daily Mirror_ is
read by the people who think they run the country.
_The Guardian_ is read by the people who think
they ought to run the country. _The Morning Star_
is read by the people who think the country ought
to be run by another country. _The Independent_ is
read by the people who don't know who runs the
country but are sure they're doing it wrong. The
_Daily Mail_ is read by the wives of the people
who run the country. The _Financial Times_ is read
by the people who own the country. The _Daily
Express_ is read by the people who think that the
country ought to be run as it used to be run. The
_Daily Telegraph_ is read by the people who still
think it *is* their country. And _Sun_ readers
don't care who runs the country providing she has
big tits."
-- YES, PRIME MINISTER
----
"Supposing I gave the
order to press the
button, and then changed
my mind?"
"That's all right, no one
would ever know, would
they?"
-- YES, PRIME MINISTER
----
"There are no big name people here, only those of
us with bigger mouths than others."
-- Dan'l Dennehy-Oakes
----
"When you're God, you find your little jokes go
down rather well."
-- God, the Ultimate Autobiography
----
"Trouble: Charles Manson. *REAL* Trouble: His evil
twin"
-- Mister Boffo
----
"The University of Utah has announced that they can
turn seawater into fuel. Exxon's already doing
that in Alaska."
-- Jay Leno 4/3/89
----
"Fundamentalists are to Christianity what
paint-by-numbers is to art."
-- Robin Tyler
----
"Why use a REAL development system when you can
bang a rock against your head?"
[From the net...]
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"AVALANCHE (Embassy) 1978. Roger Corman's
ski resort is populated by corrupt
businessmen, sensitive misunderstood wives,
and sincere, motivated ecologists -- all
schtuping like there's no tomorrow!"
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"SGT. PRESTON OF THE YUKON (Rhino). A
middle-aged man who like to dress up in
bright red uniforms and hang out with a team
of Husky dogs mixes it up with mean,
grizzled trappers in vintage TV episodes."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"COCKTAIL (Touchstone). Sexual exploits of a
handsome mixologist furnished the Beach Boys
with their first number one hit in 18 years."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"RUNNING ON EMPTY (Warner). Emotional,
disturbing picture about fugitive radicals
trying to lead "normal" lives is important
-- not for River Phoenix's adenoidal
method-acting, but because it deglorifies
the 60's and presents it as the uptight,
violent decade it really was."
----
"Just like I've always said; there's nothing an
agnostic can't do if he's not sure he believes in
anything or not!"
[Monty Python]
----
"The NY Times is read by the people who run the
country. The Washington Post is read by the
people who think they run the country. The
National Enquirer is read by the people who think
Elvis is alive and running the country..."
[?]
----
"Drop the gun or I'll kill
your girlfriend."
"Go ahead. I got lots of
girlfriends."
[THE DREAM TEAM]
----
"But in spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations
He remains an Englishman!
He rema-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ains an Englishman!"
[Gilbert and Sullivan]
----
"Hell's not so bad, as long as you don't mind
eating at Arby's."
-- Nick Bonesteel
----
"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."
-- Patti Smith
----
"They laughed at Fulton, they laughed at Bell, they
even laughed at Edison. But this was genuine,
heartfelt laughter...robust rolling waves of it,
from deep down...the kind where you know they
really mean it."
-- Joe Martin
----
"In the meantime, one word for any atheists among
you: wrong."
-- God, the Ultimate Autobiography
----
"Take cover everyone.
Justice is about to be
unleashed!"
"Holy crow! Not in my
store!!"
[Ad ad for GUN FURY]
----
"Take that and that and THAT and *THAT*! Ha! I
warned you, didn't I? Didn't I warn you? I
thought I warned you. I didn't? Oh, sorry."
[That crazy Max! From SAM AND MAX]
----
"We're bucaneers! We used
to have mundane office
jobs, working in cubicles
with water coolers and
coffee cups with clever
slogans and those wacky
calendars with photos of
diseased-looking chimps
wearing neckties."
"But you've got hooks and
peg legs."
"Funny about that."
[More reality concepts from SAM AND MAX]
----
"I love crap we'll never need -- that's my
*favorite* kind of crap!"
[Truth from SAM AND MAX]
----
"ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I blame society."
[From the forward of THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
"It was a mutual parting
of the ways. We gave him
the freedom to do what he
wanted to do."
"What was that?"
"Drink himself to death."
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
"Yes, I produced and
directed a movie. A guy
had come to me with a
great script called
ROTHRO, LIZARD OF DOOM.
I loved it, but I figured
a lot of people would
have trouble remembering
the name. I know I did.
So I made a few changes,
and we released the
film."
"ED SMITH, LIZARD OF
DOOM."
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
"Not bad for someone Dick
Cavett once called `the
stupidest man on the face
of this planet.'"
"Stupid? I don't know
the meaning of the
word."
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
"Cowboy Wally, do you deny
saying Grace with your
mouth full on your 1979
Christmas episode?"
"Of course not! I am
merely stating that if
He had been there and
could smell that gravy
and those potatoes, I
think the Good Lord
Himself would have done
the same thing."
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
"`They killed his father.
Now he's fighting back.
When the law is not
enough, it's time to call
HAMLET.'"
"That could work."
"Is he two-fisted? We'll
do it if he's
two-fisted!"
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
"But don't you see? Don't
you understand what
you're doing?"
Oh, yeah. I'm
destroying Shakespeare's
snob appeal."
"You *fiend*."
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
-----
"I want anything with a
codpiece."
"What's a codpiece?"
"It makes you look
bigger."
"Oh, like pinstripes."
[THE COWBOY WALLY SHOW]
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"DETECTIVE SCHOOL DROP-OUTS (Cannon).
Frenzied, on-target comedy about three mafia
cheese families' plan to dominate the world
pizza market. Best line: `Our cheese will
be on every pizza on the planet except
California. God knows what they put on
pizza in California!'"
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"LONG JOHN SILVER (Showcase) 1952. Robert
Newton reprises his TREASURE ISLAND role as
a smelly, peg-legged old grunt who'd rather
hang out with a bunch of sailors wearing
scarves than with a lusty wench who wants
his body. Go figure."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"THE DUNWICH HORROR (Embassy) 1970. Noted
Dennis Hopper side-kick Dean Stockwell
excells in this H.P. Lovecraft story of a
Beatle-booted looney who's more interested
in 'unleashing the old ones' then getting
romantic with Sandra Dee. Before Stockwell's
recent comeback via BLUE VELVET and MARRIED
TO THE MOB, he had been selling real estate
in Los Angeles. Do you think that's where
he learned to lip-sync Roy Orbison songs?"
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"THE PARIS EXPRESS (Showcase) 1953. Claude
'The Invisible Man' Raines is a dithery
little Walter Mitty who accidentally kills
his corrupt boss and hides out with a sexy
dominatrix who steals his money, plies him
with cheap booze, and calls him abusive and
perjorative names. Too bad Pictionary
hadn't been invented yet!"
----
"Whenever you have efficient government, you have a
dictatorship."
-- Harry Truman
----
"The great tragedy of life is not that men perish,
but that they cease to love."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
----
"I have learned to use the word `impossible' with
the greatest caution."
-- Werner von Braun
----
"You are not a realist unless you believe in
miracles."
-- Anwar el-Sadat
----
"Silence is the perfectest of herald of joy: I were
but little happy, if I could say how much."
-- William Shakespeare
----
"Three things in human life are important: The
first is to be kind. The second is to be kind.
And the third is to be kind."
-- Henry James
----
"There is nothing so habit-forming as money."
-- Don Marquis
----
"Girls like her are one in a million, so I guess my
chances are a million to one"
-- "Love at First Sight",
Jad Fair/Half-Japanese 50
Skidillion Watts Records
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Jan. 1st
In college bowl action, 'Goiters whip 'Roids,
'Geeters whonk 'Nads, and Colorado Raging
Hormones upset Utah State Fighting Lavatory
Inspection Certificates, leaving the question
of who is national champion once again to be
settled by the official NCAA procedure of
drunks shouting in bars.
----
"I'm bored with music between 1955 and 1980. I'm
completely bored. I can't listen to a rock and
roll record. I can't do it. I would rather
listen to hogs screwing."
-- Sting
----
"To the unwashed public, that woman is a star. But
to those who know her, she's a commodity who would
sell her own bowel movement."
-- Anthony Newley re: ex-wife
Joan Collins
----
"I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami,
but salami is salami."
-- Stephen King
----
"We're all given some sort of skill in life. Mine
just happens to be beating up on people."
-- Sugar Ray Leonard
----
"I'm talented and flexible. I could play Hamlet,
even though I look like King Kong."
-- Mr. T
----
"I can see stopping a car for a dog. But a cat?
You squish a cat and go on. I think we're
overcomplicating life."
-- Iowa Democratic State Senator
James Gallagher
----
"Work is the rent you pay for the room you occupy
on earth."
-- Queen Elizabeth
----
"The apes were all homosexuals, eager to wrap their
paws around Johnny's thighs. They were jealous of
me, and I loathed them."
-- Maureen O'Sullivan
----
"When we lose, I eat. When we win, I eat. I also
eat when we're rained out."
-- Tommy Lasorda
----
"I'd love to have my conk fixed. It's too big."
-- Princess Diana
----
"My wife and children are liabilites, and I haven't
sold them, have I?"
-- Ted Turner
----
"When I look at my children, I often wish I had
remained a virgin."
-- Lillian Carter
----
"I know there are nights when I have power, when I
could put on something and walk in somewhere, and
if there's a man who doesn't look at me, it's
because he's gay."
-- Kathleen Turner
----
"The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be
happy, the single wish to be married, and the
married wish to be dead."
-- Ann Landers
----
"I'll do anything for him! I love him very much!
Write that with very big letters!"
-- Brigitte Nielsen re: Sylvester
Stallone, 1985
----
"My father peddles opium,
My mother's on the dole.
My sister used to walk the streets
But now she's on parole.
My uncle plays with little girls;
My aunt, she raped a steer,
But they won't even speak to me
'cause I'm an engineer."
-- The MIT Engineers' Drinking Song
----
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and
then suddenly it flips over, pinning you
underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-- Matt Groening
----
"Some of Beethoven's favorite tunes are the works
of Mendelssohn, Handel, and Bon Jovi's 'Slippery
While Wet'."
-- Bill & Ted
----
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they
make as they fly by."
-- Douglas Adams
----
"I have enough money to last me the rest of my
life, unless I buy something."
-- Jackie Mason
----
"I refuse to believe that trading recipes is silly.
Tuna-fish casserole is at least as real as
corporate stock."
-- Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
----
"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the
food in museums."
-- Peter De Vries
----
"In literature as in love, we are astonished at
what is chosen by others."
-- Andre Maurois
----
"YUPPIES: <Y>es, <U>nder <P>eer <P>ressure <I>'ll
<E>at <S>hit"
-- Chris Squire
----
THANK GOD I'M A MONKEYBOY!
(sung to the tune of "Thank God I'm a Country Boy")
Well, I'm a Blue Blaze and I have a lotta fun,
A-settin' them Lectroid fellas on the run.
Stab 'em with a knife
Or shoot 'em with a gun...
Thank God I'm a monkeyboy.
Well, we got a boss and his name is Buckaroo.
He's a rock and roll musician and a neurosurgeon, too.
Get in any trouble
And he'll know just what to do...
Thank God I'm a monkeyboy.
Well, I got me a Go-Phone,
I got my inventions.
I got me a Jet-Car to go to conventions.
Mountains in the way?
We just use the Eighth Dimension!
Thank God I'm a monkeyboy.
-- Music: John Denver (Monkeyboy)
Lyrics: Blackjack (BBI)
Copyright 1989 by Savage
Music Division
----
"Doing what's right isn't the problem. It's
knowing what's right."
-- L.B.J.
----
"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else,
a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The
stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only
the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult
it is."
-- Willa Cather
----
"It's... Ghandi On Ice!"
"I'm starving for
attention, proclaiming
my dissension..."
[From WHAT'S ALLAN WATCHING?]
----
"For the last 14 years,
Mr. Ed has lived in a
small town in northern
California, where he
hosts a local radio
show."
"The subject tonight is
Nazi tranvestites. I'm
Mr. Ed; talk to me."
[From WHAT'S ALLAN WATCHING?]
----
"Free James Brown! Free
James Brown!"
"Hey! Why James Brown?
Why aren't you concerned
about Nelson Mandela?"
"Hey! We take care a' our
people -- you let the
Eye-talians worry about
Nelson Mandela!"
[From WHAT'S ALLAN WATCHING?]
----
"Oh, Frank, um... wear leather, OK? Love you,
babe."
[Vinnie tweaks Frank in WISEGUY]
----
"She used to be a superstar -- now she works for
you. Life can be cruel."
[...and Travis tweaks Vinnie in WISEGUY]
----
"...there's MARVEL PREMIERE which features
`Wholesome HOWIE' CHAYKIN..."
-- Marvel Hype Box, circa 1976
----
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly
considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure
wrongly considered."
-- G. K. Chesterton
----
"Truly great madness can not be achieved without
significant intelligence."
-- Henrik Tikkanen
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOONWALKER (CMV). As SCTV
would say, `Stay tuned for THE MAKING OF
MICHAEL JACKSON'S MOONWALKER, followed by THE
MAKING OF THE MAKING OF MICHAEL JACKSON'S
MOONWALKER.'"
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"SLIPPING INTO DARKNESS (Virgin). `Thrilling
action occurs when small-town girls seeking
big-time excitement accidentally kill a young
boy and must escape the vengeance of his biker
buddies.' You meet the nicest people on a
Honda."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"BUCKEYE AND BLUE (Academy). Two spoiled
teen-agers from the New York Academy for the
Performing Arts prance around in Civil War
duds and say `Yup,' `Nope,' and `Ah reckon.'
This really sucks."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"REDNECK ZOMBIES (TransWorld). Ad states
`Slobbering hillbillies drink some radioactive
brewsky and become cannibal kinfolk from
Hell!' Personally, I would reflect long and
hard before renting any movie that was shot in
`entrail-vision.'"
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"THE FEAR CHAMBER (Republic). Boris Karloff
and his daughter discover a super-intelligent,
subterranean rock that can only survive on the
blood of terrified human beings. Apparently
the rock plans to conquer the world, though it
spends most of its time watching bad topless
dancing."
----
"Looky hyar,
boys!"
"Golden bullets!"
"Hoo-hah!"
"This man is the
LONE STRANGER!"
[From the classic Kurtzman/Davis MAD parody of the Lone Ranger]
----
"Of the 500 or so films a year from all the
Hollywood sources during [the height of the studio
system] -- and I saw many of them when they were
released, some of them much more recently -- I
estimate that about two percent are worth the time
of a cultivated viewer today."
-- Stanley Kauffmann
----
Excerpt from the press conference where Lyndon LaRouche
supporters revealed a plot by the KGB and Department
of Justice to assassinate LaRouche:
"What documentation do you
have to prove the KGB/DOJ
murder plot?"
"Ohhh, ho ho! We're sure
all right."
-- Alex Heard, THE NEW REPUBLIC
----
DAN QUAYLE ON LATIN AMERICA, 2/4/89 New York Times:
"We expect them to work towards the
elimination of human rights, elimination of
human rights in accordance with the pursuit
of justice."
----
"For the love of
Jesus, Mr. Chiun."
"Now you've
done it."
"For Jesus? Oh, no.
We never got a
day's work from Him."
[Everyone's favorite Sinanju assassins, Remo and Chiun, from the DESTROYER]
----
"If you're not a player, you're not in the game."
[Vinnie Terrenova's mob motto on WISEGUY]
----
"Emotionally vulnerable women.... They eat this
sensitive crap up!"
-- Dan Fielding
----
"Remember, these terrorists are professionals.
