This thread is so long now that this may be the thing I already posted but:
Will & Grace; the fact that their first names can be personality traits is meant to be obvious, I assume. It wasn’t until much deeper into the series that I realized their last names also had double meaning
Truman = True Man
Addler - Grace is addle brained (as apparently so am I :smack:)
I’ve often wondered if Herman Munster is some kind of play on “her man, monster”.
This - I was counting out the rhythm and noticed it’s a slower beat than expected and definitely was a lot slower than the crowd’s movements. And I think 10% of them… mostly middle-aged white women who tend to be clueless about their ability to dance (as opposed to most middle-aged white guys who are embarrassed about the entire thing and just kind of shuffle with their arms bent, hands parallel with their shoulders)… were dancing to the BOMP! BOMP-BOM-BOM-BOMP! BOMP! part.
It was awesome.
The Firebug wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz last night, so we pulled out the DVD and watched it. It was still enjoyable after all these years, but one thing really hit me:
In Oz, prior to the arrival of the Wizard, there were a minimum of three (in the film) or exactly four (in the books) real witches with real, quite nontrivial powers. The witches of the East and West were wicked, and certainly the Wicked Witch of the West seems quite power-hungry when we enter Oz with Dorothy.
Yet they all seem to have at least nominally recognized the Wizard as the #1 power in Oz and let him rule the Emerald City because he…landed in a hot-air balloon??
He must’ve totally nailed the dismount, that’s all I’ve got to say.
Another, much more minor thing: when Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, she’s at something like a 5-way intersection of yellow brick roads, and wonders aloud which way is the right way, which gets the Scarecrow started with talking and pointing in various directions.
At the end of the scene, they head off down one of the roads together. But at no point have they reached a decision on which road is the right road to the Emerald City.
Weird that I should have never noticed either of these things before. Like most of us, I’ve seen it Lord knows how many times, and I was in my late 50s the last time the Firebug and I watched it together, so I can’t exactly blame it on still being a kid at the time.
Not you, WOOKIN… but yes, that one has been mentioned.
Don’t forget, at the end of the movie Dorothy has destroyed the leadership of 3 of the 5 main political units of OZ, leaving Glenda in charge of the North, West, East, and Oz.
Surely that was not by accident!
Oddly, he chose (from among his many names) “OZ” - and that is what is on his balloon. The ruler of OZ has always been known as OZ or Ozma, so people (and witches) assumed he was the rightful ruler coming back. OTOH, none of the 4 could agree on who got to rule the Emerald city anyway, so as long as the Wizard ruled just the city, they werent going to push it.
The history is rather confused as baum changed it around a couple time.
Since we’re talking OZ:
I don’t know why, but I always thought the title of Gregory McGuire’s sequel to Wicked was Son of Wicked. Noticing a copy on the library’s sale shelf Saturday, I finally realized I had it wrong. The title is Son Of A Witch
Sonofabitch!
Oh, Glinda’s one smooth operator, no question. And disgustingly smarmy, to boot.
I’m more thinking of the time after the Wizard arrived, and before Dorothy showed up. Especially right after the Wizard arrived, but not just then. You’d think there’d have been an ongoing power struggle between the witches to either depose the Wizard and control the Emerald City directly, or turn him into their puppet and rule through him indirectly.
In Shrek the villain’s name is Lord Farquaad, which sounds fairly similar to a well known vulgarism. Could be a coincidence, but I wonder.
More related to the books than the movie, but in Seanan McGuire’s latest collection of (previously published, for the most part) short stories, Laughter at the Academy, the story titled Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust addresses this very question quite mordantly.
Along those lines, I had been watching Grace and Frankie for a couple of seasons before I realized the names described the characters (or perhaps the way they’d describe themselves). Jane Fonda’s character Grace is more upper-class and refined, and Lily Tomlin’s aging hippie, Frankie, is more blunt and outspoken.
I don’t think the makers of Shrek have ever officially acknowledged this. But it was definitely noticed and commented upon at the time the movie was released.
The unofficial story is that Lord Farquaad was based on Michael Eisner, who was the head of Disney at the time. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who used to work for Disney before leaving to co-found Dreamworks, had a lot of animosity towards Eisner.
I listened to “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” from the original Broadway production of Grease.
The female lead of the stage version was named “Sandy Dombrowski”* – Sandra D.
*The changed the last name in the movie to Olssen, probably because it didn’t fit Olivia Newton-John, but killing the joke.
In Back To The Future the Flux Capacitor activated when the Delorean reached 88mph. I just realised that the 8s represent infinity.
Cool observation…also your welcoming in product design as a creative work.
This is where I get to say I finally realized–was told by someone-- that the old IBM PCs used an empty circle for “power on” and one with a vertical slash for “power off.” Or the other way around.
I just found out that Madonna was named after her mother, also named Madonna.
In fact, both are named Madonna Louise. She’s a Junior!
Prince was also a Junior. Sort of.
His father’s legal name was John Lewis Nelson. But he was a musician who performed under the stage name Prince Rogers. So when his son was born, he named him Prince Rogers Nelson.
Prince didn’t like his unusual first name when he was young. So he went by the nickname Skipper.
I think it was pointed out on this board somewhere that the laptop brand VAIO itself is a play on terms: the VA represents sine wave analog signal and the IO represents a digital Input/Output signal.
At the end of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak Up the Sun,” the last line is “I’ve got my 45 on so I can rock on.”
It never occurred to me that she was talking about sunscreen/suntan lotion with an SPF of 45. I always thought she was referring to the turntable speed. In my defense, the term “rock on” could easily be interpreted as a reference for music.