You might think I'm crazy, Flying W's, Wonder Woman, and The Rock

Last Saturday morning when I woke up, the song You Might Think, by The Cars, was playing in my head.  I actually couldn't get enough of the song, so it was just looping in my head for the rest of the day, and I was singing it quite a lot as well.  Just all day.

Here is the song and music video.  The Empire State Building does feature in it (as part of a King Kong-esque scene), but not sure anything really stuck out to me visually beyond that:

It turns out, though, that this song is connected to another theme that has come up lately, which is the Disney movie Cars, with Lightning McQueen.  I guess it makes sense to have a song by The Cars in a movie called Cars (the song was in Cars 2, specifically).  Recall that The Cars also have a special place on this blog due to the line "Good times to roll!", and the associated song "Good Times Roll" I included here back in the early fall.

Strangely, though, it was not The Cars that sang You Might Think in the Cars 2 movie.  The band Weezer did a cover of the song, and it was this version that was included..

The Flying W

I don't know much about Weezer, though I have heard few of their songs like "Island in the Sun" (which was popular when I was in college).  In looking them up, I ran across their band logo, which is this:

When I saw it, I thought that it looked like a W with wings.  It turns out, that is exactly what it is.  It is literally called the Flying W, so everybody else, including the band, must also think this looks like a W with wings, and is likely what it was intended to be.

A W with wings connects with our Willy Wonka theme, and of a Being rising up with some wings at some point (per Jesus' inclusion of the words of Malachi in his discussion to those at Bountiful) and helping to bring hopefully a whole lot of people to safe and holy places.

So, when I saw a W with wings, this seemed to make sense to me in that usual strange way.  Add on the fact that I associate Cars in general with Stones, that the other The Cars song was tied directly to the Sawtooth Stone, and the song that led me to this symbol is strongly associated with Cars in multiple ways (being originally recorded by a band named The Cars, and then for good measure, covered by this Flying W band and included in the movie Cars 2), and I think I got the picture.

In searching this logo, for some reason one of the first search results was a Reddit thread titled "The Weezer logo ruins my social life".  I clicked on it.  In the initial post, the individual makes a reference to how the Weezer logo looks very similar to the Wonder Woman logo, so much so that people think his Weezer merch is for Wonder Woman.

The first reply, no joke, is about keys (right?!), and how this guy feels the poster's pain because he once lost his set of keys that were on a Weezer keychain.  Someone found them, held them up, and asked who lost their set of Wonder Woman keys, which the guy was forced to go up and publicly retrieve, to his shame.

This reply was followed by a commenter saying that he has been asked if it is a WWF (Wrestling - now known as WWE).  I will get to the WWE comment later, because that was also relevant based on an experience earlier in the week with The Rock and WWE SmackDown (why not?), but I will first focus on the Wonder Woman comment.

Before I do, here is a screenshot of those first comments for reference:

Wonder Woman

When I read that, I thought that it is true - Weezer's Flying W does look a lot like the Wonder Woman logo.  Here her logo is:

Very similar if you take out the shield imagery behind the lettering (there are logos with just the Ws, but I liked the shield version).  The biggest difference is that due to the name Wonder Woman, with two W's, vs. Weezer, who just has claim to one, her logo then obviously has two W's nested with each other to form the larger W shape with wings.

Seemed to fit still with Willy Wonka in our analogy here, with more flying W's.  But, this is a logo for a female superhero, so what gives?

In my post "Willy Wonka's other half", I mentioned that the Willy Wonka office with everything cut in half was meant to represent his missing half, or wife.  Recall that in my story, Faramir and Eowyn have separated due to different jobs that needed doing.  Also, I think it possible that Eowyn may have flown away from this world at the beginning of the 4th age.  This would have happened in Ithilien, and likely as a result of something happening with the Stones (per my dream of the car).

Thus, my imagination basically took me to look at this symbol as Eowyn's symbol, rightly or wrongly.  Willy Wonka-Faramir's other half.   

One story detail for both Eowyn and Wonder Woman might not make this so far-fetched, or at least makes for an interesting connection in their characters.  Combined with some more name games, the connection seemed at least plausible, and if nothing else, it was a fun little thought exercise or game.

When first envisioned, Tolkien called Eowyn specifically "Amazon".  His notes state that originally she was a 'stern amazon woman', and also said that she rode into battle at Minas Tirith as an openly powerful female warrior ("Eowyn goes as Amazon").  That of course was changed for the final draft of LOTR, where Eowyn instead rode disguised as a man.

