Darrenisms

Darren is hilarious. Oftentimes this is intentional on his part. Sometimes it isn't. Darrenisms are one of those cases where he is unintentionally hilarious. Several years ago I began documenting Darrenisms (at his request - I'm not just a mean friend). Since then they've lived lonelyly in a text document on my computer (yes the Dell demonspawn). In honor of a brand new Darrenism today we agreed to liberate Darrenisms from obscurity and share them with the world to document them for... prosperity.

Update: There is some debate about what exactly qualifies as a Darrenism. In the broadest sense it is just when Darren says something unintentionally funny, usually consisting of mismatching a word/phrase/name. We generally skip ones where he just misspoke and is able to correct himself (unless we find it particularly funny). Obviously we all do this (e.g. for years I thought celibate relationships were plutonic rather than platonic), it's just that Darren is a good enough sport to have us document them. Thanks Darren.

• 6/1/04 After watching Terminator 3, Darren referred to the character Sarah Connor as Sarah Day O'Conner. Well neither is a big advocate of gun control...

• 6/6/04 Inadvertently invented the word Astrocity (Atrocity and Monstrosity combined) - Referring to the Satellite Dish on our neighbors house*
  

• 7/25/04 In Cognito instead of Incommunicado regarding my vacation to California and lack of communication

• 9/3/04 Darren became disenfranchised (rather than disenchanted) with eating Salmon as a result of working at the Four Seasons. This discussed over a game of Mexican Train at Darren's parents following a Salmon dinner

• 10/25/04 Darren asked me for neoprene to sooth his blister, then realized he wanted the Neosporin

• 11/20/04 Darren discussed religious prosecution instead of persecution

• 11/20/04 Darren talked about how his mom was all for asimulation instead of asimilation

• 9/13/07 Darren talked about taking a picture of his bike for prosperity instead of posterity
  
  
• 10/7/07 On the car ride back from skydiving, Darren explained that he didn't want to bring up his "nesting" theory of women because the last time he mentioned it the girls got all in a fizzy over it. Fit and tizzy? Or do we believe Darren's justification that it's like you know "fizzy", all excited and bubbling over...

• 10/21/07 In what may become a new subcategory of Darrenisms - the celebrity Darrenism (see Sarah Day O'Connor above) - Darren asked when Schillinger was pitching again for the Red Sox. Not too funny unless you know that Darren is confusing Sox pitcher Curt Schilling with Vern Schillinger who is the head of the Aryan brotherhood gang on Oz. It's a reasonable mistake I suppose, they are both Republicans...
  

• 10/24/07 Baseball tends to bring out Darrenisms. Two classic examples both resurfaced during the Sox World Series Game 1 victory. First, Darren said if they hadn't held up Varitek at 3rd the Red Sox would have scored 4 points in the first. He later commented how he'd seen a news bit on Pedroia and how the fan said he was voting for Pedroia (Darren somehow tried to justify this by saying it was a player instead of a team... as if you vote for a player and root for a team). While these technically aren't Darrenisms in the sense that they aren't difficult words that have been swapped or combined, he's substituted those terms on a number of occasions so we are recording them... for prosperity.
  
  
• 11/4/07 Over dinner at Aladdin’s, Darren invents the word Keginator… which as far as we can tell has the exact same definition as a Kegerator (unless the Terminator will be returning in keg-like form in the Sandra Day O’Connor Chronicles). Of course to be fair to Darren, he isn’t the first person to make this mistake.
  
  
• 11/16/07 Darren described how he'd had an alteration made to a biking jacket, but the resulting fix closed up the back pocket. This was a problem because the jacket was designed to fold into that pocket in order to form a nice little snatchel to carry it around. Perhaps it was a satchel that snaps shut (he said it was). Vulgarities aside, perhaps he's coined a new term for a snapping satchel. As a bonus, when the zipper eventually broke on the jacket, he returned it to the bike store (forgetting about the alteration in the back).
  
  
• 11/30/07 While discussing how we would embed the Festivus pole in the ground, Darren kept referring to rubar. Rhubarb, or rebar? Sure they both go in the ground but I envision the Festivus pole toppling over as the rabbits in our yard munch away the rhubarb support. Still it might be appropriate as a great "feat of strength" for some rhubarb stalks to hold up a pole...
  
  
• 12/29/07 As the Giants led the undefeated Patriots at halftime, Darren commented that the team beating the Pats had lost at home to the Redskins earlier in the season. "Well, that's the polarity of the NFL...". I gave him a chance to catch himself. He went with "Well, that's the plurality of the NFL...". The Giants wound up losing, so maybe there isn't that much parity in the NFL anyway.
  
  

• 2/20/08 When we attempted to capture a photo of the moon watchers, and Mary cringed from yet another camera flash, Darren asked “Mary, why are you so dramatized?”. While she may have been a bit dramatic in appearing traumatized by the flash, I can confirm that she wasn’t permanently dramatized.

