Specialized Mainstream Mahoney

I love random connections that don't have any meaning for anyone but me. A River Runs Through It is one of my favorite movies, not only because it has some people I like in it (Brenda Blethyn, Emily Lloyd, and a before-he-was-too-famous-for-his-britches Brad Pitt), but it is one of the two movies that made me fall in love with Montana. (The other is Lonesome Dove.) So there is this scene in the movie when Norman is trying to hit on Jessie at the 4th of July Party, and they are talking about the band, and Norman makes some kind of crack about the Clicquot Club Eskimos, and Jessie gives him a withering look and says, "My mother loves the Clicquot Club Eskimos!" Well for years and years I never knew if that was a real musical group or what. And then a couple of months ago while watching Northern Exposure, I noticed the poster hanging on the back of Dr. Joel's door: A Clicquot Club eskimo! What's this?! Well, of course I had to do some research, and it turned out that Clicquot Club was a company that produced ginger ale (and I guess other beverages), and the company was bought out by Canada Dry in 1965. "Clicquot" was the fictional name of the Eskimo boy that was pictured on the bottle and in the their advertising. And the Clicquot Club Eskimos were a jazz band that had weekly radio broadcasts during the 20s and 30s that were sponsored by Clicquot Club Beverages. Random!

And speaking of weird connections, I just found out that an acquaintace who recently moved back east now lives on a street called Barley Mow. Hello! That might not mean anything to anyone else, but it sure means a lot to me, who danced many a jig in my friend's living room, back in the day, while playing her parents' records. I can hear the Irish Rovers in my head now: "Here's good luck to the barley, good luck to the barley mow. Jolly good luck to the barley, good luck to the barley mow...." Oh man, we loved that one! And as usual, after looking it up on the internet, I discovered there are all kinds of things I didn't know about:

The Barley Mow pub in south Wales
and in Derbyshire
and in London
"Barley Mow" is a drinking song

And here's an explanation about the word nipperkin.