The Distillers

JESS: I got tickets to the Distillers … For tonight. I would’ve been here sooner, but I had to wait in line. So we should probably get going. I mean, we don’t wanna miss anything, right?

The Distillers, punk rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1998 by Australian-born vocalist and guitarist Brody Dalle. Their self-titled debut album came out in 2000, and their most recent album was 2002’s Sing Sing Death House, which reached #29 on the US indie charts. Its single “City of Angels” went to #13 on the UK rock charts.

In real life, the Distillers did not perform at a concert in Connecticut in February/March of 2003. They played The Big Day Out at the Green in Glasgow, Scotland on March 24 2003, which seems to be their first gig for that year. However, on February 14 2002, the Distillers played at Toad’s Place, a nightclub in New Haven, Connecticut, which may be part of the inspiration for this scene.

The timeline for this seems questionable. Jess went to Rory’s place at 7.30 pm, where Lorelai gave him a talking to. He then apparently drove to Hartford or New Haven, in order to line up and buy concert tickets. He somehow has time to then drive back to Stars Hollow, and catch Rory just as she is leaving the hockey game, which would have finished no later than 9 pm.

Now he and Rory are going to drive to Hartford or New Haven again, getting there around 10 pm to watch the concert. This doesn’t seem to be possible, especially as Rory is shown getting home when Lorelai is still up and having a late night meal in the kitchen.

I suppose if the Distillers were the last act on the bill, and played a very short set of 30-40 minutes or so, then perhaps Jess and Rory could have got out around midnight and made it back to Stars Hollow by 1 am, and Lorelai could still be awake and having a midnight snack then. It seems like a lot of driving around and a lot of money spent for such a short time, though.

The alternative explanation is that Jess had in fact already bought the tickets and arrived at Rory’s house ready to surprise her when Lorelai jumped down his throat. In that case, his story about waiting in line is just that – a story. However, that doesn’t explain where he went afterwards, unless he just sat in the car park and waited for Rory to come out. I find this whole plotline pretty confusing.

When Rory comes home from the concert, she doesn’t tell Lorelai where she has been, or anything much about her night. Can Lorelai not smell smoke on her, or notice any other sign that she has been at a concert? (Cigarette bans in clubs and places of entertainment would not be passed in Connecticut until May 2003).

There is no sign that Rory enjoyed her night out with Jess. When we see her alone in her room, she lies on her bed with a pensive and enigmatic look on her face which gradually becomes sadder and sadder. Her expression doesn’t say “I’ve had a great night out at a cool concert with my boyfriend”, it says, “My ex-boyfriend has found someone new and my boyfriend isn’t living up to my expectations”.

In fact, all the signs point to Rory not being over her break up with Dean, and not being exactly happy with Jess.

“I’ll be seventy years old”

KIRK: So it’s back to the desert for the Minutemen, perhaps for another forty years. Of course, by then, I’ll be seventy years old. A lot of the rest of you will probably be dead. Taylor, you’ll be dead. Babette, Miss Patty . . . that man there in the hat.

From this we learn that Kirk is thirty years old, and born in either 1972 or 1973, depending on whether he has already had his birthday for 2003, or will be turning 31 later in the year. Sean Gunn who plays Kirk was born in 1974.

Kirk’s prediction that many of the older people of Stars Hollow will probably by dead in forty years seems like a slight echo of the story of the Israelites, where an entire generation had to pass away before they could reach the Promised Land.

Bookie

LORELAI: Mom, I know Gran gives you a hard time, but she did not tell anyone about this guy for a reason.
EMILY: Yes, because she’s embarrassed. She should be. He was dressed like a bookie.

Bookie, a bookmaker, a person that accepts and pays off bets on sporting and other events at agreed-upon odds. The idea that bookies dress in tracksuits seems to be influenced by the TV show The Sopranos – I wonder if Emily has also seen this favourite show of Lorelai’s?

Picasso

MRS. VAN WYCK: Then Picasso is obscene … It has six breasts.
TRIX: You cannot be sure if those are breasts. They could be cannons. He was quite obsessed with the Spanish Civil War for awhile.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

Picasso painted a number of female nudes that Mrs Van Wyck might be looking at. Nude Woman With Necklace is one possibility, as at my first glance, I also was unsure how many breasts the figure has. On closer examination, some of them are her stomach and thighs. Remember that Mrs Van Wyck is peering at a tiny piece of transparent celluloid to view the painting.

