The Snark Handbook: Insult Edition (Snark Series)
Page 4
—ERNEST NEWMAN, ON STRAVINSKY’S
SYMPHONY OF WIND INSTRUMENTS IN
MEMORY OF DEBUSSY
I didn’t like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions—the curtain was up.
—GEORGE S. KAUFMAN
He writes his plays for the ages—the ages between five and twelve.
—GEORGE NATHAN ABOUT GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed.
—RALPH NOVAK
Shakespearean Insults37
Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death.
No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip, she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.
Thou lump of foul deformity.
Thou unfit for any place but hell.
He heareth not, he stirreth not, he moveth not, the ape is dead.
You kiss by the book.
Why, he’s a man of wax.
You should be women, and yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so.
Whose horrible image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs.
What you egg! You fry of treachery!
Fit to govern! No, not to live.
I had rather be a toad, and live upon the vapour of a dungeon, than keep a corner in the thing I love for others’ uses.
Damn her, lewd minx!
You have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness.
I do not like thy look, I promise thee.
You Banbury cheese!
Thou disease of a friend.
Critics? I love every bone in their heads.
—EUGENE O’NEILL
The critic is often an unsuccessful author, almost always an inferior one.
—LEIGH HUNT
A drama critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—KENNETH TYNAN
Match the Insult to the Show38
Guys and Dolls
Glengarry Glen Ross
West Side Story
Gypsy
Romeo and Juliet
Come Back, Little Sheba
Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.
Why don’t you get smart, you stupid hooligans? I oughta take you down to the station and throw you in the can right now. You and the tin-horn immigrant scum you come from.
I kinda like it when you forget to give me presents. It makes me feel like we’re married.
You’re like a pioneer woman without a frontier.
Alcoholics are mostly disappointed men.
Cop couldn’t find his fucking couch in the living room.
Who picks your clothes—Stevie Wonder?
—DON RICKLES TO FRANK SINATRA
He has plenty of music in him, but he cannot get it out.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON ON ROBERT BROWNING
A medical student was in the morgue one day after classes, getting a little practice in before the final exams. He went over to a table where a body was lying facedown. He removed the sheet from the body and found a cork in the corpse’s rectum. He pulled the cork out, and to his surprise, music began playing: “On the road again ... Just can’t wait to get on the road again ...” The student replaced the cork immediately, and the music stopped. He did it again. Same thing. Totally freaked out, he called the medical examiner over to the corpse.
He pulled the cork back out again and the music started. He looked up at the man, expecting him to be shocked. “Isn’t that the wildest thing you’ve ever seen?”
“So what?” the medical examiner replied, obviously unimpressed with the student’s discovery. “Any asshole can sing country music.”
To me, the Mona Lisa looks like she’s chewing toffee.
—JUSTIN MOORHOUSE
Insults and More Insults
Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times (ten actually), trying to get it right. He failed.39
He is the only genius with an IQ of 60.40
If I found her floating in my pool, I’d punish my dog.41
As for Cézanne, his name will be forever linked with the most memorable artistic joke of the last fifteen years.42
Watching your performance from the rear of the house. Wish you were here.43
It is bad when they don’t perform your operas—but when they do, it’s far worse.44
Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.45
It resembles a tortoiseshell cat having a fit in a plate of tomatoes.46
His pictures seem to resemble not pictures but a sample book of patterns of linoleum.
—CYRIL ASQUITH ON PAUL KLEE
I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.
—JOHN RUSKIN ON JAMES McNEIL WHISTLER
A decorator tainted with insanity.
—KENYON COX ON PAUL GAUGUIN
He’s a mental midget with the IQ of a fence post.
—TOM WAITS
On Wagner
Wagner has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours.
—GIOVANNI ROSSINI
I like Wagner’s music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage.
—OSCAR WILDE
Is Wagner actually a man? Is he not rather a disease?
Everything he touches falls ill: he has made music sick.
—FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE
I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
—WOODY ALLEN
Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.
—MARK TWAIN
I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes.
—THE EDGE
I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music.
—LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN TO A FELLOW COMPOSER
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.
—BETTE MIDLER
He’s so annoying he makes me want to rip my eyeballs out
just to have something to plug my ears with.
You know, if you play the Jonas Brothers backward ... they
still suck. But it gives ’em an edge.
They found a new chamber in the Great Pyramid. And here’s what was on the wall: Rolling Stones Tour, 1567 BC.
—CRAIG KILBORN
The Rolling Stones’ new U.S. tour is a lot harder than their first, when we only had thirteen states.
—JAY LENO
Snarkin’ the News
The Vatican has stated that they forgive the Beatles. For what, you ask? For the Jesus remark, for inciting young girls to a sexual frenzy, and for firing Pete Best.
Carly Simon has revealed, after thirty-eight years, that the subject of “You’re So Vain” was David Geffen. She’s re-recording the song, changing the lyrics to: “I’m so vain, I bet I think people still care.”
Lil Wayne was sent to Rikers for gun possession. I have the number fifteen in the betting pool, based on how many times he hears the word “lollipop” on a daily basis until he’s out.
Snoop Dogg has been trying to end his ban to play in England. Originally barred for using “insulting words,” the Snoop camp maintains that the Brits just don’t understand that “suck my izzle” is not derogatory.
Tiny Tim’s ex-manager is trying to open an 8-track museum, claiming this is a format that should never be forgotten. There will be four entry ways that may or may not get you where you wanna go and an AMC Pacer will be permanently parked in front.
They’ve opened ABBAWORLD in London. It’s 30,000 square feet and has a gift shop full of ABBA memorabilia and ABBA songs playing on a loop in every room. There’s even a
3-D holographic ABBA that visitors can pretend to perform with. What’s Swedish for “please kill me”?
So you’re acting now, you’re in a vampire movie, yes? That’s good. Finally, a role that requires you to suck.
—TRIUMPH THE INSULT COMIC DOG TO BONJOVI
Q. What’s the difference between God and Bono?
A. God doesn’t walk around thinking he’s Bono.
A freakish homunculus germinated outside of lawful procreation.
—HENRY ARTHURJONES ON GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
More Shakespearean Insults
Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.
You are as a candle, the better part burnt out.
I think he be transformed into a beast, for I can nowhere find him like a man.
Away! Thou art poison to my blood.
As I told you always, her beauty and her brain go not together.
I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death.
Come, you are a tedious fool.
Were I like thee, I would throw away myself.
Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.
Thou art like the harpy, which, to betray, dost with thine angels face, seize with thine eagle’s talons.
Your peevish chastity, which is not worth a breakfast in the cheapest country.
He is open to incontinency.
A knot you are of damned blood-suckers.
Thy mother’s name is ominous to children.
Pray you, stand farther from me!
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
There’s many a man hath more hair than wit.
If thou art chang’d to aught, tis to an ass.
He’s liked, but he’s not well liked.
—ARTHUR MILLER
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have; and I think he’s a dirty little beast.
—W. S. GILBERT
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
—ALBERT CAMUS
He was so narrow-minded that if he fell on a pin it would blind him in both eyes.
—FRED ALLEN
I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but
tittering jeering emptiness. They have all made what
Dante calls the Great Refusal. ... The shallowest
people on the ridge of the earth.
—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
George Bernard Shaw answered a knock at his door one day and was greeted by a couple who announced gravely: “Good morning, we are Jehovah’s Witnesses.” “Good morning,” said Shaw, “I’m Jehovah. How are we doing?”
Man is a useless passion.
—JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
He’s completely unspoiled by failure.
—NOËL COWARD
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
—SAMUEL BECKETT
The great nineteenth-century Shakespearean director Sir Henry Irving visited the American actor Richard Mansfield, immediately after his performance as Richard III, which Irving had never seen before. He found Mansfield in his dressing room, running with sweat after his exertions onstage, and, patting him on the shoulder, Irving said: “Well, Dick, me boy! I see your skin acts well.”
