Brains Are So Weird

This evening I was looking at one of the kitsch Virgin Mary candles we have on our dining room table. You know, the kind they’re talking about in the opening scene of Runaway Jury. You can also see them in the background of this photo.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the phrase “The Virgin Connie Swail” popped into my head. I took me a while to contextualize it, and at first I thought she was from Ghostbusters. Nope, it’s actually Dragnet, circa 1987:

Pep Streebeck: Hey partner. I tried to call you up till midnight. I didn’t know the Christian Science reading rooms stayed open so late.
Joe Friday: Not that it’s any of your business, but I spend the evening in the company of Connie Swail.
Pep Streebeck: Don’t you mean “the Virgin Connie Swail”?
[Friday looks at Streebeck as the Dragnet theme starts]
Pep Streebeck: Wait a minute!

I probably haven’t thought about that movie for twenty years. Or if I have, I wasn’t remembering the peculiar sobriquet for Alexandra Paul’s (still acting, I see) character. What else is stuck up there in the hoary attics of my gray matter? I shudder to think.