Barbarella

RORY: Long day. Long long day.
DEAN: The day is over. Let’s talk about the night. Uh, there’s a 7:30 showing of Barbarella, and I thought you can bring your mom’s purse, you know the one with that monkey face and we’ll sneak in some burgers and …

Barbarella is a 1968 science-fiction film directed by Roger Vadim, based on the comic series of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest, and starring Jane Fonda in the title role. The story is about a space adventurer named Barbarella finding a scientist named Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humankind.

Barbarella was especially popular in the UK, and received mixed reviews from critics because of its lush cinematography and weak story. The film has become a cult classic, and Barbarella herself  an iconic sex goddess.

Paris and Volunteering

PARIS: When you apply to an Ivy League school, you need more than good grades and test scores to get you in. Every person who applies to Harvard has a perfect GPA and great test scores. It’s the extras that put you over the top. The clubs, charities, volunteering. You know.
RORY: Oh yeah, I know.

Paris explains to Rory what she should already know – to get into a top university like Harvard, you need something to set you apart from all the other excellent candidates.

Paris has been volunteering since she was about nine, and began by handing out cookies at the local children’s hospital (possibly the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford). By the age of ten she was running a study group for teenagers, probably through Chilton. She has also been a counsellor for a children’s summer camp, organised a literacy program for seniors, worked at a suicide prevention hotline (a truly terrifying thought), and a residential centre for runaways and homeless youth.

She has also adopted dolphins (you just send money to an organisation like The Oceanic Society), taught American Sign Language (perhaps through the American School for the Deaf in Hartford), and trained guide dogs (volunteers raise puppies and give them socialisation and basic training before handing them back so they can be trained as guide dogs; Paris may have done this through Guiding Eyes in Hartford.) We know Paris likes dogs, because her dog Skippy is said to have had a litter of puppies on Lorelai’s mini-dress that she borrowed: weirdly (or perhaps lazily by the writers) her dog has the same name as Rory’s unfortunate hamster.

Paris has done an insane amount of volunteering for a 16-17 year old girl, but in fact choosing this as a good method of getting into Harvard is almost certainly wrong. Colleges don’t seem to be really be that impressed by you doing huge amounts of random volunteer work (probably because anyone with half a brain and no life can rack up hours of unpaid work fairly easily).

What they really want to see is how your extracurricular activities demonstrate the kind of person you are, and the unique skills and interests that you have. For example, Paris wants to work in medical research, so the children’s hospital was a great start, but she didn’t stick with it. It would have been better to continue volunteering with just one or two organisations, and demonstrate that she had gained a leadership role and given real help to the community – maybe even won an award of some kind. Paris’ volunteering CV looks as if she’s desperately taken any role offered (and sending money to dolphins doesn’t look impressive to anyone).

Furthermore, it depends on the university how highly they rank volunteer work when assessing applications. It doesn’t seem to be extremely important for Harvard, which makes Paris’ efforts even more pointless.

Bob Vila

RORY: Funny. I never pictured you as a Bob Vila kind of girl.
PARIS: Rebuilding Together is an extremely prestigious and respected organization. I’ve been volunteering for them for years.

Robert “Bob” Vila (born 1946) is an American home improvement television host. He was the host of This Old House, previously mentioned, from 1979 to 1989, and hosted Home Again With Bob Vila from 1990 to 2005.

Paris seems to have been volunteering for Rebuilding Together since she was at least 14, quite possibly younger.

Grub axe

RORY: It’s [the wall Paris built] very impressive.
PARIS: I’ve done it a million times before. It’s no big deal. Louise! What did I just tell you? Use a grub axe for that!

A grub axe is another word for a mattock, a versatile hand tool used to dig up roots and shrubs, and otherwise clear ground for building and planting.

The Construction Foreman

[Rory taps on a man’s shoulder while he’s sawing a piece of wood.]
RORY: Excuse me.
MAN: Hey, you’re touching a man with a saw. You don’t touch a man with a saw. What are you thinking?
RORY: I’m sorry.
MAN: I could’ve hurt myself. I could’ve hurt you. There’s a ton of hurt that almost happened here.

The construction foreman for Rebuilding Together in Hartford, played by Biff Yeager, is named Tom in the credits. He seems to be the same person as Tom the contractor who will later be seen in Stars Hollow whenever anyone needs some building or renovating work done, but it isn’t made completely clear. He doesn’t have a beard, while Tom the contractor does, but he might have grown one. It’s also uncertain whether he lives in Hartford but travels to Stars Hollow when needed, lives in Stars Hollow but took this job in Hartford for Rebuilding Together, or originally lived in Hartford but later moved to Stars Hollow.

