Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Cultural References - A Product of Our Times?

(jeez, that title reads like a dissertation paper or class essay)

For this month's book club meeting we read Little Heathens... by Mildred Armstrong Kalish.

Or I should say, we were supposed to read it. I'm still only half-way through, but planning to finish it.

BUT, the point is that part of our discussions touched upon sayings that arose from popular culture references...

Who's heard the one about something being more than Carter had pills? Here's the answer on where that came from.

(This saying was a favorite of my father's in reference to my "notions" about food, clothes, activities...and it wasn't until I was much older that I realized that it was a pop-culture reference from an earlier time and not a referral to our neighbor who happened coincidentally to have the first name of Carter.)

And as we got into bed that night, I told one of our cats to "Move over A_", and without missing a beat DH called the cat bacon. Of course, I was referencing "Move over bacon! Here comes SizzleLean"*

I'm sure that reference is going to be as mystifying to our kids as the Carter's pills reference was to me. But it made me wonder what other phrases are still out there that refer to an extinct product.

What do you have?


*Note that my memory of the wording is not the same as on this particular website. Perhaps it was just another variation on the commercial. In any case, that's how I use it.

3 comments:

  1. "One of these days, Pow, right in the kisser"
    "Nothin' says lovin'..."
    "We wear short shorts!"
    "This is your brain... this is your brain on ____"
    "Sit Ubu sit, good dog."
    "La la, la la la la, la, la la la la..."
    "Tis merely a flesh wound!"
    "Nobody puts baby in a corner."

    This might sound BAD but these are all relatively common things to hear me or a close family member saying. There are others but they aren't coming to me at this instant.

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  2. Duh. One theory behind copperosity is that it came from the Uncle Remus stories. So that's another point of data for a reference who's origin has been obscured over time.

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  3. How about "I'd walk a mile for a camel."
    Or "Where's the beef?"
    Or "I've fallen and I can't get up?"


    BTW, here from the lushary...good luck with this IUI.

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