• 4/3/08 Sara explains that she used to be good at tennis, but hasn't played in a while, so Darren remarks that she "quit tennis cold cut". Turkey is a type of cold cut (and no one seems to agree on what cold turkey means anyway), but most importantly... Sara, the first step is to admit that you have a tennis addiction.
  
  

• 4/28/2008 While I was away in Russia, I delegated Darrenism monitoring to Sara. She handled the tremendous responsibility admirably and recorded two new instances. While the context of the first one is unclear, Darren and Sara agree that for some reason he used the word “enjoyful”. The second is more fully documented since she caught it in his blog…

  Darren admits he wasn’t excited about the Greenbrier race… and that his only constellation was that MattyD would be suffering along with him. He’s since fixed the post , but highlighted the correction… for prosperity.

• 6/7/2008 Sara must be spending more time with Darren than I am lately because I keep hearing about Darrenisms second-hand from her. The latest, from his bike weekend at Big Bear, was his thank you to a teammate who had a spare part (or tool?) he needed. "You're a Lifesend" Apparently Darren was so thankful that neither Lifesaver nor Godsend sufficiently captured his gratitude.

Darrenism-a-Day 2008

• Day 1 - 6/21/2008 At our friend Colleen's post-wedding brunch, Darren began describing an upcoming show that we have tickets for at Wolf Trap. The show is called Face of America: Hawai'i Revisited. It's a celebration of Hawai'i and will include traditional Hawai'ian music and dance. It'll probably feel like the luau I went to on Maui and I am sure there will be Hula dancing. But really why use so many words to describe all of that when you can be much more succinct and describe it like Darren did... we're going to see a Hulau.
  
  
• Day 2 - 6/22/2008 Sara complements the cheese cutting board that Darren bought his mom for Christmas. "Where did you find that Darren?"... "Cracker Barrel". Frankly I'm with Darren on this one, it's much more logical that something cheese related would come from a store called Cracker Barrel than one called Crate and Barrel. Look, their logo is even cheese-colored!
  
  
• Day 3 - 6/29/2008 While playing tennis with Sara (who has yet to kick her tennis addiction cold cut), Darren began discussing a new kid's tennis racquet, which is both cheaper and better than his current racquet. It is so good that it is endorsed by sisters Vanessa and Serena Williams. Who knew Vanessa was such a tennis fanatic (or that they were long lost sisters!). Actually the entertainer has had some name conflict issues, it's just generally not with Venus.
  
  
• Day 4 - 6/29/2008 After working up an appetite playing with a non-Vanessa-Williams-endorsed racquet, Sara and Darren headed to Panera for lunch where Sara's new favorite Darrenism was born: Darren declared "I'll try one of those sandwiches on... Poonani bread". Yep, I officially won't ever be able to look at a Panini the same way again. Ever. We literally had to stop and get out of the car at Assateague to take a photo of the sign: "Need lunch for the beach? Panini's"
  
  
• Day 5 -7/7/2008 The Tour de France is underway and in addition to watching each stage on Tivo, Darren spends a good deal of time reading the cycling news sites. He particularly enjoys reading the online updates from the riders themselves and told Sara that there are quite a few more of these now because it is so much easier for the riders to post them using their BlueBerrys. Although I imagine some may be using the new version of Apricot's iPhone.
  
  
• Day 6 - 6/28/2008 Going out of order a bit here, to bring up an idiom Darrenism that he made at Front Page. The waiter rattled off the beers on tap, and Darren ordered... a gin and tonic stating that "none of those beers struck my boat". That answer did not float the waiter's fancy (and don't they usually strike boats with Champagne?)
  
  
• Day 7 - 7/13/2008 While Darren and Sara were discussing nipples (don't ask), Darren declared that male nipples are not as androgynous as female nipples. The erogenous mixup is even more enjoyful since nipples are androgynous traits.

Thanks to Darren and Sara for making this week o' Darrenisms possible, hopefully you enjoyed them (and whether you did or not, enough of you at least read them to put Darrenisms back on top as the most visited post here!)

Back to our irregularly scheduled Darrenisms

• 8/12/2008 While watching the Olympic gymnasts, we got a new celebrity Darrenism when he reflected back on the heroic vault of Kerri Struthers. I guess they do both have distinctive voices... (on several occasions he also referred to breaststroker Brendan Hansen as Brendan Fraser. Sports stars definitely seem to confuse Darren the most... sports stars and Supreme Court justices).
  
  
• 8/15/2008 On our 9 hour road trip to Ohio we played the noun game. An old road trip game where you simply go around the car stating a (non-proper) noun that starts with the designated letter until someone accidentally repeats or can't think of one. The letter was "A". We'd gone around a few times throwing out words such as "Apple, Aardvark, Ant, Anteater". Darren's next word was... Irrigation, though he did try to pronounce it "Airrigation".
  

*My current favorite

Check back for all the Darrenisms yet to be born...