One of Picasso’s most famous works is Guernica, a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by German forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Rory Sees Dean and Lindsay Kissing

After a brief, slightly awkward conversation with her never-before-mentioned old classmate Lindsay, Rory sees her kissing Dean, and realises her ex-boyfriend has moved on. Lane goes to school with Dean and Lindsay, but she has apparently not noticed that they are now together. She addresses this by saying that she “failed” Rory by not keeping tabs on Dean for her.

Lane did used to do a good job letting Rory know what was happening with Dean, but that was back in the days when Rory and Dean were dating. I guess we can assume that Lane is now busy with her own boyfriend, and possibly the relationship between Dean and Lindsay is still quite new.

The Beach Boys

LORELAI: Hey, Jess. You like music, right? The Beach Boys said it best. None of the guys go steady ’cause it wouldn’t be right to leave their best girls home on a Saturday night. Rory is one of the best girls. She’s the best girl, if you want my opinion, and you don’t seem to have the first idea as to how she should be treated.

Lorelai quotes from “I Get Around”, the 1964 song by The Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. The autobiographical lyrics describe the group’s reaction to their newfound fame and success, as well as their restlessness concerning the status quo, and their desire to find new hip places. Two lines say:

None of the guys go steady ’cause it wouldn’t be right
To leave their best girl home now on a Saturday night

Lorelai seems to be suggesting to Jess that he shouldn’t have a girlfriend if he’s too “hip and cool” to take her out on weekends. She never bothers asking Jess what the problem is, what his work schedule is like (he works two jobs, as well as going to school), or wonders why Rory can’t be bothered calling Jess or talking to him if any issues come up.

“I Get Around” became the Beach Boys’ first #1 hit in the US, as well as one of America’s biggest hits since the British Invasion and the beginning of an unofficial rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles. It also topped the Canadian charts and reached #7 in the UK. In 2017, “I Get Around” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

“Are you ready to rumble?”

KIRK: People of Stars Hollow, are you ready to rumble?

A variation of the catchphrase, “Let’s get ready to rumble” used at boxing matches and professional wrestling matches. It was created and trademarked by ring announcer Michael Buffer, who has made $400 million from licensing the phrase. The show perhaps uses a different form of it to avoid having to pay a fee.

As will become apparent, Kirk muddles up all his sports while working as the announcer at the hockey game.

Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans and Convertible Rabbit

EMILY: I sound like a spoiled high school girl.
LORELAI: Not quite. You still haven’t asked for the Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and the convertible Rabbit.

Heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, previously discussed, brought out her own line of designer jeans in the 1970s. More tightly fitted than other jeans of the time, they were an immediate success with customers.

The Volkswagen Golf Mark 1 [pictured] was marketed in North America as the Rabbit (the name was brought back for the Mark 5 model in 2006). It stayed on the market from 1974 to 1983, but it seems that for many Americans, the original name stuck.

It seems very likely that Gloria Vanderbilt designer jeans and a VW convertible were things that the spoiled teenage Lorelai asked for herself.

DAR Luncheon

LORELAI: What are you doing here?
EMILY: Well, I was thinking about possibly having our next DAR luncheon here.

It was established in the previous season that the Hartford DAR hold their monthly meetings at the Independence Inn, which Lorelai had to agree to in order to get help with a loan she needed, in “Secrets and Loans”.

The monthly meeting included a luncheon, but this DAR luncheon is presumably something separate from, and far more elaborate than, the monthly meeting luncheons. Lorelai books the DAR luncheon for the 15^th March, which was a Saturday in 2003. (There may be some joke here about the Ides of March – the 15^th of March – the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated).

Dimebag at the Sadie Hawkins Day Dance

LORELAI: Most of us had first boyfriends like Brian Hutchins … Seventh grade, I’m sitting in the library, walks up, asks me to go steady. I say yes. He walks away and I don’t see him again until the tenth grade when he tries to sell me a dimebag at the Sadie Hawkins Day dance. And he was way overcharging for it, too.

In North America, a Sadie Hawkins Day Dance is one held, usually by schools and colleges, where girls invite boys, rather than the usual convention of boys inviting girls to a dance.

It comes from Sadie Hawkins Day in the Li’l Abner comic strip by Al Capp, an unspecified day in November when unmarried women could chase bachelors, and marry the one they caught. First introduced in a strip in 1937, by 1939 there had been Sadie Hawkins events held at over 200 colleges.

A dimebag is a small bag containing $10 worth (usually 1 gram) of marijuana. Lorelai’s forgetful admirer seems to have either charged more than $10 for it, or put very little product in the bag. Although Lorelai didn’t buy the marijuana from Brian, she knew enough about buying drugs to know he was trying to rip her off, suggesting some level of familiarity with the subject.