I Like My X Like I Like My Y

"I like my women the way I like my coffee: detrimental to hippocampal neurogenesis, but conducive to short term memory and attentional control."

— Steven Kaas

I like my descriptions of I Like My X Like I Like My Y the way I like other page descriptions: done well.

This is a phrase where a person compares one thing (often their ideal boyfriend or girlfriend) to another thing (often coffee), and lists what the two things have in common.

This line can often overlap with Metaphorgotten for comedic effect. Can also overlap with Dissimile. Compare and contrast with Bait-and-Switch Comparison, which makes a similar joke, but starts off by claiming the two things are different.

See also If I Wanted X, I Would Y, X Called; They Want Their Y Back.

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Examples

Anime

• Dirty Pair: Project Eden: Inverted(?) as Carson is warning his boss of the negatives of the things he likes:
  Boss: After this, we'll be swimming in wine and women.
  Carson: I find I have to be careful of the cheaper varieties of wine and women. Both give me a headache.

Comedians

• Several from comedian Eddie Izzard-
  "I like my coffee hot and strong... like I like my women, hot and... strong... and with a spoon in them."
  "I like my women like I like my coffee: in a plastic cup."
  "I like my women like I like my coffee: COVERED IN BEES!"
• Auggie Smith prefers Irish coffee: "I like my women how I like my coffee: Filled with booze!"
• Michael Ian Black: "I like my coffee like I like my women — strong, black, and proud."
• Stewart Francis: "I like my women like I like my coffee: hand picked by migrant workers."
• Gilbert Gottfried: "I LIKE MY COFFEE THE WAY I LIKE MY WOMEN: HOT... BLACK... and with a small piece of prune danish."
• Variation by talk show host Bill Maher regarding whether it's necessary to report when a bomb goes off in Iraq; "Let's just assume that Iraq is like Lindsay Lohan; getting bombed daily!"
• Robin Williams (impersonating a vagrant): "I like my wine like I like my women... ready to pass out!"
• Jim Gaffigan (on olive loaf): "I like my bologna like I like my martinis: dirty."
• Lee Mack: "I like my women like I like my coffee: corner of the street, and I'm not willing to pay more than £2.40." Then he points out that the reverse wouldn't work: "I like my coffee how I like my women: two tits and a vagina."
• This is the punchline to Rhod Gilbert's rant about his futile attempt to buy an individual baked potato from a supermarket that only sells them in pairs. After begging them in vain to simply open the packaging and sell one of them, he announces that "It turns out I like my potatoes like I like my women: SINGLE, AND STARK BOLLOCK NAKED!"
• Ellen Degeneres: "I've always said I like my coffee like I like my men. I don't drink coffee."

Fairy Tales

• There was actually a fairy tale (Goose Girl at the Well is the Grimm version, but there are a lot of variants) about this where a king asked his three daughters to tell them how much they loved him. The girl who loved him best would fare the best. While her sisters claimed they loved their father as much as sugar and as much as the prettiest dress, the unlucky heroine (usually the youngest) told her father she loved him as much "as meat loves salt". He wasn't particularly pleased by this answer. In some versions of the tale his kingdom is cursed to go without salt (or his exiled daughter cannily serves him a dish of meat without any salt) and he rapidly comes to realize just how critical the substance really is.
  • Shakespeare pulls a variation in King Lear, except in that case, the youngest simply refused to provide a flowery metaphor, instead stating simply that her love for her father was Shaped Like Itself.

Fanfiction

• In Purebloods and Their Tedious Traditions Cyrus Greengrass "liked his women like he liked his art, pretty and silent."
• In the Elsanna Frozen story Bilingual, Megara says “And I like my coffee the way I like my women: bitter, and keeping me up at night.”