Highly trained and well equipped. With their own
set of silly religious beliefs."
[There's nothing like three dinosaurs with semi-automatic weapons for
cleaning up terrorism. From DINOSAURS FOR HIRE.]
----
"Well done, Lads. In
record time, you killed
ALL of the terrorists.
Unfortunately, you've
killed all the hostages
as well."
"Awww. Does that mean
their boring life
stories won't be made
into a mini-series for
the May sweeps?"
[DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"For a cool half mil, I'd
be Elvis' love slave."
"He wouldn't *have* you.
You talk too much,
you're too skinny, and
you always want on top."
[It had to be said. DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"And as far as Burton
directing goes..."
"Oh, give it a rest."
[Siskel and Ebert beat on each over the directing choice for Batman, in THE
INCREDIBLE HULK]
----
"In what he called the 'great tradition of warnings
in presidential farewells,' Reagan reproached the
movies, television and young parents for failing
to indoctrinate American youth in 200-proof
patriotism, the way they did in his day. 'If we
forget what we did,' said the man who still can't
remember trading arms for hostages, 'we won't know
who we are.' The section ended with this weird
passage: 'And children , if your parents haven't
been teaching you what it means to be an American,
let 'em know and and nail 'em on it. That would
be a very American thing to do.'"
-- Hendrik Hertzberg
----
"Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every
argument could be opposed by another and we'd
never be done with it."
-- Albert Camus
----
"To write a good love letter, you ought to begin
without knowing what you mean to say, and to
finish without knowing what you have written."
-- Jean Jaques Rousseau
----
"The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up
at 7:30 in the morning feeling just plain
terrible."
-- Jean Kerr
----
"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few
people are interested and the frog dies of it."
-- E.B. White
----
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is
as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as
though everything is a miracle."
-- Albert Einstein
----
"Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak
before you think, creation's."
-- E.M. Forster
----
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their
melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part
of ourselves; we must die to one life before we
can enter another."
-- Anatole France
----
"Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and
fork?"
-- Stanislaw Lem
----
"Reason in man is rather like God in the world."
-- St. Thomas Aquinas
----
"Once the number three, being the third number, be
reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade
of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naught in
my sight, shall snuff it."
[Classic Python from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL]
----
SF Examiner's MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1988:
In a TV interview, House of Representatives
Republican leader Robert Michel bemoaned the end
of black-face minstrel shows, saying, "I used to
love to imitate Amos 'n Andy."
----
SF Examiner's MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1988:
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox Television
Network was presenting "The Late Show" hosted by
comedian Arsenio Hall, was approached by Hall in
the parking lot of a Los Angeles restaurant.
Murdoch handed Hall his valet parking stub and
said, "It's the green Jaguar."
----
SF Examiner's MOST IMPORTANT EVENTS OF 1988:
A spokesman for the California Board of Dental
Examiners revealed the board's enforcement
personnel carry guns because "There are some
dentists out there who have a criminal kind of
leaning."
----
"Voom???? That parrot wouldn't voom if you put
4000 volts through him. He's bleedin' demised...
This parrot is no more. He has ceased to be.
He's expired and gone to meet his maker. It's a
stiff - bereft of life, he rests in peace. If you
hadn't nailed him to the perch, it would have been
pushing up the daisies. He's off the twig. He's
shuffled off this mortal coil. He's run down the
curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible.
He's f**king snuffed it! Vis-a-vis the metabolic
processes, he's had 'is lot. All statements to
the effect that this parrot is still a going
concern are henceforth inoperative. This is an
EX-parrot."
[Classic Python: who can possibly forget the Parrot Sketch?]
----
"This calls for... Ludicrous Speed!"
[From a Trek parody, I think.]
----
"All you have to do is... Spot The Looney!"
[Python]
----
"Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue"
-- Oliver North
[...so support Ollie's philosophy, and send him to
the slammer...]
----
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I
craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a
meaningful vision of human life - so I became a
scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so
you can meet girls."
-- M. Cartmill
----
"Intel architectures build
character."
"Segments are for worms."
"Feh."
[Seen in another signoff line. I like it.]
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"JUNGLE HEAT (Interglobal). Lovable,
obscenity-spewing Peter Fonda teams up with
frigid, hard-working Deborah Raffin to track
down a homicidal, gooey 'lost tribe' who
look like midget Sons of Kong on bad
Electric Kool-Aid."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PIPPI LONGSTOCKING
(Columbia). For unfathomable reasons, these
Pippi movies have a fanatical following
among the New York punk underground. You
figure it out."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"PHANTASM II (MCA). To make up for featuring
The Tall Man (Angus Scrimm) for about ten
minutes, this languid sequel spotlights some
fairly graphic nudity. Problem is you're
never really sure if the androgynous actor
in question is a man or a woman, and that
takes a lot of the fun out of it."
----
"I'm the world's first fully-functioning homicidal
artist."
[The Joker in the BATMAN movie]
----
"I wear a cape. You take pictures. It is not a
perfect world."
[Bruce Wayne philosophizes to his girlfriend in BATMAN]
----
"Well, ladies, I've got
some good news and some
bad news. The good news
is that your dates are
here."
"What's the bad news?"
"They're dead."
[From the classic NIGHT OF THE CREEPS]
----
"If some guy is 6-foot-5 with gigantic muscles and
incredibly handsome, why does he need to put on a
batsuit? Why doesn't he just put on a ski mask
and kick the crap out of people?"
-- Tim Burton, director of BATMAN
----
"Such is the popularity of the president that the
people will support him in whatever he will do or
will not do, without appealing to their own reason
or to anything but their feelings toward him."
-- Thomas Jefferson
----
"God grant me the serenity to fix the bugs I find,
and to call the rest features."
[Seen in a signoff line, uncredited]
----
"What goes up must come down. Ask any system
administrator."
[Seen in a signoff line, uncredited]
----
"Curse you, Inspector Dim. You are too clever for
us naughty people."
[Monty Python's Dim! (DIM of the YARD!)]
----
"Democracy takes time. Dictatorship is faster...
but too many people get shot."
[From the excellent BBC production, "A Very British Coup"]
----
"The Americans want blood -- it's in their
upbringing. They watch too many Westerns in their
formative years."
[From the excellent BBC production, "A Very British Coup"]
----
"Shush, Pokey! At a time
like this, NO job is less
important than the next!"
"What about those guys
who hand out towels in
the locker rooms?"
[GUMBY AND POKEY'S WINTER FUN SPECIAL, where Gumby and Pokey go to Heck]
----
[Sung to Billy Joel's "The Longest Time"]
When I next return from time and space
I might have a somewhat different face
Don't start debating
I've been off regenerating
That only happens
For a Lord of Time.
-- Peter David
----
"I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit
television show, which would be called `A Live
Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'."
-- Dave Barry
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Jan. 9th
In a decision that will later prove to be a
tragic mistake, Massachusetts Gov. Michael
Dukakis approves a prison furlough for U.S.
Attorney General Edwin Meese.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Feb. 3rd
Suspected drug trafficker Manuel Noriega
purchases a full-page advertisement for
"mail-order narcotics" in My Weekly Reader.
Observant U.S. foreign-policy experts examine
this possible clue with magnifying glasses and
secret decoder rings.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Feb. 16th
Primary election day finally dawns in New
Hampshire as thousands of voters go to the
polls, read the names of the leading
presidential contenders, then lie down in the
snow to die.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Feb. 17th
The Winter Olympics are marred by suspicions of
possible drug abuse after Ular Bforgsen of
Norway wins the ski jump with a leap of 14,768
feet.
----
Jeff Meyer
"Dear Emily --- BINGO!!"
[From STRAY TOASTERS]
----
"Guess what I'm in for."
"Uhh..."
"Wait! I'll give you a
hint..."
[From HEARTBREAK COMICS]
----
"Justice and solidarity feel good. In the end."
[A comment on the price of liberty. From AARGH!]
----
"I happen to be a baseball fan; I root against both
teams."
-- Studs Terkel
----
"If people behaved in the way nations do they would
all be put in straitjackets."
-- Tennessee Williams
----
"The young man who has not wept is a savage, and
the old man who will not laugh is a fool."
-- George Santayana
----
"Don't fight forces; use them."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
----
"Could ye use a little
water in your whiskey?"
"When ay drink whiskey,
ay drink whiskey, an'
when ay drink water, ay
drink water."
[Maureen O'Sullivan and Barry Fitzgerald in THE QUIET MAN, begorra.]
----
[A photo is displayed of Senator Dan Quayle
holding a pumpkin to the left of his head.]
"Here's an Update Quiz: what's the difference
between these two spherical objects? The
answer is: eventually, the one on the left will
have a light in it."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
Meg Ryan, and Tracy Pollan. And they all
look alike. And they're all made of
ticky-tacky."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
cartoon adventures of a hyper-active cat and
an anally retentive mouse. For some reason,
Simon and Garfunkle originally recorded
under this name!"
----
"Oh, what's the sound of the world out there?..."
"What, Mr. Todd, what, Mr. Todd, What is that
sound?"
"Those crunching noises Pervading the air!"
"Yes, Mr. Todd, yes, Mr. Todd, yes, all around!"
"It's man devouring man, my dear,"
"...and who are we to deny it IN HERE?!"
-- Stephen Sondheim, SWEENY TODD
----
"The history of the world, my love..."
"Save a lot of graves, do a lot of relatives
favors..."
"Is those below serving those up above!"
"Everybody shaves so there should plenty of
flavors!"
"How gratifying for once to know,"
"That those above will serve those DOWN BELOW!"
-- Stephen Sondheim, SWEENY TODD
----
"The history of the world, my sweet..."
"Oh, Mr. Todd, ooh, Mr. Todd, what does it tell?"
"...is who gets eaten and who gets to eat!"
"And, Mr. Todd, too, Mr. Todd, who gets to sell!"
"But fortunately it's all so clear,"
"THAT EVERYBODY GOES DOWN WELL WITH BEER!"
-- Stephen Sondheim, SWEENY TODD
----
"It's not enough knowing good from rotten..."
"You're telling me."
"When something new pops up every day."
"You're telling me!"
"It's only new, though, for now..."
"Nouveau!"
"But yesterday's forgotten..."
"...and tomorrow is already passe!"
"There's no surprise."
"That is the state of the art, my friend!
That is the state of the art!"
-- Stephen Sondheim,
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE
----
"Ladies and gentlemen, the question you have to ask
yourselves on November 8th is whose judgement do
you trust? Do you trust the judgement of a man
who traded arms to the Ayatollah and used that
money to fund an illegal war in Central America,
or do you trust a son of Greek immigrants, who can
think and talk in complete sentences?"
[From the Bush-Dukakis debate satire on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE]
----
"You know, I'm beginning to think that the Right To
Life movement in this country believes that life
officially begins when you agree with *them*."
-- Dennis Miller
----
"The NBC Today Show and Olympic host Bryan Gumbel's
ego applied for statehood today. If granted, it
would become our 51st state, and 9th largest."
-- Dennis Miller
----
"And the fifth-highest grossing film in America
this week is YOUNG GUNS, the new film where
everybody in it is Martin Sheen's son, but nobody
has the same last name."
-- Dennis Miller
----
"Gov. Dukakis, rebuttal?"
"I can't believe I'm
losing to this guy."
[From the Bush-Dukakis debate satire on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE]
----
NATIONAL ENQUIRER headline:
"Reagan sees UFO and orders his pilot: Follow it!"
----
"None of this is bad for America, is it?"
[COCOON]
----
"Sorry, I don't perform except at dinner."
-- Stephen Sondheim, MERRILY WE
ROLL ALONG
----
"I like trees because they seem more resigned to
the way they have to live than other things do."
-- Willa Cather
----
"All human wisdom is summed up in two words -- wait
and hope."
-- Alexandre Dumas the Elder
----
"No human being can really understand another, and
no one can arrange another's happiness."
-- Graham Greene
----
"Bowling?"
"You know. Thats where a
big black thing knocks
down a lot of little
white things."
"That sounds like the
A-Team to me."
[Keith "Badger" Vallenti found this on a channel flip, from Don Adam's CHECK
IT OUT]
----
"George Bush, you have
just been elected
president of the United
States. What are you
going to do now?"
"I'm going to go to
Disneyland!"
[A parody of the Disneyland ads, off of rec.arts.tv]
----
"A brave man dies only once, while a coward dies
only once also. It's just that the brave man gets
it over with more quickly."
-- C. E. Whitfield
----
"I recall my exact words: `There's a pile of
dinosaur eggs over there, youngster,' I said,
smiling paternally the while. `Get sucking.'"
[Alan Moore, V FOR VENDETTA]
----
"That's what this country needs -- just a little
more light cast in the right places."
[From OUTLANDER]
----
"Just what the country needs -- more insurgent
teams."
[From OUTLANDER]
----
"I shall rend you LIMB
from LIMB!"
"Hey -- could someone
give me a hand here? I'm
about to be rended..."
[The usual JLI nonsense]
----
"You're zooming up like a comet,
Your ears are starting to ring;
Your neighbor's starting to vomit,
There's ice along the wing.
As you wait for your palms to dry,
You see your whole life flash by,
And they tell you it's fun to fly!
Your chance to survive is so remote
You're far better off to cut your throat,
But who has the time to take the boat?
What do we do? We fly!
-- Stephen Sondheim, DO I HEAR A WALTZ?
----
"The shiny stuff is tomatoes,
The salad lies in a group;
The curly stuff is potatoes,
The stuff that moves is soup.
Anything that is white is sweet,
Anything that is brown is meat,
Anything that is grey... don't eat.
But what do we do? We fly!"
-- Stephen Sondheim, DO I HEAR A WALTZ?
----
"The seat was throwing my back out,
But there I was with a book;
When suddenly there's a black-out
And everywhere I look
There's a close-up of DORIS DAY!
Ninety minutes of DORIS DAY!
There was nothing to do but pray...
And what do we do? We fly!"
-- Stephen Sondheim, DO I HEAR A WALTZ?
----
"What's hard is simple,
What's natural, comes hard.
Maybe you could show me,
How to let go,
Lower my guard,
Learn to be....free.
Maybe if you whistle...
Whistle for me."
-- Stephen Sondheim, ANYONE CAN WHISTLE
----
"It's not so hard to be married,
When two manuver as one;
It's not so hard to be married,
And, Jesus Christ, is it fun."
-- Stephen Sondheim, COMPANY
----
"Best trust the happy moments... The days that make
us happy make us wise."
-- John Masefield
----
"The great man is he who does not lose his child's
heart."
-- Mencius
----
"When our first parents were driven out of
Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to
Eve: `My dear, we live in an age of transition.'"
-- Dean William R. Inge
----
Bankers' Hours: That part of the day when it is
too hot to play golf.
[Fortunes program]
----
"I'm not against women. Not often enough, anyway."
[Groucho Marx?]
----
"They used Raoul Mitgong, but he didn't help
much..."
--Harlan Ellison
----
"Only the toes knows."
-- Mel Proffit
----
Regarding Robin, the Boy Wonder:
"I mean the kid lives with a millionaire,
apparently only goes to school on alternate
Wednesdays, gets to stay up all night, and
beats up adults regularly. Who could ask for
more?"
-- Fred Bals
----
"Now, for use with your child's 'My Little Pony'
playset, the 'My Little Pet Food Processing
Plant!' -- from Real World Toys, caring about your
child's future."
[Saw this on the net, and I'm not sure who originated it]
----
"This is a revolution, damn it! We're going to
have to offend SOMEbody!"
-- John Adams, 1776
----
"He's dead. Murdered! And someone's responsible!"
[PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE]
----
"I have the heart of a little boy.
I keep it in a jar on my desk."
--Robert Bloch
----
"Take this cross and garlic -- here's a Mezuza in
case he's Jewish -- a page of the Koran if he's
Muslim... and if he's a Zen Buddhist, you're on
your own."
