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- 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
- The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
- Redwood Forest.
-
- 7:30, Channel 8: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
- The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
- Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
- %
- A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge
- the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased -- he hates
- all creative people equally.
- %
- A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
- %
- A circus foreman was making the rounds inspecting the big top when
- a scrawny little man entered the tent and walked up to him. "Are you the
- foreman around here?" he asked timidly. "I'd like to join your circus; I
- have what I think is a pretty good act."
- The foreman nodded assent, whereupon the little man hurried over to
- the main pole and rapidly climbed up to the very tip-top of the big top.
- Drawing a deep breath, he hurled himself off into the air and began flapping
- his arms furiously. Amazingly, rather than plummeting to his death the little
- man began to fly all around the poles, lines, trapezes and other obstacles,
- performing astounding feats of aerobatics which ended in a long power dive
- from the top of the tent, pulling up into a gentle feet-first landing beside
- the foreman, who had been nonchalantly watching the whole time.
- "Well," puffed the little man. "What do you think?"
- "That's all you do?" answered the foreman scornfully. "Bird
- imitations?"
- %
- A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned
- things is ample.
- -- Rebecca West
- %
- A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.
- -- Whitney Balliett
- %
- A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano.
- %
- A drama critic is a person who surprises a playwright by informing him
- what he meant.
- -- Wilson Mizner
- %
- A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of
- marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
- %
- A hard-luck actor who appeared in one coloossal disaster after another
- finally got a break, a broken leg to be exact. Someone pointed out that it's
- the first time the poor fellow's been in the same cast for more than a week.
- %
- A Hollywood producer calls a friend, another producer on the phone.
- "Hello?" his friend answers.
- "Hi!" says the man. "This is Bob, how are you doing?"
- "Oh," says the friend, "I'm doing great! I just sold a screenplay
- for two hundred thousand dollars. I've started a novel adaptation and the
- studio advanced me fifty thousand dollars on it. I also have a television
- series coming on next week, and everyone says it's going to be a big hit!
- I'm doing *great*! How are you?"
- "Okay," says the producer, "give me a call when he leaves."
- %
- A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
- %
- A musical reviewer admitted he always praised the first show of a
- new theatrical season. "Who am I to stone the first cast?"
- %
- A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
- the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
- pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
- nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if..."
- "If what?" asked the composer.
- "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
- %
- A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
- %
- A rose is a rose is a rose. Just ask Jean Marsh, known to millions of
- PBS viewers in the '70s as Rose, the maid on the BBC export "Upstairs,
- Downstairs." Though Marsh has since gone on to other projects, ... it's
- with Rose she's forever identified. So much so that she even likes to
- joke about having one named after her, a distinction not without its
- drawbacks. "I was very flattered when I heard about it, but when I looked
- up the official description, it said, `Jean Marsh: pale peach, not very
- good in beds; better up against a wall.' I want to tell you that's not
- true. I'm very good in beds as well."
- %
- A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
- -- Don Marquis
- %
- A shy teenage boy finally worked up the nerve to give a gift to
- Madonna, a young puppy. It hitched its waggin' to a star.
- %
- A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
- -- Michael Winner, British film director
- %
- A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
- drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
- -- Shaw
- %
- A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call
- what he writes fiction.
- -- William Faulkner
- %
- A yawn is a silent shout.
- -- G.K. Chesterton
- %
- A young man wrote to Mozart and said:
-
- Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
- suggestions as to how to get started?"
- A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
- some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
- Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
- A: "But I never asked anybody how."
- %
- Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
- %
- Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh
- and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh,
- well, I think of my sex life.
- -- Glenda Jackson
- %
- Actor Real Name
-
- Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt
- Cary Grant Archibald Leach
- Edward G. Robinson Emmanual Goldenburg
- Gene Wilder Gerald Silberman
- John Wayne Marion Morrison
- Kirk Douglas Issur Danielovitch
- Richard Burton Richard Jenkins Jr.
- Roy Rogers Leonard Slye
- Woody Allen Allen Stewart Konigsberg
- %
- Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
- %
- Actresses will happen in the best regulated families.
- -- Addison Mizner and Oliver Herford, "The Entirely
- New Cynic's Calendar", 1905
- %
- Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
- -- actress Mary Pickford, 1925
- %
- Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something
- strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
- -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- %
- After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was
- replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more
- advanced than the lichen family.
- -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
- %
- Alex Haley was adopted!
- %
- All art is but imitation of nature.
- -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
- %
- An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
- -- Marlon Brando
- %
- An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
- %
- Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
- television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and
- world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers
- whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath.
- -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
- %
- Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a representation
- of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a representation of
- anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone capable of sitting upright
- in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
- -- Richard Schickel
- %
- Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell it.
- %
- "Are you police officers?"
- "No, ma'am. We're musicians."
- -- The Blues Brothers
- %
- Around the turn of this century, a composer named Camille Saint-Saens wrote
- a satirical zoological-fantasy called "Le Carnaval des Animaux." Aside from
- one movement of this piece, "The Swan", Saint-Saens didn't allow this work
- to be published or even performed until a year had elapsed after his death.
- (He died in 1921.)
- Most of us know the "Swan" movement rather well, with its smooth,
- flowing cello melody against a calm background; but I've been having this
- fantasy...
- What if he had written this piece with lyrics, as a song to be sung?
- And, further, what if he had accompanied this song with a musical saw? (This
- instrument really does exist, often played by percussionists!) Then the
- piece would be better known as:
- SAINT-SAENS' SAW SONG "SWAN"!
- %
- Art is a jealous mistress.
- -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- %
- Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
- -- Picasso
- %
- Art is anything you can get away with.
- -- Marshall McLuhan.
- %
- Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
- -- Paul Gauguin
- %
- Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.
- -- Chazal
- %
- Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
- %
- As a goatherd learns his trade by goat, so a writer learns his trade by wrote.
- %
- Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a
- lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
- -- Christopher Hampton
- %
- Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
- depths they were once able to plumb.
- -- Stanley Kaufman
- %
- Authors are easy to get on with -- if you're fond of children.
- -- Michael Joseph, "Observer"
- %
- Bahdges? We don't need no stinkin' bahdges!
- -- "The Treasure of Sierra Madre"
- %
- Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent
- and original in your work.
- -- Flaubert
- %
- Being a mime means never having to say you're sorry.
- %
- "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
- %
- Ben, why didn't you tell me?
- -- Luke Skywalker
- %
- "Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
- -- Time Bandits
- %
- Best Mistakes In Films
- In his "Filmgoer's Companion", Mr. Leslie Halliwell helpfully lists
- four of the cinema's greatest moments which you should get to see if at all
- possible.
- In "Carmen Jones", the camera tracks with Dorothy Dandridge down a
- street; and the entire film crew is reflected in the shop window.
- In "The Wrong Box", the roofs of Victorian London are emblazoned
- with television aerials.
- In "Decameron Nights", Louis Jourdain stands on the deck of his
- fourteenth century pirate ship; and a white lorry trundles down the hill
- in the background.
- In "Viking Queen", set in the times of Boadicea, a wrist watch is
- clearly visible on one of the leading characters.
- -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
- %
- BS: You remind me of a man.
- B: What man?
- BS: The man with the power.
- B: What power?
- BS: The power of voodoo.
- B: Voodoo?
- BS: You do.
- B: Do what?
- BS: Remind me of a man.
- B: What man?
- BS: The man with the power...
- -- Cary Grant, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer"
- %
- Burnt Sienna. That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
- -- Ken Weaver
- %
- But if you wish at once to do nothing and to be respectable
- nowdays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.
- -- Leslie Stephen, "Sketches from Cambridge"
- %
- But you shall not escape my iambics.
- -- Gaius Valerius Catullus
- %
- Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.