Film

• In the movie Clue, Mrs. White says, "Husbands should be like Kleenex. Soft, strong, and disposable."
• The little girl in Airplane! likes her coffee black... like her men.
• The Naked Gun 33 1/3: "I like my sex the way I play basketball: one-on-one and with as little dribbling as possible."
• In The Edge, Robert says, "I like my coffee like I like my women" and Stephen retorts, "Bitter and murky!"
• In It's a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie, Pepe has this line: "I like my coffee like I like my womens: a lot, eh!"
• In Hollow Man, the token minority black woman tells one of the other scientists that a guy at the coffee shop told her "'I like my women like I like my coffee.' Can you believe people still use that line?" His reply is "Maybe he meant cold and bitter."
• The last line in Man of the Year: "Politicians are like diapers; they should be changed frequently and for the same reason."

Jokes

• A diner has been trying to impress his African-American waitress: "I like my coffee like I like my women." "I'm sorry, sir, we don't have any stupid coffee."
• Some straight-up disturbing ones:
  • "I like my women like I like my coffee: Ground up and in the freezer."
  • "I like my women like I like my coffee: Used to smuggle drugs from Colombia."
  • "I like my women like I like my whiskey: twelve years old and mixed up with coke."
  • "I like my women like I like my wine: twelve years old, imported in burlap sacks, and locked in my basement."
• Less disturbing, but still saucy:
  • "I like my men/women like I like my books: well-read, and leather-bound."
• There is a story that Alexandr Naryshkin (early 19th Century) refused to climb some mountain because he preferred to treat mountains like ladies: him at their feet.
• I like my women the way I like my ale: ginger. (Works best when told by The Teetotaler.)

Literature

• In A Dirty Job, Audrey tells Charlie she likes her men like she likes her tea: weak and green.
• The 1989 Romance Category winner to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest:
  "Jake liked his women the way he liked his kiwi fruit: sweet yet tart, firm-fleshed yet yielding to the touch, and covered with short brown fuzzy hair."
  — Gretchen Schmidt of Coral Gables
• In Bridget & Joan's Diary, Joan likes her tea the way she likes her men: still warm.
• In Andrew M. Greeley's Irish Lace, part of a series of detective-romance novels centering around a Chicago author Dermot Michael Coyne and his Irish-born girlfriend (and in later novels, wife) Nuala Anne McGrail, Dermot describes Nuala as "like Irish lace; pretty, thin, delicate and just a little complex."
• Spenser interviews a man that cheats a lot, and who comments "Women are like kleenex - use once and discard." When he later mentions this comment to Susan, she is incensed.
  Spenser: I observed her ears closely to see if any steam escaped, but she controlled herself.

