Blah, blah, blah purple monkey dishwasher
The Vulture points us to Matt Zoller Seitz’s NYT review of National Treasure 2, which contains this brilliant, brilliant line:
To acquire the cleverly named Book of Secrets, Ben plots to kidnap the current president (Bruce Greenwood) and blah, blah, blah purple monkey dishwasher.
That’s sort of how I felt about Transformers, except, well, it was awesome.
Seitz’s coinage seems like something the blogosphere could get some serious mileage out of, though, so I want to encourage everyone to start using “blah, blah, blah purple monkey dishwasher” as an all-purpose descriptor for hackneyed blockbuster narrative nonsense, and, possibly, vacuous political columns, speeches and “plans.”
For example: “Other factors may also play an important role in deciding the outcome of the race. So and so in the Washington Post today cited new numbers from a diner in Minneapolis that suggest that people who used to live in Iowa but now maintain residence in states north of Kansas favor Barack Obama in a head to head matchup with blah, blah, blah purple monkey dishwasher.”
“Purple monkey dishwasher” is from The Simpsons:
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/2F19.html
— Maureen · Dec 22, 06:14 AM · #
I fully endorse this. In fact I’m thinking about it just as I’m reading a Free Exchange post about redistributing college endowments: “Harvard or Williams (my alma mater) have endowments that are well over $500,000 per student. Why not take the colleges whose endowments exceed that per student amount and blah blah blah purple monkey dishwasher?”
IT WORKS!
— PEG · Dec 22, 08:50 AM · #
We just christened my husband’s gift to himself, a Sony Bravia wall-mounted, high-def t.v., purchased at a massive discount during a Sony employees’ Christmas sale. He labors year-round to make the world a better place for MMORPG’s and the people who love them. What could I say?
I’m building a bunker in the back yard where I can sit in silence.
Anyway, we watched NEXT with Nicholas Cage and Julianne Moore. The entire movie, from start to finish, was BBBPMD. We imagined the actors showing up for the first day of work and immediately firing their agents. I always wonder how actors with an established career get caught in bad films.
— Joules · Dec 22, 06:46 PM · #
I understand — my dad just got himself a 50” plasma, and I had to console my mother through the whole process (while alternately cheering and geeking out with my dad).
As for the actors, I always get the sense that at a certain point, they’re just looking to fill holes in their schedules. “I can either be bored for a few months, maybe go to Europe and blow tons of cash on nonsense, or I can take $5 million to do this crappy movie.” Maybe there’s only so much vacationing and shopping you can do before the crappy movie starts to look like a good way to spend your time (and add to your fortune).
— Peter Suderman · Dec 22, 06:57 PM · #
Over at Television Without Pity, whenever characters engage in pointless exposition, the recapper (reviewer) often writes, “Blah blah blah fishcakes”. They’ve been doing it for years now (I first noticed in their Buffy the Vampire Slayer recaps), so I wonder if somebody got something from someone else blah blah blah [insert preferred idiom here].
— PatrickH · Dec 26, 04:59 PM · #