- -- RKO executive, reacting to Fred Astaire's screen test.
- Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
- %
- Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
- -- Kin Hubbard, "Abe Martin's Sayings"
- %
- Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
- %
- Darth Vader! Only you would be so bold!
- -- Princess Leia Organa
- %
- Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
- that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
-
- "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and squirrel."
-
- -- ihuxw!tommyo
- %
- Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
- %
- Don't everyone thank me at once!
- -- Han Solo
- %
- Dustin Farnum: Why, yesterday, I had the audience glued to their seats!
- Oliver Herford: Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!
- -- Brian Herbert, "Classic Comebacks"
- %
- Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.
- -- Actor Edmond Gween, on his deathbed.
- %
- E.T. GO HOME!!! (And take your Smurfs with you.)
- %
- Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
- -- Fred Allen
- %
- Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
- -- Bullwinkle Moose
- %
- Elwood: What kind of music do you get here ma'am?
- Barmaid: Why, we get both kinds of music, Country and Western.
- %
- Ever get the feeling that the world's on tape and one of the reels is missing?
- -- Rich Little
- %
- Everyone is in the best seat.
- -- John Cage
- %
- Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an
- autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
- -- Marlo Thomas
- %
- Fast ship? You mean you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
- -- Han Solo
- %
- "First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
- -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"
- %
- Fools rush in -- and get the best seats in the house.
- %
- For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at
- the results of this evening's experiments. Astonished at the wonderful
- power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous
- and bad music may be put on record forever.
- -- Sir Arthur Sullivan, message to Edison, 1888
- %
- For the next hour, WE will control all that you see and hear.
- %
- Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
- %
- FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #12
-
- O.E.D.: David Lean, 1969, 3 hours 30 min.
-
- Lean's version of the Oxford Dictionary has been accused of
- shallowness in its treatment of a complete work. Omar Sharif
- tends to overact as aardvark, but Alec Guiness is solid in
- the role of abbacy. As usual, the photography is stunning.
- With Julie Christie.
- %
- FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #3
-
- MIRACLE ON 42ND STREET:
- Santa Claus, in the off season, follows his heart's desire and
- tries to make it big on Broadway. Santa sings and dances his way
- into your heart.
- %
- FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #5
-
- THE ATOMIC GRANDMOTHER:
- This humorous but heart-warming story tells of an elderly woman
- forced to work at a nuclear power plant in order to help the family
- make ends meet. At night, granny sits on the porch, tells tales
- of her colorful past, and the family uses her to cook barbecues
- and to power small electrical appliances. Maureen Stapleton gives
- a glowing performance.
- %
- FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #9
-
- THE PARKING PROBLEM IN PARIS: Jean-Luc Godard, 1971, 7 hours 18 min.
-
- Godard's meditation on the topic has been described as
- everything from "timeless" to "endless." (Remade by Gene
- Wilder as NO PLACE TO PARK.)
- %
- FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #37
- Can you name the seven seas?
- Antartic, Artic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian,
- North Pacific, South Pacific.
- Can you name the seven dwarfs from Snow White?
- Doc, Dopey, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy and Bashful.
- %
- Fremen add life to spice!
- %
- FROM THE DESK OF
- Dorothy Gale
-
- Auntie Em:
- Hate you.
- Hate Kansas.
- Taking the dog.
- Dorothy
- %
- G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
- of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
- secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
- `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
- that's your chance, my boy."
- %
- Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on
- our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
- -- Adventures of Asterix
- %
- George Bernard Shaw once sent two tickets to the opening night of one of
- his plays to Winston Churchill with the following note:
- "Bring a friend, if you have one."
-
- Churchill wrote back, returning the two tickets and excused himself as he
- had a previous engagement. He also attached the following:
- "Please send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one."
- %
- Go ahead... make my day.
- -- Dirty Harry
- %
- God help the troubadour who tries to be a star. The more that you try
- to find success, the more that you will fail.
- -- Phil Ochs, on the Second System Effect
- %
- God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant
- and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
- -- Pablo Picasso
- %
- God save us from a bad neighbor and a beginner on the fiddle.
- %
- Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
- %
- Governor Tarkin. I should have expected to find you holding Vader's
- leash. I thought I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.
- -- Princess Leia Organa
- %
- GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#17):
-
- On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place
- of residence.
- %
- Grig (the navigator):
- ... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space
- armada.
- Alex (the gunner):
- What?!?
- Grig: I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against
- overwhelming odds.
- Alex: It'll be a slaughter!
- Grig: That's the spirit!
- -- The Last Starfighter
- %
- H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L. Mencken --
- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
- -- Maxwell Bodenheim
- %
- "Hawk, we're going to die."
- "Never say die... and certainly never say we."
- -- M*A*S*H
- %
- He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
- -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
- %
- He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
- -- Jonathon Swift
- %
- "Hello," he lied.
- -- Don Carpenter, quoting a Hollywood agent
- %
- Hello. Jim Rockford's machine, this is Larry Doheny's machine. Will you
- please have your master call my master at his convenience? Thank you.
- Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Hi Jimbo. Dennis. Really appreciate the help on the income tax. You wanna
- help on the audit now?
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Hoaars-Faisse Gallery presents:
- An exhibit of works by the artist known only as Pretzel.
-
- The exhibit includes several large conceptual works using non-traditional
- media and found objects including old sofa-beds, used mace canisters,
- discarded sanitary napkins and parts of freeways. The artist explores
- our dehumanization due to high technology and unresponsive governmental
- structures in a post-industrial world. She/he (the artist prefers to
- remain without gender) strives to create dialogue between viewer and
- creator, to aid us in our quest to experience contemporary life with its
- inner-city tensions, homelessness, global warming and gender and
- class-based stress. The works are arranged to lead us to the essence of
- the argument: that the alienation of the person/machine boundary has
- sapped the strength of our voices and must be destroyed for society to
- exist in a more fundamental sense.
- %
- Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
- -- Rex Reed
- %
- Holy Dilemma! Is this the end for the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder?
- Will the Joker and the Riddler have the last laugh?
-
- Tune in again tomorrow:
- same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
- %
- How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
- %
- Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
- %
- Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
- %
- I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people
- are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen
- carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence
- terrifies people the most.
- -- Bob Dylan
- %
- I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
- -- David Bowie
- %
- I am a deeply superficial person.
- -- Andy Warhol
- %
- I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac
- thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the
- total discrediting of the world of reality.
- -- Salvador Dali
- %
- I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
- novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
- -- Fred Allen
- %
- I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! Can't prove anything!
- -- Bart Simpson
- %
- I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The curtain
- was up.
- %
- I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk
- and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously,
- unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell
- you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.
- -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
- %
- I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
- -- Elvis Presley
- %
- I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on
- earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has
- succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a
- goal in front and not behind.
- -- George Bernard Shaw
- %
- I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small
- and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a
- painting by Goya.
- -- Stravinsky
- %
- I have a very strange feeling about this...
- -- Luke Skywalker
- %
- "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, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
- %
- I have had my television aerials removed. It's the moral equivalent
- of a prostate operation.
- -- Malcolm Muggeridge
- %
- I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole ____BODY!
- -- from "Cerebus" #82
- %
- I knew her before she was a virgin.
- -- Oscar Levant, on Doris Day
- %
- I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they
- could do was to go away.
- %
- I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
- -- Lucy Van Pelt
- %
- I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
- -- G. B. Shaw
- %
- I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind
- of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances
- being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms
- of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like
- a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments
- as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease.
- -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
- %
- I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the
- reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if
- I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.
