When You're Hot, You're Hot

[Jonathan Lighter]

Reminds me of a quotable from an old _National Lampoon_ around 1975.

  It was in a story about "Jean-Paul Sauvage, the Philosopher-Detective."  See, Jean-Paul had the drop on the casuistry-spouting heavy, who argued that if Jean-Paul fired, the bullet could never reach his body because first it would have to travel half the distance; but to get that far, it would first have to travel a quarter the distance. You get the idea.

  This might have a been a tough one for a lesser _philosophe_, but Jean-Paul cut the Gordian knot of specious reasoning with an elegant, "I shoot you; therefore you ain't."

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: When You're Hot, You're Hot
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The NY Times, 9 Sept. 1949, quotes Joe DiMaggio saying, "When I'm hot, I'm hot."

--Charlie
________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:08:21 -0500
>From: "Douglas G. Wilson"
>Subject: Re: When You're Hot, You're Hot
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>>The Yale Book of Quotations cites newspaper reports from 1972 and 1971 for "When you're hot, you're hot" and "When you're hot, you're hot, and when you're not, you're not," both described as "Modern Proverbs." I expect that they both derive from the popular 1971 song by Jerry Reed (aka Jerry Reed Hubbard), titled the former and including the latter in its lyrics. I don't know if he also wrote the lyrics or not.
>
>This was one of Flip Wilson's (Geraldine's?) sayings around the same time wasn't it? Did this precede the song? Either way I suppose the saying wa used by gamblers earlier.
>
>-- Doug Wilson

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