Thursday, September 30, 2010

Pop Culture Flashback: Carl's Mantra

Do you ever find yourself suddenly recalling some completely irrelevant, random memory that has absolutely no correlation or imaginable connection to anything you were ever thinking or doing? It's not a dream or thought triggered by some tangential stimuli or an eerie feeling of deja vu; it's just a totally out of the blue flashback in your mind, like some "Inception"-style planted idea, that makes you question why your subconscious would have even bothered to have devoted any effort in preserving it.

Well you know what I suddenly recalled earlier today that I (and probably most people) haven't thought of in well over a decade? That's right, that scene from the Season 4 episode of "Family Matters" ("Driving Carl Crazy") where an enraged Carl Winslow humorously screams his personal mantra in an effort to assuage his rage after Urkel drives his little clown car into his garage.


Even though I was a loyal TGIF watcher growing up and would consider myself a fairly thorough and reliable source of knowledge of the show, when I suddenly caught myself recently muttering this hauntingly familiar yet unidentifiable mantra I had to look it up. I was shocked when I found out where it came from. As soon as I saw it I immediately remembered the episode and the context but was still left puzzled as to why I even thought about it in the first place.

Was this tedious and trivial observation worth a whole blog post? Probably not. But hey that brain's a pretty interesting little mass of slimy matter. Here I'll even throw in both German and Spanish versions of the scene to add some extra educational value.



P.S.: Had I found one more comical, rage reducing, sitcom mantra to go with this and "Serenity Now" from Seinfeld, I could have done a full Rule of Three post.