- -- Stephen King
- %
- I remember once being on a station platform in Cleveland at four in the
- morning. A black porter was carrying my bags, and as we were waiting for
- the train to come in, he said to me: "Excuse me, Mr. Cooke, I don't want to
- invade your privacy, but I have a bet with a friend of mine. Who composed
- the opening theme music of 'Omnibus'? My friend said Virgil Thomson." I
- asked him, "What do you say?" He replied, "I say Aaron Copeland." I said,
- "You're right." The porter said, "I knew Thomson doesn't write counterpoint
- that way." I told that to a network president, and he was deeply unimpressed.
- -- Alistair Cooke
- %
- I remember Ulysses well... Left one day for the post office to mail a letter,
- met a blonde named Circe on the streetcar, and didn't come back for 20 years.
- %
- I saw Lassie. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
- spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?
- %
- I stick my neck out for nobody.
- -- Humphrey Bogart, "Casablanca"
- %
- I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
- see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
- -- Shirley Temple
- %
- I suggest a new strategy, Artoo: let the Wookie win.
- -- C3P0
- %
- "I suppose you expect me to talk."
- "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."
- -- Goldfinger
- %
- I think we're in trouble.
- -- Han Solo
- %
- I think... I think it's in my basement... Let me go upstairs and check.
- -- Escher
- %
- I truly wish I could be a great surgeon or philosopher or author or anything
- constructive, but in all honesty I'd rather turn up my amplifier full blast
- and drown myself in the noise.
- -- Charles Schmid, the "Tucson Murderer"
- %
- I used to be disgusted, now I find I'm just amused.
- -- Elvis Costello
- %
- I was working on a case. It had to be a case, because I couldn't afford a
- desk. Then I saw her. This tall blond lady. She must have been tall
- because I was on the third floor. She rolled her deep blue eyes towards
- me. I picked them up and rolled them back. We kissed. She screamed. I
- took the cigarette from my mouth and kissed her again.
- %
- I watch television because you don't know what it will do if you leave it
- in the room alone.
- %
- I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If
- people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.
- -- Charlie Chaplin
- %
- I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played for SEVEN hours. Great song.
- -- Fred Reuss
- %
- I WISH I HAD A KRYPTONITE CROSS, because then you could keep both Dracula
- and Superman away.
- -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- %
- I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a
- knob called "brightness", but it doesn't seem to work.
- -- Gallagher
- %
- I'd just as soon kiss a Wookie.
- -- Princess Leia Organa
- %
- I'll be Grateful when they're Dead.
- %
- I'll never get off this planet.
- -- Luke Skywalker
- %
- I'm a Hollywood writer; so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain.
- %
- I'm not a real movie star -- I've still got the same wife I started out
- with twenty-eight years ago.
- -- Will Rogers
- %
- I've got a very bad feeling about this.
- -- Han Solo
- %
- I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
- its situation.
- Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He
- loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
- look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
- second per second takes over.
- II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
- intervenes suddenly.
- Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
- characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
- pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
- Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
- stooge's surcease.
- III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
- conforming to its perimeter.
- Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
- speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
- cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
- the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The
- threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
- -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
- %
- If *I* had a hammer, there'd be no more folk singers.
- %
- If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
- -- Paul Beatty
- %
- If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner,
- and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops,
- not just because you fear she might be crazy. If she tells her tale on
- camera, you might listen. Watching strangers on television , even
- responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs
- collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community. Never
- have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little.
- -- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television
- in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional".
- %
- If Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not by some means abridged, it will soon
- fall into disuse.
- -- Philip Hale, Boston music critic, 1837
- %
- If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
- %
- If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three to a can.
- %
- If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
- %
- If I had any humility I would be perfect.
- -- Ted Turner
- %
- If I had done everything I'm credited with, I'd be speaking to you from
- a laboratory jar at Harvard.
- -- Frank Sinatra
-
- AS USUAL, YOUR INFORMATION STINKS.
- -- Frank Sinatra, telegram to "Time" magazine
- %
- If I have to lay an egg for my country, I'll do it.
- -- Bob Hope
- %
- If it ain't baroque, don't phiques it.
- %
- If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost,
- I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down
- the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding-
- forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp
- of a student-poet to hang on to his every word I never saw.
- -- James Dickey
- %
- If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
- %
- If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient
- evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
- -- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
- %
- If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
- -- Louis Armstrong
- %
- If you lose a son you can always get another, but there's only one
- Maltese Falcon.
- -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
- %
- If you think the pen is mightier than the sword, the next time someone pulls
- out a sword I'd like to see you get up there with your Bic.
- %
- If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's
- read by persons who move their lips when the're reading to themselves.
- -- Don Marquis
- %
- Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
- -- Fred Allen
- %
- Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal.
- -- Lionel Trilling
- %
- Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
- -- T.S. Eliot, "Philip Massinger"
- %
- In Hollywood, all marriages are happy. It's trying to live together
- afterwards that causes the problems.
- -- Shelley Winters
- %
- In Hollywood, if you don't have happiness, you send out for it.
- -- Rex Reed
- %
- In just seven days, I can make you a man!
- -- The Rocky Horror Picture Show
- %
- In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending
- your left leg, it's modern architecture.
- -- Nancy Banks Smith
- %
- In Oz, never say "krizzle kroo" to a Woozy.
- %
- In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
- the proper order then why can't he?
- %
- In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains. As night falls the
- wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle. After
- everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the
- camp.
- After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from
- a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day. The drums get
- louder and louder.
- Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, "I don't like
- the sound of those drums."
- Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp: "IT'S
- NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER."
- %
- It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came
- out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded.
- He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world
- will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe
- that it is a joke.
- %
- It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been
- dead for two years.
- -- Tom Lehrer
- %
- It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
- incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
- twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
- -- Rod Serling
- %
- It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
- statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
- to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
- which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
- highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
- worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
- -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
- %
- It is up to us to produce better-quality movies.
- -- Lloyd Kaufman, producer of "Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator"
- %
- It just doesn't seem right to go over the river and through the woods
- to Grandmother's condo.
- %
- It looks like it's up to me to save our skins. Get into that garbage chute,
- flyboy!
- -- Princess Leia Organa
- %
- It proves what they say, give the public what they want to see and
- they'll come out for it.
- -- Red Skelton, surveying the funeral of Hollywood mogul
- Harry Cohn
- %
- It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
- but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
- -- Robert Benchley
- %
- It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
- %
- It'll be just like Beggars' Canyon back home.
- -- Luke Skywalker
- %
- It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
- -- Mick Jagger
- %
- It's clever, but is it art?
- %
- It's difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame.
- %
- It's from Casablanca. I've been waiting all my life to use that line.
- -- Woody Allen, "Play It Again, Sam"
- %
- "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
- -- Walt Disney
- %
- It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
- -- Sam Goldwyn
- %
- It's not easy, being green.
- -- Kermit the Frog
- %
- It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
- -- Garfield
- %
- IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or
- equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to
- spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
- Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it
- inevitably unsuccessful.
- V. All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
- Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel
- them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an
- adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to
- the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole.
- The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding
- auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.
- VI. As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
- This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a
- character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of
- altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common
- as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A "wacky"
- character has the option of self-replication only at manic high
- speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
- -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
- %
- James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
- indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
- -- Tom Stoppard
- %
- James McNeill Whistler's (painter of "Whistler's Mother")
- failure in his West Point chemistry examination once provoked him to
- remark in later life, "If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a
- major general."
- %
- Jane and I got mixed up with a television show -- or as we call it back
- east here: TV -- a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible
- Vaudeville. However, it is our latest medium -- we call it a medium
- because nothing's well done. It was discovered, I suppose you've heard,
- by a man named Fulton Berle, and it has already revolutionized social
- grace by cutting down parlour conversation to two sentences: "What's on
- television?" and "Good night".
