Seinlanguage

After my little walk down memory lane and rendezvous with my niece yesterday, I quickly popped into my favourite book shop, Algoritam, before French class to see if I would find anything that tickled my fancy. Now, this was a really stupid idea because something always tickles my fancy in that God damn book shop. It's either the latest cooking magazine or cook book or the biography of a favourite performer or artist or some poetry book or some origami paper or whatever. I always happen to come across something that has "Knitting Songbird, you just have to have this" written on it in large black print. And of course, I invariably give in and have it. Which is why I will never have enough money for a down payment on a house or apartment...

During my little saunter through the store yesterday, I turned the pages of a number of books and then, there it was, a book with a huge label on it, bigger than the rest of them. "Knitting Songbird, you reeeeally have to have this". So I gave in and now have it. Seinlanguage by Jerry Seinfeld.

Now, Seinfeld is a guy that you either love or hate. There's no middle ground. I happen to be on the I adore him side of the fence. To me, he's one of the best observational comedians around, up there with the greats like Bill Cosby, Billy Connolly, Dave Allen, Jay Leno, etc. Although I am not prone to watching television (don't have enough time and it can often be a real brain-drain), I watch Seinfeld religiously and am considering buying the complete series on DVD so I can always have them on hand in times of crises.

So I thought I would share a few quotes from the book with ya for a bit of a laugh. And BTW, a little piece of advice - don't read funny books lying down. While reading the book before taking a bit of a nap today (yeah, the headache persists...), I almost did a Jimi Hendrix and choked on my own spit laughing...so read this sitting up, that is, if you're into Seinfeld...

On the male code:
A man is paralysed mentally by a beautiful woman, and advertisers really take advantage of this. Don't you love those ads where you see the woman in the bikini next to the 32-piece ratchet set? And we'll be looking at the girl in the bikini, then looking at the ratchet set, going, "All right, well if she's right next to the ratchet set, and I had that...I better just buy the ratchet set."

On phones and the phone machine:
I love my phone machine. I wish I was a phone machine. I wish if I saw somebody on the street I didn't want to talk to I could just go, "Excuse me, I'm not here right now. If you just leave a message, I can walk away."
I also have a cordless phone, but I don't like that much. Because you can't slam down a cordless phone. You get mad at somebody on a real phone, "You can't talk to me like that!" BANG, it's over. But a cordless phone - "You can't talk to me like that! All right now, let me just find that little thing to turn this off...Just hang on, I'm hanging up on you!"

On parking:
The handicap parking spot is the mirage of the parking desert. You know the feeling. You see it in the distance, there it is. You can't believe your eyes, "It's too good to be true. A big, wide spot, and it's right by the entrance. Somehow everybody missed it." And then when you pull up, wait - it wasn't even there. There's nothing. It's like you were hallucinating. "I, I thought there was a spot there. I, I don't know what happened...I-"
What is the handicap parking situation at the Special Olympics? They must have to just stack like a hundred cars into those two spots. How else can they do it?

On buying clothes:
Buying closthes is always tricky. But when there's loud music playing, it really throws your judgment. You look at stuff like, "Hey, if there was a cool party and I was a cool guy, this might be a cool shirt."
You get it home, there's no music, there's no party, and you're not a cool guy.
You're the same chump, 75 bucks lighter.

On cooking shows:
I will never understand why they cook on TV.
I can't smell it.
Can't eat it.
Can't taste it.
The end of the show they hold it up to the camera, "Well, here it is. You can't have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye."

On sex:
Seems to me the basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To us, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we're doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They're very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur.

On the office:
Frankly, I don't believe people think of their office as a workplace anyway. I think they think of it as a stationery store with Danish. You want to get your pastry, your envelopes, your supplies, your toilet paper, six cups of coffee, and you go home.

I'll leave you with someone's version of the 10 best moments of Seinfeld ever. Personally, the Soup Nazi episode is my fave ever. Have fun!