Corn Teeth Delight

Pop-culture references have been the bread and butter for comedy outlets like Family Guy for a while now. It can be funny, whether you know the reference or not, because of the randomness. A similar comedic style uses a reference, but instead of randomness, it relies on relevance. You may not know the reference, but you “get it” because the phrase, image, or message makes sense in context. My mom has delivered jokes in that style my whole life. She would say: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” She’d say it in a manly voice. Quoting it now, it doesn’t seem like it would be funny, but the timing/mood was always silly, so we knew it was a joke.

She probably used that phrase 10 or 20 times throughout my childhood. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” I had no idea where she got it, in fact, until tonight I had never consciously understood it was a reference. That phrase is what this whole thing is all about. It is from a movie that was made in 1976, three years before I was born.

The timing is key. The 70’s decade is kind of a black hole as far as my movie trivia knowledge is concerned. I’m old enough to have seen some 80’s movies at the movies in the 80’s; and a whole lot more on video. The 70’s is a whole other bird. Only the biggest movies made it to video tape. Yeah, a lot of 70’s pop-culture has been dredged up the last ten years, but there are thousands of movies that someone my age probably won’t ever see. Except … now we have streaming movies.

I’m watching shit I wouldn’t rent at a video store in a million twinkles of Faye Dunaway’s corn teeth, and I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore! Actually, I’m not mad at all, it was a great show. (It definitely wasn’t shit.) Did that name (Dunaway) jog any movie-trivia-buff tablets? How about Duvall, Holden, and Finch? Probably not if you’re my age, so here’s the answer: “Network”. Check it out; it is definitely writery, which is probably why it made an impression on my mom.

I’m not going to go off on a “the importance of parental influence” tangent, but that one loony phrase had so much power over me. I completed the verse with the actor and I probably haven’t heard it in 20 years. It brought such a flood of reminiscence and discovery.