Took me 15 or 20 years to figure out that “My Aim is True” in Elvis Costello’s Alison has a double meaning. (1. my intentions are pure, 2. I have good aim, so you can count on me to put out the big light. I always thought it was “my intentions are pure”, but upon realizing the double meaning, I mentioned it to my dad who always thought it was the other one – interesting different approaches to world, I guess)
Um, what?
Not sure if it’s been mentioned in this thread yet, but there was recently an entire thread started by someone who just got the Britney Spears song, “If You Seek Amy.”
“Sirius” is also the name of the Dog Star. Then of course there’s Remus Lupin. (Remus as in Romulus &, and Lupin as in lupine.) That is one thing that really annoyed me about those books. All her names were way too obvious & cutesy like that. Plus Lupin wasn’t born a werewolf, was he? He was attacked by one. Pretty lucky he already had that name then. :rolleyes:
I never knew those were actually words!! I’ve only heard the song and thought she was just spelling out “F-u-c-k me.”
Just let this one go. Don’t think about it, you’ll just get pissed.
I still think she spent too much time listening to the Musical of “The Secret Garden” in her past which is why she came up with the whole Lily’s eyes thing. Every time I read a reference to Harry having Lily’s green eyes the song “Lily’s Eyes” would earworm it’s way into my head. (Lily’s eyes were apparently hazel in the musical.)
I’ve owned a Subaru for almost 4 years now and never caught that reference. Thanks.
This seems to be a fairly common trope. In the Deus Ex games, J.C. Denton is the intended savior of mankind.
The way I understand it is that these two are on a mission to upset the status quo and the castle is meant to be their first target.
And I forgot to add my sudden realization.
I had seen Men In Black many times. I even own it, but it wasn’t until my sixth or seventh viewing that I realized that K was the kid in the truck who took the wrong turn. And the flowers that he brought were for his girlfriend who he was going to propose to that night. I always thought K was one of the original MiB at that meeting.
Thought of another one. In Texas, we had Aggie jokes. An Aggie is a student at Texas A&M University, a pretty darned good school, up there with the best in the country, but for some reason a culture of jokes has grown up with the basic theme of how dumb the students are. For most of them, you could probably substitute “Polish” for “Aggie,” and it would work the same, regarding Polish jokes, which I think were common elsewhere back when I was younger.
This one joke went: “Did you hear about the Aggie who couldn’t spell? He spent $25 to spend the night in a warehouse.” I was just a kid and didn’t get it. I even asked my father about it, and he pretended he didn’t know. (I’m convinced he was pretending; he didn’t like to talk about stuff like that.)
What’s a metaphor?
For cows, silly!
OK, that one took me a minute. I had to put my inner voice in a very Southern place.
I remember seeing that the first time in the theater and thinking, “Ah, Mr. Wonka’s recently divorced.”
I don’t think that’s obvious at all. AFAIK, using X’s as a graphical element to mark off the beginning and end of a word (or to separate words) has only become common in the past few years, and a license place wouldn’t be the usual context for that.
Even if the X’s represent “kisses,” it still doesn’t jump out at ya.
:o I had to google it.
Thank you for answering my question from three pages ago.
I’m Googling around to try and find the meaning of the song, and not only is it hard to find, but on SongMeanings.net there are a million different interpretations.
OK, I have another one, although, like some others around here, I had to be told about it. I was talking to my wife about reading the movie spoiler for the recent star trek movie and the conversation about how Dr. McCoy got his nick name of bones* and she thought it was stupid. When I said that they never gave an explanation of his nick name in the original series she said that doctors use to be called sawbones and she figured that bones was just a shortening of that. I had never heard the term sawbones before to refer to a doctor, which is why I never got his nickname.
*After a divorce he said the only thing he had left to his name were his bones
Ha! Same here! Every time I would read that in the book I would picture Alan Rickman trying to sing that song. 
It wasn’t until just a couple of years ago (I’m 62) while hearing The Who’s “Momma’s Got A Squeezebox,” for the 10,000th time that the light came on for me. “Hey, this isn’t about a real musical instrument at all.”
Partial lyrics below for those as slow as myself, though there can’t be many.
'Cause she’s playing all night
And the music’s all right
Mama’s got a squeeze box
Daddy never sleeps at night
Well the kids don’t eat
And the dog can’t sleep
There’s no escape from the music
In the whole damn street
'Cause she’s playing all night
And the music’s all right
Mama’s got a squeeze box
Daddy never sleeps at night
She goes in and out and in and out and in and out and in and out
Please explain.
Rap…sure.