Drafting

[Lorelai notices Kirk running right on their heels]

LORELAI: Kirk, what are you doing?

KIRK: I’m drafting you.

Kirk is probably referring to drafting or slipstreaming, a technique used in racing sports, especially cycling and driving, where you remain behind another competitor to reduce the effect of wind resistance, thus allowing you to conserve energy.

In cycling, the effect can be significant. In running, where the speeds are slower, the benefit is much less. One of the problems is that you need to be very close behind the other competitor to get much effect, and this obviously risks antagonising them (like Kirk antagonises Lorelai). It is, however, perfectly legal, and is not classed as cheating, although some might consider it unsportsmanlike.

Indoors, where there is no wind at all, the benefit would be very small, while the chance of annoying others would be greatly increased. This seems on brand for Kirk.

In cycling, one warns another cyclist of their intention by saying, “I’m drafting you” as a courtesy. I have been unable to find any such examples of this in running.

EDIT: One of my favourite things about writing this blog is when someone writes in to correct something I got wrong, or to add something that I missed. I’m only one ordinary person, so there’s no way I can get everything right.

So a big, big thank you to blog reader melcauble for putting me on the right path with this one. I know it probably seems like a long time to wait for a rewrite, but I try to get there eventually.

The Olympics

LORELAI: Flip all you want, pal. This ain’t the Olympics.

The modern Olympic Games or Olympic, the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of international athletes participate in a variety of competitions. They are normally held every four years, and since 1994 alternate between the Summer and Winter Olympics. Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games held in Olympia, Greece. Baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894, leading to the first modern Games in Athens in 1896.

Lorelai is presumably thinking of the gymnastics at the Olympics.

“Theme from Rocky”

RORY: And ooh, I told him about how when Kirk wins, he likes to take his victory lap around the floor to the theme from Rocky.

The theme from the film Rocky, previously discussed, is called “Gonna Fly Now”. It was composed by Bill Conti, with lyrics by Carol Connors and Ayn Robbins, and performed by DeEtta West and Nelson Pigford.

Released in 1976 with the movie, it became part of 1970s popular culture, after the film showed the main character Rocky Balboa running up the 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art then raising his arms in a victory pose as this song plays. The song is often played at sporting events, especially in Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Eagles NFL team play the song before the opening kick-off of every home game. The song is often used in film and TV when a character has to train hard for something.

The song went to #1 on the US charts, while a jazz version and two disco versions also charted. It was the #21 song of 1977.

“If you say the word baby …”

MAUREEN: It’s a little game. Everyone gets a diaper pin, and if you say the word “baby,” the person catching you saying it gets to keep your pin.

At the baby shower, no one is supposed to say the word “baby”. Yet, during the game where they are shoving cotton balls into the bag, Sherry continually says the word baby and no one takes her pin or corrects her. Either the “baby pin” game only lasted a short time, or Sherry got a free pass because it’s her baby shower.

Trivial Pursuit

DORIS: I would’ve found you sooner if I had bothered to look, but now I have, I found you, and all I can say is this – I want my board games back! I want them back and I want them back now! And I will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth until I get them back – especially the Trivial Pursuit!

Trivial Pursuit, a board game in which winning is determined by a player’s ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions in different categories, collecting wedges for each category until the playing piece is full. It was created in 1979 by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott in Montreal, Canada, and released in 1981. It was one of the most popular games of the 1980s.

Incidentally, the fact that Doris has tracked Dwight down may explain why we never see him again. Doris may have forced him to return home, or demanded that he sell the house in Stars Hollow as it is a joint asset. Or maybe he just went on the run again to escape from her. Either way, there’s nothing to say that he remained living in Stars Hollow, although no real proof that he ever left.

Quilting Convention, Cartwheels

LORELAI: Well, the quilting convention is sitting down to tea.

MICHEL: Uh, I’m doing internal cartwheels.

Quilting is the process of sewing different pieces of fabric together to form a multilayered quilt, which may be simple in design or a complex piece of art. There are numerous quilting societies in the US, and the inn is currently hosting a quilting convention.

