Four Horsemen of the Apopcalypse – Pop culture references in The Colbert Report: March 30-April 2, 2009

Welcome to No Fact Zone’s weekly roundup of cultural references on The Colbert Report. From Darcy to Dangermouse, String Theory to Shakespeare, we’ve got the keys to this week’s obscure, oddball, and occasionally obscene cultural shout-outs (hey!).

Hey Zoners!  I was out of town last week, but when I saw clips from the Glenn Beck segment on CNN airport TV, I knew I was in for a good time catching up!  Our apopcalyptic tidbits this week range from highbrow literature to lowbrow scatological humor – you can’t deny our Report writers have range!  Be sure to post your own favorite bits in the comments.

Monday: Intro & Space Module: Colbert

“My guest is Derrick Pitts is an expert on Galileo.  My first question: Scaramouche, scaramouche will you do the fandango?”

And yes, I’m aware that by printing that quote I’ve just instilled a pernicious ear-worm in thousands of heads.  My apologies.  Stephen is quoting from Queen’s 1975 song Bohemian Rhapsody, an epic hard-rock-opera-melodrama hybrid full of opaque lyrics and a fair number of falsetto cries of “Galileo!”.  For those of you who prefer your references 1990′s style, there’s also the rockin’ head banging car trip from the film Wayne’s World.

“How do you answer charges that Bill Cosby is from Philadelphia? Translate something for me : Reezum hazzum razzum frozum… But off camera [he] told me it involves doing something with pudding pops that I cannot repeat.”

Oh, the hours I spent as a kid listening to Bill Cosby records.  A comedian who came up in the early 1960′s, Cosby is often caricatured as speaking in jazzy mumbles (for example, SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy). In the 1980′s he was known for the popular TV program The Cosby Show, and for endorsing Jell-O Pudding Pops.  His early routines are simply classic.  Try : Noah! (Pts 1,2, & 3) or Brain Damage.  Bill Cosby is a very funny fellow, right!

Tuesday:  Intro & The 10.31 Project

“Glenn Beck embarks on new crusade.  This is your last warning, windmills!”

Glenn Beck, the Don Quixote of our age?  Don Quixote is the central character of Miguel de Cervantes’ classic 1605 novel El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (more commonly known simply as Don Quixote).  Obsessed with tales of knighthood and chivalry, Don Quixote lives in a self-made fantasy world of imagined heroes and villains, where innkeepers are great lords and windmills are terrible giants to be fought (the origin of the phrase “tilting at windmills”).  His delusions are mercilessly ridiculed, and Don Quixote eventually dies a sane but broken man.

“It’s organized around 10 principles, 31 flavors, 4 seasons, 10 lords-a-leaping, and 525,600 minutes.  I’m sorry, I just love my country, and I love the musical Rent.”

Wow, ice cream, planetary motion, Christmas carols, and Broadway musicals all in one formula – that’s some complicated math!  525,600 is the number of minutes in a normal calendar year of 365 days, but in this case it’s also a reference to the song “Seasons of Love”, from the hit musical Rent.  The show tells the story of a group of young people living the bohemian life in 1980′s New York City, in the midst of the AIDS crisis.  Widely acclaimed by critics and (particularly young) audiences, Rent ran on Broadway from 1996 to 2008, and spawned numerous touring productions, a soundtrack, and a film.

Wednesday: Cheating Death

“These dirty cameras are the most disgraceful thing to come out of a military colon since Powell’s testimony at the UN.”

That would be former Secretary of State General Colin Powell, pictured holding up a chemical vial suggesting anthrax, in his address to the United Nations Security Council on February 3, 2003.  Powell was making the Bush administration’s case that Iraq was manufacturing biological weapons of mass destruction, a case built on evidence
subsequently known to be unsubstantiated and false, but which eventually led to the US and allied invasion of Iraq later that year.

Thursday: Cold War Update

“I want the old progress – where they go bankrupt and we watch new episodes of Cheers.  I think Sam’s gonna kiss Diane.  It’s gonna happen this year.”

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.  Cheers, the fictional Boston bar, was the setting for the popular sitcom which ran from 1982-1993.  A recurring theme of the show was the unfulfilled sexual tension between bartender Sam (played by Ted Danson) and waitress Diane (played by Shelley Long).  Blame Cheers if you’re tired of the ubiquitous “will-they-or-won’t they?” plot line!

“Mr. Medvedev, flush down this log!”

A distinctly lowbrow callback to President Ronald Reagan’s landmark June 12, 1987 speech at the Berlin Wall, in which he called for an end to Communism and the Cold War:

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”