This Twin Cities Public Television documentary, broadcast circa 1980, has a brief but kind-of-sexy Duluth moment. A clip from a Northland Ford commercial at the 12:12 mark of the video shows actors playing a Duluth couple standing in front of the Ford product chosen to represent the Zenith City — an LTD Country Squire station wagon with simulated woodgrain siding.
Twenty years ago today — March 30, 2002 — Jiminy Glick shared with Andy Richter his story of hanging out with O.J. Simpson in Duluth.
Jiminy Glick, of course, is a character played by comic actor Martin Short. The scene is from season 2, episode 6 of Primetime Glick, a series that aired on Comedy Central.
Episode 5 of Pam & Tommy, the biographical drama series about Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, mentions Duluth. The same Duluth joke comes up twice, and it’s also used as the title of the episode: “Uncle Jim and Aunt Susie in Duluth.” The episode premiered today on the streaming service Hulu.
The two scenes with the Duluth mentions are strung together in the video above. The setting for both scenes is the writer’s room for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 1995.
The episode of Jeopardy! that aired on Valentine’s Day ended with this clue: “At about 90,000 it’s the most populous U.S. city on North America’s biggest lake.” All three contestants failed to answer Duluth. Two answered Green Bay and one answered Minneapolis.
The fake internet court podcast Judge John Hodgman, where pressing issues are decided by Famous Minor Television Personality John Hodgman, Certified Judge, once again mentioned Duluth, this time at length in the concluding segment of its Great Lakes Beach report.
In the new Netflix series Colin in Black & White, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick serves as the narrator for his own story of growing up in California’s Central Valley with white adoptive parents. At the very beginning of the third episode, a modified version of a photograph taken at the 1920 lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie in Duluth is used as part of a montage explaining the concept of white privilege.
Twenty-eight minutes into episode 8 of the new CBS crime drama NCIS: Hawaii, characters start dropping the D-word. Before the 29-minute mark, Duluth is mentioned four times. It almost feels like the writers were peppering it in just for the sake of getting mentioned on the silly website in Duluth that catalogs such things.
Last night comedian Dusty Slay appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallen and at the end of his monologue launched into a story about a visit to the Great Lakes Aquarium. The story, which begins at the 3:15 mark in the clip above, concludes with Slay asking a “fish expert” at the aquarium whether fish sleep. To not spoil the punchline, let’s just say he gets a Yogi Berra-style response.
Slay does not mention the Great Lakes Aquarium by name, but as a story on Mix 108’s website notes, “he’s certainly not referencing World of Fish.”
The neo-noir film Lonely Hearts was released 15 years ago today — Oct. 21, 2006. In the clip above, John Travolta and James Gandolfini — as detectives Elmer Robinson and Charles Hilderbrandt, respectively — disregard a letter from “Meredith from Duluth.”
Have you heard about the gentleman out of Duluth who developed his own word processor? You should have heard about him seven years ago in episode 9 of the television drama Halt and Catch Fire.
The clip above features the Duluth mention, which aired on the AMC cable network on July 27, 2014.
The podcast Dark Air with Terry Carnation dropped a reference to Duluth in episode 9, titled “The Haunting of Emily’s Hair.”
Rainn Wilson plays the part of Terry Carnation, host of a fictional late-night AM radio talk show on the paranormal. In the episode he meets director Jason Reitman, who wants to make his screenplay, but ultimately Carnation ends up being “splooged in the face by the cynical abuse of shallow corrupt patriarchy that is show business.” You know, “like many a would-be ingénue fresh off the boat from Duluth, Minnesota.”
Calling all film buffs and trivia nerds: this quiz is for you! Test your knowledge of movies that name drop Duluth (a perusal of the PDD tag References to Duluth in Film/TV or Other Media might help you cheat study).
The next PDD quiz will review the month’s headlines; it will be published on Aug. 29. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Aug. 24.
Microsoft’s Flight Simulator came out on the Xbox last week and allows players to fly anywhere in the world, including Duluth. It combines information from Bing maps with an algorithm that builds 3D representations of the landscape, creating shapes and textures when data is missing or incomplete.
The video below shows a simulated flight over Park Point.
A caller identifying as “Jebadiah from Duluth, Minn.” made it onto the Aug. 4 episode of the podcast Yo, is this Racist? The show, hosted by Andrew Ti and Tawny Newsome, answers questions from listeners about whether given subjects are an example of racism or not.
In “Kiss Me Cat,” a 1953 Looney Tunes short from Warner Brothers, the burly bulldog Marc Antony helps the tiny cat Pussyfoot learn the art of catching mice. At the 4:50 mark, Duluth gets a mention.
