Quotations Weblog

I wrote about the CBS TV show Criminal Minds a while ago. While it’s still not the best show on TV, it has improved a bit, and they still include quotations in the narration on a regular basis. I’ve received several emails asking about quotations on previous episodes, so I’ve collected them as I watched. Here’s the second batch of quotations featured on the show, from approximately episodes 7 to 11:

Criminal Minds airs Wednesdays at 9:00 PM Eastern/Pacific on CBS. The next episode is tonight. Tune in next Wednesday for another batch of quotations from the show. (See part one for the first batch.)

The nominees for the Oscars have been announced.

• CNN.com – ‘Mountain’ looms over Oscar nominations – Jan 31, 2006

I always feel a little strange when I look over the list of movies nominated for Oscars. Most of the time, I haven’t seen any of them. This year is no different. I don’t really care for movies about cowboys. If I did, I’d live in Herriman, Utah instead of Salt Lake City. I don’t want to see terrorists kill people. I don’t want to see horrific crashes that change the lives of several people. I’m sure Truman Capote and Edward R. Murrow are very interesting people, but I prefer to get my history from the History Channel instead of the movies. None of the nominated movies really appealed to me.

Am I so far away from the “art” that I can’t even enjoy the “Best Picture”? Why do the nominees have to be so depressing? Why do they never nominate comedies? The only appeal of the Oscars was an Oscar Party that we used to go to, but those friends moved away long ago and I have no desire to take their place by hosting the party.

I guess I should just watch the MTV Movie Awards.

In 1973, Time Magazine named Flip Wilson as television’s first black superstar. I was four years old. From my point of view, I didn’t really understand that Flip Wilson was a black man. He seemed like a funny guy and he made my parents laugh when they watched Laugh-In.

He later got his own show, The Flip Wilson Show. I remember my parents being really excited that he got his own show and we sat down to watch it each week. Now, I can see that he won a Golden Globe for that show. Back then, I paid no attention to accolades and awards. I just watched what my parents thought was funny.

I barely remember seeing Flip Wilson say any of his funny tag lines, but they are so ingrained into our language now that many of you probably quote him every day and didn’t even know it.

As a child, I remember quoting Flip Wilson whenever I got into trouble, “The devil made me do it.” As long as the transgression wasn’t too foul, it was always enough to get me out of trouble. The adults would laugh and I would try to blink my eyes like Flip Wilson did. I know now that he was performing the universal “innocence” look with those eye blinks, but all I was doing was copying a great man.

To learn more about Flip Wilson:

• Flip Wilson Biography – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Flip Wilson Biography & Filmography – IMDB

• Flip Wilson – Museum of Broadcast Communications

See all of Flip Wilson’s Quotations Here:

• Flip Wilson Quotes – The Quotations Page

I’ve been catching up on the first few episodes of the new CBS drama, Criminal Minds. This show follows a team of criminal profilers at the FBI. It’s not my favorite show—the violence is overdone sometimes, and some of the plots require a bit more suspension of disbelief than I posess. But it does have well-written dialogue and good acting, in particular Mandy Patinkin and Dharma and Greg‘s Thomas Gibson.

Oh, and it also has quotations. In an apparent effort to make Patinkin’s character, Jason Gideon, seem even smarter, he narrates an occasional appropriate quotation during the transition between scenes. Of course, being a quotation fanatic, I have to pause the video and verify each one. Surprisingly, almost every one has been correctly quoted, and there were even some good ones I hadn’t heard before.

TV crime dramas aren’t usually a source of great quotations, so watching Criminal Minds has been a pleasant surprise. Here’s a sampling of quotes used in the first 6 episodes of the series.

Before South Park came out on DVD, we were unable to watch it. Whatever channel it’s on was always unavailable to us. Plus, I don’t have much time to watch television on their schedule instead of my own. Once the series became available on DVD, I was able to see what everyone else was so excited about.

For years, all I heard about the series was how vulgar it was. The kind of people who talked to me about South Park this way refused to allow their children to watch it. While the rest of the kids had those strange little Kenny dolls, their kids were excluded. By the time I actually saw the series, I realized that all of those parents were letting the fart jokes get in the way of the true morals of the stories.

Here are some of the best quotes I’ve gathered from the series:

I love South Park. Every time I watch an episode, I sit nearby with a pen and paper so I can get the tidbits of wisdom that are taught with humor and vulgarity. So what if they have a talking piece of poo. Even Shakespeare had his Sir Toby Belch.

• See all the South Park Quotations here.