Movies, Jelevision, and Actors
You had to stand in line to hate him.
—HEDDA HOPPER
AH YES, SHOW BUSINESS. There’s no business like it, so the song goes.... and there’s no other group of folks where the snark reigns supreme. Figures, no? What else do overpaid, overpampered, overindulged people have to do with their time than engage in one on ones with others of their kind? I know it works for me.
This section includes the crème de la crème of the snark ideology, folks like Mae West and Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields and many more. Like the “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” all-inclusive pardon at the end of every movie, no punches were pulled in the making of this chapter.
Match the Insult to the Movie47
Christmas Vacation
The Ref
The Big Sleep
Dazed and Confused
The Departed
Garden State
I’m the guy that does his job. You must be the other guy.
My, my, my. So many guns around town and so few brains.
What are you looking at? Wipe that face off your head, bitch.
Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?
If there was a retarded Oscar you would win, hands down.
You know what I’m going to get you next Christmas, Mom? A big wooden cross, so that every time you feel unappreciated for your sacrifices, you can climb on up and nail yourself to it.
Is that your nose, or did a bus park on your face?
—ROXANNE
She’s been on more laps than a napkin.
—WALTER WINCHELL
There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.48
—JACK E. LEONARD
If I wanted to talk to an asshole,
I would have farted.
—ANDREW DICE CLAY
To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people!
I’ve known sheep who could outwit you.
I’ve worn dresses with higher IQs, but you
think you’re an intellectual, don’t you, ape?
—A FISH CALLED WANDA
Snarkin’ the News
A monkey in a Russian zoo, fed vodka and cigarettes by tourists, was diagnosed as alcoholic and nicotine addicted. He has been placed in rehab, suffering from “exhaustion.” No comment was forthcoming from his roommate, Charlie Sheen.
Right out of a WB cartoon: A man in New Jersey was standing on a corner when a piano that was being lowered from the third story of a building fell, killing him instantly. The piano landed upright and was completely unharmed.
Mattel is coming out with a set of Mad Men Barbie dolls, complete with fedoras, sharkskin suits, and bad cocktail dresses. Infidelity, guilt, and repression sold separately.
You’re a parasite for sore eyes.
—GREGORY RATOFF
Hitler got more laughs than Jimmy Kimmel, and he did it without Jewish writers.
—LISA LAMPANELLI
If people don’t sit at Chaplin’s feet, he goes out and stands where they are sitting.
—HER MAN J. MANKIEWICZ
Peter Lorre: “You despise me, don’t you?”
Humphrey Bogart: “If I gave you any thought,
I probably would.”
—CASABLANCA
Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.
—GROUCHO MARX
Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings?
—MILTON BERLE
They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze.
They should photograph me through linoleum.
—TALLULAH BANKHEAD
She has the attention span of a lightning bolt.
—ROBERT REDFORD
Insults and More Insults
He’s the type of man who will end up dying in his own arms.49
He couldn’t ad-lib a fart after a baked-bean dinner.50
He looked like a half-melted rubber bulldog.51
His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open.52
He is to acting what Liberace is to pumping iron.53
Her body has gone to her head.54
She has discovered the secret of perpetual middle age.
—OSCAR LEVANT
He has a Teflon brain ... nothing sticks.
—LILY TOMLIN
She looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth—or anywhere else.
—ELSA LANCHESTER
Geena Davis: “Don’t put it there! It’ll make a bulge. People can see!” Samuel Jackson: “Want me to put it in my pants and shoot
my damn dick off?” Geena Davis: “Now you’re a sharpshooter?”
—LONG KISS GOODNIGHT
Her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.
—WOODY ALLEN
Her only flair is in her nostrils.
—PAULINE KAEL
He hasn’t an enemy in the world—but all his friends hate him.