"Pinchfaced cocksucker" is for Amis a compliment.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 20:53 (twelve years ago) link
Casey Stengel had maybe the greatest accidental zing ever: "I got a kid, Greg Goosen, he's 20 years old and in ten years he's got a chance to be 30." (You'll come across a dozen slightly different versions of this.)
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 21:01 (twelve years ago) link
By calling that accidental, I'm probably buying into the caricature of Stengel as a doddering old man; he was exceptionally smart about baseball, and may have known exactly what he was saying about Goosen there.
― clemenza, Sunday, 29 April 2012 21:10 (twelve years ago) link
Greatest cricket sledge zing of all time:
Glenn McGrath to Eddo Brandes: "How come you're so fucking fat?"Brandes: "Because every time I fuck your wife she gives me a biscuit"
― Touché Gödel (ledge), Sunday, 29 April 2012 21:31 (twelve years ago) link
Rufus T. Firefly: Not that I care, but where is your husband?"Gloria Teasdale: Why, he's dead.Rufus T. Firefly: I bet he's just using that as an excuse.Gloria Teasdale: I was with him til the very end.Rufus T. Firefly: No wonder he passed away.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:18 (twelve years ago) link
from the same scene: Don't look now, but there's one too many people in this room and I think it's you.
― Mordy, Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:27 (twelve years ago) link
i could swear i saw a clip of capote actually saying that kerouac line, but that what he actually said was "that isn't writing, that's...just...TYPEWRITING!"
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:34 (twelve years ago) link
this isnt handwriting, its typewriting! *gets the vapors*
― lag∞n, Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
Also, I've read a bit of Nabokov's literary criticism now, and for someone who can reach the heights he can (for which read: OMG Pale Fire is amazing) he's pretty buttoned up and conservative in his thinking...
i kinda think of nabokov's critical views as just an extension of his artistic character, no less than any of his novels -- most of his interviews have the exact same 'voice' as most of his fiction. it's funny that he claimed to hate 'death in venice,' since 'lolita' could be read as an answer to it (or a parody of it).
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:47 (twelve years ago) link
tbh i've come to feel that gore vidal's zings are probably his best and most lasting works of art. i tried picking up that huge book of his essays a while back and most of them are a slog.
Ignore the political writing and concentrate on the lit crit (the lit crit is political too): his essays on Mencken, James, Wharton -- classic explication de text. And he deserves credit for reviving interest in Dawn Powell and James Purdy, not to mention breaking Calvino on these shores.
I'll defend Burr and Lincoln as great novels too.
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:51 (twelve years ago) link
i have nothing against lonely guys in rooms but the desk gangster routine is just kinda tiresome
Really considering this for a display name.
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 29 April 2012 22:52 (twelve years ago) link
a zing of beauty doesn't need all this contextual analysis, nor does it need to be an instant riposte nor a product of bile, sometimes a zing's just a zing, here's something mean about u i thought of, lol. *telegrams churchill*. Medium's not rly that important imo.
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:09 (twelve years ago) link
a zing of beauty is a joy forever
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:15 (twelve years ago) link
Drunk Jack Kerouac at poetry reading: Frank O'Hara, you're destroying American poetry!
O'Hara: That's more than you've ever done for it.
― President Keyes, Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:31 (twelve years ago) link
darragh OTM
― Choc. Clusterman (contenderizer), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:34 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah IMO, that is why ILX can be funny to read, like obviously once it gets to be an intense clusterfuck thread it's not fun at all but when it's something milder and I have no personal horse in the race, watching people throw off rejoinders and ripostes, when they're good, is really entertaining. And ILX is great for this because, behind the more visible monuments of the heated vicious threads, there's a whole lot of people killing time talking about something that nobody actually takes all that seriously.
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:52 (twelve years ago) link
the zinger games
― diafiyhm (darraghmac), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
most of [Nabokov's] interviews have the exact same 'voice' as most of his fiction.
iirc, he'd require the interviewer's list of questions be submitted to him, with his responses entirely written rather than spontaneous.
