This blog is a tribute to the show Seinfeld which simultaneously taught me everything I need to know and nothing at all – it is a show about nothing, after all.
Years ago I tried to make it a requirement for all friends and co-workers to watch Seinfeld but some of my very closest friends dislike the show (blasphemy!) despite my constant (daily!) references. So I have to share this love (obsession) with other like minded people.
So if you like Seinfeld, this blog is going to make you giggle; if you love Seinfeld this blog will likely make you laugh right out loud. And if you’re a friend of mine who looks confused when I burst out with a pearl random quote or scene description, you can use this blog as a reference guide.
Now for rants, raves, and wisdom…
Relationship etiquette
1. Simple, honest pick up lines work best: “Hi, my name is George, I’m unemployed and I live with my parents”
2. Men will say anything to date a woman:
George: Elaine, I once told a woman that I coined the phrase, “Pardon my French.”
Jerry: I once told a woman that I don’t eat cake ‘cause it goes right to my thighs.
George: I once told a woman that I really enjoy spending time with my family.
3. Make a break up easier by taking responsibility: “it’s not you, it’s me”.
4. It takes 2 to break up:
Maura: I refuse to give up on this relationship. It’s like… launching missiles from a submarine. Both of us have to turn our keys.
George: well then, I’m gonna have to ask you to turn your key. Turn your key, Maura. Turn your key!!
5. And breaking up doesn’t always stick the first time: “breaking up is like knocking over a coke machine. You can’t do it in one push, you got to rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over.”
6. Sex can save a friendship
Elaine: All right, let’s go, I’ll give you half an hour.
Jerry: You’re serious?
Elaine: Jerry, we have to have sex to save the friendship.
Jerry: Sex to SAVE the friendship. Well if we have to, we have to.
7. There are well established rules to dating. Don’t mess with them. Examples:
Spending the night is optional – and other rules — leads to “I want this, that, AND the other”
The roommate switch is not possible and might lead to a very uncomfortable situation
There are many ways to move a date to the next level
You could try the Phil Titola and just take it out
Jerry: So you were talking, you’re having pleasant conversation, then all of sudden…
Elaine: Yea.
Jerry: It.
Elaine: It.
Jerry: Out.
Elaine: Out.
A friend of mine tried this once…unsuccessfully. But hey, it’s worth a try. Kind of like “the naked man” in How I Met Your Mother. While there are other amusing ways to take a date to the next level, this is simply the most humorous so I don’t want to water it down with another reference.
Office etiquette
1. Sex in the office is generally frowned upon in most businesses:
“Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead to ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon… you know, cause I’ve worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.”
2. If you’re caught making out at the office party, tell everyone you’re a couple. “Cause if we’re dating, what everyone saw was just a beautiful moment between two lovers.”
3. If you’re going to lead the office in dancing at the holiday party, make sure you know how to dance. “It’s more like a dry body heave set to music”
4. There are many ways to quit a job, as demonstrated by many members of the cast:
- Tell off your boss, then storm out of the office. Want that job back? Show up on Monday morning as if it were al a joke (trivia: Larry David actually did this on SNL)
- Poison your boss with a mickey
- Get caught suffocating your boss with a pillow
- Go on strike
5. It’s possible to keep a job without doing much work…or any work
- End on a high note.
- Get hired on a technicality such as being handicapped then refuse to leave when you’re found out
- Circumvent the hiring manager who is on vacation; then add value by toasting co-workers at office parties and working on an all-important file such as the Pensky file
- Leave your car in the parking lot so the first person in the morning and the last person in the evening see your car and assume you’re working non-stop. The trick? Make sure to remove flyers from your windshield daily. “Jerry, it’s Frank. Steinbrenner’s here. George is dead. Call me back.”
6. If someone confuses you with another person in the office – and you have a poor reputation – just form an alternate personality and defend yourself. “What am I, a bulimic, chain-smoking, stenographer from Staten Island?”
Restaurant etiquette
There is a proper protocol for ordering food & a serious consequence for not following protocol: “NO SOUP FOR YOU. Come back, 1 year.”
This seems to be most prevalent in NYC. In our last trip there I was almost kicked out of a line ordering one too many toppings on my salad at a chopped-style, assembly-line restaurant.
What you say is as important as how you say it.
“These pretzels are making me thirsty” takes on a different meaning as said in character by Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer.
This line is a great ice breaker.
The secret to lying…and passing a lie detector.
“Jerry, just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
Life not working out for you? Try the opposite.
“It became very clear to me sitting out there today that every decision I’ve made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat – it’s all been wrong.”
This ties into pick the pick-up line by George in Relationship Etiquette (see number 1)…which worked! The woman responded, “Hiiiiii….I’m Victoria” which led to a date which led to George’s interview with the New York Yankees. Which led to…
Be honest.
