Dunno if this has been posted yet, but I only realised a few days ago that Legally Blonde was a play on legally blind.
In Soul Music people keep asking Imp if he’s Elvish. I thought it was leading to some reveal about who he really was.
Then near the end one of Susan’s friends remarks about the guy at the chip shop, “swear he’s Elvish.”
I read that line and immediately thought, “Kirsty MacColl reference! Oh. And Elvis. Him too.”
Something I only recently realized when it was pointed out on another forum about Bosun Higgs of the webcomic Girl Genius. Bosun Higgs = Higgs boson.
The main character of the Mystical Ninja video games is Goemon. I knew Goemon was a real person but it took me years before I figured out that the character design is an extremely cute version of his famous portrait.
I wouldn’t say it deserves a smack, but I do always chuckle whenever I see it and think “I’m sure Annie is freaking out right now”
Can I add an obvious “geographical/political” fact that I only just recently realized?
My entire life, I’ve been familiar with the “county”, the geographical/political subdivision into which most US states are divided (I live in Chelan County in Washington State).
I’ve also been familiar, for many years, with the European noble title, “Count”.
It only just dawned on me, while reading Medieval history, that a “county” is an area ruled by a “Count”.
The funny thing is that I already knew that a Duke rules a duchy and a Baron rules a barony. I’m blaming the facts that we don’t have nobility in the USA, and we also don’t have duchies and baronies. So I just didn’t make the Count -> county connection.
With a new kid in the house we’ve been watching a lot of kids movies. Many of which have inside jokes that took me far too long to catch. Just two off the top of my head:
Finding Nemo: Mount Wannahockaloogie
(want to hock a loogie). LOL
Ice Age: When going through the caves just before the ambush, there are lots of fossils etc. frozen in the ice. The gang goes past a space ship also frozen in the ice. The baby waves at the ship with the Vulcan salute.
Off-topic, but interesting. My wife, Pepper Mill, saw that film with an ex-boyfriend. When the camera started pabnning over the old photographs, he sat bolt upright and said that one of the photographs was from his family.
I suspect the set dressers bought a bunch of old photographs from somewhere, and that one just happened to be in there.
Well, hunh!
(“Dammit, my garbage ain’t been picked up in three weeks. The next time I see Dracula I’ll give him a piece of my mind!”)
It doesn’t help that one of the oddities of the English was retaining the old Anglo-Saxon title of “Earl” for what everyone else called a Count (despite the fact that the English called an Earl’s wife a “Countess”).
Yes. Frankly, as an American, whenever I read stuff about nobility in books and such I’m always wondering what the hell the relationships are, which are “major” vs “minor”, etc. I’ve wondered why an Earl’s wife is called a Countess, etc.
The life of this thread still amazes me.
How many people catch the sexual innuendo in this scene from Hamlet:
HAMLET
Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
OPHELIA
No, my lord.
HAMLET
I mean, my head upon your lap.
OPHELIA
Ay, my lord. .
HAMLET
Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA
I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET
That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
OPHELIA
What is, my lord?
HAMLET
Nothing.
If you don’t get it, put a pause between the two syllables of “country.”
That and it makes Ophelia sound like a retarded bunny. Was she supposed to be what we’d now called a air-headed bimbo?
Might I recommend What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, an invaluable guide book for anyone reading 19th century English literature. A whole chapter is devoted just to rank and nobility, if for example you’re confused over whether a viscount outranks a baronet, how a lady’s title changes as she marries, is widowed, becomes a mother-in-law, etc.
“Earl” is an Old English word, and was used to describe noblemen (in general, it was not a specific rank) by the early 600s according to the OED. It was used to mean something like “brave warrior” in Old English hundreds of years earlier than that.
“Count” derives from the Old French “conte”, and according to the OED was used in Anglo-Norman but did not become a standard English word until the 16th century and then only to translate foreign titles. (It looks like the Romance languages all have similar-sounding noble titles based on the Latin “comes”.) However, “countess” was adopted as the feminine form of “earl” in English within a century of the Norman Conquest – the earliest cite in the OED is 1154. I don’t know what, if any, specific title an earl’s wife had before that.
I’ve heard two explanations for why “countess” caught on in English but “count” did not. First, “earl” had a long history in England and is one of the only modern English noble titles that is not derived from French. The English may have wanted to hold onto it for traditional/patriotic reasons. Second, “count” sounds awfully close to a particular Old English word that is still in use today. I don’t know that there’s any evidence that this is what kept “count” from catching on, but I can easily believed that earls preferred the traditional title with its macho connotations to being called counts.
Sounds like a joke I know (it’s funnier said aloud than written): “The Gentry is full of gents and the Country is full of… counts”.
Anyone who’s studied it in school? I studied it at two different schools, both teachers pointed that out.
Does an Earl rule over an early?
An earldom.
Hey, that’s what the sheep say in Warcraft if you click them often enough. (Or they did when I played Warcraft, which was about 15 years ago). I had no idea it was a reference to anything. Huh.
I was in my senior year in college before I realized that “le poisson” (the song that the cook sings in The Little Mermaid) is French for “fish.”