I almost broke my neck today...about 27 hours ago. All I could say was "Negative, Ghost Rider"

I'm exaggerating a bit, but I did strain my neck if anyone wants to feel just a tad bit of sympathy for me. You see, my girlfriend has one of those inflatable medicine balls (I'm too lazy to look up what they're really called) but you know those balls that you lie on and do exercises...that thing. If someone tells me what the correct term for what I sometimes use as on oversized basketball is, I'll give you $100 dollars...cash. So I was stretching out my back and not really paying attention to what I was doing, then proceeded to roll back, and got my head somehow, albeit kind of impossible, caught underneath the ball, body flips over, sideways, and I strain my neck. When from the other room, M asks if I'm okay, because I made a ruckus. My only response was, "Negative, ghost rider".

If you haven't figured out by now, while writhing in pain, I threw out a quote from Top Gun; that venerable movie from the year 1986 (Just in case you been living in a cave or perhaps someone of Amish persuasion, Top Gun is a shirtless dudes movie where the dudes play volleyball and kill Cold War Commies). A friend of mine told me that the dialogue from that movie was so common denominator that you could use it in everyday life. Just replace a word or two to fit applicable conversation and you could literally get by with just quoting that movie, maybe you could get by your whole life by using the " Gun speak". Try it sometime...I dare you.

This then led me to think about, no matter how clever or stupid it is, people (proudly including myself) seem to quote dialogue from movies, a lot. It's a true geek speak. Showing that, I may not know what the state motto or what two senators represent the great state of Colorado, but I can give 30 minutes of Reservoir Dogs...verbatim. Just tell me what scene to start with. Sadly, if you don't feel like coughing up the $3 bucks to rent or $14 to buy "Top Gun", I can probably come to your house and quote it with 95% accuracy (if you have a volleyball court...even better, I'll do a bit of scene recreation, sans tan and oiled body.)

But, even better, is to mimic the character as you're quoting some piece of dialogue, so as to sound like that person, and then top the tank off by nailing the inflection and beats in the delivery. No sense in being a C average student.

Ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper and my favorite movie was Back to the Future I loved to thrown down quotes. I have a library in my head, which should be filled with pertinent information (read: expanding my vocabulary, expanding my knowledge of various world leaders, or perhaps retaining information that an education costing somewhere in the neighborhood of the name of that one candy bar).

But no, I'll store up useless junk dialogue from that Mark Harmon movie Summer School, just in case I can throw it out when making what will be considered later, a useless joke or some "witty reference". We all do it, whether consciously or not and let's face, it fun. How many times have you thrown out a "Bueller, Bueller". My freshman year in college, my friends and I would always quote "Tombstone", well at least all of Val Kilmer's dialogue. That sort of attitude even cost me a chance to be with a girl "in that way" I was at a party, and Dave Ferrer and I were knee deep into a fifth of Captain Morgan Spiced Rum and Mountain Dew, and quoting for days. I had my chance with Beth Saddeson, but her advances were no match for "I know Ike, let's have a spelling contest". Sorry Beth... I was never that cool anyway.

My friends and I still do it today, Tombstone included.

Don't be Joshua (via WarGames) and follow the credo he laid down to Professor Falken, "The only winning move is to not play"

Addendum to the story...as I was trying to be all smart and check what I typed for errors of a grammatical nature, I realized that I love to quote movies starring ....Val "Oh Kent, that's so unfair, we were going to make you King of the Winter Carnival" Kilmer.

Oh my god...I'm totally gay for Val Kilmer. (waving hands in that jazz hands way) "oh my god, oh my god".

Till next time kids...