Yogi Berra

LORELAI: [giggle] Good one … Baseball the size of a cantaloupe … ‘Cause a baseball can only be one size, so it’s a Yogi Berra type thing.
SOOKIE: Yogi Bear?

Lawrence “Yogi” Berra (1925-2015) was an American professional baseball catcher who later became a manager and coach. He played 19 seasons of Major League Baseball between 1946 and 1965, nearly all of them with the New York Yankees. Berra was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, and is regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Yogi Berra was known for his malapropisms, paradoxical statements, and seemingly unintentional witticisms, known as Yogi-isms. Yogi’s nickname came from a friend thinking that the way he sat with his legs crossed made him look like an Indian yogi.

Sookie mixes him up with cartoon character Yogi Bear, previously discussed. Yogi Berra sued Hanna-Barbera for use of his name, but they claimed the similarity of names was a coincidence. Berra withdrew his suit, although Hanna-Barbera’s defense was considered implausible.

“Blah blah blah Ginger”

RORY: You’ve never tried [to talk to Emily].
LORELAI: Oh no, that’s not true. I have tried. I have tried my whole life. But my mother and I, we speak a different language. I talk, I think I’m being clear, and all she hears is “Blah blah blah Ginger.”

Lorelai is referring to a cartoon from Gary Larson’s The Far Side comic series. It shows a man scolding his dog Ginger, thinking that he is giving him very detailed instructions on what not to do, but all the dog can understand is, “Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah”. (For dog owners – it’s just a cartoon, of course dogs can understand more than their own name).

The Far Side ran from 1980 to 1995 and was syndicated to over 1900 newspapers worldwide. The quirky cartoons were also collected into a series of books, made into calendars, and printed on greeting cards, mugs, and tee shirts, so they were extremely well known. The “Blah blah Ginger” one seemed to be especially popular as a greeting card, and Lorelai may even have received it, or bought it for others.

(There was a cat counterpart to Blah Blah Ginger, where the cat didn’t listen to a single word, not even recognising its own name or hearing “blah blah” – the speech balloon was a total blank).

Happy dance

RORY: I just thought if she saw how we lived, and how pretty it was with the lake and the swans …
LORELAI: That she’d do a happy dance?

In slang terms, a “happy dance” is any spontaneous dance done in celebration, or in order to gloat at personal success.

It’s especially known from the Peanuts cartoons by Charles M. Schulz, where Snoopy does an excited happy dance whenever Charlie Brown brings him food. This may have been part of Lorelai and Chris’ performance when they sang Suppertime, from the musical You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.