― "Fourvel - it's like Fievel, but one less." (R Baez), Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:56 (twelve years ago) link
ahead of his time with that one
― Number None, Sunday, 29 April 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
then he would revise his answers!
xpost
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:03 (twelve years ago) link
lot of amazing zing scholarship itt... not
― lag∞n, Sunday, April 29, 2012 11:50 AM
lock thread pls
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:03 (twelve years ago) link
irc, he'd require the interviewer's list of questions be submitted to him, with his responses entirely written rather than spontaneous.
Cf., Nat Hentoff's 1966 Dylan interview in Playboy, espcially Dylan's explanation of how he became a rock and roll star. From the same interview:
PLAYBOY: Did you ever have the standard boyhood dream of growing up to be President?DYLAN: No. When I was a boy, Harry Truman was President; who'd want to be Harry Truman?
― clemenza, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:16 (twelve years ago) link
no im srs lock the thread
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:20 (twelve years ago) link
:-/
― flopson, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:25 (twelve years ago) link
someone zing amon
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
unzingable
― arsenio and old ma$e (m bison), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:26 (twelve years ago) link
I will zing him
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:27 (twelve years ago) link
...
― flopson, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:27 (twelve years ago) link
zinging mt. everest
― dayo, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:27 (twelve years ago) link
It's always some zing.
― clemenza, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
hello anon
― The Startrekman, Sunday, April 29, 2012 4:19 PM (Yesterday)
― the sunno)))boys (electricsound), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRw97mX4EMg
― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
AH SAY HEY MON
― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 April 2012 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
lol Startrekman
― am0n, Monday, 30 April 2012 00:47 (twelve years ago) link
sick burn
lol that tom waits quote reminds me of casey kasem's 'these guys are from england and who gives a shit'
― balls, Sunday, 29 April 2012 04:59
p sure that was prof. wgw of this parish tho?
― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Sunday, 30 September 2012 00:57 (eleven years ago) link
This thread will belong to Mitt Romney come Wednesday.
Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2
― clemenza, Sunday, 30 September 2012 01:05 (eleven years ago) link
Noel Gallagher on Jack White“He looks like Zorro on doughnuts.”
― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Sunday, 30 September 2012 02:32 (eleven years ago) link
"As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that."[21]
RIP big man
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:17 (eleven years ago) link
was Rummy ever this zingy?
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:18 (eleven years ago) link
no but he was a better epistemologist
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:21 (eleven years ago) link
zinging saddam just seems too easy
― iatee, Friday, 28 December 2012 03:28 (eleven years ago) link
and i had the best present i was going to send you
http://www.ebay.ie/itm/G7199-Modern-Postcard-4x6-General-Norman-Schwarzkopf-/370526552767
― things that are jokes pretty much (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 28 December 2012 03:34 (eleven years ago) link
tbf a few other dudes with those qualifications were more successful than norm
― mookieproof, Friday, 28 December 2012 03:37 (eleven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/ldsUHVe.png
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 March 2013 17:22 (eleven years ago) link
In 1958 Winston Churchill broke his spine in a fall and was required to sleep with a bedrest, which he hated. He and nurse Roy Howells got into a heated argument in which the two swore at one another.In making up afterward, Churchill said, “You were very rude to me, you know.”Howells said, “Yes, but you were rude too.”Churchill said, “Yes, but I am a great man.”“There was no answer to that,” Howells remembered later. “He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right.”
In making up afterward, Churchill said, “You were very rude to me, you know.”
Howells said, “Yes, but you were rude too.”
Churchill said, “Yes, but I am a great man.”
“There was no answer to that,” Howells remembered later. “He knew, as I and the rest of the world knew, that he was right.”
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/03/22/detente/ (!)
― s.clover, Saturday, 23 March 2013 01:56 (eleven years ago) link
Those guys grew up in L.A. and they don't have cow-shit on their boots - they just got dog shit from Laurel Canyon. - Tom Waits
accidental self zing imo
― wk, Saturday, 23 March 2013 04:36 (eleven years ago) link
XP it doesn't really work so well as a zing if the person saying it seems like a d-bag who's hard to sympathize with
― Poliopolice, Saturday, 23 March 2013 05:41 (eleven years ago) link
yeah remember all those country rock albums tom waits made
― balls, Saturday, 23 March 2013 05:54 (eleven years ago) link