Monday, August 17, 2009

"Ghost Rider doesn't smoke." "He's made of fire."

Via Eli's Coffer, who is carrying on the Yale Mafia's good name, this dialogue from Confessions of a Superhero, "a 2007 documentary about costumed panhandlers outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre":
"Superman" and "Ghost Rider" are walking down the Walk of Fame.

Superman: Ya gotta remember there's a lotta dos and don'ts, ah, as a superhero... but if you abide by 'em, you do okay.

[silence]

Superman: Well, just remember, superheroes don't smoke. [pause] It's an image.

Ghost Rider: Except Ghost Rider.

Superman: No. Ghost Rider doesn't smoke.

Ghost Rider: He's made of fire.

Superman: But, still, he doesn't smoke cigarettes. [pause] You can't make exceptions for something that doesn't exist. You'll never see Ghost Rider smokin' a cigarette walkin' down the street. It's just not proper.
While we're passing along laughs-of-the-day, here's an unrelated Jazz Age one from Geoffrey Wolff's The Art of Burning Bridges: A Life of John O'Hara:
I found in the 1934 O'Hara files of the New Yorker archive at the New York Public Library a press clipping that somebody at the magazine decided belonged in their former colleague's folder. It was a Walter Winchell item, titled "the Squelch Swelegant," lampooning "a brandy-foolish author of a recent bestseller" who had been "doing a table-thumping 'I am' solo in Tony's. 'Dorothy Parker,' he thundered, 'called me a genius.' 'Oh well,' deprecated I, 'you know every funny thing that's said here is credited to Dorothy.'"

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