Amazons, by they way, as mentioned here are likely a reference to the Amazons of Greek mythology.  Amazons were all women warriors and hunters who were considered equal to men in skill, physical capabilities, etc.

Wonder Woman's history, as it turn out, is also specifically linked to Amazons, which in this case were a group of immortal superhuman women living on a place called Paradise Island.

In terms of names, Wonder Woman's actual name is Diana.  In mythology, Diana is a Roman goddess, who is also identified with the Greek goddess Artemis.  Of specific interest for us, is that Artemis is strongly connected to the Moon, being one of the things she is a goddess of.  NASA's current moon exploration program, for instance, is called Artemis (the current plan is for Artemis II to circle the moon in the fall of 2025, and Artemis III to land people there in 2026).

Eowyn is also strongly attached to the moon in her own case, due to Ithil Stone (Moon Stone) and the land of Ithilien where she lived with Faramir (Land of the Moon).  This attachment, though, also extends through her character of Izilba (Deseret) in Words of the Faithful.  In that story, her communication through a stone she possessed at the time with other Beings was conducted only during certain phases of the moon (in this case, during its waning).  Further, while there is no "Izil" (the first part of her name) in Eldamo, there is "Isil" (phonetically identical), which means "Moon". Actually, "sheen" as well, so you have something like Moonshine.  A new moon shining?  Potentially a link or play on words as well to a drink?

There are other similar story elements, and even some fun name games.  For example, going back to Diana, in Elvish it can read something like Di-ana, giving us "Woman/bride toward or alongside", which in my story is what Faramir will ultimately do on his journey, so that works, I guess.  Artemis can sound out like "Art-amis" which cleanly translates to  something like "Alongside/ beside mother", which could make sense in the same way that Di-ana did, but not we have her called mother (perhaps as part of her position as a mother of the Family of Light).  Additionally, you can interpret Art-amis as "Exalted Mother", and I like this interpretation also.  I have indicated that Jesus said his servant (potentially Faramir in this case) will be 'exalted and extolled and be very high'.  Well, Eowyn is already 'very high', and so exalted is a good description of where he ends up upon their reunion in Tirion, a very high place with respect to us.

Lastly on names, leaving Elvish aside, Diana means "Divine" in Latin (and also "Bright or "Shining One" and "Heavenly", which is also relevant).  In Words of the Faithful, Izilba-Deseret is called this exact name or title by spirits who have followed her to the entrance of the Paths of the Dead (the same that Aragorn would enter many years later), she doesn't go in, but one of the spirits called her "Daughter Divine".

I don't know - maybe a stretch, but there are definitely some overlapping elements and connections if you want to see them, I suppose.  Anyway, the characters and topics these details are potentially related to are so prevalent that I thought it was worth calling out.

The Rock on WWE Smackdown

The Weezer and Wonder Woman symbols also take us to the WWE.  It was mentioned in that reddit thread I pasted in above, so of course the symbols are going to be similar - that was the point of that thread.  What instead interested me in seeing that mention was that earlier in the week I had randomly watched an episode of a WWE show called SmackDown which featured the return of the character known as The Rock, played by Dwayne Johnson

Here is the WWE logo by the way, and you can see we once again have the W, and it is two W's like for Wonder Woman, but no wings this time, but Black and White.  It reminded me of our Black and White Rabbit, with the sometimes red eyes.

I have not watched a WWE broadcast or show for probably a couple decades, to give you an idea of how random this was.  One of my roommates in college was a big WWE fan, so he would watch SmackDown, Raw, whatever.  It was actually kind of fun to watch with him sometimes, because he would fill us all in on the storylines and characters.

But I don't think I have watched anything since then, so it has been awhile.

We have been having issues with our cable quality, and so I have been testing out picture quality between the actual cable box vs. streaming those channels over the cable provider's app (on AppleTV).  This tip was given to me by a Best Buy guy, so I've been trying it out.  It turns out, by the way, that something must be going on with the cable signal, because the channels look great over the internet, but terrible through the box.  I am not sure why.

Anyway, while in the streaming app, there was a big picture advertising WWE SmackDown, and it had a picture of The Rock.  I thought this must be an old episode, because to my knowledge The Rock had gotten into acting and wasn't a wrestler anymore.  The date on the picture said this was a new episode, however, recorded from the previous Friday.  Curiosity piqued, I decided to watch and investigate.

The short of it is that The Rock had been indeed retired from WWE since 2016, which was the year of his last match.  Apparently, though, starting last month, The Rock is set to return to the ring.  This will happen at the next WrestleMania.  Any guesses on the dates for that?  If you guessed the Solar Eclipse, you are close:  April 6 and 7.  The Eclipse will happen on April 8.  So The Rock returns right before the Eclipse.