Live-Action TV

• In Blackadder Goes Forth, Squadron-Leader Flashheart advises new recruits to the Air Corps that they should treat their plane like their girl "Get in her seven or eight times a day, and take her to heaven and back". Blackadder comments that he suddenly has sympathy for the suffragette movement.
• Breaking Bad does a variation on this, poking fun at Walter and Skyler's relationship, courtesy of Saul Goodman.
  Saul: Clearly his taste in women is the same as his taste in lawyers. Only the very best, with just a right amount of dirty.
• From the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Pangs":
  Buffy: The thing is, I like my evil like I like my men: Evil!
• The Daily Show segment about Joe Scarborough's Product Placement of his morning show's new sponsor Starbucks had Jon Stewart saying, "I like my news like I like my coffee: black and sponsored. No, wait, that's how I like the NBA."
• The Mad Libs Catchphrase of Swiss Toni on The Fast Show is "X is very much like making love to a beautiful woman".
• Home Improvement did a bunch of these in an episode concerning magazine compatibility tests.
  • Jill and some other women wrote a test for their magazine, with one question comparing husbands to kitchen appliances: an oven ("warm and self-cleaning"), a garbage disposal ("grating and eats anything"), a refrigerator ("very cold and the light's never on"), and a tea kettle ("Hot and steamy, done in two minutes"). Jill chose that last one for Tim and added a quip that he does "whistle when he's done".
  • In response, Tim and his coworkers also came up with their own test where they compared wives to hockey equipment; choices included a hockey mask ("Wiry and closed off"), a stick ("Long, rigid, and likes to hit things"), elbow pads ("Soft, flexible, and a good housekeeper" — when Jill questioned the "good housekeeper" part, Tim responded "Takes care of the joint"), and a jock strap ("Gets in the way a lot, but basically supportive").
• House (who else?) gave us a rather distasteful one towards the end of season two, saying he liked his coffee black, the same way he liked his brain damaged neurologists.
• From The IT Crowd..."I like my women like I like my toast. Hot..." "And consumable with butter, you don't have to remind me."
• From the producers of Whose Line, Mock the Week often goes into this.
  I like my women like I like my coffee - always getting my name wrong.
  I shoot my gun like I shoot my load - into my hand.
• Parodied in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, where Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and James McNeill Whistler try to stump each other by making increasingly bizarre comparisons of the Prince of Wales.
  Wilde: Your Majesty, you're like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top.
  Prince: I beg your pardon?
  Wilde: Um ..... It was one of Whistler's.
  Whistler: I didn't say that.
  Wilde: You did, James, you did.
  Prince: Well, Mr. Whistler?
  Whistler: I- I meant, Your Majesty, that, uh, like a doughnut your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure merely makes us hungry for more.
• Murder, She Wrote: in "Danse Diabolique", while investigating the murder of an arrogant ballerina, Jessica's police lieutenant friend asks why she wants to investigate the theater where the murder took place yet again. Jessica answers, "There are three things you can never have enough of in life, Lieutenant; chocolate, friends and the theatre."
• One Foot in the Grave: I like my toast like I like my women. Golden, brown, and covered in marmalade.
• Used in Psych:
  Mira's mother: I like my wine like I like my men: white and hairy.
  Shawn: That makes no sense. None whatsoever. But I can see where Mira gets her spunkiness!
• Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation purchased Hawaiian coffee on her honeymoon as a gift for Donna because Donna likes her coffee like she likes her men: "rich, dark, and full-bodied".
• Reservation Dogs: Mekko's reaction to the Rez Dogs' meat pie stand is to declare, "I like my meat pies like I like my women- brown, greasy and hot."
• Sanford and Son had a very early coffee example. "I like my coffee like I like my women: sweet, hot, and ... without cream." Surprisingly enough for the show, the last item is delivered without either sexual or racial innuendo.
• Michael Ian Black offers up this example in Stella (US):
  Black: I like my coffee like I like my women: Strong, black, and proud.
• Fez on That '70s Show, after Donna changes her hair from red to blonde, and he disapproves.
  Fez: I like my women the way I like my wine: red and full of alcohol.
• Home Secretary Mary Drake in The Thick of It states when threatening to subsume DOSAC and put them in charge of the tea run that "I like mine (tea) weak and white, like my men" then again, she was there in her 'angry capacity'.
• Daniel Tosh puts his own spin on the gag in one episode of Tosh0:
  Daniel: I like my women like I like my coffee: I don't like coffee.
• While preparing to work all night on a case, Quentin Welcher of Welcher & Welcher - apropos of nothing - asked for his coffee "black; like my women".
• An inversion of this trope from the Scenes From A Hat game on Whose Line Is It Anyway? is "Things you can say about your X, but not your girlfriend." Popular versions are "car/truck" ("Yeah, you could fit twenty in there!") or "dog", which results in "Come."

Music

• This Little Esther song: "I lie my men like I like my whiskey / Aged and mellow".
• From the Mindless Self Indulgence song "Shut Me Up": "The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble / I like my coffee black, just like my metal."
• From Bloodhound Gang's "Three Point One Four:" "I like my women like I like my cheese / Preferably for me fat-free American singles only"
• The Band Perry's "Hip to My Heart" begins with "I like your lips like I like my Coca-Cola / Oh, how it pops and fizzes".

