I was trying to be domestic the other day, looking at a full sink and wishing someone would get around to inventing a machine that washes dishes for you, so I put on some Beach Boys music. I tend to flail sometimes when it comes to inspiration.

My 20-year-old son was not inspired at all, although he liked the music, and after listening for a bit he had a good question.

"What's a T-bird?" he said. "And why would her daddy take it away?"

I worry about expiration dates on allusions, wonder if I need to periodically shelve references that mean nothing to readers born after, say, the invention of seatbelts. It feels disrespectful somehow to qualify once-famous people or works of art (or cars) just to be on the safe side, to say "humorist Mark Twain" or "movie star Clark Gable," but I also hate to lose you along the way. Maybe I should just stick with Snoop.

Here's where I'm heading, at any rate: In June 1942, "comedian" Jack Benny was at the height of his career, although he would pretty much stay at that height until his death 32 years later. He was big star on radio and stage, and to a lesser degree in films. He was on the Warner Bros. lot one day and wandered over to a movie set.

They were filming a restaurant scene with lots of extras, so Mr. Benny, for whatever reason, put on a costume and blended into the background, just having fun.

That's the story, anyway. It's floated around among Benny fans and film buffs for decades, although there's a fair amount of contemporary evidence that it's true. And it would be just that, a little piece of ancient trivia, a blurry figure in an otherwise forgettable film, except nobody forgot. Not with a little wartime movie called "Casablanca."

No one has definitively identified Benny in the film, although there are a few suspects. This makes sense; he was a famous face and would have been jarring had he slipped past Sam just as Bogie was dealing with Major Strasser.

See, I can refer to Major Strasser with a clear conscience. If you don't know this character, well, you should. And you probably do, at least if you like movies. "Casablanca" wasn't ever obscure, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, but over the years it's become perhaps America's favorite film.

And why not? Its detractors are minor voices, nitpickers who go on about melodrama and clichÇ while the rest of us wander through the magic, over and over again. It's exotic and ordinary at once, dealing with a specific place and time, and timeless all the same. The actors are classic, the script is tight, the loose ends are neatly gathered and Rick turns out to be noble after all. It's cheesy enough to remind us of simpler times, but then nothing was simple about that war and that time, about Nazis and North Africa and the Resistance and a man standing on a railway platform in Paris with a funny look on his face because his insides have just been kicked out. I mean. It's "Casablanca."

Movies are easy metaphors, collective shorthand for quick quotes and understood references. I can say, "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore" or "I'm shocked, shocked..." and you know what I mean, where I'm going and where I got it.

I love this language, movies and memories. It's a shared experience for many of us, even as our individual stories vary. I know when I saw "Star Wars" for the first time, who was with me and how long we waited in line. I remember movies watched from the backseat of a station wagon at a drive-in theater, movies seen on first dates, movies shared with good friends or stumbled across in a video store, just looking.

I remember showing my 4-year-old daughter "E.T" for the first time and also my first time with the little alien, going with a bunch of friends and sitting next to a casual acquaintance who is now sitting in this room while I write this column, funny.

And you know what else is funny? I intended to write about "The Godfather," another favorite, and how I bought the Blu-Ray and relived the Corleones in high definition, how this is a movie that gets under the skin of guys in particular but has no bigger fan than my now-adult daughter, how the technology that remasters classics to make then shiny and new is fabulous, etc.

But I got carried away by movies, as I do. My knees still go weak at the smell of popcorn, and famous lines are scattered throughout my brain like so many bread crumbs, leading me home, reminding me that we'll always have Paris and that somebody has to answer for Santino, and that you know what I mean.