“Blind Date”

Not as far as I can tell. If anyone wants to take a run at a bear and give me a definitive answer on this one I’ll post it here and give you credit.

An updated riff on the classic gripe of someone finishing the crossword puzzle in the paper. Sudoku was popularized in Japan in the 1980′s and is a widely played game where you fill numbers in on a grid to completion. Sudoku is an abbreviated form of the Japanese phrase Sūji wa dokushin ni kagiru (数字は独身に限る), which can be translated as “the digits must be single” or “the digits are limited to one occurrence.” In Japanese,” dokushin” means an “unmarried person”, confirming my suspicion that Sudoku is the game of choice for the aspiring crazy cat lady.

Reiki was developed in 1922 by Japanese Buddhist Mikao Usui. Jack’s quite correct. Reiki practitioners aim to heal their patients through a technique called palm healing.

Tom DeLay was a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented Texas’s 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006, and was forced to step down, due to a number of scandals, on June 9, 2006 — a little over four months before this episode was aired. (yawn) Not much here. Although Dickipedia tells us Tom did go on to compete in the ninth season of Dancing With The Stars in 2009, making him the first national politician to appear on a reality show, and the first contestant to compete on a reality show while currently out on bail.

Green screen, or chroma keying, is a widely used technique where actors are filmed against a coloured (usually blue or green) background, that’s later removed in post-production and replaced with another scene, making it look like the actors are in a different location. You can see this in action a moment later as Tracy and Josh are superimposed on a ski hill.

Josh is wise. There ARE no poker games by these names. Crazy Seven is the name of a slot machine game, but probably a messed up reference to Crazy Eights, which IS a game. There’s nothing similar to Albuquerque Freak Out. And One Card Stud is a take off on Five or Seven Card Stud.

An opulent restaurant at One West 67th Street in Manhattan, which closed in 2009.

If Tracy has all four aces, he’s holding the best Four of a Kind hand in poker, beaten only by a Straight Flush.

Probably referring to Julia Robert’s prostitute-turned-socialite in the movie Pretty Woman.

Definitely not a real game. There are “wild card” poker games, the most popular being “deuces wild.” A wild card typically means it can take the place of any other card, however, the more wild cards you play with, the more chance is involved, removing some of the element of skill. Pretty sure there’s no such thing as a “jinx” card in poker, and only the criminally insane would make fives into twos.

Okay this sounds like it’s some sort of famous line they’ve lifted, but it’s 100% original 30 Rock writing. Nice work, kids. Nice work. It’s so damn good they should wrap a movie around that quote.

Liz Lemon is choking on one of the variety of Altoids mints that exist today, each nestled tastily in their tin containers. This particular curiously strong throat-blocker is classic peppermint, given away by the tin’s red edges. For the second time today, she gives herself the Heimlich maneuver to save herself. This time it works. The first time she had to use a chair. A chair!

“Cowboys” in poker refers to being dealt two Kings in your starting hand. Jack has three. Jack wins.

Rain Man was a movie with Dustin Hoffman who played Raymond, a character with autism. Raymond’s brother, played by Tom Cruise, at one point took him to Las Vegas to count cards in poker. Tracy’s implying both that Jack isn’t that smart, he just has some freakish savant ability with cards and that he’s possibly cheating at cards in some way.

Tracy appears to be holding the Ace of Clubs, 4 of Hearts, Queen of Spades, and the 7 of Spades. Not a good hand, especially seeing as that’s only four cards. This looks like a continuity error. When the camera is behind Tracy, you can see he’s only holding four cards, and two are facing him. When the camera is facing Tracy, we clearly see five cards, but only two are facing the camera.

I’ve always wondered where this expression came from. Apparently “pale” is an old English term for a sharpened stake driven into the ground, and also the name for a barrier around a fortification made of pales. So “beyond the pale” came to mean “beyond what is acceptable”.

Kenneth’s Royal Flush is the highest possible hand in poker. Kenneth Ellen wins.