- -- Goodman Ace, letter to Groucho Marx, in The Groucho
- Letters, 1967
- %
- Jim, it's Grace at the bank. I checked your Christmas Club account.
- You don't have five-hundred dollars. You have fifty. Sorry, computer foul-up!
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Jim, it's Jack. I'm at the airport. I'm going to Tokyo and wanna pay
- you the five-hundred I owe you. Catch you next year when I get back!
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Jim, this is Janelle. I'm flying tonight, so I can't make our date, and
- I gotta find a safe place for Daffy. He loves you, Jim! It's only two
- days, and you'll see. Great Danes are no problem!
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Jim, this is Matty down at Ralph's and Mark's. Some guy named Angel
- Martin just ran up a fifty buck bar tab. And now he wants to charge it
- to you. You gonna pay it?
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- JOHN PAUL ELECTED POPE!!
-
- (George and Ringo miffed.)
- %
- Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.
- -- Bob Dylan
- %
- Just close your eyes, tap your heels together three times, and think to
- yourself, `There's no place like home.'
- -- Glynda the Good
- %
- Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of
- blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys
- like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim. I don't enjoy the sky
- or sea as much as I used to because of this Levi character. If Jesus Christ
- came back today, He and I would get into our brown corduroys and go to the
- nearest jean store and overturn the racks of blue denim. Then we'd get
- crucified in the morning.
- -- Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull
- %
- Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
- immune to bullets.
- -- The Brigadier, "Dr. Who"
- %
- Lamonte Cranston once hired a new Chinese manservant. While describing his
- duties to the new man, Lamonte pointed to a bowl of candy on the coffee
- table and warned him that he was not to take any. Some days later, the new
- manservant was cleaning up, with no one at home, and decided to sample some
- of the candy. Just than, Cranston walked in, spied the manservant at the
- candy, and said:
- "Pardon me Choy, is that the Shadow's nugate you chew?"
- %
- Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
- lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always
- getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
- the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
- sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
- you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
- What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
- of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
- the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever.
- They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the
- applications for.
- -- Dave Barry
- %
- Lay off the muses, it's a very tough dollar.
- -- S.J. Perelman
- %
- Lensmen eat Jedi for breakfast.
- %
- Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
- tries to hide behind a beard. No good. There are still too many people
- and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking. He moves to the
- outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
- caretaker included. He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
- day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
- Nobody's cut the grass in months. What's happened to that caretaker?
- What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
- start to get curious. A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
- Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared. The senior
- class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
- movie one night and stays out. The town's up in arms, but just before the
- police take action, the kids turn up. They've found a purpose. They go
- home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
- now. They're in a band.
- -- Ira Kaplan
- %
- Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was
- going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then
- being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
- %
- Like ya know? Rock 'N Roll is an esoteric language that unlocks the
- creativity chambers in people's brains, and like totally activates their
- essential hipness, which of course is like totally necessary for saving
- the earth, like because the first thing in saving this world, is getting
- rid of stupid and square attitudes and having fun.
- -- Senior Year Quote
- %
- Linus: Hi! I thought it was you.
- I've been watching you from way off... You're looking great!
- Snoopy: That's nice to know.
- The secret of life is to look good at a distance.
- %
- Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
- we should think only about today.
- Charlie Brown:
- No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
- better.
- %
- Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse.
- -- James Dean
- %
- Live from New York ... It's Saturday Night!
- %
- Love thy neighbor, tune thy piano.
- %
- Lucy: Dance, dance, dance. That is all you ever do.
- Can't you be serious for once?
- Snoopy: She is right! I think I had better think
- of the more important things in life!
- (pause)
- Tomorrow!!
- %
- Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser.
- -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
- %
- Maj. Bloodnok: Seagoon, you're a coward!
- Seagoon: Only in the holiday season.
- Maj. Bloodnok: Ah, another Noel Coward!
- %
- Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
- Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
- don't think, right?"
- -- Dr. Who
- %
- Many of the characters are fools and they are always playing
- tricks on me and treating me badly.
- -- Jorge Luis Borges, from "Writers on Writing" by Jon Winokur
- %
- Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
- the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam dancing.
- -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
- %
- Mate, this parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it!
- -- Monty Python
- %
- "Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been watching
- Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
- %
- Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out
- of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
- -- Casablanca
- %
- Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
- Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO inconsiderate."
- -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
- %
- Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
- %
- Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade
- themselves that they have a better idea.
- -- John Ciardi
- %
- Mos Eisley Spaceport; you'll not find a more wretched collection of
- villainy and disreputable types...
- -- Obi-wan Kenobi, "Star Wars"
- %
- Mr. Rockford, this is the Thomas Crown School of Dance and Contemporary
- Etiquette. We aren't going to call again! Now you want these free
- lessons or what?
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Mr. Rockford? Miss Collins from the Bureau of Licenses. We got your
- renewal before the extended deadline but not your check. I'm sorry but
- at midnight you're no longer licensed as an investigator.
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Mr. Rockford? This is Betty Joe Withers. I got four shirts of yours from
- the Bo Peep Cleaners by mistake. I don't know why they gave me men's
- shirts but they're going back.
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- Mr. Rockford? You don't know me, but I'd like to hire you. Could
- you call me at... My name is... uh... Never mind, forget it!
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
- -- The Dragon to Grendel, in John Gardner's "Grendel"
- %
- My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I threw my
- amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste. First we
- checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the frame, using the
- belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up the amplifier and backed
- up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed forward, shouting "The WHO! The
- WHO!" and we launched my amplifier perfectly, as though we had been doing it
- all our lives, clean through the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a
- small but appreciative crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say
- that this was a symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away
- from one state in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper
- and I really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
- OK.
- -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
- %
- "My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?"
- -- MadameX
- %
- My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.
- -- Peter Stack, movie review
-
- His performance is so wooden you want to spray him with Liquid Pledge.
- -- John Stark, movie review
- %
- No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.
- -- MGM executive Irving Thalberg to Louis B. Mayer about
- film rights to "Gone With the Wind".
- Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
- %
- No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill,
- belonging to it.
- -- Frank Lloyd Wright
- %
- No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of
- them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe
- their wish has been granted.
- -- W.H. Auden, "The Dyer's Hand"
- %
- No two persons ever read the same book.
- -- Edmund Wilson
- %
- "No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'"
- -- Dr. Who
- %
- Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
- -- Tallulah Bankhead
- %
- NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
- %
- Noone ever built a statue to a critic.
- %
- Not all who own a harp are harpers.
- -- Marcus Terentius Varro
- %
- Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of
- wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is
- astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful
- not to make any poultry jokes.
- -- Woody Allen
- %
- Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
- %
- "Oh sure, this costume may look silly, but it lets me get in and out
- of dangerous situations -- I work for a federal task force doing a survey on
- urban crime. Look, here's my ID, and here's a number you can call, that will
- put you through to our central base in Atlanta. Go ahead, call -- they'll
- confirm who I am.
- "Unless, of course, the Astro-Zombies have destroyed it."
- -- Captain Freedom
- %
- Oh, Aunty Em, it's so good to be home!
- %
- Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
- %
- Old musicians never die, they just decompose.
- %
- Once, I read that a man be never stronger than when he truly realizes how
- weak he is.
- -- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel #31"
- %
- One big pile is better than two little piles.
- -- Arlo Guthrie
- %
- Oprah Winfrey has an incredible talent for getting the weirdest people to
- talk to. And you just HAVE to watch it. "Blind, masochistic minority,
- crippled, depressed, government latrine diggers, and the women who love
- them too much on the next Oprah Winfrey."
- %
- Penn's aunts made great apple pies at low prices. No one else in
- town could compete with the pie rates of Penn's aunts.
- %
- People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to
- amuse them.
- -- S. Johnson
- %
- Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry without a certain
- unsoundness of mind.
