Title: Paris is Burning

Finally, a title that has another meaning (or two!). I was over the expositional titles. While the title obviously refers to Paris turning into a mondo bitch and telling all of Chilton about Max and Lorelai, there are a couple other references buried here. Paris is Burning was a 1990 documentary about a community of drag queens living in NY. It could also be a reference to the phrase “fiddle while Rome burns”, which means to do something trivial or irresponsible during an emergency.  The phrase comes from the myth that the Roman emperor Nero played his violin during the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD.

Summary: Max makes Osso Buco. Lorelai tries Proust. The Girls go ice skating. Lorelai is getting attached so she cha-chas away. Paris is burning so she spreads the flame. Lorelai and Max get caught kissing at Chilton, Emily finds out. Sookie finally asks Jackson out.

LORELAI: Look, I know it was bad, but this was a vicious hamster. This was like a Damien hamster with little beady eyes and a big forked tail and…a cape with a…hood.

Damien is the antichrist and the main character of The Omen film franchise. He was “adopted” at the hospital by Katherine and Robert Thorn after their child died and Damien’s mother died in childbirth. Robert keeps the baby swap hidden from his wife but when Damien starts freaking everyone out she starts to figure it out. His nanny hangs herself at his 5th birthday, Damien throws a violent fit when entering a church, and all the animals are scared of him at the zoo. Odd. Signs your child is the antichrist? Just possibly. The story gets freakier from there.

The original 1976 film was four more movies and two tv shows. So there is no shortage of Damien content to watch if that’s your sort of thing.

LORELAI: I love the little sombrero napkin holders, very ole.

Obviously, she’s referring to the Spanish word “olé”, an expression of encouragement or excitement. But the word has an interesting history. It became popular as an interjection in bullfighting, and then even more popular as a chant in soccer and rugby internationally. The chant is used in such a variety of sports and teams from the 2019 Toronto Raptors, the Cleveland Indians, the Argentinian tennis player Juan Martin del Potro, the Belgian World Cup team, and WWE Raw. Interestingly, it was first heard in American pop culture on I Love Lucy when Ricky Ricardo, a.k.a. Desi Arnaz used it in one of his songs.

LORELAI: What can I say – watching someone work makes me hungry. If I hadn’t stopped watching This Old House I’d be 500 lbs right now.

This Old House is one of the original home improvement shows, predating HGTV by quite a few years. I’m sure many of the popular house flipping and renovation shows would never exist if This Old House didn’t come first. Each episode focused on the renovation of an older, modest home over several weeks, but the houses became more luxurious as the series progressed. Bob Vila was the host from 1979 to 1989, who became quite a cult hero himself. Tim Allen’s character and show Tool-Time from Home Improvement is based on Bob Vila, who even made a few cameos on the show. The show still airs weekly on PBS.

 

LORELAI: Hm, I never read Proust, I always wanted to. Every now and then, I’m seized with an overwhelming urge to say something like “As Marcel Proust would say..” but of course I have no idea what Marcel Proust would say so I don’t even go there. I could do, uh, “As Micheal Crichton would say..” but it’s not exactly the same you know.

Marcel Proust, or Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust for those of you not into that whole “brevity” thing, was a French author most well known for his book In Search of Lost Time, explained below. He’s considered one of the greatest and most influential writers of the 20th century. Being able to quote Proust at will would be a great feat indeed.

Michael Crichton was a popular fiction writer, possibly known best for his Jurassic Park novels that inspired the movies franchise. He wrote 28 novels, 4 nonfiction, and writer and/or director for 12 movies including Jurassic Park, Twister, and Westworld.  He passed away in 2008.

LORELAI: Yeah well…Hey, he loaned me a book. RORY: What book? LORELAI: Swann’s Way. RORY: Aren’t we ambitious.

Swann’s Way is the first volume of Proust’s most revered work – a 3,200-page, seven-volume tome titled In Search of Lost Time. In french, its title is Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu and sometimes translated to Remembrance of Things Past. The novel includes a stunning 2,000 characters and follows the narrator from childhood to adulthood. The novel is praised for its handling of themes such as the passing of time and memory, especially involuntary memory – the thing that happens when you hear a song you haven’t heard in a while and it immediately takes you back to a time or place you had forgotten. Proust uses an experience with a madeleine cookie dipped in tea to first show involuntary memory in Swann’s Way. Many critics consider In Search of Lost Time to be the definitive modern novel, especially because it was such a break from the typical plot-driven novels of his time.

LOUISE: Dumb girls crave smart men. It’s that whole Marilyn Monroe – Arthur Miller syndrome.

