Literary Riffs

I think it’s SFI. Crow says to the kid whose parents are getting divorced, “Come on! Just read Catcher in the Rye and deal with it!”

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High School Big Shot
“Put the rat mask on her!”

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When they’re commenting on the greasy little weirdo with the nightdress in Attack of the the Eye Creatures:

“Ingatius J. Reilly had better hygiene than this guy!” (Yes, his middle initial should be “P,” they even acknowledge in the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide that they got that wrong. Even so.)

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Is the Naked Lunch pop-up book considered a literary riff?

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Also, for a time any woman with dark, frizzy hair was automatically Fran Lebowitz (still not writing).

Or Paul from Werewolf, the “writer” : “JD Salinger writes more than this guy!”

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There’s a series of religious detective novels by Harry Kemelman that focus on the character of Rabbi David Small. They would have titles like Friday the Rabbi Slept Late and Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry and so on.

I was surprised that Gunslinger had a reference to that Rabbi David Small series with the riff “Tuesday the Rabbi got robbed.” I have one of the novels (Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet), so it was interesting to see them refer to a somewhat more obscure literary series (well, obscure nowadays, anyhow).

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They were bestselling books back in the day. I think a lot of people of a similar age to the Best Brains folks would have been familiar with the titles. There was even a short-lived TV adaptation in the '70s.

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When I was getting my Philosophy degree, I mainly focused on 20th century Continental, specifically Existentialism, so the “Jean Paul Sartre’s motorcycle gang!” “I believe in the Existential outlaw hero, that is why I travel with these men!” riffs from Horror of Party Beach are personal faves

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There’s also a Sartre reference in Catalina Caper, and I’m pretty sure a few others through the series.

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Starcrash
“One ship, two ship, red ship, blue ship.”

and

“We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams.”

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I didn’t study much English lit, so thank you for ones to which I can relate! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Someone riffing that Camus “The Plague” was Marvin’s favorite novel in High School Shot, added another layer of grim to Marv’s grim world.

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Oh, that jostled a memory of Angels Revenge, but I’ll have to look up the specifics…

I’m back! it was a spin on a line (or lines) from Bellem’s hard-boiled Dan Turner pulp series - “My Roscoe barked, ‘chow, chow’ and it jock (or “drat”(?) according to the subs) drilled his knickers”

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Oh, nice!

I dug it when we got some Spillane references, too, like the “Mickey Spillane still life” riff during the opening moments of Secret Agent Super Dragon.

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“Yeah, you’re a regular Ray Bradbury and I’M TRAPPED IN THE BUBBLE!”

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Maybe it’s already been mentioned above…I seem to think there were probably one than more references to Polonius behind the curtain in one or more of the grimier experiments. Maybe just one…not sure.

I’m not a specialist in early modern English-language literature, particularly, but I liked the medium-deep dive on that one or ones.

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You jogged my memory - in Danger!! Death Ray the guy who looks like Jerry Reed is hiding behind a curtain, I think, and they say “Jerry Reed is Polonius”.

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Oh, in Alien from LA, there are a couple of Dickens references.

“This is rather Dickens-esque, isn’t it?”
“It’s so Dickens-esque, it’s almost Dickensian.”

And in The Deadly Mantis, when the random lady is getting off the bus, they make a Poe reference and a Sherlock Holmes reference.

“She’s a waitress at the International House of Usher.”
“She has a temp job at Baskerville Castle.”

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From the ACI Turkey short (RT):

:turkey: “It was the best of turkeys. It was the worst of turkeys.” :turkey:

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