We’ve got a new catch phrase over at the Shrinky & Bitey homestead. Catch phrases are very important for us, very important to mankind and home life. Think about it. Honestly, where would we be without a good Homeric D’oh!?

I’m not the only one who thinks catch phrases are essential to living and there’s a real art to finding a good one. Michael Cieply over at The New York Times had a sweet little article about ’em www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/movies/20lines.html a few weeks ago. Some of the babies he mentions like Go Ahead. Make my day, have gone global, others he doesn’t discuss, such as "Gene Hackmankickyourass" are obsure, minor lines in a film that may only mean something to a few viewers in a particular household, like mine

Over the weekend I finally watched, in its entirety without any interruptions (as with my previous three attempts), the Coen Brothers’ 2009 offering A Serious Man, and I quite enjoyed it. I love how the Coens use oddball bits of humour in dark tales of woe, you know, like Javier Bardem’s Toni Tennille hair in No Country For Old Men. I love how eloquent hick-sounding H.I. McDonnough is in Raising Arizona. Mostly I love the Coens because they come up with lines that I can, and do, use in my daily life. Raising Arizona’s "OK then," and "Awful Good cereal flakes, Ms McDonnough," are staple lines at Biteycrest as much as a Noo Yawk-ish "Look in your heart!" from Miller’s Crossing. After viewing A Serious Man, and laughing at the subtle horror of a man’s life gone to dreck, "working on The Mentaculus" is now the new home  phrase for dicking around when you should be concentrating on something else, like taking out the trash, writing further chapters of And She Was or doing a lit review for a PhD. For example,
Shrinky: "Did you iron my shirts?"
Oldbitey:  "No, I’ve been working on the Mentaculus."

The phrase also comes in handy for those times when you don’t want to do something rather unsavoury.
Shrinky:" How about we go and see Avril Lavigne in concert this weekend?"
Oldbitey: "Oh, sorry, I can’t. I’ll still be working on the Mentaculus."

I’d be curious to know what you Bitye-ites out there use as your movie catch phrases of choice. Are you a Nobody puts baby in the corner kind of gal? Do you Yoda up your life with "do or do not, there is no try?" Does your naughty kid spend time in "The Cooler?"
Oh, and if you’re curious about the "Genehackmankickyourass," it’s from Fletch Lives, with Chevy Chase. And we use it the same nonsensical way he does.