on acid

Man (first of all, hello! This is my first post, and I'm quite excited), those were the days when the comparative phrase "like ______ on acid" had a vivid, shocking effect on people.

Here's what I mean: My roommate's girlfriend just gave him the Stella Season One Box Set. (Why I Capitalize Each Word I Do Not Know.) Stella, for those of you (like me) who didn't know, was a series on Comedy Central in 2005 starring the guys who created The State. On the back of the box, back-of-box perusing gentlefolk like me are treated to the following quote from The Hollywood Reporter:

"Like the Marx Brothers on acid."

And man, I'm just seeing yellow flowers (like the ones on the inner sleeve of Neil's On the Beach?) jump into the clear blue sky of my mind, recalling the innocent days when saying that something-was-something-else "on acid" actually meant something!

Is there a word or a term for when, in the midst of the almost exponentially multiplied world of descriptive possibilities in which we reside, a vestigial phrase parts the thick language branches like, um, the nose of a dinosaur emerging from the woods, and, uh, bellows (maybe?) before withdrawing back into the trees?

This weekend, see how rudimentary you can make your descriptions of random stuff. It feels kind of weird to reach back for old matter, like your tongue is slipping down your throat and into your stomach for linguistic compost.

I guess it's just refreshing when "on acid" does the job, historically or contemporaneously. Contemporaneously, by the way, might be my least favorite adverb, like generality is my least favorite noun, and like orientate(d) is my least favorite verb. But this post is about (like) being on acid, y'all, and the wonderful simplicity of such a statement.