[Im-ple-ments of destruction for undead (vampires, that is) in BADGER]
----
"He's a bloodsucker, all right, but not the kind
we're looking for. This man is an I.R.S. agent."
[The Badger, Ham and a Van Helsing pig stalk vampires in BADGER]
----
"Yes, sir, just Top-Forty Beatle CLASSICS!
[What ah woosie.]"
[From HONKEYTONK SUE]
----
"...and Doc Holliday ends
up in the front row of a
Led Zeppelin concert..."
"So THIS is hell."
[From HONKEYTONK SUE]
----
"Gud, marry me, or I'll kick yer ass."
-- Honkeytonk Sue
----
"I hereby sentence you to live in Blythe,
California in a house with an airpad cooler, until
you are dead, or wish you were."
[From HONKEYTONK SUE]
----
"It was all very
impressive, but the State
of Arizona built an
air-tight case..."
"This woman does not own
ONE Willie Nelson
tape... OR album. NOT
ONE!"
[From HONKEYTONK SUE]
----
"Bondage... what's
bondage?"
"He's from Flagstaff."
"Oh."
[Bruce Babbit poses a question in HONKEYTONK SUE]
----
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then
to hang a question mark on the things you have
long taken for granted."
-- Bertrand Russell
----
"The bigger the information media, the less courage
and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."
-- Eric Sevareid
----
"It has always been true that in the United States
the people who ought to read books write them."
-- Gore Vidal
[Editor's note: Now if Vidal would only take his
own advice...]
----
"Sure, you're right, it's easy to find flaws.
`Sure,' America says to the critic, `it's easy to
tear down, but you can't build up, can you? The
suffering and labor of the artist mean nothing to
you, do they Mr. Ian Shoales? You don't believe
in anything,' America screams, `except the sound
of your own voice!' Well, calm down, America.
Lighten up. Unclench those hardworking fists."
-- Ian Shoales
----
"I admit it freely -- I'm not a positive thinker.
On STAR TREK, the beautiful alien with the green
hair and the taut belly would always say to
Captain Kirk, `Oh one called Jim, what is this
thing you call a kiss?' If that alien were here
today (and in my Perfect World, believe me, she
would be), she would gaze at me lovingly and say,
`Oh one called Ian, what is this thing you call a
sneer?' That's the kind of guy I am. Captain
Kirk and I both want the same thing: the
whole-hearted devotion of a naive alien. And if
certain things stand in our way -- Klingons for
Kirk, reality for me -- well, we just have to suck
in our guts, set the phasers on Stun, and hope for
the best."
-- Merle Kessler, IAN SHOALES'
PERFECT WORLD
----
"And cruelist of all, I've learned that the bucks
in this criticism thing just aren't what they
should be. I figure if I'm not gonna make any
jack in my chosen profession, the least I can do
is vent my spleen. My motto is VENT FOR THOSE WHO
CAN'T."
-- Ian Shoales
----
"As the roadies say before the concert, `Let's
carve this turkey.'"
-- Ian Shoales
----
"I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going,
but I'm on my way."
-- Carl Sandburg
----
"There is nothing stronger in this world than
gentleness."
-- Han Suyin
----
"I braved the contempt of my friends last week and
ventured out to see _Bambi_, the Disney rerelease
that is proving to be a hit once again in the box
office. I was looking forward to a gentle,
soothing, late afternoon relief from the
Washington Summer. Instead I was traumatized. As
a psycho-sexual return to the horrors of early
adolescence, it couldn't be more effective. For
the first half-hour, you're lulled into an
agreeable sense of security and comfort. Birds
twitter; small rabbits turn out to be great
conversationalists. Pop is what Senator Moynihan
would describe as an absent father, but Mom's
there to make you feel OK in the odd thunderstorm.
You make great friends, fool around on the ice,
discover the meadow, generally mellow out. Then,
without any particular warning, your mom gets
shot, your voice breaks, huge growths start
appearing on your head, and your peers start
heading off into the clover with the apparent
intention of having sex. Next thing you know, the
forest burns down. If I were still eight, I think
I'd prefer _Rambo III_."
-- Townsend Davis
----
"You hear a lot of dialogue on the death of the
American family. Families aren't dying. They're
merging into big conglomerates."
-- Erma Bombeck
----
"Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to
light the fraternity of strangers."
-- Victor Hugo
----
"A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he
has a right not only to be right but also to be
wrong."
-- Thomas Szasz
----
"You McPike?"
"Most of my life. In 3rd
grade I was Batman, but
that seems to have
passed."
[One of Frank McPike's best droll comments, from WISEGUY]
----
"Roger Rabbit's wife! My goodness! Such...
AMPLE... drawing!"
[Jarvis, the butler for the Mighty AVENGERS, comments on a popular movie]
----
"Lord Hermes, is it true
you can conjure up
*anything*?"
"Yes."
"Awesome! Do y'know what
a video entertainment
center is?"
[Yes, having an Olympian God around the house is handy. WONDER WOMAN]
----
"B-r-r-other! What good is having a god around if
you can't get any FUN out of it?"
[From George Perez's WONDER WOMAN]
----
"The sound of harps... of
organs... of cascading
violins."
"What about Def Lepard?
They got Def Lepard?"
[Heavan described to a generation of vidiots. From THE SHADOW]
----
"It suddenly occurs to me, Hong, that if THESE are
American tourists, I would certainly hate to
engage their military..."
[OK, when was the last time YOU invaded China? From THE SHADOW]
----
"You do not know?! Have you never
heard the tales of the man from
the East -- A frightful creature
of the night -- with the POWER to
cloud the minds of men... and the
FURY to obliterate Evil with a
single sweep of his terrible
hand?!"
"Frankly, Hong...
no."
"Nor I."
"Perhaps if you
were more
specific..."
[Brilliant hyperbole from THE SHADOW]
----
"That's the trouble with `mindless slaves'...
they're, well, *mindless*!"
[Dr. Quest points out those little problems with world domination. JONNY QUEST]
----
"Seems like, lately, everybody with four guys and a
proton accelerator thinks they can rule the world.
No offense."
[A lucid point from Race Bannon in JONNY QUEST]
----
"No more ice cream ever, ever, ever again."
[Hallucinations and chocolate chip -- or is it real? THE MYSTERY MAN]
----
"[The Republicans'] platform was 30,000 words long,
3,000 of which was the word 'God'."
[Mark Russell]
----
[Sung to the tune of The Flinstones Theme]
"Team-sters, we're the Team-sters,
We're just one happy family!
Gambino and Celerno...
Make that two happy families!
'Nolo contendre', that's our Teamsters song!
Cops and Robbers -- we play it all day long!
Teamsters, love the Teamsters!
Support us if you please,
Or else we'll break your knees,
Have you hugged a Teamster today?"
-- Mark Russell
----
"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies
and chase them before you, to rob them of their
wealth and to see those dear to them bathed in
tears, to ride their horses and to clasp to your
bosom their wives and daughters."
-- Ghengis Kahn, civic leader and
Bud man
----
"All progress is based upon a universal innate
desire on the part of every living organism to
live beyond its income."
-- Samuel Butler
----
"It is not uncommon in a Republican convention hall
for delegates to gather in menacing clumps around
the press gallery, shaking their fists and shouting
imprecations. (When this happened in Dallas in
1984, some of us fantasized about picking up our
friend Ben Wattenberg bodily and tossing him over
the side into the angry crowd with a cry of "Get
'im! He's a Democrat!" Wattenberg would've had
only a split second to convince the engraged
delegates that while he may look like a Democrat,
he actually supports the Contras, the Reagan
Doctrine, Star Wars, etc. But Wattenberg is such a
nice guy that we didn't have the heart.)"
-- Hendrik Hertzberg
----
"Our parents were of Midwestern stock and very
strict. They didn't want us to grow up to be
spoiled and rich. If we left our tennis racquets
in the rain, we were punished."
-- Nancy Ellis, George Bush's
sister
----
"A duel to the death!"
"Dr. Science!"
"Okay, until we get tired
and grumpy."
[From the DR. SCIENCE TV show]
----
"If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't
grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a
temporary surrender of security."
-- Gail Sheehy
----
"We must believe in luck. For how else can we
explain the success of those we don't like?"
-- Jean Cocteau
----
"I don't make jokes -- I just watch the government
and report the facts."
-- Will Rogers
----
"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but
not enough to make us love one another."
-- Jonathan Swift
----
"It's odd that you can get so anesthetized to your
own pain or your own problem that you don't quite
fully share the hell of someone close to you."
-- Lady Bird Johnson
----
"Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery."
-- Jack Paar
----
"The healthy, the strong individual, is the one who
asks for help when he needs it, whether he's got
an abscess on his knee or his soul."
-- Rona Barrett
----
"[Michael Dukakis is] a card-carrying member of the
A.C.L.U., a group [which is] pretty far out in
left field [and does not reflect] Texas values."
-- George Bush
----
"Strange, when you think of it, that of all the
countless folks who have lived before our time on
this planet not one is known in history or legend
as having died of laughter."
-- Sir Max Beerbohm
----
"A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful
presence: I do not know. What I do know is that he
has a perfectly delightful absence."
-- Idries Shah
----
"When the writer becomes the center of his
attention, he becomes a nudnik. And a nudnik who
believes he's profound is even worse than just a
plain nudnik."
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
----
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making
a few failures early in life."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
----
"MS-DOS isn't dead, it just smells that way."
-- Henry Spencer
----
"Today I'm not a doctor, but you can call me one.
Some folks call it 'science', but I just call it fun.
Upon my every statement you can have complete reliance;
I know more than *you* do -- Call me Dr. Science!"
[The last lines to the Dr. Science theme]
----
"You will curse the day you did not do
All that the Phantom asked of you!"
[I think -- I think -- this is from THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (the musical)]
----
"I say we blow the crap
out of it and torch the
joint."
"Don't be bloody DAFT.
This is a Terror
Elemental -- not a rival
biker gang."
[John Constantine and friend in HELLBLAZER]
----
"DO WHAT YOU'RE TOLD, YOU DAMN FISH!!"
[Aquaman]
----
"I must admit, I *like* five-to-one odds."
[the JLA]
----
"HAIR-PULLING?! You're
actually indulging in
HAIR-PULLING?! What kind
of a Green Lantern are
you, anyway?"
"The kind that eats punks
like you for
*breakfast*!"
[Guy Gardner in JLI]
----
"Always keep your bowler on in times of stress.
And watch out for diabolical masterminds."
[Emma Peel's parting comment to John Steed on THE AVENGERS]
----
"A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or
15 years."
-- Harry Truman
----
"I'm not a pushover, believe me. I laugh at
HAMLET."
-- Billy Wilder
----
"Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single
amiable trait."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"You're not exactly Little Mary Sunshine yourself,
Bernie."
-- Moi
----
"Ain't that just like a tin-pot dictator! Calling
in the faceless hordes when things get rough!
Faceless horde is my middle name!"
[The Badger, in NEXUS]
----
"Honest Crocus worships at the font of free
enterprise."
[NEXUS]
----
"So... I can save the solar system. But not a
friend. This job isn't worth a tinker's damn."
[NEXUS]
----
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just..."
-- Thomas Jefferson
----
"The gorilla had an 800-word "vocabulary."
Apparently a new record in the animal intelligence
racket. I wasn't impressed. I had a nephew into
Motley Crue that could speak 850 easy."
[THE AMERICAN]
----
Unemployed? Hungry? Eat a foreign car.
[Seen on a bumper sticker]
----
"Say, Ralph, what do you
think of those
Cardinals?"
"I think they're
terrific, Jim. I love
the way they use black
smoke to signal that
they haven't picked a
Pope and..."
"No, Ralph, no."
[Ralph Dinby, THE ELONGONATED MAN]
----
"What do I care for the C.I.A. Director's tawdry
affairs? I'm on the trail of Satan himself!"
[I dunno -- ask Tom Galloway, it was one of his]
----
"The stupid are deaf to the truth; they hear, but
think that the wisdom applies to someone else."
-- Heraclitus
----
"Do you know back at the turn of the century how
long it took to cross Manhattan on horse? What
the average speed was? Seven miles an hour. You
what it is today? Exactly the same, seven miles
an hour."
-- John Denver
----
"Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."
-- Robert Frost
----
"Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it
comes late in life."
-- Lord Byron
----
"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches
itself."
-- Albert Camus
----
"Look! Sunglasses! EXACTLY like the ones worn by
the American Don Johnson!"
[Several Chinese Army guards find evidence in THE SHADOW]
----
"I-I-I didn't know they
were carnivorous!"
"Or expert shots!"
[DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"Permit me to introduce myself. My name's Dracula,
Lord of the Undead. God, I do love the way that
sounds."
[DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"Besides, my teeth aren't what they used to be. I
have some weird degenerate gum disease. It turns
out even the Undead have to floss."
[Dracula discusses problems of the modern vamipire in DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"Not bad. Were you aiming
for the Ferarri?"
"Yeah, but I thought it
would have made a bigger
dent."
[A large tyrannosaurus and Dracula discuss trajectories in DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"You forgot to read your fortune cookie... It
says... you're shit out of luck."
[Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry in THE DEAD POOL]
----
"The following program contains language which may
be offensive enough to knock a buzzard off a
shitwagon."
[A cartoon I saw]
----
"Do they still keep track
of me at the Agency?"
"We heard you married
some old Nazi."
"He was NOT a Nazi -- he
was Austrian."
"So was Hitler."
"Yes, but *he* had no
sense of humor."
[A wonderful exchange between Glenda Jackson and Walter Matthau in
HOPSCOTCH, a film well worth searching out]
----
"Its public knowledge that you dislike small
animals and children, Luthor."
[Some SUPERMAN comic -- I didn't read it, someone else used it as a signoff
line]
----
"I have discovered that all human evil comes from
this, man's being unable to sit still in a room."
-- Blaise Pascal
----
"If you're going to do something tonight that
you'll be sorry for in the morning, sleep late."
-- Henny Youngman
----
"After decades of "Masterpiece Theater" decline,
deferent workers cheering dim royals, and legions
of garden fetishists whose idea of fun was a
gentle discussion of acidity levels in the
topsoil, the class system is finally getting
shaken up. There are happier consequences of this
than violence, of course, but the hooligan revival
is at least a reminder that there's now no
shortage of Britons successful enough to deserve
beating up and plenty of others self-confident
enough to do it."
-- Andrew Sullivan
----
"Spock, maybe your
reknowned Vulcan logic
can get Jim to rest. God
know he never listens to
me."
"Do not take it
personally, Dr. McCoy.
*None* of us listens to
you."
[A classic exchange between Spock and McCoy in the STAR TREK comic]
----
"Oh, come ON! A one-man
religion?"
"There is no other kind."
[From THE QUESTION]
----
"Okay, Sister, I never
hurt a nun before..."
"Undt you won't hurt one
now, you little turd."
[A street punk addressing a transexual, form Nazi nun nicknamed "Sister
Twyster." From THE BADGER]
----
"Are you Catholic?"
"Episcopalian, and not
very."
"Ja, ja. Agnoztic."
[From THE BADGER]
----
"I'll keep 'em off your Holy Ass as long as you're
in Wisconsin."
[From THE BADGER]
----
"Vhat are you doing?"
"I was preparing to
divine trends in
business software
through the ritual
sacrifice of AT&T's
Consumer Memory Banks.
Will you assist me?"
"Wiss pleasure!"
"It's more humane than
animal sacrifices and
infinitely more
rewarding!"
[From THE BADGER]
----
"Strangers may laugh at him behind his back, but
still he saves their lives!"
[That could only describe... THE FLAMING CARROT!]
----
"You should always read the instructions first,
Uncle Billy!"
