The Language of Our Marriage: The Shows and Movies that Have Shaped What We Say to Each Other
Also known as a trip through core Millennial cultural artifacts
I grew up relatively sheltered when it came to media. I didn’t see an R-rated movie until I was old enough to buy the movie ticket myself, and when I got to college, I was mostly unable to banter with my dorm-mates about movies because I had seen exactly none of them. (I did get very good at pretending to have seen movies I had not seen.)
Christian had the opposite experience. He watched The Exorcist accidentally as a six-year-old child and that is a pretty good summary of how un-sheltered he was. As a result, when we met, Christian had seen twenty times as many movies as I had.
Something you should know about my husband is that he has the ability to pull something out of his brain at a moment’s notice. Of course, you can only pull out of your brain what is already there, and in addition to multiple foreign languages and an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, his brain is full of movie and TV quotes. I did not know this when I met him, though, and so he would say something that was meant to be funny or quirky, and I just thought he had made it up. It wasn’t until he started introducing me to all of his favorite movies that I realized at least half of the things he said on a regular basis were just movie quotes, not things he had come up with. (To be clear, he never claimed to have come up with them; I was just woefully ignorant of the movies he was quoting.)
Thankfully, in the last 20 years, we have created our own compendium of movie and TV quotes that make up a large part of the language of our marriage. If you are a millennial, I hope this is a welcome trip down memory lane.
Homestar Runner / Strong Bad / Teen Girl Squad
Is there a millennial who didn’t spend at least some time at www.HomestarRunner.com during their prime teenage years? We certainly did.
We use the phrase “burnt or dead” to describe plants, food, or any other thing that just looks, well, bad. Other TGS favorite lines include “MSG’d!”, “ARROWED!", and “I have a crush on every boy!”
The the only way Christian and I ever say “good job” to each other is to say, “Good jorb!” and we have now introduced our children to Coach Z, so we never say “good job” to them either. It’s always, always “Good jorb!”
Somehow we took this phrase and then decided to twist other words that have either R-O or O-B in them (or both). For example, if we need help, we will exclaim, “I have a porblem!” A newer one that has popped up recently is, when trying to identify an amount of something, we say appORXimately instead of approximately.
Another language inspiration from Homestar Runner is li’l brudder. When one of our kids is failing at doing something and it’s a little bit pitiful, we will say to each other *NOT TO THE CHILD* “Awww, Li’l Brudder.” When we ourselves are persevering at something and failing, and perhaps should ask for help or give up, our defense is often, “I can make it on my own!”
This one Homestar Runner clip is the source of two of the most-said lines in our marriage. The first line is originally, “I doubt it; I dwove,” which for us morphed over the years into, “I don’t think so; I dwove.” We say this whenever the other person is attempting to correct us on something that is pretty obvious. If the person persists, then the person in the wrong finally admits, “Yeah, yo-uh pwobabwy wight.”
Mac and Me
A funny story about the movie Mac and Me is that I watched it as a child and it terrified me. When my dad would take us to Blockbuster to pick out a movie on Fridays, I would run to the science fiction section, half close my eyes, and turn the cover of the movie around so that I could browse the section without accidentally catching sight of the alien Mac. Here is the movie cover:
I rewatched this with Christian as an adult and discovered it is not terrifying at all. In fact, it’s basically an ET knockoff. The phrase that we took from this movie that has wormed its way into our marriage is from the beginning of the movie when the main character and his family move to a new town.
Now, any time we run into something that is ordinary or even underwhelming, one of us will say, “Pretty nice!”
If you’ve never seen the film, I do want to include a scene from the end just to give you a picture of what we’re working with. Skip ahead to about the two-minute mark and you can see Mac and his family becoming citizens of the United States of America.
Napoleon Dynamite
This movie came out when I was a freshman in college, which meant I found the entire thing absolutely hilarious. It then became part of the lore of my family of origin, and so I spent many years quoting this film before Christian and I even got married. It would be most accurate to quote almost the whole movie for this post, but I will just give you a few key quotes.
Whenever we are talking about something becoming official, the response is, “I guess you could say things are getting pretty serious!” The subtext of this quote is even more hilarious for us because we actually did initially meet by chatting online for several hours each day.
