Stupid .... tricks

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, March 19, 2002 12:32 pm -0500 Gareth Branwyn
<garethb2 at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:

> "James A. Landau" wrote:
>
>> "stupid accounting tricks"---"stupid .... tricks" is in my experience a
>> phrase used only by computer people (I remember a collection of "stupid
>> UNIX tricks" in the newspaper Computerworld several years back) but it
>> could easily have arisen elsewhere.
>>
>
> "Stupid .... tricks" originated (I believe) with David Letterman when he
> was still at NBC. "Stupid human tricks" was a regular segment (where
> people did silly bar-bet types of stunts). But then, the bit (and the
> term) may have come from Steve Allen, from whom Letterman got most of
> his act. They still do stupid human tricks periodically on CBS. When
> Letterman left NBC, there was a big intellectual property stink about
> whether he could take the bit, and the name, to CBS.


Before Letterman did Stupid Human Tricks, he started with Stupid Pet
Tricks.

Lynne



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320