- -- Thomas Macaulay
- %
- Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
- because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
- couldn't compete successfully with poets.
- -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer), "Venus on the Half Shell"
- %
- Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
- -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
- %
- Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
- %
- Plots are like girdles. Hidden, they hold your interest; revealed, they're
- of no interest except to fetishists. Like girdles, they attempt to contain
- an uncontainable experience.
- -- R.S. Knapp
- %
- Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:
-
- SPUD ROGERS OF THE 25TH CENTURY: Story of an Air Force potato that's
- left in a rarely used chow hall for over two centuries and wakes up in a world
- populated by soybean created imitations under the evil Dick Tater. Thanks to
- him, the soy-potatoes learn that being a 'tater is where it's at. Memorable
- line, "'Cause I'm just a stud spud!"
-
- FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER SERIES: Crazed potato who was left in a
- fryer too long and was charbroiled carelessly returns to wreak havoc on
- unsuspecting, would-be teen camp cooks. Scenes include a girl being stuffed
- with chives and Fleischman's Margarine and a boy served up on a side dish
- with beets and dressing. Definitely not for the squeamish, or those on
- diets that are driving them crazy.
-
- FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER II,III,IV,V,VI: Much, much more of the same.
- Except with sour cream.
- %
- Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:
-
- THE TATERNATOR: Cyborg spud returns from the future to present-day
- McDonald's restaurant to kill the potatoess (girl 'tater) who will give birth
- to the world's largest french fry (The Dark Powers of Burger King are clearly
- behind this). Most quotable line: "Ah'll be baked..."
-
- A FISTFUL OF FRIES: Western in which our hero, The Spud with No Name,
- rides into a town that's deprived of carbohydrates thanks to the evil takeover
- of the low-cal Scallopinni Brothers. Plenty of smokeouts, fry-em-ups, and
- general butter-melting by all.
-
- FOR A FEW FRIES MORE: Takes up where AFOF left off! Cameo by Walter
- Cronkite, as every man's common 'tater!
- %
- Prizes are for children.
- -- Charles Ives, upon being given, but refusing, the
- Pulitzer prize
- %
- Producers seem to be so prejudiced against actors who've had no training.
- And there's no reason for it. So what if I didn't attend the Royal Academy
- for twelve years? I'm still a professional trying to be the best actress
- I can. Why doesn't anyone send me the scripts that Faye Dunaway gets?
- -- Farrah Fawcett-Majors
- %
- Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator
- of sociopathic tendencies.
- -- Zoso
- %
- Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the
- Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
- %
- Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
- %
- Rascal, am I? Take THAT!
- -- Errol Flynn
- %
- Recently deceased blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan "comes to" after
- his death. He sees Jimi Hendrix sitting next to him, tuning his guitar.
- "Holy cow," he thinks to himself, "this guy is my idol." Over at the
- microphone, about to sing, are Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and the
- bassist is the late Barry Oakley of the Allman Brothers. So Stevie
- Ray's thinking, "Oh, wow! I've died and gone to rock and roll heaven."
- Just then, Karen Carpenter walks in, sits down at the drums, and says:
- "'Close to You'. Hit it, boys!"
- -- Told by Penn Jillette, of magic/comedy duo Penn and Teller
- %
- Rembrandt is not to be compared in the painting of character with our
- extraordinarily gifted English artist, Mr. Rippingille.
- -- John Hunt, British editor, scholar and art critic
- Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
- %
- "Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it."
- -- Dave Barry
- %
- Satire is tragedy plus time.
- -- Lenny Bruce
- %
- Satire is what closes in New Haven.
- %
- Satire is what closes Saturday night.
- -- George Kaufman
- %
- 'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!
- -- Robert James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix
- %
- She ran the gamut of emotions from 'A' to 'B'.
- -- Dorothy Parker, on a Kate Hepburn performance
- %
- "She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
- you should hear me play piano.'"
- -- Morrisey
- %
- She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way a midget is
- good at being short.
- -- Clive James, on Marilyn Monroe
- %
- Shhh... be vewy, vewy, quiet! I'm hunting wabbits...
- %
- Show business is just like high school, except you get paid.
- -- Martin Mull
- %
- Sir, it's very possible this asteroid is not stable.
- -- C3P0
- %
- Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects
- such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern
- art.
- -- Tom Stoppard
- %
- Smile! You're on Candid Camera.
- %
- Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
- -- Indiana Jones, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
- %
- Snoopy: No problem is so big that it can't be run away from.
- %
- Snow White has become a camera buff. She spends hours and hours
- shooting pictures of the seven dwarfs and their antics. Then she
- mails the exposed film to a cut rate photo service. It takes weeks
- for the developed film to arrive in the mail, but that is all right
- with Snow White. She clears the table, washes the dishes and sweeps
- the floor, all the while singing "Someday my prints will come."
- %
- So do the noble fall. For they are ever caught in a trap of their own making.
- A trap -- walled by duty, and locked by reality. Against the greater force
- they must fall -- for, against that force they fight because of duty, because
- of obligations. And when the noble fall, the base remain. The base -- whose
- only purpose is the corruption of what the noble did protect. Whose only
- purpose is to destroy. The noble: who, even when fallen, retain a vestige of
- strength. For theirs is a strength born of things other than mere force.
- Theirs is a strength supreme... theirs is the strength -- to restore.
- -- Gerry Conway, "Thor", #193
- %
- So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
- With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
- maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
- corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
- flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
- it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
- I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
- the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
- Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
- I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
- heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
- unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
- up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
- opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
- our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
- the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
- cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
- these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
- into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
- -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
- %
- Some men who fear that they are playing second fiddle aren't in the
- band at all.
- %
- Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
- you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse.
- -- Avery
- %
- "Spare no expense to save money on this one."
- -- Samuel Goldwyn
- %
- Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
- Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
- science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all
- on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
- -- Harlan Ellison
- %
- "Surely you can't be serious."
- "I am serious, and stop calling me Shirley."
- -- "Airplane"
- %
- Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
- -- Laurie Anderson
- %
- Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra and sank.
- -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
- %
- Television -- the longest amateur night in history.
- -- Robert Carson
- %
- Television has brought back murder into the home -- where it belongs.
- -- Alfred Hitchcock
- %
- Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
- -- Ann Landers
- %
- Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
- -- attributed to both Fred Allen and Ernie Kovacs
- %
- Television is now so desperately hungry for material that it is scraping
- the top of the barrel.
- -- Gore Vidal
- %
- Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.
- -- R. Geis
- %
- That's no moon...
- -- Obi-wan Kenobi
- %
- The Angels want to wear my red shoes.
- -- E. Costello
- %
- The best definition of a gentleman is a man who can play the accordion --
- but doesn't.
- -- Tom Crichton
- %
- The big problem with pornography is defining it. You can't just
- say it's pictures of people naked. For example, you have these
- primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot,
- and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal
- saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think
- you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same
- time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of
- Northern Mali that you may be interested in."
- So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic
- publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest
- naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason
- naked, or whatever. But if National Geographic were to publish an
- article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System
- Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography. But
- others would not. And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev.
- Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
- -- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
- %
- The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better
- people, and don't come in clearly enough.
- -- Bill Maher
- %
- The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
- greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
- inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party
- of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
- -- H. L. Mencken
- %
- The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense
- -- Picasso
- %
- The covers of this book are too far apart.
- -- Book review by Ambrose Bierce.
- %
- The difference between waltzes and disco is mostly one of volume.
- -- T.K.
- %
- The faster we go, the rounder we get.
- -- The Grateful Dead
- %
- The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.
- -- Dorothy Parker
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- *A Giggle Gurgling Gulp of Glee*
- With Pretty Girls, Peppy Scenes, and Gorgeous Revues -- plus a good story.
