An Incomplete List of Pop-Culture References in How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog

I've been going through the manuscript for the book making up a list of glossary words (a frighteningly long list), and also noting miscellaneous pop-cultural references-- quotes, direct mentions, paraphrases, etc. I'm sure I've missed a few-- many of them occur in section titles, which my eyes tend to slide right over as I read (in the previous book, one section was titled "Clever Section Title Here" until distressingly late in the process)-- but for your amusement, here's what I have at the moment, in approximately the order in which they appear in the book:

  • Star Wars
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
  • George Carlin
  • The Music Man
  • Pardon the Interruption
  • Groucho Marx
  • Lewis Carroll
  • Tom Waits and/or Norah Jones
  • William Butler Yeats
  • The Rolling Stones
  • Crystal Gayle
  • Sherlock Holmes
  • The Triplets of Belleville
  • The Princess Bride
  • The Eagles
  • Trent Reznor and/or Johnny Cash
  • Neil Young
  • They Might Be Giants
  • Terry Pratchett
  • Elvis Costello
  • Sesame Street
  • Peter, Paul, and Mary

I suppose this list might provide some sort of insight into my psyche, but I'm not sure what beyond the fact that I have too many snippets of pop-song lyrics occupying neurons that might otherwise be used for something productive. I probably ought to offer some sort of prize to whoever can correctly identify all of these, but since nobody else has the full manuscript yet, I won't bother.

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