Tag: People

Wang Chung and Billy Joel

SHERRY: Finding something was impossible. I would be looking for my Wang Chung or Billy Joel and I would just have to give up.

Wang Chung: English New Wave band formed in 1980 by Nick Feldman, Jack Hues and Darren Costin. The name Wang Chung means “yellow bell” in Chinese, and is the first note in the Chinese classical music scale. The band found their greatest success in the US, with five top 40 hits there, all charting between 1983 and 1987, including “Dance Hall Days” (1984) and “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” (1986).

William “Billy” Joel (born 1949) [pictured], singer, pianist, composer, and songwriter. He has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s, having released 12 pop and rock studio albums from 1971 to 1993 as well as one studio album of classical compositions in 2001. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

Joel has released 33 self-written Top 40 hits in the US, with three of them reaching #1 (“It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”, “Tell Her About it”, and “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). He has won 6 Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. He received the Johnny Mercer Award for songwriting in 2001 and the Kennedy Center Honors for the arts in 2013. He has had a successful concert career, and continues to tour.

“She meant to run all those people down”

SHERRY: Maureen’s the instigator of this little soiree. She has her own publicity firm in New York …

MAUREEN: She meant to run all those people down, but you didn’t hear it from me.

Maureen refers to publicist, manager, and socialite Elizabeth “Lizzie” Grubman (born 1971). In 2001, after being asked by security to remove her vehicle from a fire lane, she intentionally drove her Mercedes Benz SUV into a crowd of outside an inn in the Hamptons, injuring 16 people.

Grubman was later charged with second-degree assault, driving while intoxicated, and reckless endangerment. The trial gained widespread media coverage because of the circumstances and because of Grubman’s profile and attitude. She is alleged to have said, “Fuck you, white trash”, before ploughing her car into the crowd. Later allegations were that she received special treatment from the police.

In 2002, Grubman served thirty-eight days in jail after reaching a plea bargain. She maintains that the incident was accidental.

“Andrew Jackson, not Alfred E. Neuman”

LUKE: And he paid cash? … Did you make sure Andrew Jackson was on the bills, not Alfred E. Neuman or someone?

Andrew Jackson, previously discussed. Former president Andrew Jackson is on the US $20 bill.

Alfred E. Neuman, the fictitious mascot and cover boy of the humour magazine Mad. The image had been used since the 19th century in advertising, and for Roosevelt’s political campaign in the 1930s. Mad magazine claimed the image in 1954, and named him “Alfred E. Neuman” in 1956. Since his debut, he has appeared on all but a handful of the magazine’s covers.

In 1967, the magazine published pictures of joke coins and a three dollar bill with Alfred E. Neuman’s face on it. Despite being an obvious satire on coin collecting, some readers cut the notes out of the magazine and were able to use them in Las Vegas money-changing machines, leading to federal authorities moving to stamp out this counterfeit operation.

Mad magazine went on to publish fake Monopoly money, and smaller versions of the three dollar bill which were given out as novelties at trade shows and conventions.

Jan and Dean

LUKE: I know a little about cars, that was all gibberish.

KIRK: Oh, well, would you mind not telling people about this? I’ve cultivated a reputation as sort of a car aficionado and in reality, all I have is a Jan and Dean record.

Jan and Dean, rock duo consisting of William Jan Berry (1941-2004) and Dean Torrence (born 1940). In the early 1960s, they were pioneers of the California Sound and vocal surf music styles popularised by the Beach Boys. Their song “Surf City” (1963) was the first surf song to reach #1. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Several of their songs are about cars, including “Drag City” (1963), “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” (1964), and “Dead Man’s Curve” (1964).

In 1966, Berry had a serious car accident on Dead Man’s Curve in Beverley Hills, two years after writing a song about it. He was in a coma for two months, and had to recover from brain damage and partial paralysis. He returned to the studio in 1967, almost a year to the day since his accident.

Rosa Parks

TAYLOR: Well, that’s not indicated here, but it doesn’t matter, because protesting is not allowed in the town square, period. It’s un-American.

LUKE: You mean like the Revolutionary War?