Liz’s phys ed shirt reads “WHITE HAVEN H.S. PHYS. ED.” There is a White Haven, Pennsylvania, where Liz Lemon is said to have grown up. It’s too small to have a high school, but close enough to be less than two hours from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, where Tina Fey grew up. There is also a Whitehaven High School, but it’s in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m sure it’s supposed to be the other one.

General Electric actually DOES have a plastics division! Well, they did. They sold it to SABIC in 2007, a little over six months after this episode aired. In this case, SABIC is the lesbian.

General Electric acutally has a Water Process Technologies division, too. As far as I can tell, it has no official connection to lesbians.

Liz’s “bi-curious” shoes look suspiciously similar to Ellen’s shoes shown at the end of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In fact her entire foot looks suspiciously Ellen-like, who is a noted lesbian. NOTED.

Hmmm, another Ellen reference. Almost in the same breath. Strong correlation. Curiously strong.

Myers-Briggs has no “aggressive” category.

Jennifer Jason Leigh is an actress who, oddly enough, played a prostitute in the movie Miami Blues across from a sociopathic Alec Baldwin.

Jason Lee is an actor. A male actor.

Decidedly unflattering comparisons. Present day Linda Ronstadt: could be worse. Ruth Bader Ginsburg: damn! couldn’t be worse. Tootsie: ooo.. toss up.

NY1 is a 24-hour cable show focusing on the five boroughs of New York City.

“Neptune” probably refers to The Neptune Room, a Mediterranean-inspired seafood restaurant in the Upper West Side. It closed in December of 2008. So far being mentioned on 30 Rock is NOT a good thing. They may also mean The Neptune Diner, a Greek restaurant in Astoria. Considering Liz is supposed to live in central Manhattan, they probably meant the former.

Pittsfield is, in fact, the home of GE Plastics (now owned by SABIC-Innovative Plastics). That’s just awesome. I mean, there’s no need for the writers to keep dropping these obscure yet accurate references to General Electric. But they do.

“The curtain has been drawn back” may be a reference to The Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal The Great And Powerful Wizard of Oz as a fraud.

Gayle King is Oprah Winfrey’s BFF.

I can’t find any reference to “Neil” and Charlie Chaplin, except that Chaplin married a woman named Oona O’Neil, which is a massive Neil-coloured smokescreen on the internet. It’s like naming your child “The.” You want your child to have anonymity in the internet age? Name him “The.”

“Dennis” probably refers to Dennis Duffy, an ex-boyfriend of Liz’s, who is hilarious. You’ll see.

“Conan” probably refers to Conan O’Brien, a late night talk show host, who in, in fact, an avid guitarist. And is tall and gangly and red-haired.

Jack’s doing a fantastic impression of Dr. Hannibal Lector (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins), tormenting Clarice Starling (played by Jodie Foster) in the movie The The Silence of the Lambs, and although the words are different, the sentences are almost identical. Again, bravo writers!

And Stone Mountain, Georgia is a real place of around 8,000 people, and the birthplace of the second Klu Klux Klan. It’s also the birthplace of Donald Glover, one of the writers of 30 Rock, and the name was used because it sounded like a hick town. Curiously, Donald Glover isn’t listed as a writer on this episode.

There is debate over where this saying originated. Some claim Sun Tzu, the great and ancient Chinese military strategist said this, others attribute it to Machiavelli or Petrarch, but the first recorded use is actually in the The Godfather Part II by Michael Corleone.

Never winning war sounds about right, but mass producing a decent car? Are you kidding me?

Liz and Gretchen are back at the Cafe des Artistes, where they first met.

IKEA seeks to dominate the world with inexpensive and blandly attractive flat-pack furniture. I don’t hate them.

Margaret Cho is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and recording artist, and they were probably talking about seeing her stand up show at the Beacon Theatre.

The Amazing Race is a reality television show where two people who know each other well race around the world against other teams.

Stedman Graham is Oprah’s husband, well they never got married so… life partner? They had a “spiritual union”, so they’re.. dead? and mashed into a single ghost? I don’t know. They really like each other. That’s all you need to know to get the joke.