- -- Tea with a Kick (1924)
-
- Whoopie! Let's go!... Hand-picked Beauties doing cute tricks!
- GET IN THE KNOW FOR THE HEY-HEY WHOOPIE!
- -- The Wild Party (1929)
-
- YOU HEAR HIM MAKE LOVE!
- DIX -- the dashing soldier!
- DIX -- the bold adventurer!
- DIX -- the throbbing lover!
- -- The Wheel of Life (1929)
-
- SEE CHARLES BUTTERWORTH DRIVE A STREETCAR AND SING LOVE
- SONGS TO HIS MARE "MITZIE"!
- -- The Night is Young (1934)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- A mis-spawned murderous abomination from the nether reaches of an
- unimaginable hell.
- -- The Killer of Castle Brood (1967)
-
- NEW -- SICKENING HORROR to make your STOMACH TURN and FLESH CRAWL!
- -- Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968)
-
- LUST-MAD MEN AND LAWLESS WOMEN IN A VICIOUS AND SENSUOUS ORGY OF SLAUGHTER!
- -- Five Bloody Graves (1969)
-
- The family that slays together stays together.
- -- Bloody Mama (1970)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- An AVALANCHE of KILLER WORMS!
- -- Squirm (1976)
-
- Most Movies Live Less Than Two Hours.
- This Is One of Everlasting Torment!
- -- The New House on the Left (1977)
-
- WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU!
- -- Zombie (1980)
-
- It's not human and it's got an axe.
- -- The Prey (1981)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- Different! Daring! Dynamic! Defying! Dumbfounding!
- SEE Uncle Tom lead the Negroes to FREEDOM!
- ... Now, all the SENSUAL and VIOLENT passions Roots couldn't show on TV!
- -- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1972)
-
- An appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality!
- -- Flesh and Blood Show (1973)
-
- WHEN THE CATS ARE HUNGRY...
- RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
- Alone, only a harmless pet...
- One Thousand Strong, They Become a Man-Eating Machine!
- -- The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972)
-
- They're Over-Exposed
- But Not Under-Developed!
- -- Cover Girl Models (1976)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- HOODLUMS FROM ANOTHER WORLD ON A RAY-GUN RAMPAGE!
- -- Teenagers from Outher Space (1959)
-
- Which will be Her Mate... MAN OR BEAST?
- Meet Velda -- the Kind of Woman -- Man or Gorilla would kill... to Keep.
- -- Untamed Mistress (1960)
-
- NOW AN ALL-MIGHTY ALL-NEW MOTION PICTURE BRINGS THEM TOGETHER FOR THE
- FIRST TIME... HISTORY'S MOST GIGANTIC MONSTERS IN COMBAT ATOP MOUNT FUJI!
- -- King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- HOT STEEL BETWEEN THEIR LEGS!
- -- The Cycle Savages (1969)
-
- The Hand that Rocks the Cradle... Has no Flesh on It!
- -- Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971)
-
- TWO GREAT BLOOD HORRORS TO RIP OUT YOUR GUTS!
- -- I Eat Your Skin & I Drink Your Blood (1971 double-bill)
-
- They Went In People and Came Out Hamburger!
- -- The Corpse Grinders (1971)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- KATHERINE HEPBURN as the lying, stealing, singing, preying witch girl
- of the Ozarks... "Low down white trash"? Maybe so -- but let her hear
- you say it and she'll break your head to prove herself a lady!
- -- Spitfire (1934)
-
- Do Native Women Live With Apes?
- -- Love Life of a Gorilla (1937)
-
- JUNGLE KISS!!
- When she looked into his eyes, felt his arms around her -- she
- was no longer Tura, mysterious white goddess of the jungle tribes --
- she was no longer the frozen-hearted high priestess under whose hypnotic
- spell the worshippers of the great crocodile god meekly bowed -- she
- was a girl in love!
- SEE the ravening charge of the hundred scared CROCODILES!
- -- Her Jungle Love (1938)
-
- LOVE! HATE! JOY! FEAR! TORMENT! PANIC! SHAME! RAGE!
- -- Intermezzo (1939)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- POWERFUL! SHOCKING! RAW! ROUGH! CHALLENGING! SEE A LITTLE GIRL MOLESTED!
- -- Never Take Candy from a Stranger (1963)
-
- She Sins in Mobile --
- Marries in Houston --
- Loses Her Baby in Dallas --
- Leaves Her Husband in Tuscon --
- MEETS HARRU IN SAN DIEGO!...
- FIRST -- HARLOW!
- THEN -- MONROE!
- NOW -- McCLANAHAN!!!
- -- The Rotten Apple (1963), Rue McClanahan
-
- *NOT FOR SISSIES! DON'T COME IF YOU'RE CHICKEN!
- A Horrifying Movie of Wierd Beauties and Shocking Monsters...
- 1001 WIERDEST SCENES EVER!! MOST SHOCKING THRILLER OF THE CENTURY!
- -- Teenage Psycho meets Bloody Mary (1964) (Alternate Title:
- The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and
- Became Mixed Up Zombies)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- SCENES THAT WILL STAGGER YOUR SIGHT!
- -- DANCING CALLED GO-GO
- -- MUSIC CALLED JU-JU
- -- NARCOTICS CALLED BANGI!
- -- FIRES OF PUBERTY!
- SEE the burning of a virgin!
- SEE power of witch doctor over women!
- SEE pygmies with fantastic Physical Endowments!!!
- -- Kwaheri (1965)
-
- The Big Comedy of Nineteen-Sexty-Sex!
- -- Boeing-Boeing (1965)
-
- AN ASTRONAUT WENT UP-
- A "GUESS WHAT" CAME DOWN!
- The picture that comes complete with a 10-foot tall monster to
- give you the wim-wams!
- -- Monster a Go-Go (1965)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- SEE rebel guerrillas torn apart by trucks!
- SEE corpses cut to pieces and fed to dogs and vultures!
- SEE the monkey trained to perform nursing duties for her paralyzed owner!
- -- Sweet and Savage (1983)
-
- What a Guy! What a Gal! What a Pair!
- -- Stroker Ace (1983)
-
- It's always better when you come again!
- -- Porky's II: The Next Day (1983)
-
- You Don't Have to Go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!
- -- Pieces (1983)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- SHE TOOK ON A WHOLE GANG! A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog
- on a roaring rampage of revenge!
- -- Bury Me an Angel (1972)
-
- WHAT'S THE SECRET INGREDIENT USED BY THE MAD BUTCHER FOR HIS SUPERB SAUSAGES?
- -- Meat is Meat (1972)
-
- TODAY the Pond!
- TOMORROW the World!
- -- Frogs (1972)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- She's got the biggest six-shooters in the West!
- -- The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949)
-
- CAST OF 3,000!
- 4 WRITERS,
- 2 DIRECTORS,
- 3 CAMERAMEN,
- 3 PRODUCERS!
- 1 YEAR TO MAKE THIS FILM --
- 24 YEARS TO REHEARSE --
- 20 YEARS TO DISTRIBUTE!
- BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS!
- AWE-INSPIRING! VITAL!
- THE PRINCE OF PEACE PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM!
- Be Brave--bring your troubles and your family to:
- HISTORY'S MOST SUBLIME EVENT! YOU'LL FIND GOD RIGHT IN THERE!
- -- The Prince of Peace (1948). Starring members of the
- Wichita Mountain Pageant featuring Millard Coody as Jesus.
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- The Miracle of the Age!!! A LION in your lap! A LOVER in your arms!
- -- Bwana Devil (1952)
-
- OVERWHELMING! ELECTRIFYING! BAFFLING!
