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Weekend Discussion Thread: Catch Phrase-itisOkay we may have done something like this before but…
Please keep those thread ideas coming! 70 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Catch Phrase-itis”Commenting at Satellite News
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I don’t think you understand that different people have different opinions of what they find funny. Some people love, say, “Watch out for snakes”, while others don’t get why it’s so funny. People are different, and I have never understood the need that some people have for everyone else to think just like them.
I’m guessing you haven’t watched all of Joel’s episodes if you think that only the Mike-era and Jonah-era episodes “beat it into the ground”. You should watch them all, some of them are pretty funny.
Speaking of catch-phrases:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GTFzHofLkY
I’m sure Mr. J finds this one hilarious. ;)
… now where can I get one of those t-shirts?
“I like it very much”, “NO!”, “you’re stuck here!”, “I’m a Grimolt Warrior!”, “Time for go to bed”, “TORCH-A!”, “I killed that fat barkeep”, “durn smoochers”, “there was no monster”, “Sampo”, “the Master would not approve”…now if I could just find some Joel-era catchphrases from actual movie dialogue that were beaten into the ground…oh wait.
Sorry, I’ve been trying really hard to just focus my attention on the good and the beautiful, but this was too easy.
Whenever I see someone in public who looks vaguely like someone famous, I will declare the famous person’s name with a note of surprise and wonder, a la Crow seeing The Master in Manos at just the right angle and shouting, “Bill Buckner!” (This is a riff type I associate precisely with Trace/Crow: some of the others do it from time to time, but mostly it’s him.) Understand, I haven’t had the nerve to declare any name out loud in public–obsessed I may be, but even I know what riffs are likely to fall flat.
Thank you, Bartcow, for your long partial list of Joel-era catch phrases! I tried that myself once in a similar thread, seemingly to little effect, but maybe it’ll work for you. Catch phrases have been an integral part of MST3K from the beginning–many classic, some driven into the ground, some never getting off the ground, some a matter of debate. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise!
When playing a board game with my family a few years ago, one of the types of cards that was used was labelled “What Am I?”. Thus, whenever it was my turn and I had a card that said “What Am I?”, I would yell it a la the riff from “At Your Fingertips: Grass”.
Also, during the holiday season, whenever I hear “Here Comes Santa Claus”, I tend to get the urge to yell out “TUSK!”.
Whenever there’s a fat, doughy guy on TV in closeup: “Jimmy Osmond…all grown up” (from ‘Mitchell”)
Let’s not forget, “He tampered in God’s domain,” and the ever-popular, “Hi-keeba!”
I say “Hi-Keeba” when I quickly pass out a stack of papers in my classroom. I keep hoping that one of my students will get it. Unfortunately, not yet!
Also, “You do it, I’m bitter” falls flat in my house. My wife thinks I’m serious EVERY TIME. Jokes are funniest when you have to explain them. Ha ha!
I love it. That captures this whole issue in a nutshell, doesn’t it? I’ve found that, most of the time, the explanations just make things worse. As a linguist, I see a future scholarly paper in all this: how catchphrases enter the idiolects of most MSTies, how long MSTies consciously regulate their use, and at what point they start to use them automatically, without thinking, just like regular ol’ verbs and adjectives.
“It’s the wango-zetango!”, “I’m huge!”, “Jim Henson’s ____ babies”, “He’s dead, Jim”.
From Hired “If I knew how to read I’d know what the problem was.”
You could always follow up with, “I thought it would be funny. Now I’m just ashamed.”
“Elgin’s my black friend,” whenever I hear Elgin, IL mentioned.
And yet, I still often flash back to that third-grade joke about “What did one taste bud on the tongue say to the other?”
And “Yew and your daughter are dewwwmed”, which, like “I’m a Grimolt warrior!”, was never actually SAID in the movie.
(Going through my pile of unwatched Shout disks, I’d dug down to VWvtSS, where Jay Sayer actually says “A girl rescue a Grimolt warrior?…(whine)But I’m a PRI-iiince!!”)
Of course, in both cases, the altered versions became a Catchphrase from callbacks in other episodes, which is a different category from the Mike-style high-school-hallway episode-long parroting of “I’m comiiiing!“, “That squishy feeling”, or “That certain Boing”.
Oh, you’re just so adorable. Now, go outside and play, honey, the grownups are talking.
Yeah, Mike is awesome!
One from Season 11 that has caught on with me is from Reptilicus: “The door is ajar. The temperature is ___. The time is ___”, and repeat with mounting urgency/hysteria.
Invariably when I hear “the temperature is …” I can’t resist getting swept into that.
Crow’s exuberant “Kitty!” is a go-to in a house with four cats.
Not a catchphrase, but I usually pronounce it “tenperature,” with more or less emphasis on the ‘n’ depending on who’s around.
“You are the one in my dreams of blood,” and “Killing doesn’t help any more!” are two that I try not to use around those who don’t get it.
Gotta add this one, which is probably my most used of all to the point that I forget where it actually comes from.
In the Ring of Terror episode there’s a host segment where they are doing an autopsy on the vacuum cleaner (Mr. Hoover). There’s a moment where Crow is trying to move the hand of the clock forward to show lapse of time and says “oopsie”
I say that quite often if I see a snafu or blunder in reel or real life. Oopsie. It’s sort of nonchalant, but perfectly encapsulates the oh crap-ness of the moment.