When George meets Steinbrenner during his interview, Steinbrenner innocently says “Nice to meet you”.
George, going against his better judgment (the opposite) responds: “I wish I could say the same, but I must say, with all due respect, I find it very hard to see the logic behind some of the moves you have made with this fine organization. In the past twenty years, you have caused myself, and the city of New York, a good deal of distress as we have watched you take our beloved Yankees and reduced them to a laughing stock, all for the glorification of your massive ego.”
Steinbrenner’s response? “Hire this man”
How to handle telemarketers
Option 1: Agree; hang up.
Telemarketer: Would you be interested in a subscription to the New York Times?
Jerry: Yes.
[hangs up]
Option 2: turn it around
Jerry: This isn’t a good time.
Telemarketer: When would be a good time to call back, sir?
Jerry: I have an idea, why don’t you give me your home number and I’ll call you back later?
Telemarketer: Umm, we’re not allowed to do that.
Jerry: Oh, I guess because you don’t want strangers calling you at home.
Telemarketer: Umm, no.
Jerry: Well, now you know how I feel.
[hangs up phone]
Mental note: must try these techniques.
Education on the opposite sex
It shrinks…and we are not talking about laundry.
George : Do women know about shrinkage?
Elaine: What, you mean like laundry?
Jerry: No. Like when you’re in a pool… afterwards…
Elaine: It shrinks?
Jerry: Like a frigthened turtle.
Elaine: Why does it shrink?
George: It just does.
Elaine: I don’t know how you guys walk around with those things.
Don’t try this at home…the beard
Jerry: I don’t understand it. You were having such a great time, the sex, the shopping.
Elaine: Well here’s the thing. Being a woman, I only really have access to the, uh… equipment, what, thirty, forty-five minutes a week. And that’s on a good week. How can I be expected to have the same expertise as people who *own* this equipment, and have access to it twenty-four hours a day, their entire lives.
Jerry: You can’t. That’s why they lose very few players.
Elaine: Yeah, I guess I never really stood a chance.
How to avoid any topic…yada yada yada
George: You don’t think she’d yada yada sex?
Elaine: [raising hand] I’ve yada yada’ed sex.
George : Really?
Elaine: Yeah. I met this lawyer, we went out to dinner, I had the lobster bisque, we went back to my place, yada yada yada, I never heard from him again.
Jerry: But you yada yada’d over the best part.
Elaine: No, I mentioned the bisque.
Just “write it off”
Cosmo Kramer: It’s a write-off for them.
Jerry: How is it a write-off?
Cosmo Kramer: They just write it off.
Jerry: You don’t even know what a write-off is.
Cosmo Kramer: Do you?
Jerry: No, I don’t.
Cosmo Kramer: But they do, and they’re the ones writing it off.
Got a present you didn’t like? Re-gift it
Re-gift and expect to be found out. It’s best to be honest up front that said gift was not purchased specifically for the person you are giving it to, but might have some use anyway.
“I don’t trust the guy. I think he regifted, then he degifted, and now he’s using an upstairs invite as a springboard to a Superbowl sex romp.”
And here are just some lines & situations that make me giggle…and that I cite often
“I’m at the corner of 1st and 1st… How can the same street intersect with itself? It must be at the nexus of the universe” I say this every time I am in NYC and come to the corner of 1st and 1st. Thankfully Josh gets the reference and smiles.
“People with guns don’t understand. That’s why they get guns. Too many misunderstandings.”
“It’s a festivus for the rest of us”
“Serenity now…insanity later”
Someone sneezes? “You are soooo good looking”
“You’re killing independent George” (obviously I substitute Jill for George)
“Worlds are colliding!”
“see you know how to take the reservation but you don’t know how to hold the reservation”
“The 4 worst words in the English language are “we have to talk” or “whose bra is this?”
“GET OUT!”
“Poise counts!”
“Simon, Bennett, Robins, Oppenheimer, Taft”
Would you believe I actually know someone who named their kid Seven?…who wasn’t a Mickey Mantle or Seinfeld fan?
You always say HELLO no matter the circumstance…in a rush for a meeting with NBC executives? Just got busted for shoplifting? Say HELLO.
We learn that spite is a perfectly acceptable reason to return an article of clothing (Jerry) or not break up with a girl (George & Daphne)
The very last lesson that Seinfeld teaches? What goes around, comes around.
Jerry: See, now to me, that button is in the worst possible spot.
George : Really?
Jerry: Oh, yeah. The second button is the key button. It literally makes or breaks the shirt. Look at it. It’s too high. It’s in no man’s land.
George : Haven’t we had this conversation before?
Jerry: You think?
George : I think we have.
Jerry: Yeah, maybe we have
This is the very first, and very last conversation in Seinfeld.
Are you still reading?
Really?
Wow.
And thank you.
Love the Moment 
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