- Fire Can't Burn Them! Bullets Can't Kill Them! See the Unfolding of
- the Mysteries of the Moon as Murderous Robot Monsters Descend Upon the
- Earth! You've Never Seen Anything Like It! Neither Has the World!
- SEE... Robots from Space in All Their Glory!!!
- -- Robot Monster (1953)
-
- 1,965 pyramids, 5,337 dancing girls, one million swaying bullrushes,
- 802 scared bulls!
- -- The Egyptian (1954)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonizing
- horror on a screaming world!
- -- The Crawling Eye (1958)
-
- SEE a female colossus... her mountainous torso, scyscraper limbs,
- giant desires!
- -- Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman (1958)
-
- Here Is Your Chance To Know More About Sex.
- What Should a Movie Do? Hide Its Head in the Sand Like an Ostrich?
- Or Face the JOLTING TRUTH as does...
- -- The Desperate Women (1958)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- They hungered for her treasure! And died for her pleasure!
- SEE Man-Fish Battle Shark-Man-Killer!
- -- The Golden Mistress (1954)
-
- See Jane Russell in 3-D; She'll Knock Both Your Eyes Out!
- -- The French Line (1954)
-
- See Jane Russell Shake Her Tamborines... and Drive Cornel WILDE!
- -- Hot Blood (1956)
- %
- The Great Movie Posters:
-
- When You're Six Tons -- And They Call You Killer -- It's Hard To Make Friends...
- -- Namu, the Killer Whale (1966)
-
- Meet the Girls with the Thermo-Nuclear Navels!
- -- Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966)
-
- A GHASTLY TALE DRENCHED WITH GOUTS OF BLOOD SPURTING FROM THE VICTIMS
- OF A CRAZED MADMAN'S LUST.
- -- A Taste of Blood (1967)
- %
- The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."
- -- Johnny Carson
- %
- The horror... the horror!
- %
- The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
- lists of "Ten Best".
- -- H. Allen Smith
- %
- The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment
- you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
- -- Sir George Jessel
- %
- "The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
- has gills through which it can see."
- -- Monty Python
- %
- The key to building a superstar is to keep their mouth shut. To reveal
- an artist to the people can be to destroy him. It isn't to anyone's
- advantage to see the truth.
- -- Bob Ezrin, rock music producer
- %
- The last vestiges of the old Republic have been swept away.
- -- Governor Tarkin
- %
- The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
- -- Nicol Williamson
- %
- The old complaint that mass culture is designed for eleven-year-olds
- is of course a shameful canard. The key age has traditionally been
- more like fourteen.
- -- Robert Christgau, "Esquire"
- %
- The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
- catch his own breath.
- -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
- %
- The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
- -- Dorothy Parker
- %
- The only real advantage to punk music is that nobody can whistle it.
- %
- The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
- -- David Lardner
- %
- The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid,
- stable business.
- -- John Steinbeck
- [Horse racing *is* a stable business ...]
- %
- The Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
- %
- The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.
- %
- The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been
- changed to protect the innocent.
- %
- The streets were dark with something more than night.
- -- Raymond Chandler
- %
- The sun never sets on those who ride into it.
- -- RKO
- %
- The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
- -- Ken Kesey
- %
- The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
- annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
- -- Oscar Wilde
- %
- The ultimate game show will be the one where somebody gets killed at the end.
- -- Chuck Barris, creator of "The Gong Show"
- %
- The world has many unintentionally cruel mechanisms that are not
- designed for people who walk on their hands.
- -- John Irving, "The World According to Garp"
- %
- The Worst Musical Trio
- There are few bad musicians who have a chance to give a recital at
- a famous concert hall while still learning the rudiments of their
- instrument. This happened about thirty years ago to the son of a Rumanian
- gentleman who was owed a personal favour by Georges Enesco, the celebrated
- violinist. Enesco agreed to give lessons to the son who was quite
- unhampered by great musical talent.
- Three years later the boy's father insisted that he give a public
- concert. "His aunt said that nobody plays the violin better than he does.
- A cousin heard him the other day and screamed with enthusiasm." Although
- Enesco feared the consequences, he arranged a recital at the Salle Gaveau
- in Paris. However, nobody bought a ticket since the soloist was unknown.
- "Then you must accompany him on the piano," said the boy's father,
- "and it will be a sell out."
- Reluctantly, Enesco agreed and it was. On the night an excited
- audience gathered. Before the concert began Enesco became nervous and
- asked for someone to turn his pages.
- In the audience was Alfred Cortot, the brilliant pianist, who
- volunteered and made his way to the stage.
- The soloist was of uniformly low standard and next morning the
- music critic of Le Figaro wrote: "There was a strange concert at the Salle
- Gaveau last night. The man whom we adore when he plays the violin played
- the piano. Another whom we adore when he plays the piano turned the pages.
- But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin."
- -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
- %
- There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need
- the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the
- world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the
- long winter evenings.
- -- Quentin Crisp
- %
- There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows
- what they are.
- -- Somerset Maugham
- %
- There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies. They hang out and play
- together for years, virtually inseparable. Unfortunately, one of them is
- struck by a truck and killed. About a week later his friend wakes up in
- the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the
- room. He calls out, "Who's there? Who's there? What's going on?"
- "It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice.
- Excitedly he sits up in bed. "Bob! Bob! Is that you? Where are
- you?"
- "Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now."
- "Heaven! You're in heaven! That's wonderful! What's it like?"
- "It's great, man. I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day.
- I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time!
- Man it is smokin'!"
- "Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more,
- tell me more!"
- "Let me put it this way," continues the voice. "There's good news
- and bad news. The good news is that these guys are in top form. I mean
- I have *never* heard them sound better. They are *wailing* up here."
- "The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..."
- %
- There are two ways of disliking art. One is to dislike it. The other is
- to like it rationally.
- -- Oscar Wilde
- %
- There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
- other is to read Pope.
- -- Oscar Wilde
- %
- There is much Obi-Wan did not tell you.
- -- Darth Vader
- %
- There is nothing wrong with writing ... as long as it is done in private
- and you wash your hands afterward.
- %
- There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
- that is not being talked about.
- -- Oscar Wilde
- %
- There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to
- recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let
- go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its
- past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief
- that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out.
- The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well. It's hard to
- recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process. It's hard to
- learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the
- dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experiences
- and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take
- ourselves along -- quite gracefully.
- -- Ellen Goodman
- %
- There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right
- keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
- -- J.S. Bach
- %
- There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.
- -- Red Smith
- %
- There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists.
- If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.
- %
- There's such a thing as too much point on a pencil.
- -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
- %
- They can't stop us... we're on a mission from God!
- -- The Blues Brothers
- %
- ... TheysaidDoyouseethebiggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehill?andIsaidYesIsee
- thebiggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehillTheresabigdarkforestbetweenmeandthe
- biggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehillandalittleoldladyridingonaHoovervacuum
- cleanersayingIllgetyoumyprettyandyourlittledogTototoo ...
-
- I don't even *HAVE* a dog Toto...
- %
- This door is baroquen, please wiggle Handel.
- (If I wiggle Handel, will it wiggle Bach?)
- -- Found on a door in the MSU music building
- %
- This is Jim Rockford.
- At the tone leave your name and message; I'll get back to you.
-
- This is Maria, Liberty Bail Bonds. Your client, Todd Lieman, skipped and
- his bail is forfeit. That's the pink slip on your '74 Firebird, I believe.
- Sorry, Jim, bring it on over.
-
- This is Marilyn Reed, I wanta talk to you... Is this a machine? I don't
- talk to machines! [Click]
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- This is the ____LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
- %
- This is the Baron. Angel Martin tells me you buy information. Ok,
- meet me at one a.m. behind the bus depot, bring five-hundred dollars
- and come alone. I'm serious!