Another common quote we use is, when one of us asks the other one what we want to do or what we are about to do or what our plans are, the response must be: “Whatever I feel like I wanna do, GOSH!”
Elf
A few years ago I saw this film listed as a classic, and it almost sent me to an early grave to learn it was 20 years old. I still remember seeing it in theaters with my best friend when I was in high school, so the math tracks, but… I hate it. This is another film with a plethora of amazing quotes, but here are our favorites.
We say, “Bye, Buddy, hope you find your dad!” at least a quarter of the time when we’re saying goodbye.
We usually say, “Oh, he’s an angry elf!” whenever a small child or toddler nearby is especially distraught, or sometimes, when we witness an adult being particularly unreasonable. (We do not use it to describe people who are genetically small statured, because that would actually be offensive.)
Something about me is that I find certain male comedic actors not funny at all. Men in this category include Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Nicolas Cage. It’s my understanding that a lot of people feel that way about Will Ferrell, but he is the opposite for me. I laugh just looking at him and thinking about funny things he’s done. For that reason, this is one of my favorite movie quotes of all time. Christian and I probably say, “You sit on a throne of lies!” at least once a month.
Arrested Development
I recently told someone that if someone I meet has watched this show, their opinion of it gives me a pretty quick idea of their personality and sense of humor. I have plenty of good friends who don’t like this show. But when I meet someone who loves Arrested Development, there is no doubt in my mind that we will be good friends. The humor is so absurd and understated that it takes a very odd sort of person to find it funny.
We will say, “How much could a banana cost, $10?” any time we get the price of something horribly wrong or when we encounter someone extremely out of touch with reality for middle-class Americans.
I recently tried to explain this quote to two young 20-somethings by describing what a Never-Nude is. I don’t know if they really got it. I guess you had to be there. Any time we are talking about something most people don’t know about or a very niche interest, we will say, “There are dozens of us!”
Here is a clip explaining what a Never-Nude is so that the above clip will make sense.
I couldn’t find a clip of another one of our favorite lines, but in the show, the patriarch of the family is in prison, where he often enjoys ice cream sandwiches. At one point he is talking to his wife on the phone and is going on and on about his ice cream sandwich and she says, “Why don’t you marry the ice cream sandwich?” Christian and I use this on each other whenever the other person is waxing poetic about something or another.
The line “I’ve made a huge mistake!” is a repeated joke in the show that only gets funnier as it goes on. Any time we get in over our heads on something, we say this.
I can’t even really put my finger on the context in which we use the phrase “hot ham water” but it will never not be funny.
At this point, you should probably just watch the first three season of the show. But just in case you decide not to, I will leave you with one of our favorite bits of all time. J. Walter Weatherman and his detachable arm are peak comedy. Whenever we feel like we have learned our lesson or are watching someone else learn a lesson the hard way, we will say, “And that’s why you always leave a note!”
Zoolander
I recently introduced our favorite line from this movie to our oldest son, but he did not find it amusing as I continue to find it decades after I first saw it.
Christian or I will say, “What is this, a school for ants?” any time we see something that is extremely small or smaller than anticipated. Rewatching this clip, I had forgotten that Will Ferrell was even in this movie, which makes it even better.
Old Greg
The two most frequently used lines in our marriage are “Make an assessment” any time the other person is procrastinating on making a decision, and the phrase “love games” also occurs frequently to refer to anything marriage related. We will sometimes sing the whole song to each other.
There are a few other key quotes from Old Greg that are borderline inappropriate but that we use in non-inappropriate ways; however, I will not be sharing those. You can watch the sketch and try to guess.
The Googly-Eyed Gardener
The final cultural artifact that has made its way into the language of our marriage is an underrated SNL skit starring Christopher Walken. Please watch the whole thing.
While out of town for work recently, I ran across this somewhat terrifying monstrosity of a robot vacuum in a grocery store.
I immediately took a picture and texted Christian that I was glad for the googly eyes, because I felt like it helped me know where I stood with the robot vacuum.
I’d love to know if any of these movies or TV shows are part of our marriage or family’s comedic treasure box, or if there is some other media item that has made it into the language of your marriage or other relationships.
For now, though, “Bye, Buddy, hope you find your dad!”