[FLAMING CARROT offers some good advice to Uncle Billy re: his mail-order
jungle bride]
----
"Senators, TV crews and the nation in general are
mystified when, on the third day, Flaming Carrot
shows a Star Trek blooper reel on behalf of the
defense..."
[FLAMING CARROT at the Senate Hearings]
----
"Meanwhile... the Carrot
is using his keen but
unorthodox crimefighting
techniques..."
"Are you a gangster?"
[FLAMING CARROT]
----
"I loved you... loved you as much as any American
used car dealer could..."
[Uncle Billy laments in FLAMING CARROT COMICS]
----
"The summit meeting has also allowed a warm
personal relationship to blossom between the two
world leaders. This warmth was evident right from
their first joint press conference, where
Gorbachev offered, as a gesture of his friendship
toward Reagan, to have Sam Donaldson shot."
--Dave Barry
----
"Dave Sim appears in dark glasses and talks like
he's been up for three days doing God knows what,
which is kind of how you like to think of Dave
Sim."
-- Rob Rodi
----
"I didn't resolve the questions... and I find that
entertaining. And if my life were to end
tomorrow, it would be fulfilled in that manner. I
would say, 'The questions have been terrific.'"
-- Jack Kirby on his work
----
"I don't often make a mistake, but when I do, it's
a beaut."
-- Fiorello La Guardia
----
"I'm sick of taking falls
And bouncing off the walls;
Without that gun
I'd have some fun
And kick you in the..."
"Hey, dat doesn't rhyme
wit 'walls'!"
"No, but THIS does!"
>*KRUNCH!*<
[Eddie Valiant in ROGER RABBIT]
----
"As a last restort, we can
always sic Les Nesman on
them."
"My God... that could
signal the end of
organized religon as we
know it."
[WKRP IN CINCINATTI]
----
"Whenever I'm faced with a difficult situation, I
like to ask myself what my idol, Edward R. Murrow,
would think; and I think Ed would call this
censorship.
"But I also ask myself what my other hero, General
George Patton, would think; and I think George
would believe this country needs to be cleaned up.
Why, if George were alive today, he'd take two
armored tank divisions into Hollywood and knock
those liberal pinheads into the ocean!
"So, as you can see, I'm a very confused man. And
when I'm confused, there's only one thing that
makes me feel better: I watch TV."
-- Les Nesman
[WKRP IN CINCINATTI]
----
"Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for
love, and then for a few close friends, and then
for money."
-- Moliere
----
"I don't mind you *thinking* I'm stupid, but don't
*talk* to me like I'm stupid."
-- Harlan Ellison
----
"There, but for the grace of God, goes God."
-- Herman Mankiewicz on Orson Welles
----
"What do you know about
show business, Mr.
Valiant?"
"Only that there's no
business like it... no
business I know."
[Eddie Valiant in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?]
----
"A Toon killed his brother... dropped a piano on
his head."
[WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?]
----
"A ladies man, eh?"
"The problem is, I gotta
fifty-year-old lust and
a three-year-old dinky."
[WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?]
----
"I'm not bad... I'm just drawn that way."
[WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?]
----
"Haven't seen you for nigh
onto three years. Where
you been, Eddie?"
"Drunk. Feeling frisky
tonight, boys?"
[WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?]
----
"A good many things go around in the dark besides
Santa Claus."
-- Hoover
----
Jeff Meyer
The first sign of maturity is the discovery that
the volume knob also turns to the left.
[Anonymous]
----
"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of
listening when you'd have preferred to talk."
-- Doug Larson
----
"Been through Hell? Whaddya bring back for me?"
-- A. Brilliant
----
"Yow! That Sklar guy
leaves a road behind
him!"
"Good! Look for a
McDonald's!"
[The Badger makes another cognizant observation, in NEXUS]
----
"You're a lot of GRIEF, Badge. I'm going to write
you with tight underwear, or something."
[Creator Mike Baron harangues the Badger...]
----
"But I can't excuse that FLASH GORDON review. That
was the *dumbest* movie ever made."
[A fan of Baron's who can't excuse just *one* little thing]
----
"I don't know what their
gripe is. A critic is
simply someone paid to
render opinions glibly."
"Critics are grinks and
groinks."
[Baron and Badger]
----
"I used to do movie
reviews in town. They
never forgave me for
liking FLASH GORDON."
"You must be nuts. I
liked it, too."
[ditto]
----
"It's true... I consume 47 times my own weight in
fast-food burgers. They call me the human
Rolaid."
[ditto]
----
"As Mayor of Houston, it gives me great pleasure to
award you this Texas Freedom Award and a gold
Neiman Marcus charge card."
[Foo-fa-raa in BADGER]
----
"Quick! A Mai-Tai!"
[ditto]
----
"If you wants something cheap, try McCrory's."
[ditto]
----
"That buffalo is the greatest figure skater I've
ever seen! I must sign him to STAR in my next
show!"
[ditto]
----
"HEY, LARRY! DITCH THE JACKET!"
[ditto]
----
"Hey, I think his heart
has stopped."
"Let's give him a few
more minutes."
[Penny and Hopey discussing the results of a sexual encounter in LOVE & ROCKETS]
----
"Why, I'd recognize those boobs anywhere."
[Hopey spots Penny in LOVE & ROCKETS]
----
"Israel today announced that it is giving up. The
Zionist state will dissolve in two weeks time, and
its citizens will disperse to various resort
communities around the world. Said Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir, 'Who needs the aggravation?'"
-- Dennis Miller, SNL News
----
"Bush? OK, he's experienced, but he's never going
to be a GREAT liar. He can hardly bamboozle Dan
Rather. How's he going to do up against
bloodthirsty, power-mad dictator, like Margaret
Thatcher?"
-- A. Whitney Brown
----
"And, of course, you have the commercials where
savvy businesspeople Get Ahead by using their
MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate
American business product: a really sharp-looking
report."
-- Dave Barry
----
"All you Klingons, you want to ravage helpless
Earthwomen. Brute."
[They really should have named this, "I Married a Klingon." From DC's STAR TREK]
----
"SHOP OR DIE, people of Earth!
[offer void where prohibited]"
[Capitalists from outer space! From the JLI]
----
"I'm shouting again. I've got to watch that."
[One of said invaders worrying about appearances....]
----
"Roman Polanski makes his own blood. He's smart --
that's why his movies work."
[A brilliant director at FRANK'S PLACE]
----
"I'll get my revenge on all of society! I'll build
a mighty criminal empire!"
[Mobieus's career criminal]
----
"Badger! Grab something
and *hang on*!"
"Right-Oh! I'm hanging
onto this 1890 Liberty
Head Silver Dollar!"
[Badge, Judah and Nexus battening down the hatches, from NEXUS]
----
"Avast, ye slobs! Deploy the mizzen mast! Rotate
the rubber baby buggy bumpers!"
[ditto]
----
"Well, I read somewhere
that to kill a vampire,
you have to behead it and
fill its mouth with holy
wafers."
"Really?"
"I knew you'd like that."
[The fun part is AFTER you drive the stake through the heart. HERO SANDWICH]
----
"You know, you're more in need of a blow job than
any other white man in the history of the human
race."
[Robin Williams, GOOD MORNING VIETNAM]
----
"The following is not for the weak of heart or
Fundamentalists."
[Dave Barry]
----
"Maybe there is not one damn villain in the
world..."
[The Question]
----
"Gee... these guys really ARE impervious!"
[The Badger vs. demon bike gangs from Hell. Guess who wins?]
----
"General, a machine becomes human when you can't
tell the difference."
[From D.A.R.Y.L.]
----
"Taste cold justice, you direputable
henchman-types!"
[Holy Melodrama -- it's Bat-Bat! (From Bakshi's MIGHTY MOUSE series)]
----
"Butter becomes weightless?.... Raymond Burr must
be in orbit by now."
[Ditto]
----
I think it's part of a corporate discipline
program for Disney executives:
"Johnson, your department is
over budget again. You know
what that means."
"No! Please!"
"Yes! Into the Goofy suit!"
-- Dave Barry
----
The spokesperson told me that one of the hot toys
for boys this year, once again, is the G.I. Joe
action figure and "accessories," which is the toy
industry code word for guns, as in: "Don't nobody
move! I got an accessory!"
-- Dave Barry
----
"I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus,
help me find a bargain.'"
--Tammy Faye Bakker
----
It's safe to vote for Gary Hart, but only if you
wear a condom.
[From an article in the NEW REPUBLIC]
----
GARY HART:
Living proof that your really *can* fuck
your brains out.
[From an article in the NEW REPUBLIC]
----
"Well, here we are in the
Phillipines!"
"Drawn without reference
material, apparently."
[The superbly loony SAM AND MAX]
----
"Holy jumping Mother O' God in a sidecar with
chocolate Jimmies and a Lobster Bib!"
[Ditto]
----
"We must teach him, Max!
Hey, where do you *keep*
that gun?"
"None of your damn
business, Sam."
[Ditto]
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- Nov. 12th
In continuing media coverage of the Character
Issue, presidential candidates named Bruce
"Dick" Babbitt and Albert "Dick" Gore Jr.
state that they have tried marijuana, but no
longer use it. "Now we just drink gin till
we throw up," they state.
George Bush reveals that he tried to smoke
marijuana, but nobody would give him any.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- Oct. 23rd
The Senate rejects Bork. President Reagan,
informed of this by his aides, angrily
responds: "Who?"
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- Oct. 8th
Three hundred prominent law professors sign a
petition stating that Supreme Court nominee
Robert Bork has "a weenie beard."
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- Sept. 28th
In the Persian Gulf, tensions mount as a U.S.
gunboat engages in a scuffle with actor Sean
Penn.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- August 20th
In Miami, alert Metrorail police arrest a
woman for permitting her child to eat a
Vienna sausage. Bystanders applaud this
courageous law-enforcement action by firing
their revolvers into the air.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- August 10th
As "Ollie-mania" continues to sweep the
country, one of the most popular video-arcade
games in the country is a new one called --
this is true -- "Contra." The way it works
is, there are are two soldiers on the screen,
and when you put in a quarter, it never gets
to them.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- June 29th
In Wimbledon action, John McEnroe kills a
line judge and is given a stern warning.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- May 17th
The U.S. Navy frigate Stark is attacked by
an Iraqi jet, which, under our extremely
clear Mideast policy, causes us to prepare
for violent confrontation with Iran.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- May 5th
The Iran-Contra hearings begin with Sen.
Daniel Inouye doing his hilarious two-hour
impersonation of a 78 r.p.m. record being
played at 33 r.p.m.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- Feb 1st
A new policy requiring random drug testing of
all airline pilots runs into a snag when
nearly half of the Delta pilots are unable to
hit the specimen bottle.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1987 IN REVIEW -- Feb. 4th
The United States yacht Stars and Stripes
recaptures the coveted America's Cup when the
Australian entry, Kookaburra, is sunk by a
Chinese-made "Silkworm" missile. The U.S.
Sixth Fleet steams toward the troubled region
with orders to "form humongous targets."
----
"Aman-Tut and Julius Caesar -- they both foresaw
their untimely deaths, thousands of years ago, in
this very oracle. And so did Max Headroom."
[ABC seeks after David Addison with help from a soothsayer, in MOONLIGHTING]
----
"I thought you were a Right Guy, Huntley... but I'm
ashamed to be in the same chain gang with you."
[David is critically evaluated by a fellow prisoner in MOONLIGHTING]
----
"Blessed be those
Who initiate lively discussions
With the hopelessly mute
For they shall be know as
Dentists."
[Seen in my dentist's office]
----
"Yeah, a dead sixteen-year-old falls from the sky
-- that'll surprise them!"
[Frank comment from BEANS BAXTER]
----
"Und then it says here he sings 'Pigs? In There?'
over und over. What a very silly person."
-- Conrad Schnitzler, German
synthethist for The Bulldaggers
[From SAVAGE HENRY]
----
"Adventure builds a thirst! What a guy!"
-- The neo-Canton guy
[Ditto]
----
"See? You NEED me... like Skipper needs Gilligan!"
-- The Flaming Carrot
----
"It isn't spread
by casual contact,
you know."
"Yeah, *I*
know! Why
did YOU pull
back?"
"People. I love 'em."
[Observations on humanity in CONCRETE]
----
"Oh dear... well, if you
don't get her to a very
powerful Shaman right
away -- she'll die."
"We got an Elder God in
the van. Will he do?"
[SAVAGE HENRY]
----
"Well, Henry, we did all we could to save her...
... so, naturally, she survived."
[Ditto]
----
"I don't believe in sweeping social change being
manifested by one person, unless he has an atomic
weapon."
-- Howard Chaykin
----
"By an inevitable chain of causes and effects,
Providence punishes national sins by national
calamities."
-- George Mason
----
"Now, my faithful minions, let me explain my
plan... for the benefit of the audience."
[The Kingpin -- not the fat one -- from Bakshi's MIGHTY MOUSE series]
----
"Now, please excuse me while I wreak my vengeance."
[Huge the Barbarian from the same cartoon]
----
"Welcome to Amboy 4. We are pleased to have your
puny planet participate in our Intergalactic
livestock show and demolition derby."
[ditto]
----
"Well, if it wasn't Buckaroo Banzai, I'd say
'commit the man.'"
[The Secretary of Defense from BUCKAROO BANZAI]
----
"We've replaced the fine coffee at Mssr. Andre's
with sand and ground-up clam shells."
[A line from a vacuam ad I like]
----
"They [South Africa] have eliminated the
segregation that we once had in our own country --
the type of thing where hotels and restaurants and
places of entertainment and so forth were
segregated -- that has all been eliminated."
-- President Reagan, 1985
----
"A tree is a tree. How many more do you need to
look at?"
-- Ronald Reagan, 1966
----
"On the other hand, it takes real moral fiber to
remain a Republican when there's no money in it.
And things *are* looking grim on the financial
front. Even worse for the President, they're
getting confusing."
-- A. Whitney Brown
----
"You know, you look at the chaos in the
conservative camp right now, it's only too
tempting to blame it all on pot. But in fact, the
Reagan revolution owes a lot to Reefer. For one
thing, it's made the symptoms of senility socially
acceptable."
-- A. Whitney Brown
----
"I think it's time to stop carping on the blunders
of the President and give him some credit for
creativity. I mean, where do you even FIND a
Jewish hard-line conservative Republican
pot-smoker? Sounds like an Oprah Winfrey guest."
-- A. Whitney Brown
----
"Political observers noted that Governor Mario
Cuomo last week altered his position on running
for the Presidency; he now says that if everyone
in the world got down on their hands and knees and
said, 'Please, Mario, Please, Please, Please be
President!', then he would."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL News
----
"President Reagan, embarrassed by Ed Meese's
incompetence in the Ginsburg nomination, verbally
lambasted the Attorney General and his wife at a
White House dinner earlier this week by shouting
'I hate the Meeses to pieces!'"
-- Dennis Miller, SNL News
----
"What about you, you ever
kill anything?"
"No, I think killing
animals for sport is
wrong."
"So you wouldn't kill an
animal, huh?... Would you
kill a MOOSE that was
molesting your WIFE?"
-- The Mountain Man
[One of Dana Carvey's great SNL character]
----
"Ever free-climbed a
thousand foot vertical
cliff with 60 pounds of
gear strapped to your
butt?."
"No."
"'Course you haven't, you
fruit-loop little geek."
-- The Mountain Man
[ditto]
----
"I mean, like, I just read
your article in the Yale
law recipe, on search and
seizure. Man, that was
really Out There."
"I was so WRECKED when I
wrote that..."
[Ginsburg at a smoke-in on SNL]
----
"Hi, I'm Professor Alan Ginsburg... But you can
call me... Captain Toke."
[ditto]
----
Q: In these busy market times, how can you get the
attention of your broker?
A: Say, "Hey, waiter!"