- -- "The Rockford Files"
- %
- This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.
- -- Dorothy Parker
- %
- This unit... must... survive.
- %
- This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible
- with raisins in it.
- -- Dorothy Parker
- %
- Three actors, Tom, Fred, and Cec, wanted to do the jousting scene
- from Don Quixote for a local TV show. "I'll play the title role," proposed
- Tom. "Fred can portray Sancho Panza, and Cecil B. De Mille."
- %
- Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
- -- Trollope
- %
- To be is to do.
- -- I. Kant
- To do is to be.
- -- A. Sartre
- Do be a Do Bee!
- -- Miss Connie, Romper Room
- Do be do be do!
- -- F. Sinatra
- Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
- -- F. Flintstone
- %
- Today you'll start getting heavy metal radio on your dentures.
- %
- Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
- cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
- spectacular adventure starring... Tippy, the Wonder Dog!
- -- Bob & Ray
- %
- "Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
- except in major motion pictures."
- -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
- %
- Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy.
- -- Han Solo
- %
- Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
- -- Michelangelo
- %
- "Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense."
- %
- TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
- -- Frank Lloyd Wright
- %
- Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking,
- unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
- -- Edward Gibbon
- %
- Use an accordion. Go to jail.
- -- KFOG, San Francisco
- %
- Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds
- sang there except those that sang best.
- -- Henry Van Dyke
- %
- Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The
- reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of
- thirty-five.
- -- Joel Hildebrand
- %
- VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel
- entrances; others cannot.
- This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least
- it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to
- trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical
- space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to
- follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not
- of science.
- VIII. Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
- Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives
- might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed,
- accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be
- destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate,
- elongate, snap back, or solidify.
- IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
- This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to
- the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of
- watching it happen to a duck instead.
- X. Everything falls faster than an anvil.
- Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner cartoons.
- -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
- %
- Watch all-night Donna Reed reruns until your mind resembles oatmeal.
- %
- Watch your mouth, kid, or you'll find yourself floating home.
- -- Han Solo
- %
- We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.
- -- Decca Recording Company, turning down the Beatles, 1962
- %
- We have art that we do not die of the truth.
- -- Nietzsche
- %
- We'll be recording at the Paradise Friday night. Live, on the Death label.
- -- Swan, "Phantom of the Paradise"
- %
- We'll know that rock is dead when you have to get a degree to work in it.
- %
- We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which
- people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products.
- Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spirtual
- and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run,
- it's not going to do anything for you.
- -- Bob Dylan, "LA Times", September 5, 1984
- %
- We're only in it for the volume.
- -- Black Sabbath
- %
- "Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can*
- you believe?!"
- -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
- %
- "Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet.
- The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily
- maim or kill innocent little children."
- "Oh, so you don't like it?"
- "Don't like it? I'm CRAZY for it."
- -- The Killing Joke
- %
- "Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
-
- "Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ... coefficient of
- relevance to Key of Time: zero."
- -- Dr. Who
- %
- Wharbat darbid yarbou sarbay?
- %
- What a bonanza! An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script
- by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary
- Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!
- -- David Niven, "Bring On the Empty Horses"
- %
- What an artist dies with me!
- -- Nero
- %
- What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.
- -- Brendan Francis
- %
- "What are you watching?"
- "I don't know."
- "Well, what's happening?"
- "I'm not sure... I think the guy in the hat did something terrible."
- "Why are you watching it?"
- "You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art flow
- over you."
- -- The Big Chill
- %
- What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of about
- Down Under up for?
- %
- "What do you do when your real life exceeds your wildest fantasies?"
- "You keep it to yourself."
- -- Broadcast News
- %
- What ever happened to happily ever after?
- %
- What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
- %
- What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working
- when he's staring out the window.
- %
- "What was the worst thing you've ever done?"
- "I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that
- ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing."
- -- Peter Straub, "Ghost Story"
- %
- When all else fails, try Kate Smith.
- %
- When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by
- reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"
- %
- When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
- -- Raymond Chandler
- %
- When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony concerts,
- she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years -- and I find I mind
- it less and less."
- -- Louise Andrews Kent
- %
- Where is John Carson now that we need him?
- -- RLG
- %
- While he was in New York on location for _Bronco Billy_ (1980), Clint
- Eastwood agreed to a television interview. His host, somewhat hostile,
- began by defining a Clint Eastwood picture as a violent, ruthless,
- lawless, and bloody piece of mayhem, and then asked Eastwood himself to
- define a Clint Eastwood picture. "To me," said Eastwood calmly, "what
- a Clint Eastwood picture is, is one that I'm in."
- -- Boller and Davis, "Hollywood Anecdotes"
- %
- Whistler's mother is off her rocker.
- %
- Who is D.B. Cooper, and where is he now?
- %
- Who is John Galt?
- %
- Who is W.O. Baker, and why is he saying those terrible things about me?
- %
- Who was that masked man?
- %
- Who's on first?
- %
- Who's scruffy-looking?
- -- Han Solo
- %
- Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
- -- Paul Simon
- %
- "Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
- have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."
- -- Ian Shoales
- %
- Why are you doing this to me?
- Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before
- there is change.
- -- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel", #29
- %
- Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
- %
- Why not? -- What? -- Why not? -- Why should I not send it? -- Why should I
- not dispatch it? -- Why not? -- Strange! I don't know why I shouldn't --
- Well, then -- You will do me this favor. -- Why not? -- Why should you not
- do it? -- Why not? -- Strange! I shall do the same for you, when you want
- me to. Why not? Why should I not do it for you? Strange! Why not? --
- I can't think why not.
- -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from a letter to his cousin Maria,
- "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
- %
- Why you say you no bunny rabbit when you have little powder-puff tail?
- -- The Tasmanian Devil
- %
- Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with a valentine.
- -- Christopher Plummer
- %
- Worth seeing? Yes, but not worth going to see.
- %
- Would it help if I got out and pushed?
- -- Princess Leia Organa
- %
- Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
- -- Frank Zappa
- %
- Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
- %
- X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
- imagination is the plot.
- %
- Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet. I've got eight slugs in me. One's lead,
- the rest bourbon. The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver. I'm
- a private eye.
- -- "Calvin & Hobbes"
- %
- Year Name James Bond Book
- ---- -------------------------------- -------------- ----
- 50's James Bond TV Series Barry Nelson
- 1962 Dr. No Sean Connery 1958
- 1963 From Russia With Love Sean Connery 1957
- 1964 Goldfinger Sean Connery 1959
- 1965 Thunderball Sean Connery 1961
- 1967* Casino Royale David Niven 1954
- 1967 You Only Live Twice Sean Connery 1964
- 1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service George Lazenby 1963
- 1971 Diamonds Are Forever Sean Connery 1956
- 1973 Live And Let Die Roger Moore 1955
- 1974 The Man With The Golden Gun Roger Moore 1965
- 1977 The Spy Who Loved Me Roger Moore 1962 (novelette)
- 1979 Moonraker Roger Moore 1955
- 1981 For Your Eyes Only Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
- 1983 Octopussy Roger Moore 1965
- 1983* Never Say Never Again Sean Connery
- 1985 A View To A Kill Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
- 1987 The Living Daylights Timothy Dalton 1965 (novelette)
- * -- Not a Broccoli production.
- %
- Yevtushenko has... an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty feet.
- -- John Cheever
- %
- "You boys lookin' for trouble?"
- "Sure. Whaddya got?"
- -- Marlon Brando, "The Wild Ones"
- %
- You're all clear now, kid. Now blow this thing so we can all go home.
- -- Han Solo
- %
- "You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."
- -- Gary Giddens
- %
- Zero Mostel: That's it baby! When you got it, flaunt it! Flaunt it!
- -- Mel Brooks, "The Producers"
- %
-