Re: What's that all about?

tinwhistler <ozziemaland@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jan 12, 3:46 pm, t...@xxxxxxxxxx (Donna Richoux) wrote:
[snip]

I have heard more than one (not particularly funny)
standup comic use this phrase for punctuation or
to prod the audience: but I don't think it is owned
by any particular public figure.

That's it. A search confirms that Jerry Seinfeld used it routinely. His
show began in 1989.
[snip]

If you Google on "What was that all about" "Marlon Brando" you get
many hits; eg:

http://www.dawnrobinson.com/expressions.htm

"I don't know what determines happiness in life - I really don't
know. Life is a mystery and it's an unsolvable one. You just simply
live it through. And, as you draw your last breath, you say, 'What
was that all about?'" - Marlon Brando in an interview sometime in
the late 1980s.

I think this attribution is accurate, from my own memory, even if it
is fuzzy on the precise date.

Well, I didn't mean to suggest that Seinfeld was the first to string
those words together. An 1827 book for Englishmen wanting to learn
French has both "What is that all about" and "What was that all about"
as idiomatic phrases. But as an example of a modern
not-particularly-funny stand-up comedian who used it repeatedly as a
comic formula...

I also find one hit for George Carlin, who was one of the first stand-up
comedians to muse about the oddities of everyday life, in the modern
style.

Don't you hate it when people send you unsolicited
pictures of their kids? What's that all about?

Oh, but that book was published in 2001, so it doesn't prove much of
anything.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
.

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