Wasn't that a great line? All you have to say is, "Badges?" and everyone thinks of Treasure of Sierra Madre. Which brings up movie quotes...How about, "You have fifteen seconds to comply," from Robocop? My favorites include "Plastics!" from The Graduate, which must be the shortest. A close runner-up: "Mmm, Juicy Fruit!" -- the first words uttered by Jack Nicholson's fellow inmate, thought to be mute, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Which brings up gum, that archetypical device for swift character development: one second of on-screen chewing conveys insouciance or with mouth open, insolence.Have you noticed? Baseball players chew gum now. Some, anyway. I can guess the reason, but I have difficulty saying it (see pancake). Which brings up television...The telescopic lens magnifies and foreshortens everything in its sight. A television shot along the dug-out makes the players, near and far, look about the same size. Their profiles teeter across the screen like so many fitful ponies at the gate. Heedless of the camera's companionship and attentive viewers beyond, a player at random will focus his mouth to eject a quantum of viscosity, as if adhering to some inner ritual. Thus begins a trajectory off camera toward unknown accumulations at the player's feet. That expectorant has consequence in baseball will hardly be denied. Indeed the stuff is outlawed, enroute from mound to plate, conferring as it does unseemly advantage to the pitcher. The requisite self-restraint must overburden the poor chap -- and his sympathetic teammates. For they most earnestly seek to end their deprivations by running off the field at inning's end, thence to resume their lubrication of the dug-out floor. All that may be changing. Gum, bubble or otherwise may eventually displace a psychic protocol in baseball -- unique to that sport, I think. Which brings up commercials...Oral effluvia never achieved acceptance, else by now one might suppose that every network would have at least one -- "Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy ride" -- spitcom (a statement I could not state if I used expectorate). Which brings up mucus...Wouldn't that make an awful swear word? "Don't give me any more of your mucus," we might say. Never heard it. Have you? |
"Badges?
I don't got to show you no stinkin' badges."