I LOVE LOVE LOVE Ab Fab. Love it. But, I would probably hate hate hate it if everyone I knew repeated lines from the show at obvious moments.

Quoting, is not a blanket bad thing, but when certain lines are constantly used, it become really tiresome and I don't find the lines on their own - accent or not - to be very funny.

Aahhhh... You cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding ! (For Better... or for worse.)

Exactly!

I'm really trying to think of a time when I thought quoting was tiresome. When I don't get the joke, I just let it go. When I do get the joke, the worst it will get is a smile from me.

Here's the disclaimer - we're talking about witty quoting here. I think quoting well is an art and there are those that are terrible at it. There's original or witty quoting and unoriginal, predictable quoting. Saying "we're not in Kansas anymore" is not original quoting because it's been done to death and is the obvious conclusion. I know one guy who thinks he's the bomb because he has a predictable movie quote (including "Kansas", seriously) for any situation. Lame.

There's also a difference between what I guess I'd label "conversational quoting" and "inspired quoting". Saying "it's only a flesh wound" when someone hurts themselves is not supposed to be the funniest thing ever - it's just a touchpoint. If I had a Pythonite friend land in the hospital (God forbid) due to some accident, I might pull that line just to make them smile.

As for inspired quoting, there's something really bonding about having a moment where someone pulls out the right quote that no one really expected and everyone laughs. This is what quoters are trying to achieve but some forget that inspiration is about quality, not quantity.

My eldest brother once said that it was his life goal to speak only in movie quotes, so I may be a bit biased ;)

Witty quoting - well that's me beat ! :)

Apparently, I must spread some cream cheese on a different bagel ... but CP stated the unstated obvious with daggerlike precision.

I guess it is just a difference. While I find reasonably appropriate quoting tolerable (though very few who do it, do it well) I don't really ever find it witty. It is just an exercise in memory and no more witty than someone mentioning a topic and being able to remember a Web site that has something interesting to say.

Saying you want to speak only in movie quotes is, to me, like saying you'd like to speak only in domain names or in words that consist of concatenations of element abbreviations (Beryllium-calcium-uranium-selenium Iodine calcium-nitrogen, Iodine americium lanthamum-molybdenum. Iodine tungsten-indium.). An exercise in cleverness perhaps, but not wit.

Is that going to be a cemetery screening?!

Here's the thing - he was mostly joking. Yeah, just mostly. In my family, "What's That From" is not a game, it's a bloodbath. I suck at it but my brothers are all in a never-ending attempt to claw their way to the top of the heap. Even so, it was a joke.

I can wax poetic on the concept...that as children of the cable/VHS generation, many more of us can be movie buffs, and movie buffs in our own way, whatever our favorites. The great thing about movies is very similar to the great thing about message boards - every sentence is planned in advance, edited carefully to say the exact right thing in the exact right way at the exact right moment. Sure, it's not always done perfectly, but when it does hit the mark, wow! It's no wonder that the simple lines said in a movie can touch us so deeply and feel so profound. I admit to wishing everything I said in face-to-face encounters was so well crafted.