From my friends Clark Smith and Dan Berger

•  Swing for the fences

•  Shit from Shinola

•  The whole nine yards

•  How are you doing? “Finer’n frog hair!”

•  Sweet as Tupelo honey

•  A New York minute

•  Flyover States

•  Out of left field

•  Ballpark figure

•  Take a rain check

•  Write your John Hancock

•  Go postal

•  Cut to the chase

•  23 skidoo

•  Not my first rodeo

•  Come hell or high water

•  Bless your heart  (as a put down)

•  Chew the fat

•  Do time

•  Sent up the river.

•  Plead the Fifth

•  Putting Lipstick on a Pig

•  Shoot the Breeze

•  Jump on the Bandwagon

•  Break a Leg

•  In the Nosebleed section

•  Riding Shotgun

•  Green Thumb

•  Sounding Like a Broken Record



[Mine, which I think are uniquely American]

•  Cold enough to freeze the ass off a brass monkey.

•  Colder than a witch’s tit

•  Madder than a wet hen

•  Stupid as a chicken with its head cut off.

•  The south end of a duck going north

•  Colder than snot on a pump handle in January

•  God willing and the creek don’t rise

•  You’d be dangerous if you had the sense that God gave geese

•  You’re like he general who got on his horse and rode off in all directions.

•  You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many/much fill in the blank.

•  That would fill a gnat’s navel and leave room left over for a Hollywood Agent’s Heart (now that has to be American for sure)