Hilarity = mc^2

Have you ever said the perfect line at the perfect moment? You're standing there with a group of people listening to a story, and suddenly you throw in a comment that makes everyone crack up. If you had stopped to consider how funny the line was then you'd have missed your window of opportunity. It wasn't even a conscious decision to say the line. It just happened.

For some people, this is second nature. They're comedians... or so-and-so's friend who is really funny. For the rest of us, these moments are few and far between. If I get one of these lines out in a month then I feel great.

It happened last night. I said something funny. But let's not talk about that. Instead, let's go back to what last night made me think of.

A Twilight Zone marathon.

When I was in middle/high school, there was a twilight zone marathon every summer on the sci-fi channel. So Justin, Matt and I would watch most of it while we enjoyed lazy days of doing nothing (do you remember those days? When you had no responsibility whatsoever? Yeah, they were great).

Well there was this one episode with William Shatner (no, not the man on the wing of the plane episode). He goes into a diner with his wife for lunch. While they are waiting for their food, they play around with a fortune-teller machine at the table. The machine starts giving them cryptic messages about them dying if they leave the diner. Of course, they ignore it and eventually leave. But as soon as they go outside, the wife almost gets hit by a car. So, obviously, they run back inside and start throwing money into the machine and asking tons of questions about what will happen to them if they leave again.

So this goes on and on. Shatner is obsessed with this machine and refuses to leave the diner all day, while the wife begins to get angry and wants to go home. But as she yells at him, all he can do is drop coins into this "magic eight ball" machine and ask things like "Will I die if I leave?"

Eventually, the wife begins to stalk away and Shatner grabs her at the door before she can go. In a moment of climactic tension she yells something like "Are you just going to let that thing run your life forever?"

...and that's when I chimed in with a comment like "Hold on, I'll go ask the machine." (in a william shatner voice).

Yeah yeah, so it's not exactly comedic gold... but come on, I was around 16 at the time. To a kid, it was hilarious.

So I'm purposely ending this post with an opening for people to tell me funny things that they've said before. You know you've done it. You know you have a story. You know you want to share it.

So do it!!!