You... Me... Paul Krebs... Everybody.
We had a colloquium today that dealt with what is locally termed "converging technology," the buzzword around which the engineering program is being reorganized. (The talk, for those who care, was about "spintronics," and had a bunch of nanoscale fabrication material to boot.)
With that in mind, I sent the announcement to the engineering faculty and students as well as our usual list of people, and was rewarded with a slightly bigger crowd than usual, including a few new faces. When I got up to introduce the speaker, it took a real effort not to start off by saying "I'm so glad to see so many lovely people here tonight, and I'd especially like to welcome all the members of the Illinois law enforcement community who have chosen to join us in the Palace Hotel ballroom this evening."
Sometimes I hate the way my brain works. Those who know me know that I tend to drop odd snippets of pop-culture references into conversation all the time. What you don't know is that I manage to stop about half of what my mind coughs up before it can get to my mouth. What slips through is enough to make most people think I'm a lunatic.
It doesn't help that my college experience was radically different than that of most of my colleagues. There are maybe three people I work with who have even seen This Is Spinal Tap, and none of them have the obsessive knowledge of the dialogue that I do. I don't think any of them are Coen Brothers fans, so I get nothing but blank looks when I say "Hell, Leo, I ain't afraid to say it-- it's a question of ethics." Doing the John Polito voice doesn't help. I've so far managed to avoid dropping any of Dennis Farina's lines from Midnight Run, which is a good thing, as I doubt that "Not a word, Sidney, not a fucking word, or I'll bury this phone in your head" would go over well in a faculty meeting.
It's not just movies, either-- I walked into an office at NIST one day, to ask my supervisor a question, and the postdoc who shared the office (and the affliction of pop-culture obsession) said, "'Ancient Chinese secret, huh?' Where's that from?" "A commercial for laundry detergent-- Calgon, or something like that." "How do you know that?" the other postdoc in the room asked incredulously. I don't know why it is that I remember this stuff, when I can't remember to call Earthlink and shut down my old email account, but these weird fragments creep into my head and get lodged there.
The worst of them are the lines that are so specific to my own experience that there isn't a ghost of a chance of anyone else picking up the joke. The phrase "None more black" acquired a significance out of all proportion to its role in the movie, back in the day, so other people end up mystified as to why I find it amusing. Other lines-- the post title, for example-- are drawn from things my friends and I used to say, so there are maybe a dozen people on earth who might recall the origin and crack a smile, and none of them work here. And, of course, there are a whole host of semi-obscene snippets of rugby songs that drift through my head all the time, which aren't fit to be quoted in polite company. Some of those verses contain very... enduring images, though.
Probably the single worst inescapable fragment dates from the first Gulf War, in a local tv ad shown over and over again on CNN. In the middle of an otherwise unremarkable car commercial, full of testimonials from satisfied customer urging you to buy your car from some dealer in southern Vermont, a rather fat old woman appeared on screen, with a red-and-blue bandanna on her head, and loudly commanded "Don't you buy no ugly truck!" in a hick accent that had to be heard to be believed. I'm not sure I can explain why that cracked me up every time back then, let alone why I still find it hilarious.
Describing it now does it no justice, of course, and won't help anyone else to see the humor. It will, at least, provide some hint of an explanation, should you hear me mutter those words, and chuckle to myself... I'm not actually crazy, it's just the strange workings of memory that make it seem that way.
Posted at 7:27 PM | link | follow-ups |