New Media

• There was a bit of an Internet kerfuffle when someone complained of seeing a T-shirt that said "I like my women like I like my coffee: ground up and in the freezer." The Fandom Wank community listed the many ways in which they like their men like they like their coffee:
  • ...strong, hot, and gone in around 10 minutes.
  • ...tied to the back of a mule.
  • ...advertised by a guy in a sombrero.
  • ...naked and in a burlap sack.
  • ...overpriced, and brought by a Ph.D. making minimum wage.
  • ...hot and black.
  • ...with a tongue-twistingly pretentious name that's much too long.
  • ...bitter and Jewish.
• Was a bit of a meme at one point on GameFAQs before the mods cracked down on it.
• Pedobear likes his women how he likes his whisky: 12 years old and mixed up with coke. (He also likes them like he likes his wine - 8 years old and locked in his basement.)
  • So Pedobear is really Bob Saget?
• From The Absorbacon comics blog:
  I like my fish like I like my women: pretty, but deadly, pawns in my larger game.
• Bad-Luck Bootsy from Board James provides his own.
  I like my coffee like I like my women... with my dick in it!
• One screenshot from the Doctor Who serial "The Daleks' Master Plan" led to the suggestion that Sara Kingdom was admiring Steven Taylor's tight trousers:
  I like my men like I like my coffee... in vacuum-sealed packages.
• There's an image macro that runs:
  I like my coffee like I like my Death Stars... gigantic, on the dark side and powerful enough to destroy a planet.

Radio

• Used as a Running Gag by Sir Philip Bin on Bleak Expectations:
  Clocks should be like women; placed in the corner, and once a year, given a good servicing.
  Bags should be like women; simple and with a single, lockable opening.
  Emotions are like wine, to be bottled up for years and then presented to your son on his 21st birthday.

Theatre

• Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

Video Games

• In Kingdom of Loathing, the item description for the thermos full of Knob coffee says "Knob Goblins like their coffee like they like their female volleyball players: black, hot, and spiked."
  • And from the 'coffee pixie stick' item: "You always liked your coffee like you like your women — dark, bitter, and they make you all twitchy and irritable and agitated."
  • And from the zone where everything talks like Dr. Seuss, the description of a 'cup of hickory chicory': "Like the women I like, it is dark and it's bitter / So drink it up, doc! C'mon! don't be a quitter."
  • Also "You like your showers like you like your women. Hot and in the shower with you."
• In World of Warcraft, one of the jokes the female dwarves tell is, "I like my ale like I like my men: dark and rich."
  • Similarly, male dwarves have: "I like my beer like I like my women: stout and bitter."
• Telltale's Sam and Max games give us this exchange while examining the coffee pot at Bosco's Inconvenience:
  Sam: I think it's the tinge of green that makes this coffee especially appealing.
  Max: I take my coffee green. Like my men!
• League of Legends gives us this:
  Mordekaiser: I like my weapons like I like my music: heavy and metal.
• Fallout 4: If your affinity with Piper starts going up, she'll sometimes say this when you talk with her:
  Piper: I like my pistols like I like my company: high caliber. Talking about you, Blue.
• Team Fortress 2's Competitive Mode has a rare chance of The Spy giving some at the start of a match:
  I like my enemies like I like my wines: I let them breathe, for a moment.
  I like my teams like I like my romances: in groups of six.

