Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE)

Slightly off topic, but I have a playlist in iTunes of holiday music that I put together about eight years or so. While I don’t play it very often, it’s always sitting there, right near the top of my playlists, whenever I have iTunes open, which is most of the time my computer is on.

I just now realized, after seeing it almost daily for the better part of a decade, that the playlist is called Chirstmas Music.

I happened to watch part of Logan’s Run the other night and for the first time evar, I noticed a distinct pattern: Michael York plays Logan-5, Jenny Agutter plays Jessica-6 and Richard Jordan plays Francis-7.

The three characters are numbered 5, 6, 7. I have no idea what it means, but it can’t be a coincidence that the three main characters are in sequential order.

“King Herod’s Song” from Jesus Christ Superstar has the lyrics:

Prove to me that you’re divine, change my water into wine,

and later

Feed my household with my bread, you can do it on your head.

I only listened to it about a million times before someone hearing it for the first time brought up this “wine & bread” Holy Communion reference.

I’ve got to change my PIN number!

I dunno, it seems pretty obvious as a reference to Jesus’ reported miracles, along with “prove to me that you’re no fool / walk across my swimming pool.”

What’s really fun is to note that Herod’s Palace actually HAS a swimming pool!

“It was followed by Herod’s second palace constructed above its ruins. The new palace was built on an elevated artificial mound (the northern mound) in which the main building of the Hellenistic palaces were built, along with a large swimming pool, a garden, and a Roman bath.”

nm

The clue for two words in an acrostic puzzle I was solving a couple of days ago was “He tawt he taw a puddy tat”. My thought was “Tweety Bird”, because I mis-remembered that as being the toon’s name. My next thought was the long overdue realization that, considering the character’s way of pronouncing words, his name must actually be “Sweety Bird”. Then I felt like a total maroon when I realized the correct answer to the clue was “Tweety Pie”. How could I have not seen the connection in the 50+ years I’ve been aware of the character - even when “Precious Sweetiepie” is something I call my wife - and she’s enough of a fan of Tweety Pie that I had his image put on her birthday cake once?

I’ve never heard the character called Tweety Pie and I’m pretty sure his name is Tweety Bird.

Anyway, here’s a really stupid one. I was going through the stuff on Netflix Instant the other day and spotted the original Pokemon series (Indigo League). Somehow it never occurred to me that they called it Indigo League because it was based on the first two Pokemon games, Red and Blue (and, duh, that’s purple when mixed).

His name is simply Tweety. Tweety bird is occasionally given as his species, but it is certainly not his name. At least one short suggests his name was intended to be Sweetie Pie, but his actual canonical name is Tweety. (Sweetie Pie is the name of his Tiny Toons counterpart.) Tweety Pie is the name of a short featuring him.

In Animal House, the scene where Otter and his friends go to a girl’s college and he pretends to be the fiance of a dead girl named Fawn Leibowitz. He fools Fawn’s roommate into going out with him. He and his friends bring Fawn’s friends to the roadhouse where Otis Day & the Knights are playing, and then Otter pretends to be broken up and runs out to the car. Fawn’s roommate comes out to comfort him, and they start making out.

It took me years until I realized that Otter was pulling a scam. But it doesn’t stop there.

Later, Otter’s feeling her up and says “I used to touch Fawn this way.” She replies, “I know. She told me.” Otter looks confused, and it felt like there was supposed to be a pause for audience laughter, but I didn’t get the joke.

It took me a few more years until I realized she had caught on to his scam, but went along with it anyway.

Well, let’s just say that the acrostic puzzle creator must have thought it was Tweety Pie because that was the only answer that fit the clue.

My understanding of that scene was that she was so into him that she lied about Fawn telling her - not that she knew it was a scam.

Another Animal House one - there’s a scene at the beginning where Boone and Otter are talking about how Boone’s girlfriend doesn’t think he takes things seriously. Otter pulls out a medical bag and produces an enormous dildo and says “She’ll take this seriously.”

Later, as they’re going into the courtroom and being cheered on by other fraternity members, Otter holds up that same medical bag and smiles at them.

Presumed Innocent is one of my favorite courtroom dramas, which I’ve probably watched 100+ times since it came out. There’s a significant twist in the middle of the film, where Brian Dennehy’s character flips on Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford’s character), and testifies that he believes Sabich is guilty of murder, as well as distorting the truth about how the murder investigation progressed. His testimony always came across to me as the most heinous betrayal, and was always one of the most angering moments of the film.

However, on a recent viewing, it struck me – Dennehy’s character bought the story concocted by his rivals Molto & Della Guardia, hook line & sinker, that Sabich must be guilty of murder. Therefore, HE is the one who feels betrayed, by his co-worker and closest friend. As for distorting the truth? Well, it’s one of those psychological things, where a normal person’s brain makes shit up to fit what they perceive to be the truth. That revelation totally changed how that section of the film plays out for me, as well as heightening the drama and increasing the depth of the various character conflicts.

This was mentioned in another thread and it reminded me. I listened to “LA Woman” for a couple of decades but didn’t notice that Mr Mojo Risin is an anagram for Jim Morrison until somebody pointed it out.

I always thought it was weird for underwear to use anthropomorphic fruit as its brand. I never saw the connection between briefs and grapes.

Today, I had the epiphany that Fruit of the Loom is entirely metaphorical, as in “the fruits of his labor”, and simply refers to the woven product that comes from a loom. :smack:

Having grown up Catholic, I always heard it as a pun on the phrase “fruit of thy womb” from the Hail Mary.

Shortly after LA Woman was first released the story was that Jim used the anagram when correspondending with Doors office staffers.

As for Tweety, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweety lists his aliases as both Tweety and Tweety Bird along with his fictitious species, Tweety Bird.

Tweety Pie (1947) was Tweety’s first appearance. Perhaps that’s what the clue was pointing to.

And Tweety is a male, BTW.

Not only that, her maiden name was Phillips.

Earl’s friend is Roy Hess.

Earl’s boss is Bradley P. (B.P.) Richfield.