Gilmore-speak

TV When I was at school one of the best anecdotes that an English teacher who was prone to telling anecdotes told was about how he would take students to see productions of Shakespeare and during the interval would notice them all unconsciously talking in iambic pentameters. I'm not sure how possible this on the hoof intellectual achievement might be, certainly I'd expect some stumbling and grasping for words, and I've never been afflicted by it when I've been working my way through a Hamlet. But. Something similar does happen to me when I've been watching some television shows.

Lately, as I mentioned in my stop .... start review of Not Going Out (which I actually keep calling Don't Look Now for some reason despite the non-appearance of a scary little red hoody) I've been spinning my way through the superlative second season of the Gilmore Girls. Apparently they have so much dialogue that they burn through double the usual number of script pages than most US hour programmes (in other words forty-two minutes). I can believe it, because in some episodes there's so much talking that I'm sure the viewers brain has to enter a higher state of conscience to keep up with it all (even though -- and this is really clever -- they don't have particularly sophisticated or complicated storylines).

What I find after watching a couple of episodes is that I have a tendency to slip into Gilmore-speak, not consciously but I can tell its happening. I'll start dropping cultural references and describing every day objects and actions in interesting ways, I'll asks questions and answer them myself straight away and stop taking no for an answer and I'll do all this very fast, with a word per minute count that Rory's nemesis Paris would be proud of. After a few minutes it wears off, but during those minutes it also seems easier to talk and express myself. Conversely after watching The West Wing, I'll pick up the tick of repeating sentences in the way that characters there repeat sentences and back chat all over the place which I simply don't do otherwise -- oh and there are the run one sentences that seem to run on and on.

You can't imagine what it was like after Friends. Good that *be* anymore irritating? It would often .... take me ..... seconds .... to finish .... a .... sentence. Oh .... my .... God.