Other important dates are tied up with April 6, however.  Joseph Smith founded the first Mormon church on April 6, 1830.  And, also potentially of interest, this year's General Conference of the LDS Church (where members gather to hear the leaders of the church speak, including the man they call prophet) will fall on April 6 and 7, so the same date as the founding, as well as with WrestleMania.  Between the two, I'd probably go with WrestleMania.

In any case, The Rock is coming out of retirement, and the SmackDown show I ended up watching a part of included what they call a 'promo', which basically had The Rock taking the stage, issuing some challenges, partnering up with a wrestler named Roman Reigns (which is a pretty funny and relevant name, honestly) and a group of people known as the Bloodline.  Heck, there was even a guy on that team called the Wise Guy (Wiseman = Wizard = Gandalf?).   

I don't know any of these characters besides The Rock, so I don't have their backstories or know anything about them.  But we have been dealing with El-Anor, the Sun Star or Sun Stone, and we have linked the Being of Faramir with this Star-Stone.  A Star-Man, or Stone-Man.  In my post The Honey Maid (OR: What crazy people see on graham cracker boxes and Oreos), I linked the man and the stone fairly tightly together in writing:

Is it the Son of Righteousness or Sun of Righteousness?  Man or Stone?  I think both, as this Son uses the Sun to rise.  He will rise to Aman or 'Heaven', where Eowyn-Ilmare now sits.

And here we have a WWE character by the name of The Rock (The Stone) making his return to the ring after an 8 year hiatus (where have I seen 8 years before?) on the weekend before the Solar Eclipse, which has become a symbol on this blog of the linkage between the Anor Stone and the Ithil Stone.

I think that is pretty randomly neat.

And then there is this partner he has teamed up with, Roman Reigns.  I have written recently about a Roman:  Peter.  Some claim that he was the first bishop of Rome.  And whatever the case was then, Rome certainly claims him as a citizen now, both as part of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as having his body buried (apparently) under St. Peter's Basilica, which is technically in the Vatican, but the Vatican sits right in the middle of Rome.

I have written about Faramir teaming up with Peter at some point in the future in this story, and here we have The Rock teaming up with a Roman.  

I don't know.

The Rock actually goes into a pretty funny monologue in the promo.  He insulted the whole city of Phoenix as a bunch of 'cactus loving crackheads' and meth users.  They still cheered for him.

At one point, he did make an interesting reference.  He used the number 22.  22 came up for me in a dream which I included in on of my posts.  In writing that post, I landed on tutu (two-two) as a potential meaning, which could be a flame or match, but also had some strange relevance to Elves and Tirion.  In the end, I equated Tutu with Artu, and both of these with "Heaven" or Tirion.

The Rock used 22 to at first allude to the length of his penis, of course, or at least let people think that is what he was saying.  Importantly, though, he uses the reference "22 inches of heaven", thus also linking 22 with heaven, though a bit differently than I had intended, obviously.

He also calls his penis a "Holy Moses", which is a first for me hearing anyone using that phrase to describe that part of the male anatomy.  Whatever works, I guess.  But Dicks and accompanying Stones have come up before.  We are looking for Dicks that have Stones, and which will help gather people and lead us to a land just like Moses.

Lastly, as part of making sure everyone understood he wasn't referring to his Holy Moses, The Rock helpfully clarifies that he was actually referring to his arm.  His biceps must be 22 inches around in circumference, I guess.  

In a few instances on this blog I have stated that Faramir is also an "arm", specifically the Arm of the Lord.  For example, in my post "First Man":  Armstrong and Hail Mary, I referenced an earlier post on this very topic, and concluded by making the connection more explicit through the use of a name game with Neil Armstrong's last name.  For the broader discussion and link to the earlier post, you can visit the Armstrong post and go from there (I thought it was a bit much to quote myself quoting myself...).  Here is a brief concluding statement I made:

Anyway, so we have Faramir-Eonwe as both a strongman, and also an 'arm'.  A strong-arm, or Armstrong.  Interesting right?

In conclusion, and as a reminder, I saw this episode on Monday night (again, Smackdown is on Fridays, apparently, but this was the recorded streamed version on the Xfinity app...  and actually I just noticed the X showing up again in Xfinity now that I wrote that).  So, it would have been the next night, Tuesday evening, when I watched the first part of Treasure Planet, which I finished later in the week, where I was introduced to the character of Mr. Arrow who was also a Rock or Stone Man, and who would end up falling or detaching into a Black Hole