Remember when Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar tried to do MAD MEN in the present, with an ad agency’s inhumanly skilled pitchman making presentations to clients while surrounded by (a) attractive young women he outranks, and (b) the guy who played Bob Benson, for crying out loud? I mean, they couldn’t have made it more obvious.
Oh, wait. Yes, they could have. They could have called it [del]MAD MEN[/del] CRAZY ONES.
Ha! Oh, man. Well spotted.
Forty-odd years after the character debuted, I realized this weekend why Perez and Shooter named the “bride of Ultron” Jocasta. Understand, I was 6 when they created her, and I missed her debut by a couple of months (she was already an ambivalent guest of the Avengers the first time I saw her). I knew about Ultron using the Wasp for a model and actual stolen personality. I knew all the facts about her creation for close to 40 years now. But it was while reading an article about the Age of Ultron movie in Entertainment Weekly that the penny dropped. They were talking about how there was a new Stark AI with a female voice (spoilery reasons for the replacement omitted here) and I wondered if they were going to name it Jocasta…and SMACK! It hit me in the face.
Doesn’t that lose the pun that’s in the original series?
I just read the Wiki article about Jocasta and I still don’t get it.
Ultron wants to surpass and kill his father, as part of a whole Oedipus complex.
Hey, so long as it’s an inferior copy in various other ways, why not this one too?
In the comics, Ultron was created by Hank Pym (Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Yellowjacket, etc). When Ultron broke free and decided to create a wife for himself, he modeled her after Janet Van Dyne, Pym’s wife (and also basically stole Jan’s personality from her and transferred it to Jocasta). Ultron’s “mother”. Jocasta was Oedipus’s mother/wife.
Ultron’s actions mostly followed an Oedipus complex…he wanted to kill his father and marry his mother. So Jocasta was an appropriate name for his robot bride.
In the cartoon “The Adventures of Gumball” I was wondering why a bunny and a cat had a fish for a son (other than absurd). Then it occurred to me: a fish with legs named Darwin Waterson.
Just learned about Isambard Kingdom Brunel, an engineer who was very important to Britain’s Industrial Revolution. It occurred to me that J.R.R. Tolkien would have known about him, and may have consciously or unconsciously named “Isengard” in LOTR after him. Its Saruman’s HQ, and he is trying to start something much like an industrial revolution.
A pleiad is a group of seven. It plural is pleiades.
The Pleiades received that name because they were supposed to be the Seven Sisters (daughters of one of the gods or demigods). The constellation was used to determine how good a person’s eyesight was – everyone can see the SIX stars, but only those with extraordinarily keen vision could make out the seventh.
Only, there was NO seventh star in that cluster. Six stars (as depicted on the Subaru medallion) are visible with the naked eye. Once telescopes were invented and being used, it was finally revealed that the difference in brightness between the sixth brightest star and the seventh was so significant, and the differences in brightness between 7th to 10th so insignificant, that there could not have been any single candidate for #7.
BTW, I learned the meaning of Subaru from, of all people, Jimmy Buffet. Aliens from Subaru, IIRC, in one of his novels.
I’m pretty sure it came from Eisen, the German word for iron. Most of the names are translated in one of the appendices, which takes much of the guesswork out of it.
Much of Brunel’s fame is for his being one of the principal movers in the inauguration of Britain’s Great Western Railway; and I understand that Tolkien – with his lack of love for industry and modern technology in general – disliked railways, and would have preferred them never to have been invented. I recall reading in a biography, about Tolkien’s young sons being – like very many small boys most of a century ago – fascinated by trains and railways, and wishing him to take them to a rail junction near Oxford, to watch the Great Western’s fastest express passing through. As a loving father, JRRT complied; but reluctantly and with annoyance, and with a hearty wish that they would grow out of this wretched railway obsession.
Reading this gave rise to my having the idle thought, that so far as Tolkien was concerned, Isambard certainly belonged in Isengard…
I just realized that the new Sheriff of Rock Ridge being named “Bart” was a joke.
Black Bart.
sighs.
Huh… and I always assumed that Jeb Bush’s name was short for Jebediah…
The fourth season of Archer introduced the character of Ron Cadillac, Malory’s new husband, who was voiced by Ron Leibman. I didn’t know at the time I was watching those episodes that Leibman is married to Jessica Walter in real life as well.
Lido by Boz Scaggs
He’s for the money
He’s for the show
Lido’s a-waitin’ for the go
Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins
Well, it’s one for the money
Two for the show
Three to get ready
Now go, cat,go
Lido was my favorite song for a time in the late 70’s and is still on my Ipod, and I’ve been familiar with Blue Suede Shoes for my entire life (mother was an Elvis fan).
I made this connection about two weeks ago.
I don’t know if Lido is specifically referencing Blue Suede Shoes, but the rhyme is way older than BSS - it goes back at least to the beginning of the 19th century.
I suspect it isn’t referencing BSS since the last line calls to mind the last line of the standard rhyme (‘and four to go’), rather than Perkins’ ‘go, cat go’.
Another belated connection, although in this case it’s most likely a coincidence.
In Cast Away, Tom Hanks’ character finds a volleyball made by Wilson sporting goods. Hanks ends up naming the ball Wilson and it becomes his imaginary companion on the island.
Today I was reading an article that mentioned Tom Hanks and Wilson and at first I thought they were talking about Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson. It was the first time I noticed that Hanks’ island companion was “named” after his wife.
It’s a coincidence: