the buzz log
George Carlin, R.I.P.
Good-bye, George Carlin. We will miss your scathing wit, hoarse delivery, and never-wavering contrariness.
Without you, seven little words may never have been more than that, and audiences would have left comedy gigs unscathed by your rat-a-tat release. Death, selfishness, oxymorons, hypocrisy, and humankind's general lousiness never seemed so funny.
Since Carlin died on Sunday, hundreds of articles and obituaries have inundated the Buzz. In Search, demand for the comedian's name spiked more than 8,000%. The boost landed him in our top five movers, sandwiched between "living lohan" and "ugliest dog." We can only imagine what he would've thought of that.
Searches for "seven dirty words" also registered an uptick, while queries for "george carlin jokes" and "george carlin quotes" leapt. Now, as we tip our hat to the master satirist, we offer the top 10 funny guys (and one lady) who joined him among the most popular "quotes" searches yesterday...
And Search Ran Away With the Spoon
We noticed a bit of a Buzz storm raging Tuesday over an unusual phrase: "spoon me to death." The surge seemed to correspond with searches on "movie quotes" and "kroq," so we surmised that some sort of big screen challenge had been thrown down to listeners of the popular Los Angeles radio station.
Challenge turns out to be the right word. One of the Buzz Log's Southern California connections reports that KROQ deejays Kevin and Bean sparked the spoony controversy by wondering aloud which movie or TV show featured the line, "What are you going to do, spoon me to death?" Cue the Search frenzy.
Our source tells us that the mystery has become a city-wide obsession. "Various movies and TV shows were re-watched (many of them bad ones)," he revealed to us on Wednesday morning, "but none have been confirmed to have [the line] so far." Some enterprising souls have even cashed in on the hysteria and begun selling "spoon me to death" T-shirts.
Does the line come from "Mystery Men"? "The Whole Nine Yards"? "Anger Management"? "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"? Intrepid investigators left behind a trail of Search spikes as they ventured into the wilds of the Web and dipped into their DVD collections. These would-be Sherlocks approached the problem from different angles, tweaking their searches to find "famous movie quotes," "famous funny movie quotes," "funny quotes," and even "famous quotes."
"Spoon me to death"—after this hubbub, it may indeed qualify as a famous quote. Wherever it comes from.
Filed under: Quotes, Radio, Movies and DVDs
The Commander in Quotes
There are many ways to rate a president's legacy. Economists, historians, and political pundits can tussle for decades over the topic, and usually do. Here at the Buzz, we have various approaches to gauging a commander in chief's status in the popular imagination. One of them is tracking the online demand for his quotes.
Admittedly, this method is not scientific. It's not long range, either;
we're examining one week's worth of "quotes" queries. But it's a
snapshot of status—or, at least, recognition—from the thousands of
people turning to the Web each day to find comments that inspire them or outrage them or make them laugh.
On this week's list of White House quotable notables, Honest Abe maintains his reputation as the man with the silver tongue. John F. Kennedy was the only one to come through with just his initials, although we did spot equally informal lookups for "abe lincoln quotes" and "teddy roosevelt quotes."
Finally, no disrespect to the 30th occupant of the Oval Office, but if anyone has a good reason for why Calvin Coolidge is beating out FDR this week, we'd love to hear it...
A few notes...
We didn't include quote searches for other inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but if we did, "eleanor roosevelt quotes" would have ranked #2, just after Lincoln. You also would've seen "dan quayle quotes" posing cutely toward the bottom of the roster.
We kept our eyes on the men themselves, but it should be noted that "presidential quotes" and "famous presidential quotes" both pull in a high number of searches each week. Now, that's a nice legacy for the office.
Filed under: Quotes, Presidents
Straight From the Actor’s Mouth
Searches for movie and TV quotes have always been popular, and why shouldn't they be? It's only natural that we'd want to find the original "Pulp Fiction" repartee that spawned the thought-provoking question, "You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France?" And of course we're curious to read the verbatim "Sex and the City" heart-to-heart that gave us the handy explanation, "He's just not that into you."
And so these quote searches continue. Those seeking the wisecracks of a precocious teen dealing with a "doodle that can't be un-did" propelled "Juno" to the No. 1 spot on this week's top 20. Rookie catfighters looking for snarky comebacks gathered ammo from "Gossip Girl," while budding Cyranos mined "The Notebook" for sweet nothings. And fans of V (both the letter and the character) feasted on the "vichyssoise of verbiage (that) veers most verbose" in "V for Vendetta."
Take some time to discover all the quotable gems awaiting you in this week's top searches. After all, you know what they say the best medicine is. Kevin from "The Office" might think it's "… a combination of interferon and dacarbazine." But boss Michael Scott knows the real truth: "And laughter, also."
To Quote or Not to Quote...
Fans may buy your books, listen to your albums, or watch your movies. They may display posters of your face, wear T-shirts with your image, or gossip about your outrageous behavior. But the only way to truly cement your standing with the people is to get them to quote you.
Welcome to the Buzz Quotability List, where only the wisest or the fastest talking rise to the top. Being a Search-based survey, this round-up of orators spans time, geography, profession, and IQ score (#22, case in point).
So, without further ado, we present this week's roster of the most popular individuals for "quotes" online...
A couple of notes:
–What would Jesus say? While searches for "jesus quotes" flow in consistently, they failed to boost the Prince of Peace into our top 30. However, both "bible quotes" and "christian quotes" place pretty high, and probably account for Jesus not only falling lower on the list, but losing out to "mandy moore quotes" as well. Ouch!
–Shakespeare is the heaviest hitter of all. He not only pounds the searches out of the park, but also scores big with "romeo and juliet quotes," "hamlet quotes," and "famous shakespeare love quotes." Aw.
Filed under: Quotes
top movers
| Rank | Subject | 1-Day Move |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ford 400 | Breakout! |
| 2 | Indonesia Ferry | Breakout! |
| 3 | Jordan Chandler | 3481% |
| 4 | Evan Chandler | 2322% |
| 5 | American Music Awards | 1841% |
| 6 | John F. Kennedy | 1529% |
| 7 | Turkey Stuffing Recipes | 1361% |
| 8 | Liam Hemsworth | 1172% |
| 9 | Lou Dobbs | 1142% |
| 10 | Hendrick Motorsports | 888% |
top leaders
| Rank | Subject | Move | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Black Friday | +340 | 1290 |
| 2 | NFL | +489 | 670 |
| 3 | Jennifer Lopez | +451 | 515 |
| 4 | New Moon | -67 | 250 |
| 5 | American Music Awards | +236 | 249 |
| 6 | UFC | -36 | 239 |
| 7 | Miley Cyrus | +66 | 169 |
| 8 | Hulu | -11 | 154 |
what's the buzz?
A subject's buzz score is the percentage of Yahoo! users searching for that subject on a given day, multiplied by a constant to make the number easier to read. Weekly leaders are the subjects with the greatest average buzz score for a given week.
For more detailed information, visit our FAQ.