Footnotes to the TV series
JESS: I can’t get into poetry. It’s kind of like, geez, just say it already, we’re dying here.
Jess has actually read Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl more than forty times, so this “I’m too butch for poetry” is nothing but posturing. Maybe he’s trying provoke Rory into saying something, which would reveal to an outsider how they formed an intimate bond over her poetry book. If so, it doesn’t work.
PARIS: Typical guy response. Worship Kerouac and Bukowski, God forbid you’d pick up anything by Jane Austen.
JESS: Hey, I’ve read Jane Austen … and I think she would’ve liked Bukowski.
Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist, previously mentioned as the author of Emma, amongst others.
As previously hinted at, Jess has read some of the English Literature classics, as well as American counter-culture icons. Unlike Dean, he wouldn’t have needed prodding to read Jane Austen.
But in what possible universe would Jane Austen have liked Charles Bukowski, as either a person or a writer? She lived in an era when it was deeply shocking, even violating, for a man to address a woman without an introduction – how would she have coped with Bukowski’s vivid description of his own penis and his offer of it to a female friend, with instructions as to its use?
Jess is saying that a nice, genteel girl like Rory can still appreciate a crude but intelligent bad boy like himself. Rory and Jess? For sure. Jane Austen and Bukowski? Not a chance.
PARIS: [The Beats] believed in drugs, booze, and petty crime … That was not great writing. That was the National Enquirer of the fifties.
National Enquirer, tabloid newspaper founded in New York in 1926, known for its sensationalist reporting and flimsy journalistic ethics.
The National Enquirer already existed in the 1950s, so I’m not sure how The Beats are “the National Enquirer of the 1950s”. Surely the National Enquirer was the National Enquirer of the 1950s? For a supposedly smart character, Paris says some remarkably silly and ignorant things.
PARIS: A tragic waste of paper.
JESS: I can’t believe you just said that.
PARIS: Well, it’s true, The Beats’ writing was completely self-indulgent. I have one word for Jack Kerouac – edit.
Jack Kerouac, previously discussed.
There is a myth that his novel On the Road was typed on one long free-form written scroll, without any editing. In fact, the experiences which inspired the novel were first written in a series of notebooks, and the early drafts were worked on for several years.
Dissatisfied with his progress, and impressed by a rambling 10 000-word missive from his pal (and muse) Neal Cassady, Kerouac then decided to write the novel as if it was a letter to a friend, with all the improvisational fluidity of jazz. The first draft was typed up in three weeks on a continuous 120-foot roll of tracing paper that he cut and taped together, single-spaced, and with no paragraph breaks.
In the following years, Kerouac continued to revise this manuscript, and the final published version was considerably shorter, with fictional names given to the real people he wrote about. In 2007, a slightly edited version of the original scroll was published, retaining the real names.
The original scroll was bought in 2001 for $2.43 million by American businessman Jim Irsay, and has been exhibited at various times in museums and libraries in the US, UK, Ireland, and France.
Paris’ comment is reminiscent of Truman Capote’s withering statement about Kerouac, and his supposed lack of editing: “That’s not writing. That’s typing”.
LORELAI: Ah, I just love the idea of shrimp cocktail with a steak dinner, you know? It’s so Casino – ‘Big Joe, steak and shrimp’.
Casino is a 1995 epic crime film, directed by Martin Scorsese, and based on the 1995 non-fiction book, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi, who also wrote the screenplay. It stars Robert De Niro as Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a gambling expert handicapper who is asked to oversee the casino and hotel operations at the fictional Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas. It is the eighth film collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro.
The main characters are based on real people: Sam “Ace” Rothstein is inspired by Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal who ran several casinos in Las Vegas for the crime syndicate the Chicago Outfit from the early 1970s until 1981. Casino was a worldwide box office success, and received mostly positive reviews.
LORELAI: Ah, I just love the idea of shrimp cocktail with a steak dinner, you know?
Shrimp cocktail is the American term for prawn cocktail, a dish consisting of shelled, cooked prawns in a cocktail sauce, served in a glass. In the US, a cocktail sauce is made with ketchup and horseradish, sometimes with chilli sauce, slightly different to the Commonwealth version of mayonnaise and tomato sauce with Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice. Shrimp cocktail was very fashionable from the 1960s to the 1980s, and is now seen as a bit kitschy. Shrimp cocktail with a steak dinner remains a classic.
PARIS: [on phone] Hola, es Paris. Voy a comer la cena de cas de Rory. Hay mucho mac and cheese!
Paris’ nanny is Portuguese, yet Paris speaks Spanish to her here (is Nanny bilingual? Why can’t she speak English?).
She says, “Hi, it’s Paris. I’m going to eat dinner at Rory’s house. There’s a lot of mac and cheese!”.
She doesn’t translate “mac and cheese” into Spanish, which would be macarrones con queso. Probably because American mac and cheese feels like a completely different dish to what a Spanish-speaker would be expecting, unless she couldn’t think of the right word for it.
PARIS: I’m not allowed to have mac and cheese.
RORY: Splurge.
Paris is allergic to dairy products, which was introduced in the episode, “Concert Interruptus” (Lorelai ordered her a cheese-free pizza). Someone eating something they’re allergic to isn’t a “splurge”, it’s a potential medical emergency!
Paris asks if Stars Hollow, a town of less than 10 000 people, has a 24-hour pharmacy in case she has a severe allergic reaction. Unbelievably, they do! In real life, the nearest 24-hour pharmacy to them would be in Waterbury or Hartford.
Rory may simply be lying, eager to keep Paris there so she is not left alone with Jess. If so, she’s taking a bit of a risk with Paris’ health in the process.
Macaroni Cheese
Hamburgers
French fries
Salad
Chocolate brownies
Layer cake???
The care package is a more elaborate version of what Luke brought Lorelai for the Bid-on-a-Basket Fundraiser when they ate a picnic in the gazebo, as if Jess is trying to give Rory even more. It might be another sign that he is paying too much for her or offering Rory too much. He’s all for the big gestures – similar to Dean and his gift of a car.
The food is brought in a box which once contained bleach. I’m not sure if there’s any significance to that, but it’s provocative (sperm is often said to smell of bleach, for example) and slightly off-putting.
JESS: He wasn’t sure how long your mom was gonna be gone for.
RORY: Just tonight.
Emily invited Lorelai to spend the weekend with her, then turned up to collect her on Friday morning (rather than Saturday morning, as a weekend would suggest). Rory indicates that they were only spending Friday night at the spa, yet at the end of the episode, Emily and Lorelai are said to be leaving early when they go home on Saturday morning.
Either Rory is psychic, or she is trying to discourage Jess from thinking he can hang around or pester her all weekend. She may be protecting herself from Jess even more carefully than she protected herself from Dean, out of worry that sex might be on the menu as well as macaroni cheese.
Good thinking, because Jess needs only the slightest encouragement to invite himself to dinner, which was his plan all along.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 