From: This Is Spinal Tap
Genre: Movies
Who said it?: Nigel Tufnel
The story behind the quote: This Is Spinal Tap is a comedy film shown through a fake documentary on an equally fake band known as Spinal Tap. The “documentary” focuses on the band’s concert tour promoting their latest album. While the movie was only a modest hit when it was released way back in 1984, it became a cult classic when it was made available in the home video market. In fact, the band actually released three real albums in total.
The quote comes from a scene where the lead guitarist of Spinal Tap, Nigel Tufnel (played by Christopher Guest) is showing off his specially made Marshall amplifiers to the director of the documentary, Marty DiBergi (played by Rob Reiner). Nigel explains that the amplifiers are much more powerful than regular amplifiers since they exceed the regular limit of 10. Marty questions this and asks why didn’t they make the regular 10 louder. Nigel doesn’t seem to get the logic and once again explains that the amplifiers he has are more powerful.
Geek wisdom: Everyone likes to show off and prove they have the best stuff. In the rush to be better, we sometimes don’t really understand in what way they are better. What’s worse, we can sometimes think that something is better because of misleading information. The sad thing is, when this is pointed out to us, we can foolishly cling on to our original mistaken belief.
It’s okay to be proud of having great stuff. But, if you’re going to announce it to everyone, make sure it’s something to be proud of.