the fastest jack in jefferson county

Today was the last day I will watch Groundhog Day... this year. But, there’s always next year.

The weird thing—and I’ve got a theory to cover it—is I noticed something new just last night. Day 151 and I notice something new. At the banquet, two old ladies dancing together come up to Phil and Rita. He changed their tire earlier. And the exchange goes like this:

Old Lady: It’s that nice, young man from the motor club. Thank you again.
Phil: It’s nothing, ladies.
Old Lady: He’s the fastest jack in Jefferson County.

Then, the Old Lady does... for lack of a better description, a couple air kisses… Just look:

As Rita asks, “What was that all about?”, the other Old Lady glares at the first like she said something awful. At least that’s how I saw it before. It was only last night I noticed the kisses.

My theory is that, while I may not be in a time loop, I have fallen into some alternate universe that includes those kisses in the movie and they were not in there before. I was actually a little confused why the second Old Lady thought calling Phil “the fastest jack in Jefferson County” was so bad. But, it’s the first Old Lady suggesting Rita should kiss Phil that is bad.

And, I’ve been missing that all this time.

But, mistakes happen.

For example, just yesterday, I pointed out the recent naming error in calling both Day 125 and Day 146 “this is a restricted area.”

(Day 125 has been changed to “for you, miss?” But that will not change the address or any of my links.)

Now that I’ve got my corrected transcript for the film, I was going to print a copy and highlight each line I’d used as a title and mark the date and whatnot so I don’t repeat any other titles. But, before not making that mistake again, I had to be sure I hadn’t already made it before. And, I had to mark the lines I’d used (though I decided to do it in Word via comment bubbles). So, marking 151 lines today, while the film was playing, I noticed two more repeats and a handful of misquotes. Since this is New Year’s Eve, as I type this, I will make a resolution on behalf of The Groundhog Day Project: I will never again use a line for a title that I have used before, nor will I misquote any line for a title.

(That last bit will be based on my transcript, of course, so on a few lines, some people might differ on what was actually said, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.)

Anyway, on to the mistakes. Or, rather, the corrections:

One of my entries about love, Day 83 has had its title changed from “we made love like sea otters” to “is this what love is for you?” so as not to conflict with the more recent entry about 24 Dates of Christmas, Day 143.

My entry about the four sights of Buddha, Day 108 has had its title changed from “its hard down there at the bottom” to “and sees his shadow” so as not to conflict with the more recent entry about the old homeless man being called a wino, Day 140.

Those were the only two other repeats. But, there were also some misquotes or inadvertent typos that have now also been fixed. They were as follows:

Day 42 used to be simply called “you can freeze to death” but has been changed to match the proper line from the film, “you can go ahead and freeze to death.”

Day 50 used to have the wrong verb. Instead of “see, I knew you were gonna say that” I had “see, I knew you would say that.”

The Word file for Day 51 was fine, but in entering the title into Blogger, I put “I feel really weird” instead of “I really feel weird.”

Day 58, for some reason I inserted a parenthetical “will” to, I suppose, make Phil’s actual line—”probably be some accumulation”—sound better. I have changed it back.

Day 67 had “going out on a limb here” instead of “going out on a limb now.”

Day 88, I simply adjusted the punctuation. In the transcript, I have the line as “maybe read... Hustler or something” but for the title, I didn’t have the ellipses. This wouldn’t affect the address even if it had been there initially, so I really don’t even have to admit this one.

Day 103 I actually cannot believe I got wrong. I put the line as “I’m repeating the same day over and over again” instead of “I’m reliving the same day over and over.”

Day 122, I corrected to match the transcript. So, instead of “you totaled it” it is now “you’ve totaled it.”

Day 135 was another verb issue. I had it as “I have to do this report” and have corrected it to “I gotta go do this report.”

Day 139 has been corrected from “it led you here” to “it’s led you here.”

Today’s reason to repeat a day forever: to never make mistakes, even the first time through.