BABETTE: And Rosa Parks?

TAYLOR: That’s different. They were against the British and buses. No one likes the British or buses.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005), an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, she refused a bus driver’s order that she vacate her row of seats in the “coloured” section of the bus to make way for white people, once the “white” section was full. Her act of civil disobedience helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery bus company for over a year. In 1956, the courts decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks became an international icon of resistance to segregation, and collaborated with civil rights leaders such as Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job, and received death threats for years afterwards.

Rosa Parks received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday, February 4, while Ohio, Oregon, and Texas commemorate the anniversary of her arrest, December 1.

Comically, Taylor thinks that Rosa Parks was protesting buses, which he appears to approve of! Is Taylor against public transport?

Brooke Shields

LORELAI: I once told a store my name was Squeegy Beckinheim just to see how many catalogs they would sell my name to, and apparently my name is to catalog companies what Brooke Shields’ picture is to Chinese restaurants.

Brooke Shields (born 1965), actress and model. She began her career as a child model and gained critical acclaim at age 12 for her leading role as an underage prostitute in the film Pretty Baby (1978). She continued to model into her late teenage years and starred in several dramas in the 1980s, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Endless Love (1981).

She returned to acting in the 1990s and appeared in several films, as well as starring in the TV shows Suddenly Susan and Lipstick Jungle. She is currently a voice actor on animated TV show Mr Pickles, and its spinoff, Momma Named Me Sheriff.

Lorelai refers to the practice of restaurants putting up photos of their famous customers, and sometimes, famous people they wish were customers. Brooke Shields may have eaten at a lot of Chinese restaurants when she was young – she was brought up by a “bohemian” single mother, and like Lorelai and Rory, they often had Chinese food for dinner. Brooke Shields does have a regular Chinese restaurant – Mr Chow, which opened in Manhattan in 1979, and became an upscale hotspot in the 1980s. Her favourite Chinese food is chicken sticks and fried seaweed.

“Our president said exercise”

JESS: You’re walking pretty fast for nothing.

RORY: Well, our president said exercise and I am very patriotic.

In June 2002, George W. Bush made an appearance to launch a federal campaign called The President’s Challenge that urged Americans to stay fit, eat healthier and kick bad habits, such as smoking. He issued twelve pages of recommendations on how Americans could improve their lifestyles, and urged people to walk for at least 30 minutes a day. The president was himself very fitness conscious, running and lifting weights every day.

Erin Brockovich

DORIS: How dare you sneak out like that, you sniveling little pond scum sample! I should call Erin Brockovich to bring a lawsuit against your parents, you steaming lump of toxic waste!

Erin Brockovich (born Erin Pattee in 1960), legal clerk, consumer advocate, and environmental activist who, despite her lack of education in the law, was instrumental in building a case against Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) involving groundwater contamination in a town in California with the help of attorney Ed Masry in 1993.

Their successful lawsuit was the subject of the Oscar-winning 2000 film, Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Robert and Albert Finney. Since then, Brockovich has become a media personality and legal consultant.

Bowie’s Farewell Tour

LORELAI: There’s no way I could stand this guy for another night. I’ll catch Bowie the next time he does a farewell tour.

David Bowie’s Heathen Tour in 2002 was not his farewell tour, or his final tour, nor was it ever planned to be so or promoted as such. His final tour was A Reality Tour in support of his Reality album, beginning in Denmark in October 2003, and brought to a sudden end in June 2004.

David Bowie suffered a heart attack on stage in Prague on June 23, and the tour was cut short after a music festival in Germany the next evening due to continued discomfort. The tour was officially cancelled after Bowie was diagnosed with an acutely blocked artery that required an angioplasty procedure (performed on 26 June). It was only after this incident that David Bowie decided his touring days were over, and he retired from live performance in 2006.

Lorelai seems to be aware that time is running out to catch David Bowie live (he was then in his mid-fifties), and perhaps also that her chances of dating a wealthy man who can pay for the tickets again is slender. However, Lorelai could have seen David Bowie at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 15 December 2003 – which really would have been his next time in New York, and his farewell tour. This makes her comment seem rather prescient.