It was windy here the other day, and we were talking about a movie, The Holiday, where Jack Black tells Kate Winslet that “when the Santa Ana’s blow, anything can happen.” The Santa Ana winds are warm winds that blow from over the mountains that surround LA.  

Now, I was born and raised in the LA area… I’ve lived my entire life here, and when I heard him say that line, I was like: What? I’ve never heard that in my entire life.  

I don’t know why the writers chose to throw that line in, but they did. 

It brought to mind another line from the movie Young Adult with Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt and Patrick Wilson where she refers to Minneapolis as “the mini apple”, I suppose in contrast to “The Big Apple”. I asked a friend from the Twin Cities area if they referred to Minneapolis this way, and she told me she’d never heard that in her life. 

I don’t know why these things get put into movies. Maybe it’s a way of creating a convincing character- someone who has genuine idiosyncrasies, not sure. The Italian phrase “dolce far niente” is along those lines. It’s an actual phrase, but I’ve never heard anyone use it while I was in Italy. I think it’s more of a movie thing. 

Of course, phrases do come into, and go out of, usage, so it’s possible that it was in usage once, but not anymore. 

And apropos of nothing in this post, an instagram account started showing up recently, where a stoic looking Norwegian guy would say stuff about Norway in a deadpan manner. I think the first one was a joke that went: In Norway, we don’t have to knock on the door. But I recommend it or else you can be standing for a very long time.