[from rec.humor.funny]
----
"I wouldn't say that Wall Street is a TOTAL
disaster zone... but I saw Malcolm Forbes this
morning sucking subway tokens out of a turnstile."
[ditto]
----
"It's great to be smart 'cause then you know stuff."
[I dunno]
----
"Time is money and money can't buy you love and I love your outfit."
[T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1]
----
"What's G. Gordon Liddy doing in the living room,
putting the moves on Mom?"
[BEANS BAXTER]
----
"Can't you just gesture
hypnotically and make him
disappear?"
"It does not work that
way. RUN!"
[Hadji on metaphyics and Mandrake in JONNY QUEST]
----
"Can the county spare me couple hundred body bags
-- the kinds with the twist lock tabs? You know...
the hefty, Hefty, HEFTY kind. Heh, heh."
[THE DOGS OF DANGER]
----
"You shouldn't make my toaster angry."
[Household security explained in JONNY QUEST]
----
"Someone's been mean to you! Tell me who it is, so
I can punch him tastefully."
[Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse]
----
"And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie.
If you think there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the
basement:
1) Don't give him a chance to hit you on the
head with an axe!
2) Flee the premises... even if you're in your
underwear.
3) Warn the neighbors and call the police.
But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE
DAMN BASEMENT!"
[Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th]
----
"This Dec. 7th, the summit which will ban all
medium-range nuclear missiles has already run into
its first snag: The National Rifle Association has
officially protested the treaty, and says its
members will continue to own and carry nuclear
missiles -- but only for hunting and
self-protection, of course."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL News
----
"If you think you have enemies, then, dear
simpleton, you will have enemies."
[I dunno]
----
"Watch out, world! Here
comes Ford!"
Why, do the brakes suck?
-- Lisa Hunt
----
"Victory or defeat."
-- Motto of the 82th Light Horse
Marines (the "Floating Parrots")
[A sample of the wonderfully odd humor of Col. G.L. Sicherman]
----
"I'll tell you what I want, I want someone who is
so beautiful that when you see her you say, 'Wow,
that Humperdinck must be some kind of fella to
have a wife like that.'"
-- William Goldman / S. Morgenstern,
_The_Princess_Bride_
----
"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my
father. Prepare to die."
[The Princess Bride]
----
"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion."
-- Harlan Ellison
----
"I felt a great distubance in The Force, as if 500
billion dollars cried out in terror, and suddenly
vanished."
-- Obi Ben Bosky, 10/19/87
[Harold Feld, the BEM from Alderann]
----
"It's curtains for you, Mighty Mouse! This gun is
so futuristic that even *I* don't know how it
works!"
[Ralph Bakshi's MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"I've got a monkey's body, so I'll provide the
comedy relief!"
[Matt Feazall's send-up of ZOT!]
----
"It's Jenny's brother, Butch! Boy, are we
semi-glad to see you."
[ditto]
----
"And there! Between STAR TREK and ASTROBOY... It's
Zot's world!"
[ditto]
----
"We can't escape
the long arm of
education!"
"Where can
we hide?"
"Better ask a farmer!"
[ditto]
----
"I beseech John Byrne that when The Star Brand
obliterates Pittsburgh, that he spare the
Captain's Table in the Pittsburgh airport, which
serves a steak on toasted garlic bread with
bearnaise sauce that is second to none..."
-- Dave Sim
----
"What we need is a
symbol."
"Y'mean like the `Man
From Glad'?"
[Chester the Protester from SWAMP THING]
----
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way
to your house."
-- George Carlin
----
"Definition of mixed emotions: Finding out your
ex-wife accepted a Kirby Award on your behalf in
San Diego."
-- Dave Sim
----
"He's a bit too theatrical
for my taste."
"Mr. Rogers is too
theatrical for your
taste, darling..."
[Married and Superheroes from JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL]
----
"What are you so damn
cheerful about? The
stock market crashed!"
"I'm a software engineer.
I TRAFFIC in human
misery."
[Me, believe it or not]
----
"A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common
parking problem."
[Stole this from someone on the net]
----
Vaya con Dios,
[A common Spanish phrase. I think.]
----
"Judge Robert Bork, in an attempt to win sympathy
from the American people after his unsuccessful
attempts to be confirmed to the Supreme Court,
walked into his back yard and fell down a 30-foot
abandoned well. So far, no efforts have been made
to get him out."
-- Dennis Miller
----
"I am immune to all such things, my friend. As a
youth, a certain amount of head-bangin' and
metal-bashin' left my synapses so callous, no
mind-alterin' substances are in charge."
-- Blank Reg
----
"Daddy, Daddy, make
Santa Claus go away!"
"I can't, son;
he's grown too
powerful."
"HO HO HO!"
[Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre]
----
"...so the American
government went to IBM to
come up with a data
encryption standard and
they came up with..."
"EBCDIC!"
[From a collection of University of Waterloo Computer/Math class quotes]
----
"Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat."
[ditto]
----
"You have to regard everything I say with suspicion
- I may be trying to bullshit you, or I may just
be bullshitting you inadvertently."
[ditto]
----
"You can bring any calculator you like to the
midterm, as long as it doesn't dim the lights when
you turn it on."
[ditto]
----
GREAT MOMENTS IN MATHEMATICS
"You can't drink negative beer...
Well, I guess you could throw up."
[ditto]
----
GREAT MOMENTS IN MATHEMATICS
"How do you find an isomorphism? You just F
it. See? Graph theory is a lot of fun."
[ditto]
----
GREAT MOMENTS IN MATHEMATICS
"I think it is true for all n. I was just
playing it safe with n>=3 because I couldn't
remember the proof."
[ditto]
----
GREAT MOMENTS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION
"You can do this in a number of ways. IBM
chose to do all of them. Why do you find
that funny?"
[ditto]
----
"Well, now, hold onta yer
horses, there, Frazier.
I mean, as a psychiatrist
isn't it your job to, uh,
`seek and uphold the
truth'?"
"Oh, get real, Cliff."
[Frazier and Cliff discuss ethics on CHEERS]
----
"...and Keller is schedule to be executed on
Friday... I guess he won't be around, then, for
the Patriots-Buffalo game this Sunday!"
[A newscaster on CHEERS]
----
"*I*... am undergoing
`male bonding' with your
father."
"DADDY!"
"...Apparently, it
involves repeated
vomiting!"
[Opus meets his in-laws in BLOOM COUNTY]
----
CREATING A COMIC STRIP: Step 1, Dream Up Theme
"... a gruff but endearing two-headed nuclear
mutant who's always squabbling with itself!
"Naw... it'd look rotten on a Burger King glass."
[BLOOM COUNTY]
----
"I say, son... you've
bopped the Queen Mum on
the noodle."
"I was aiming for Aunt
Fergie's hips. Can't
see how I bloody well
missed 'em."
[ditto]
----
"No, we shall not be
telling the Royal Navy to
`take back' Massachusetts
today, son."
"Mum's right. Yer such a
bloody wimp, Dad."
[ditto]
----
"Take me away, imperialistic puppets of the great
Pay-TV Satanistic Corporate BoogerHeads!"
[ditto]
----
"Let's blast the Holy Bejeezus out of the savage
desert planet LIBYA!...
"Instant gratification: the stuff of leadership."
[ditto]
----
"Nurse, fetch the patient a `Bud'..."
[ditto]
----
"I left the tri-corder on
`The Wild, Chunky, Spunky
Planet of Mary Lou Retton
Clones.'"
"Spock, you are SUCH a
putz."
[ditto]
----
"Shut up, Wilber, and load the Photon Torpedoes."
[ditto]
----
"Ahead Warp 37 to the wild, loud PLANET OF THE
LUSTY WOMEN COMMODITIES BROKERS!"
[ditto]
----
"Yes, we're the nation's top corporate executives:
the valiant frontline in the battle for a purer
America!"
[ditto]
----
"It is practically impossible to teach good
programming style to students that have had prior
exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they
are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
regeneration."
-- Dijkstra
----
"I don't want no Commies in my car... no Christians
either."
[REPO MAN]
----
"In terms of air-time and ad rates, View Age is
bigger than Islam, Judaism, IBM, Scientology, and
all but two Christian denominations. Projections
indicate that they will pass the Catholics and the
700 Club by this time next year."
[The View-age Church on MAX HEADROOM]
----
"Norm!"
"Shh! Not now, you
idiot!"
[CHEERS]
----
"Oh, God, he's been in the Dobey Gillis file
again."
[MAX HEADROOM]
----
"Captain Justice
knows no fear!"
"Captain Justice
knows no women!"
[A decent line from ONCE A HERO]
----
"Oboy! It's the colorized version of CITIZEN
KANE... oh, my mistake. It's just THE
FLINTSTONES."
[From SAM & MAX, FREELANCE POLICE]
----
"DOM!... If it's not loud, it doesn't work!"
[MAX HEADROOM]
----
"No sweat! The Sheik is on the set. I didn't
major in political science at The University of
Illinois for nothing."
[SONIC DISRUPTORS]
----
"Now... about my allowance..."
[Another bleedin' mutant from HULK]
----
"Splendid chaps. Kill-crazy as all get out."
----
"Bob also asks if Bill Ward ever did any 3-D
comics. Of course, ALL Bill Ward's comics are 3-D
comics."
-- Fandom Confidential
----
"With sales at an all-time high, Marvel will
expand their line next month with a new
title, "Marvel Two-On-One", which will pair
two superpowered heroes against one
not-so-supervillain. Issue #1 pits Thor and
The Hulk against Paste-Pot Pete."
-- Fandom Confidential
----
"I must rise and behold the tiny skull which could
contain a brain so *worthless* that it commands
its keeper to disturb the great JOHN BYRNE as he
scales new heights of comic majesty! EGAD! It's
worse than I thought! It's JIM ENGEL and CHUCK
FIALA!"
[The John Byrne interview from FANDOM CONFIDENTIAL #1]
----
"Hey! I've got a TERRIFIC
idea! Let's go visit JOHN
BYRNE!"
"Hey, yeah! Everyone
loves fanzines with JOHN
BYRNE in them!"
"This'll be GREAT! Maybe
he'll say something about
HOMOS!"
[Chuck and Jim anticipate the John Byrne interview]
----
"[New York] is the place where if you have talent,
and you believe in yourself, and you show people
what you can do, then some day, maybe -- just
maybe -- you could get shoved in front of a moving
subway train."
-- Dave Barry
----
"What was the name of the
dog on the `Brady
Bunch'?"
"...Florence Henderson?"
[Unknown]
----
"Wow! Death by Stereo!"
[One of the Vampire-hunters from THE LOST BOYS]
----
"Remember kids, if there's a loaded gun in the
room, be sure that you're the one holding it."
-- Captain Combat
----
Delta: We never make the same mistake three times.
[DAVID LETTERMAN!]
----
Delta: A real man lands where he wants to.
[ditto]
----
Delta: Terrorists are afraid to fly with us.
[ditto]
----
Delta: The kids will love our inflatable slides.
[ditto]
----
Delta: We're Amtrak with wings.
[ditto]
----
"DEAD OR ALIVE, YOU ARE COMING WITH ME."
[ROBOCOP]
----
"I *LIKE* IT!!"
[Deliquent w/cannon in ROBOCOP]
----
"...And I want a new
car... And I want the
city to pay for it all!"
"What kind of a car,
Miller?"
"Something with reclining
leather seats that goes
really fast and gets
really shitty gas
milage."
[Frustrated city official from ROBOCOP]
----
"Murphy, I'm a mess!"
"That's OK. They'll fix
you. They fix
everything."
[Robocop]
----
"Boy, this would make a great TV series..."
[A vagrant TV executive, from CROSSFIRE]
----
"A scarred psyche is like a used Pinto... you can't
do anything with it."
-- David Addison
----
"Is there anyone on this ship who even...
remotely... resembles Satan, Mr. Spock?"
[Captain Kirk picks on Mr. Spock again]
----
"We call it SHADOWNET! Pretty cool, eh?"
[A delinquent hacker talks to the Shadow]
----
"But that's the way of *all* flesh, ennit?"
[John Constantine, boy psychic investigator]
----
"I see Liberace in a white
ermine coat."
"That's right, Riley
Thorp! And I've got
five more at home just
like it."
[Liberace returns from the dead in a bar. From BADGER]
----
"I know this creature. He
is the EMBODIMENT of EVIL
-- decades ago, his
macinations often brought
the world to the *BRINK*
of chaos!"
"Hey -- people change!"
[The Shadow and associates discuss Shiwan Khan. From THE SHADOW]
----
"Where humor is concerned there are no standards --
no one can say what is good or bad, although you
can be sure that everyone will."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
----
"Hello again, Peabody here..."
[The opening lines to almost every episode of PEABODY & SHERMAN]
----
"Discussing whether Black and White comics will
survive is like asking whether sex will survive
AIDS."
-- Will Eisner
----
"Color is like an orchestra playing behind a singer
too loud."
-- Will Eisner
----
"I'd like to ask Gary [Groth] to say something
nasty about this."
-- Will Eisner
----
"Expanding a comic line just to gain market share
is like... Marvel."
-- Harlan Ellison
----
"No, no, no, NO! Perverts are hired by MARVEL!"
-- Harlan Ellison
----
"I am absolutely without flaw, and don't you
f***ing forget it!"
-- Harlan Ellison
----
"We'll learn about Euro-Communism -- That's
communists who drive Porches."
-- Howard Chaykin
----
"It's the best thing since professional golfers on
'ludes."
-- Rick Obidiah
----
"We've repackaged Flagg. Basically, it's gonna
look like a box of Tide."
-- Howard Chaykin
----
"Almost all Eskimo jokes have the same punch line
-- You know, he fell through the ice and died."
-- Larry Marder
----
"College... what a *disgusting* place."
[An observant quote from BEANS BAXTER]
----
"Captain America."
"Revamp him? Make him a
Commie or something?"
-- Mike Grell and Mark Gruenwald
----
Jeff Meyer
"Gee, this is pretty good for slop!"
[Gourmet advice from JONNY QUEST]
----
"...and so -- for weeks after -- you won't be able
to swing a dead CAT in Jerusalem without hitting
someone descended from the house of David...
anointed by a close relative... riding into town
on a donkey."
[The tantalizing tail end of the Judge's soliloquy from CEREBUS]
----
"If you don't find him,
they'll shoot him down
like a dog!"
"Well, he *is* a dog."
[A cute little gypsy girl pleads with THE BADGER over Spuds McKen... err,
Buddy McBride]
----
"I see more than you do,
child. I see an end to
Hell. What do YOU see?"
"I see someone in a lot
of pain."
[Dekko and Jenny from ZOT!]
----
"I give up then. If Mozart can't justify our
continued existence, nothing can."
[Max, a man in love with the minutae and beauty of life, from ZOT!]
----
"Did you learn that from
captains' school, too?"
"No. Rodgers and
Hammerstein."
[Uhura and Kirk from the STAR TREK comic.]
----
"Wow! You're up and
around already? I'm
impressed."
"Oh, great. Now they'll
be no living with him."
[End of a great punch line with Kirk getting out of bed and McCoy's acid
comments]
----
"You and Ronald McDonald are the two most popular
clowns in this country right now."
[Nick Fury's comments on Clay Quarterman's Ollie North-like popularity.
From THE INCREDIBLE HULK.]
----
"But only the wind picked
him up, and blew him away
into the Arizona skies.
And, I hope, to a better
place.
"Rio, maybe."
"MR. JONES!"
"Well, I didn't want to
sound too maudlin."
[Rick Jones from the same issue of THE HULK]
----
"In the afterlife, everyone's good-looking."
-- Laurie Thompson
----
"You realize that if they
catch us they will beat
us, torture us, and kill
us?"
"So, you are suggesting
we go home?"
"No, this is more fun."
[The two brownies from WILLOW]
----
"What will we do when they
come?"
"See if we can sell Mom
and Dad into slavery for
a star cruiser."