I would argue it’s more likely men who think they are smart desire being around women who they perceive to lack intelligence because it makes them feel superior. But what do I know? Marilyn Monroe married playwright Arthur Miller in 1956, 5 years after they had an affair while he was married to his first wife. Monroe was growing frustrated with Hollywood and wanted a quiet life in the country. She had also never had any true family of her own and was happy to join Miller’s family, even converting to Judaism. She was well-liked by his two children and by his parents, and it seemed the two were a perfect fit. But their relationship began to fall apart in 1960 when she starred in a movie he wrote, The Misfits. She was becoming increasingly addicted to sleeping pills and uppers, arriving late for filming and forgetting her lines. They divorced in 1961 and Miller married again soon after. Monroe died the next year, a true tragedy.

In Season 5, Episode 12, Miss Celine claims to have dressed Marilyn Monroe for her wedding to Arthur Miller. She claims she told her “Marilyn! Wear a flat hat on your head. It will remind him of a book.”

MAX: And you’ll call me… RORY: Norman? MAX: Norman? MAX: I look like a Norman to you? RORY: I’m sorry, Psycho was on earlier and it was just the first name that came to mind.

Norman Bates is the creepy mother-obsessed antagonist of the classic horror movie Psycho. I won’t ruin the twist in this story for you, but it’s worth a watch if you can stomach the jumpy frights. Pyscho was directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock, and the shower stabbing scene is one of the most famous in all of cinema. The film was controversial for its use of violence and sex, a marker of change in the Production Code (basically censorship) that had ruled over Hollywood until the 60s. Psycho was the first movie to show a flushing toilet and the opening scene of unmarried lovers in bed together (with her bra showing no less!) was very taboo. Norman’s gender performance was also very controversial at the time, but I don’t want to give too much of the plot away.

The franchise includes three sequels, a television movie, and a recent series titled Bates Motel on A&E. Norman lives on, apparently.

LORELAI: Rory and I have a skating date. RORY: I’m Nancy Kerrigan. LORELAI: And I’m Tonya Harding. I’m gonna do the whole shoelace coming untied – nervous break – let me start again act and everything.

One of the best sports rivalries/dramas, IMO. Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding were Olympic ice skaters in the 90s who were opposites in all sense of the word. Kerrigan grew up in a middle-class family of five in Massachusetts and was praised form her youth for her skating ability. Harding was raised by a single mother in Portland, OR where she devoted almost all of her time to training, eventually dropping out of school.

Kerrigan and Harding became rivals in the 1991 season when Harding took first in the US Championships after landing her triple Axel (the first American women to do so in competition), with Kerrigan taking third. The rivalry came to a head in January 1994 when Kerrigan was attacked by men hired by Harding’s ex-husband at the 1994 US Championships in Detroit. Kerrigan was whacked with a police baton at her knee, meant to break her leg but it was just severely bruised. Kerrigan had to withdraw from the US Championships but was still able to compete in the Olympics in February. Harding went on to win the US Championships and secured her place on the Olympic team.

In Lillehammer for the Games, Kerrigan had one of the best performances of her career, winning Olympic Silver. Harding was originally assumed innocent and pledged that she had nothing to do with the attack. She was allowed to compete in the Olympics after threatening legal action, but the media circus had taken a toll on her. Her practices were attended by hundreds of spectators in her hometown, and reporters were following her everywhere. At the beginning of her Long Program, she abruptly stopped and went over to the judges crying that her skate laces had broken. They let her have a re-do while she repaired her laces. It didn’t matter though, she finished 8th overall. Just a few months later, she pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to hinder a prosecution” and was later indicted on charges that she participated in the assault plot and paid for it with USFSA money. Yikes!

There’s more to the Tonya Harding story but for now, watch her freak out over the broken skate lace (it gets good at minute 2:30):

SOOKIE: (singing) Livin’ la Vida Loca. LORELAI: Sookie. SOOKIE: Shake your bon-bon, shake your bon-bon. LORELAI: Hey, you will not stand there singing Ricky Martin songs to me.

Ricky Martin was having a bit of a moment in 2000 when this episode premiered. The “King of Latin Pop” started his career at age 12 with the popular group Menudo, but it was his 1999 self-titled album that shot him to stardom in the US. It’s one of the best-selling albums of all-time and his single Livin’ la Vida Loca from the album was #1 on Billboard for five weeks. He helped pave the way for other Latin singers like Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony, and Shakira. Plus he is a total babe! He kept his romantic relationships private for many years, eventually coming out as gay in 2010. He married Jwan Josef in 2018 and the couple welcomed a daughter in December of 2018. Martin also has 11-year-old twin boys, via a surrogate.

