I just figured out the Seinfeld joke behind “The rines are crossed” instead of ‘lines’ in The Chinese Woman.
One Year Ago Today
This was the first Knicks game where Carmelo Anthony played. We played the Bucks, which was ironic since the last game that Carmelo played (as a Nugget) was also against the Bucks. I was so giddy with anticipation for this game and to see how Carmelo did, and thankfully we won.
Thoughts
I keep saying that although I’ve seen every episode of Seinfeld a million times, there are always new things I discover about each one. I watched The Chinese Woman episode (Season 6), and Jerry meets a woman who he assumes is Chinese. When he tried to call George he got this woman instead because the lines were crossed, and he found out her name was Donna Chang so he assumed she was Chinese. They met at a Chinese restaurant per her suggestion, where he discovered she’s just a blonde chick from Long Island. She always introduces herself as Donna Chang (family name is Changstein), she’s an acupuncturist, and she gave George’s mother some wisdom from Confucius.
So Jerry continues to date her (because she is a woman), and in the scene I mentioned in the title the two are talking in Jerry’s apartment. Donna Chang says, “It’s really getting ridicurous,” and Jerry pauses for a long time and tries to think if he really heard her pronounce that incorrectly. Then later in the episode he says “Because the rines are crossed,” and he gets caught saying that incorrectly too. I always wondered about all of that, and I figured the joke was that since the lines were crossed they were messing up their letters. But it wasn’t until I watched it this time and thought about it more that I realized they replaced the ‘L’ with an “R,” and I remembered that Asian people can’t pronounce “L’s” so they somehow say “R’s” instead (or at least that’s the stereotype). The final scene of A Christmas Story comes to mind, when the family is at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas because it’s the only place open, and all the cooks come out and sing “Deck the harrs with barrs of horry…” I’m glad I finally figured out the joke.
My Day
Last night I was in deep debate about whether to stay up until the early morning to clean the church or go to bed and try to get up in time to do it before the Knicks game. I decided that I should try and get some sleep, and although I slept the whole time the guys were working, bad sleep was better than no sleep. I got up right on schedule, which was just when the guys finished working.
I left the house right on time, then grabbed an SS and finally went to the bank to deposit some money. I always feel weird when I’m depositing a few hundred dollars because I feel like I’m doing something illegal (or acquired the money illegally), or that the teller thinks I’m doing something illegal. But this time I deposited a lot more than usual because I haven’t been to the bank in a while. I cleaned the church quickly, and I had just enough time to go to Wal Mart finally. The cost was just more than the cash I had, but my debit card wouldn’t work. I remembered that they changed my PIN number when I got a new card, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Thankfully I had my emergency money so I used that to avoid some embarrassing holdup.
One side note I guess I’ll make is that while out today I was stopped at a light, and I looked at the license ring of the car in front of me. It said something about “Sisters Shearin,” which I guess is a salon by two sisters (I assume it’s just two). The funny part is that when I went to the bank right afterward, I was reading the Shamrocks that had names of people and or businesses. Like the first one I read was the same company, so it’s crazy that for a company I’ve never heard of before, I heard about them twice in about five minutes.
The Knicks played the Heat in Miami, and it was a pretty good game. The Heat were all over Jeremy Lin, and they pretty much shut him down. The rest of the Knicks played pretty well, but the Heat’s defense was great and they outperformed. We stayed close for most of the game, but in the last quarter the Heat got a double-digit lead and they won by 14. But now we got a few days off for the All-Star break.
Then I watched Drive again before returning it to Netflix. I also watched the new Parenthood, then rewatched the Thursday night NBC shows. I missed the ones tonight, and since I haven’t rewatched them yet this worked out well. I played a little more Zelda finally, and I got engrossed in that so I’m not going to bed until 5am. I have to go into work an hour early tomorrow, so this extra hour is really a two-hour swing. Hopefully I can wake up in time to get ready for work, and be able to get in the shower if the guys are done by then. Thanks for reading, and “I don’t have wheels on my car. That’s one thing you should know about me.”
—Eric Del Medico
