Why: Joel at 2Pz posted this picture of James Franco (yesterday, pre-Oscars) with his cats Sammy and Zelda,
and then I got to reading about how James and his brothers all love kitties, and then I read this sentence,
With his memorable roles in Superbad and a regular gig on TV's Scrubs, Dave been making a name for himself in Hollywood, with very little help from his superstar older brother.
which I thought was weird because I've seen that movie like 14 times in 2011 alone.
Answer: "Greg the Soccer Player"! Is that one of the guys at the party?
Why: Lucy Lawless is credited in this episode of "Veronica Mars." Chandler was all, "Yes! I love Lucy Lawless!" (and then we talked about "Battlestar Galactica"). When she appeared on screen, this happened:
ME: Whenever she's in anything, I'm sort of always aware that she's a famous person. CHAN: Who? Who is that? ME: Lucy Lawless. CHAN: WHAT! She's blonde! Why does she look like that! ME: Anyway, she always plays bitchy aggressive characters. She can't just blend. CHAN: Have you ever seen "Fajita Roundup"? ME: No, I don't know what that is. CHAN: WHAT! Google it right now!
But - full disclosure - after 2 more lines of dialogue, I remembered that I had, in fact, seen it. It's an SNL skit about Stevie Nicks.
Answer: By The Lonely Island, and that's Julian Casablancas (of The Strokes, who still exist). Everyone was wearing fingerless gloves: Source: Hulu The More You Know: The 3 guys in The Lonely Island (TLI) are Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone (the cute little one), and Akiva Schaffer. They started doing comedy skits in junior high in Berkeley, CA. They created MacGruber, and Taccone directs all of those sketches and is directing the movie (due out May 21).
Why: On the SNL sketch "New Car Horns (by Tina Tina)," the old-timey horns goes, "Aawoooga, jalopy. What?" Answer: It's just an old-ass car! Theories of origin:
from the Yiddish word shlappe, a term for an old horse (actually Polish)
from the French word chaloupe, a kind of skiff - which is a boat, not a car
from the Italian-American pronunciation of "jelly apple" - the jell-oppy, "one of the decrepit old carts from which Italian immigrants sold this delicacy during the early part of the 20th century..."
from Spanish galapago, i.e. one of those big slow tortoises (galapago means "saddle," btw)
And this:
A theory is that it is derived from a non-Spanish pronunciation of Jalapa, Mexico. It seems that, during the 1920s, many decrepit automobiles were shipped from New Orleans to scrapyards in Jalapa. The theory is that some of the dockhands or crew members who did not speak English began naming these broken-down autos after their destination, and the name eventually morphed into our current jalopy.
Other words for shitty cars: flivver (1910), heap, tin lizzy (1915), crate (1927), bucket, beater, hooptie (1990), and clunker (2009).