RORY: Well, it’s not the Rich James incident, but Hugh Grant should be feeling pretty good about himself.

The transcript of this episode says “Rich James” here but I think it should be Rick James, who really had some controversy in his life. Rick James was a popular singer-songwriter in the rock/funk genres known for song like “Superfreak” and “Give It To Me Baby”. But he was a bad boy with lots of issues. His persistent hard drug use caused multiple health problems and he spiraled out of control in the 80s and 90s. He and his wife held a 24-year-old girl hostage for like a week, tying her up, forcing her to perform sex acts, and burning her with a crack pipe while on a serious cocaine binge. While out on bail for this heinous crime, James kidnapped a music executive after the two were supposed to meet for a business meeting and beat her for 20 hours. He spent a few years at Folson Prison (of Johnny Cash fame) but died in 2004 of a heart attack. The autopsy discovered he had 9 prescription and street drugs in his system at the time.

In comparison, Hugh Grant’s controversy is much tamer. In June 1995, Grant was arrested in Los Angeles in a sting operation while he was receiving oral sex from prostitute Divine Brown. He was fined $1,180 and put on probation. But Grant never really made any excuses for his behavior, a refreshingly honest approach. He was quoted on Jay Leno saying “I think you know in life what’s a good thing to do and what’s a bad thing, and I did a bad thing. And there you have it.”

Hugh Grant and Divine Brown pop up again on Gilmore Girls in Season 5, Episode 9. A hormonal and pregnant Sookie is inconsolable after reading an old People Magazine with an article about Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley’s break-up, caused by his prostitution arrest.

LORELAI: Really? Like a normal hello? Not like a ‘Here’s Johnny‘ kind of hello?

An obvious The Shining reference. As Jack Nicholson’s character Jack Torrance is becoming increasingly unhinged in the 1980 film, he hacks down a door with an ax to reach his wife and son who are hiding from him. He yells “Here’s Johnny” with a menacing tone and expression on his face, haunting many viewer’s nightmares I’m sure. The “Here’s Johnny” quote is listed on many top movie moments/quotes lists.

LORELAI: Wow, you’re the new ‘Heather‘

The Heathers is a dark comedy film from 1988 starring Winona Ryder as Veronica Sawyer, the only non-Heather named girl in a high school clique. The Heathers are mean, vindictive popular girls and Veronica is sick of her friends’ behavior. She wants to leave the clique to rejoin her “nerdy” friends, especially after one of The Heathers tries to force her to have sex with a frat guy at a party. Veronica joins forces with a new kid J.D. who helps her kill the Heathers but frame the murders as suicides. This inspires other “copy-cat” suicide attempts by kids trying to be like The Heathers. J.D. becomes obsessed with killing all the popular kids and plans to bomb a pep rally. Veronica stops J.D. to the cheers of the school, but he blows himself up anyway. The surviving Heathers concede to Veronica as she joins her “nerdy” friends. The movie may not have been a box office success, but it became a cult classic and was adapted for TV and for Broadway. It also shot Winona Ryder to stardom, giving us the hero we didn’t know we needed.

RORY: Oscar! LORELAI: Felix!

The Odd Couple‘s Oscar and Felix are pretty much Rory and Lorelai. The Odd Couple was a tv series from 1970 to 1975 with Tony Randall as Felix Unger and Jack Klugman as Oscar Madison. The two men are divorced and decide to share a Manhattan apartment but they are complete opposites. Oscar is the messy, irresponsible one while Felix is orderly and thoughtful. It was originally a play, then a film, before becoming a popular sitcom. The show made regular use of celebrity cameos including Howard Cosell, Dick Clark, Hugh Hefner, and Betty White. The 2015 remake for TV starred Matthew Perry as Oscar and Thomas Lennon as Felix.

MAX: In fact, I want as little space as possible. 100 clowns crammed into a Volkswagen. That’s the kind of non-space I’m talking about.

Seemingly endless clowns pouring out of a small car is a classic circus joke and tv trope. When performing the “trick” in a live circus, the car usually has been stripped of all internal linings, seats, mechanics, etc. and then stuffed with as many clowns as possible. No trap doors are used – it’s a real car according to real clowns. There are several reports and calculations for the number of clowns that can fit in a car, but it’s usually about 14. The Guinness World Record for the number of people stuffed into a VW Beetle is 20. The clown car trope is also used in many cartoons but with an impossible number of clowns, due to the magic of animation and the suspension of real physics.