Amazon

DEAN: I just thought we could hang today. Maybe see a movie, get something to eat. We could go to a bookstore, I’ll watch you browse for six or seven hours.
RORY: I would love to, but I have to do this thing today.
DEAN: Blow it off.
RORY: I can’t.
DEAN: Did I mention the bookstore for six or seven hours?
RORY: How about tonight? We can get a pizza and go on Amazon. You’ll be just as bored watching me ordering books, I promise.

Amazon is an American e-commerce company that was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and is now the largest Internet retailer in the world by revenue, and second-largest by total sales, and the most valuable retailer in America. They originally started as an online bookstore, and later diversified. When she’s not buying books from the bookstores in Stars Hollow, Rory apparently orders her reading material from Amazon.

It seems from their exchange that Rory did not bother telling her boyfriend about the volunteer work she signed up for the previous day. It also seems that their “dates” generally revolve around Rory and her interests, with Dean having nothing to do except watch Rory enjoy herself. And further, it seems Rory sees absolutely nothing wrong with this level of selfishness in a relationship, which means she really has learned everything she knows from Lorelai.

Who’s on First?

DEAN: You’re going to build a house?
RORY: It’s for charity and I’m late, and why don’t you go on inside and you and my mother can continue the “Rory’s building a house” routine, and when that gets boring you can move on over to “Who’s on First?”

“Who’s on First?” is a famous comedy routine by Abbott and Costello, in which Abbott is identifying players on a baseball team for Costello. The comedy comes from the fact that their names sound as if they are answers to Costello’s questions. For example, the first player is named Who, thus the answer to “Who’s on first?” is “Who’s on first”, leading to utter confusion.

This was a style of routine very popular in the early twentieth century, and Abbott and Costello had a big hit with “Who’s on First?” in a vaudeville revue in 1937. In was performed on radio in 1938, and copyrighted in 1944. Abbott and Costello performed it numerous times in their careers, rarely the exact same way twice, and performed it for President Franklin D. Roosevelt several times.

Abbott and Costello included a shorter version of their routine for their 1940 film debut One Night in the Tropics, and a longer version for their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties, considered their best recorded version of the routine. The “Who’s on First?” bit they did for their 1950s television program The Abbott and Costello Show is considered the definitive version.

Busan

Busan is where Lane’s cousins live, and where she will be spending the summer from June to August 2001. The city was called Pusan until 2000, and is pronounced like Pusan (at least that’s how it sounds to English-speakers).

Busan is the second-biggest city in South Korea, and has a population of over 3 million. It is the economic centre of south-eastern Korea, and has a large industrial area, and the biggest port in Korea. It is called the summer capital of Korea, since it has a number of beaches to attract tourists, along with cafes, restaurants, and shopping districts to cater to them.

It is unknown whether Mr and Mrs Kim, or their families, are originally from the Busan area as well as the cousins, but it doesn’t seem too unlikely.

A Connecticut Yankee

RORY: Hey, Henry?
LANE: Called him.
RORY: And?
LANE: He likes me. He’s perfect. I’ll never see him again. You’ll read about it in my novel, A Connecticut Yankee in Busan.

Lane is parodying the title of the 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, by Mark Twain. The novel is a satirical fantasy about a 19th century American engineer who is mysteriously transported to 6th century Britain in the time of the legendary King Arthur. It may be a novel that Lane and Rory once read for English class at Stars Hollow High.

At least Lane and Henry have finally spoken to each other, and everything went well – just as Lane is about to be shipped off to Korea for several weeks.

Lane Gives Rory Her Contraband

Lane comes over to give Rory boxes of all her pop culture contraband for safekeeping while she is in Korea for the summer (she fears it might be forever).

Lane leaves her CDs, magazines, books, posters, three sweaters she borrowed from Rory, and one Diva Glam lipstick which is apparently all her make-up, and probably also from Rory. There also seems to be other clothes, and various cloth knick-knacks such as cushions. Rory says she will treat it like it’s her own, which makes sense, because some of it actually is hers.

Lane also gives Rory a “retrieval kit” in a heavy yellow envelope which might help rescue her from Korea. It has the phone number of where she is staying, a map showing her location, a photo of Lane, and a mock-up of what she will look like in six months time (thinner, so she seems to expect that she will lose weight on a traditional Korean diet). It also contains the phone number for the American consulate, and some Korean phrases written out phonetically, such as “Help”, and “Have you seen this girl?”.