Ah, thank you! I expect I’ll end up with a cat someday when I have my own place, and had already decided I would call it “Tybalt” or “Tevildo” if it’s male, but I never could think of a good name if it’s female.
I’ve read everything written on the Algonquin group and I don’t remember ever coming across a reference to Friends of Dorothy pertaining to Parker.
I’d need to see some contemporary cites before I believed it.
No, the real boy had a stuffed pig named Piglet. (Winnie the Pooh is named after a real bear from Winipeg.)
What am I missing here?
I’m also not believing that “Freinds of Dorothy” refers to Dorothy Parker.
Thank you. I’m glad I’m not the only one wondering.
Straw man- someone used as a front for a questionable or non-existent enterprise, which the “Wizard” himself was. So when he left, he named the Straw Man as the straw man.
Since you’re having so much fun with “Rosemary,” here’s an annotation about the first names of the Satanic couple the Castevets:
Roman is obviously a reference to the Roman Catholic Church. The conception takes place when the Pope is visiting New York City. Ira Levin wanted to have the child born on June 25, 1966, and looked back nine months to see what was happening at the right time for the conception. When he realized the Pope was in town, he felt the book had to be.
The first part of the plan is for Rosemary to eat the drugged mousse made by Mrs. Castevet, who pronouces it “chocolate mouse.” Her first name is Minnie. Yes, Rosemary is done in by Minnie’s Mouse (I don’t know if Levin had the pun in mind when he named her, but it’s too good not to mention).
Could you explain what the significance was to you?
FWIW - Don’t know when it was - and don’t really have the time to search - but there was a thread a couple years ago that I participated in dealing with what we in the sci-ed biz call misconceptions. There’s a great deal of research on how children come to school with notions about nature, and the difficulty of addressing these misconceptions. The point: All of us at one time or another had bizarre, irrational ideas about the world and how it works, and eventually saw the light. Usually. (Some people still think blood in our veins is blue, e.g.) I’ve collected a number of these beliefs from folks in the courses I teach and there’s a continual new supply each semester. This thread is a nice way to see how we’re all quite naive about many common things, and we’re all life-long learners.
Yeah, so many diagrams in school textbooks show blue blood, you can hardly blame people for believing it. It was many years after leaving school with good grades in biology that I realised it was wrong.
When I started reading these I looked back on the SDMB to read some threads - there’s a whole thread on “stuff I was too dim a bulb to catch” that makes me kind of wonder about some of you people. People didn’t realise that whatshername Stark died in childbirth?
For extra points, what happened to Princess Rhaenys’ kitten?
Not to mention the fact that one’s veins tend to look blue.
This is kind of an obscure one – someone mentioned Lou Reed upthread, and it reminded me.
In Lou Reed’s song “Dirty Blvd” he has a line “the TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck.”
For the longest time, I thought this was some kind of inscrutable comment on the media.
And then, out of nowhere, I realized – oh, here TV doesn’t mean television, it means transvestite! That makes much more sense!
I first read the novel Carrie over thirty years ago. I have seen the movie countless times.
I only realised last year why the elaborate “prank” that they played on her consisted of coating her in blood.
Because of what happens in the shower room at the start.
Right. He invented the character from a bunch of sources: the name came from the manufacturer of the coffee cup, the accent from a news paper clipping on the wall, and the face from an accomplice. Same for Redfoot and everyone else we meet. He weaves such an amazing story that it isn’t until later, when the illusion is gone, that Agent Kujan sees the BS for what it is.
[Emphasis added.]
Although this is probably fairly obvious, the name “Redfoot” was used because it’s close to “red herring” which, as it turns out, the character most definitely is.
“Redfoot” is seen an an alias of a criminal on a wanted poster on the wall of the office (I believe an African American woman)… I’ve never thought… “Ohhh REDfoot… RED herring!” … i think that’s not at all obvious.
Nope. Didn’t realize anything but anything until I read the comments on it. Still prolly missed a whole lotta important stuff. I’m not good at reading between the lines.
Zoe, while it’s possible that the final fight scene in West Side Story was supposed to be the place where the Met is now, it’s certainly not the place where the Kennedy Center is, since that’s in Washington, not New York.
Bugs Bunny cartoons were/are still some of my favorites, but the classical music shorts, even the ones with Sylvester rank as the best. I honestly didn’t know for quite a while that the music had been composed several dozens of years earlier, and not by the musicians employed by Merrie Melodies, Looney Tunes, or whatever. :o It was only after second grade or so that I discovered the names of the real guys and heard symphonies playing the pieces without the accompanying animation. :smack: