This phrase came up twice in about two hours. I haven't heard it for ages - in fact, I think I have never had it said directly to me, but have only overheard it, but it's one of those phrases: even when you hear it for what could be the first time, you know just what it means. Almost instinctively. Like "carrying coals to Newcastle." Or, my favorite, "singing to the choir" (which is even more futile, presumably, than "preaching to the choir."
And I do love a turn of phrase, a really tidy one, one that can stop on a dime. Few people seem to be able to come up with one. I remember hearing someone at Disneyland - probably the guide on the Jungle Cruise - say "It's not rocket surgery," which, at the time, I thought was hilarious. In fact, it's still funny. I use it occasionally (it can slip out) and it still gets a chuckle.
Not that my aim to get a laugh. I don't know what exactly it is about wordplay, but it's really one of your underrated forms of play; it may indeed be my favorite one. I'm a quoter - someone who quotes films. Do you know these people? Perhaps you are one yourself. It's strange but wonderful form of communication. I quote a wide range of films, most of which are cult or indie or old - rarely modern. You know: Woody Allen, Spalding Gray, the Coen Brothers. Some sci-fi, some fantasy, some TCM-style classics.
I know most of the classic quotes, and, in many cases, I know the correct response. There's nothing like the great call & response of the Film Quoter (or the Literature Quoter, which I also do....or the Poetry or Opera quoter - I don't do that but I have seen it done); your friend says something from a movie - and if they are a Quoter worth their salt, the quote will thematically match the present situation, it will be a sort of wry or creative commentary on the actual scene you find yourselves mutually on - and you get it, and then, then you respond. The response is great, because, especially with people you are testing out - casting quotes before co-workers, as it were - you can get immense satisfaction from a proper call & response.
Sometimes it can be the actual two lines that follow each other in a movie (such as, for example: "I'd just as soon kiss a Wookie." The correct response is, of course, "I can arrange that.") but it can also be a sort of looser association, like when you just quote the same movie but along parallel lines, lines that just remind you of other lines. Like if someone says "After all, tomorrow is another day," you might respond with just some generic Gone With the Wind quote, like "Frankly, my dear etc" (a bit obvious) or something more fun, like "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies" or, if you're in the mood, "Why Captain Butler, you do dance divinely." You could even pull out a "quittin' time!" in the right context, with great success. You get the idea.
(I won't even get into inflection quoting, which is whole other ballgame, and one so immensely more sophisticated - and, one might argue, even more sillier - that non-quoters don't even know it exists. Talk about the pleasure of shared obscure knowledge.)
Of course, the more obscure the quote, the more satisfying when your listener picks it up and responds in kind. It's a strange modern way to immediate intimacy. As John Cusack said in High Fidelity, it's not what you're like, but what you like that counts. It's kind of horrible, kind of silly, and kind of true. My friend D did something the other day which was incredibly endearing. A few weeks ago, I'd told him a story (a true story) about when I visited New York in 2005 for the legendary Christo & Jean Claude site-specific artwork The Gates (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates). He knew the artists, remembered The Gates, and could talk intelligently about this sort of art - I'm sure we could have gone on to discuss Andy Goldsworthy, and he'd probably even would have had an opinion. That's cool - I know a lot of people who don't have any opinion about Andy Goldsworthy, but I have one, and so it's fun when I meet other people who do.
This is not to say I'm an elitist or trying to be highbrow - that is not my point. My point is, everyone likes to have friends with common interests, and everyone has some interest that is not common (from people who find head colds sexy to those who love to collect needlepointed pictures of fruit; if Google has shown us anything, it's that no matter how weird your interest is, there are plenty of people around the globe who share it). So, we all know what it's like to find someone who has a common interest in your uncommon interest.
Just recently, my friend D and I found ourselves down by City Hall, which was all lit up for the holidays. The seasonal changing of lights on the tops of civic and skyscraping buildings in San Francisco is one of my favorite things about this great skyline. I am not a big sports fan, but it was hard to miss the recent victory the SF Giants had in the World Series. Even I felt gratified when I drove across the Bay Bridge the night of the victory parade day, and saw all the buildings lit up orange (Giants' colors, you see). It wasn't that I was all into the celebration per se, but I liked the idea of this unified show of aesthetics. Same thing with the City Hall - no one can be keen on the real gold leaf that graces its dome: the $400,000 they spent on it a decade ago is depressing when you look at the city's homeless population. However, aesthetically - and only in that light - it's pretty cool. And when it's lit up with brilliant red & green lights for Christmas, it's simply marvelous. Almost art.
"Isn't that lovely?" I said to D. He's politically aware and highly practiced in general compassion, so I think he may have been thinking about the capitalist implications of spending resources to light the gold leaf travesty, and wondered for a split second how I could find it lovely, but his reply was, "Oh, that's right, you like Christo."
I have no idea why the quote about the eggs and the omelet came up twice today, but if one more person says it, I'm probably going to want to follow them home.
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