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"I try to make everyone's day a little more
surreal."
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"I kind of like it.
Interesting percussion
section."
"Those are cannons."
"And they perform this in
crowded concert halls?
Gee, I thought classical
music was boring!"
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"I've got *plenty* of common sense! I just choose
to ignore it."
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"Why would she want
another kid?? She's
already got ME!"
"Yes, you'd think she'd
have learned her lesson
by now..."
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"Either he's playing classical music at 78 RPM, or
I'm still dreaming."
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"Just think! With the
push of a button, you
could be a 500-story
gastropod -- a slug the
size of the Chrysler
Building."
"Gosh, how can I refuse?"
"Well, if you don't like
that, be something else!
I don't care!"
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"I'm disappointed too, but keep in mind that
transmogrification is a new technology."
[CALVIN AND HOBBES]
----
"The weed of crime bears *bitter fruit*... but
there are limits..."
[Even THE SHADOW can have second thoughts...]
----
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old;
they grow old because they quit playing."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
----
"Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that
has at least one thing right, that there should be
nobody with the power to dictate where responsible
journalism begins."
-- Tom Stoppard
----
"It is better to have a permanent income than to be
fascinating."
-- Oscar Wilde
----
"Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own
Self in all beings, loses all fear."
-- Isa Upanishad
----
"No trumpets sound when the important decisions of
our life are made. Destiny is made known
silently."
-- Agnes De Mille
----
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the
answer but wish we didn't."
-- Erica Jong
----
"Beware of all enterprises that require new
clothes."
-- Henry David Thoreau
----
"One can aquire everything in solitude -- except
character."
-- Stendhal
----
"It's not the world that's got so much worse but
the news coverage that's got so much better."
-- G. K. Chesterton
----
"Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are
no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark
than a moral."
-- John Burroughs
----
"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
----
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.
No machine can do the work of one extraordinary
man."
-- Elbert Hubbard
----
"I don't need psychotherapy, I have a CAR!!"
-- Hans Fiedler
----
Should South Florida legalize casino gambling? As with
any important issue, there are pros and cons. Here they
are:
PROS: Everybody would get rich.
CONS: Everybody would get killed by gangsters.
-- Dave Barry
----
"Great, you wasted all my
Clearasil on another
picture of Thor?"
"Thor's my hero..."
"Thor's a homo."
"Is not."
[From ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING]
----
"You can do more with a kind word and a gun than
with just a kind word."
-- Al Capone
----
"New York... when civilization falls apart,
remember, we were way ahead of you."
-- David Letterman
----
"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to
reinvent it, poorly."
-- Henry Spencer
----
"I know engineers. They love to change things."
-- Dr. McCoy
----
"...this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel
resistance buried under six million hardbound
copies of 'The Naked Lunch.'"
-- The Firesign Theater
----
Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
-- Andy Finkel
----
"I would have promised those terrorists a trip to
Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages
released. I thank God they were satisfied with
the missiles and we didn't have to go to that
extreme."
-- Oliver North
----
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the
Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek
Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant
Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own
mind is my own Church."
-- Thomas Paine
----
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there
are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my
pocket nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson
----
Sample Error Message from DEC's RSTS OS for the
PDP-11:
"UNIBUS TIMEOUT FATAL TRAP PROGRAM LOST SORRY"
----
Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and
opposite criticism.
----
"Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to
relinquish the spheroid."
-- Indiana University football
cheer
----
"I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot
cards. I got a full house and 4 people died."
-- Steven Wright
----
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look
like the ultimate in restraint."
-- Dave Sim
----
How many QA engineers
does it take to screw in
a lightbulb?
3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to
say "I told you so" when it
doesn't work.
[rec.humor]
----
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no
substitute for a good blaster at your side."
-- Han Solo
----
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine
people and that most of them seemed to come from
Texas."
-- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
[Personal note: thus confirming my opinion of
both Bond and Fleming...]
----
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
[Anonymous]
----
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
[Anonymous]
----
"...if the church put in half the time on
covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a
better world."
-- Garrison Keillor, LAKE
WOBEGON DAYS
----
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
-- David Letterman
----
"Show business is just like high school, except you
get paid."
-- Martin Mull
----
"It's currently a problem of access to gigabits
through punybaud."
-- J. C. R. Licklider
----
"One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many;
three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a
certain parallelism of life, a community of
thought, a rivalry of aim."
-- Henry Brook Adams
----
Thank God a million billion times that you don't
live in Texas.
-- Me (from a somewhat different
Karl quote)
----
"Send lawyers, guns and money..."
-- Warren Zevon
----
"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the
blink again."
-- Marvin
----
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our
best ideas!"
-- Ben Jonson
----
"There are things that are so serious that you can
only joke about them."
-- Heisenberg
----
"Some people like my advice so much that they frame
it upon the wall instead of using it."
-- Gordon R. Dickson
----
"Assuming that either the left wing or the right
wing gained control of the country, it would
probably fly around in circles."
-- Pat Paulsen
----
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of
civilized nations."
-- Thomas Jefferson
----
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral
standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a
scoundrel."
-- H. L. Mencken
----
"Software suppliers are trying to make their
software packages more 'user-friendly'.... Their
best approach, so far, has been to take all the
old brochures, and stamp the words,
'user-friendly' on the cover."
-- Bill Gates
----
"'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become
famous without ability."
-- George Bernard Shaw
----
(To Walter Cronkite):
"Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us
a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if
I'm going to use up mine running up and down a
street."
-- Neil Armstrong
----
"He hasn't one redeeming vice."
-- Oscar Wilde
----
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
If the probability of success is not almost one,
then it is damn near zero.
-- David Ellis
----
"If A equals success, then the formula is:
A= X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
-- Albert Einstein
----
"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save
all the parts."
-- Paul Erlich
----
"The world looks as if it has been left in the
custody of trolls."
-- Father Robert F. Capon
----
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to
participate in it."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
----
Don't lose
Your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it.
BURMA SHAVE
----
"Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble
doing it."
-- Tallulah Bankhead
----
"I think that God in creating man somewhat
overestimated his ability."
-- Oscar Wilde
----
"The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this
incredible jail break."
-- Wavy Gravy
----
"Tip the world over on its side and everything
loose will land in Los Angeles."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
----
"It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in
a bank at night."
-- Willie Sutton
----
"No, it's 'Blessed are the meek.' I think that's
nice, 'cause really they have a hell of a time."
[A lovely little quote from MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN]
----
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
[Anonymous]
----
Charity: a thing that begins at home and usually
stays there.
[Ambrose Bierce, THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY]
----
"It's not often that you get so much class
entertainment outside your bedroom window... or
outside your bedroom, period."
-- Groucho Marx
----
"We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is
more than she ever did."
-- Rufus T. Firefly
[Groucho Marx]
----
University: A modern school where football is
taught.
[Anonymous]
----
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist
and too rich to be a communist.
[Anonymous]
----
"There will always be survivors."
-- Robert Heinlen
----
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time.
The last 10% of a project takes 90% of the time.
[Anonymous]
----
"It is common sense to take a method and try it.
If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
But above all, try something."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
----
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over
for dinner.
[Anonymous]
----
"Sylvester Stallone does Hamlet:
'To be, or what?'"
-- Robin Williams
----
"Lack of skill dictates economy of style."
-- Joey Ramone
----
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning
and gets to bed at night, and in between he does
what he wants to do."
-- Bob Dylan
----
"Let the meek inherit the earth -- they have it
coming to them."
-- James Thurber
----
"I really appreciate The Writer's Guild. Under
their health plan, I can get prescription drugs
for $2 a pop."
-- George Carlin
----
"Why is the camera moving
around so much?"
"It's a film style called
cinema verite."
"Huh? What's that?"
"It's a fancy French
expression for 'sloppy
camera work'."
-- The Tracy Ullman Show
----
GEORGE BUSH at the College of Southern Idaho, 5/6/88:
Regarding President Reagan, "For 7 1/2 years
I've worked alongside him, and I'm proud to be
his partner. We've had triumphs, we've made
mistakes, we've had sex."
"Setbacks," he quickly corrected. "We've had
setbacks."
----
"If the airport books are any indication, there are
at least 450,000 evil Nazi World War II geniuses
still at large, many of them with atomic laser
cannons."
-- Dave Barry
----
"I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pedantic and that's just
as good."
-- D Gary Grady
----
"Now you have accidentally said something
valuable!"
[Hercule Poirot in MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS]
----
"But, will I get the chicks? I mean, in
truckloads?"
[BLOOM COUNTY]
----
"What a pinhead! Does he not fear us?!"
[SAM AND MAX, FREELANCE POLICE]
----
"Vaya con dios, scumbucket."
[Roger LaCoco from WISEGUY]
----
"Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit
sniffing glue!"
[Lloyd Bridges from AIRPLANE!]
----
I don't care if it rains or freezes,
As long as I got my plastic Jesus,
Sitting up there 'tween my pair of fuzzy dice!
I can do a hundred miles an hour!
Long as I got the almighty power,
Sittin' up there 'tween my fuzzy dice.
[Selections from the Plastic Jesus song -- forgot the title and artist]
----
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste someone with."
[SLEDGE HAMMER!]
----
"The living dead don't NEED to solve word
problems."
[CALVIN & HOBBES]
----
"Every now and then when your life gets complicated
and the weasels start closing in, the only real
cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then
drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas."
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
----
"Comedy. Sudden, violent comedy!"
[Monty Python]
----
"Bring the little ones unto me, and I will get a
good price for them."
[Dr. Fegg's Encyclopedia of ALL World Knowledge]
----
"Hey, stewardess. Run through that seatbelt
demonstration a few more times. It's unbelievably
tricky!"
[HERMAN]
----
"We Americans live in a nation where the
medical-care system is second to none in the
world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little
scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could
vaporize in seconds if we felt like it."
-- Dave Barry
----
"Spontaneous combustion! What a stroke of luck!"
[SAM & MAX, FREELANCE POLICE]
----
"He has been known by many names; the Prince of
Lies, the Director, Lucifer, Belial, and once, at
a party, some obnoxious drunk kept calling him
'Dude'."
[Ty Templeton's STIG'S INFERNO]
----
"...just when I had you wriggling in the crushing
grip of reason, too..."
[CALVIN & HOBBES]
----
"Mind your manners, son! I've got a tall pointy
hat!"
[Elrod from CEREBUS]
----
"Yes, well, that's just the sort of blinkered
philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from
you non-creative garbage."
[John Cleese of Monty Python]
----
"You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the
Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it."
-- Rorschach
[WATCHMEN]
----
"I've got to concentrate. I've got to concentrate!
..Hello?
..Echo!
..Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon, Manny Mota!"
[AIRPLANE!]
----
"The language of politics is poetry, not prose.
Jackson is poetry. Cuomo is poetry. Dukakis is a
word processor."
-- Richard M. Nixon
----
"Spare me, gentle knight! Tenure shalt thee have,
and gold, and several attractive female teaching
assistants."
[Gary's fantasy from thirty-something]
----
"Whoever said talk is cheap never saw a bill for
Phonesex."
-- Michael Corcoran
----
"On our third date, I plan
to screw your eyes blue."
"Yup.... just an old-
fashioned girl."
[MIRACLE MILE]
----
"My next storyline has the Punisher going after the
Attorney General. This should be good."
-- Mike Baron
----
"Last year they got food poisoning. This year they
got Bill Gates."
-- MacWeek on the NAUG meeting
----
"In the handbook, it says that most people ignore
the strange and unusual; while I myself *am*...
strange and unusual."
[BEETLEJUICE]
----
"One day I woke up and discovered that I was in
love with tripe."
-- Tom Anderson
----
"Most people would like to be delivered from
temptation but would like it to keep in touch."
-- Robert Orben
----
"The rule on staying alive as a program manager is
to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never
give 'em both at once."
[Anonymous]
----
Everybody lies; but it doesn't matter, since
nobody listens.
[ditto]
----
"An optimist believes we live in the best world
possible; a pessimist fears this is true."
[ditto]
----
"Be suspicious of anything that works perfectly --
it's probably because two errors are canceling
each other out."
-- Dave Bartley
----
"A feature is a bug with seniority."
-- Dave Bartley
----
"If John Madden steps outside on February 2, looks
down, and doesn't see his feet, we'll have 6 more
weeks of Pro football."
-- Chuck Newcombe
----
"If hyperspace did not already exist, science
fiction writers would have had to invent it."
-- Peter Oakley
----
"It is customary in these
situations for the
developer of the plan to
explain it."
"It is also customary for
the DETECTIVE to explain
how HE figured it out!"
[Steve Martin and Carl Reiner battle it out in DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID]
----
"Is it really that good?
It couldn't be, could it?
I mean, a first attempt
by a total amateur?"
"I'll tell you how good
that is: even a gifted
director couldn't hurt
it."
[from DEATHTRAP]
----
"Dead? No excuse for laying off work."
[God (played splendidly by the late Sir Ralph Richardson) in TIME BANDITS]
----
"Yes... why do we have to
have evil?"
"Ah, I think it's
something to do with
free will."
[Ditto]
if I'm wrong?]
----
Woodard's Law: You can have it right, or you can have it now.
But you can't have it right now.
----
"The universe has fascinated mankind for many, many
years, dating back to the very earliest episodes
of "Star Trek", when the brave crew of the
Enterprise set out, wearing pajamas, to explore
the boundless voids of space, which turned out to
be as densely populated as Queens, New York.
Virtually every planet they found was inhabited,
usually by evil beings with cheap costumes and
Russian accents, so finally the brave crew of the
Enterprise returned to Earth to gain weight and
make movies."
-- Dave Barry
----
"The ultimate metric that I would like to propose
for user friendliness is quite simple: if this
system was a person, how long would it take before
you punched it in the nose?"
-- Tom Carey
----
"Lead me not into temptation... I can find it
myself."
[Anonymous]
----
"The two most common things in the universe are
hydrogen and stupidity."
-- Harlan Ellison
----
"When people are least sure, they are often most
dogmatic."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
----
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and
won't change the subject."
-- Sir Winston Churchill
----
"Nature is very un-American. Nature never
hurries."
-- William George Jordan
----
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from
history."
-- George Bernard Shaw
----
"Flattery is all right -- if you don't inhale."
-- Adlai Stevenson
----
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today
as you were a year ago."
-- Bernard Berenson
----
"Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings.
The expectations are always high, and the results
usually disappointing."
-- Robert Orben
----
"A great many people think they are thinking when
they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James
----
"To talk to a child, to fascinate him, is much more
difficult than to win an electoral victory. But
it is also much more satisfying."
-- Colette
----
"Tell the truth and run."
-- Yugoslav proverb
----
"The best index to a person's character is a) how
he treats people who can't do him any good and b)
how he treats people who can't fight back."
-- Abigail Van Buren
----
"Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up
in the morning."
-- Marlo Thomas
----
"Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which
never seems to fit."
-- David McCord
----
"The value of marriage is not that adults produce
children, but that children produce adults."
-- Peter De Vries
----
"It is easier to fight for principles than to live
up to them."
-- Alfred Adler
----
"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not
exist in nature... Life is either a daring
adventure or nothing."
-- Helen Keller
----
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of
Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter
of the gods."
-- Albert Einstein
----
"Success covers a multitude of blunders."
-- Corporate motto of Microsoft
[Actually, it was George Bernard Shaw]
----
"The mark of an immature man is that he wants to
die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature
man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-- William Stekel
----
"There's this to say for blood and breath, They
give a man a taste for death."
-- Housman
----
"So that's it in a
nutshell, Phil. We're
here to take over your
planet and enslave all
you goobers what live
here..."
"Never mind that -- what
about *women's issues*?
What do you think about
equal pay? I could just
weep!"