Cartwheels [pictured] are an acrobatic maneuver commonly performed in gymnastics, as well as cheerleading and certain types of dance, including classical Indian dance. It is performed by bringing the hands to the floor one at a time while the body inverts. The legs travel over the body trunk while one or both hands are on the floor, and then the feet return to the floor one at a time, ending with the athlete standing upright. The phrase “performing cartwheels” is sometimes used metaphorically to mean that someone is exuberantly happy and excited. Compare when Lorelai said she was mentally doing a Jig.

Monopoly and Twister

RORY: He’s got Monopoly from every country in the world …

LORELAI: Remember he owns Twister – there’s a great visual awaiting you.

Monopoly, previously discussed. There are numerous international editions, well over a hundred.

Twister, previously mentioned. A game of physical skill played on a large plastic mat which is spread on the floor. The mat has six rows of large coloured circles on it with a different colour in each row: red, yellow, green, and blue. A spinner tells players where they have to place their hand or foot. The game promotes itself as “the game that ties you up in knots”.

It was developed for Milton Bradley, and originally called Pretzel before Milton Bradley changed its name. Twister became a success when actress Eva Gabor played it with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show in 1966, but was also controversial, as the company was accused of selling “sex in a box” – it was the first well-known game where human bodies are used as the playing pieces. Twister was highly popular in the second half of the twentieth century.

“Pretend you’re at a baseball game”

LORELAI: Oh, now that kid’s a major drooler …

LUKE: Okay, that’s it, they have to go.

LORELAI: Luke, come on, it’s just spit. Pretend you’re at a baseball game.

Frequent spitting has been a tradition in baseball since the 1800s, with tobacco the first substance chewed in order to stimulate saliva. Chewing tobacco went on the decline during the 1970s, and has been banned in the sport since 2016 (but with a grandfather clause, so anyone who chewed tobacco before that is still doing it now). Sunflower seeds, slippery elm bark, peanut shells, and chewing gum became other popular ways to stimulate saliva flow. Spitting at baseball games was banned in 2020, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but I think the ban got lifted or was never policed. I can’t find a reference to it since 2020. Anyone that knows baseball, fill us in!

The reason for the spitting? Tradition, habit, helping to pass the time, showing off, and basically, because they can! At least these are the reasons I have been given.

Butch Danes

[Luke walks over to her. His high school picture is hanging in the display case with the caption “State High Hurdles Champion: 1985 – Butch Danes”]

LUKE: For the love of . . . what’s that doing there?

Here we discover Luke’s nickname in high school was “Butch” (a very manly nickname, best known from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).

If Luke was seventeen in 1985, that would make him the same age as Lorelai, both of them born in 1968. If he was any younger that year, he would be younger than Lorelai, which doesn’t seem likely (it’s a stretch of plausibility that he’s the same age – Scott Patterson is almost a decade older than Lauren Graham). I don’t think he can have been eighteen, because he didn’t do his final year of high school.

Luke said he didn’t have a single positive memory from high school, yet he was a star athlete and a state hurdles champion. It can’t have been all bad. It’s definitely a lot better than what Jess has been through at school.

Seventh Day Adventist Schools

RORY: Out of twenty-three schools, there wasn’t one that you might want to go to?

LANE: It depends on what I’m looking for. Of course, all the great Seventh Day Adventist schools were represented, with their ban on dancing, gum chewing and bowling.

There are twelve Seventh Day Adventist colleges and universities in the US, and one in Canada. The closest one to Connecticut is probably Washington Adventist University, in the suburbs of Washington DC. If Lane had to apply to all of them, that leaves at least ten more she applied to that weren’t Seventh Day Adventist.

Seventh Day Adventists really do disapprove of secular dancing, seeing it as worldly and immoral. Chewing gum isn’t forbidden, but it isn’t seen as part of a healthy diet, and some older Seventh Day Adventists prefer that gum not be chewed in public.

Back in the day, I think bowling was considered an unsuitable entertainment, along with anything else that was a competitive pastime, but these days it can seen as a wholesome activity, and there are even Seventh Day Adventist bowling teams.