There’s a RiffTrax movie called the Sword and the Sorceror that’s about the balding guy from Murphy Brown visiting a medieval-themed brothel with his friends, and at the start of the movie there’s a bunch of overwrought narration about all the legendry that’s in the offing.
So here’s my question:
What are other bits of wordplay or turns of phrase that only show up in storytelling?
Have you ever been thwarted in real life?
Have you ever been talking to a friend and described someone as birdlike or grizzled?
Have you ever vis a vis-ed on purpose?
What does hardscrabble even mean?
Every Fourth of July when the Minnesota snows are at their peak, it’s fun to settle in with the family and play a little Hardscrabble OR a little Hardboggle. I fill the slow-cooker with delicious hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps. The old man puts on his parka and roasts weenies on the deck out back. At dusk, we crown our game champion and they get to wear the Uncle Sam costume and lead us in patriotic songs until sunrise on the 5th.
Quicksand seemed like it was just an omnipresent danger in the 80s.
I kind of assumed being an adult would mean balancing the very real risks posed by quicksand and heavily themed gangs and topless 18 yr olds being chased by serial killers.
The 70s too! Also, we got PSAs during cartoons about the dangers of playing with stray blasting caps, which, as it turned out, were not just lying around everywhere. We sure looked!
My daughter went through a toddler phase in which she strode purposefully into the room with a thing and said “BEHOLD!” I wish that phase never ended.
They just genericized everything into “drugs” by the 80s. It was simply “don’t do drugs” or, more famously, “just say NO to drugs” and “winners don’t use drugs.” As a kid, I knew that drugs were a bad thing, but I had no idea what they were.
My folks were thrilled that I would check lots of anti-drug guides and bad anti-drug kid-lit out of the library. In truth, I was reading them because the colors and descriptions of tripping were so cool. I bet I wasn’t the only one.
Also, you don’t have to be McLuhan or Butler or some other deep thinker to note how confusing kids’ TV has always been. You have your just say no PSAs alternating with ads for breakfast sugar and plastic ponies which make every legit form of consumption look like a non-stop drug party.
