what are the chances...

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This entry will be brief. Today during my downtime on campus, I ended up taking a short nap (not entirely on purpose) when I meant to be a) working on this blog or b) studying for my midterm tonight. Even after I woke up, I ended up watching the Bill Nye / Ken Ham debate online instead of studying in depth. Still, midterm went smoothly. For today's entry, I just wanted to note separately a few coincidences.

The first one I have already mentioned. The girl who offered hot chocolate to those of us on the walking tour the second day, and who lives in "the piano teacher's house" is named Kate. The name I gave months ago to the "piano student" kicked out of that house: Kate/Katie.

The second coincidence is just me enjoying connections I am able to invent. See, Phil hangs out at the bowling alley with Gus and Ralph...

(A bit of an aside, this coming from Bob Hudgins on the Walking Tours. There were supposed to be bowling scenes. Phil was supposed to start out as not that great a bowler then eventually we'd see him bowl a perfect game. One of the deleted scenes on the blu-ray (which I only just watched last night--and I must thank Bob Hudgins for that, as he mentioned the deleted scenes on the tour. I hadn't even noticed they were on the menu, the way the special features section is set up, I thought it just had the same things as the DVD) is the end of Phil's perfect game and Gus and Ralph are, indeed, there watching. Anyway, the bowling alley also became the location for the bar scene for a very basic l reason: it had "a horseshoe bar." The bowling scenes and bar scene were supposed to be separate things, but the local bowling alley--Wayne's Lanes--has the kind of bar they wanted. And then, for whatever reason, the bowling scenes didn't survive and instead we get a bar scene inexplicably in a bowling alley, and it's a classic scene.

A sidenote: Because they've got a big flatscreen TV at the north end of the bar now, you can't really sit where Phil and Gus and Ralph sat anymore. But, I got a photo from that angle (coming later with all the rest of the photos).)

The coincidence comes down to numbers mostly. Phil hangs out in the bowling alley with Gus (three letters, starts with G-U) and Ralph (five letters, second one's an A). Saturday morning I bowled with Guy (three letters, starts with G-U) and his grandson David (five letters, second one's an A). Unless there was a Gus and a Ralph somewhere in Woodstock who wanted to bowl, I'd say I got a good set of bowling partners.

The last one is a simple one: Phil dresses as none other than Clint Eastwood for his date with Laraine (that's the French Maid costumed girl's name in the second revision of the screenplay for you new arrivals to the project). And, while in Woodstock, I stayed on none other than Eastwood Dr.

And, speaking of the minor characters names and deleted scenes--and expect more on the deleted scenes at a later date--I wonder why the Old Man had a different name in the deleted scene (Jedson, I think the guy says) than in the script (O'Reilly). I choose now to assume his name is Jedson O'Reilly. I will still refer to him as O'Reilly, for the sake of consistency.

Today's reason to repeat a day forever: to catalog all coincidences and do my best to manufacture many more than occur naturally.

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