[Phil Donahue talks to alien invaders in WHAT TH...?!, a completely
forgettable comic]
----
"The year is 2989. New York City has become a
melting pot for humans and various alien races.
Blind dates are a real crap shoot now."
[From ROACHMILL]
----
"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless
carci into dogfood..."
[That darned BADGER...]
----
"So tell me... did you
remember to ask for World
Domination?"
"Whoops... I knew I
forgot something!"
[ditto]
----
"As that pudgy ex-Genesis drummer, I put the entire
state of Connecticut to sleep and stole their
wallets."
[A Disney construct who can resemble anyone revels in his crimes in SONIC
DISRUPTORS]
----
"Is it really you, Fuzz, or is it Memorex, or is it
radiation sickness?"
[Ditto]
----
"Just because I'm not a
real person doesn't mean
I'm not a *good* person."
"That's... that's
beautiful, Fuzz. You
want to host a
telethon?"
[Ditto]
----
"Stop it! You're pinching
my arm!"
"You're lucky I don't rip
it off and beat yer
girlfriend with it!"
[A Mark Martin satire of the Charles Atlas ads...]
----
"Ever see a Dirty Harry
movie?"
"Yessir!"
"Like 'em?"
"Yessir! Very much so!"
[A soldier with a gun to his head in THE AMERICAN]
----
"According to my instruments -- they're preparing
to jump into hyper-space... or go to warp drive...
or something like that."
[Yes, it's JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL. 3 points.]
----
"Gross! GROSS!
GRRROSSSS!"
"But VERY Cronenberg."
[ditto]
----
"Shulang it! This is exactly the treatment we've
come to expect from Delta Airlines!"
[BADGER in NEXUS]
----
"We need the boat to cross
the next zone!"
"We need the hat to
impress girls, and
stupid natives!"
[ditto]
----
"Civilization! Look for a Burger King."
[ditto]
----
"Nuns - No sense of humor."
[Some film I can't remember]
----
"Do we have any more animals that Grandma can
torture?"
[NOTHING IN COMMON]
----
"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what
we like and make up reasons for it afterwards."
-- Soren F. Petersen
----
"You're going to burn in
Hell for this."
"I don't believe in Hell.
I believe in
unemployment."
[TOOTSIE]
----
"You're a creature of the night, Michael. Wait'll
Mom hears about this".
[THE LOST BOYS]
----
"I'm going to throw up all
over you."
"Go ahead, it won't show
on this shirt".
[THE RUNNING MAN (yes, it's an Arnie line)]
----
"I like you as much as I can like anybody who
thinks I'm an asshole".
[BROADCAST NEWS]
----
"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant... *I* want to be
Cary Grant."
-- Archibald Leech
----
"We're going to kill each other, aren't we?"
[THE KILLING JOKE]
----
"Don't get even... get mad!"
[ditto]
----
"But I guess nobody gets to live happily ever after
anymore, do they?"
[Abby in SWAMP THING]
----
"Plastic gun. Ingenious. More coffee, please."
[Lee Falk's THE PHANTOM by Peter David]
----
"But you other two, I don't see any place for you
in the revolution. ESPECIALLY YOU, Kate Straight!
If you persist in playing that awful crunchy
granola folk music all the time!"
[A Chinese Communist Col. whose life is changed by R&B in SONIC DISRUPTORS]
----
The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our
thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or
later with astounding accuracy.
[Anonymous]
----
If at first you don't succeed, you are running
about average.
-- Bill Cosby
----
"If only God would give me a clear sign! Like
making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss
bank."
-- Woody Allen
----
"A child is a person who can't understand why
someone would give away a perfectly good kitten."
-- Doug Larson
----
"If God had really intended men to fly, He'd have
made it easier to get to the airport."
-- George Winters
----
"The trouble with doing something right the first
time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it
was."
-- Walt West
----
"Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone."
-- G. B. Stearn
----
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in
matters of taste, swim with the current."
-- Thomas Jefferson
----
Jeff Meyer
True item: Published reports reveal that a U.S.
B-1 bomber, which costs $238 million and is
designed to use the world's most sophisticated
technology to be able to penetrate deep into
Soviet airspace, crashed because it hit a
pelican.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Mar. 20th
George "The Enforcer" Bush, explaining his
Anti-Crime Platform at a Texas campaign rally,
bites the head off a duck.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Jun. 22nd
In a cover story, Newsweek magazine reports
that the Greenhouse Effect is getting worse and
nobody can stop it and the polar ice caps are
going to melt and we're all going to die. Next
week's cover: Cher.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Aug. 2nd
In Gdansk, Poland, shipyard workers finally
reach an agreement with the government after
eight years on strike and return to work, only
to discover amidst much hearty laughter that
they no longer have the faintest idea how to
build ships.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Sep. 4th
In a tough and practical pre-election stride
forward in the War on Drugs, Congress votes to
dig up deceased suspected pushers and have them
shot.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Sep. 10th
The America's Cup competition, reflecting
radical improvements in technology, is won
decisively by the U.S.S. Vincennes when skipper
Dennis Conner "mistakes" the New Zealand
challenger for an attacking Iranian fighter jet.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Sep. 18th
In Olympic action, sprinter Ben Johnson wins
the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter hurdles, the
pole vault, platform diving, table tennis and
tae kwon do. "I felt very good today," says
the Canadian athlete, although not in any
recognizable language.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Oct. 2nd
Generoso Pope Jr., publisher of the National
Enquirer, dies. Elvis rushes to scene.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Oct. 31st
Many radio stations re-broadcast Orson Welle's
classic "War of the Worlds" on the 50th
anniversary of the night when millions of
Americans were terrified by the belief that the
Earth had been invaded by Martian spacecraft
carrying furloughed rapist Willie Horton.
----
DAVE BARRY'S 1988 IN REVIEW -- Nov. 1st
The publishers of Batman comics, responding to
a poll of their readers, kill Pee-wee Herman.
----
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the
road to truth: (1) not going all the way; and (2)
not starting."
-- Buddha
----
"The art of being a good guest is knowing when to
leave."
-- Prince Philip, Duke of
Edinburgh
----
"I always prefer to believe the best of everybody
-- it saves so much trouble."
-- Rudyard Kipling
----
"It's Mayor McCheese."
"Huh?? What kind of
menace is Mayor
McCheese?!"
"Um... Okay. He has a
machine gun."
[Woody tries to add some life to a role-playing game in ZOT!]
----
"I'll bite his leg off."
[Someone getting into a role-playing game a bit too much in ZOT!]
----
"Nah. You don't get it yet. See, I ain't inta
gettin' burned. HELL no. Am inta burnin'. Man, I
burn all *kindsa* shit."
[The Ganja Fire Man, from MIRACLEMAN]
----
"And what you didn't give
away, you spent on wild
parties, young girls, and
every drug you could get
your hands on."
"Every pill I took kept
it out of some kid's
hands!"
[Melvis Wesley (yes, everyone uses a psuedonym these days) is back from the
dead in DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"Howard Hughes, John
Wayne, Melvis Wesley."
"Rocket scientists all."
[A wry dinosaur in DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"God BLESS America! You can't do this in Russia!"
[Melvis comments on the freedoms he enjoys in America... DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"Gadzooks! The Bumble Snow Monster of the North
strikes again!"
-- Yukon Cornellius
[You MUST know this one... from RUDOLPH, THE RED-NOSED REINDEER]
----
"Thank you for
not seating us.
I'm sorry, our
children are
animals!"
"Oh, come on now,
Eleanor; in a
sense, we are
all animals,
don't you think?"
"McDONALDS,
McDONALDS!!"
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
"Just remember, the stars are *very* far away...
but that's good, because they're REALLY HOT!"
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
CORRECTION:
"In our `Pets on Parade' episode, we incorrectly
identified a Yorkshire Terrier as a reptile. Our
veterinary friends assure us that the Yorky is
actually a yapping rug, and not an animal at all."
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
CORRECTION:
"And lastly, we made the
mistake of calling the
Chief Executive of the
United States of America
`a mindless baboon', when
we should have called him
`Mr. President'."
"For this, and for
everything, we are
sincerely sorry."
"Very... sorry."
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
CORRECTION:
"Of course, the cards and
letters just poured in
when we mistakenly
credited actor Clint
Eastwood with the line
`Why don't you come up
and see me sometime?' in
the movie IT'S A
WONDERFUL LIFE."
"What Eastwood actually
said was, `Move and I'll
blow your head off,' in
the film LAST YEAR AT
MARIENBAD."
"And it was actor Jimmy
Stewart who said, `You're
a frustrated old miser
with no friends' to
actress Donna Reed in the
final moving scenes of
the film, HIROSHIMA, MON
AMOUR."
"Our apologies to the
entire film industry, as
well as our listening
audience. We are *very*
sorry."
"Sorry."
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
"You know, back in the war I was a spy for General
Lee. One day he called into his tent and he says,
`Secret Agent X-9, I want you to go behind enemy
lines and blow up a blue-belly bridge.' So, I
disguised myself as a farmer, got myself a big bag
of bombs and painted 'em all to look like ears of
corn. Got behind enemy lines, and there was a
Union picket there. Bunch of guards, they said,
`Halt! Who goes there?' And I said, `Just a
rebel spy, come to blow up the bridge!'"
"Well... soon as those words were outta my mouth, I
coulda just kicked myself."
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio,
SENSELESS CRUELTY
----
"Eat death, orphans!"
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio,
SENSELESS CRUELTY
----
"It's no use, boys -- there's too many damn
orphans! (Why can't teenagers be more careful?)"
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio,
SENSELESS CRUELTY
----
"Dear Doctor Science: Back
in B.C., when they
counted the years
backwards, did they count
the months and days
backwards, too?"
"Your ignorance appalls
me."
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
"There's something in the cornfield... an evil that
has no name! Zadar, Cow from Hell!"
-- Duck's Breath Homemade Radio
----
"You think this job is easy? Not only do I have to
wade through politics, life and popular culture, I
have to have an opinion. You can go to the movies
and fall asleep -- not this consumer!"
-- Ian Shoales
----
"At Microsoft, it doesn't matter which file you're
compiling, only which flags you #define."
-- Colin Plumb
----
"We had a better class of bastard in the old days,
that's for sure."
-- The Red Mask
----
"Strong men tremble when they hear it.
They've got cause enough to fear it;
It's even blacker than they smear it!
No one mentions -- my name."
-- Bill Sykes
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"THE GHOUL (Sinister Cinema) 1933. Boris
Karloff, correctly sensing that his
indifferent relatives, his corrupt
accountant, and his slavishly persnickety
butler are all going to steal his estate
blind, comes back from the grave and scares
the whoozits out of the greedy fuckers."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"YOUNG GUNS (Vestron). Big-budget misfire
stars Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou
Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen and two
others as Hollywood drugstore outlaws. If
you made one of them a construction worker
and another an Indian, they'd be The Village
People!"
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"FUNNY FARM (Warners). A lot of good things
have gotten screwed up during the 80s.
Chevy Chase isn't one of them -- he stopped
being funny in 1977!"
----
"Peace on Earth. Wish you were here."
[Dan's Dennehy-Oakes's (sp?) Christmas Card greetings...]
----
"A bear in his natural habitat: a Studebaker!"
[I've forgotten where this is from... THE FAR SIDE?]
----
"I'm too old for Santa Claus, and I don't believe
in Batman."
[I think this is either Peter David, or a Peter David character]
----
"Anyone with an active mind lives on tentatives
rather than tenets."
-- Robert Frost
----
"Those whose hope is weak settle down for comfort
or for violence; those whose hope is strong see
and cherish all signs of new life and are ready at
every moment to help the birth of that which is
ready to be born."
-- Erich Fromm
----
"To be nobody-but-myself -- in a world that is
doing its best, night and day, to make you
everybody else -- means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight, and never
stop fighting."
-- e. e. cummings
----
"On the day of victory no one is tired."
-- Arab proverb
----
"Tradition does not mean that the living are dead;
it means the dead are living."
-- Harold Macmillan
----
"They that love beyond the world cannot be
separated by it. Death is but crossing the world,
as friends do the seas; they live in one another
still."
-- William Penn
----
"I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything
said about the masses. First you take their faces
from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you
accuse 'em of not having any faces."
-- J. B. Priestley
----
"In nature there are neither rewards nor
punishments -- there are consequences."
-- Robert Green Ingalls
----
"Man is not the creature of circumstances.
Circumstances are the creatures of men."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
----
"The Boom Tube has emerged
on Earth!"
"How can you be so sure?"
"Just look at the tacky
furniture!"
[Those trite androids from MR. MIRACLE]
----
"Mr. Nguyen, I'm dead, not stupid."
[A wise zombie from BILLY NGUYEN]
----
"Mention Jerry Garcia and I'll puke on your shoes."
[A ha-ha from BILLY NGUYEN]
----
"I think that is what is called a `self-fulfilling
prophecy.' I think it is a brave thing, and... I
think it is wonderful."
[Yeah, that's the effect DOC SAVAGE has on people...]
----
"So we're not alone. Now I have to die -- *now*!
Just when human history promises to become
interesting!"
[CONCRETE's Mom grumbling about dying, after finding out her son's brain is
in an alien's body]
----
"A man can do something for peace without having to
jump into politics. Each man has inside him a
basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it
and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what
it is the world needs most."
-- Pablo Casals
----
"It is at night that faith in light is admirable."
-- Edmond Rostand
----
"For me the cinema is not a slice of life, but a
piece of cake."
-- Alfred Hitchcock
----
"Bill Cosby, huh?"
"If you play your cards
right..."
[David Addison, baby, from MOONLIGHTING]
----
"What're you trying to do -- screw up our chances
for syndication?"
[David, from MOONLIGHTING]
----
"WITHOUT A RE-RUN,
WITHOUT A RE-RUN,
WITHOUT A RE-RUN,
[except one or two...]"
[Surrreee... the MOONLIGHTING cast makes some promises for the new season]
----
"Chi-ka-go! Bang Bang!"
[Czech border guards (including Joe Flaharty) with guns pointed at them,
from STRIPES]
----
"We're not going to Moscow -- it's Czechoslovakia!
It's like going into Wisconsin!"
[Bill Murray paints a rosy scenario in STRIPES]
----
"Nah, we're not
homosexual, but we are
willing to learn."
"Yeah, would they send us
someplace special?"
[Bill Murray and Harold Ramis in an Army recruiting station in STRIPES]
----
"Oh, you look like a sensitive, intelligent guy.
Don't make me shoot you."
[The kind of cute M.P. that appears only in movies, from STRIPES]
----
"We're Americans -- with a capital 'A'! And do you
know what that means? Do you? It means that our
forefathers were kicked out of every decent
country in the world."
[Rousing speech by Bill Murray in STRIPES]
----
"You know, you're very pretty... for a cop!"
[Bill Murray's line to P.J. Soles in STRIPES]
----
"Hey! You didn't read me
my rights!"
"This is Mexico, pal. The
only Miranda they've
heard of around here
wears bananas on her
head."
[I dunno... I got it from Jerry Boyajian]
----
"There's no such thing as evil. Just excuses that
heaven won't accept."
[I've forgotten this one, too, though I'm pretty sure it's a comic]
----
"Famous age-old rock group Pink Floyd visited the
Soviet Union this week where their historic album
[Dark Side of the Moon] has been on the Soviet top
ten list for the last decade. Spokesmen for the
Soviet government welcoming the group to Moscow
said, `Wow... the Floyd, man.'"
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"New York's record lottery prize of $45 million was
claimed today by Raymond Simmons, an unemployed
crack addict from Brooklyn. He said he planned no
changes in his life-style."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"Lotto fever hit New York again this week, and like
the old saying goes, `You gotta be in it to win
it... but first, you gotta have a dead-end job so
pathethic you're willing to kill five hours
standing in line for a 1 in 25 million chance.'"
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (MGM/UA) 1957.
