“We have a piper down. I repeat, the piper is down.”

The Movie: So I Married an Axe Murderer, 1993 (Robbie Fox, screenwriter; Thomas Schlamme, dir.)
Who says it: Mike Myers as Stuart Mackenzie, Scottish nationalist and father to Charlie Mackenzie (Mike Myers)
The context: Stuart’s insistence that a wedding bagpiper play Rod Stewart songs has led to the piper’s collapse.
How to use it: To announce a minor crisis, with a Scottish accent. My brothers and sisters and I use this line a lot around the holidays.

I'll rent a car later this morning, but in the meantime my lack of transportation means that I'm missing the Early Bird Sale at Reny's, a discount store in downtown Gardiner. Reny's is hard to describe; it's like K-Mart, but more crowded, and with a much more eclectic inventory. It's a little like Honest Ed's in Toronto, but not as big or gaudy.

Several people have said to me, "If Reny's doesn't have it, you don't need it," and it might be true: they have everything from rugs to toothpaste. I went in there the other day to look for a shower curtain, but left after twenty minutes, feeling overwhelmed. Reny's has its own peculiar layout, and it's crammed with merchandise; once you figure it out, Anna says, you know where things are, but it takes a while.

A display of canned and bottled Maine foods mesmerized me for at least ten minutes. It reminded me of another line from this movie: "I think most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare." Bottles of clam juice, just clam juice, sold as if it were lemon juice. Lobster pate. Haddock chowder. Soldier beans -- soldier beans? -- and, most alarming of all, something called Indian Pudding.

Relations with the Native American community must be pretty bad up here, if they're still making people into pudding.