Monday, August 01, 2005

Cultural Reference Chains

My brain keeps making connections! Every time I hear a word or phrase, I’m reminded of a movie, a tv show, a song, a comic, a website, a book, an inside joke, or some other cultural reference. I’ve had disturbingly long conversations that jumped from one reference to another. As an example, see the following exchange that I saw in a chat room about seven years ago:

Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?
I bite my thumb, but not at your, sir.
It’s only a flesh wound!

Shakespeare to Monty Python! (I remember an exchange from a chat room 7 years ago, but I can’t remember my sunglasses. Jeez!) I’ve been trying to figure out how many references I can string together. Pairs are pretty easy:

…the important thing is that the future of *my* company is secure. Right, Mr. Fox?
Right you are, Mr. Wayne… Didn’t you get the memo?
Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. The problem is, I just forgot this one time. And I've already taken care of it so it's not even a problem anymore.

He’s dead, Jim.
I’m not quite dead yet.

Yes, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.
Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

If you run into oddly recurring themes, it’s easier to chain more together:

Devil bunny needs a ham.
There it is!
What? Behind the rabbit?
It is the rabbit!
*Ka-click* Time to die, nerd boy!

SpoooOOOOON
Why a spoon?
Because it’s dull, you twit. It’ll hurt more!
There is no spoon.

It’s somewhat more difficult to chain references together that have no words in common but have common themes or sound like they could be reasonable responses to each other.

Say hello to my little friend.
Hi! I’m Chucky! Wanna play?
Hi! I’m Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you.

I could do this longer, but I need to at least pretend I’m trying to wind down for bed. So I pass the baton to my readers (I’ll probably add more as they come to me). See if you can do more than three. Rules? Er, you can't have quotes from the same movie/show/song/etc. right in a row (since they already have an obvious connection). Bonus points for having an actor respond to their own line in one reference with another from a different reference.

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