Screen Memes, vol. 1
Starting a few years back, I began taking photos of scenes in movies and TV shows that seemed funny, reminded me of friends, or had the possibility of being useful at some point in the future. I sent some of these to friends to make them laugh, but I kept others in archive to be used at a later time. In some cases, that time never came. In others, I was able to make a friend or family member laugh (hopefully out loud in a work meeting).
I’m posting the current set here with explanations, with the hope that others might find them useful or at least entertaining. I’ve blurred out the swear words, sorry.
Spadino se ne va. My first effort was from season 1 of “Suburra” on Netflix. It’s a scene where Spadino, the son of a Romani crime family, leaves the family. It’s a scene of happy defiance, where he tells them all good-bye in the third person. I saved it use when I finally turn in my retirement papers or to share with a friend who’s finally decided to quit a crap job or leave a bad situation. It’s the Italian version of Dave Chapelle’s famous, “I quit!”
Pensa che cazzo me ne frega di quello che dici te. This is also from “Suburra,” and the context is Aureliano Adami telling his sister that he never listened to their father, so he’s really not going to listen to her. This again is a scene of someone telling someone else that they don’t really care what they think. The series is full of these moments, and they usually lead to a bad end. Whatever, the world is still overly full of people with bad advice and dumb opinions, and it still feels good to let them know you’re not listening. As Elán a famous self-help advisor on TikTok puts it: “Le caigo mal a puro pendejo.”
Mónica! No! This one was a family inside joke that I never got to use. It comes from “Wandavision,” and it’s pretty much what it looks like: an FBI agent yelling at a woman named Monica not to do something. Our eldest daught, Mónica, was a teenager at the time, so I fugured I’d have lots of opportunities to send this to my wife to make her laugh about something crazy our daughter had done. Shortly afterward, however, our daughter seemed to emerge from her adolescent fog and stop doing things for which the meme would have worked. It’s a joke I’ll likely never get to use (unless she decides to study literature in college), but that’s probably good.
Long Distance Serial Killers. Our daughters went through a phase where they watched a lot of “Criminal Minds.” Our eldest likes true crime stories, but she later admitted that she had a crush on Spencer Reid, a character from the show. Fair enough. I tried to watch an episode from season 1 with them, but I stopped when Reid said, with utter seriousness, that crime were being committed by “long distance serial killers,” as though there were a thing and he’d read a whole chapter on them in some pyschology textbook. It came to stand in for any silly explanation expressed with utter seriousness, as though everyone would automatically nod in agreement. “Oh no, my car won’t start!” “Racoon gangs.” Something like that.
So probably best if you don’t speak or look at me again, okay? This one is from “Giri/Haji,” and Kelly MacDonald (as Sarah) is telling a woman at work to leave her alone. I don’t remember the exact context, but it may have had something to do with the woman trying to steal Sarah’s boyfriend or something similar. It’s a baller move, in any case. I’ve sent this to both of our daughters at different times when they had beef with someone at school.
Noi siamo peggio che sposati, siamo soci. Back to Italy for this one. It’s from “Romanzo criminale,”and Er Libanese is explaining to Er Dandi that their relationship—as partners in crime—is stronger than marriage. I sent this to a friend in Italy when we agreed to co-edit something (he laughed), and I also sent it to my wife to let her know that we’re not just married (serious enough) but also bound by something much deeper. Siamo soci. She’s my ride or die, and I’m hers.
Canada’s Worse. This if from “1923,” and here a shepherd named Hank is giving advice to Teonna Rainwater after she escapes from a religious residential school. She wants to run away, and she considers fleeing to Canada. Hank advises against this. I’ve got nothing against Canada, really (they gave us Joey Votto), but I had a friend who moved there from the US and had a hard time adjusting. I sent this to him to make him laugh.
Well, Jesus did all those nice things, look what they did to him. This is Isaac from “Beef,” and he was probably my favorite character on the show. Kind of a knucklehead and definitely a criminal, but he’s loyal, sweet, and basically honest. This is his version of “no good deed goes unpunished,” and this is one I more or less kept for myself. Maybe I’ll send it to someone at some point or use it for teaching. It’s just a beautiful scene to me, and I can’t really explain why. I get that it shows a criminal justifying his crimes (I think he’s sitting on a stolen massage chair when he says it), but there’s still something endearing and naively philosophical about it.
And then she ran off to Stanford, like rich girls do, and stopped returning my texts. A friend who also teaches at Stanford had sent me the clip from “The Simpsons” (S13E07: “Brawl in the Family”) where Lisa gets arrested and worries she won’t get into an Ivy League college. Bart and Homer tease her by singing, “You’re going to Stanford! You’re going to Stanford!” Not long after receiving the clip, I was watching an episode of “Elsbeth,” in which a woman cons her way to the head of a lucrative start-up, and the detective interview people who know her to get to the bottom of things. One woman knew her before college and characterizes her as an opportunistic psychopath. It’s a cliché likely penned by someone who’s never even been to Palo Alto, but I sent it to my friend anyway. There are likely more of these out there, but we moved on to other jokes.
Eat sh*t, a**hole! This is a throwback to “The Sopranos.” Tina Francesco (Vanessa Ferlito) is yelling in the street while Bryan Spatafore (Vincent Orofino) looks on. I was texting back and forth with a friend in Italy about Italian-American culture, and he’d never seen “The Sopranos.” I told my wife about this, and she sent me the image. I can’t take the credit/blame for this one. I know Tina is a bad character in the show (rule of thumb: don’t flirt with your friend’s fiancé), but this is still a great scene. I like how Spatafore just looks on passively. Honestly, I’ve witnessed nearly this same exact scene a hundred times in my life. The speaker isn’t always Italian, but the sentiment is the same. What provokes it? Usually nothing, but that’s the point.
I speak seven f**king languages! I saved the best for last. This is from season 3 of “Industry,” an HBO show that’s mostly uneven and even sadistic at times (but then I’m neither British nor under 40). In this scene, a monstrous (like, for real) father is telling his daughter what he thinks of her. He tells her that as bad as he may be (and he is), she’ll still have to live with the fact that she’s “spectacularly talentless.” She then defends herself somewhat weakly with: “I speak seven f**king languages!” It’s a desperate, sad statement, and it really only serves to prove his point. For the record, the number of languages one speaks says nothing about their talent or intelligence (and let’s face it: the phone in your pocket can speak 207 languages). It’s like responding: “I can ride a horse!” The question, really, is whether a person has anything intelligent to say in any one of those languages. Most of us sadly don’t. I sent this to a friend after he complained about a coworker who likes to brag about all the languages he knows.