Over-achieving gluttony, excessive sex, and
inebriation among powerful Manhattan
entertainment columnists. Why don't I ever
get invited to these parties?"
----
Geraldo Rivera on cover of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER,
regarding his being hit on the air:
"I battled hate-mongers -- and won!"
----
"Following the Geraldo Rivera `watch out for flying
chairs' incident there was a deep belch of media
concern about Trash Television. Newsweek, the
Washington Post, and a few other publications ran
anguished analyses. Television experts told us,
grimly, what this trend says about our country. (I
already knew what it said about our country --
`We're stupid' -- but it was fun to hear the
experts say that in 25 words or more.)"
-- Alex Heard
----
"I've never thought my speeches were too long; I've
enjoyed them."
-- Hubert Humphrey
----
"When the President does it, that means it's not
illegal."
-- Richard Nixon
----
"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule
is already full."
-- Henry Kissinger
----
"It is fun being in the same decade with you."
-- FDR to Winston Churchill, 1942
----
"God gave us our memories so that we might have
roses in December."
-- Sir James Barrie
----
"The American people were asked to choose between a
candidate whose theme was `We're all right, Jack,'
and a candidate who said, `Eat your broccoli.'"
-- William Schneider
----
"Young conservatives must feel the withdrawl
symptoms most. It's not just the loss of a father
figure, either. It's the utter banality of what
is to come. After eight years of revolutionary
activity, schmoozing with George Bush is going to
be difficult. Trained to kill, they're suddenly
having to take crash courses in outreach. You can
see them wandering aimlessly around Washington
these days, pained, simpering grins on their
faces, engaging in mild post-Reagan banter.
`How're you doing today, Clinton?' `Oh, kinder and
gentler, Dean, thank you.'"
-- Andrew Sullivan
----
"In our last episode,
Hoodwinkle was searching
for a cure to a disease
plaguing the world."
"At last, a cure for loud
Hawaiian shirts!"
[From THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"Well, Zoiks! Let's take off his mask and see who
he is. [...] Hey, there's nothing under here but a
neck and some tendons."
[From THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"Look, it's Mister *E*!"
"I pity the fool who
picks on my group of
ethnically-mixed
friends."
[From THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"Gosh, I feel my IQ dropping by the minute."
[From THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"Now I see why they call television a medium.
Nothing on it is rare or well-done."
[From THE NEW ADVENTURES OF MIGHTY MOUSE]
----
"No job too big; no fee too big!"
-- Bill Murray, GHOSTBUSTERS
----
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make
a heaven of hell, and a hell of heaven."
-- John Milton
----
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more
complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of
genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the
opposite direction."
-- E. F. Schumacher
----
"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is
understood."
-- T.S. Elliot
----
Re: an article titled 'Inside The Dukakis Campaign':
"Kinda like looking up a dead horse's ass."
-- William Meyer (succinctly put, Dad)
----
"I'd like to ram a hunk of fried goat cheese
straight up his ass."
[A wonderful line from MYSTIC PIZZA]
----
"In a calm sea every man is a pilot."
-- John Ray
----
BEST non sequitur FOR 1988:
"Let's cut through the demagoguery. America is #1."
-- George Bush
----
"Everybody knows they're worth something on this
world. But we're never quite sure on my planet.
We're always trying to prove it to someone."
[Another solemn, gently ironic line from ZOT!]
----
"There's too many people here! Maybbe we should
kill some!"
[Yow! FLAMING CARROT and Screwball on a binge!]
----
"You took on the immortal DR. FOOM with a
MEATBALL!"
[A fine-lookin' babe expresses amazement at one of FLAMING CARROT's stories]
----
"Better watch out, Carrot,
or you're going to wind
up as a Saturday morning
cartoon character, just
like Mr. T!"
"Alright! That did it!"
[Tension you could cut through with a wiffleball in FLAMING CARROT COMICS]
----
"So, what's on, Doyle?"
"Ah, videos, unless you
wanna see THE SCARLET
CLAW."
"Might as well. Holmes
does that cool speech on
Canada at the end."
[Jaime, Jaime, Jaime... from LOVE & ROCKETS]
----
"If we cannot now end our differences, at least we
can help make the world safe for diversity."
-- John F. Kennedy
----
"Unhappiness is the hunger to get; happiness is the
hunger to give."
-- William George Jordan
----
"The fate of the country... does not depend on what
kind of paper you drop into the ballot box once a
year, but on what kind of man you drop from your
chamber into the street every morning."
-- Henry David Thoreau
----
"I have occasional memory
lapses."
"Oh, I get it. You're a
politician."
[A rather odd comparison: THE HULK and politicians. Script by Peter David.]
----
"You've got to learn more about Motown, Miles.
Those raisins didn't invent that song, you know."
[From the TV series MURPHY BROWN]
----
"I am the Supreme Being, you know. I'm not
entirely dim."
[Sir Ralph Richardson as God (he's probably at the right hand of Him,
anyway) in TIME BANDITS]
----
"I came here to chew bubble gum and kick ass...
...and I'm all out of bubble gum."
[From THEY LIVE!]
----
"Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Lloyd
Bentson today that he would now return to his old
job as the Grandfather Clock on the Captain
Kangaroo show."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"Isn't it ironic that Herman Wouk's WAR AND
REMEMBRANCE cost $110,000,000 to produce when
World War II itself cost only $80,000,000."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"Y'know, the movie sequel ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS
was released this week, one of the Biblical signs
that Armageddon is near."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"No love without freedom. No freedom without love.
Simple truths. Worth dying for."
[A broken (or is he?) #6 speaks to the new #6 in THE PRISONER comic]
----
IAN SHOALES Re: LOTTERIES:
"Luck gets a bureaucracy."
----
"Americans will buy anything, as long as it doesn't
cross the thin line between cute and demonic."
-- Ian Shoales
----
"I don't like people who speak French in public
places. This includes the French."
-- Ian Shoales
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"E.T. (MCA). I met him at the Video Software
Dealers Association Convention in Las Vegas.
Helluva sweet guy."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"SCAVENGERS (Academy). As far as films
featuring stuntment driving motorcycles out
of airplanes goes, this is one of the best."
----
MONDO VIDEO with Prof. Fred Hopkins:
"BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY (MGM/UA). Michael
J. Fox is a Manhattan yuppie who worries
about his identity while wearing $400 suits
and driving his new BMW. This is about as
gritty as Fox ever gets."
----
"Several great men have occupied the vice
presidential office -- Thomas Jefferson and
Theodore Roosevelt certainly. But there has only
been one great vice president. Thomas Riley
Marshall served two happy terms under Woodrow
Wilson, content to be, as he once wrote in a
letter to his boss, `your only vice.' In contrast
to the recent veeps with elaborate Secret Service
retinues to convince people of their importance,
Marshall was happy to play the homespun game. `In
the city of Denver, while I was vice president,'
he recalled, `a big, husky policeman kept
following me around, until I asked him what he was
doing. He said he was guarding my person. I
said: "Your labor is in vain. Nobody was ever
crazy enough to shoot at a vice president. If you
go away and find somebody to shoot at me, I'll go
down in history as being the first vice president
who ever attracted enough attention even to have a
crank shoot at him."'"
-- Nicholas Von Hoffman
----
THE 1988 CAMPAIGN "Huh?" AWARD:
"George Bush has the experience, and with me the
future -- a future committed to our family, a
future committed to the freedom."
-- Sen. Dan Quayle
----
"Quayle hasn't had a press conference in nearly two
weeks (not since the one in which, memorably, he
had called the Holocaust `an obscene period in
American history', and then, trying to explain
that he meant this century's history, blurted out
`I didn't live in this century.')..."
-- Hendrik Hertzberg
----
"The question raised by the prospect of President
Quayle is the same as the question raised by the
prospect of President Bush and for that matter by
the reality of President Reagan: How long can a
great nation afford to have silly leaders?"
-- Hendrik Hertzberg
----
"For the rest of your life you must run,
Your day in the sun is done,
You're a LIBERAL... Run, liberal, run!
"Big government was your creed;
But now you're the last of a dying breed.
So, run liberal run,
Run run run run run run,
Run run run RUN,
Run run run run;
Run run..."
-- Saturday Night Live
----
"You know how they test condoms now? They pull 'em
down over Howie Mandel's head."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"Those whales trapped beneath the ice in Alaska
were finally freed this week when actress Shelly
Winters dove into the icy waters, swam to the pair
and led them to safety."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"In view of all the deadly computer viruses that
have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would
like to remind you: when you link up to another
computer, you're linking up to every computer that
that computer has ever linked up to."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
----
"When you put all this into The Big Picture, you
point the blame at New Hampshire. They pick both
candidates; every election, they get first choice.
I know, we trust them because they seem solid: The
Granite State. Well, it's more like The Small
Mammals By The Side Of The Road State. There they
are, passing themselves off as some kind of Norman
Rockwell/American archetypes; `Live Free or Die',
that's their motto -- it's on all their license
plates. But when you think that these license
plates are made by people in prison... well, it
makes you wonder what it really means. [...]
"Well, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's perfectly safe
to hand over the destiny of our nation to a pack
of maple syrup-swilling squirrel worshipers..."
-- A. Whitney Brown
----
"Ignorance is not bliss -- it's oblivion."
-- Phillip Wylie
----
"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as
to seek happiness by changing anything but his own
disposition will waste his life in fruitless
efforts."
-- Samuel Johnson
----
"I started at the top and worked my way down."
-- Orson Welles
----
"I can't stand this proliferation of paperwork.
It's useless to fight the forms, you've got to
kill the people producing them."
-- Vladimir Kabaidze, General
Director of the Ivanovo Machine
Building Works
----
"Three men against twenty? Impossible. Now, if
only we had a wheelbarrow..."
[From THE PRINCESS BRIDE]
----
"Don't rush a miracle man. You rush a miracle man,
you get rotten miracles."
[From THE PRINCESS BRIDE]
----
"Batman didn't write any
plays."
"Yeah, but Shakespeare
didn't beat up any
crooks."
[Overheard at a sci-fi convention by Jerry Boyajian]
----
"I know human names well enough. After all, you
are who you eat."
[Ed the Shark (one of my favorite characters) from Diane Duane's DEEP
WIZARDRY (one of my favorite books)]
----
"You warm-bloods are all such great believers. But
there's no greater pragmatist than a shark."
[Damn straight. From DEEP WIZARDRY.]
----
"Do you expect me to
talk?"
"No, Mister Bond; I
expect you to die."
[That famous line from GOLDFINGER]
----
"You must accept the truth from whatever source it
comes."
-- Maimonides
----
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the
university stifles writers. My opinion is that
they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a
bestseller that could have been prevented by a
good teacher."
-- Flannery O'Connor
----
"The longest distance is between head and heart."
-- Thomas Merton
----
"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend
to be witty."
-- Sacha Guitry
----
"We grow tyrannical fighting tyranny."
-- E.B. White
----
"Quiet, Ringo, Elvis is talking."
[From a sketch on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE]
----
"The first time I saw the infamous `Morton Downey
Junior' show I was innocently flipping through the
channels and came across this man looming over a
woman in a chair, point a cigarette in her face,
and screaming, `You're a WHORE! You're a
PROSTITUTE!' Wondering what this poor woman had
done to unleash such metaphorical fury, I kept
watching and it turned out she really was a
prostitute. That was the whole story. They'd
found a prostitute to put on TV in order to
denounce her as a prostitute. Something to tell
the grandchildren."
-- TRB in THE NEW REPUBLIC
----
"You kids shouldn't see
this, though -- your
parents would think it's
too adult for you. So
I'll leave this copy here
with you when I split to
go start a war or
something, okay?"
"Yer a pal, Mr. Post."
[Ron Post, mass murder and guitar player, talks about censorship, in one of
Matt Howarth's many independently-financed comix]
----
"Filthy bag of Lovecraftian poison -- nobody fucks
with Monsieur Boche!"
[Monsieur Boche, a Hunter S. Thompson clone with brains, balls and the
ability to traverse dimensions, in a Matt Howarth comic]
----
"The discovery of God in a hole in the polar ice
cap by a pair of punk rockers does not disturb
your governments' conscience in the least."
[Another wonderful Howarth line]
----
"I submit for your approval: Monsieur Boche -- A
man with a reputation."
[From Matt Howarth's WRAB: PIRATE TELEVISION, which you should buy immediately]
----
WRAB Programming:
"THE CHURCH OF GODZILLA (1/2 hr -- religion)
Instruction in the eager belief of getting
one's way all the time. John Madden as
Godzilla. (Emph: narrow-mindedness)."
[From Matt Howarth's WRAB: PIRATE TELEVISION, which you should buy immediately]
----
WRAB Programming:
"KEY GRIP (1 hr -- Drama) Part three of Patrick
McGoohan's `John Drake' Trilogy. Series
security prohibits any information release
prior to broadcast. (Emph: the struggle for
individualism)."
[From Matt Howarth's WRAB: PIRATE TELEVISION, which you should buy immediately]
----
"Nobody likes a smart ass
vampire."
"Pity there's never
enough blood in a
midget."
[Bon mots from Dracula, in DINOSAURS FOR HIRE]
----
"`If you want to touch something *basic* in your
audience,' says the full-page ad in the 1988
edition of the DIRECTORY OF EXPERTS, AUTHORITIES
AND SPOKESPERSONS (also known as the `Talk Show
Guest Directory'), `...move them to *action*:
phone, write, praise, damn, cheer, etc..... Then
you need to present -- REAL LIVE COMMUNISTS ON
YOUR SHOW!'"
-- TRB in THE NEW REPUBLIC
----
"`Never turn down a chance to have sex or go on
television,' Gore Vidal is supposed to have said.
At the rate things are going, people will soon be
advertising to do both at the same time."
-- TRB in THE NEW REPUBLIC
----
"Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you
walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their
lives."
-- Sue Murphy
----
"I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played
for SEVEN hours. Great song."
-- Fred Reuss
----
"A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to
my suede jacket. `You know a cow was murdered for
that jacket?' she sneered. I replied in a
psychotic tone, `I didn't know there were any
witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too.'"
-- Jake Johansen
----
"I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their
minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out
and yell `Whooa, I'm way too high.'"
-- Bruce Baum
----
"How about those Dodge Turbo Wagons?! What's the
deal on those anyway? You can sleep in the back
while you're waiting for a tow truck."
-- Steve Kravitz
----
"This Thanksgiving is gonna be a special one. My
mom says I don't have to sit at the card table."
-- Jim Samuels
----
"Remember folks. Street lights timed for 35 mph
are also timed for 70 mph."
-- Jim Samuels
----
"In Los Angeles, McDonalds quickly reacted to the
highway shootings. They came out with 'Happy To Be
Alive Meals.'"
-- Al Clethen
----
"If I'm typecast as a genius, who cares?"
-- Jeremy Brett, on playing
Sherlock Holmes
----
"I'd get out of here now
if I were you. It's not
safe here."
"Trust me - it's not safe
out there either."
"Oh hell, I forgot that."
[From the TV series WAR OF THE WORLDS]
----
"Are you SURE that
Moriarty isn't planning
to kill me?"
"Of course not... he
*knows* you're an
idiot."
"Thank God!"
["Holmes" and Watson discuss Yours Truly in WITHOUT A CLUE]
----
"I do not take drugs. I am drugs."
-- Salvador Dali
----
From DOUBLE DARE:
"What is the name of the
hero Billy Batson
transforms into when he
says his magic word,
'Shazam'?"
"Gomer Pyle."
----
"Imitation is the sincerest form of Television."
-- Mighty Mouse
----
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as
citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.
This is one nation under God."
-- George Bush, 1988
----
"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Show me a hero and I will write you a travesty."
-- John Byrne [well, he *should* have]
"Show me a hero and I'll eat it."
-- Peter David
----