Today, I’m starting a new tradition. Each week, I’m going to share my favorite quote and expression I ran across during the previous seven days. These won’t necessarily be items first uttered that week; only words I ran across that week. Sometimes they’ll have made a smile creep up the side of my face, sometimes they’ll have made me slap my knee. Hopefully, few will have made me think. (If you learn much from any of them, I’m probably doing something wrong–so please forgive me ahead of time.) First up is a quote from Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I’ve got others.” Making nonsense make sense is a high calling. God bless Groucho, all these years later. As for the expression, I’m going with “slipperier than a Mississippi eel.” I like it for its pure cornball nature and also as an example of how physical writing can be. Who, after all, has handled a Mississippi eel? I’ve never been in Mississippi, much less the river, and I’ve certainly never been grabbing for eel in its depths. But, still, I can feel it, slip out of my hands and swim off, undulating back down into those depths…all from the words, corny as they are. Of course, I probably would have felt the same thing from the phrase: “slipperier than Groucho’s grease mustache,” but I didn’t run across that one. At least, not this week. Stay tuned.
My son LOVES Groucho, especially Duck Soup. Not entirely age appropriate (he’s 6), but the risque conversation goes right over his head because he’s cracking up at the physical comedy. It’s a little less violent than Looney Tunes, his 2nd favorite.