The West Wing, Sports Night and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip all used the episode title “What Kind of Day Has It Been” for the finale of their first season (in Studio 60’s case, it was also their series finale); this was but one of many, many examples of “self-plagarism” used by Aaron Sorkin over the years.
“You can’t handle the truth!” from A Few Good Men is an oft-quoted movie line.
You can’t handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
The Camino de Santiago, known in English as The Way of St. James, is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried. Today, it is traveled by tens of thousands of pilgrims every year.
It was depicted in an excellent film called The Way which is now available on DVD (which this poster highly recommends). The film stars Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, which ironically brings us full circle back to several posts ago, as Sheen also played the lead role in The West Wing.
Okay, I just added that to my Netflix list. Thanks.
One of my favorite movies, and also for Mrs. e7t, is The Dish. Netflix doesn’t have it, but Amazon has the DVD for $30. I recommend it.
(From Wikipedia) The Dish, starring Sam Neill, is a 2000 Australian film that tells the story of how the Parkes Observatory was used to relay the live television of man’s first steps on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. It was the top grossing film in Australia in 2000.
Sam Neill also starred in the 1999 film Bicentennial Man, with the lead role of Andrew Martin played by Robin Williams. Andrew was a robot who spent 200 years trying to be more human. It was loosely based off of a novella by Isaac Asimov.
In Isaac Asimov’s novella The Bicentennial Man, the World Court of Earth, considering the robot Andrew’s request to be legally freed and deemed a human being, ruled, “Freedom may not lawfully be withheld from any being capable of asking for it.”
The asteroid 5020 Asimov, a crater on the planet Mars, a Brooklyn elementary school and the Isaac Asimov literary award are all named in honor of Isaac Asimov.
Asimov was a lover of rhymes and also puns. One of his favourite limericks was:
[QUOTE=Isaac Asimov]
When Isaac’s at a nudist camp
He promptly joins the fun
For When in Rome 's his favourite quote,
As he tells everyone.
So when the signal’s given,
“All clothing you must doff”
Without a moment’s hesitation,
Isaac 'as 'em off.
[/QUOTE]
ETA: meant to say “verses” not “limericks”
“When in Rome” is a saying attributed to St. Ambrose.
(Which is the Catholic Church in my hometown, Latham NY!)
Ambrose Bierce was the tenth of thirteen children whose father gave all of them names beginning with the letter “A”. In order of birth, the Bierce siblings were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia.
Ariel’s sisters in the Disney movie The Little Mermaid all had names starting with A, as well: Attina, Alana, Adella, Aquata, Arista, and Andrina. Each is a year or so younger than the previous one, with Ariel being the youngest.
(Before you look at me askance, I googled on this one. I didn’t have their names memorized.)
Legendary record producer Clive Davis, former head of Arista records, had adopted a stretch of I-684 near Westchester County, NY – the one-mile section where the highway cuts into Connecticut.
Derek and Clive were comedic characters created by Dudley Moore (Derek) and Peter Cook (Clive) in the 1970s. Their performances were captured on the records “Derek and Clive (Live),” “Derek and Clive Come Again,” and “Derek and Clive Ad Nauseam,” and in a film documentary, Derek and Clive Get the Horn. Considered highly offensive by some, the sketches primarily took the form of bizarre, sometime drunken streams of consciousness led by Cook, with interjections from Moore.
Eric Clapton and Duane Allman were the most prominent members of Derek and the Dominos, a name hurriedly arrived at the day of the first public performance of the band that had heretofore been “Eric Clapton and Friends”. One version has it that the proposed name was either “Eric and the Dynamos” or “Del and the Dominos”, but the rest of the group misheard it. The group’s one hit, “Layla”, reached #10 on the US charts in its original form, and #12 twenty years later as a slow-tempo solo by Clapton.
A revamped version of Del Shannon’s 1961 hit “Runaway” served as the signature tune of the excellent* mid-80s TV series “Crime Story.”
*In its first year.
Al Gore, Democrat of Tennessee, briefly lost while afoot in a snowstorm during his 1988 Presidential campaign, was reported by a Newsweek reporter who was with him to have gleefully sung Del Shannon’s “Runaway.”
James Kim and his family got lost on a fire road in Oregon in a snowstorm.
The name of the Soviet space shuttle, Buran, is Russian for “snowstorm”. Although copied from the Rockwell shuttle, it did not include onboard booster engines. It completed one unmanned flight, as a proof of concept, before eventually being destroyed in a hangar collapse. The world’s largest airplane to fly multiple times, the Antonov An-225, was built to carry Buran and its planned sister spacecraft, and is still used today to fly large commercial payloads on charter.
Buran prototype OK-TVA was a testbed built to simulate the loads and stresses that would be encountered during flight. It was used for heating and static vibration tests, and is now an attraction at Moscow’s Gorky Park.