Tales of the Invisible Ben

Post #300: The Movie Quote Contest Strikes Again!
(Now With Comments!)

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you read that post title correctly. As I have promised for weeks now, the movie quote contest is posted below, coinciding neatly with the three hundrendth post I have written on this blog.

Prior to writing this entry, I was sifting through the Invisible Archives, reflecting on how much things have changed since I posted the first iteration of this movie quote contest on December 24th, 2003. At that time, I considered the contest (a holdover from my days working retail) an escape from the madness of my teaching job at Underwood High. I called it a "burst of sanity." Three years and approximately 286 posts later, we find our hero a graduate student at a prestigious institution, having escaped from Underwood only slightly worse for wear. No longer bound to a rigid routine of lesson planning, teaching, and grading, no longer subjected to demeaning professional development meetings or unscheduled classroom inspections, nothing to worry about for the next month or so but writing research papers.

Is there still a place for the movie quote contest in this relatively carefree world I've shaped for myself? Is there even a place for this blog anymore? Originally, I started this blog to describe the madness that was my teaching career, to "lay bare my passions and frustrations" with the strange situation I was in for the past three years. Now, more and more, my posts are about mundane things: the local bookstore, the heat (or lack thereof) in my apartment, and so forth. Call it the cost of success, having left Underwood, I find myself with fewer absurd or frustrating things about which to write.

Now this may be a bad thing, especially to those people who only read my blog due to its relevance to teaching or educational issues as a whole. But just as people's personalities evolve over time to match their living situations, I think that blogs can adapt and evolve too. From where I sit today, with 300 posts under my belt, I think I can say without hesitation that the Tales of Invisible Ben have not all been told and that this blog still has a purpose. If nothing else, it lets me keep friends and family up to date on my activities. And there are of course, the added perks, like perpetuating random traditions that I make up.

Like the movie quote contest, which begins below. The format remains unchanged from previous years. 50 movies. 50 quotes. See how many you can identify without resorting to outside resources. (Yes, we're all very proud that you know how to use IMDB and Wikiquote. Your computer literacy is admirable. Now show us how much you know about movies.) If you think you recognize a quote, you can post your answer in the comments section below.

Yes. You read that right. For the first time in this blog's history, I am turning on comments pending good behavior. Consider this another sign of how this blog and I have changed since the fall of 2003. If things get out of hand on the comments section (insults, spamming, etc.), then I will turn them off and you'll just have to wait another 300 posts before I think about switching them back on again. But otherwise, feel free to post about the contest and see how many films you can name.

The answers will be posted around New Year's. And no, before any of you ask, there is no prize for the winner. Although if you have ideas for prizes for next year's contest, please feel free to suggest them below.

Ok, enough introductory stuff. Without any further adieu, I present to you this year's iteration of my favorite holiday tradition:


THE HOLIDAY MOVIE QUOTE CONTEST

1. You were in a 4g inverted dive with a MiG28?

2. Getta your tootsie-frootsie ice cream!

3. What are you doing here?
A very brief cameo.
Me too.

4. We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder.

5. I've never been alone with a man before, even with my dress on. With my dress off, it's most unusual!

6. I was the equivalent of a 98 pound weakling. I would go to the beach and people would kick copies of Byron in my face!

7. Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.

8. Think of your children pledging allegiance to the maple leaf. Mayonnaise on everything. Winter eleven months of the year. Anne Murray...all day, every day.

9. You'll be able to spit nails, kid. Like the guy says, you're gonna eat lightning and you're gonna crap thunder.

10. You've seen a general inspecting troops before haven't you? Just walk slow, act dumb, and look stupid!

11. I am not going to New York to meet some woman who could be a crazy, sick lunatic! Didn't you see Fatal Attraction?

12. Anyone who isn't dead or from another plane of existence would do well to cover their ears right about now.

13. Personally, Veda's convinced me that alligators have the right idea. They eat their young.

14. One more thing, Sofie... is she aware her daughter is still alive?

15. I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky!

16. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to tag along is more than welcome.

17. Two penguins are standing on an ice floe. The first penguin says, you look like you're wearing a tuxedo. The second penguin says, what makes you think I'm not?

18. You still picking your feet in Poughkeepsie?

19. Why didn't you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty cars.
Oh, I'll remember that when we need forty cars.

20. "H" for "Hurry," "E" for "'Ergent,'" "L" for "Love me," and "P" for "P-P-P-Please help!"

21. Hey. Hold it. Now, are we actually gonna go before a federal judge, and tell him that some moldy Babylonian God is going to drop in on Central Park West, and start tearing up the city?
Sumerian, not Babylonian.

22. Not only does he know how to treat his editor-in-chief with the proper respect, not only does he have a snappy, punchy prose style, but he is, in my forty years in this business, the fastest typist I've ever seen.

23. I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is.

24. Walther PPK, 7.65 millimeter. Only three men I know of use such a gun. I believe I've killed two of them.

25. I had not come to Hollywood to fight with a man dressed as Hitler.

26. Since the United States Government declares this man to be Santa Claus, this court will not dispute it. Case dismissed.

27. And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less."

28. Hey, I got a dedication here that's for a friend of the ol' Wolfman. And he wants me to play the next song for a blonde young lady in a Thunderbird.

29. Mother of Mercy! Is this the end of Rico?

30. So, again we are defeated. The farmers have won. Not us.

31. Helping the little lady along are you, my fine gentlemen? Well stay away from her, or I'll stuff a mattress with you! And you, I'll make you into a beehive.

32. Well, you know, race cars don't need headlights, because the track is always lit.
Well, so is my brother, but he still needs headlights!

33. Here we are. You got me into your house. You give me a drink. You put on music. Now you start opening up your personal life to me and tell me your husband won't be home for hours.

34. Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide gorilla? Is that what you’re telling me?

35. What difference does it make where you buy underwear? What difference does it make? Underwear is underwear! It is underwear wherever you buy it! In Cincinnati or wherever!

36. I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. You see, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it...

37. But what if none of us goes for the blonde? We won't get in each other's way and we won't insult the other girls. It's the only way to win. It's the only way we all get laid.

38. It's a dinglehopper. Humans use these little babies to straighten their hair out.

39. Attica! Attica!

40. I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there.

41. Now we got here in the state of Louisiana what's known as the Napoleonic code. You see, now according to that, what belongs to the wife belongs to the husband also, and vice versa...

42. That's all right. He can call me “Flower” if he wants to. I don't mind.

43. Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong.

44. People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.

45. You're two wonderful people who happened to fall in love and happen to have a pigmentation problem.

46. They called me chicken. You know, chicken? I had to go because if I didn't I'd never be able to face those kids again. I got in one of those cars, and Buzz, that - Buzz, one of those kids - he got in the other car, and we had to drive fast and then jump...

47. Who is that? Nietzsche? So you stopped talking because of Friedrich Nietzsche?

48. But if the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.

49. As my first act with this new authority, I will create a grand army of the Republic to counter the increasing threats of the Separatists.

50. They're here already! You're next! You're next! You're next!