Webcomics

• Tailsteak has a take on it with various webcomic characters. T-Rex is particularly in character.
  • His new comic, Leftover Soup, has covered the cast page in these, all but one pertaining to coffee.
• This A Softer World comic.
• Another fresh-ground set from Octopus Pie. Including Shaped Like Itself.
• One semi-infamous bad webcomic (whose name is not easily remembered) is posted fairly often in certain forums to satirize racism in other webcomics. It features a superhero punching out a black man who had just offered him a drink, saying "I like my beer like I like my rap music... NONE AT ALL."
• Surviving the World devoted a strip to variations with different fruit juices.
• Girl Genius has used this gag more than once:
  • One that's sadly cut off: "Well, a circuit is like an elegant lady - spot-weld her enough and -"
  • A Funny Background Event has a mug with "I like my coffee like I like my women — mean!"
  • Regarding the Incorruptible Library:
  Agatha: I thought libraries were supposed to be quiet.
  Melissa: Ho - they also say that about young ladies -
  Jon: - but the best ones rarely are!
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal provides us with a handy chart.
• This example from the Red Meat Construction Set, a user-created parody of Red Meat.
• "Monstar" provides us with this example.

Web Originals

• Parodied in the Tomska video "Bad Director" when the director instructs the actor to read the line "here's your coffee" like he's a sleazy guy at the bar:
  Actor: I like my coffee like I like my women.
  Director: ...On your penis?
  Actor: On my PENIS! WAHEYYYYAAAAAAAGH!!!!
• From Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series Episode 31:
  Joey Wheeler: Eh-rihga-toe back at ya, pal! Just Remember, you treat a Duel Disk just like a woman: you fasten it to your arm and place Trading Cards into it at regular intervals!
• From Board James:
  Bad Luck Bootsy: I like my coffee like I like my women... [takes a sip] ...WITH MY DICK IN IT!
• Phoenix Wright: Bullshit Evolved:
  Pedophile: Before the trial started I replaced the coffee creamer with a jar of my own semen!
  Prosecutor: I'll admit, it was a good plan, but it has one fatal flaw... You see, I like my coffee the way I like my woman... BLACK!!!
  Pedophile: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Western Animation

• Futurama: Brannigan's Law is like Brannigan's love: hard and fast.
  • And to Zapp, making an arrest is like making love: it may or may not hold up and it's often challenged in court.
  • If it doesn't make sense, don't ask Zapp for an explanation. He didn't write Brannigan's law, he just enforces it.
• Clone High: Clone-Gandhi likes his humping like he likes his martinis: Dry.
• In the first Crimson Chin episode of The Fairly OddParents! a villainess called spatula woman said she liked her cops the way she liked her eggs: scrambled.
• King of the Hill: Bill was pretending to be gay so he could work at a trendy salon. At a bar he has this to say:
  "I like my drinks like I like my men: strong, sweet, and under an umbrella."
• During an episode of American Dad!, Stan asks a drunk President Bush how he takes his coffee. Bush responds with:
  "I like my coffee, like I like my Secretaries of State. Not too dark, and a little sweet!"
• The "Optimus Prime Suspect" sketch on MAD had Optimus Prime as a detective who kept making 'like my coffee' analogies that didn't work; e.g. "I like my perps like I like my coffee: in a coffee cup".
• Archer: Kreiger likes his women like his coffee - black, bitter, preferably fair-trade.
• The Amazing World of Gumball: Gumball tries (and fails) to lighten the mood in "The Parents" with this meta joke: "I like my coffee the way I like my 'I like my coffee' jokes: I don't."
• In Super Jail, Lord Stingray claims he likes his coffee like he likes his henchmen: strong and simple.

Other

• Inverted in the classic joke: "Coffee, chocolate, men... some things are better rich."
• Computational linguistics researchers at the University of Edinburgh wrote a computer program to generate jokes of this form. They compared their program's output to a random joke generator and to jokes taken from Twitter; according to their paper, the five human judges evaluating them rated as "funny" about 4% of the randomly generated ones, 17% of ones generated by their program, and 33% of the ones taken from Twitter. Some highlights:
  • "I like my relationships like I like my source: open."
  • "I like my coffee like I like my war: cold."
  • "I like my boys like I like my sectors: bad."
• Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord had written that coffee should be "Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love."

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