Snowclones Word Game

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. And joining us once again is our quiz guy, John Chaneski.

John, come on down.

Hello, Grant. Hello, Martha. How are you guys?

You guys look great today, by the way.

Thank you. Thank you.

Cheese ball, what do you want? Money?

Why not? Who doesn’t?

Wait, what do you have on the paper there? You got something? Can I see those? Are those the questions?

No, no. Get away, get away.

No, you can’t see those, Grant.

My gosh.

Luckily, the font is very, very small.

Yeah, Grant’s good at reading.

Actually, he’s written in backwards and in Chinese, and it’s like red on red text.

That’s right. I form it out to Leonardo da Vinci.

I send it back in time and it comes back to me.

Our weather recently has inspired me to create a quiz about snow clones.

Now you guys know what snow clones are, right?

They’re delicious.

We’ve talked about them before, right?

Yummy.

Right.

You might say, Greg Pliska is a great quiz master, but you know, these days, Chaneski is the new Pliska.

People say that all the time.

But yes, beige is the new black or whatever.

That’s a snow clone.

It’s a template for a phrase based on an earlier well-known phrase.

Well, I’m going to give you a sentence with a snow clone in it, and I’d like you to tell me the original word or words that have been replaced in the snow clone.

And if you can, the source, just for fun.

For example, if I said, as a reviewer, I get lots and lots of free books.

Frankly, my shelves runneth over.

You would say…

I would say, buy another bookshelf.

No.

My shelves runneth over.

Right.

It’s like my cup runneth over, right?

You would say the word cup, right?

The word shelves replaces cup, as in my cup runneth over, which is from…

Is that the King James Bible?

Is that a biblical reference?

Exactly, yes.

King James Bible, Psalm 23, verse 5.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.

Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.

Be prepared.

There could be several words in the snow clone whose originals I’ll need, okay?

Oh.

All right.

Here we go.

You know, Bob and Tom were pretty beat up.

I offered to get some bandages for them, but Tom snarled, bandages?

We don’t need no stinking bandages.

Oh, sure.

The treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Badges.

Badges is right.

All right.

What else?

All right.

Here’s another one.

Sometimes you seem almost proud to be a complainer.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you say, I am Josh.

Hear me whine.

Oh, so this I am woman.

Hear me roar.

Nice.

Right.

Who said it, Martha?

Helen Reddy, of course.

There we go.

How does the song go, Martha?

I am not running up to kick that.

I am woman.

My favorite lines from that song is, I’m just an embryo with a long, long way to go.

Who decided that would be a great?

Who penned that?

I remember that.

Yeah, I’m still an embryo with a long, long way to go.

Okay.

All right.

Here’s the next one.

I stopped off at Grant’s house to show him my new Webster’s Dictionary, but he takes out his Oxford English Dictionary and says,

That’s not a dictionary.

That’s a dictionary.

That’s not a knife.

This is a knife.

Very good.

From?

It’s Crocodile Dundee.

Right, starring Paul Hogan.

Right, playing the Australian, the fish out of water in New York City, right?

Strine, yeah, 1986.

Very good.

Nice, nice.

This next one is an actual line I heard on one of my kids’ television shows.

On the episode of Lazy Town, entitled Happy Brush Day, the character of Ziggy, who loves sweets, says,

I love the taste of taffy in the morning.

It tastes like taffy.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

Oh, yeah.

It’s from Apocalypse Now.

It smells like?

It smells like victory.

Taffy.

Right.

The words I’m looking for are smell, napalm, and victory.

The original phrase is, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.

It smells like victory.

It’s a great little scene there.

And it’s just a man who’s at the peak of his personal power and feels like he can do anything.

Right.

He feels in charge of great forces.

Which I’m sure is how Ziggy felt about taffy.

He felt really in charge of taffy.

He could finally…

Okay, next.

When I cleaned out my dorm room,

Anthony took my old garbage can for his room,

Stating, well, a wastebasket is a terrible thing to waste.

Oh, no.

That’s horrible.

Horrible.

Thank you.

It’s the slogan of the United Negro College Fund,

Actually, which has just decided to stop using the full name

And go strictly to the initialism.

UNCF.

UNCF, yes.

And the word that is replacing that?

A mind.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, which is really still a great slogan, I think.

Sure.

It is fantastic.

Anyway, John, thank you so much for our fun time.

Thank you, guys.

I’ll see you soon.

Well, if you’ve got a question about slang, regional expressions, pronunciations, word origins, or anything else, give us a call.

1-877-929-9673.

Or send us an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.