Don't Call Me Shirley

One of the greatest movies of all time, Airplane, has many enduring and cherished bits of dialogue on top of the never ending homages to the great aviation movies.  Based on the great movie Zero Hour!, it also includes many references to the movie generally rated tops by today's older generation of airline pilots, The High and the Mighty, with the unforgettable cockpit slap in the Captain's face by John Wayne as the co-pilot. It also nods to From Here to Eternity and Saturday Night Fever and The Singing Nun, among many others.  There are sight gags galore, but rhythm of the repetition with variations of lines funny the first time is part of what propels this movie to the top ranks.

Since I've now worked in the aviation industry for twenty-seven years, I nearly know this movie by heart. And running through my head today was the line that Lloyd Bridges, as the air traffic tower supervisor, keeps coming back to with progressively worse conditions:  "I picked the wrong week to (1) quit smoking (2) quit drinking (3) quit shooting up..."

Let's just say I picked the wrong week to re-energize my diet and leave it there.