Extra fomo on your simulatte?
Or, the best lines of 2021
It’s deja flu all over again, as Yogi Berra never said. Just in case you are asked for your proof of subscription to this newsletter before you enter your local pool hall, here’s a distillation of 21 superlative items that passed through these servers in 2021, followed by a chaser of what got caught in the mental gunk trap.
1. Best opener
“Listen, why don’t we start the proceedings with a nice glass of champagne?”
— Keith Waterhouse, The Theory and Practice of Lunch
2. Best insult
“You got a face for swim trunk ads.”
— James McBride, Deacon King Kong
3. Shaggiest dog
A teenager is working up the courage to invite his sweetheart to the big dance. He waits behind a long line of suitors to ask her, and to his relief she says yes. Then — and this is the part you describe in intricate detail over the course of an hour — he sets out to obtain corsage, tuxedo, transportation, prophylactics (depending on your audience), etc, each taking a great deal of time and waiting. Finally, they arrive at the dance and the sweetheart needs a drink. Our hero spies a punch bowl in the auditorium and to his great relief: There is no punchline.
4. Best bird
5. Best dad joke
“What do you win if you lie on the couch for a month? A trophy.”
— Sarah Murdoch
6. Best footnote:
“At one time the salaries of Russia’s foreign ambassadors were paid in rhubarb.”
— Will Cuppy
7. Best advice
“Be something useful. Be a piece of melon wrapped in prosciutto.”
— Bowen Yang as Fran Lebowitz
8. Best rap lyric/crossword clue
“Off pride tykes talk wide through scar meat
Off sides like how Worf rides with Starfleet”
— MF Doom
9.Best clerihew
“Miss Mae West
Is one of the best;
I would rather not
Say the best what.”
— E.W. Fordham
10. Worst pun
“Wrapsody in Glue.”
— John Crosbie
11. Best pun
“Parking is such street sorrow.”
— Douglas Hofstadter
12. Best trick
The Truffaldino Zoom.
13. Lowest professional qualification
“No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean fingernails.”
— John Mortimer
14. Highest professional qualification
Jazz musicians “don’t play anything the same way once.”
— Shelley Manne
15. Highest form of wit
16. Wisest quip
“We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.”
— Marshall McLuhan
17. Best novel
18. Best headline, as evidenced by open rates
19. Best Succession strategy
Talk less, connive more. (It worked for Nero and Sporus, after all.)
20. Truest credo
“There is no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”
— Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
21. Best thing to slouch toward
The merger of William Butler Yeats and the slang term “yeet” was the sort of meme salad enjoyed by quite a few Twitter accounts. To crown the one true William Butler Yeets, I asked them all what they were slouching toward. The winner was @CptBaker:
A weekend, a vaccine, and the eternal promise of ‘better things yet to come’
L’esprit d’escalier
The wit of the staircase refers to all those things you only remembered to say on the way out of the party. Here’s a smattering of clever lines I forgot to highlight till *checks watch* just now:
“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service”
— Christopher Nolan’s nicely phrased reaction to Warner Brothers’ launch of HBOMax.
“Simulatte”
— Cafe in the Matrix Resurrections, currently available on the world’s worst streaming service.
“To refuse to do the crappo thing is to strike a de facto blow for quality.”
— George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
“Where’d you find The Book of Mormon?”
— James Bond’s reference to a clean-cut CIA agent in No Time To Die, widely attributed to script polisher Phoebe Waller-Bridge
“Money comes with its own point of view; what you own, when you own enough of it, starts making you see the world from its perspective.”
— Ayad Akhtar, Homeland Elegies
“My theory is that humans lost the instinct for beauty in 1976, when plastics became the most widespread material in existence.”
— Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Jonathan Franzen on alcohol, from Crossroads:
“The main effect of the alcohol was to create a powerful but hazy sense of importance; of being on the verge of a great, warm insight. As her buzz began to fade, the sense of importance faded with it, leaving behind a small, cold insight: she was bored.”
Jonathan Franzen on marijuana, from Crossroads:
“In her mind’s eye, her thoughts were laid out like snacks on a lazy Susan. They weren’t evaporating the way thoughts were supposed to. They just sat there, going round and round, available for second helpings. Why had she had to take a third puff on the doobie? Why even the first?”
“What do you mean you’ve been spying on me, with this thing in my hand that is an eye?”
— Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This
“I hate when people say ‘touché’ after you say something funny. I don’t know what it means, but I know that I hate it.”
— Norm Macdonald, in his 2016 memoir Based on a True Story
Will the last one to leave 2021 please forward GWQ No. 130 to a friend? You see, it all began with Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, tap the ❤️ below and your call will be answered in priority sequence.
I feel special. I have never made a year-end list before. Thank you.
i love this one: “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.”
— Marshall McLuhan