Footnotes to the TV series
JESS: [to Mrs. Kim] Baseball bat?
MRS. KIM: Cricket.
Cricket, a game played with a bat and ball with two teams of eleven players. Originating in England, it is played in the UK and Commonwealth countries around the world, but is not a widely known sport in the US.
Cricket bats are heavier than baseball bats, which might be why Mrs Kim favours one for a weapon.
MISS PATTY: When you were six and took my cheerleading class, you wouldn’t even cheer for any other school than Harvard.
The number of classes that Rory took with Miss Patty as a little girl keeps increasing. Ballet, tap dance, baton twirling, and now cheerleading! How did she end up so awkward?
PARIS: [Rory’s] never had sex. She’ll probably go to Harvard. She’s a shoo-in.
Shoo-in, North American informal English, meaning “a certainty, an easy winner”. The phrase dates to the 1930s, and originally referred to horse-racing When there was a predetermined winner in a horse race, jockeys would hold their horses and shoo the winner in – drive them in. Although the expression comes from corrupt horse races, today it doesn’t carry any stigma of cheating.
MAX: I’ve been in California.
LORELAI: Well, cowabunga dude.
Cowabunga, a phrase of unknown origin which was popularised (as Kowa-Bunga) on the children’s TV show Howdy Doody in the late 1940s and early 1950s, where it was used by a character named Chief Thunderthud as a fake Native American greeting [picture shows it as Cowabonga, just to confuse things]. It became associated with the surfing subculture, who spelt it cowabunga, and used it to express delight or satisfaction.
By the early 1980s it was used as a catchphrase by Cookie Monster on Sesame Street, and became more widely known in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to its use by the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Bart Simpson from animated series The Simpson gave it even broader recognition in the 1990s.
Lorelai presumably thinks of it as a particularly Californian phrase because of its use by surfers. It seems as if almost everyone who leaves Connecticut goes to California! Max is Lorelai’s second ex to move to San Francisco.
RICHARD: Do you really think he was wearing a track suit? … Well, I wonder if he was wearing Nikes also.
LORELAI: Just Do It takes on a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?
Nike, multinational corporation engaged in the design, development, manufacturing, and worldwide marketing and sales of footwear, apparel, equipment, accessories, and services. The company is headquartered in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. The company was founded in 964, as Blue Ribbon Sports by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, and officially became Nike in 1971. The company takes its name from Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. It is the world’s largest supplier of athletic shoes and apparel.
Wieden+Kennedy is Nike’s primary ad agency. It was their co-founder Dan Wieden who coined the famous slogan “Just Do It” for a 1988 Nike ad campaign, which was chosen by Advertising Age as one of the top five ad slogans of the 20th century and enshrined in the Smithsonian Institution. Wieden credits the inspiration for the slogan to “Let’s do it”, the last words spoken by murderer Gary Gilmore before he was executed by firing squad.
KIRK: Well, ladies and gentlemen, much like the Israelites of yore, the Stars Hollow Minutemen languished in the desert for forty years. But tonight, there was no Promised Land, no New Canaan, only a humiliating five to one defeat at the merciless hands of the West Hartford Wildcats.
After escaping from servitude in Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the Israelites wandered the wilderness for forty years – a punishment from God for not believing they would be able to take the land promised to them by God from the Canaanites, who were gigantic of stature and had fortified cities.
Only after the entire generation who left Egypt had passed away, except Joshua and Caleb, who had maintained faith in God, were the Israelites able to cease wandering. Eventually they were led into the Promised Land by Joshua, the successor of Moses. Note that Kirk mixes up the land of Canaan with New Canaan, a town in Connecticut.
In real life, the West Hartford Wildcats is actually a women’s softball team.
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?
KIRK: Also, the puck is never referred to as a ball, not according to the book. Again, my bad.
An ice hockey puck is a short cylinder with a closed surface made of rubber. According to Wikipedia, it has been known as a “flat ball”, but Kirk is probably correct that this isn’t in the official regulations he is presumably referring to.
[the referee drops the puck to start the game]
KIRK: And the puck is down as the first quarter begins. Period, sorry. First period begins, my bad.
American football games are divided into four quarters of 15 minutes each. Hockey has three periods, lasting 20 minutes each, with two intermissions of 15 minutes.
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.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 