- In #32 Noël,
Leo tells Josh the following story (Josh refers to it when talking to Leo in "Bartlet for America"):
- "This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.
- "A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, 'Hey you. Can you help me out?' The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.
- "Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, 'Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?' The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on
- "Then a friend walks by, 'Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?' And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, 'Are you stupid? Now we're both down here.' The friend says, 'Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out.'"
- keywords: a man fell in a hole, a man falls into a hole
- Where does the title "Six Meetings Before Lunch come from?
- Chris Kelsey emailed us, "I figure they are not talking about an exact number of meetings. . . rather that the title is an echo of the line (Alice In Wonderland? originally and then paraphrased in 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy') about
believing/doing Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast."
- Shaun Parry writes "The title is paraphrasing Alice through the Looking Glass not Alice in Wonderland.
"Alice finds herself on a chess board, talking to the White Queen:
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one CAN'T believe
impossible things.'
"'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half- an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"
- Is George Washington's Rules of Civility (which Bartlet reads from in "Six Meetings Before Lunch") still in print?
 There are two editions in print:
George Washington's Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation (Little Books of Wisdom) is available in a red hardcover for $9.95.
Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace by George Washington, Richard Brookhiser, also in hardcover. Price=$12.57
And NPR has a nice article about the book.
It was a posting on the NPR article at Television Without Pity, that set us off to investigate whether the book was still in print.
- Where does the title "No Exit" come from?
- Standup posted this on the Television Without Pity West Wing forum,: "In Sartre's No Exit three people are locked in a room (Hell), and forced to discuss their sins in search of absolution, so it does to a point mirror Toby/Will and CJ/Donna."
- A summary on the Internet says, "Three damned souls... are brought to the same room in hell.... [One of them] refuses to believe that they all ended up in the room by accident and soon realizes that they have been placed together to make each other miserable...."
- Cornell University's website has an introduction to the play which says, "Jean-Paul Sartre's one-act play, No Exit, explores the idea of hell as a bare room holding only three people destined to drive each other crazy."
- The Internet Movie Database says of the play, "These three people don't know each other, and don't want to get to know each other [but they] quickly rumble that all three of them are dead... and that now they are in Hell. And [they] have been sentenced to eternal damnation in the form of being confined to this room, forced to keep each other's company for all eternity. The most famous line in 'No Exit', as rendered in most English translations, is the prisoners' final realisation: 'Hell is other people!'"
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Leo's Story & Other Stories and Writings
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