>What you meant (I think) was the birth of a specific metaphor ie “jumping the shark’.

Um, yes. What Phil said was “the birth of a metaphor” (emphasis added), not “the birth of metaphor”. See the difference? English, you might try it some time. You might also try typing. (“metophotr”, “teh wall pof amammoth”, etc).

I mean, if you’re going to be hypercritical, at least don’t screw up yourself.

(I now invoke Gaudere’s Law. So there.)

It’s easy and fun, Bo Babbyo.
With numlock turned on, hold down the alt key while typing the decimal ASCII code on the number pad. The character will appear when you release the alt key.
é is alt-0233.

Here’s a table of ASCII codes that work in Mac and Windows:
http://www.4d.com/docs/CMu/CMU10121.HTM

Stuff it. I hate Bush, but we’re not the ones declaring the destruction of Israel and all Jews as part of our national policy. You are trapped in an ideological singularity.

J. D.

“In Dubya Bush’s warped interpretation of God we trust”

with perhaps a row of barrels of oil or skulls symbolising the various states …

It’d certainly be an apt if sad and no doubt enragingly accurate reflection to most of the world about how you’ve changed and what sort of a nation you’ve sadly become.

BTW. Despite my strong anti-Bush feelings & political outlook, I’m actually very much pro-USA – its smarter, better, more inspirational side exemplified by Martin Luther King & Isaac Asimov – & Phil Plait & the good folks here that is; NOT its fundamentalist, hypocritically prudish*, arrogant, ignorant neo-con one exemplified by George the Second.

I discern a battle within America right now and I wish I could say the side of good and hope for the future was winning, the sideof science and democracy and civil liberties NOT the side of the Religious Wrong & Neo-Conservative fascists out for “full spectrum dominace” over a planet they donm’t understand and care only about getting themselves rich from regardless of the suffering.

If you’re going to give away you’re guns and SUV’s, well, the rest of the planet would be very grateful ..

* Ie the sort of thing where Janet Jackson’s 1/4 sec. part-breast flap has folks foaming at the mouth yet a President lying his country into the war crime of invading Iraq and thus murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people gathers nowhere near even a tenth that same outrage ..

—————————————
Hmmn .. now all that that is going to be controversial – albeit very true.

What you meant (I think) was the birth of a specific metaphor ie “jumping the shark’.

Well, I was never a big Happy Day’s fan before or after I heard of it. But I grok the idea anyway. There are a whole lot of TV shows that I think “jumped the shark” – a sizeable number in their pilot episode!

I could be controversial and suggest that the way the ‘Star Trek’ franchise jumped the Shark with the series after ‘The Next Gen’ is a classic example tho’ ..

Come to think of it, I just have!

And, as is the case with a number of clichés — “game not worth the candle”, “lock stock and barrel”, “carrying coals to Newcastle” “motorman’s holiday,” doubtless there will be many who use the term without knowing what its initial meaning is/was.

I’d have to say, “jumping the shark” fills a gap in meaning that isn’t quite satisfied by “contemptuous by familiarity” or “stale” or “past its sell-by date” or even “clichéd”. There are, after all, reasons why a cliche’ becomes a cliché.

(And by the way, how did you get the actual é with the accent ague character? I cut-and-pasted yours I was so jealous.)

Even then I was a skeptic.

>>> I’m going to turn in my flag,
>>> my SUV and my gun collection.

Can I have the guns? actually, I could use a new flag, too.

I showed my ignorance of late 20th Century US popular culture.

I wrote “…Happy Times TV sitcom…”.
Every patriotic, red-blooded American knows that should be “…Happy Days…”.

I’m so embarrassed…
I’m going to turn in my flag, my SUV and my gun collection. I don’t deserve to be an American…

(Anyway, if the aim was to definitively puzzle and irritate foreigners with obscure references to some American TV-pop culture idiocy, this post has been a success… now I’ll have to waste time finding out what the hell is this nonsense about else my curiosity gland will explode, but SURE it won’t be worth it… >:( )”

Bill Bones, I can assure you that it won’t be worth it.
This episode of the dragged-out Happy Times TV sitcom marked a historic low point for US culture. This became a cliché for a dying TV show that got so very bad that its own viewers begged for the show to be put out of its misery because they could no longer stand to watch its suffering.
This is now a cliché for anything that once was worthwhile but is still being clung to long, long after it should have died.

(Anyway, if the aim was to definitively puzzle and irritate foreigners with obscure references to some American TV-pop culture idiocy, this post has been a success… now I’ll have to waste time finding out what the hell is this nonsense about else my curiosity gland will explode, but SURE it won’t be worth it… >:( )

It seemed like a long time after that before Happy Days appeared in the Granada region & the mystery was resolved. Anyway, at least Granada had The Beatles before anywhere else

And we didn’t get the first series of “Happy Days” until 1978 – this excerpt probably explains why it was flogged to us.

I never could figure out why he was such a big deal. He was so cleaned up and watered-down that I’m amazed he had any following at all. He never had enough grease in his hair. Early in the series he wore A BABY-BLUE WINDBREAKER instead leather jacket, and when he finally DID get a leather jacket, it wasn’t a motorcycle jacket but a bomber jacket.

How I gleaned all this info I will never know, because I am pretty sure I never watched an entire episode of this show.

TRIVIA NOTE — Check me out on this, but I’m pretty sure the pilot for Happy Days ran as a segment on LOVE AMERICAN STYLE.

But MAN! I never had any idea how AWFUL that sequence was or what a great metaphor the shark-jump was/is!

Thanks for some valuable cultural enrichment.

I’ll probably ruffle a few feathers here, but the Fonz came across to me as too up himself to be cool

Google ‘Jumping the Shark’